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My Second American Day, A Clown embeds.
cont from pt 1
My first morning in America found me full of Vim and Vigor .
I ate a stupefyingly large breakfast in bed worked it off by
dancing round naked for a bit, answered the phone,
I was to be picked up mid afternoon to visit the venue and there was something downstairs for me to pick up from reception.
I showered then grabbed the morning paper and did the sociological thing I always do where I look to see how sex is framed.
Every large newspaper contains sex and how it is framed illustrates the character of the society it represents.
Some societies NZ and Australia have pages devoted to the sex industry in the major papers, others hide behind euphemisms like 'escort' or 'massage' and yet others are further disguised under 'counselling services'.
Personally I don't avail myself of sexual services, I've lived with partners who dabbled in providing them but to me the transaction is too transparently humiliating to be worth papering over the cracks of your own inability to achieve intimacy by using simply cash. [scares the shit out of me.]
In most things I've noted that the purchaser risks more than the provider. To define a need is a form of nakedness no amount of money can obscure.
I settle for the overview, perhaps I'm a coward. Some large missing inner asshole or something.
The Chicago newspaper was neutered, how strange. The yellow pages in my hotel room screamed sex with an inch or more of escort services but the daily reality was scrubbed clean.
I formed a judgement,
the society was in arrested adolescence with a strong and overtly repressed sexual Calvinism that was dour and depressing overlay-ed with a plastic American coating of free will and limitless choices which grated like an exposed nerve on the social subtext that had at it's foundation that God had already chosen his friends on earth and that most of us were hellbound by statistical probability and just needed to be steered away from the depravity that is our natural state by the good folk who happened to own newspapers.
This was confirmed by the hotel porn which was littered with obscuring post production lampshades and 'objects de-mask-the-genitals'.
So with a surplice of inner bacon and eggs and a deficit of sexual confidence I ventured downstairs to flirt as best I could with America.
Reception greeted me warmly and passed me an envelope full of money. My fee in full. So I was off the hook for room-service, sweet!
It was in the thousands rather than hundreds so for day one I felt I was settling in well.
And where does a newly rich Clown shop while in America? Why the first Dollar shop he comes to, of course.
One large bag of industrial bi-product metallic tinsel and a handful of cheap plastic props later and I was briefly back at my hotel room, decorating.
Out again, observing, lot's of power dressers, pinstripes, wannabe Titans clutching their brittle slavery and attempting to project it, in a breathtaking attempt at style over substance, as confidence.
Oh well, from what I'd been led to believe the whole country was constantly hallucinating it's existence, I was just here to temporarily trip with them.
Down town was all business. The buildings were muscular and neo-Gothic, the only shopping mall I found might as well have been in Tokyo, London, Barcelona, France. Same stuff, same prices.
The only interesting distinction was the high exposure corporate branding on clothing. Amusing to train a population to pay to wear cloth sandwidge-boards.
Loyalty cannot be bought, but selling it seems to be another matter.
The underclass shone shoes on the sidewalk, I saw no one playing any instrument, no individual expression not off the peg of some retailer. Go Ford Go! How about those Zerox's!
Given time I could have found some soul and later I did. I have, my natural optimism aside, a weakness for being overwhelmed with despair. Creating my own entertainment is my antidote. I left Chicagos grim steroid-taut inner city rendition of itself and circled back to the hotel to get my ride to the venue.
A simple taxi arrived, a heavily fortified gentleman seemingly locked in a tiny cell with a steering wheel sped off with me in the padded holding cell behind him. He knew where he was going. All I knew was that Al Capone was involved and that where I was going was the Aragon Ballroom.
The Aragon Ballroom cost 2 million dollars to make in 1926. Get your head around that.
A ballroom that today would cost 40 million dollars but with 1920's tech.
It was designed to replicate a Spanish palace courtyard with its crystal chandeliers, mosaic tiles, garishly painted plaster, terra-cotta ceiling and beautiful arches. The shiny bent wood floor was created for dancing and rests on a cushion of cork, felt and springs. It appears to be a palace of illusions, where artificial stars twinkle overhead and projectors beam clouds scudding across the domed roof some 60 feet above the dance floor...
...Opened in July, 1926 more than 8,000 people jammed the Aragon to enjoy its unprecedented beauty. It was dubbed the most beautiful ballroom in the world.
..The Aragon enjoyed near capacity crowds every day. Weekly attendance regularly topped 18,000 during the 20's, 30's, and 40's...
...Playing the Aragon was regarded as having obtained "big-time" status. Acts like Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Welk, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Dick Jurgens, Harry James, Xavier Cugat, Eddy Duchin, Carmen Cavallaro, Kay Kyser, George Olsen, Benny Goodman, Sammy Kaye, Art Kassel, Artie Shaw, Ted Fio Rito, Jan Garber, Frankie Masters, Russ Morgan, Orrin Tucker, Griff Williams, Ben Bernie, Tommy Tucker, Abe Lyman, Henry King, Bernie Cummins, Shep Fields, Gus Arnheim, Ted Weems, Eddy Howard, Wayne King and many more frequented the Aragon....
...And in the Midwest those who weren't dancing perhaps sat at home by their radios and waited impatiently until the announcer ended his station break by saying: ".... we return you to our studios in the Aragon Ballroom, where the dancing is now in progress." The announcer spoke of the beauty and described the happy crowd enjoying the music of the best orchestras in the nation. Radio broadcasts were of paramount importance to the Aragon for advertising. These broadcasts were made live six nights a week from 10:05 PM to 11:00 PM on WGN Radio...
I walked in. There was all sorts of setup going down and sitting somewhat central were the two head honchos on directors chairs. They were lounging, not sitting up tense but layed back and splayed.
I love those first moments of contact. I know and recognise people who look at you like one expendable wheel on the locomotive they are tasked with .
We said hello. I share with a good number of my fellows the blight of being hyper-vigilant. Gruff people = Brittle self inflating reactionaries
Playful people = disciplined all encompassists with a mission. These guys were the latter and with the whole , 'puppy' thing behind us we knew where we stood.
I introduced myself, they smiled ruefully, I excused myself to put my stilts on and take a wander . Just checking for challenges generally. I found I could get everywhere, stairways are a speciality of mine. I looked for niches and cubbies and pillars and corners. The fact that it was all based on Spanish architecture and I had delt with that in Spain suited me.
There was a grand dual stairway entrance, statues of egyptian/african giants at their base.
I found my way up to the choirstands overlooking the dancefloor, the second story of the plastered spanish courtyard, interesting,
On the night Aretha Franklin would have 150 on each side as her choir, then James Brown.
I found myself even higher in a loft and took it for my dressingroom.
I knew all they wanted to know was that I was confident. I walked the set, took my stilts off and let them know that I was pleased and ready and I'd see them tomorrow, the day of the gig.
They offered a taxi, I refused, stating I preferred to walk for a bit.
I saw the cultural jar, they flinched. I was about to learn why.
I saw the same flinch in Tokyo where a friend, after about a 40 hour flight with holding lounge stopovers, after getting to our room in Tokyo, took his shoes off and walked barefoot out of the house and up the road. There is no greater sin than this in Japan. To walk on your bare feet in public =automatic flinch
Japanese anecdotal olympics aside,
The surrounding Chicago burbs were unattractuve.
Taxis knew full well the densians were desperately poor. I walked a long way back home before a taxi picked
me up. I was white.I was male, I was incongruous . I hadn't been mugged yet.
I arived back at my hotel and tipped heavily. I finally gave the bellboys something for nothing, went up to my room and ordered industrial quantities of of food and alcohol. I had just under 24 hours to the gig.
Pt 3
My first morning in America found me full of Vim and Vigor .
I ate a stupefyingly large breakfast in bed worked it off by
dancing round naked for a bit, answered the phone,
I was to be picked up mid afternoon to visit the venue and there was something downstairs for me to pick up from reception.
I showered then grabbed the morning paper and did the sociological thing I always do where I look to see how sex is framed.
Every large newspaper contains sex and how it is framed illustrates the character of the society it represents.
Some societies NZ and Australia have pages devoted to the sex industry in the major papers, others hide behind euphemisms like 'escort' or 'massage' and yet others are further disguised under 'counselling services'.
Personally I don't avail myself of sexual services, I've lived with partners who dabbled in providing them but to me the transaction is too transparently humiliating to be worth papering over the cracks of your own inability to achieve intimacy by using simply cash. [scares the shit out of me.]
In most things I've noted that the purchaser risks more than the provider. To define a need is a form of nakedness no amount of money can obscure.
I settle for the overview, perhaps I'm a coward. Some large missing inner asshole or something.
The Chicago newspaper was neutered, how strange. The yellow pages in my hotel room screamed sex with an inch or more of escort services but the daily reality was scrubbed clean.
I formed a judgement,
the society was in arrested adolescence with a strong and overtly repressed sexual Calvinism that was dour and depressing overlay-ed with a plastic American coating of free will and limitless choices which grated like an exposed nerve on the social subtext that had at it's foundation that God had already chosen his friends on earth and that most of us were hellbound by statistical probability and just needed to be steered away from the depravity that is our natural state by the good folk who happened to own newspapers.
This was confirmed by the hotel porn which was littered with obscuring post production lampshades and 'objects de-mask-the-genitals'.
So with a surplice of inner bacon and eggs and a deficit of sexual confidence I ventured downstairs to flirt as best I could with America.
Reception greeted me warmly and passed me an envelope full of money. My fee in full. So I was off the hook for room-service, sweet!
It was in the thousands rather than hundreds so for day one I felt I was settling in well.
And where does a newly rich Clown shop while in America? Why the first Dollar shop he comes to, of course.
One large bag of industrial bi-product metallic tinsel and a handful of cheap plastic props later and I was briefly back at my hotel room, decorating.
Out again, observing, lot's of power dressers, pinstripes, wannabe Titans clutching their brittle slavery and attempting to project it, in a breathtaking attempt at style over substance, as confidence.
Oh well, from what I'd been led to believe the whole country was constantly hallucinating it's existence, I was just here to temporarily trip with them.
Down town was all business. The buildings were muscular and neo-Gothic, the only shopping mall I found might as well have been in Tokyo, London, Barcelona, France. Same stuff, same prices.
The only interesting distinction was the high exposure corporate branding on clothing. Amusing to train a population to pay to wear cloth sandwidge-boards.
Loyalty cannot be bought, but selling it seems to be another matter.
The underclass shone shoes on the sidewalk, I saw no one playing any instrument, no individual expression not off the peg of some retailer. Go Ford Go! How about those Zerox's!
Given time I could have found some soul and later I did. I have, my natural optimism aside, a weakness for being overwhelmed with despair. Creating my own entertainment is my antidote. I left Chicagos grim steroid-taut inner city rendition of itself and circled back to the hotel to get my ride to the venue.
A simple taxi arrived, a heavily fortified gentleman seemingly locked in a tiny cell with a steering wheel sped off with me in the padded holding cell behind him. He knew where he was going. All I knew was that Al Capone was involved and that where I was going was the Aragon Ballroom.
The Aragon Ballroom cost 2 million dollars to make in 1926. Get your head around that.
A ballroom that today would cost 40 million dollars but with 1920's tech.
It was designed to replicate a Spanish palace courtyard with its crystal chandeliers, mosaic tiles, garishly painted plaster, terra-cotta ceiling and beautiful arches. The shiny bent wood floor was created for dancing and rests on a cushion of cork, felt and springs. It appears to be a palace of illusions, where artificial stars twinkle overhead and projectors beam clouds scudding across the domed roof some 60 feet above the dance floor...
...Opened in July, 1926 more than 8,000 people jammed the Aragon to enjoy its unprecedented beauty. It was dubbed the most beautiful ballroom in the world.
..The Aragon enjoyed near capacity crowds every day. Weekly attendance regularly topped 18,000 during the 20's, 30's, and 40's...
...Playing the Aragon was regarded as having obtained "big-time" status. Acts like Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Welk, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Dick Jurgens, Harry James, Xavier Cugat, Eddy Duchin, Carmen Cavallaro, Kay Kyser, George Olsen, Benny Goodman, Sammy Kaye, Art Kassel, Artie Shaw, Ted Fio Rito, Jan Garber, Frankie Masters, Russ Morgan, Orrin Tucker, Griff Williams, Ben Bernie, Tommy Tucker, Abe Lyman, Henry King, Bernie Cummins, Shep Fields, Gus Arnheim, Ted Weems, Eddy Howard, Wayne King and many more frequented the Aragon....
...And in the Midwest those who weren't dancing perhaps sat at home by their radios and waited impatiently until the announcer ended his station break by saying: ".... we return you to our studios in the Aragon Ballroom, where the dancing is now in progress." The announcer spoke of the beauty and described the happy crowd enjoying the music of the best orchestras in the nation. Radio broadcasts were of paramount importance to the Aragon for advertising. These broadcasts were made live six nights a week from 10:05 PM to 11:00 PM on WGN Radio...
I walked in. There was all sorts of setup going down and sitting somewhat central were the two head honchos on directors chairs. They were lounging, not sitting up tense but layed back and splayed.
I love those first moments of contact. I know and recognise people who look at you like one expendable wheel on the locomotive they are tasked with .
We said hello. I share with a good number of my fellows the blight of being hyper-vigilant. Gruff people = Brittle self inflating reactionaries
Playful people = disciplined all encompassists with a mission. These guys were the latter and with the whole , 'puppy' thing behind us we knew where we stood.
I introduced myself, they smiled ruefully, I excused myself to put my stilts on and take a wander . Just checking for challenges generally. I found I could get everywhere, stairways are a speciality of mine. I looked for niches and cubbies and pillars and corners. The fact that it was all based on Spanish architecture and I had delt with that in Spain suited me.
There was a grand dual stairway entrance, statues of egyptian/african giants at their base.
I found my way up to the choirstands overlooking the dancefloor, the second story of the plastered spanish courtyard, interesting,
On the night Aretha Franklin would have 150 on each side as her choir, then James Brown.
I found myself even higher in a loft and took it for my dressingroom.
I knew all they wanted to know was that I was confident. I walked the set, took my stilts off and let them know that I was pleased and ready and I'd see them tomorrow, the day of the gig.
They offered a taxi, I refused, stating I preferred to walk for a bit.
I saw the cultural jar, they flinched. I was about to learn why.
I saw the same flinch in Tokyo where a friend, after about a 40 hour flight with holding lounge stopovers, after getting to our room in Tokyo, took his shoes off and walked barefoot out of the house and up the road. There is no greater sin than this in Japan. To walk on your bare feet in public =automatic flinch
Japanese anecdotal olympics aside,
The surrounding Chicago burbs were unattractuve.
Taxis knew full well the densians were desperately poor. I walked a long way back home before a taxi picked
me up. I was white.I was male, I was incongruous . I hadn't been mugged yet.
I arived back at my hotel and tipped heavily. I finally gave the bellboys something for nothing, went up to my room and ordered industrial quantities of of food and alcohol. I had just under 24 hours to the gig.
Pt 3