Plastic People of the Universe
Carothers and Marvel
Standing in the trees,
F-I-S-H-I-N-G!
First came nylon,
Then came plastics,
Then came pipes n’ pikes~
Fantastic!
Wallace Carothers, left, inventor of nylon, with Carl “Speed” Marvel, the father of synthetic polymer chemistry, fishing at Squaw Lake, Wisconsin, ca 1935.
Photo from Carl Marvel Archives
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Recommended “Books” on CD
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Leaves of Grass,
Music by Fred Hersch,
Words by Walt Whitman,
The Fred Hersch Ensemble
Kurt Elling and Kate McGarry, vocalists
(2005)
…Works of the great American poet set to an Ellingtonian Jazz suite. It reminds you that poetry is rooted in song. Some of it reminds you of Miles.
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Songs of Innocence and Experience
Poems by William Blake
Set to music by William Bolcom
University of Michigan
School of Music Symphony Orchestra/
University Musical Society
Under Leonard Slatkin
(2004)
…A grab-bag of musical styles fraught with alarming transitions and general alarm befitting the great mystic and romantic poet. Some of it sounds like your high school jazz ensemble circa 1973.
Celebrate yourself,
Vanx
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The Nightmare Song
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By Gilbert and Sullivan
When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache,
and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose 
to indulge in, without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire–the bedclothes conspire
of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes,
and your sheet slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles–you feel like mixed pickles–
so terribly sharp is the pricking,
And you’re hot, and you’re cross, and you tumble and toss
till there’s nothing ‘twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap,
and you pick ‘em all up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines
to remain at its usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze,
with hot eye-balls and head ever aching.
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dream
s
that you’d very much better be waking;
For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing
about in a steamer from Harwich–
Which is something between a large bathing machine
and a very small second-class carriage–
And you’re giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat)
to a party of friends and relations–
They’r
e a ravenous horde–and they all came on board
at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney
(who started that morning from Devon);
He’s a bit undersized, and you don’t feel surprised
when he tells you he’s only eleven.
Well, you’re driving like mad with this singular lad
(by the by, the ship’s now a four-wheeler),
And you’re playing round games, and he calls you bad names
when you tell him that “ties pay the dealer”;
But this you can’t stand, so you throw up your hand,
and you find you’re as cold as an i
cicle,
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks),
crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too–
which they’ve somehow or other invested in–
And he’s telling the tars all the particulars of a company
he’s interested in–
It’s a scheme of devices, to get at low prices
all goods from cough mixtures to cables
(Which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers
as though they were all vegetables–
You get a good spa
desman to plant a small tradesman
(first take off his boots with a boot-tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot,
and they’ll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree–
From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea,
cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant,
apple puffs, and three corners, and Banburys–
The shares are a penny, and ever so many
are taken by Rothschild and Baring,
And just as a few are allotted to you,
you awake with a shudder despairing-
.
You’re a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck,
and no wonder you snore, for your head’s on the floor,
and you’ve needles and pins from your soles to your shins,
and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg’s asleep,
and you’ve cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose,
and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue,
and a thirst that’s intense, and a general sense
that you haven’t been sleeping in clover;
.
But the darkness has passed, and it’s daylight at last,
and the night has been long–ditto ditto my song–
and thank goodness they’re both of them over!
(Lord Chancellor falls exhausted on a seat.),
Vanx 
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Paintings by Max Beckmann
Top to bottom:
Party in Paris
The Dream
Family
Bird’s Hell
The Prodigal Son
The King
Hotel Lobby
Self Portrait in Tuxedo
Editor’s note:
I heard this on the radio tonight, sitting in the van, waiting for my daughter to get out of basketball practice. Nightmare is a pertinent theme these days. And I marvel at this song. The first time I ever heard it (you guessed it) it was Todd Rundgren singing. He did a faithful rendition, and…Oh, what the hell! My generation was introduced to the great Russian composers by Bugs Bunny. The Runt route to Gilbert and Sullivan is all right. The Beckmann paintings dropped into place before I even thought of them.
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TV/Radio Head
The other day, I clicked on something on Yahoo about Heath Ledger finally doing something good (Brokeback Mountain) after doing a lot of things
bad. One of the bad things he did, says Yahoo, was Ned Kelly (2003), a movie based on Robert Drew’s book, Our Sunshine, about the famous Australian “bushranger” outlaw who was hanged in 1880.
I didn’t see the movie—not many people did, apparently. But I did see a series of paintings about Kelly by Sidney Nolan a few years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The paintings, done around 1945, are supportive of the protagonist’s Robin Hood/Billy the Kid reputation. But they add an unnerving Space Age twist.
Wikipedia has a concise and informative biography of Ned Kelly—the short of it is that he came from an “outlaw” family of Irish Catholics, and, after a series of petty criminal activity and rather severe abuses to his family and friends at the hands of the British and Protestant Irish, met his fate at Glenrowan in 1880. There, the Kelly Gang—Ned, his brother Dan, Joe Byrne, and Steve Hart–held 70 people hostage at an inn and took on a trainload of Australian police. They were captured, and executed.
At Glenrowan, it is told , the gang manufactured armor for themselves using iron hardware from ploughs. Kelly was, in fact, a little obsessed with armor. This may have started when, as a boy, he was given a green sash by the family of a child he saved from drowning. Legend has it that Kelly wore the sash under his armor at Glenrowan. The legend also goes that Kelly walked into blazing cop fire at Glenrowan, getting shot either 6 or 20-something times in his unarmored legs, depending on whose account you believe.
Nolan, the painter, picked up on the armor, especially the helmet, in turning the bushranger into an iconic figure. The series depicts Kelly riding about the Australian landscape, basically behaving like Robin Hood, with a big, black TV/r
adio-looking box for a head. Sometimes it has a slit at eye level and two spherical or simply beady eyeballs lined up inside. The figure is black and flat. It is an unsettling image that seems to transport the head of the protagonists from the late 19th century of the rest of the painting into the electronic age of the latter 20th century. Kelly has a bizarre buzz about him in these paintings, which are otherwise broad, naïve, and quirky. He is a futuristic knight in armor. Strange indeed.
There have, in fact, been several movies made about Kelly. Tony Richardson made a movie called Ned Kelly in 1970 starring Jagger in the lead role. Jagger’s head is canned in a TV/radio-li
ke helmet, suggesting that Richardson’s costume designer was familiar with the paintings. (Richardson ran into trouble with the Australian actor’s guild for casting a Brit in the lead role, by the way—Ned probably would have had a problem with Mick as well).
I wonder if the Heath Ledger “Ned Kelly” had a TV/radio head? There is something like a snowball’s chance in the Outback that I would rent the movie to find out. But I bet he didn’t have the head box, and that that’s what blew the box office.
Vanx
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Top-Down Images (Paintings by Sydney Nolan)
Ned Kelly
First Rate Marksman
Street Fighting Man: Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly
The Trial
Very Niece
We are not able to custom order relatives to our exact specifications. And we have all witnessed the tragic results.
If, however, I could walk up to Plato’s cave and shout out “Niece, straight up,” this delightful person would emerge.
And she actual is my niece!
Her name is Erin. Her family name is even more Irish—it conjures images of dark Celtic liba
tions.
She did an Irish dance at our wedding reception in 1984, and she stopped by over the weekend (she was in Manhattan for high-level meetings last week).
Sadly, we had to send her back to her happening Midwest home, where even by local standards she is extraordinarily sweet, bright, and polite. I’m cutting her slack on the occasional shamrock accessory. And I’m just one lucky uncle.
“Pheasants in sock drawers
The winner of January’s Fun With Literature is Tata of Poor Impulse Control! And her prize is the following poem inspired by her winning entry:
One Hundred Years of Slapstick.
In composing it, I culled grist from the many great entries.
One Hundred Years
of Slapstick
-Dedicated to Tata, Gun Moll for the
Modern English Subversion Conference
For one hundred 
….years putzes
….traveled.in pairs
Amidst kick-
…..trapeze
…..cowgirls
…..and knife-
…..wielding bears.
Frankly, no one
…..expected
.….a whole
…..lot from us
Before you slapped my ass in the back of the bus.
I remember the first tour—ah, only too well!
Our romp through the Catskills, our throw-down in Hell!
Our nights in the diners across the heartland,
Carving out our routines on the backs of our hands.
We trudged through the grange houses of Tobyhanna,
In Terre Haute straightmen don’t play Pollyanna.
But you were most gracious, you let me play through
As you thwarted my eye-poke in Kalamazoo. 
We clocked time at Doll’s House,
…..shared the bill at The Wharf
With that dirty rat bastard
…..Vernon God Dwarf ,
Who stumbled, unscripted,
…..in utter disgrace,
Through the small towns where we wiped
…..the boards with out face.
The summer meant backlots in old Pascagoula,
Jumping tricks through the hula-hoops-not-meant-for-hula,
We were coming up fast and going down hard–
Our shtick was composed by the Marquis de Sade
We knew Lewis and Monkey, Oryx and Crake
The Devil wore lunch when we plotzed by mistake!
We played outdoors at county, indoors at state,
Where Bibles flew over the nests at the gate.
We awakened the D’Urbevilles, twice in one night
With Horse-shots of cold blood that started a fight. 
When the chorus went postal
…..we couldn’t resist
Simply punching ourselves
…..in the nose with our fists.
We ran ten decades strong,
…..shooting straight for the heart–
But then came that Spring
…..when the act fell apart.
When I hit the bottle and you
…..hit the cop?:
Farewell to insomnia that just
…..wouldn’t stop.
Still we’re pasted with memories
….like cold lemon pies
That drip from our noses, bring tears to our eyes.
“Folks don’t know what hit ‘em! Can’t say what they saw!”
Says our manager, Donatien Alphonse Francois.
Yes, we lit up the Lumens, the Lugs, and the Humdrums,
Steered clear through all of the cocktail conundrums,
And acknowledging Jodhpurs, and Junkies, and Jeers,
Fell all over each other for one hundred years.
Thanks, all, for playing!
Vanx
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Photo’s top to bottom
Poor Impulse Control Logo-shot: Jim Graham
Kipper Kids: Yanked from here
Lewis and Monkey: Thanks Dave the Spaz
Kipper Kids: Here again
The Road Not Taken
Today, I cleaned out my studio. I found, as I always do when I clean, the brown sketchbook with my first attempt at a grid drawing from a photograph (left*). I never completed it. I distinctly remember when I abandoned the project, which was an assignment for an adult education course I took when I started painting in 1991. 
The drawing had been going very well, actually. I was working from a photo taken during my summer camp counselor days in the 1970s (the camp photographer took the photo**). But working that grid felt so mechanical and cerebral. It was boring. Math-like.
I had taken a book of George Rouault paintings from the library that week (Rouault’s Old King above, right) . His work struck me as human and heartfelt. It reminded me of paintings at the Fauve Landscape exhibit in Los Angeles that had weeks before thrown me by my pants into the Utrecht art supply store on 4th Avenue in NYC. It reminded me that I wanted to paint.
To tell the truth, I had been enthusiastic about the grid technique to start with. My instructor did 
very large photorealistic cityscapes in watercolors that I really admire. She was the head of a group of New Jersey painters who all worked from photographs and exhibited everywhere. Some are very successful today. It was an established path. It was just not for me, and I’m glad I realized it early. (The course also included hand-eye drawing basics, which were very helpful. I did learn to draw in that class)
Anyway, I finally gave the brown sketchbook to my daughter Emily who scribbled lightly on the drawing in red crayon. That’s my favorite part of the drawing now.
I never looked back. I don’t think I would have had nearly as much adventure, elation, and disappointment as I’ve had in my basement corner if I’d stuck with the grid. There’s my studio (above, right)—one of New Jersey’s lesser-known Superfund sites. I love it and all the little animal and plant friends I share it with. Now that it’s kind of clean, I’m thinking of messing it up again with “The Wedding of Hassan Fattah” from a sketch I did on site (which I think kind of pissed-off out the Imam). 
*Had I finished the grid drawing, it would have been three times as wide and it would have included Toby Loyd dressed as Elvis. It was “Halloween Night” at Camp Moore, and Loydo spelled his name, Texas style, with only one “L”.
**The photograph is great, one of many such taken by J. T. Gibson.
Right: Sunflowers from the basement
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The Darwin Boys
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Or the Flip Side of Evolution
My favorite display at the Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History is this drawing by his son, Francis, which the boy titled “Joust of the Fruit and Vegetable Knights”
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The parsimonious Darwin would insist that the boy draw only on the back of scrap sheets of manuscript. The display at the museum does not give us what C.D. had written on the reverse side of this particular drawing. We at Verb-Ops, however, are fairly confident that the back side includes this stretch from The Voyage of the Beagle in the great man’s hand:
….very attitudes were abject, and the expression of their countenances distrustful, surprised, and startled. After we had presented them with some scarlet cloth, which they immediately tied round their necks, they became good friends. This was shown by the old man patting our breasts, and making a chuckling kind of noise, as people do when feeding chickens. I walked with the old man, and this demonstration of friendship was repeated several times; it was concluded by three hard slaps, which were given me on the breast and back at the same time. He then bared his bosom for me to return the compliment, which being done, he seemed highly pleased. The language of these people, according to our notions, scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat, but certainly no European ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, guttural, ….
I like the guy on the grape,
Vanx
Watch this space: Darwin, Van Gogh, and Whitman meet in New York–coming soon to Verb-Ops
Drawing courtesy of Denis Finnin, American Museum of Natural History
