AMERICA'S CUP 2013

usa (black) new zealand (red)

The America's Cup racing ended yesterday with an American win. I watched videos of five of the races, the 19th the last. The ones I saw were 6, 7, 15, 16 and 19.. To say a sailboat race was exciting sounds like saying a toad race is. I've always liked to see America's Cup races on tv, though seldom have. I recall the beautiful, sleek boats of the Fifties and Sixties, much like the slick Indy cars of that time. Along came the computer; boats and cars changed, as did planes and everything else. This year the boats were catamarans with 130 foot masts. The only difference I could see between the two boats were the size of what I think I remember called jibs, the small sail in front of the tall sail. They were different sizes, and a little bit different shapes. These were hi-tech to the present moment. Instead of the hulls skimming over the water, the catamarans had thin blades with a little wing at the bottom that sliced through the water raising the hulls of the catamarans into the air for nearly no resistance. These boats sliced through the water at 45 to 50 mph in a good wind. The skill of the dozen or so people operating each boat equaled a pit crew in NASCAR races changing tires, filling up gas, peeling a layer of windshield film, in twelve to fourteen seconds. The crew on these sailboats never stopped their all-out physical activity. They had to go into this race with a great deal of physical stamina, at least as much as it would take to play a soccer match or basketball.

I found it actually thrilling to watch the sailboats cut the water, leaving two narrow wakes that look like contrails from above. I have a powerful love for sailboats. They have attracted my attention all my life. I love their beauty, that the America's Cup sailboats are every year the cutting edge of the latest technology on aero and hydro dynamics at sea. A psychic told me I had a lifetime as a pirate in the North African part of the Atlantic and Mediterranean in the 13th Century. This is the only explanation I can figure for why I've loved sailboats since childhood, like I loved pirate movies in childhood. Even liked to dress as a pirate for Halloween. I've been on a few small sailboats, just enough to find that learning to sail is complex and fun, too complex for casual sailing. There is the truth that a boat is a hole in the water you throw money in, and I've never had nor wanted enough money to throw a large portion of it away. I like documentaries about circumnavigation in a sailboat for one. I think of that something like the Adamson's in East Africa knowing lions so well they could trust their knowledge to keep them safe among lions. Setting out to go around the tip of South Africa and the tip of South America in suicidal rough seas takes knowledge so subtle that the one operating the boat has full confidence in understanding the sea, the wind, the boat and self. It takes comfort with solitude to circumnavigate the globe solo.

The America's Cup racing teams are hyper athletic. One of them on the American team was said to be a winner of four Olympic gold medals. These are people dedicated to racing boats like NASCAR drivers dedicate every moment to racing. These people stand out in front of everybody else in their field. It takes dedication and work to get there and to stay there. They verge on flawless like the car race pit crews and our tv football games. Pro football is so tight by now that winning is a matter of making the least mistakes. It's the same with baseball. It's the skill I watch when I see a tv football game or baseball game. I see somebody hit a home run with a ball that he has to decide whether to swing at or let it go by the moment the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, the ball going 90mph. I wouldn't even see the ball. If I'd been on one of those catamarans, there would have been no place for me to get out of the way but to jump over the side. No room for passengers. The best thing for me to do is go to youTube, write americas cup 2013 in the box and pick a race to see. According the to the two men doing the talking during the race, moment by moment, like talking about car races, intelligent guys who understood high speed catamaran racing, America's Cup, the history, the rules, this may have been the most neck and neck race since the beginning. I'd rather see the youTube video than actually to have seen it from the shore of San Francisco Bay amidst the throng of people, parked cars, two sails in the near and far distance, mostly far, and that's it. I liked listening to these two guys talk about it for their knowledge.

 The American team came back from starting out with eight losses, and made that up plus the one, race 19, it took to win. Congratulations to the American crew. The New Zealand crew deserves congratulations for being so difficult to defeat. The crew was the equal of the American crew and the boats equal, too. The American crew took awhile to get in tune, but when they got there, they were unstoppable. It came down to race nineteen neck and neck. Even to have lost that race doesn't mean much. It was only by 35 or 40 seconds. That's not even a minute behind. The two teams and the two boats were so equal that it made a truly exciting race. The two men doing the talking were blown away by what good races these were. One read a tweet they'd received from somebody who said something to the effect of -- you never told me your sport was like this! The announcer said, "It's not like in your grandfather's day," meaning, I presume, the Fifties when America's cup was a sailboat race before catamarans and computer designs. Then, the hull rode on the water; now knife blades slice the water while the hull, itself, streamlined as a knife blade, flies above the surface. Watching the boats fly over the water brought to mind watching two NASCAR drivers running around a curve side by side at 150, perfect control. This sailboat race represented for me the image of near perfect control of self, as close as is humanly possible this year.

 

*

PACKERS OWN STEELERS

caterpillar

Yesterday, Sunday, I watched the complete SuperBowl game between Pittsburgh and Green Bay, commercials and all. I was one of 6 redneck boys sitting around 2 pizzas, some beer and so forth. It worked out that 3 pulled for one team and 3 pulled for the other. I went into it thinking the Steelers would probably win, but pulled for Green Bay. Why? I liked the colors, green and yellow, Alleghany Trojan colors. I really didn't care which of them won the game, but a good game is an enjoyment to watch, whatever it is. Sports is the perfect activity for television. Sports are about nothing but winning, like politics. Only difference, politics pretends to be about something. Television goes so fast, it doesn't have a span of attention that allows thought, but in reaction. Sports is all fast-moving eye candy devoid of meaning but for what you see.

I only knew 2 of the guys there, had never even seen the other 3 that I can recall. Comments hopping around the place. Near the end when Green Bay intercepted a pass, the 2 other guys pulling for Green Bay jumped to their feet, YEAH. I've an idea they'd have been a lot louder had it not been for somebody there old enough to be grandparent to any of them, me. Sometimes I'd look at the picture of a grandparent sitting among these guys in their mid 20s. They didn't quite know what to make of me, and I had the same problem knowing what to make of them. The only thing I knew about where they were coming from was several generation gaps I've paid little attention to. Yet we all got along reasonably. Focused on the game, we had it in common, so generation gaps didn't have any affect on our communication, only made for minor discomfort not knowing that that you don't have to watch your language in front of this old turd. I felt like they were a bit inhibited, getting together so they can jump and holler and let the inner little boy have a chance to play. Bud Lite.

It was a tense game. Green Bay established the lead and held onto it. Pittsburgh came on in the 2nd half, but not quite enough. I've never been used to anyone listening to anything I have to say all through my life. I talk too slow for minds without attention spans to follow. You just about have to remember from one word to the next consciously. There was a moment when I said something and everybody in the room listened. Blew my mind. It was the end of the first half and everybody talking about Green Bay so far ahead Pittsburgh didn't have much of a chance. I said, "Like Steven Seagal says, Things have a way of changing real fast." It was saying "Steven Seagal" that got their attention. We've all seen games where the team behind drives ahead and wins in the second half. Every play was tight. The Green Bay quarterback got MVP. All of us thought that a little odd. My reason for thinking it odd was they said it was for 3 touchdown passes. About every play, he threw a pass. At least a hundred passes and 3 connected for td. I was surprised to see his arm hold up like it did. It was a throwing game on both sides. Consistently good plays, even the ones that failed.

Part of the thrill of the game is the long anticipated SuperBowl commercials, the unveiling of the most expensive commercials debuting that day. I used to wonder why commercials didn't use more humor, when the comic ones always received the most attention, like the Budweiser frogs and the old gal who said, Where's the beef? These commercials last night were just about all humorous. And about all of them were done in YouTube spontaneous moments, some of them the FAIL moments so popular on YouTube, like the kid on a skateboard, like the kid who tried to jump a skateboard from the roof of one building to another and missed. Those are called fails. The ads had a kind of dark edge about their humor that made them all the funnier, like the newborn baby that accidentally gets tossed face-first onto a pane of glass, sticks a moment and slides down the glass on its face. It was a rubber doll, but it still represented a baby, and very well. There was a car ad that was the equivalent of a half minute acid trip. The commercials had all of us laughing out loud.

It was like looking at YouTube every time they showed a run of commercials. Some of them didn't even seem like commercials. Mad Ave has learned that YouTube is everybody's favorite activity on a computer, besides pornography, the public television no-no. When television frees up to pornography, the SuperBowl ads will be the most popular ever. Like last night everybody in the room was waiting for the woman singing at half time to expose a boob like Janet Jackson. All agreed that was no accident. The ads also featured large numbers of people in them. The one that struck my Art button was the little boy of maybe 3 in a Darth Vader outfit going around the house opening his hands at objects attempting to do something magic. He was in the driveway in front of dad's new VW. He opened his hands at the front of the car and dad inside the house looking through a window clicked the clicker starting the car. Couldn't see the boy's face for the mask, but his surprise was visible.

*

MUSIC VIDEOS

lucas pasley, fiddle; chris johnson, banjo

Rain all day today, rain awhile and let up, rain awhile and let up. Fog all day with it. Not an outdoor day for cats. At the computer I wrote Sparta NC in the search box at YouTube and found a drive through Sparta from beyond the old pipe factory water tower into and through town all the way through almost to Blevins where the bypass comes in. It was called Main St In Sparta NC. It's worth the visit for the fun of it. A ride we know so well, everything familiar along the way. I like that smooth curve the road takes from the old pipe factory down and a curve to the right, then left to cross the bridge, then KFC and the smooth curve to the right. It has a nice flow through there. Actually, come to think of it, the road through Sparta has a smooth flow all the way through, up and down to Gap Civil. The traffic moves fairly well along there too. Except for Friday afternoons. It takes as long waiting to make a left turn onto Main St anywhere but at a light as it takes in Myrtle Beach to get onto hwy 17. A hundred times more cars there, but waiting for an opening with 4 lanes each way takes no longer than in Sparta.

Also found of local interest the Junior Appalachian Musician program band Borderline 3 years ago. They played Leather Britches and did a respectable job of it. When the audience caught on that these fellers were about making some music, the whoopin and hollerin started and then it settled down and everyone listened to these kids a-layin it to it, and roared for them when they were done. Chris Johnson, banjo, and Justin Willey, mandolin, got with Lucas Pasley, fiddle, teacher at the high school, and Justin Willey's dad, Jerod, who plays bass. They've gone on calling themselves Borderline. I've put up about 5 videos of them from a concert in the summer. I headlined it Borderline Old Time Band because there is an infinite list of things called Borderline. This title goes straight to it.

Lucas Pasely is a fiddler with a long list of fiddlers in his genealogy, a great-great uncle was Guy Brooks of the Red Fox Chasers, the first musicians from Alleghany to record, back in 1928.

Brooks was a preacher, I've been told, probably Regular Baptist, and was given his letter by the church over a record he made with the Red Fox Chasers, a comic kind of thing that was funny in the Twenties, the guys in the band talking like they're drinking and having a good time with some mountain liquor. It's still funny, today. But it didn't set too well with the people in the Association, the preacher making a record about being drunk and talking about drinking. Whether he took a drink (inhaled) was neither here nor there. That must have been why he moved to Wilkes County and wasn't heard much from anymore, as far as I know, which isn't much, and probably inaccurate. Lucas Pasley, whose grandmother was a Brooks, has that natural ability to pick up a stringed instrument and figure it out right away and has the intelligence to hone his playing to mastery. It's good for him to have some teenage energy pushing him to make that fiddle bow do its thing.

Borderline is already a band in the county. There is the Jubilee band, Rise and Shine Band and Town and Country, where some of the better musicians in the county are playing. I believe Borderline has played at the Jubilee a time or two. Being young musicians, they're given the stage quite a lot and by now they've played about everywhere around here, and always to a happy crowd. When they come out on the stage you see a bunch of kids. When the music starts, it's just a few seconds into it you know this is going to be some music. They have drive in abundance. These boys are going to make some excellent musicians. They already are. It's fun for me to see a band in its early years and watch them mature. It's how it was in the old days, people paying attention to a young fiddler or banjo or guitar picker and watching them over the years at fiddlers conventions, watching them go from #10 to #1 over a period of years, watching them mature and become known as one of the better ones around. I've listened to some old men in their 80s tell of watching such fiddlers as Thornton Spencer and Jeff Michael improve over the years to where they've become masters.

The music at the Front Porch Gallery is good as it gets every week. I don't know how long it will last into winter, and feel like I don't want to miss anything, because there's no music better anywhere around. May be the equal, but none better. Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart put the show on each week and have a guest artist they accompany as needed. When Johnny and Jeanette Williams played there, it was on the moment they hit their first licks. Using a 5star rating system like netflix, I'd give all the bands that played there 5 stars. Scott showed a list of who will be there over the next month and it's more of the same, music as good as it gets. It's curious to all dozen of us who go there regularly why there are never more than a dozen or 14.

It can only hold about 2 dozen comfortably. We who go regularly are happy as kids for 2 hours every Friday night. We've come to know each other and it's turned into a house party. The musicians love to play for a small crowd like that. It's intimate the way music is shared best.

GROUNDHOG HOLES AND VIDEOS

I find television very educating.

Every time somebody turns on the set

I go to the other room and read a book.

---Groucho Marx

Fog this morning, the kind you can see through for a little ways, the kind that makes a white background for shapes and images in the foreground. Saw the above out the window to the east. What sent me outside in the rain with an umbrella was the shapes of the leaves against the fog. It was Asian; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Persian. Fog gives the picture a suggestion of watercolor on paper. I like everything about the fog but driving in it. I don't mind a fog with some visibility for driving. Today's was an easy fog to drive in. As long as I can see if a car is coming around the next curve, I'm ok.

Have you ever had a moment driving along in a perfectly familiar place and not know where you are? Yesterday I was driving on Wolfe Road, shortcut between Pine Swamp Road and Frasier Road going in to town. My mind was dwelling on something and I came out of it in a section of road with trees along both sides, no houses in sight. I realized all of a sudden I'd better watch it. My mind about went someplace besides driving a car 30mph, and I had no idea where I was. It was like setting me down on a mountain road anywhere in these mountains I'd never been. That was a bit alarming considering it was awhile before I knew where I was. I came around the curve and saw Betty Roupe's mailbox, Oh, Wolfe Road. Of course, it's Wolfe Road. I turned down Wolfe Road. Duh. The mind is playing tricks on me like that more and more. I don't mind it a bit. It's part of the process. Sometimes I think ginko tea might help, might taste good too. Most of the time I think it doesn't matter. Gives a bit of drama by surprise to the day. The one today was actually somewhat alarming, because it was like I'd woke from a sleep and found myself driving. I was too present in the thinking of the moment. I mean it must have been the same as dreaming awake. Mind off on its adventures while the body is driving a car.

I knew I knew where I was, but it would not come to me. I wasn't lost, but it was the same as lost when it comes to the familiar. Woods along the sides of the roads do have a way of looking alike. If I'd seen a house when snapping out of the dream, it would have been familiar. I'm not complaining about it. The momentary disorientation was fun. Like the way a house of mirrors feels walking through it. Also a little unsettling. Like, Whoa! What was that? The same has happened before and when I come out of it, I'm immediately aware of where I am. But not today. Talking, sometimes I see the next thing to say fade away before my eyes, like a big fog rolls in and it's gone. I call that falling down a groundhog hole. Today's experience was like thinking I'm awake in the morning, seeing TarBaby walk in through the open window and lie down beside me on the bed. I reach to pet him, wake up and he's gone. The very same kind of experience, but today it happened awake. Evidently awake needs qualification there, like somewhat, a little bit, slightly, only the least little bit, not at all.

Maybe in the course of this blog you can watch me slowly lose my mind. Maybe it will turn into Surrealism and that could be very interesting. To give an idea of what I mean by Surrealism, the title of one of poet Andre Breton's books was Soluble Fish. From there, anything can happen. Fairly liberating. I'm thinking Lady Gaga is today's Wendy O Williams of the Plasmatics. Another time, another style. I've discovered Plasmatics videos on YouTube and they are everything I'd want them to be. All out. Totally cut loose. The only limits being the size of the stage. Punk in the beginning was a kind of anti-commercial expression. The Plasmatics went all out commercial, were on tv, made the charts, made a lot of money really fast. They went on for about 10 years. Wendy had been a tv wrestler before she became a rock stripper. It's not quite right to call her a stripper, because she'd start a show as nearly nude as she ended. She didn't have anything to take off. I emailed my friend Lucas I went to school with, "We doubted the artistic integrity of the Plasmatics." Looking at them 35 years after, and actually seeing them for the first time in motion, only still photos before. They are delightfully outrageous.

After seeing several Plasmatics videos, I switched to Nashville Pussy. It's a Southern rock punk biker band. Plasmatics again. This time not blowing up cars and cutting up guitars with a chainsaw. After several of their videos, I went to Jane's Addiction. There was the Plasmatics again in a new style, their rebellion more in words than going at a television with a sledge hammer while the guitars are going apeshit. Perry Ferrell was Wendy O Williams in his own style. He had the same fascination with public nudity. By the end of every concert he'd be down to his bikini. He was arrested in Honolulu about 1991 for taking it off. There's more than one way to make headlines. Like take your clothes off before 50,000 people and at least a hundred cops. I dropped in on some friends a few weeks ago. Their 3 little kids were going about free of their clothing. I felt like I was at Woodstock. I esp liked Jane's Addiction's Ocean Side video, a guy on a surfboard riding a big tsunami wave from the time it's swelling up and eventually breaks, he rides in front of the foam fast as he can go, but it catches and consumes him and he comes riding out of it like it was nothing. The time I saw Jane's Addiction at Raleigh, I recall that video playing on a gigantic screen above the stage. It was unforgettable. The music is a soundtrack for that ride.

It's so great to be in a time where I don't have to go to New York to see what's going on in art. I've never had access to so much rock visuals where I can see any band I've ever heard of in concert, some like they're made with a cell phone in the audience and some with good sound and visuals. They're all good. And there are old-time bands galore, and again, some good, some bad, all good. I can't even start the thinking to figure out how all that is on YouTube is possible. But I'm still stumped by how a telephone works. It wouldn't do for me to waste time trying to figure out something like that. The big social changes occurring now seem to be of a psychological nature, finding new ways of thinking, and it's changing really fast. It's all beyond me. It's happening to the young kids, another generation gap.

I'd guestimate at least a half dozen generation gaps between me and someone graduating from high school. It's something I can't fathom from this end of it and the other can't fathom from the other end. When I'm around someone of late teens, early twenties, I see the chasm of all those generation gaps and turn my attention to staying out of them, paying them no mind, all attention to whoever it might be, the person I'm talking with, not the generation I'm talking with. We can talk easily person to person over the generation gaps such that they aren't there but in the pop culture we pay attention to. I like the younger people I know to turn me on to the music they listen to. Rufus Wainwright is a recent discovery. Without sounding at all like Dylan, he has a similar spirit to what Dylan had in his early years, plus that distinctive something that says this guy has something to say worth hearing. At the end of the day, I have to say I am truly happy among the people I know. It may not show in effervescence or effusive gushings, but I feel it inside.