A real flaw of mine: I see somebody physically beautiful and my brain goes stupid.

I start thinking they must live on some higher plane. No fear, no mess, no bad thoughts. Just beautiful people floating around in white light while I’m down here in the mud with the rest of the mammals.

I know it’s bullshit.

Life has beaten that lesson into me plenty.

Like the girl who invited me over. We were both so nervous we drank ourselves stupid. Then she puked while I held her hair and she cried, “This is it. I’m going to die.”

She didn’t die but my illusion did.

Or the girl I was making out with at a punk show whose nose suddenly blew open like a busted pipe. Blood everywhere. I stared. She saw me staring, punched me in the jaw, and stormed off.

So much for higher consciousness.

Beauty still gets me, though. That first hit can wipe the future clean. Skin and eyes and mouth. Whatever it is. For a minute, the whole filthy world shuts up.

Then the drug wears off. And there she is. I realize: skin, muscle, fat, blood, bone. All of it.

There’s no priesthood and no transcendence.

Just a body with somebody living inside it.

And you better like that somebody when the pretty spell breaks.

I’m trying to get better at writing.

Years of writing like a journalist—clean, tight, easy to scan—trained me to cut out the messy stuff. Trouble is, the messy stuff is where I actually live.

So now I throw words at the wall and try to get down to the meat and bones.

Sometimes I hit publish and think, yeah. There it is. I finally got the damn thing out in a way that’s true.

Then I come back a few hours later. Read it again. And think:

Christ.

Corny as hell.

One more thing about The Dirty Boogie:

This CD sounds great!

Again, I paid a buck for it, shoved it in the player, and the thing has room to breathe. Solid dynamic range.

Yeah, Setzer lays on the reverb. Because, come on, he has to. That’s his grease.

But the important stuff still comes through: cymbals riding, trumpets squawking, guitar cutting through the brass without getting buried alive.

If you’re making swing, that stuff has to move. And this disc moves.

The Dynamic Range Database has the numbers here:

https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/73983

RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/43f665c9-deb2-43f8-b42d-383a5bed6e4c

Sun Moon Lake black tea makes me realize why I’m in love.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot to hang on a cup of tea.

But most of life is boring. Get up. Do the thing. Pay the bill. Fix the mess. Then something big happens and, usually, it bites.

Broken arm or a lost job.

Today? A bathroom pipe broke. Which resulted in a big hole in the carport. Then we discovered mold in our insulation.

Beautiful, just beautiful.

The good stuff comes around less often. You graduate. Get your first paycheque.

And if you’re really lucky, you meet somebody.

One meeting. One little crack in time. Then sixteen years crawl through it.

You have good days, bad days, dumb fights, bills, broken pipes. All the regular junk that fills a life.

Then every so often, something reaches through all the daily muck and yanks you straight back to the good stuff.

Today, it was tea.

Tea was there when I got married.

One of the first things I did as a husband—on my wedding day—was kneel beside my wife before her family. Elders in chairs. Me in a black tuxedo. Her in a red qipao. Both hands around a teacup.

“Please drink tea.”

We said this to her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

And this wasn’t some plain little cup. This was the good stuff. Sweet tea with red dates and lotus seeds.

We were kneeling there, dressed up, holding those cups, about to start the whole damn ride that is life.

This week makes 16 years of marriage.

Now I’m here. Same wife. Same life we started that day. Except today there’s a hole in the carport and mold in the insulation because life has a nasty habit of leaving crap on the floor.

That’s partly why tea matters to me. It makes me stop. Heat the water. Watch the clock. Taste the cup. Be where I actually am.

And once in a while, the taste catches something old.

I have to repair my house—which is proving to be a money sink. But the tea is still sweet. So is my wife.

Well, I just saw something rotten.

A VR game where a guy crawls into a cave, gets stuck, and dies there.

Nope, I don’t like this at all.

Too tight. Can’t turn. Can’t back out. Rock on your chest. Rock on your ass. Nothing but dirt and your own stupid breathing.

Now my nerves are buzzing like flies.

I need brain bleach. I need grass, wind, sky. A big dumb meadow with NOTHING over my head.

And spelunking? Forget it. Earth can keep its holes.

FINALLY FULFILLED A TEENAGE DREAM.

I watched Batman & Robin.

And I did it RIGHT.

VCD on a Toshiba 32-inch CRT. I almost used the little Sony Trinitron, then thought: hell no. This thing needs the big glass.

What a movie. Campier than the ’60s show: rubber, neon, ice, vines, butt shots, codpieces.

And nipples.

Of course the Batsuit has nipples.

Joel Schumacher was ordered to make Batman brighter, more toyetic, more kid-friendly. Fine. But Schumacher was also a gay man, and I have a hard time believing all that rippling rubber and lingering male anatomy happened by accident.

George Clooney has even said Schumacher told him Batman was gay. So we can definitely say—at least for this film—that Batman was a “confirmed bachelor”. And it’s this dialogue between Bruce and his fiancee that seals the deal for me:

Julie: I know you’re a dedicated bachelor. I know you’ve had your wild nights.

Bruce: Wild doesn’t qu—doesn’t quite cover it.

And I’ll take this gay, campy Batman over another straight-laced brooding Batman any night of the week.

Because all that camp doesn’t let up. It comes pouring right out of their mouths. Here’s some samples:

Mr. Freeze: “Let’s kick some ice!”

And:

Poison Ivy: “Come join me. My garden needs tending.”

And:

“There’s just something about an anatomically correct rubber suit that puts fire in a girl’s lips.”

This movie has no shame. Good.

And VCD was absolutely the way to see it. The colours on that Toshiba are filthy with saturation: blue ice, green poison, red neon, purple haze. Everything glowing like radioactive candy. The CRT smooths over the 352×240 picture until the action gets fast and the pixels start showing their teeth.

And yes, Batman & Robin is trash Big, expensive, shameless trash. I get the feeling Schumacher knew exactly what kind of machine he’d been handed and decided to stuff as much subtext, camp and dirty fun into the gears as he could before somebody stopped him.

For example, the Bat-Credit Card. Batman pulls it out. Expiration date: “FOREVER.” And then he says:

“Never leave the cave without it.”

What a crass moment, utterly commercial, and shameless as hell.

Is Batman & Robin trash? Absolutely. Lowbrow, loud, horny, fluorescent trash.

And I had a hell of a time.