ChingChongChinaman is otherwise indisposed this weekend, so he has asked me to sub for him. I normally host the Thursday Classical Music Blogging diaries where we discuss, uh, classical music in a rather geeky, didactic way. I'll try to spare you my geekiness. (Last Thursday we did the Beethoven Piano Concerto #3 in C minor).
So! What have you been smoking this week? What have you been listening to while you smoked whatever it is you did or did not smoke?
Now me, personally, I don't smoke anything anymore. I'm more of a coffee freak. Mmmmm... Home-roasted Kenya AA from Sweet Maria's...
More on this subject BELOW!
I did used to smoke certain exotic herbs, though, years ago. As to my choice of music at the time, well, I discovered that classical music isn't optimal for the herbally-enhanced listening experience.
Trust me on this. I'm an authority. Much patient field-testing on my part bore this out. True, some classical music does work better in this respect than others. For instance, Bach harpsichord concertos, with their tinkly abstract sound and repetitive rhythms.
That's about as good as it gets. But you can totally forget trying to listen to Beethoven or Romantic period music while high... I mean, herbally-enhanced. The many changes in rhythm jolt you and break the groove. That analytical part of your mind that wants to break things up into parts isn't functioning at its highest level. The herbal mind wants a more immediate sensory experience that doesn't require long-term construction and deconstruction. No, for this, rock music is far better.
And the best rock music I ever discovered for this was Frank Zappa's Uncle Meat. Oh, how I loved my Uncle Meat!
I can't find the original on Youtube. Damn. There are countless other versions of it, including some rather funny home-made covers. But here's one Zappa version from a different album that sounds a bit different from the Uncle Meat version burned into my cerebral ROM chip. What wonderful bright chirpy tinkly sounds, like people throwing champagne glasses into a fireplace inside your head!
What? You don't find it that interesting. Well, get high and listen to it, then report back to me on that one.
Frank Zappa, it turns out, was also a classical composer. Did you know? In fact, he made an orchestral version of Uncle Meat, The Dogbreath Variations. I found it just now while surfing Youtube. Think about that. Uncle Meat with a symphonic orchestra! How fucking awful can you get! Just listen. It's atrocious. You can't get high to this shit.
So, no, classical music just isn't optimal (best way to put it, eh?) for the herbal experience. Unless... Unless...
Unless it is accompanied by a top flight cartoon. In color. Lots and lots of colors. And dancing animals with their own inscrutable agendas. I mean, of course, Walt Disney's Fantasia (1939).
I'm sure Disney didn't smoke herb. Well, maybe not THAT sure. Who knows? He did build Disneyland, eh, and he did have himself frozen as a high-tech popsicle. That would argue for. But in argument against, it's well known that they have undercover narcs on the ground in all the little nooks in Disneyland that they carefully calculated would best appeal to potheads. Clever people those Disney folk, but, jeez, they should have more respect their own second biggest constituency, after little kids: people who want to get high to dancing animals.
It's somewhat sad that Fantasia is so easily available now on tape and DVD. It used to be a once every year or two year experience when Disney released it to the big screen theaters in short revivals. I know, because I took enough girls on dates to those theater shows that I can't count. Maybe it wasn't really that many, I don't know. I just can't count them anymore. That period of my life, the 80s, is a little fuzzy for some reason.
The Disney Fantasia version of Tchaikovski's Nutcracker Suite. The audio is too low, so you may need to crank up your volume.
In my Thursday Classical Music Blogging series, I'm probably going to dive headfirst into the romantic composers in the coming weeks, and to me, that means Tchaikovsky. I'm sure everybody has heard Nutcracker Suite over the years until they are burned out on it. But, ah! With herbal enhancement and the genius of the 1939 Disney cartoonists, what a different experience, no matter how many times you have heard it before!
I remember one time, the best time I had at a Fantasia show. I took a girl that I adored named Cathy. I happen to know her sister has one a few Academy Awards since I knew her for Art Direction (Back to the Future II?) and for Costume Design (Titanic). Quite a family. Her grandfather, Paul Gross, had numerous awards of his own. I'm not sure what Cathy is doing nowadays.
But... back around 198?, we went to see Fantasia at the Century City multiplex, which at that time had big ass screens. Parking in the underground lot, before rushing upstairs, we whipped out the joint and started puffing away, looking over our shoulders both ways, trying to get as high as humanly possible without being comatose because once inside, of course, it would be difficult or impossible to just relax and pass a joint around.
Then we made a dash for the escalator, two stories of them. In our rush, we got on the down-escalator, running as fast as we could to try to go up. Looking to left and right, realizing we weren't making as much progress as we should, I remember thinking, is it the pot or is it me? Is this a time dilation thing? Such deep thoughts. Such deep, deep thoughts to have while running up a down-escalator.
When we reached the top, Cathy and I panting and looking at each other, I shouted, "Holy Shit!" She looked at me, grabbed my hand and said, "Yeah! Let's do it again!" And she headed for the up-escalator, screeching in that high-pitched way only women can manage, like a red-tail hawk in a dive. With me running after her. Down at the bottom, we turned and ran up the down-escalator again. Again at the top, our faces sweaty, I looked at her, she looked at me, I mumbled something incoherent, and she mumbled something back, and we were running down the up-escalator again!
I'm not sure how long it took for us to get tired of it. We must have got winded pretty fast. I just remember some well-dressed couple in the parking lot staring at us with open mouths. Eventually, though, we were winded, and realizing we were missing the greatest herbal experience ever created, we headed for the box office.
"What movie?"
"Murrr murr murrr Fantasumurrr..."
"That will be Two Fantasia adults."
"Yeh... yeh...yeah..." When you're a little high, it's not so hard to sound coherent. You just feel incoherent. But when you're, like, super-duper, Fantasia-mega-high, the process of putting sounds together to communicate can be difficult, if only because it's just so interesting and you never thought about it much before while trying to do it. And we had been smoking some VERY good Thai stick.
As we were buying our tickets, a little late, another couple in sunglasses (for the 10pm showing) bought two tickets. "Why didn't we think of that?" Cathy communicated. "Sunglasses!"
"Because it's a 10pm show in a dark theater?"
Navigating through the labyrinth of Arabic-numeraled theaters was rather daunting. Should we follow the couple in sunglasses? No, wait. I think they're trying to follow us. "They are trying to follow us!" Cathy said.
"Don't get paranoid!"
We found it, and oh! Was it heart-clutching glorious! It was a nice big screen, the kind that overpowers you as you walk down the aisle, and God bless the theater manager, they had cranked up the volume to that wonderful place just below auditory damage. I, of course, the pro at Fantasia watching, had it all figured out where to sit for the optimal experience: third row from the front (REALLY big, but not like so big you can't see it at all) and a little bit to the left of center. It has been my counter-intuitive experience that when you sit directly in the middle of a theater, the stereo effects don't seem as noticeable. Being just a little off-center seems to improve the experience. And so we were seated, although, yeah, a bit late. And sweaty. And winded and panting from our escalator misfortunes.
"Fuck! Popcorn!" Cathy exclaims. Now, I was not in my most gracious mood at the moment because I wasn't just high, I was like trying to create a peak human potential experience for myself but there is no arguing some things with human beings. "Get me popcorn, now!" she said. And as I'm getting up she grabs my arm. "Lots of popcorn! Lots!!" I'm halfway up the aisle when I hear her following me. She grabs me and says, "Oh! Oh! Oh! I forgot to tell you. Butter too!! Lots of Butter. LOTS!! For the popcorn."
"Yeah. Butter. For popcorn."
I'm not sure how much I missed, but I know that I got back in time for one of the best parts of Fantasia, the Goldfish scene. And, oh God, how I love that goldfish. In fact, that's what inspired the long anecdote of this diary, because I'm like haunted by that Fantasia goldfish in the Nutcracker. The Goldfish scene starts about 5:30 on the video above. I wish it were crisper, and in booming stereo on a huge screen for you, but it will have to do.
I mean, I REALLY REALLY loved that goldfish. It was feminine. And it was sexy. It was a feminine, sexy goldfish! In fact, that goldfish turned me on something awful. I felt myself trying to understand these strange feelings I was having. I was like Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice, only it was me and a cartoon goldfish. I realized, I wanted to fuck that goldfish something awful. Yes. That's how I felt.
I told Cathy, "God I love that goldfish. I think I want to fuck that goldfish."
Without looking away from the screen or leaning towards me, she said, through her popcorn, "You want a spa?"
"What? What did you say? What?"
She munched away and then leaned over and mumbled, but rather loudly, "You want a spa?"
"I want a spa?"
"I said, you want to spawn, with that goldfish?"
Oh. "No, I don't, I..." Well, hell, yeah. That's what it is when you do a goldfish, isn't it? "Yeah, maybe so."
Now I was watching the goldfish do its sexy little dance, where before it had been so coy. Coy? A coy goldfish? Wait! Maybe it's a coy KOI! Not a goldfish at all. A coy koi! I told Cathy this and she said something back followed by "yeah" and "shit," all of it filtered through popcorn and butter which was disappearing rather quickly. I didn't care if she ate it all. My mind was on the goldfish. No, koi. Whatever it is. Those beautiful little eye, teasing me. Those teasing fins. And, OH GOD, that little fan dance with the white goldfish in the middle of the piece, where it waves away its fins, not looking coy at all, but tempting, slutty, like it was ready and eager to swim in my jizz, and if not mine, then somebody's more bold.
I thought about spawning. We would clean a rock together. First she would pass over it, laying her eggs. Then I would wink at her, and follow behind, spraying my precious milt. Together, huddle, fanning our precious brood, in ecstasy.
No! Wait! That's not it! These aren't cichlids. Jesus, what was I thinking. They are carps, members of the Cyprinidae family. Goldfish (or is it koi?) just make a mad dash at each other and spray eggs and milt all over the place and then say Adios. Too impersonal. I was more into the egg-laying and fanning business, but not this spraying and bolting thing. No thank you, no spawning for me. Why did Cathy ruin it for me for suggesting something like that.
No. But then I remembered, isn't there another fish family, the Cyprinodontidae. Yes. The killifish. They are just like the carp Cyprinidae family, except they have teeth. The "dontidae" part, if you know your latin roots. It stands to reason goldfish then must have no teeth, because why would you name another family Teeth-Carp if regular carp had them too? That's right. It would make no sense at all. My little aquatic love had no teeth. Oh, what a job she could do on me, her soft slimy lips wrapped around my joint, gumming me to ecstasy. Yeah. As I stroke her pectorals. Uh huh. Those lovely, graceful pectorals, my fingers sliding down to glide over her missing brow, with those two seductive eyes glancing upwards at me. Oh yeah!
I reached for Cathy's hand and started rubbing it on my slacks. My tan brown slacks. My tan brown slacks that quickly had a huge greasy handprint on my crotch that wasn't going to come out easily. SHIT! I looked at Cathy, and she looked at me, like, what? Her hand was all greasy, and, in fact, the whole half of her face, from about the nose-midpoint down was shiny in the glare of the film from all the butter in the popcorn. They really did put a lot of butter in the popcorn. It was like the BP oil disaster, but with little bits of popcorn swimming around, adulterating it from what might otherwise be pure butteriness. Shit.
Furthermore, let me say that although in some respects, this might have otherwise qualified as one of the best dates of my life, it sucked in too many regards to be counted as such. For one, the embarrassing handprint on my slacks. For another, I didn't get laid that night, and that kind of disqualifies any date from the "perfect" category. The up and down the escalator part, though, wow, one of the best times I have ever had on a date. I knew I would write about that some day.
Well, that was all a long time ago. I'm 53 now. I haven't smoked weed in years. Not my thing. It wasn't even my thing back then, really, but Fantasia made it mandatory, so I blame my drug experiences on the Disney Corporation. I listen to classical music, mostly, and as I pointed out at the top, good classical music precludes weed. It's more of a coffee thang.
Also, as you get older, just as a general observation, you become less perverted. This has its good and its bad points. The good part is, you're less perverted. The bad part is, well, that is the bad part, too. You're less perverted. Your little sexual anecdotes become more amusing and less embarrassing. It is amusing, right? Because I hope you aren't judging me for anything I have told you: the drugs, the bestial fish lust cravings, the escalator abuse, public handjob attempts. Really, who the fuck are you to judge me, anyway? I just pissed away whatever aspirations I might have held for higher office just to entertain you. Fuck you all. You're not better than me.
Oh, one last thing. Does anybody else need me to sub for their diary series?