Cheeky!

Snakes Can’t Run is almost here!  It’s right around the corner!  (April)

I’ve posted some upcoming dates in the calendar, so I think you need to plan accordingly.  If you want to see me in your town, give me a shout-out and I’ll see if I can make it happen.

Dude, the book recently received a starred review in Publishers Weekly:

Snakes Can’t Run Ed Lin. Minotaur, $24.99 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-56988-4

Set in New York City in 1976, Lin’s accomplished second novel to feature NYPD detective Robert Chow (after 2007’s This Is a Bust) finds the Chinese-American cop, who’s still haunted by memories of his service in the Vietnam War, relegated to undercover work posing as a Con Ed worker. Meanwhile, other officers in Chow’s precinct are focused on apprehending the FALN terrorists who set off a bomb right outside police headquarters. The murders of two Asian men, who are shot and dumped under the Manhattan Bridge, take Chow away from the drudgery of his undercover assignment and onto the trail of the head of a ring of human smugglers known as snakeheads. Lin portrays the police, including his lead, warts and all, and paints a convincing picture of Manhattan’s Chinatown. Readers interested in the integration of Asian-Americans into American society, as well as those who like gritty procedurals, will be well rewarded.

You could pre-order this book on Amazon, but considering the recent spat with Macmillan (parent company of my amazing publisher, Minotaur Books) and the hardball negotiations of Amazon (which employed tactics worthy of China when it “negotiates” with Tibetans), I heavily and heartily suggest that you buy my books at the stores that I will appear at or try IndieBound.

Me in 1991.  The other Ed took my picture against a Mr. Softee truck to soften my image.

When I was finished with college in 1991 and had finally secured my mining-engineering degree, I went about doing what I really wanted to finish – my literature-writing degree.

It wasn’t so much that I wanted the degree itself.  I was reading and writing a lot on my own.  But I needed that degree because I wanted to go to journalism school.  An engineering degree alone wasn’t going to cut it for admission.

I also needed an appropriate internship.

Back then, several fledging Asian American publications were floating around New York City and while nearly all of them would gladly take submissions, there were basically no staff positions.  Late that summer, I wrote to a newspaper that I’ll call Super Asian News and asked if I could intern there.  It was based just outside of Koreatown, which at that time was only one block on 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth.

This woman I’ll call Jane Lee called me a few days later and asked if I wanted to come in for an interview.  The office of Super Asian News was at the top of a straight walkup – one could look directly up at the four flights of stairs that reminded one of my friends of the end of “The Exorcist.”

Jane Lee regarded me with a small smile as I trudged up the stairs.  When I got closer I saw that she was in her late 40s.  I don’t remember what we talked about but the next day, and many days after, I would ascend those very steps to the humble offices of Super Asian News.

I was being paid a certain amount of money, but nothing to write home about, mainly because it would barely cover the postage.

The office was about 20 feet by 20 feet – big enough for several desks, a phone and some file cabinets.  But there were no computers or printers.  Where was the rest of the staff?  Well, it was just Jane and me.

Jane had planned a nearly complete outsourced business model.  All the writers were freelancers, as were the designers and production side.  Considering the state of journalism today, one could say that that was rather forward-thinking.  Super Asian News was a 16-page monthly, and Jane had planned to handle all the advertising and marketing herself.  Apart from being a freelancing line editor, I was going to handle the editing.

My first project was taking a monstrous, book-length manuscript written by a friend of Jane’s and cutting it down to sections short enough to run in serialized form.  Although the manuscript was a memoir of the Korean War, it was contrarian in that it was boring and academic.

In fact, most of the stories in the issue I started with (I think it was the fourth or fifth issue of Super Asian News) were from professors of Asian descent from New York colleges. We were also set to publish two or three “I can’t believe that racism still exists!” essays from young writers still in college or just out.  And almost everything we were about to publish was just terrible.

Let’s put things in context, though.  At this time there were two nationally distributed Asian American magazines, both glossy.  One always ran cheesecake on the cover and praised Asian business owners in its editorial content.  The other magazine not surprisingly had “The Sex Issue” every third issue and included dumbed-down content (I recall a personal essay in which Asian women were praised as being perfect Southern belles by virtue of their small waists.)

My big problem with the magazines was that upfront, on the editor’s page, there was talk of fighting stereotypes.  But out the back door, their pitches to potential advertisers totally played up the model minority crap – Asians are well-educated and have more disposable income than any other group, including whites!  Perhaps most disgracefully, both magazines ran ads for eyelid surgery.

So Super Asian News wasn’t that bad a place to be.  Sure, the content sucked, but at least we presented the same face to our readers and advertisers.

Oops, what advertisers?

Although the one issue I saw before I joined was full of ads, none of them were paid ads.  Jane merely took the ads from the Daily News or The New York Times and reprinted them to give us more prestige.

We outsourced the layout and production to this woman who would do it in her apartment.  Jane didn’t trust her to do it on her own, so she sat next to the production person at the computer for the several hours over several days that it took to lay out.  Why did I have to be there, too?  I guess Jane didn’t trust me alone in the office.  For one thing, someone was using Super Asian News’ phone to place long-distance calls.

Super Asian News didn’t pay for its office space.  It was donated by some guy who had planned to live in the space, but couldn’t get the building rezoned for residential use.  This guy would still sneak on the weekends and take showers there.  Jane suspected that he was using her phone, so she would unplug it and lock it in a file cabinet when we left for the night.

Enter the Other Ed

The September issue came back from the printer the first week of that month. One of Jane’s friends had a van and we drove around Manhattan and Queens, dropping off bundles of newspapers at the student centers of colleges.  We also gave them away to newsstand owners to sell.

The next week, Jane took her phone out of the file cabinet, plugged it in and waited for it to ring. Surely, college students, professors and newsstands would be clamoring for Super Asian News.

Unfortunately, the calls were few and even those were along the lines of, “Can we get a discount for our college?”  The subscription was only $20 a year, or 12 issues, but then again, 1991 was a tough year!  The economy was in the tank, layoffs were pervasive and many who had graduated with me headed to grad school to avoid the fruitless task of trying to find a job.

One caller was another guy named Ed.  He was a few years older than me, and was anxious to come work for Super Asian News.  Jane hired him to be my boss.  I was a little annoyed at first because here was this dude just walking in and now I had to take orders from him.  But I grew to really like Ed a lot and enjoy working with him.  In fact, because it was he and I doing everything, he was a co-worker and not a boss.

He really knocked my socks off by telling me he had written two novels.  After college, he got a night job behind the desk of a hotel in Atlantic City and spent the days writing.  Ed said that nearly every night he saw the same scene at work: somebody on the lobby payphone making a collect call, sobbing, “I lost it all. . .”

One of Ed’s novels was influenced by things that happened at the hotel.  The other was something he’d been cradling since college and had been written on a typewriter.  I freaked out when he told me that.  I insisted that he back it up by typing it into a computer, but he said it would lose flavor by being in electronic form.  “Advancing the roll is a labor of love,” he said.

He invited me over to his apartment to check out his books.  Ed lived in an apartment on Avenue D, and this was back when it was still called Alphabet City.  It wasn’t as rough a neighborhood as it used to be, but there were still signs of the violent past.  His building entrance had a bullet hole through the glass window.

Ed’s apartment was small but bigger than mine.  I sat on his couch and he got a Coke for me.  I set the can on the floor and picked up his typewritten manuscript.

“Ed,” he told me.  “Don’t put your soda on the floor.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Last time I did that, I took a sip and then I had something chewy in my mouth.  I spit it out in my hand and I saw it was a cockroach.”

“That’s fucking disgusting, Ed.”

“Yeah, you know I just put it back in my mouth and ate it.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I figured I already ate half of it already, so it didn’t really matter.”

I picked up my soda and cradled it.  I knew I had to protect it.  I also knew that Ed wasn’t as stable as I thought.  He told me that he was so fed up with the country under George H.W. Bush that he had quit his job in Atlantic City and was going to Paris to write.  But a week before his flight, he had gotten in a bad car accident and was in a near-coma for several days.

That was a few years ago and things still hadn’t come back together.  Ed was also planning to apply to journalism school after the Super Asian News stint.  Now I was mildly annoyed.  If we applied to the same schools – including my top choice, Columbia – they might take my “boss” instead of me!

How could I read his manuscript now?

When I left I picked up a few almanacs to read through.  The Columbia current events and writing test was coming up in December and I’d be damned if he was going to do better than me.

Nothing but Worries

I was more worried than I had been in a long time.  I have never been one to struggle with self-doubt.  Yet at the time I was terrified that Coma Ed was going to do in my plans for journalism school.

I still had three more classes to finish my literature-writing B.A., but I knew that that wasn’t going to lead to a job.  I needed that journalism degree so I could do that reporter-by-day-novelist-by-night sort of thing.

(One of my writing teachers at Columbia shook his head sadly when I told him of my plans of mixing journalism and creative writing.  “You’re trying to get on board that old American hang-up,” he said.  Years later he declined to blurb my first novel Waylaid – in fact, he declined to even read it.)

But now my plans and ability to execute on them were in jeopardy.  Let’s say you’re the admissions officer of a graduate journalism program.  You have two applications from two Asian American applicants.  They both work at the same newspaper.  Hell, they’re both named, “Ed.”  Who are you going to take?  The “Editor” or “Assistant Editor”?

I’m pretty good at overthinking any situation and freaking myself out.  I bought three different almanacs of the last year to bone up on the current events and essay-writing test Columbia Journalism was administering in December.  I kept one on my bed, one in my bag and one. . .oh, no, where the hell did it go?  Damn, now I was down to two!

It was now October.  I worried every moment I was awake.  I wrote short stories with much unease (one was published in the first issue of the Asian Pacific American Journal put out by the one-year old organization, Asian American Writers Workshop). I watched TV with one of the Almanacs in my lap, reading during commercials and unable to find anything I saw funny.

During my fortnightly calls to beg for more money from my parents, they were bugging me to come home and work at the family business.

Journalism?  What’s journalism?  It’s not medicine.  It’s not law.  Why do you want to do it?  What kind of career are you going to have?  You want to write books?  Become a doctor first and then you can write books at night!

Despite my parents’ growing impatience as I progressed to complete vagrancy, I still managed to hold my parents to the terms of a deal.  If I got into Columbia Journalism School, they’d help pay for it.  If I didn’t, I’d come back and work at the family business for XX years.

I ended calls with the customary recitation of the deal, and my father would close by growling, “You’d better not get in!”

Pow!

What was that?  The sound of one or both of my almanacs sliding off of my chest and onto the hardwood floor of my crappy little studio. I’d fallen asleep again on the couch that I bought for five dollars from a homeless man in the street.  After I had paid him for the couch and dragged it several blocks, another man chased me down to tell me that I had paid the wrong guy.  But I pulled out my empty pockets to show him I didn’t have any more money – not even a wallet.  He shook his head as he walked away.  I heard change jingling in his pockets.  He had more than me.

It was a crappy couch, but it worked.  You could actually sit on it.  Or fall asleep on it after reading almanacs on it from beginning to end, trying to cram the equivalent of Wikipedia in my head.  Shit, are there going to be questions about the turmoil in the USSR?  Now I’d have to read the newspaper every day, too!  The things a journalist has to do. . .

The Minuses of Ad Sales

By the middle of October, Ed and I had expanded our repertoire to selling ads for Super Asian News.  Door to door.

Jane had informed us one day that she had run out of money.  The October issue was saved on a series of floppy disks, but she didn’t have enough to actually print them.  Because our office was on the border of Koreatown, Jane sent Ed and I to solicit the local businesses to take out business-card-sized ads at $10 each.  That seemed cheap enough.  All we needed was 100 of these mom-and-pop businesses to buy in and we could send this thing off to the printer.

Two major holes in the plot: Neither Ed nor I could speak Korean, and nobody wanted to advertise in an English-language publication, even if it was called “Super Asian News.”

Jane herself could have come with us, but she refused.  She had to wait by the phone.  There were a number of potential investors who could swoop in at any second.

When I think back to the week or so that Ed and I walked around Koreatown methodically (and yet, aimlessly, as we couldn’t read signs or communicate with people), it all comes back as a silent, black-and-white film in my mind’s eye.  I see two sad clowns walking up and down the endless stairwells of Koreatown.  I see looks of puzzlement and annoyance from businessmen and businesswomen who are having a hard enough time during the recession.

There aren’t any stunts from Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd to leaven the misery.  There’s no bum who shows up with the fortune he’d squirreled away to save Super Asian News.

By Thursday Ed and I agreed to split up to cover more ground.  He went to cover the western half of Koreatown and I went to Electronic Boutique in the Manhattan Mall to check out the Sega Genesis games I couldn’t afford.

We met up at a bulletproof-glass Chinese place for pitiful pork-fried rice ($3) and compared notes.

“What did you do, Ed?” he asked me.

“I didn’t do shit,” I said, popping open a can of White Rock cola (50 cents).  “What did you do?”

“I went to that really nice Chinese restaurant by Penn Station.  The one with chandeliers and tablecloths.  I went in after the lunch rush and managed to corner the owner.  I showed him Super Asian News and he sat down with me at a table.  He pointed to the rugs on the floor and the rugs on the walls.  ‘Look at this place,’ he said. ‘Do you really think I would advertise in a newspaper like this?’”

“Oh, man, that’s fucking cold!”

“I just realized right there and then how shameless a salesman has to be in order to get the job done.  And I knew that I was a man who felt shame.”

We didn’t say much else.  As we ate, I kept my head down, watching grease drip from the corners of our fried-rice boxes onto the cut-up cardboard on the floor.

Ed didn’t come into work Friday.  Jane sighed heavily as the hours went on.  I was busy editing articles for November’s issue so that when the money finally came through, we’d have two issues ready to run on the presses.

Ed hadn’t called in, but Jane also refused to call him.  It was a standoff: Exploited and young Asian American idealist versus Asian (not American) businesswoman wannabe.

“This is not how you quit,” she told me several times.  “Not this way.”

Later, she told me that the Moonies had offered her money to keep Super Asian News afloat, but Jane had refused on principle.

I wondered how the Moonies even got in touch with her.

I wondered if there were in fact Moonies who had gotten in touch.

I wondered how long Jane could sit like that staring off into nothing.

I wondered how much longer I could stay at Super Asian News.

Testing Time

I took the Columbia Journalism School test on a cold morning in a room with 50 other people.  We all sat at computer monitors bathed in a sickly green glow.  I craned my neck before the test started to look for Ed, but I didn’t see him.

I typed in answers even though it didn’t seem like I was sure of anything.  The essays I was writing didn’t make sense when I reread them.

I felt numb when I was done.  I had no idea how I did.

I walked down Broadway and stopped at Mama Joy’s for a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk.  I started eating it in the street before I got back to my apartment.

I was terrified that I was going to be heading to my parents’ house in rural Pennsylvania.  Well, if that was going to happen, then I wasn’t going to bother reapplying to journalism school.  I had only applied to Columbia in the end because, hell, it was in the middle of the media center of the world and had connections to every news organization.

Now, as I crunched chunks of black and white chocolate, I collected my thoughts.  My mother was right.  I always could write at night.  In fact, I could probably start putting short stories together and then start submitting them to all these journals.  In a year, I could even have an agent and a book deal.

I continued to eat ice cream as I entered my building and opened my apartment door.  When I was done with the pint, I took a shower and went to sleep.

Jane seemed a little bit happy when I told her I didn’t think I did so great.

“You could always keep working for me,” she said.  That was funny because she said that starting in January, she couldn’t even pay my pitiful salary anymore.

The fact that Ed was gone hadn’t made the finances any easier.  Despite his higher title, she hadn’t been paying him anything.

After a wonderful holiday with my parents, I called Ed to see how he did on the test.  He probably kicked ass.  He was much more well-read than me and probably had magical essay-writing powers gleaned from the typewriter method of writing.

“I didn’t bother take the test,” said Ed.  “I just said, ‘Fuck it.’”

“Why, man?  You already paid for the application.”

“I just thought about it and I don’t want to go back to school.  If you really want to be a journalist, you should just start freelancing and build up some clips.  Most journalists want to eventually become freelancers, anyway.”

“Maybe you’re right.  By the way, Jane was pretty upset about you quitting.”

“I didn’t quit.  I just never came back.  What’s the point to it?  Super Asian News is done.”

“But all we need is some money and we can print the October issue.  We can even change it to October slash November.”

“Listen, Ed. Get out of there!”

“I’m not giving up on this.  The community needs something that isn’t that stupid Sex Issues Only Magazine.”

“Don’t be stupid!  It’s not a movement you’re taking part in!  It’s a business, and you’re working for an owner!  And it’s a badly run business, too!”

“But we might get some money from the Moonies.”

“You’re on a trip to the Moonie!”

I kept going in, but Ed had gotten to me.  I was trying to imagine how I would spend my days if I weren’t at Super Asian News.  I wasn’t sure quite how I was going to quit, though.

One day, Jane asked me to go to RadioShack to get something, I think it was a phone part, and she gave me a five dollar bill for it.  But then the thing cost two dollars more and I had to use my own money for the difference.  That really pissed me off.  Not only was I donating my work to Jane and Super Asian News – I was paying to work there.

I got back to the office and showed her the receipt.  She got all huffy herself and threw me two dollars.  I don’t think we talked the rest of the day.

I spent that night thinking of what I should do.  In the end I wrote, by hand, a note: “I can’t work here anymore for you.”  I mailed it, along with a bunch of floppy disks of the early December issue.

I started going to meetings of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, this fledging little group that met up at the battered folding tables in the Asian American Arts Alliance on Lafayette Street. I got Ed to join me there, too, and pretty soon we were both cranking out short stories.

It was an early start to that collection of short stories.  You know, for when I got rejected by Columbia Journalism School and had to head home.

Applicants were supposed to hear back from Columbia in late February or March.  I held my breath every day before checking my mail.

There was usually nothing.

Incredibly, I was already receiving solicitation letters from Columbia (the undergraduate school), even though graduation was less than a year ago.

When it hit April, I was pretty frantic.  I was too scared to call the admissions office, afraid that when they realized that no one had rendered a decision on me, the immediate reaction would be to reject.

In late April, I opened my mailbox and saw a fat manila envelope curled against the back wall.

I exhaled slowly and reached out for it.

I grabbed one edge and pulled it back to read the return address.

It read, “The Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University.”

I did it.

How come Asians never sit in the front row?

At the Page Turner festival a few weeks ago, I read a short piece in which I channeled my mother — accent, broken English and all.

During the Q&A, this Asian woman asked me if I would read the same piece to a “white” audience, because in front of an “Asian” audience, “we’re all in on the joke” with the accent.

I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was annoyed and sort of mean (when the event is posted to YouTube, I wonder if they’ll include that part).  I said something along the lines that I was trying to authentically portray my mother and that I read for myself without trying to tailor my work for any particular audience to seek approval.

But the question still annoys me.

For one thing, it assumes that all “white” people are ignorant jerks ready for a laugh drawn on stereotypical lines.

For another thing, my mother accent isn’t “the joke.”  What kind of jackass would I be for counting on a Chinese accent for laughs?

Essentially, my short piece is saying, “This is my mother.  She’s quite a character.  If you ask her to tell you a ghost story, this is what you’ll get.”

Let’s give “white” people some credit.  They are not all ignorant jerks out to screw over people of color.  Certainly not the “white” people who show up for book readings.  Larry the Cable Guy is not going to come to a Snakes Can’t Run reading.

And speaking of people of color, I put “white” in quotations because Asians come in all colors.  That “white” guy sitting next to you could have a gay Korean dad.

Believe it or not, the Asian-woman questioner later came up to my wife to compliment her on her performance in “Children of Invention,” in which her character speaks with a Cantonese accent!

Not quite the journey of a thousand miles.

You may know that I am attending the Bouchercon in Indianapolis.

You may not know that I am taking Amtrak there and Greyhound back.  It’s about 22 hours each way.

I honestly want to see if mass transit is a viable alternative to air travel.  It’s also green, man.  And I’m all about the green.

I will be updating the traveling there and back as well as the Bouchercon/Indianapolis in the upcoming days. You may be amused by keeping tabs on my Twitter and Facebook.

All the action starts 4:30 AM EST Wednesday.

If you’ve worn one of these on your wrist, you’re going to Hell.

I don’t know how long the Brooklyn Masonic Temple has been putting on shows, but it was a trip for me to go to my old neighborhood, Fort Greene, to see a concert.

The crowd (read, “men and boys”) dressed appropriately in decayed metallic wear for the bill of four Southern Lord acts: Eagle Twin, Pelican, Earth and headliner Sunn 0))).

My takeaway is that I have seen the future of heavy music and that Pelican is that future.

Twin Eagle, you guys definitely look cool and I will listen to your new album “The Unkindness of Crows” many more times.

Twin Eagle is a duo of a guitar player who can also throat sing and a tireless drummer who soon became shirtless. They did have a full and developed sound, but it isn’t really for me, at least not this night.  Their new album is growing on me, though.

Pelican! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Next up were Pelican. Did they get their name from the fact that all four members are tall and lanky?  They are an all-instrumental band and there are elements of various species of metal and tuneful punk.
Sound good to you?

Here’s another cool thing about the band.  They are down with tapers, so check out some of their live shows on archive.org.

Despite the lack of a traditional frontman, Pelican did have a rapport with the audience. One of the guitarists would move to a microphone on the side and speak in modest words.

“Thanks for coming early,” he said early on. Later he noted they were playing songs from a forthcoming album on Southern Lord.

Pelican won fans that night, and the applause grew with each song.

Down to Earth.

Earth, another vocal-less band, was up next, but their set was delayed by apparent problems with the drum set up. Leader Dylan Carlson was friendly and affable from the start, but while playing, he would turn his back on the crowd to concentrate. They opened with “Omens and Portents II.”  At the end of the song, somebody yelled out a loud “Yee haw!” and Carlson chided him with, “You’re at the wrong show!”

The title track to The Bees Made Honey in the Lions’ Skull was next.  The acoustics for the temple were perfect for Earth’s slow-core, epically cinematic sound.  Every instrument – guitar, bass, drums and keyboards – was distinct and yet also came together at key points as if jazz were the genre.

Then they played a new song from their as-yet-unrecorded new album. Fans won’t be disappointed when said album is released next year.

Three songs and that was it for Earth, barely more than half an hour of playing time. The crowd bellowed for an encore, but Carlson shrugged. The matter was out of his hands, as Sunn 0))) had to set up.

Sunn o))) of a. . .

They should have let Earth do an encore.  Sunn 0))) was supposed to go on at midnight, but well past 12:30 am, the only thing moving on stage was concert fog accompanied by pre-recorded throat singing.  The crowd grew antsy and there was a palpable annoyance running throughout the fully attended sold-out show, particularly among those standing on the ground floor.

Finally Sunn 0)))’s two principals, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson, came out in hooded black robes.  They proceeded to wield guitars and basses in front of their amps, slashing away in the air to get better howls of feedback.  This went on for almost 20 minutes before vocalist Attila Csihar came out in a robe and narrated a story about humankind and rituals before a few rounds of throat singing punctuated with guttural grunts.

I remember thinking at the time that this portion of the show was painfully boring. Yet, as I turn to my recording of the show, I actually find it interesting and yielding more with each listen. The guitars, but the way, were turned up in accordance to the band’s mantra, “Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results.”  (It was the second-loudest show I’ve ever been to.  My Bloody Valentine at Roseland last year was several-fold louder – it was the only show I’ve been to where I could feel my clothes rippling on my body from the soundwaves alone.)

After that section, Csihar made a costume change into a goth Statue of Liberty complete with mirror pieces and shooting red lasers from his fingertips.  He later changed into an outfit that resembled a tree growing through a burlap sack.

Sunn 0))) finally sets.  It’s past 2 AM at this point.

At the end of their set, Csihar crawled out of his costume, baring his upper body, and all three men bowed,  waved and raised their arms in triumph — acknowledging the crowd for the first time in their 90-minute set.

Oh, and by the way, if you were looking for Sunn 0)))’s latest album Monoliths and Dimensions on vinyl or the (初心) Grimmrobes Live 101008 cassette (!), the merch table on the current tour is the only place to get them. (Whoops!  Wrote too soon!)

Congratulations to the Blackened Music Series for putting up such an unforgettable show. I didn’t enjoy every minute of it, but it was continuously challenging in the aural, intellectual and spiritual senses.  I’ll be back.

Yes, I ripped that off from somebody who ripped it off of someone else, but it is a wonderful sentiment.

You know as well as I do that this country has experienced, shall we say, a bit of an economic malaise over the last year or so?  It’s only now that people are contemplating whether or not we’ve hit a floor.

Let’s give this man a sidesmile!  Donate today!

Banks and financial institutions get government bailouts.  Arts institutions get the shaft.

I’m not going to get into a “art is more important than food” sort of argument.  Rather, I’d like to point out that a society is judged by its cultural legacies rather than its accumulated wealth.  Yes, excavations of the ancient world have yielded priceless treasures, but those very items are priceless not because of the precious metals or gems but mostly because of the workmanship (workwomanship, also) that wrought them.  Most valuable of all are the literary works uncovered — think of the various iterations of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and bamboo strips containing the earliest version of the Dao De Jing.

You can see where I’m going with this.

Hell, I think you should go here and give what you can.

I am acting out of selfishness, you know.  Not only do I like hanging out at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (and hold two awards from that fine institution), but I have a new book coming out in the early spring and I want to make sure the place is not only intact at that time but vibrant and that Ken Chen is smiling.

Official verbiage follows.  I’m quoted again, in case you can’t get enough of me:

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Cyril Jordan (left) and Roy Loney (right) throwing off some heat at Maxwell’s. A-Bones pounder Miriam Linna flails away in the background.

I was so bummed that I couldn’t make the Ponderosa Stomp back in April in New Orleans for a number of reasons but most of all for missing the reunion of Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney, who hadn’t shared a stage since 1971 when Loney left the Flamin’ Groovies and Jordan carried on.  (For quite a number of years, actually — the last studio album was 1993’s Rock Juice, which I like a lot, but I’m incredibly biased.)  So when the two New York-area shows were announced, I shook some action and got my credit card out like so fast.

Who else but the ragged and righteous A-Bones could back these two?  I don’t know how the Ponderosa shows were, but you have to give it up to them for opening both Maxwell’s and Southpaw shows and then backing Cyril and Roy.  And give it up big time for Cyril and Roy for reuniting!  In the time they were apart, the Ramones got together, had their entire careers and then passed away.

The A-Bones slug it out. Left to right, Marcus the Carcass, Miriam and Billy Miller.

Up first at the Maxwell’s show were the A-Bones, who have a new album out, Not Now, I guess a play on Flamin’ Groovies Now.  If you want to party hardy but don’t want to wait for the Sonics to come back out east, hey, this band is your only shot.  The dirty grinding music was so good, I picked it up on vinyl at the show.  Yeah!

They brought up a special guest to introduce and sing along with “The World’s Greatest Sinner” — Romeo Carey, the son of Timothy Carey, one of the most distinctive actors ever.  When they finished their set, the room was completely packed and the anticipation had reached a sweat-dripping-off-the-walls quality.

Down in F-L-A!  Cyril, Roy and A-Bones’ Bruce Bennett.

Cyril and Roy were low-key about walking through the Maxwell’s crowd to get to the stage.  Cyril was eerily youthful-looking — he could pass for a man in his 30s. Roy looked like a carny with a mischievous swagger who would toss out expired candy to passersby. Both still had an unsettling amount of hair — one of the perks of being groovy!

They wasted no time before ripping into “Second Cousin.” With hardly a breath, “Can’t Explain” was next, with Cyril noting, “We always used to warm up with this.”  Cyril’s hands seemed as fast as ever, playing leads like the band had never taken time off. Roy still has the menacing growl that all school principals seem to put on when they know they can’t legally hit you.

Introducing “Golden Clouds,” Cyril explained they were doing the song because A-Bones’ keyboardist/guitarist Ira Kaplan loves it. “We haven’t done this song since ‘68. What is that, 50 years or some shit? Argh, I’m getting old. I still feel like I’m fucking 17.”

“You look like you’re 17!” countered Roy.

“Maybe 117!” replied Cyril, adding, “Be prepared for a disaster that might be kinda OK.”

Of course it was more than OK and, like the entire night, great.  Not tight, as beginnings and endings of songs were fudged a bit, and “Shake Some Action” fell out of sync on both nights, but hell, great in the way that rock and roll should be.  Loud, dirty and jumpin’.

Cyril shared the story of how his dad liked to listen to classical music on the radio and that one day Cyril tuned in to a rock show and was blown away by the opening to Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon’s version of “Tallahassee Lassie.”

“I think that’s the reason why I ruined my life,” he confessed, chuckling.

If that’s the case, the Groovies “ruined” many lives, judging by the sold-out Maxwell’s crowd and the packed house at Southpaw in Brooklyn the next night, which looked like it was sold out if it wasn’t.

“Damn, Cyril, we’re playing Southpaw together!”

One senses that Roy’s departure from the band in 1971 may still be a bit of an issue. At Maxwell’s they mentioned the split twice briefly and it wasn’t mentioned at all at Southpaw. The set list only had a few songs from the Cyril-helmed Groovies era, nearly the opposite of the 1989 compilation Groovies Greatest Grooves, the last major-label release for the band in the U.S. that cut down Loney’s contributions to only two songs out of 24.

In fact, at Maxwell’s while introducing “Jumpin’ in the Night,” the regular set closer, Cyril said with a degree of contrition, “I wrote this about 10 years after Roy had left the band, but I was thinking of Roy when I wrote it. I was trying to go back to the old style we were doing and I hope I kinda got close.”

Also, about a decade ago Roy said in an interview that he and Cyril were “pretty much incommunicado.”

In any case, I’m glad they were at long last able to rejoin their considerable powers and blast the hell out of Hoboken and Brooklyn. Different encores each night, so you really did have to go to both, natch!

Pretty early into the Maxwell’s show. Roy’s jacket came off about three songs in! That’s Ira Kaplan on the far right yowling into his mike.

The A-Bones more than held up their end.  Miriam Linna bashed away like her spring had been wound too tightly and Marcus the Carcass on bass was nimble in a way that would have made Groovies’ bassist George Alexander proud.  Bruce Bennett was game enough to play slide guitar on “High-Flyin’ Baby.”  Singer Billy Miller came up and throttled “In the U.S.A.” while Ira co-sang “Shake Some Action” with Cyril, yelling out the “Make it all right”s on the chorus along with the whoops.

In the U.S.A.!  Billy Miller guests on lead vox while Lars Espensen wails it out at Maxwell’s. Bruce Bennett in the back.

Some fans may consider this desecration, but I now consider the live “Teenage Head” and “Slow Death” with Lars Espensen on sax and Miller on maracas to be the definitive versions of those songs. “Head” simply had a more-threatening edge with Espensen but “Slow Death” built up to a five-minute maelstrom not unlike the Stooges’ “L.A. Blues.”

During their set at Southpaw, the A-Bones brought up Wreckless Eric to sing a spirited rendition of “Wooly Bully.”

There was a third band at the Southpaw show that opened the night, the Underthings. They didn’t play very long, but their bluesy rock (somewhere, Johnny Thunders is smiling) struck some pretty good sparks before the flames later that night.

Set list:  Second Cousin / Can’t Explain / Sweet Little Rock n Roller / Comin’ After Me / High-Flyin’ Baby / First One’s Free / Golden Clouds / Have You Seen My Baby? / Road House / Tallahassee Lassie / Evil-Hearted Ada / In the U.S.A. / Shake Some Action / Teenage Head / Slow Death

Maxwell’s encores: Round and Round / Jumpin’ in the Night

Southpaw encores: Doctor Boogie / Johnny Bye Bye / Jumpin’ in the Night

Singing while balancing a Farfisa on your head helps dull those sharp notes.

I’ll fess up right off the bat.  When the three New York-area shows for The Mummies were announced I was one of those jerks who bought tickets for all three and cleared those days for vacation at work.  The boys were playing an early and a late show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on a Tuesday night and then one show at Southpaw in Brooklyn the next night.  I was going to need the rest.  I mean, hell, even when I was in college, it was tough getting out of a show at 2 AM at Maxwell’s and walking the mile and a half or so to the PATH stop to get back to the city.

Expectations were pretty high for The Mummies’ first shows in the U.S. in 18 years — and the fact that the first was taking place at the site of the last one in 1991, you knew there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. Certainly not from those who dropped $50-$60 to scalpers after the shows sold out immediately ($15 face value for each ticket!).  But could anyone really miss these shows?  In fact, you’ll see those strange orbs floating around in my pictures.  Maybe they are the spirits of Mummies fans who have died in the intervening 18 years who wanted to cross to the other side see their favorite band?

For those who don’t know, The Mummies are/were a garage rock band from the Bay Area who wrap themselves up in guaze and generally act like idiots on stage.  Of course, that all serves to mask their talent, which is pretty obvious when they crank out Wailers and Sonics covers along with their own original Budget Rock (a phrase that they claim to have trademarked) such as “(You Must Fight to Live) On the Planet of the Apes).”

The early show started with the drummer coming out.  He warbled, in a voice uncannily similar to Joey Ramone (who started in the Ramones as the drummer), “You paid the money to see a professional show.  Let’s not waste any more time. . .let’s go with. . .professional show business!”  Then he kicked off a beat.  Mummy bassist came on and started playing, as Maxwell’s capacity crowd of 200 recognized the lines from “Food, Sickles and Girls.” Then the guitarist came on and started playing.  At this point people were chanting, “Food, sickles and girls!”  And then the lead singer/keyboard playing mummy jumped on and said into the mike, “Okay, everybody.  Grab your ankles.  You’re gonna get screwed!”  After hitting a few chords on his Farfisa, the band lurched into the song with full gusto and bodies both on and off stage jumped around like grubs on a hot plate.

The Mummies are known for trash talking as well.  Early on the singer said, “We’re gonna have to clear you guys out for the V.I.P. show,” referencing the later show.  “This microphone taste like shit. . .did G.G. Allin just play?”  About halfway through the set, a few songs after a version of “He’s Waiting” that blew apart, the bassist asked, “Hey are we skipping something here?”  “Shhh!” said the singer, “that’s for the V.I.P. show, man!”

Some in the crowd yelled for The Mummies to just stop the banter and play.

“You know, back in the old days,” the singer countered, “you know, when your parents used to come see us, they’d be lucky to get, like, 15 minutes of actual music, so stop fucking complaining, all right?”

Encore: “Zip a Dee Doo Dah” and “Justine.”

The later show was even more high-energy.  In fact, I can’t remember the last time I felt the entire Maxwell’s crowd moving that fast and in all directions.  This time, they all came onstage at the same time.

The bassist announced that they “saved all the good songs for this V.I.P. show.”  People were screaming pretty much anything.  “Don’t get too excited,” said the drummer, “you may be disappointed.”  The singer added, “Too bad you guys missed the V.I.P. show that happend a little while ago.”  Then he said, “You can feel free to sing along to this one.  Except Russell.”

The Mummies launched into a hi-speed and raunchy version of “Skinny Minnie” and the floor seemed to convert into a junction of moving walkways as torsos twisted and slammed against each other.

A few songs in, the bassist chided, “If you were here at the last show, please stand in the back so the other people can see.”

“This place is a dump, look at this!” said the singer, referring to the cups and other crap that people thew on the stage.

As the bassist tuned up, the singer said to his bandmates, “Let’s see how long we can make them wait.  The funny thing is, they can’t make us actually play, and they can’t make us play good.”

Encore: “(My Love Is) Stronger Than Dirt,” (bringing things full-circle) “Food, Sickles and Girls” and “Show Me.”

It was kinda more of the same at Southpaw the next night, which, in The Mummies’ case, is a great thing!  The Brooklyn club actually had curtains drawn as the boys set up, so when they parted, as the drummer keeping a beat on the high hat, it was actually pretty dramatic.

They opened with a ferocious cover of “Come on Up” that saw the singer stand on his Farfisa, grab a ceiling beam and swing from it.  Of course, someone else in the audience later in the show got a boost from a buddy and did the same thing.  How original.

I have to say that the crowd of 500 were more vocal than the Maxwell’s crowds, although the latter were way more physically active.

When the regular set was over, the crowd chanted “food, sickles and girls!”  And they got it for the first song of the encore. Then there was “(My Love Is) Stronger Than Dirt.”  After that, the bassist asked the crowd, “Are you guys getting bored?” to a resounding “NOOOO!!!!”

The ultimate (in many ways) song followed, “(You Must Fight to Live) On The Planet of the Apes.”  The crowd continued to roar for more, but the boys were done, off to some shows in Europe.  Will they ever play in the U.S. again?

For more pictures, check out my fan page on Facebook.

No, not here, though I wish!

Hey, all, I want to let you know about an event coming up this Sunday.

Bad news: it’s not in New York City.

Good news: it takes place in Paramus, New Jersey!

More good news: I’ll be on a panel with the beautiful Wendy Lee and equally beautiful Sung Woo.

Sunday June 14, 2009, 1:30 PM – 2:00 PM

Books NJ 2009
Panel Discussion – The Immigrant Experience (yeah, bay-bee!)
featuring Wendy Lee, Ed Lin, Sung J. Woo.
Paramus Public Library
116 East Century Road
Paramus, NJ 07652