Author Archives: Brick Wahl

War of the Worlds

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The first machine landed right near my folks’ house. Just a couple miles away. I was watching and knew the area they were talking about. Then I realized the flying wing was dropping the bomb on the hills maybe a mile from our house. I recognized them. I could look out the sliding glass door and see the same outline as I could on the TV. That was the early seventies and as cool a late night television experience as I’ve ever had, matched only by the realization a couple decades ago that giant ants were nesting in the Los Angeles River a couple hundred yards behind my back. I swore I could smell the formic acid, but it was only the weed.

War of the Worlds, 1953. Martians are incinerating Carbon Canyon. No word on the fate of the nudists just up the road at Glen Ivy Hot Springs.

War of the Worlds, 1953. Martians are incinerating Carbon Canyon. No word on the fate of the nudists just up the road at Glen Ivy Hot Springs.

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Laundromat

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I recall the time at a laundromat in Hollywood when a man was washing women’s underwear. They were drying, pink and violet and black and lace going round and round. As he plucked each dainty out of the dryer he’d try it on. Well, the brassieres he tried on. The panties he held in place in front of him and gazed in the mirror, seeing something we couldn’t see. Then he’d fold each item carefully and slip it into a bag, return to the dryer and start the performance all over again.

Laundromat

Laundromat

Grand Hotel

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Was at an empty bar in Palm Springs off season once and the bartender was saying how out there you had to know how to make all the old style cocktails, so I got drunk on Louisiana Flips. Just like Lionel Barrymore in Grand Hotel. And like Lionel Barrymore, I fell down. Ouch. But man, those Louisiana Flips…they were wonderful things, some kind of yellowish concoction if I remember right,  and you could down ’em like creme soda. I haven’t dast another since….besides, my wife told me I began quoting the movie to the bewildered bartender. I vant to be alone, I said. So she left.

I followed her a flip or two (or maybe three) later. Our room was a quick few steps across a parking lot that became positively oceanic on the walk–if you can call it that–back. But I did well, I thought, tacking a little to port, to starboard…it wasn’t till the elevator door opened and I fell like a redwood that there was a problem. Surprised the hell out of me, how that elevator door opened to nothing but space. A fall is a long drop for a tall man. Several feet of air to plunge through and the floors are always hard and unforgiving.  Gravity is merciless, Isaac Newton a vile little man.  There were no witnesses, though, save a swollen, angry knee.

Palm Springs, ya know, people come, people go, nothing ever happens. Except I fell down. It was worth it, though. I got to be Lionel Barrymore. Maybe next time I’ll be John Barrymore and not pay my hotel bill.

He Stopped Loving Her Today

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(April 26, 2013)

I’ve never told anyone this before, but there was a two week stretch there maybe a decade and a half ago when I must have listened to He Stopped Loving Her Today a hundred times. Over and over. Once turned to twice turned to thrice turned to twenty times. I couldn’t tell you why, but there I was, in the dark, maybe a little stoned, George Jones singing this most perfect song ever in a tone I knew I could never match in words even if I spent a lifetime trying. I met a trumpet player once, a fine jazz musician, a bebopper, who confessed to me over a couple whiskeys that he wished he could play like George Jones sang. The other jazzers kind of laughed nervously, unsure what to say. I said nothing. I knew exactly what he meant.

I started writing this a verse or two into the tune. A couple sentences later I spun it again. And again. He stopped loving her today fades, a piano descends five notes, strings disappear way into the background and are gone. They’re Nashville strings but you couldn’t tell here, they’re so subtle, the band is so subtle too, the drummer swings the thing like a funeral dirge. Which it is. They placed a wreath upon his door. I had a fight with the wife once, said things I wish I hadn’t, hid in the living room in the dark, and kept thinking about those letters by his bed, all the I love you’s underlined in red.  I played the song. Played it again. Again. I went into the bedroom and said I love you. It was underlined in red.  In my mind I mean, three little words underlined in red. This might sound like the dumbest thing you ever heard, but then I’m not talking to you people. I’m talking to the people who heard George Jones finally died, the ol’ Possum, and found themselves singing they left a wreath upon his door. You knew you would too. And you knew you’d cry just a little. Which you did. He stopped loving her today.

He Stopped Loving Her Today

Hells Angels

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(2009)

We used to hang out in a Hells Angels bar, the Canby Sweet. Van Nuys chapter. This was back in the 80’s, there was a record store around the corner that would book all kinds of cool shows. We’d smoke pot in someone’s van parked out front, coughing and giggling, but if ya wanted a beer you had to go into the Angels hang around the corner. We always wanted a beer. The dudes were mellow, huge and almost laid back. The women were insane, tight jeans, tighter tees and violent tempers. Hot, scary hot.

I really liked the place. We never got in anybody’s way, and they tolerated us just fine. Only time it ever got a little tense was when the women were tweeking. At the pool table they’d wave the cues around wildly, and they’d slam their empties on the bar and demand another. They always got served immediately. It was never fast enough for them. They’d grab the fresh beer off the bar and chug a lug, yell something at somebody, and stride across the room, their asses like sculpted marble.

Angels.

Their women.

Panty hose

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(2011)

I just read in Slate that panty hose are out of fashion. Maybe extinct even. Something about Michelle Obama hating them. I hadn’t noticed. Which is odd in that I notice women’s legs all the time. I guess I just thought panty hose had gotten super sheer. Didn’t realize they weren’t there. To be honest I hadn’t thought about it. Had they been seamed I would have thought it. I think about those when I see them. And those dark ones. I think about those. And fishnets, though you don’t see them too often anymore. At least not on nice girls. But since I personally don’t wear panty hose I don’t think about them much when they’re not right there on legs walking in front of me. Some festishist I’d make. Sorry of this disappoints anyone. I’ll try to think about them more in the future. And while I understand that this  might be the least important news story ever and that actually I read only about every fifth sentence, and after a while no sentences at all, it does beg a question…..

You see last time we were in Chicago in the end of November it was a Saturday night, downtown was jumping, couples everywhere, and the temp was in the 20’s. Chilly. We were bundled up like it was a zillion below, of course, being from L.A. The Chicago girls, though, were stepping out, feeling good and wearing short skirts. Not really short, but short enough to make me think lady, aren’t you freezing?  I mentioned my amazement to my wife. She’s from Milwaukee, remember (i.e., from north of Chicago) and pointed out that they were wearing cold weather hose. Really? Yeah….it’s actually quite warm, as long as you keep moving. Which these ladies were, scuttling up the sidewalk into the wind.   But couldn’t they just wear jeans? Well, yeah, but you can’t show off your legs in jeans. Besides, when it’s really cold, you wear jeans over your winter panty hose, and slip them off in the ladies room. But tonight’s not really cold? It sure as hell felt really cold. When  you caught a blast of wind blowing up from the lake, in fact, it felt really cold. My wife shivered  and nodded …it feels cold to us, but to them February is cold. They live here. You can still wear skirts in late November, when it’s just chilly. And I watched leggy Chicago girls waiting for a street light to change and hiding behind their dates from the wind. They did look good, though.

Which gets to my point….does the end of L’eggs mean that there’ll be no more skirts in frigid Chicago? I mean those chicks would have died barelegged. Is it pants nine months of the year up north from now on? I mean if you are heading downtown in Chicago you will have to walk some distance..there’s no parking anywhere. What’s a girl to do? Wear jeans and long underwear under her skirt? Has it really come to this?

This sounds like an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Star Trek

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He’s dead, Jim.

You know the color’s going on the set when the redshirts are greyshirts. Very nostalgic, though, as we had a black and white set until late in the Nixon administration. The Wonderful World of Color in black and white. Long Maine winters, grey skies, white snow, slush. Even the birch trees were white on grey. The Northern Lights splashed colors on the horizon like the smudge of pink creeping into the bottom of the screen. I walked into the den. Dad was in his favorite chair, watching Star Trek. I’d never seen it. Bones appeared in an alley, screaming about assassins and murderers. A tramp dropped a milk bottle. It shattered and milk flowed in perfect white. Bones screamed and grabbed the tramp by the skull, measuring. That’s all I remember. I missed out on the Beatles too. Maine was squaresville. They showed us Maine propaganda films in school. Mom passed me the mashed potatoes. Maine has the greatest potatoes I announced. My parents laughed. Non-believers. Not of the body. Back here on the tv set, in glorious black and white, Lurch is an alien. Korby is an android. And Sherry Jackson defies gravity.

Sherry Jackson and friend.

Sherry Jackson and friend.

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Machine Gun

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Several people asked where the biker joints were I described earlier. The first was the Canby Suite, just off Sherman Way in Reseda, on Canby behind BeBop Records. A block from the Country Club. Older Valley rock’n’roll fans will recognize the location. That was the early to mid eighties

The second, mid to late 80’s, was called Big Johns, down in Anaheim somewhere, a lot of people played there. The Suicide Kings–a great trashy rock’n’roll band from the 80’s– were on the stage the night a big biker named Machine Gun–a Viet Nam vet with what we now know as PTSD–was offended by the singer’s pseudo-fay Mick Jagger/David Johansen act. Faggot! he yelled. The singer–Rick–shook his ass at him. Machine Gun went berserk and nailed him with a full beer to the forehead. Rick hit the floor, out cold. Then Machine Gun went after the fans. Who wants to take me on? he yelled. I’ll take you on, asshole! It was my brother Lex’s drummer, a former high school boxer named Derek, half Machine Gun’s size. Machine Gun swung wildly, missed, Swung again, missed. Then Derek peppered him with about twenty rapid fire punches to the face and Machine Gun went down like a redwood, bang. All the punk rockers swarmed on top of him like pummeling little ants. Machine came to and rose from the floor, roaring, shaking the kids off. He kept swinging but couldn’t see, his face was so swollen. Eventually it all settled down, the floor a mess of broken glass and furniture and blood. Other bikers broke it up. No one wanted the cops to show up. I got all this from my brother Jon, who called me at 2 in the morning with the story. It’s the greatest rock’n’roll tale I know. Machine Gun, I believe, was the one reduced to cinders when the place burned down. And it was Lex’s guitar player who had, on a previous night there, gone berserk himself and smashed his guitar and infuriated the bikers, forcing me to become a lawyer for a second.

Rock’n’roll used to be way more fun before it became a business. Not for the kiddies. Not for nice people at all. Fuck all this School of Rock shit. You learned rock’n’roll in garages, in dives, in dangerous places, with no teachers at all except Machine Gun.

Free money

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After a late Friday night we stopped into a 7-11 just before 2 am where an attractive and personable lady wearing pink pajamas with feet on them and a hood with mouse ears bought a 40 oz Old English. I am secure in my skin and my onesie she said. She posed for picture, smiling, and went out into the night to get fucked up.

Today at Trader Joes a man reached into his pocket and withdrew it in an explosion of twenty dollar bills. Scores of them. Some fell in a wad–maybe thirty or forty of them–the rest fluttered through the air like an exaltation of larks. I’d never seen so many twenties, never seen anything like it. I said so. As the man crouched and frantically tried to scoop them up his checker looked over at me and asked what was it. Twenties, I said, soundlessly, to not embarrass the guy. Twenty dollar bills. She read my lips. A hundred of them, I continued, spreading my hands. All over the floor. Her eyes went wide.

Free money, she thought. Free money, I thought. Free money, everybody thought. The man scooped up the last loose twenty and shoved them all back into his pocket. Our eyes followed him out of the store. Free money.

I got home and cracked open a beer. I am secure in my skin and my onesie, I said.

Wikifeet

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I can’t remember which story it was, but not long after I started blogging I posted something that somehow wound up on Wikifeet. You’d be amazed at how many people read the thing because it was linked to on Wikifeet. So many, in fact, that I pulled the story. Not much creeps me out, I suppose, but having a large following on Wikifeet did. I don’t think it was Wikifeet readers themselves. I mean they just really, really like feet. It was the idea that I might be considered one of them. I mean I like pretty feet as much as the next guy, I suppose. Just not as much as some guys. Some guys really like feet.

I’d forgotten this till I woke up just now in front of the TV after several hours of slumber to find myself in the middle of Kansas City Confidential. There was John Payne, sweating and scared. There was Lee Van Cleef acting tough. There was Neville Brand, giggling like Tommy Udo. And there was the girl, Coleen Gray, very striking but I couldn’t place her. I googled her name. Turns out she died just this year, aged 92. There were lots of publicity photos. Some of them were off of Wikifeet. Seems that some people look at a cheesecake photo of a movie moll in a bathing suit and all they see are the feet. You wonder just who these guys are. If you can tell them by their gaze in a crowded night club. Follow their gaze as the girls walk by. Some guys would see the color of their eyes. Some guys would watch the way they move. The Wikifeet guys find the loose change on the floor.

You never even heard of Wikifeet, I know. Actually neither had I, until I wrote something about feet. I wrote something about feet like I would have written something about hands or knees or thumbs. But there is no wikihands or wikiknees or wikithumbs that I know of. Maybe I haven’t written the right piece.

When I post this to my blog it will key word Wikifeet, and all the feet guys will be disappointed when they get here. They might even be miffed. Imagine a foot guy, miffed. Imagine too, that if I died right now, the last words I would have ever written would be a foot guy, miffed.

Fortunately I didn’t.

Coleen Gray, though perhaps some of you know that already.

Coleen Gray, though perhaps some of you know that already.