Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things (2)

Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things 

(Part 2 of 3) How to Care About It in the Wrong Way 

During a summer rainstorm that you could hear from inside a windowless bar on California near Diversey, I got stuck in a longer conversation between my neighbor, Brian, and a skinhead.
        We were lined up at the stools and initially talked about leather jackets. I wanted to know where Brian bought his. My old jacket got ruined through rips and soakings.
In minutes I lost all footing in the conversation, which had turned to Johnny Thunders, who I knew of only as a tattoo on the arms of bleach headed punks.

        Brian and the skinhead worked me through Johnny Thunders' history with the New York Dolls, into The Heartbreakers and up to his New Orlean's death and posthumous rising stardom in books and record shops.
        Then I remembered what I read in Poison Heart, and I said, "Hey, didn't Johnny Thunders steal a song from Dee Dee Ramone? Was it Chinese Rocks?"
        Then skinhead looked into space.
        "Oh no!" he said. "That has never been established." 
        Seeing this, the bartender stopped pouring a draft and watched us from a few feet away as the skinhead explained to me with the aggression of a man abused that Thunders, as a songwriter, played miles ahead of DeeDee. 
        And further, that the man who fronted The Heartbreakers would never stoop to steal a song in all his life. 
        "Especially not from a Ramone!"
        "But maybe he'd steal your watch for heroin," I guessed. Then I got a dirty look. Eventually, Brian was talking hockey and then I knew it was really time to leave. 

Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things

Dee Dee Ramone Figures Into Things

(Part 1 of 3) Where Songs Can Come From

Rather than visit the library or plan a quicker way to teach Huck Finn, I usually slink around collecting stories about bass players, almost exclusively from punk bands. I do it unprofessionally and lazily, but putting the years in perspective, its graduated from coincidence to hobby. How Sting claps slowly, and like a caveman. Or the way Kira Roessler who played bass for five Black Flag albums used to respond to groping fans at shows: by smashing them in the jaw or eye socket with her heavy bass's body, all without missing a note any of the thousands of notes she touched off without a pick.

A recent continuation of this collection has been reading DeeDee Ramone's first book, Poison Heart. My experience oscillated between wanting to light some sage or a sizeable candle to put DeeDee's soul to rest and giggling over his ritual of loss: his headhitting, his life of setback and willpower to whirlpool himself into disasters. (Here place two examples from text).

Born to an unlucky young German mother and an older alcoholic US vet in 50s Berlin, you get the feeling that Dee Dee never had a chance to be anything other than a Ramone. Not a hotdog vendor with a cart in the park nor a candy store owner and not a doorman in a suit, career choices he regretted not choosing.

Regrets like these cause Dee Dee to dash through apartment doors away from police and Phil Spector, and to leap from the tour van into Florida swampland or congested intersections, his fellow bandmates yelling, "Dee Dee, no!" but only half able to dismiss one of the lead songwriters.

More Orwell

This summer I'm not sure what I tried to focus on reading. 

Last summer I read a bunch of Orwell. His essays, a biography, and two of his books. One of them was Down and Out in Paris and London, a sort of glancing around anthropology that's a little like Burroughs' Junky and Queer as in it's written for casual readers and leaves you feeling satisfied and not too much like a guy at the zoo. He follows life under the poverty line in France and England. 

If it's read as true, Orwell half stumbles and have drives himself into the life of a tramp, to use his words, shortly after getting out of military training. Happily, he doesn't get hot for Paris and spends most of his time hanging out with castaways from all over Europe. In particular, a  former Russian officer who is lonely for monarchs.   

The quotes below come from the Down and Out book. Some are Orwell and some are lines of dialogue from his peers. 


- He is, somehow, profoundly disgusting to see. 
- By strict economy he managed to always be half starved and half drunk.
- Rackety
- Rickety
- Inveterately 
- Bad luck seemed to have turned him half witted in only a single day. 
- ...And you can never go there again. 
- It is the suburbs, as it were, of poverty.
- I would not flinch, I had been a soldier, remember. 
- He sat up in bed and renewed the situation.
- A duke is a duke, even in exile. (on a duke leaving the bar w/out having paid his bill)
- Of course, one is always a patriot; but still--Did not Moses say something about spoiling the Egyptians? As an Englishman you will have read the Bible. What I mean is, would you object to earning money from Communists?
- The doorkeeper is a cunning swine.
- English eh? He said, if you work well--he made the motion of up-ending a bottle and sucked noisily. If you don't--he gave the doorpost several vigorous kicks. 
- I counted the number of times I was called __?__ during the day. 
- We are a notable set of people.
- It is worth describing...
- Owing to... 
- The bad ones are past imagining.
- People have a way of taking for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. 
- It is a fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.
- The thought of not being poor made me very patriotic.
- D'ysa want to go across my knee?
- His ignorance was limitless and appalling.
- Forced idleness is one of the worst evils of poverty.
- The Salvation Army stinks of charity.

Journal Moments Without a Home

“In my childhood there are many caves.” -- A Turkish bus driver speaking about the local geography.

It is 5am. I am reading in my side room. My emergency exit is a sealed door to another apartment. On the other side is a dog in a crate. I turn a page, he mumbles annoyed in his crate. These are the morning sounds.

Things that are unsatisfying: Joe Strummer’s inspiration for the song, “Spanish Bombs.” Literary anthologies without author biographies or contextual notes. The first time I used the word “chill.” Reciprocation. Catholicism being a system of faith when it is obviously a system of works. Gino’s East frozen pizzas. Dressing rooms in winter months, my body is as pale as the moon.

“Being an adult means expressing jealousy in the form of cautionary advice.” Whose aphorism was this? Why is it in my notebook?

The car had engine trouble. My dad took a look under the hood. A small bag. Inside the small bag, a wad of cash. “What’s this?” he asks my grandpa. “You think you’ll never have an emergency!” says my grandpa.