2008

CB's tale of holiday Beatle redemption

I wrote the story, clickable below, 5 years ago and haven't looked at it since I published it at Christmas 2005. The story takes place in 1995. Things have changed, but some things haven't---most noticeably the Drama leanings.

Here's "Broke For The Holidays."

(My apologies for "Thoughts skittered around my brain like hot water dancing on a skillet.")

A for-real Festivus

I pulled over at Broadway Farms on the Upper West Side of Manhattan late last night and dashed, leaving Mrs. B in the passenger seat.

I passed a short, elderly man and quickly realized it was this guy.

He looked at me, I looked at him, and we both went on. He was wearing a baseball cap with "Comedy" on its brim, and he walked very slowly.

Pause, baby.

There are famous actors and musicians, and then there are the guys who have really meant something to you, day in, day out.

I'd passed a magic man.

I texted Mrs. Bananas from the frozen section, "Keep your eye on the front door. In a moment, you'll see Jerry Stiller coming out."

I checked out my goods before Stiller did, so Mrs. B and I sat in the car and waited so she could get a look. And waited. Debated whether or not to skat, but one of us said, "You will most likely never see him again, and you will remember this forever." Agreed. We sat.

He emerged, turned left and slowly walked north, glancing at us as he passed and continuing on into the night. Satisfied, we drove off.

This makes the third "Seinfeld" actor I've randomly come across. The first was Jerry himself, at the 79th Street boat basin in 1998, at the height of the show's popularity.

Nobody ate. I looked around at the restaurant and every single head was turned toward JS, who ate, talked and laughed with his male pal.

Two years ago I saw this man in a Maui Hotel:

Since he's the cousin of a musician friend, I dropped the name and Wayne Knight turned around. He asked all about my friend, his wife, their family, and I told him. Off we went and off he went.

Why do we care?

Because the USA is glutted with so-called "stars", but the artists--the ones who truly deserve fame, money, adulation and their eternal life via the tube and elsewhere, and especially those who make us laugh, are rare and magical. If you see one, you stop what you're doing and say hi, even just in your head.

Now, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre a month ago, I've seen Frank Costanza in person, and I'll go on my way.

The gas, please, at once

At the dentist, waiting to get an "onlay."

The hygienist, they told me at the front desk, sings awesome.

Far out. Something to talk about after she applies this mouth-numbing goo before the 100-foot needle(s) go in my (gums) eye.

"Singer, eh?"

"Yea."

"Where do you sing?"

"Oh, just pop stuff."

"No. Where?"

"Oh, just around the house, a capella."

"Sing me something. Come on, man."

"Ha! Ha."

"How about this one? (sings) 'Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you've got 'til its gone/They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot.'"

("Big Yellow Taxi," Joni Mitchell, 1970)

"I don't know that song."

"Ok, here's another: (sings) 'Busted flat in Baton Rouge/Waitin' for a train/I was feelin' 'bout as faded as my jeans/Bobby flagged a diesel down/Just before it rained/Took us all the way to New Orleans.'"

("Me and Bobby McGee," Janis Joplin, 1971)

"I don't know that song."

"So what do you sing?"

"Oh, just pop stuff."

"Who?"

"Britney, Jessica Simpson, Miley Cyrus."

Things get hazy after that. I know I screamed.

Fortunately for me, there's you

Every once in a while
Life becomes a trial
And I sink down, down, down
Into the Goo
A hairy beast gone wild
Kicking my feet like a child
But fortunately for me there’s you

Takin’ it all so hard
Puttin’ up my guard
Bitin’ off more
Than I can chew
When the world breaks balls
My spirit slips and falls
But fortunately for me there’s you

You are all that is good and kind
The rope without which I would sink
Compassion and healing combined
Bringin’ me back from the brink

When the sky starts to cloud
And the voices get loud
And I feel the turn---the turn of the screw
When all the horns start to beep
And every hill looks steep
Fortunately for me there’s you

You are healer and priestess and sage
The fence at the end of a ledge
Siphoning out all the rage
Pulling me back from the edge

When the Gods are drunk
And makin’ me their punk
And they come down and dunk
Dunk me into the stew
When I’m stuck down a well
When everything’s shot to hell
Fortunately for me there’s you
Fortunately for me there’s you
Fortunately for me there’s you

(c) Josh Max

The Ash-Scram Part 3

Part 2 may be viewed by clicking on this sentence.

The door to my bedroom opened a little after midnight. I turned over and saw the silhouette of a woman standing in the doorway.

“Hello?”

“Hi," she said.

“Can I help you?”

“This is my room.”

“Um. Wow. God. Really? Yakaru put me here.”

“He did? Where’s Amitab?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Mmm.”

“I’m just in from India, and I needed a place to stay. I’m not moving in or anything.”

“It’s ok. Where’s Amitab?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“It’s ok.”

Silence.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.

She left the room and I turned over and fell into twilight. 10 minutes later the door brushed open and I heard the sheets move on the other side of the room and the sound of a body getting into bed.

“That you?” I called.

“Yup.”

“Ok.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

I turned over to go to sleep.

“So where are you from?” she asked.

I turned back over.

“New York City, but I’ve just come in today from India. I lived there 5 months in the Ashram.”

“Wow. What’s it like? I heard it’s amazing.”

“It is. You should go.”

“I want to.”

“Where are you from?”

“Israel.”

“Wow. You’re a long way from home.”

“We’re all a long way from home, man.”

I liked her.

I decided to take a bold leap. It was a commune, after all, and if it was anything like the commune I'd just left, my request wouldn't seem entirely unreasonable.

“Hey," I said.

“Mmmm?”

“If I have a bad dream, can I come and sleep with you?”

“If you want to sleep with me, say you want. Don’t make up a story.”

I gulped. "Ok, I want.”

She got up, came over to my side of the room, pulled the blankets away, climbed into bed with me, pulled the blankets over us, and came into my arms.

24 hours of taxis, buses, plane rides, car rides, another new country, horns and smoke and noise dissolved in the healing presence of Pritidana. It was not a mindless, mechanical encounter, but rather a sweet, gentle, fun and organic experience, and we did not cross that certain line.

Finally we both drifted into semi-sleep, a single, foggy thought crossing the brain, which had absorbed so much so recently.

"I dig London."

The Ash-Scram, Part 2 of 3

Part one may be read by clicking on this sentence.

Part 2:

I was welcomed into the house by the sinewy, kind-eyed Yakaru, who led me to a large room with a fireplace, enormous windows, two generous beds and the smell of wood everywhere.

It was a far, far cry from the kitchen floor of the busted-up flat I’d lived in at the Ashram, and the room was mine for the ridiculous sum of 10 American dollars a night including food and the use of a washer and dryer.

I immediately saw my new digs were maintained impeccably; windows expertly painted, raising and lowering in perfect silence, heavy, finely oiled doors with gleaming glass knobs, furniture of the highest quality and placed just so. It felt as though the room was my official welcome to England, and a first-class welcome it was.

Famished and filthy, I took my biggest English carrot into the shower with me and rinsed the last of India down the drain while I munched under the warm water. I wrapped my room towel around me, threw my entire wardrobe in the laundry, and waited for---what? It was 3 in the afternoon and no one was home except Yakaru.

I padded into my room, closed the door and wrote in my journal, “I miss you, Valeria.”

I got a surge of mojo from the shower and clean clothes and decided to walk the streets to see if I could scratch a farthing making music. I threw back the shoulders, walked to the Crouch End tube, pulled out my box and sang for an hour, mostly Sun Records stuff like early Elvis, Jerry Lee, Perkins. A few stopped to look and in 60 minutes I had 22 new pounds in my case. English money can be heavy. Indian rupees are always filthy and beat-up.

I headed back home without a key.

Knock.

"Yes?"
"Hi, I'm staying here."
"Huh?"
"Yakaru knows."

The door closed, and swung back open in about 5 minutes.

"Come in, then," said Yakaru's wife, as though addressing a deliveryman.

People started arriving home from their jobs at around 6, going about their business. None seemed impressed or curious about their new visitor. The housepeople were so quick and so comfortable with each other that they all melted into one blap of “stranger with an English accent”, and I couldn't process each as individuals yet except for two 17-year old girls who looked right past me.

Dinner was prepared. I offered help and was given the job of chopping vegetables and putting them in bowls. I really didn’t want to do anything but figured I ought to, and when the meal was on the table, I ate surrounded by strangers who talked among themselves, with only the most fleeting logistical interest in yours truly. An enormous, bearded, leather-clad biker-looking guy turned to me and blew his entire image with “’Would you pahss the buttah, please?”

Energized by food, I accepted an invitation to attend a party with three dinnermates. We pushed into a car, drove to a club, parked and the others took off into a crowd of about 100 people dancing to house music, leaving me to wander, looking for a sign of welcome warmth, of tenderness, fun, understanding, humor and intelligence. Instead I found attractive people with emotionally constipated faces and perpetual cigarettes parked in their mouths, and I felt as lost as I had when I first arrived in Bombay. I was also clobbered by a new wave of fatigue and could barely stand.

Annoyed by the noise, the people and the smoke, I found one of my housemates and told him I’d be on my way, and he graciously found someone to drive me. Deposited back at the house, I took a hot shower, rinsing the club smell off me, and went to my room.

As I climbed beneath the cool, fresh-smelling sheets, I began to feel better. It was the first time I’d been truly dry and clean after months of humid, filthy India. I let down my mask, the mask I’d needed to deal with customs, to arrange logistics, rides and lodging, to postpone deep feelings of any kind, letting go of my friends and all my adventures in India and to produce some kind of pleasing personality to stranger after English stranger.

Now, alone with the silver moon bathing me through my window, I felt flush in the wake of what I’d done, where I’d carried myself to in these last months, busting out of a Manhattan shell and taking a chance halfway around the world. What would happen to me tomorrow? I had no idea, but for now, I had a beautiful bed in a beautiful house, I was as clean as a baby, and I’d found my own North Star once again. Even if there was no one else in the world who was soft and gentle in the world at that moment, I would be soft and gentle with Mr. Swami Gyan Shunyam, taking him away from loud fools and parking him in bed where he belonged.

Leaving the commune, or The Ash-Scram

The Captain offers Slappy Frankenstein
aficionados his post-commune
adventures, in 3 EZ installments.

PART 1: THE ASH-SCRAM

I’d been in India five months and the spiritual cracks had been scraped, patched, sanded and painted. It was time to head west. Even master Osho said you have to go back out into the marketplace eventually and see how you do with your new, improved self. And I wanted a bath.

My first phone call in five months was to book the return trip of my plane ticket back to New York, and the first flight was in 24 hours.

I wandered around the Ashram and said goodbye to different friends, teachers and ex-lovers like Premartha, Sushumna, John Anando Masta, Marga Uti, Rohi, Shivan, The Spanish Guy, the Prince and the Pervert. I fished my smashed Western clothes out of the bottom of my duffel bag and left my mattress on the kitchen floor where I’d found it. I counted my scant cash and did what meditators do best---waited.

A nationwide rickshaw strike was going into effect the next day, imperiling my ride to the airport. I was directed to Nanu, who ran the Ashram “brown” market where Westerners could change money for better rates, rent bicycles and arrange other transactions.

“No problem, Baba, I am going to the airport myself, and you can come with me,” he said.

After my final night on a Poona floor and last breakfast of mangoes and papaya, I stopped by Nanu’s hut at 8 A.M. to confirm our 4:30 trip.

“4:30, Baba,” he said.

I showed up with two bags and a guitar at 4:30 with my girlfriend Valeria, who would see me off.

“I cannot go, Baba,” Nanu said. “There is a nationwide rickshaw strike.”

Blue Diamond had a coach that was leaving for the airport in 15 minutes, he advised.

Valeria grabbed one of my bags and ran with me the quarter mile to the stop. The bus was full when it showed up because of the strike, but there is no such thing in India as a train, bus or car that can’t squeeze in one more person, so Valeria pushed on my behind like she was jamming a vacuum cleaner into a closet and when I was more in than out of the bus, the driver set off with the door ajar. Valeria ran alongside the bus, waving, the prized tigers-eye necklace I’d given her bouncing on her chest. I held up the good luck electric yo-yo she’d given me and waved back as she receded into the distance, clomping through the Indian muck up above her ankles.

As I felt the bus wheels lurch violently over the deep divots of mud mixed with cow dung that were typical of the country’s roads, it seemed as though India and the ashram were giving me one final spiritual shake as if to say "Don't fall asleep out there in the world, baba."

I took a dented plane to Mumbai, checked into a cheap hotel and walked the filthy, shitty, packed streets, wanting to fill, fill, fill my being with the flavor of the ancient country in my last moments there. When the traffic fumes and the smell got too much, I found my way back to the hotel, ordered a last bowl of Dal and watched Indian MTV until midnight. At 5 AM, Air India whisked me out of their country, and the door to the East officially closed.

I’d left New York in March; it was August and I feared what I’d be in for when I got home. I had a new outlook, a new name and hundreds of experiences both tiny and monumental. How was I supposed to land in Manhattan, unpack my things and jump back in the river of urban mayhem, say hi to people without hugging them, get by with no morning and evening meditation in Buddha hall?

I had no money, was sunburned and dusty, I couldn’t explain the purpose of my visit or how long I planned to stay, but the customs man let me through when I decided to jump ship at Heathrow airport in jolly England, and there I disembarked.

It wouldn’t be too hard to bop around London like a pro, I reasoned. Hadn’t I watched “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Quadrophenia”, “Frenzy” and “The Wicker Man”? I’d been given the name of a local bookstore in London where they sold Osho books and took a big black English cab to get there, gaping out the window in search of Carnaby Street, Abbey Road, Michael Caine, Elton John or Led Zeppelin standing on a corner.

“Oy, ‘ere’s another ‘ippie!” the clerk called to the owner of the store when I showed up. I was given a phone number and the address of a commune, called and was told I would be picked up in a car in an hour. An adjacent room in the bookstore was used for meditation and I was invited to wait there. I plopped the bags, closed my eyes but got no meditation accomplished; the mind went nuts.

A hulking buzz-haired guy picked me up in an asthmatic Vauxhall and we rode to wherever it was I would end up.

“I just got back from 5 months in India!” I announced.
“Oh, yeh? Ow wuzzit?”
“Amazing.”
He didn’t ask anything more about it, and I didn’t tell him.
“What’s your name again?” he asked after 10 minutes of silence.
“Shunyam. What’s yours?”
“Pragyan.”
“What’s it mean?”
“I don’t know, bliss, sunshine, the usual rubbish.”

I had assumed every Sannyasin I met outside India would have longish hair, colorful clothes, a colorful mind and a playful attitude towards life, like me and most of my pals in the ashram, and I was shocked to meet a conservative man with a Sannyasin name. Pragyan stopped for an errand and I ducked into a small grocery store, buying English carrots and English grapes, my first in almost half a year.

We pulled up to a homey-looking house on a quiet street in a neighborhood called Crouch End.

“ Thanks for the lift, Baba,” I said to Pragyan.
“Huh?”
“Thank you for driving me.”
“Mmm.”

Captain Bananas' Thanksgiving truisms

*Before you leave your house, it's smart to butter the doorway to accomodate the 28,472 pounds you will gain today.

*It's better to cook the night before. This way, if whatever you're making sucks, like my first batch of cookies did, there is still time for a do-over. However, just because it's best to cook the previous night doesn't mean you'll do it. Instead, you'll go to Rodeo Bar and stay out until 1:30, ya stew bum.

*If a relative calls and their message goes to your voice mail and you subsequently call back and your call goes to their voice mail, it counts as having spoken to that relative.

*If you bring a camera, shoot early because everyone looks a little beat-up after 8 hours of Thanksgiving.

*On the way home, you won't bother to check and see if it's best to take the Holland Tunnel, Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge back to the city because, after all, it's 10:30 PM on Thanksgiving day---no one will be on the highway.

*When you get home, 19 turkeys, who know where all the vegans live, will emerge from behind the stairwell wearing raincoats and Groucho Marx fake noses, eyebrows and moustaches and want to sleep with you in your bed.

Some Bananas inventions that didn't make it

"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

Alexander Bullock,"My Man Godfrey," 1936

The plane lands; the Captain doesn't

I had resisted being BFF---Back From France.

It took me two days to acknowledge I wasn't waking up in the Napoleon hotel anymore, that I would not see the Arc De Triomphe to the right upon leaving my residence each morning, nor would I hear “Bon jour, Monsieur!” from the friendly bellhop with the “Stinky Armpit Championship” ribbon pinned to the lapel of his jacket. I was home, in Inwood, tactfully referred to by real estate agents as “Upstate New York.”

Inwood, where three parking garages, a gas station, a car wash, auto parts stores, a couple of restaurants and scattered bodegas bustle to my north and whose streets are almost completely deserted at night except for those walking to and from the subway or who find themselves in need of chicken claws from the 24-hour Fine Fare or a live pigeon from the store on 10th Avenue. Fort Tryon park nearby, yes, and one must be grateful for the trees, but you cannot munch “rocket salad” in this park, nor can you walk its wooded paths without being propositioned by Joe Buck minus the hat, fringe and accent.

I grew up with a similar collection of trees in Westchester, anyhow, cut off from the world except for the deer and squirrels, and was similarly removed from civilization. Everything interesting in Manhattan---theatre, coffee shops, cinema, art, live music, diversity---begins below 96th Street. I am here, nudging the Bronx, squeezed like the last blop of toothpaste.

But Paris! Civilization 1,000,000 times multiplied. I’d gorged and guzzled her over three days, rolling as a dog rolls in dirt, covering myself, getting her on my face and between my toes, screaming “Sacre bleu!” and “Zut alors!” with each roll, and stuffing my pockets with snails, French attitude, a lock of hair from Quasimodo, a vial of Seine, a photo of a guillotine and an eclair before my wife and I left the country.

In three days, we did the Louvre, Muse d'orsay, a Seine cruise, the top of the Arc, the stroll down the Champs Elysses, the Metro, the Tour de Montparnasse.

Determined to learn the language of my new girlfriend quickly back home, I dialed my Satellite Radio to NPR in French and let it ride all day.

Two days later, I still didn't understand what the men and women on the radio were saying.

I remembered, though, how long it took me to learn the language of the chords of the Great American Songbook in the early 90s as a non-reading musician, how I had to pick out every note of every chord of Bobby Short's version of "I've Got A Crush On You." by ear. Today, I hear and speak that language fluently as if I've always known it. Some day it will be the same with French. Not today, not tomorrow.

I obtained recordings of the work of the following French musicians:

Charles Aznavour
Jacques Brel
Sylvie Vartan
Daniel Colin
Jacqueline Francois
Maurice Chevalier
Josephine Baker
Mistinguett
Yves Montand

...and let their quick vibratos, accordions and drama wash over me as I stood doing the dishes.

Wednesday, I went solo to "The Wild Child", a 1970 film by Francois Truffaut, at the Film Forum.


In the movie, Wild Child Victor's teacher attempts to teach him to speak, and as such I also learned, from watching, the meaning of lait---milk---and clé---key.

Finally, on my 4th day back in New York, I went for a run in the freezing cold, running for my life as if chased or chasing, breathed deeply, and felt the sorrow of goodbye.

Then I was able to face being home at last.

And I must say it was nice to exchange the following with the customs man at Kennedy Airport Sunday night:

"How y'doin'."
"How y'doin'."

It is possible for a parent to love two or more children, and it is possible to love Paris without being disloyal to Manhattan.

I shall see my girl again in May---a long 6 months away.

The Captain ships out

Mr. and Mrs. B sail to London today.

Love, Popeye

Olive, Olive
On the movie screen
Olive, Olive
You're my cartoon Queen.
Will you---won't you
Take this sailor boy?
Do you---don't you
Hear me sayin' "Ahoy!"?

I know
Bluto
Thinks he's quite a catch
But let's you 'n' me
And S'wee Pea
Go wandering through
The spinach patch

Olive, Olive
Where do I begin?
Olive, Olive
You so tall and thin

Out at sea
When you're not with me
The ocean seems to spoil
But the whis'pring gales
Blowing through the sails
Will carry me back to my sweet Miss Oyl

Olive, Olive
On the movie screen
Olive, Olive
You're my cartoon queen.
(c) Josh Max

Drawing by C. Bananas

Vote, ya mugs!

The Captain's Beast Loaf

I would like to show you my "meat" loaf from last night, thanks. We saved some for you. It was made with faux meat and sausage, bread crumbs, bar-b-cue sauce, Heinz, Dijon mustard, assorted spices, an onion puree, chopped garlic and luv xoxoxoxo.

Mrs. Bananas ate it with relish (figuratively) and she grew up in Ohio, where they know their frito pie, their lettuce-with-mayonaisse-and-peas, and their meat loaf.

That scream you heard

was a musician getting a large break.

Wanted: The Captain's music, at last

A child isn't supposed to live at home after they're grown, and CDs shouldn't either.

So off goes "The Maxes Sing Al Hoffman", disc by disc, to this one and that one, each with a letter of explanation and a kiss before I drop it in the mailbox.

People ask me how I drive exotic cars---hell, cars of any kind---without crashing 'em at least once, or how I ride a motorcycle without getting knocked off like a porch pumpkin smashed with a baseball bat.

I tell 'em: "I surround myself with a bubble of love."

I do the same with the discs I send and hopefully the opener has an orgasm when he/she opens the package, or at least a flutty-wutty feeling. Off the discs go, like birds dropped from the nest, or bird droppings, depending on your point of view.

Some of the birds land.

Got a call three days ago from the New York music publishing office of 1/4 of That Band whose name rhymes with Needles, offering representation of 10 of my songs. Gonna meet with 'em this tomorrow to hammer and yammer.

Took a meeting last night with a record company distributed through WB who wants me, us, The Maxes, to record 3 more discs, soon, full budget, full production, horns, strings, and distribution in the US and Europe, and the dough ain't coming from my paper route. Yeah, you gotta recoup, but this deal is let's go let's go let's go we love you let's do it. We say ok. Gotta have the expert look at it and approve it, but barring incident...

Giddyap.

Got this quote from Sirius DJ Meg Griffin yesterday regarding last year's "The Maxes", whose "Stand and Dig It" and "Fortunately For Me, There's You" she played a billion times:

"The Maxes...are infectious and optimistic in a way that defies the dysfunction of our times, and they sit quite nicely between Flaming Lips and the Jetsons. I'll have some more, please, especially on the radio where this kind of fun just grabs the listeners."

I have sent hundreds--hundreds of letters in the last 10 years to people in the industry. Tapes, discs, photos, calls. Repeat.

It's easier to get a Bentley Continental GT to show up at your door than to make a quick dent in the Biz, in my experience.

But in the imagined words of sewer worker Ed Norton of 328 Chauncey Street:


"The s--t moves along at last."