"After closing time
At the county fair
I detect the El Supremo
In the room at the top of the stairs..."
—Steely Dan
At the county fair
I detect the El Supremo
In the room at the top of the stairs..."
—Steely Dan
What does it mean? Beats me...it's Steely Dan, so Fagan and Becker probably chose the words because they fit some weird internal rhythm and, as a bonus, rhymed. Still, I woke up this morning with the verse swirling around my head like a flock of crows after a morning at Starbucks, so I thought I'd pass it along.
In my Books I'm Going to Read as Soon as I Survive the SHOT Show category, first on the list is Haruki Murakami's new Kafka on the Shore. Murakami writes as if our strangest dreams have stepped forward into our everyday life, and so what? He deals in straightforward narrative in surreal situations. Strangely enough, Murakami has had a profound effect on both my writing and my life. I stumbled across his Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami's first novel translated into English and published in America, at a time when, for reasons I was at a lost to understand, my life had "lost traction."
Things were going great...I was mostly writing high-speed business stuff, dream assignments like "go hang around the MIT Media Lab and tell us about the future," "interview Andrew Grove of Intel and David Packard of H-P and just see what they have to say," etc. My co-written book on business management, Shifting Paradigms, was doing well ("an important contribution to understanding cutting edge management," wrote one of the reviewers...), in my spare time I was pal'ing around with Dolly Parton and other coutnry music stars, and my future was so bright, I had to wear shades!
Except that it wasn't. So I read Sheep — imagine Raymond Chandler on an acid trip that just won't stop — and it dawned on me that the reason my wheels were slipping was that I had placed limitations on myself as a writer — and as a person — then convinced myself those limitations were the laws of the universe. I had always believed in the existential power of morphing, the ability to shapeshift on command...from newspaperman to Rolling Stone music critic to respected business writer in one fell swoop!...but I realized that I had morphed myself into a natty little trap.
So I mulled Murakami's words over and over, restless as the "blown seed" of Murakami's driven hero, and one night in a pizza joint in Tampa I launched what I would later call in print my own wild sheep chase (you can read about some of it here, because, after all, I am a writer; buy the book, because, after all, I need the money), which would take me around the world, nearly kill me numerous time, wreck my life and leave my head as clear as the mountains after a storm blows through. It was just what I needed! I think.
Okay, enough introspection...let's talk cowboy boots! Specifically, these cowboy boots, Liberty Boots' KILLAZ. Bad to the bone indeed! Death-heads and elaborate stitching! Don't these bad boys look like something Prince Harry would wear would wear to the SS-Totenkopfverbande All-Night Rock and Roll Dance Party?
A Michael Must Have!
In my Books I'm Going to Read as Soon as I Survive the SHOT Show category, first on the list is Haruki Murakami's new Kafka on the Shore. Murakami writes as if our strangest dreams have stepped forward into our everyday life, and so what? He deals in straightforward narrative in surreal situations. Strangely enough, Murakami has had a profound effect on both my writing and my life. I stumbled across his Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami's first novel translated into English and published in America, at a time when, for reasons I was at a lost to understand, my life had "lost traction."
Things were going great...I was mostly writing high-speed business stuff, dream assignments like "go hang around the MIT Media Lab and tell us about the future," "interview Andrew Grove of Intel and David Packard of H-P and just see what they have to say," etc. My co-written book on business management, Shifting Paradigms, was doing well ("an important contribution to understanding cutting edge management," wrote one of the reviewers...), in my spare time I was pal'ing around with Dolly Parton and other coutnry music stars, and my future was so bright, I had to wear shades!
Except that it wasn't. So I read Sheep — imagine Raymond Chandler on an acid trip that just won't stop — and it dawned on me that the reason my wheels were slipping was that I had placed limitations on myself as a writer — and as a person — then convinced myself those limitations were the laws of the universe. I had always believed in the existential power of morphing, the ability to shapeshift on command...from newspaperman to Rolling Stone music critic to respected business writer in one fell swoop!...but I realized that I had morphed myself into a natty little trap.
So I mulled Murakami's words over and over, restless as the "blown seed" of Murakami's driven hero, and one night in a pizza joint in Tampa I launched what I would later call in print my own wild sheep chase (you can read about some of it here, because, after all, I am a writer; buy the book, because, after all, I need the money), which would take me around the world, nearly kill me numerous time, wreck my life and leave my head as clear as the mountains after a storm blows through. It was just what I needed! I think.
Okay, enough introspection...let's talk cowboy boots! Specifically, these cowboy boots, Liberty Boots' KILLAZ. Bad to the bone indeed! Death-heads and elaborate stitching! Don't these bad boys look like something Prince Harry would wear would wear to the SS-Totenkopfverbande All-Night Rock and Roll Dance Party?
A Michael Must Have!
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