And how about them White Stripes? Aren’t you tired of the White Stripes? Don’t you wish they’d just… disappear? I mean, what self-respecting rock ‘n roll band doesn’t even a bass player?

Madeline and I obviously look nothing like Jack and Meg White (we’re not even real fans of their music), but the costumes were easy. Alas, I had no time to make a big red guitar out of cardboard, my hair’s all wrong, and when my crimson pants arrived, they looked like something an old golfer would wear. (This pair, of course, is what I should be wearing.)

Izzy isn’t going as a junior White Stripe, but as a baby snow leopard. Then we’re taking her “trick-or-treating” (in quotation marks, since she won’t get to eat any candy) for the first time, probably up to Seacliff and Robin Williams’s house.

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I’ve already written about 1983 — Spandau Ballet’s “True” — was my pick of the year. But because my friend Jane (when are you ever going to update your site?) is throwing a 1983 party, I felt inspired to write more about the year. (Guests are supposed to come dressed as they were in 1983, so Jane is apparently wearing a mohawk, in tribute to Nina Hagen. I’m still trawling eBay for a long-backed Lacoste polo shirt in white or red, like the kind Ted Shackelford used to wear on Knots Landing — add on a pair of tight blue jeans, white socks, and Sperry Topsiders and I’m set.)

1983 actually wasn’t a bad year, as it was the true beginning of my musical education: it was the first time I could afford to buy a long-playing album, because my allowance was upped (yes, I started late): The Police’s Synchronicity. I still think it’s unbelievably good, though it spelled the death of the Police as a tight power trio and the beginning of Sting and His Inflatable Head. 1983 had some great pop nuggets like Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the Pretenders’ “Back on the Chain Gang,” Men At Work’s “Overkill,” Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen,” The Human League’s “(Keep Feeling) Fascination,” The Clash’s Combat Rock (okay, so “Rock The Casbah” isn’t exactly PC nowadays), Musical Youth’s odd reworking of the Mighty Diamonds’ “Pass The Kutchie,” Joe Jackson’s “Breaking Us in Two,” and (you-all can criticize me for this one) Stephen Bishop’s “It Might Be You.”

But looking back in my old age, the best part of 1983 was really the worst parts. Some of the worst/best parts were truly grim:

- Bonnie Tyler, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”
   Little comes close to the sheer excess of “Total Eclipse” — the lyrics, the hoarse histrionics. And that video: billowing curtains, flowing nightgowns, kids right out of Village of the Damned. “Turn around bright eyes” — what the fuck was the point of having children with glowing eyes??? Guns ‘n Roses would later come up with “December Rain,” but few songs can touch our Bonnie. It’s time for a chest-pounding Celine Dion remake.

- Styx, “Mr Roboto”
   For the longest time, I thought this was called “Secret Secret.” Taken from the concept album — a phrase I don’t miss — Kilroy Was Here (“Kilroy! Kilroy!”), “Mr. Roboto” spelled out themes of technological alienation and xenophobia… why am I bothering to dignify this with a reading?

- Toni Basil, “Mickey”
   I really never want to hear this ever again.

- Laura Branigan, “Gloria”
   Fuck, this was bad. And the fact that she also came out with “How Am I Supposed To Live Without You” in the same year and have it covered by Michael Bolton compounds her offense. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

- Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, “The Girl Is Mine”
   The idea of Paul and Michael duking it out over a “doggone girl” — oh, wait, there’s no “duking it out,” since Michael did say “Paul, I think I told you, I’m a lover not a fighter.”

- Air Supply, “Making Love out of Nothing at All”
   One line, taken at random: “The beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost and it’s looking for a rhythm like you.”

- Toto, “Africa”
   Sorry, Barbara, but it sucked. At least they had the good taste not to have any musicians from Soweto guest on the track.

- Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, “Tonight I Celebrate My Love For You”
   Ick. They’re about to have sex.

My vote for Supreme Craptastic Godhead Song of 1983 goes to “Making Love out of Nothing at All” for its completely overblown lyrics (“You can take the darkness from the pit of the night / And turn into a beacon burning endlessly bright”), the ever-increasing octaves, an actual guitar solo, the background choir singing “Making love!” in falsetto, and… I’m getting exhausted just thinking about it. The dubious charms of this song lies in the fact that, on its surface, the song was your prototypical Big Power Ballad, except that it was performed by the Siegfried and Roy tag team of ’80s Music. “And every star in the sky is taking aim at your eyes / Like a spotlight.” Who makes these things up?

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Or rather, I wanted you folks to read a comment: here’s my original post, then read the comment.

I’m speechless, so… no comment.

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Here’s Eudora Welty, writing about the photographs in The Democratic Forest, by my favorite photographer, William Eggleston:

They focus on the mundane world. But no subject is fuller of implications than the mundane world! When you see what the mundane world so openly and multitudinously affirms, there is everything left to say.

After reading Aimee Nezhukumatathil‘s new poetry collection, one is more convinced than ever that poets — or, at least, this particular poet — unlike ordinary human beings, have different eyes through which to see: the reds of a jungle, a sari swinging over the shoulder, cherry farmers, potatoes pulled up from the earth. Each poem in her quietly stunning Miracle Fruit is a finely calibrated balancing act of breathlessness and restraint, sprinkled with words that must be savored in the mouth: “fire sponges, jingle shells, a remnant of whelk,” she writes.

Here’s an almost random excerpt, the last stanza of “In Praise of Colophons:”

My favorite colophon reports that another monk
designed Carlyle over two centuries ago. Its letters
sit round and open as fishbowls on a windowsill.
The balance so delicate, one strong wind
could spill the glass and its slippery contents
across the stone floor. O, but the light in each
watery leaf, the small transparencies in those fins –
the arc of orange fish that leap and leap and leap.

Her poems are afflicted with the ecstasy of small things, with an exuberant, barely containable delight in the ordinary. Look, she says to the reader, these are the miracles I see. And you must see them too.

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I don’t know what Amazon.com was thinking, but their new search engine — one that seemingly makes you look inside books by default — renders the browsing experience needlessly, stupidly difficult. It’s confusing, it’s annoying — but a little amusing as well.

For instance, there are apparently 16 references to the word “asshole” in this book (all typos and whatnot are Amazon’s fault). Can you guess what the book is? =)

(I’m almost tempted to make this a contest, since I have a whole stack of duplicate CDRs that are going into the trash, but…)

1. on Page 27:
“. . . before it drains, enough drains, but maybe that’ll be good, natural, a slow draining, like a leeching-not like a leeching, asshole you sick fucking asshole-not a goddamn motherfucking leeching- Would we tell people how it happened? No, no. This would be . . .”

2. on Page 139:
“. . . tree. He’ll hit me like he hit me then-one good shot, in the sternum, sending a quick, simple message-You’re an asshole-that I felt for months, every time I breathed. I find my car and drive across town, all the passing headlights . . .”

3. on Page 157:
“. . . down from the wall; I can’t sit, I’m wired. I pace in front of her. I got their plates! Stupid assholes. The police car pulls up two minutes after. It looks huge. The engine roars. It’s immaculate, shiny like an enormous . . .”

4. on Page 263:
“. . . says, chuckling, amused by me. “Don’t sweat it. Don’t worry,” he says, with what seems to be exaggerated drunkenness. Asshole. “It’s cool. It’s mellow.” He’s really talking like this. I want to kick him in the head. “Then where are . . .”

5. on Page 264:
“. . . 264 A H W()SG “Why are you talking like an asshole?” He does a gesture indicating drinking, the throwing back of a shot, the kind of gesture you make when you . . .”

6. on Page 266:
“. . . part about how we don’t know what he took or when, I point to John with my thumb and then: Asshole does the cute shrug for the cops! But his eyes are starting to look nervous. Maybe he did take something. . . .”

7. on Page 272:
“. . . hands in fists, the hands tied down, as the color continues to drain I watch the stupid fucking dickhead asshole sleep. Then he gets up. He is awake and he is standing, and pulling the tubes from his mouth, from . . .”

8. on Page 290:
“. . . side. How could we wait for so long and be so devoted and ready, only to have this roundbacked asshole devour our chance for an audience with Bill? This will not stand. I will toss him aside if need be. . . .”

9. on Page 317:
“. . . anger.” “Of course it is. These people have already attained, at wha ever age, a degree of celebrity that you assholes will never reach, and you feel, deep down, that because there is no life before or after this, that fame . . .”

10. on Page 339:
“. . . her to marry you, and together you will fight through AIDS, because-no, she won’t want anything to do with you, asshole- . . .”

11. on Page 398:
“. . . about eight particles-I’m stepping on them! Of course I am! Of course I’m stepping on them, how fitting! How expected, asshole! I lean over to pick up the particles but I already have a handful in the other hand and as . . .”

12. on Page 401:
“. . . of the cremains. I should keep some. I could keep just a few bits, as souvenirs. Souvenirs! What kind of asshole- What a fucking sick dickhead, souvenirs, thinking of souvenirs. I shake out the bag. I do not like to have . . .”

13. on Page 406:
“. . . yes, she grabbed at the air, grabbed for us and for you, and where are you? Where are you motherfucking assholes? . . .”

14. on Page 413:
“. . . when I drive no-handed, using only my knees, for a little while, lookee here, ha ha, look at this! “Don’t, asshole.” “What?” “Use your hands.” “You can’t call me that.” “Fine. A-hole.” And as distressing as this, his first curse, is the . . .”

15. on Page 422:
“. . . minute or so of silence. I turn up the radio. “Then let me out.” “I want to let you out, asshole.” “Then let me out.” “I mean, are you trying to break some record? Like, right now, you’re sitting here, seemingly . . .”

16. on Page 445:
“. . . the humid wooden walls. It was at first warm and for a while the sweating felt good, but then some asshole kept putting water on those rocks, or whatever they do to make it hotter, and then I couldn’t breathe, and . . .”

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