Rocky Arredondo & My Mom Present… Vol. 26 I’d Rather Be 17 Jan. 2001 The Cobra’s Notes… Off and on, for years and years, I have wondered what would happen if the world suddenly turned upside down. Like if I were lying on the couch at the old house in Mesa, I would look up at the vaulted ceiling and think, “ If the world suddenly turned upside down right now, I would miss the fan but hit that exposed beam and that would suck. Fortunately, though, I’m sort of in the elbow of the couch so when it fell it would sort of tent over me and I wouldn’t be squashed.” I think that’s better than lying in bed in my current home and thinking, “If the world suddenly turned upside down right now, I would hit that lumpy ceiling, then the mattress and box springs, and all the stuff under the bed would pile up on top of me. Unless it caught on one of those pictures when they fell too and then maybe only my head would be hit by all that stuff. Maybe I should scoot little further down the bed just in case.” It’ s silly, of course. A room could never just…it’s not even turning over, it’s just over, as if earth’s gravity abruptly relocated to the sky. And that just doesn’t happen, at least not to me, even metaphorically. There have been events in my life after which I have thought, “That’s it. The world has turned upside down. Life will never be the same after this.” I’m saving those events for my scandalous memoirs, but for now suffice it to say the world The Vaguely Suggestive Eagle Nebula righted itself every single time, or at any rate I got used to the new look and wasn’t squashed. I’m reminded of the book DMW loaned me, Don’t *!^#+ Around State of the Cobra with My Cheese. It’s a slender volume and I shudder to think how This month, Cobra saw Stars…and got them to much it would cost a person retail, but it makes a salient observation: Things Change. The book is about big things sign up for her newsletter! changing, the story is about mice, you see, and the cheese is My cousin Evelyn lives in Pasadena. Though she isn’t famous yet (it’s only a matter of time), I make a point of looking out for their staff of life. I’m not going to tell you the names of the mice, celebrities whenever I visit her. Actually, I make a point of asking her because they would inspire some of you to violence. Oh, what to look out for celebrities and telling me if she sees any, as I have a the hell, I’m mailing most of these and don’t care if you get violent cripplingly short attention span and a horror of looking strangers in with your own possessions, or even Cosmodemonic’s; they are the face. Anyway, this last trip seemed unfruitful. Evelyn had been “Hem” and “Haw” and “Scurry” and “Sniff.” (Ow! Pat, quit it.) pointing at limos with dark windows and saying, “Maybe one is inside Anyway, the book goes on to make a salient suggestion re there.” But she’s sly. That very night, she invited two-count-them- Change: Deal with It. As much as I hate to admit it, those mice two celebrities to an all-night-watch-Sex-and-the-City-and-eat- have a point. They go too far when they start squeaking about Pringles-and-chocolate-until-you-are-sick party—Judith (“Jude” to “embracing change,” I’m not ready for it. “Embrace this, mice,” is pals like me) Shelton and Brad (“Bradley”) Slocum. You may recall my motto. these luminaries from The Gregory Hines Show and SLC Punk!, respectively. I’m willing to accept that Things Change, and maybe even for the better. Que ever. But the next time my world turns upside down And that’s not all! A couple of weeks ago, Mr. P-Body of the one thing I know for certain I’ll see are fingernail scratches on Funk+Fashion and Java fame stopped by the house and borrowed a the wall—evidence of me trying to get back. bunch of dvds (including How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which he loved, so will you listen to the tape I made you already, Scott?) At the Funk+Fashion show last Thursday, he Sharon C McGovern introduced me to the editor of Java—Robert Something—who Editor/ Publisher/ Cobra-in-Chief exhibited that trapped look people get when I speak (cont. on page 5) IF THIS IS PARADISE, I WISH I HAD A LAWN MOWER Kirsty MacColl—15 Minutes at Least Kirsty MacColl was killed in a boating accident in Mexico on December 18, 2000. That was the gist of the article in the New York Times On-line a couple of weeks ago, the headline stuck down with Culture Notes and obituaries for people I’ve never heard of. The footnote status for deceased philanthropists never bothered me, but when it was applied to one of my favorite singers on the same page that the ramifications of John Lennon’s murder twenty years ago were being endlessly considered, well, it rankled. I know MacColl wasn’t as important in any practical sense as Lennon, but she had rare and valuable talent, and I want people to miss her. For her 1995 compilation Galore, Kirsty MacColl had her friends and fans in the business—including Bono, David Byrne, Chris Frantz & Tina Weymouth, Johnny Marr, Morrissy, and Billy Bragg—write liner notes praising her talent and bemoaning her obscurity. “Why isn’t she massively successful?” wondered Shane MacGowan, to whom she sang “you liar you maggot,” and, “Merry Christmas my ass I pray God it’s our last” on The Pogues dyspeptic “Fairytale of New York.” It’s a fair question. Though she had lifelong stage fright and rarely toured, she was in demand as a singer on albums by most of the above, plus Robert Plant, the Happy Mondays, Alison Moyet, the Rolling Stones, and Simple Minds. But unquestionably, her best songs were the ones she wrote herself. Kirsty MacColl wrote songs like George Bernard Shaw wrote plays—witty and The Party’s Over candid, having a keen awareness of the sadness of life coupled with an aversion to wallowing in it, and an eye for telling detail. instance, in “Soho Square,” she is stood up on her birthday and struggles with how bad she feels about it. Her inner self bickers with Another time, another day/ Another baby on the way A dreamboy for your nightmare nights her absent suitor. She imagines his apologies and retorts, “I don’t Who never shouts and never fights want to hear it, baby,” but her toughness is as illusory as his regret. Happy with your 2.2/ What else is there for you to do Why didn’t he just come? Why doesn’t he just love her? Why can’t But turn and wet the baby's head they just be happy? She sings a lilting tune and wills a happy And pray he will be happier than you or me? ending, and ends the song with a flourish of self-conscious denial. That's how it's meant to be/ It's called a lifetime It’s a daydream and she knows it, like her fantasy in “Bad” where That’s the beginning of “Tread Lightly,” and the sound of a woman she wants to trade the currency she’s collected as a “token daughter giving up on her future is remarkably stolid and fleet. MacColl may write and a token wife” to “the man who wants to go too far for a token of about desperate characters (in fact, Desperate Characters was the title of my affection.” But where she uses daydreams to direct wanton her 1981 British lp), but she is never one to mope. “I never knew just energy (“I’m not crazy, no I’m just mad”), sleep is a passive what to feel or to expect/ I tried to stretch my mind but I just get my body aggressive escape. In “Dancing in Limbo,” “She sleeps like a wrecked,” is presented as a statement of fact rather than a lament; and the woman when he wakes like a man,” in “Mother’s Ruin,” “Don’t emphasis she places on wrecked, starting with a slight growl on the “r,” wake me up again, don’t let me feel anything,” in “Tread Lightly,” “I she owns her predicament, takes responsibility for it. She realizes people don’t sleep at night in case I don’t wake up tomorrow.” are created by their choices, good and bad, and she wishes they would Significantly, the penultimate track on her album Titanic Days, wise up even if “it would take a gunshot just to clear your head a while.” which was recorded during the breakup of her marriage to producer Steve Lillywhite, is “Just Woke Up,” MacColl has a knack for pithily assessing a person or situation, as in: She was a party girl, stayed up till the small hours Oh let me open my eyes Now she's embarrassing and everybody laughs Open the door and look up to the skies and leave the shore At the girl with the face that could drive her baby wild And let my hand trail in the cool water, float downstream Say goodbye to that dream…I just woke up Now wasn't she the child with everything? (“What Do Pretty Girls Do?”) a nearly delirious release of the bad dream of a bad relationship.