The Wake's Progress

You may recall: I wrote a rather scathing assessment of the new National Harbor complex recently (evidence here). There was really nothing "wrong" with the place; my skin naturally crawls with paranoid terror when faced with glitzy "place-making" developments like that.

Instant city-center: poof! Now be happy and go shopping...

It's a matter of taste. To me, the place stank of artificial life; of manufactured opulence and cufflinks and hair-plugs and expense accounts. Classless and gaudy and overdone, like a child's sci-fi exaggerated vision of corporate success. Perhaps I've read too many J.G. Ballard novels (Super-Cannes for instance).

Then, Mr. T posted a comment which reminded me that The Awakening had been moved out to the new Harbor complex. Aahh, I must have missed it when I was out there looking at the conference halls.

For the unaware: The Awakening is a sculpture of a bearded man, some 100 feet in length, partially embedded in the earth as if he's crawling up from a premature burial; a foot, a leg, pair of arms, and a tremendous head with nostrils flaring and mouth gaping in what could be a yawn. Or a scream. It was originally installed at the end of Hains Point in Washington DC's East Potomac Park, and was to be a temporary fixture there.

My mother took me to see it in 1980 when it was brand new (uh, that would make me.... twelve years old at the time). And it was awesome. The vision of that sculpture stayed with me throughout my years of living in New York, Arizona, and Maine, and when I finally returned to DC, it was one of my top five places to re-visit.

And it seems many folks my age had a similar relationship with that silver psychotic dude in the ground. He was like a pagan deity; raw and intense and he ignited a child's imagination simply by being there.


After reading Mr. T's comment, I had to return to the National Harbor and this time, go directly to the harbor itself. Avoid all that conference-hall insanity at the Gaylord and visit the Old Silver Man in his new digs on the wrong side of the Potomac. And being the sentimental fool I am, I didn't approve of what I saw.

Of course the Hains Point site was temporary, but we were rather used to seeing him where he was. He was mighty like a grandfather oak tree, a witness to the creation of the world. Seeing him plopped in the middle of this wretched Disneyland of corporate hotels and cafes was like a violation of nature. For those of us who grew up around here in the '70s and '80s, The Awakening was almost a rite of passage; EVERY 12 year-old boy had to go crawling around the dude's mouth.


Look at him. He's clearly unhappy about it and just wants to get back to sleep. I'm turning forty in a few weeks, which gives me the right (nay, the imperative!) to be a sentimental dweeb about these things. And dweeb I shall.

Halls of opulent butterscotch vomit

Come the rapture, may I have your credit cards?

The two-billion-dollar National Harbor Project received its final nod of funding back in August of 2004, and the big, glass-enclosed hive of marble, steel, and piped-in new-age saccharine hypnosis is nearly complete.

I had the opportunity to tour the mammoth Gaylord Resort with some co-workers as we plan an upcoming whoopie-doodle of a trade conference. And being the token Art Director in a group of editors gave me license to bring a camera and snap strange detail photos as we walked through the place.

NOTE: "Token Art Directors" will also be the most cynical, unkempt, quick to laughter, and the first to order scotch of any editorial group on field-trips like this.


Anyway: This "National Harbor" is a curious thing. It is, quite literally, in the middle of freaking nowhere. Technically it's in Maryland, across the Potomac from Alexandria, VA, and it's an easy drive from DC along 295, but it is eerily isolated. Certainly no public transit available.

As you approach it, the place begins to feel like a pre-fabricated, glossy Jonestown: It looks like the work of a cult of corporate/retail executives and paranoid survivalist lunatics who had this compound built to preserve their opulent, credit-card-waving lifestyle after the bombs drop and reduce the rest of us to carbon-stained cockroach kibble.

So why this location? What's the big idea? During the tour, I heard something about the developer having the site for some twenty years before launching the project. So perhaps "the big idea" was simply one of financial convenience, coupled with the ugly conceit of modern "place-making." Behold:

The approach from the 295 exit takes you along a new, crisp, flawless, manufactured "main street" of highbrow shopping and condos. Along the sidewalks you will see strolling families of fresh-faced Clean Laundry People, all of whom look suspiciously artificial--as if they'd been hired by the developer to wander outside eternally, providing the illusion that PEOPLE EXIST HERE. EVERYONE IS VERY HAPPY.

I know it's a matter of personal taste, but these suddenly-manufactured "town center" projects strike me as insanely creepy. The Kentlands in Montgomery County is like this: a nightmare of Stepford-Wives pleasantry, where it seems behind every smiling face is some boiling evil. Behind every WELCOME mat, some horrific violation is going on.

Can't trust it. Warning lights and sirens in the brain start going apeshit.


Despite its new-ness, the Gaylord hasn't had an easy run so far. Early on, it suffered a well-publicized plague of mice in the hotel, followed by a bit of norovirus contamination in the food, resulting in some rather unhappy guests and employees.

Oh, and on top of the mice and food poisoning was the slight problem of death. That can't be good for publicity.

But the place is definitely shiny, I'll give it that.

Carnage in Baltimore

Anyone born in Maryland has earned the birthright of ordering crabs without seeing the rest of the menu. It's a biological necessity; something in the blood calls out for the unique flavor of Chesapeake Blue Crab on the tongue, whenever it's available.

Granted I was born in Bethesda, which is a far cry from Baltimore, Annapolis, or the Eastern Shore, but jeez. It still counts as Maryland. The Call of the Crab is still in there.

Today's feast was a classic Baltimore Backyard Bash, at the home of a good friend who has been making truckloads of fine music for thirty-something years. And more music is on the way. But that's another post. Let's get back to the crabs.

So even in these days of stressing over work (I have too much of it, Marian has not enough of it), the house (holy crap, that's another roof leak, isn't it), the dog (or is it the spawn of satan?), it's reassuring to note that there ARE still blue crabs in the world, and a cozy back yard in Baltimore in which to inhale them...as is the birthright of schmucks born in Bethesda.

It was a good day.
And yes, there is a new roof leak.
But that's another post. Let's get back to the crabs.

Absolut Maximalism!

And so it came to pass, that THEE MAXIMALISTS did gather in a small studio space in Baltimore before a teeny audience of dedicated fans and weirdos, and lo, they did make one hell of a fantastic noise.

Thee Maximalists is the brainchild of Muffins drummer Paul Sears. The music is all improvised, using something like the concept of free jazz with the instrumentation of rock, with occasional prog touches (via Jim Rezek and his magical mellotrons). The most stable root of the band is Sears and Keith Macksoud, bassist from the very fine Present. Add to this an unpredictable rotation of highly skilled musical creatures, who thus far has included Yanni Papadopoulos (guitar: Stinking Lizaveta), Dave Newhouse (saxes & keyboard: Muffins), Marshall Allen (saxes: Sun Ra Arkestra), Mark Stanley (guitar: Farquhar), Werbinox (vocals), Elliott Levin (saxes & poetry: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen, others), Cyndee Lee Rule (violin), Rick Iannacone (guitar: Jamaaladeen Takuma, others), and God knows what other characters are waiting in the wings... it makes a Maximalists gig something like a tiny, private supernova... a unique moment in time/space, not to be repeated.

Each has brought unique, world-class musical skill to this heady, self-indulgent stew of sound, and it comes across like an extremely fun romp in the playground for these folks. It's particularly enjoyable to witness Keith Macksoud build spontaneous rhythmic structures with Sears, considering the highly practiced precision of Present's music. Maximalists gigs must be like a freeform vacation for these folks.


But enough setup! The Baltimore performance of November 11 was a classic evening for Maximalist freaks. This time, the band was Sears/Macksoud/Newhouse/Levin/Iannacone, and the mixture was perfect. The music was much more of a free-jazz blast this time around, thanks to Elliott Levin and his massive presence with the tenor and toy saxes... Once he gets going, man, just sit the hell down and ride it out.


Dave Newhouse is always a welcome addition. When at the keyboard, he provides an airy trance structure of repeating passages and chords that echo the best Muffins moments. He complements the heavy bed of rhythm that Sears and Macksoud lay down with his own tonal patterns, letting the others fly free... But of course, Newhouse is a master on the brass as well, and his baritone is a hot sound for the Maximalists' madness.


Levin is also a gifted wordsmith in the tradition of the best jazz and beat poets; his cadence delivers from the hip, sounding spontaneous but well-phrased; confident and clever without pretention. The other musicians settled into a cautious groove and gave him a perfect space for the words. Hard to believe they never practiced this stuff beforehand.


Rick Iannacone's contribution was a guitar so heavily treated with effects and gated filters that it scarcely resembled a guitar for most of the performance. His textures layered a very strange flesh over everything... sometimes wild with coarse fur, sometimes dry and cracked as if there must be a reptile's eye in there, somewhere... Iannacone's mind must be a damned fascinating place to be. He coaxed such sounds from that guitar...

By the end of the evening, Orion Sound Studios was left standing (miraculously) and I only hope they got a decent recording of the event. There may be a Maximalist album in the works, so they say, pieced together from shows like this. Performances like this are all too rare, and the Maximalists are among the most important music being made today. There. I said it. You can quote me, Sears.

Photos and flyer design by Hawkins/IntangibleArts

one kid's river

It looks like Ernesto, be it hurricane, tropical storm, or other, will be doing its thing to the DC area tomorrow. The early rains already started, which was a treat, after several dry summer weeks.

It was such a delight to have cooler air, that I decided to haunt some childish stomping grounds. The photo above shows a wee bit of the Patuxent River, which winds through Laurel, Maryland. Seems like it was always just beyond the trees outside any of the several apartments we had, all over town. I'd come home with obscenely muddy shoes, after exploring all day...... what was I, eleven? Twelve years old? Thereabouts.

So the Patuxent still has that smell of careless childhood adventure about it. A melancholy thing to sniff nowadays, but nice. Even in the rain. The occasional dead Coors Light can would float by, keeping it real, but i still dig this tiny river as if it was mine by birthright.

Speaking of nature, we leave tomorrow for a week of tree-hugging splendor, somewhere in the top of Michigan... Not the Upper Penninsula; that would be the top-top. This is just the top. Or rather, the sub-top.

The under-top?

It's time for a break anyway. I'll have the camera. It'll be a blast. A nice, quiet, relaxing kind of blast. With obscenely muddy shoes at the end of each day's adventure... I hope.

the last supper

How to have a classic American Weekend:

1. Pack everything you own into boxes.
2. Move it all 9.5 miles directly south.
3. Unpack everything.

And so begins our final farewell to the Maryland suburbs and finally, hopefully, a chance to stay put for a while. The DC house is nearly painted, the exterior work carries on, and the punchline of an enormous, 4-month joke is about to be delivered. ... something about "patience" or some rubbish like that. It's not funny anymore.

So, knowing we'd spend Friday night in a dizzy freakout of packing boxes, we had our sacramental Last Supper on Thursday, at that corner landmark that needs no introduction (photo above). The Stained Glass Pub. Home of the most unfairly hyped pizza in the state of Maryland (which is strange, with Armand's just down the street), and a great place for classic Murrlin' people-watchin'.

Particularly during Redskins games. hooboy.

As expected, the pizza was astonishingly bland and caused a moderate amount of visceral distress, and the people-watching was off as well, since of course, it was Thursday. And the Redskins were nowhere to be seen.

No matter! We're moving on, and I'll finally be back in the DC neighborhood which I abandoned, stupidly, for Syracuse some 16 years ago. Since then, such marvels as the Wonderland have cropped up, which will be MORE than sufficient to fill the void left by the Stained Glass Pub, and its Redskins...

Morris and the Mouse

It was the strangest thing I'd seen in a while... innocently walking with M through the fake streets of the newly face-lifted Silver Spring, and chanced upon a surly gang of Morris Dancers.

Meanwhile: We're preparing for an extended weekend in Disneyland. This will be a strange cultureshock, considering I'm in my late 30s, tend to be intensely quiet, and have never been to Disney-Anything before. Oddly, I'm looking forward to it: it's our Great American Vatican. It will likely be a joyful and surreal bloodbath of the Mind, and will have camera and notebook handy to record the devastation.

Bring it on, damned mouse, bring it on!

Noted, without (much) comment:

"Wheaton tastes good, like a cigarette should..."

Maximal, vegetable, or mineral?

And so it was, that THEE MAXIMALISTS did gather at yonder Orion Studios in Baltimore. And lo, they did raise a most unholy racket. As is their way. Aaahhh...

It was only the fourth public performance of Thee Maximalists, and this one happened to be the tenth anniversary of Orion's first Progressive Rock Showcase. The atmosphere was festive and wacky. And pregnant with sound.

For the uninitiated: THEE MAXIMALISTS consists of a rotating cast of characters, most commonly anchored by Paul Sears (of The Muffins fame), Keith Macksound (from Present), and Yanni (from Stinking Lizaveta). Recent inductees include Werbinox (vocals) and Jim Rezek (mellotron). Beyond that, anything goes. Last minute additions are to be expected. The music is entirely improvised, and tends to be joyfully crazed, taking the "free jazz" concept into "free rock" territory.

This time, Yanni couldn't make it (the Stinkies are on tour), and Werbinox wasn't present either, but the supplementary cast was fabulous. Dave Newhouse (also from The Muffins) provided keyboards & saxophones, Cyndee Lee Rule was there with electric violin, Adrian Sears provided cello, and Rezek was there with a moog and TWO mellotrons, for cryin' out loud...

It was the fullest-sounding Maximalist show yet. Dave Newhouse was a perfect addition, with his penchant for looping keyboard passages that gave the improvised madness a trance-inducing, swaying backbone. Paul Sears' drumming was powerful as usual (worthy of his brief association with Magma), and Keith's bass echoed Present's darker, growling moments but with a playful spirit that suited the evening perfectly.

At one point, Newhouse emerged with a harmonica and forced the Maximalists, perhaps kicking and screaming, into a deranged prog bluegrass stomp that sounded exquisitely well-practiced, though of course, it wasn't. It was Thee Maximalists.

Nearly two hours later, Orion lay in ruins. I staggered back to the car with the camera in hand, wondering how the hell they'd ever top this one.

Main Street

I seem to be on a shop-front photo kick these days, but this one is different. Those of us who grew up in Laurel (Maryland) share a certain respect for the surreal. On a deeply subconscious level, the town "feels like" Lumberton, where the film Blue Velvet takes place, but it's more concentrated: almost urban, but not quite. Very schizophrenic. It's still a sleepy suburb with tiny pockets that haven't been touched by the scraping fingernails of time.

The photo above is Main Street, which is one of those timeless pockets. When I return for a quick nostalgia fix and walk the length of Main Street, I pause with eyes closed and detect the stubborn vapors of 1977 still hanging in the air. Those blue polyester uniform shirts from St. Mary's always made one's neck itch like the plague.

The Laurel Meat Market could always be trusted for all my one-stop shopping needs, from Gayla kites to balsa-wood gliders. I suppose "meat" was in there as well, but I never cared to look for it.

buried alive (apparently)

In grade school, they came right out and told us that the Original People of Maryland were all gone. Somehow, I didn't have the heart to go home and face my (distinctly Piscataway) father and tell him, "uh, evidently, we're all dead. Teacher said so." If word of this gets out, the powwows next year might be a real drag, with all those dead guys dancing around. Can we fly Russell Means up here to sacrifice these teachers?

The old man in the photo was spotted peddling cigarettes on North Market Street in Frederick, MD on 6nov05.

Eavesdropping on Catoctin

The tiny footsteps of my childhood are still under those leaves, on Catoctin Mountain in the northern woods of Maryland. They are the high-water mark of infinite dreamtime; that mystical, early phase in a human life when WONDER hasn't yet been distilled into cold science.

The most vulnerable aspect of youth is fantasy. In those years before the disease of "reason" turns the boy into the man, fantastic things still inhabit these forests--there ARE beasts in the trees. The hissing rush of wind in the leaves IS the sound of old spirits rushing to meet new ones, to induct them into the world of elders...the mother's milk of infinite vision.

To visit these places properly, one must be silent: The old folks who fly here may have dropped their bodies, but they're still elders & don't hear so well. They need to get their talking done first. You'll get your chance. Be silent.

So sit for a minute. Breathe in that spirit milk and maybe you'll catch a word or two before they see you sitting there and rush away, leaving you with the leaves and your thoughts...

Shot, glasses.

Can beauty be found in the golden velvet hues of Agave Poison? That most psychotropic of alcohols (but for absinthe, perhaps) seems to promise much by its color alone: what lurks inside that brine of madness?

The rabbit-hole goes deep, and all rabbits are insane when they return to the surface. Perhaps they were humans once, sitting in a Maryland restaurant, studying the secrets lost in that golden chemical maze...

Be Where?

Alas, no inspired prose this time. A recent series of work-related deadlines has left me numb and lifeless in the world. To reflect this, I offer the above Public Health Warning, as etched by a concerned citizen at the Silver Spring Metro station. Beware. That's all... just..... beware.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to this Labor Day weekend's Progday in North Carolina. I'm not familiar with many of the bands on the bill, though I am fiercely interested in The Spacious Mind, who seem to be flying the SpaceRock banner as well as anyone. Other acts include Happy the Man, Mike Keneally, Glenn Phillips (founding member of Hampton Grease Band), Far Corner, and others... I'll be there with the camera & 2GB to fill. Expect a full report upon my return.

Until then, fellow Silver Springers, beware...

Privacy World

Evidently a summer resort for pathological shut-ins, "Privacy World" exists in a strange and nebulous Maryland territory, alternately known as Silver Spring, Glenmont, Aspen Hill, North Wheaton, and if you believe what the nearby fire station says, Kensington.

Come to Privacy World and wonder, discreetly, where exactly you are...