LUDIC LOG

Imagine you are me. You have just gotten paid and the money is burning such a large and intensely hot hole in your pocket that you decide to have a night out on the town, regardless of the elements that constitute it. You decide to treat yourself to a big meal at a local diner (which will also serve as an exciting preview of your golden years), and to go to a jazz club with some friends, even though you don't like jazz very much.

Imagine you are my dinner. You consist of a serving of meat loaf that would not meet the rigorous standards of the good people in Quality Control at Swanson's; delicious, juicy (well, mushy), fresh-from-the-can peas; mashed potatoes that not only come from a cardboard box rather than from a potato, but also are liquified enough to qualify as a soup rather than a side; a passable green salad that is not notably improved by the addition of an alleged dressing that is the color, flavor and consistency of mayonnaise that is several weeks past being off; and a single glass of Coca-Cola, because the waitress never comes back to refill it.

Imagine you are a jazz club. Even though you are located in a depressing industrial ruin in the South Loop, you attract crowds that would be severely outnumbered by a baseball team, and your address has a fraction in it, you still charge a ten-dollar cover because someone famous once played in you.

Imagine you are the drummer in a jazz band. You are a pretty good drummer, even though your kit appears to be the musical equivalent of an RVN army uniform, kluged together out of dozens of other drum kits seized from enemy percussionists.

Imagine you are the reed player in the same jazz band. Although your audience, being fans of Keiji Haino, Sonic Youth and the Stooges, are not unfamiliar with the concept of "skronk", you test their patience to the utmost by blatting out a repetitive series of tuneless, aggreived exhalations through a saxophone that appears to be broken. Also, you are a 50-year-old white guy with a Hawaiian shirt and a ponytail.

Imagine you are the bass player. You are very talented and expressive, and you can't figure out what the fuck you are doing slumming around with these honky jackoffs.

Imagine you are the guitar player. Imagine you are the worst jazz guitar player in the entire world. Imagine that you are so out of synch with whatever the rest of the band is playing that you appear to have wandered in from the soundtrack to a particularly low-grade industrial training film. Imagine that you are so bad that even your friends in the audience are having a really hard time not laughing at you. Luckily, you are able to compensate for your lack of talent and unfamiliarity with chords, tone or improvisational ability by having the most severe, overwrought guitar face since David St. Hubbins. You contort your facial features and sway your head and neck around as if you were being fellated by a large electric eel, even though you are playing something on the same level of complexity as scales.

Imagine this: a sucker's evening.