I don't know that I am qualified to eulogize Bob Heinecken. My friend Stan Mock (photographer and sculptor, who was very close to him) would be a good choice. I can ask him, if you like. I can say that my memories of Bob personally are Bogartian. I knew him long, though little. I can see him as the Photo prof. at UCLA, cigarette in hand (always), the only faculty longhair in the 60's, a singularly masculine short man who, along with Dick Diebenkorn, embodied for his students the mystery of authentic accomplishment as an artist. Or later, for many years, across the table at the ritual of the monthly poker game, plumed in smoke (occasionally grabbed by smoker's cough), a poised player, impossible to read. Even after he and Joy(ce Neimanas) moved to Chicago, he would return to the poker game whenever they were in L. A. When they attended my opening at McCormick in 2000, he and I had a good chat, and then he wandered off. Joy had to retrieve him from the sidewalk. It was the first sign I had seen of any change, though we had all known about the Alzhemer's for awhile. He was still, when we talked then, acutely observant about the work, still wryly humorous. The last time I saw him was at one of the poker games (2001?) Joy came with him to the game, for the first time, and he sat beside her as she played the hands. He smoked, talked a little, we had some laughs, and she ran the table.

Don Suggs

Betty's Blue Star Lounge
1600 W. Grand Ave.
Greenlight, Banking Hours, Coupleskate
Thursday, May 25th 9pm, $5

Sharkforum's very own Andrea Bauer plays guitar and sings in Coupleskate. Word is she's no relation to Jack. - ed.

"Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph."

THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB PROUDLY PRESENTS:
Reckless Optimism

featuring:
JOHN KRUTH – “The Madman of the Mandolin” – SF Chronicle

DAVE DREIWITZ – The Face of the Bass

STEVE BEAR – Perplexing Percussion

With a Special Mystery Guest or 2!!

SATURDAY, MAY 27TH @ 8 PM - $8

THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 BOWERY, NYC
(X the street from CBGB)

Four big shows (by three artists) to push this week, all Sharkforum approved:

Thursday:
Eleventh Dream Day w/ Red Eyed Legends at Empty Bottle
Alejandro Escovedo at Martyrs'

Friday:
Alejandro Escovedo at Martyrs'
Twilight Singers at Metro

You may now rock around the city.

We took a walk upstream the other day, with the Rhine up to near-normal levels after recent rains. Following a period of record low water— and the reappearance of old sunken boats, and bodies long disposed of and forgotten— this was our first walk together since my return from the north. I pulled my sports shoes from the closet—the brown ones, still practically new—we’d bought back in December in Houston at the Academy store. I sat down and laced them up, waiting while she checked her hair, then we went down the stairs together. Out on the street we turned down the hill, then right towards the river, following the creek that runs by the Unterhof, a small restored castle and grounds. Refurbished as a conference center and hotel, the ground floor houses a restaurant, with outside tables set up in the summer months. The street goes on past a row of houses, with a stretch of trimmed sycamore trees fronting the river before emerging at the one-lane bridge that goes across to Gailingen. Past another stretch of row houses, the road goes through an arched passage, and on down another block before it narrows to a walking trail, past the swimming area. The Badi, the Swiss call it; they put a li on nearly every noun, a playful diminutive, the way the Mexicans like to affix ito or ita to the tail end of nouns. Across the river in Germany a similar bathing area is called the Strandbad, with heavy-footed, consonant-ending. In similar fashion, across the river the musical Swiss greeting Grüezi becomes Grüss Gott, or Guten Tag for Good day.

LOCAL HEROES: A WEEKLY COLUMN ON MUSICIANS AND HAPPENINGS IN THE CHICAGO AREA MUSIC SCENE

Eleventh Dream Day turns `Zeroes and Ones' up to 11

Andy Downing
Published May 12, 2006

The idea of "ones and zeroes" is something that author Thomas Pynchon explored on more than one occasion, writing in "Vineland": "If everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?"

For more click here.

noticing I haven't sewn enough wrinkled chiffon to the old
back of a slip, threatening to need the heat
dressed in scarves, I'll wake up with a bee comb
for a mouth instead of new eyes to seed
the outside air. A stark mirror for a vintage sun.
I'll wake up a widow tapping her cane, my braid
a tight tomb when the air dries.

"Fruit Bats started out in the mid-nineties as Eric Johnson (not the virtuoso guitar player nor the Archers of Loaf guy) sat in his bedroom like so many other young people at that time and discovered the joys of the 4-track machine. He went on to form the short lived band I Rowboat, whose Velvet Underground-ish sounds managed to win no more than a small Chicago fanbase. One day Johnson and two other Rowboaters, guitarist Dan Strack and drummer Brian Belval decided to dip their collective toes in folk music. This side project was dubbed Fruit Bats, named after a type of large, flying, fruit-eating tropical mammal. Years later, after line-up shifts galore, many tours, and a deal with the fabled Sub Pop Recording Concern, Fruit Bats' sound has evolved and then un-evolved and then evolved back again. What was once weirdo folk tinkerings became cinematic pop which became something else."
Buy tix here.

To truely know ones self is a good thing. It’s rare, but knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. From time to time life presents you with a vision into the depths of self, and those who dare look would do well to consider the gravity of such knowledge.

One of the things that I’ve learned about myself is that I’m essentially reactive. For all time I spent drawing up my master plans, in the end I made it up in real time and acted on instinct. I had taken other actions which proved essential to my success, but they were intended for other uses. No matter. I appropriate those aspects and folded them into my actions. Sometimes life requires that we move swiftly and with decision.