In Boozo Veritas # 51: The Ghost of an Artifact

21 Monday Jul 2014

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Hemingway, In Boozo Veritas, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas # 51 by Teege Braune

The Ghost of an Artifact

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

–Ernest Hemingway

I have a clear and distinct image of the photograph in my memory. A boy a few years older than myself who I am told is – but do not recognize as – my father sits on the lap of an elderly gentleman. I think of the man, with his white beard and sad, kindly smile, as a grandfather, despite the fact that he in no way resembles either of my actual grandfathers. He beams down at my father who in turns looks, straight faced and serious, at the camera. “Idaho – 1961” is scribbled in ink on the back of the photograph. The one time I remember seeing this old photograph I was informed that the man was a very famous writer who killed himself shortly after my father met him. I don’t know why anyone felt the need to convey that final detail to me as a child, but it stands out as the saddest thing I had heard by that point in my life.

The writer in the photograph is Ernest Hemingway who would have been 115 years old today on July 21, 2014. My father describes their chance encounter as such:

“My family was traveling through Idaho in Spring of ’61 when I was 11, and I was admitted to Sun Valley Hospital with severe joint pain. The doctor’s thought it might be some kind of iron overload. EH was in that hospital at the time, and he liked to tell me stories because I was in such pain. He wanted me to sit on his lap for the story telling – which was weird because I was 11 – but I did it and some nurse took a picture at some point. I was ok, just some odd bug bite or something, but I heard he killed himself a few months later. I remember that scene like it was yesterday.”

My dad does not have a lot more details to offer. As his parents have both passed away and his siblings are all younger, there is no one available to further elucidate the circumstances of this meeting. My dad remembers that Hemingway told him stories about soldiers, cowboys, and Indians, the kind of stuff he perhaps assumed all eleven year old boys enjoyed, though my dad was more interested in spacemen. (Maybe he would have been more entertained had he found himself in the same hospital as Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury.) He remembers Hemingway as a kind, elderly man who seemed “very old and sort of out of it,” though Hemingway was only sixty-one at the time. I asked my dad if Hemingway’s suicide affected him emotionally in any fundamental way, but he does not remember. “It was the first time I probably even thought about suicide. It wasn’t a subject people liked to discuss in the early ‘60s. I doubt I had much of a concept of what that meant,” he said. I asked my dad, who I have always known as a prodigious reader, if his youthful encounter with Hemingway allowed him to feel a connection to his work later in life, but my dad says no. “I’ve got nothing. I’m not very familiar with him. I read The Sun Also Rises in high school, but I don’t remember being able to associate that book with the man I met many years before,” he told me. If my dad made an impression on Hemingway there is no record of it. It is entirely possible that Hemingway, whose numerous physical and mental problems had already destroyed him creatively, never wrote another word between his short time with my father and his untimely death.

I became a big fan of Hemingway’s work in high school when I read The Old Man and the Sea and shortly after The Sun Also Rises, the bookends of Hemingway’s career in reverse order. My own writing, in which I attempted to copy Hemingway’s short, abbreviated style, became even worse than it was when I was copying Jack Kerouac’s sprawling sentences.

“Your dad met Ernest Hemingway once,” my mom told me as my interest began to turn into an obsession.

“Dad met Hemingway?!” I nearly shouted.

“Oh, yeah. There was a picture of them together floating around somewhere,” she said casually.

The meaning behind the photograph that I had seen as a child and had not thought about since suddenly became painfully obvious to me. I asked my mom if she knew where it was, but she did not. I asked my dad who said that his parents probably still had it. The next time I was at their house I went through several boxes of photographs but none of them featured Ernest Hemingway. My grandparents remembered the photograph, but could offer no clues as to its whereabouts. “He seemed like such a strange old man, but he loved your dad” was their only input on the entire meeting. Finding the missing photograph became a mission, but none of the family members who I called or emailed had any information. Everyone agreed to search through their old family photos or allow me to look through them myself, but nothing ever turned up. In the last few years I have begun to wonder if the picture is an example of a sort of mass family hysteria or hallucination. Perhaps we are remembering a story about another family who showed my grandparents a picture of their own son sitting on Hemingway’s lap, and at some point we internalized it, made the story about us because that seemed more interesting.

The photograph included here is not the one in question; it is a picture of Hemingway and his own son. Maybe one day I’ll be rummaging through old family albums, turn a page, and there it will be, shining forth from behind its clear envelope, the lost and coveted photograph of my dad sitting on the lap of an old and very depressed Ernest Hemingway, one of the last photographs ever taken of one of the 20th century’s most important writers, a smidgen of history, a family legend verified, one more ghost laid to rest.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90, episode 102) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas # 50: Divertissement with Kittens

14 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas #50 by Teege Braune

Divertissement with Kittens

A man dreams, his visions, hopes, loves, anxieties all bubbling to surface of his unconscious mind with out logical transition, referents lost, his thoughts incoherent to himself. In brief: Chaos reigns. How to order this miasma? How to peer into phantasmagoria, to find a thread of inspiration wriggling in the soup like a baited worm, to bite down and embrace the hook that pierces not the lip but the imagination, to allow oneself to be dragged out of the sea of one’s confusion, pulled by no effort but one’s own submission into the air of creative triumph? Is this what the philosophers mean when the speak of Genius?!

I stand with rod raised in the storm, allowing the gail to blast my calm. Smite me, Jupiter, for I have blasphemed against thee. Like Ixion I have insulted thee, lusted for thy bride, violated thou natural order, and now here I stand making mockery of thee, and yet lightening doth not strike!

Turn not to Jupiter, young man, for he has long since wearied of mortal folly. Apollo burns but speaks not. The wisdom of Minerva will help you least of all. Bacchus of the Vineyards is your salvation. This is the embodiment of the divine, which has called you to worship. Blessed be he whom in his benevolence bestowed upon humanity that sacred fruit, the grape and the secret it contains within. Liquid courage, social lubricant, bottled, bubbling inspiration. Bacchus for thee and thy gifts we give praise.

What was Papa Hemingway’s advice: “Write drunk but edit drunker?” The first sip merely sets the stage. Consumed in meditative state like a prayer, we give it up to God. Gone down the gullet before it even touched our lips, it never belonged to us in the first place. The second sip is a labor of love. It goes down like brass tacks, our mission solidified. Once more for good measure, after the third sip we can begin to work.

A finger taps a key, but a flitter in the corner of an eye distracts me from my purpose.

–Be thee mote or fairy, speak, sir, please. I implore thee of thy purpose.

My voice creaks, betrays my fear. I feel the steely gaze of cold malicious eyes upon my heart. Dare I investigate further lest I come face to face with some incorporeal beast?

The tinkle of a bell, the pitter-patter of tiny feet, no roar but a friendly mew, eyes the emerald green of precious stones not hellish flame, Tom Tom trots through the door, fit for the ball in elegant tuxedo. He bats a ball of yarn conveniently lying on the floor, chases dust bunnies to their doom. Laughing at the antics of this jester, I lose my train of thought, forget completely the masterpiece for which I’ve completed a mere two words: “Stately plump…”

–Tom Tom, entertain us with a little soft shoe,

I tease the kitten, sipping from my glass.

Now here comes little Ariel all white from whiskers to tail. She’ll give Tom Tom a run for his money, by gum. Pouncing upon the predator, we see how quickly the lion on the prowl is turned knavish at the pummeling of his paramour. He rolls onto his back showing his furry little belly, flashing white daggers, bluffing.

Another drink and then another and then I’m seeing in photo negative. No, that’s just Ariel’s counterpoint Mephistopheles. A witch’s familiar in his first life, he was burned at the stake. Poor Mephistopheles isn’t bad luck. On the contrary he seems to bring with him a kind of infernal fortuity. Happy is she for whom he has taken a liking, albeit this luck seems always to come at another’s expense. Perhaps a charm has been placed on him, for the hapless kitten is oblivious to his own talents. Nevertheless, his entrances can be off-putting, for in unlit rooms one is rarely aware of his presence when suddenly a pair of glowing green eyes of obstreperous intent appear as if floating midair.

Chuckling to myself I turn away from the kittens at their play. Let’s see, where was I? Ah, yes,

–Buck Mulligan…

One’s concentration is difficult to sustain while kittens are arriving one by one as if for some kind of feline fête. There is Eury whose preternatural ability for rediscovering objects lost weeks previous suggests a secret tendency towards kleptomania. Newt, the thief of shrimp, fish, and foul, master of the grab and run technique, he brazenly enacts his criminal activity under our very noses. Riley, the manx, with stub of tail and tufts of main jutting this way and that, well groomed but perpetually unkempt.

I pour another glass, but finding it empty before I can return to my work, I pour one more. More and more the kittens arrive. Here come Mittens, Dempsey, and Ambrosia. Then Goneril, Reagan, and Cordelia. Tumbling head over ass they make fools of themselves on my office floor. Squealing, they beg for grouse, cream, liver pâté. How to explain to them my abject poverty, for I, a starving writer, am barely capable of feeding myself, much less a dozen kittens and yet more are arriving every minute? Bean and Dusty, Jersey and Schnickelfritz, Bailey and Loki. All of these kittens climbing over me. Impossible to write another word amidst this cuddly infestation, I am Saint Anthony suffering adorable torment at the claws of darling imps and demons. Dozens of kittens turn to hundreds. Their mewing is a din drowning from my mind my creative intention. Kittens will be my death. They tear at the curtains, slash at the sofa, scatter their dirty litter into every nook and cranny. They rise up, swirl around me like a maelström. Stern discipline is what they need so that I may finish my task. I attempt to pluck them from midair, but they elude my grasp. Reeling, I stumble, fall, hitting my head against the linoleum floor, I blackout, slip from a world overfilled with kittens into a dark and dreamless sleep.

When I awake, my head is throbbing, but the room is empty, not a kitten in sight. Somehow the decimated furniture is immaculate, not a fiber misplaced. I look at the computer dreading the humiliation of another missed deadline when, to my surprise, words adorn my screen. Some sprite or fairy has taken it upon itself to finish In Boozo Veritas in my slumber.

___________

In Boozo Veritas # 49: Lana Del Rey Vs. The Cult of Authenticity

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in David Foster Wallace, In Boozo Veritas, Music

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In Boozo Veritas # 49 by Teege Braune

Lana Del Rey Vs. The Cult of Authenticity

While I never went nuts for Lana Del Rey’s 2012 premier album Born to Die in its entirety, I did become obsessed with the single “Summertime Sadness.” I was captivated by a brand of pop-music that cannot be easily classified within a single genre, that is both contemporary and also nostalgic for a bygone (and possibly fictitious) era. Furthermore, Del Rey’s lyrics and smoky vocals create an atmosphere of deep longing and simultaneously celebrate a sense of wild abandon, sensations alluring not only to myself as denoted by the song’s immense popularity and success. I played the song over and over again last summer, and though I thought “Video Games” was fairly catchy as well, many of the songs on Born to Die did not appeal to me and for the most part, Del Rey herself remained only in my periphery.

The title of Del Rey’s 2014 sophomore effort Ultraviolence immediately captured my interest. Anyone who’s read In Boozo Veritas # 5 knows that I’m fascinated by violence, though I have ambivalent feelings towards my enjoyment of it. The title track is a haunting portrait of a toxic and obsessive relationship that is both complicated behind its straight-forward honesty and deeply uncomfortable in its decidedly un-P.C. romanticization of abuse. A quick survey of the tracks suggested to me more complex and daring songwriting than Born to Die, but I was particularly disappointed in the album’s single “Brooklyn Baby,” a satire of hipster posturing. In the chorus, Del Rey sings,

Well, my boyfriend’s in a band

He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed

I’ve got feathers in my hair

I get down to Beat poetry

And my jazz collection’s rare

I can play most anything

I’m a Brooklyn baby.

This has been done, I thought. We’ve already heard all the hipster cliches. We all know phony people who interpret cool as a collection of possessions and surface style choices. Despite my reservations, I could not stop listening to it and have come to the conclusion that by taking the lyrics of the chorus out of the context of the entire song I’ve done it and myself a disservice.

The lyrics of the second verse let us know that we are in territory much richer and more meaningful than mere cliche. Here Del Rey sings,

They say I’m too young to love you

They say I’m too dumb to see

They judge me like a picture book

By the colors, like they forgot to read.

In these lines Del Rey demonstrates not only an awareness of her narrator’s flaws, but a deep empathy for her as well. There’s an aspect to the song that in undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek and humor in lines like, “My boyfriend’s pretty cool / But he’s not as cool as me,” but there is undeniable longing in it as well. This is represented by the song’s mysterious “you,” a character who is only revealed to us through his or her juxtaposition to the narrator, who sings,

I think we’re like fire and water

I think we’re like the wind and sea

You’re burning up, I’m cooling down

You’re up, I’m down

You’re blind, I see.

It is not easy to decide who’s love is being unrequited here. In the first verse she says, “They say I’m too young to love you,” and then conversely, “I think I’m too cool to know ya.” Is the narrator rejecting someone for failing to match her social status or justifying her own rejection? Her own narcissism makes it impossible to know the answer. We might laugh hearing someone like this sing the line, “You’re blind, I see,” but at the same time, there is a deep sadness in the loss of human connection that comes with this narcissism. Del Rey handles this loss with the upmost respect and compassion encapsulated best by the ever-present sorrow of her incredible voice.

In her essay “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men: The Difficult Gifts of David Foster Wallace,” Zadie Smith discusses Wallace’s disdain, even fear, of solipsism. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is filled with stories of characters who miss or almost miss the chance of true revelation and connection because of their own narcissism. Take the “fifty-six-year-old, American poet” of “Death Is Not the End” who, floating in his pool among the trappings of his insurmountable success, ceases to become anything but an extension those very trappings. “God help the man who has chosen to worship himself! Whose self really is no more than the awards he has won, the prestige he has earned, the wealth he has amassed,” Wallace through Smith warns. And then there is the “younger sister of his wife’s college roommate” in the story “Think” whose smile is “media-taught” and whose “expression is from page 18 of the Victoria’s Secret catalogue.” Her would-be affair is neither an act of unbridled passion nor self-loathing, but an reenactment of a cliche, something television has taught her she’s supposed to do. Like Wallace’s characters, the narrator of “Brooklyn Baby” insists on the legitimacy of a selfhood so dependent on the artificial qualities by which she defines herself, that the listener begins to wonder if there is anyone behind these feathers and jazz records at all.

The song is even more interesting in the context of Del Rey’s own persona and the noisome attacks of her authenticity. It has never been a secret that Lana Del Rey is a stage name for Elizabeth Grant, and yet this fact is a problem for some people. It’s true that Del Rey’s management team downplays her early, unsuccessful career as Lizzy Grant, and Del Rey herself seems blissfully unaware that such a person even existed, but I feel that both of these details are understandable from a performer who reinvented herself. Nevertheless, every aspect of Del Rey’s identity is scrutinized by her critics and detractors from her appearance (questions of plastic surgery) to her background (Grant grew up privileged) to the legitimacy of her self-proclaimed depression to her social status (apparently Grant has not always been as effortlessly cool as Del Rey). By simply ignoring Grant, Del Rey keeps the line between her fictional stage persona and real self blurry. Controversial comments she’s made in interviews and the deep sorrow embodied in her music suggest to me a person who has struggled with depression throughout most of his life, that her claims to mental health issues are honest, or at least are an aspect of both Grant and Del Rey’s personality. But then again I could be wrong. The fact is that Lana Del Rey, a person who seems to live in some nexus era of the most hip, most romantic version of several decades, who has preternaturally pouty lips and is dressed flawlessly whether she’s wearing a cocktail dress or jeans and a t-shirt, who writes devastatingly beautiful music and sings with a sultry, sad, smoky voice simply could not and will never exist. I’m even willing to concede that there may be something affected about Del Rey’s persona, but let us remember that art does not exist without artifice.

“The struggle with ego, the struggle with the self, the struggle to allow other people to exist in their genuine “otherness”–these were aspects of Wallace’s own struggle,” Smith tells us in her essay. It was a struggle that Wallace sadly could not maintain and took his life at a tragically young age. It is likely that Del Rey can be compassionate towards the narrator of “Brooklyn Baby” because she acknowledges or even laments her own lack of authenticity. Her critics may not be wrong in this regard, their criticism is simply irrelevant. By willing herself to become what she is not, what she can never really be, perhaps Grant is annihilated like the American poet or the wife’s roommate’s younger sister, and maybe this is what she has desired in the first place. If so, Lana Del Rey is the transcendent force created, as if spontaneously, in the void left behind.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #48: What to Drink in Westeros

30 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Drinking, In Boozo Veritas

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Dansk Mjød Viking Blod, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, Red Light Red Light, Shade of the Evening, Teege Braune, Waiting for New Season of Game of Thrones, What to Drink in Westeros

In Boozo Veritas #48 by Teege Braune

What to Drink in Westeros

It has now been two weeks since the Game of Thrones’ season four finale aired, and if you are anything like me, the long, drawn-out, nearly endless interval before season five has you jonesing for an Ice and Fire fix. Common symptoms of withdrawal from GoT include nervousness, phobia of weddings, the fear that friends and loved ones will die violently without warning, itching, and hallucinations of Peter Dinklage.

What is one to do to assuage the agony? Binge on something like Supernatural just to get that dose of fantasy? No, of course it doesn’t hold up against Game of Thrones. Diehard fans, those with the worst yen, already know what’s going to happen in the next couple seasons as they’ve no doubt read the entirety of George R. R. Martin’s groundbreaking Song of Ice and Fire series. Furthermore, those who have followed Martin for any extended period of time, must be used to waiting by now as a period of over five years went by between the publications of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, so what’s the big deal? Why the jittery, anxious impatience?

Here’s the rub: even the most colorful imagination can’t always hold up against a cast of talented and often very attractive actors, lush sets and costumes, and a budget of millions of dollars. The TV series and the book series have a marvelous way of filling in each other’s gaps, and sometimes seeing how one’s favorite scene plays out is exciting as reading that scene in the first place.

If waiting is just that unbearable, there is one recourse left to you: have a drink, and then have another.

Anthropological evidence has recently suggested that alcohol is the oldest form of artificial patience in human history. Before folks were able to kill time with Facebook, iPhones, and HBO, they had booze. Additionally many of the characters in the technologically challenged land of Westeros combat their ennui with alcohol. In his books Martin mentions many different adult beverages enjoyed by his characters: ciders, dark beers and rich ales, and especially wines such as the highly regarded Arbor Gold and the strong, sour Dornish reds.

The Inn at the Crossroads is the official food blog for The Song of Ice and Fire, and while they do an excellent job of recreating the exotic menus that Martin describes in his novels, their input on the booze is more limited. Much of the technology and culture found in Westeros is comparable to that of Europe in the late middle-ages, so one can imagine that the booze would be similarly linked. For example, the cider Brienne enjoys at the Inn at the Crossroads (the fictional one, not the blog) wouldn’t be the overly sweet, fizzy stuff we refer to as hard cider in the United States. A cider in Westeros would probably be very dry or tart with perhaps even a mineral quality such as Hogan’s Cider out of England. It would also likely be still or contain only a slight effervescence from the natural fermentation process.

Before he was gored to death by a wild boar, King Robert Baratheon was unconventional in more ways than one. While the nobles of GoT usually only drink wine, Robert seemed equally at home indulging in beer, a beverage that was a staple among the commoners and clergy of medieval Europe as well. Truth is, Robert was apt to drink anything he got his hands on, and his love of the common folk was more amorous that it was paternal. If the ales Robert enjoys share their origins with the ales of the middle ages, they would have most likely be missing the hops, which characterize the bitter flavors of American IPAs and pale ales. Before hops became a popular ingredient, ales were more akin to what we call gruit today, an odd, malt-forward fermented beverage that utilizes herbs and spices in place of hops, not something that is particularly easy to come by these days. Pale, crisp lagers weren’t even invented until the nineteenth century, but then again, the same goes for stouts, and we’re told that these exist in Westeros, so perhaps the seven kingdoms have a more developed brewing history than did the people of medieval Europe, or perhaps the strong, dark beers that Robert enjoys are more akin to Gouden Carolus Cuvée van der Keizer, which means Grand Cru of the Emperor, a rich, Belgian ale that is brewed every year in honor of Charles V, certainly a beer fit for a king.

If you want to drink like a Lannister, the wealthiest family in Westeros, then wine will be your pleasure and your poison. Other than their surname, the one thing Cersei and Tyrion have in common is that both our seldom seen without a chalice of wine in their hand. Martin describes many kinds of wine in The Song of Ice and Fire: along with the Arbor Gold and Dornish red, he mentions iced wine; honeyed wine; warm, spiced, mulled wine; wines made from plums, apricots, persimmons, or blackberries; spicy pepper wine. One’s mouth waters imagining slurping down all these delightful, albeit fictitious, beverages. TV does a shoddy job of filling in the gaps in this context, and what’s more, examining the wines of medieval Europe isn’t much help either. Is there a historical antecedent for the Dornish sour? Sour flavors are usually avoided in fine wines, and yet this is a prized vintage in Westeros. I imagine it has more in common with Flemish reds, such as Rodenbach, which while actually beer, have a tart, decadent, semi-sweet flavor, perhaps an acquired taste, but one that is worth the initial shock.

Mead, on the other hand, a staple of hospitality in the northern regions of Westeros, is easier to get one’s mind around. That is assuming one has tried mead in the first place. Brewed from water, honey, and occasionally spiced with other ingredients like hibiscus, hops, or ginger, mead is the oldest fermented beverage in the world, and has evolved relatively little in the last few centuries. Only recently rediscovered outside of a few small circles, mead has enjoyed a surge of popularity in Orlando thanks to its availability at innovative bars such as Redlight Redlight, Li’l Indies, and Oblivion Taproom. After all, how could fantasy fans resist something with a name like Dansk Mjød Viking Blod.

There are other more illicit beverages floating around the world of Game of Thrones as well. Maesters often give a drink called milk of the poppy as an anesthetic, and we can assume this would be similar to laudanum. The warlocks of Qarth drink a mysterious beverage called Shade of the Evening that stains their lips blue and supposedly enhances their magic. Perhaps one could dissolve a grape Jolly Rancher in a tea of psilocybin mushrooms to capture this effect, though I can’t legally recommend you actually do this. Nevertheless, one can only imagine that a decent enough portion of this drink would be ample to propel the uneasy fan, dreading the upcoming Game of Thrones-less year, straight into George R. R. Martin’s universe, a place that I, for one, would much rather observe than actually live in, but I’m the voyeuristic type who’d rather gander at other people’s cosplay than actually participate in it. Maybe a tripped-out, hallucinated afternoon in Westeros would be just the thing to ease the agony of waiting.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #47: Mon Semblable, Mon Frère!

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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Black Swan, Edgar Allen Poe, Psycho, Robert Louis Stevenson, Split Personalities, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, True Detective, William Wilson

In Boozo Veritas #47 by Teege Braune

Mon Semblable, Mon Frère!

If there’s one trope every editor of mystery, suspense, and horror asks aspiring writers to quit using, it’s the multiple personality disorder twist-ending. You’ve seen it before, and odds are, you’ve seen it done well. Psycho, Fight Club, and Black Swan are some of the better forays into this sub-genre, and these movies’ ability to truly surprise us is all the more special because we are so used to this reveal that we sometimes anticipate it and find ourselves delighted when something else happens instead. Take True Detective, truly an original show, one of the best to find its way on television for a long time. Before the unexpected conclusion of the first season, the internet was awash with theories about the identity of the killer. Was it Rustin Cohle or Marty Hart, each or both of them dreaming up the Yellow King and acting out their fantasies in a state of somnambulism? One of my favorite ludicrous ideas was that Rustin Cohle was the secret identity of Marty Hart. I laughed at most of these, but secretly harbored a silent dread that this would be the cheap, easy ending of an otherwise groundbreaking program. (Fortunately, it was not.)

The split-personality twist-ending finds its root in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a work that has so infiltrated popular culture, it has inspired well over a hundred direct film adaptations and influenced countless others, and yet even Jekyll and Hyde has its antecedent in Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson,” who in turn was inspired by an apocryphal anecdote from Washington Irving. “William Wilson” remains unique among split personality tales in that it flips the script before the script was ever written: instead of a good person discovering that he is the perpetrator of the story’s mayhem, Poe’s debauched and immoral narrator discovers that the nemesis who has foiled each and every one of his misdeeds throughout his wicked life is in fact himself, a manifestation of his own conscience, which he despises. “William Wilson” explores the nature of evil by taking the notion of mind/body dualism to a literal level, the title character is a man so torn between his wanton desires and rational sensibility that he, at least in his own mind, splits into two separate people, mere guilt replaces actual compassion, empathy, and true goodness. When the narrator finally succeeds in killing the double, the consequences are dire indeed, but not because some vengeful God or devil sends Wilson to hell; rather, without his conscience Wilson loses all sense of propriety whatsoever. Instead of indulging in the affairs, boozing, and swindling that his doppelgänger interrupted, Wilson turns to out and out violence and murder. The story, like many of Poe’s most famous tales, is both confession and excuse for the crimes the narrator has perpetrated.

“William Wilson” was written long before dissociative identity disorder was a thing or even before psychology was a field of study. The reader doesn’t have to figure out how the mechanics of the story work. Unlike Jack and Tyler of Fight Club, we don’t need to bother worrying how both Wilsons could have been one place or the other at the same time, and furthermore, Poe’s precise and measured story telling relieves the pressure. Much of “William Wilson” is, in fact, expository and only becomes episodic in the three pivotal, most suspenseful scenes. Fans of literary history will, likewise, find it interesting that the fictional Wilsons provide a stand-in for Poe himself. Many of the details of the narrator’s youth are reflections of Poe’s own childhood and education. He didn’t even bother to fictionalize the name of this school’s headmaster John Bransby. “William Wilson” perhaps hyperbolizes a conflicting nature in Poe who was himself a rational, intelligent man with plenty of personal demons and a propensity for vice.

I have had several doppelgängers in my own life. When you have a red beard, you are sometimes inclined to wonder if that is the only detail some people notice when they look at you. Once a picture of me had been tagged on Facebook as my friend Mike, another guy with a red beard. Another acquaintance named Nathan and I are often mistaken for each other. Whenever we happen upon a chance encounter we share stories of our often confused identity. People tell me that they recently passed me on my motorcycle, a vehicle belonging to Nathan, while they’ll tell him how much they enjoy his bar Redlight Redlight, the one I work at. Amused by these incidents, Nathan and I have agreed, however, that red beard aside, we bare little resemblance to each other. My first and most favorite doppelgänger is my brother Nic who even my fiancé tells me I do mirror, though Nic and I don’t see it.

People often asked my mom if Nic and I were twins when we were children, although I am almost two years older than him. Once while drinking together in a bar, two acquaintances from high school, guys I hadn’t seen in several years, walked straight up to my brother, shook his hand, and greeted him thus:

“Teege? Teege Braune?”

My brother responded: “He’s literally sitting right next to me,” pointing in my direction as he spoke.

Amused, I pretended not to notice the interaction. Without missing a beat, the two gentleman turned to me:

“Teege? Teege Braune?” they said enthusiastically, shaking my hand.

What followed was nearly an hour of catching up and remembering old times, which while not unpleasant, was neither an entirely welcomed diversion in my half-drunk, about-to-be-dumped-by-my-then-girlfriend state of mind. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had my brother pretended to be me, took the ruse to its logical conclusion, and answered their questions as me to the best of his ability. He knows me well enough to pull something like that off. I imagine that sitting next to him, witnessing this conversation would have been akin to an out of body experience, tranquil, and dream-like, but if someone were pretending to be me behind my back, without my knowledge, how would I react? Depending on who it was and what I imagined their motives to be, I think I might become conversely angry or amused. I can see myself playing along, taking over their identity as well, the two of us moving in and out of each other’s lives fluidly, the borders becoming increasingly blurry until neither of us was sure where we really belonged. On the other hand, I might become so upset that I took it upon myself to confront and challenge this person at a masked ball, stab him to death only to realize, too late, my error: that he had been I all along, and in so murdering him, I had destroyed all my goodness as well. Face to face with my bloodied mirror image, I can hear his voice as he dies:

“You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead–dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist–and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou has murdered thyself.”

___________

In Boozo Veritas #46: My Old Man

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas #46 by Teege Braune

My Old Man (for Stuart Braune)

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers
teach us at odd moments,
when they aren’t trying to teach us.
We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
-Umberto Eco

“A man knows when he is growing old
because he begins to look like his father.”
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Growing up, I was not inclined to refer to my dad as “my old man.” Every year we’d watch A Christmas Story, and I always thought it was funny that Ralphie calls his dad “the old man.” Every year I decided to start using the expression for my own dad, but it never stuck. Instead, he has always referred to himself as “daddy-o.” He has signed every birthday and Christmas card he has ever given me with this nome de plume. In lower case, no less. As I am the oldest among my siblings, my dad calls me “Son Number One,” but the way he writes it can vary. Sometimes he spells it out, but sometimes he writes “son no. 1,” and when he’s feeling particularly brief, he simply writes “son # 1.”

Once when I was a teenager, I found my baby book sitting in the back of a closet. It was interesting to flip through a collection of memories that, while about me, were not my own, and the short, loving messages my mom wrote to my infant self were incredibly sweet and moving. I came upon a page that the publisher had entitled “A Message to My Son,” the publisher had also kindly included a poem that was both sentimental and endorsed masculine stereotypes. My dad had drawn a large X over the poem and written next to it, “This is not my message.” Instead he wrote a short passage entitled “I’m Glad I Didn’t Kill You.” The story told of a time not long after my birth when my dad was hiking in the Smoky Mountains with me strapped to his back. When he tripped over a branch in the trail, I came flying out of my pompous and began to roll towards the edge of a cliff, coming to rest mere inches from the a sheer drop of several hundred feet. My dad concluded the story by mentioning that had I fallen, my mom would have killed him too, so at least we would be together, but he’s glad we are both alive. I found the story a little jarring as I had never heard it before. I asked him about the next time I saw it.

“I never told you about the time I almost killed you?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “I think I would remember that.”

“The funny thing was you didn’t even know you were in peril. You were just lying on the ground by the edge of this cliff laughing,” he told me.

My dad taught me to not only question what others tell me, but my own assumptions as well. He taught me that it is better to be compassionate than judgmental, though he makes doing so look easier than it is. He taught me that an insult can be a compliment, and that pranks make the world a more exciting place. Sometimes he’d say he had to work on a Saturday, but instead he’d drive away, change his clothes in the car, and then return home pretending to be his twin brother Uncle Jack. I was in middle school before I learned that Jack was completely fictional and had never existed at all.

He’s given me many things including his bald head, red beard, and analytical mind, his love of the outdoors, books, movies, classic rock, and classical music, candy, and of course, beer. The funny thing is that I don’t remember him having more than one or two drinks in a single sitting the entire time I was growing up, but as soon as I turned twenty-one, his enthusiasm for guzzling beer with his son number one was both delightful and surprising. One night while we were sitting around his fire pit he became agitated when we ran out of beer.

My brother’s band was playing at a nearby bar, and I reminded him that we were running late. My dad was wearing sweatpants, socks and sandals, and a t-shirt with an arrow pointing to one edge of the Milky Way Galaxy that read “You are here.” I asked him if he was going to put on blue jeans or shoes but he declined. He strapped on his fanny-pack, and we wound through the hills of southern Indiana towards Bearno’s Pizzeria. When we got there he pulled some money out of his fanny-pack and told me to get us a couple of beers.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“You’re the beer guy,” he said. “Pick me out something good.”

I handed him an IPA, and he took a drink.

“Wow. I really like this,” he said, though I knew he’d probably buy a case of Bud Light the next time he went to the store.

“You know,” he said to me. “When I used to go out with my dad and he’d be dressed like this, I’d think, that old man has no idea how ridiculous he looks, but now that I’m an old fart, I get it. I know I don’t look cool; I just don’t give a shit anymore. I wanna be fucking comfortable.”

I laughed at this. I thought there ought to be a line of men’s wear geared to older guys called “Fucking Comfortable.” I thought, my dad is awesome.

Happy Father’s Day, old man!

___________

In Boozo Veritas #45: A Review of Greg Proops’s Live at Musso and Frank

09 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas #45 by Teege Braune

A Review of Greg Proops’s Live at Musso and Frank

If you’re like me and you watched an excessive amount of television in the 90s, you’ll remember Greg Proops as the guy with the signature thick-rimmed glasses who performed alongside Drew Carey in Whose Line Is It Anyway? which was unique in being one of the only improvisation comedy shows to ever make it to primetime. Most likely you’ve heard Proops voice more that you’ve seen his face as he’s provided voiceover work for Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and even Bob the Builder and Disney’s Brother Bear. These various and diverse roles aside, Proops is at his best when performing live stand up comedy as proven by his performance at Musso and Frank’s Grill. I stumbled upon the special inadvertently and mentioned it to John King who, it turns out, has been an avid fan of Proops ever since John was a PhD student at Purdue. It was this bit in particular from Proops’s Comedy Central Presents special that clenched the deal for him:

Proops: We’re taught a lot of lies, growing up, about American history.

Proops’s Mock Dudley-Do-Right voice: Really, Greg, which ones?

Proops: All of them.

An In Boozo Veritas review of Live at Musso and Frank seemed the natural conclusion to our common enthusiasm.

Proops begins his special by giving us a little bit of history of the L.A. landmark Musso and Frank’s Grill whose famous regulars include not only the giants of the cinema like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Charlie Chaplin, but was also loved by the Los Angeles literati including William Faulkner who, Proops points out, used to make his own mint juleps behind the bar. It isn’t often that a standup comedian references and quotes authors like Faulkner, Raymond Chandler, and Charles Bukowski, and it is this unapologetically intelligent slant to his humor that got me hooked on his act. His unapologetic love of drinking was another draw, and the astounding number of martinis the man consumes over the course of his act without ever losing his refined, if not ribald touch, is truly impressive.

Proops carries himself with all the smart-alecky charm of an old school entertainer transitioning seamlessly from the polished, wise-cracking dandy to the hyperactive, self-imitating funny man. Having come to Hollywood from San Francisco, he celebrates Los Angeles in a place that was once an epicenter for the cultural elite, all the while mocking it for its idiosyncrasies. “I’m saying San Francisco is a city,” Proops says. “And Hollywood is an idea held simultaneously by a million assholes.”

Nothing is safe from Proops mockery, and he even lightly teases Musso and Frank’s for continuing to serve humorously out of date items such as jellied consommé and Welsh rarebit, but woe unto the pretentious, the fake, the narcissist for they will be decimated by Proops razor sharp wit. Take for instance his attack of the bored, barely-trying waitress at the uber hip restaurant with a beautiful outdoor patio and inedible food who approaches the table with a casual, “Hey. All right.” If the poor woman’s hilarious beat down comes off a little curmudgeonly, don’t mistake the intent. Proops is a comedian transported from another more formal, more stylish era. A server’s disaffected apathy is as maddening to Proops as it would have been to Don Rickles before him.

This is, of course, the charm not to mention the design. Sitting in a Musso and Frank’s (or if you are like me watching the special on your computer, pretending you’re sitting in Musso and Frank’s), a relic of a golden age of entertainment, and watching a man delightfully misplaced in our modern times, yet all the more capable of critiquing contemporary culture because he doesn’t quite fit in. The result is nostalgia for old Hollywood without sacrificing relevance.

Proops’s cross-generational persona becomes clearest in the second half of the special as he discusses his time working for a restaurant called Chicken Delight where the manager doubled as a drug dealer. Not surprisingly, Proops is as fond of marijuana as he is of alcohol and has even dabbled in less socially accepted chemicals such as crank, or as we call it now, he explains, methamphetamine, pronouncing the final vowel as a short “i” instead of a long “e” like the enduring sophisticate that he is. This sequence, including a celebration of irresponsible child labor, i.e. compensating the adolescent employees of Chicken Delight with weed, is fantastically irreverent and could have never occurred in any time or place but California in the 1970s. That is the nature and joy of Proops; he is a comedian willfully straddling many eras. His ideal audience would probably be a grab bag of upper-crust members of the Mafioso, the Rat Pack, Marilyn Monroe, and Faulkner himself, but as these icons are long gone, he’ll give us, his audience, though we are culpable in everything he mocks, the same treatment he would have given his heroes had he been born half a century earlier, and in the end, we find ourselves grateful that he chooses to bless us with his disdain. I know I do.

You can download Live at Musso and Frank for only $4.99 here.

Incidentally, if you have not yet listened to The Drunken Odyssey’s roundtable discussion of Donald Duck, today is his actual 80th birthday. Celebrate the single greatest cartoon character of all time by clicking right here.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #44 : The Bone Must Go, the Wish Can Stay

02 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Kafka, Odradek, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #44 by Teege Braune

The Bone Must Go, the Wish Can Stay

I had long been aware of Odradek and knew that he had for some reason chosen to make our apartment his residence. As far as roommates go, he was not hard to get along with. He was quiet, neat, and mostly kept to himself, but his sudden appearances could occasionally be unnerving. Weeks might pass without me catching sight of him, when returning home late from work, distracted by other problems, I would be startled to find him sitting in the middle of my living room playing with a bit of lint. At other times, Jenn and I would be sitting casually together, faces glued to our respective smart phones when she would say something like, “The cats chased Odradek today,” without really looking up at me.

“No kidding” I’d mutter.

“Yeah, he scurried through the living room with bits of thread hanging off of him, but when I looked for him in the bedroom to make sure he was okay, I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“Well, I’m sure he’s fine,” I’d say unable to feel concern for a creature who seemed more like an object than a living thing.

I suppose I will never know where he hid during his prolonged absences. I tried to look for him once. I can’t remember if my curiosity suddenly got the best of me, if there was something I wished to tell him, or if I simply wished to be distracted by his awkward shape and demeanor for a moment. Most likely I was avoiding any number of chores that would have been time better spent. I began digging through closets, pulling out old bins, emptying them and stuffing everything back inside when Odradek was not amongst the contents. Then I started opening all the drawers allowing myself to get preoccupied sorting through photographs and reading old Christmas cards, forgetting all about Odradek in the process. There always seemed to be another layer of debris to sort through, another jam-packed corner in which Odradek may be hiding. I did this until I began to feel irritated with him for making me muddle around in the tedious contents of my life.

“Why does he persist in these foolish games?” I asked myself. “I have better things to do this afternoon than dig through all this garbage.”

I grew increasingly anxious before I realized I wasn’t really concerned with Odradek’s whereabouts at all. He obviously didn’t depend on me to make his way in the world, and I had no need of him. Frustrated with myself, I plopped down on the couch and allowed myself to get carried away with the internet and social networking.

I’ll admit that Odradek never crossed my mind as Jenn and I were finally completing the final stages of our move from the apartment in which we had lived for the last four years, the vast majority of our relationship. I could have easily scooped him up and deposited him in the dumpster as we tossed out everything we could live without and removed one garbage bag after another. As I yanked out some old blankets in the back of our bedroom closet, I was surprised to see Odradek huddled up beneath them.

“Well, how are you doing today?” I asked speaking to him as though he were a child, for one is always inclined to speak to Odradek as though he were a child.

“I’m fine I suppose,” he answered.

Something in his tone had a note of sadness to it, or so it seemed, though I suspect he always came across a bit melancholy and I had never noticed until now.

“Will you be sad when we leave?” I asked.

“Others have come before,” he said.

Until this time it had never occurred to me that Odradek had lived in our apartment before we moved in, and I felt uneasy at the revelation that it was we who were encroaching on his home. I wondered what kind of relationship he had shared with the tenets who preceded us. Maybe they had been friendlier with him, treated him as a pet or even a member of their family. Perhaps he saw Jenn and I as unkind and unwelcoming strangers. Conversely, the old tenets may have screamed whenever they saw him. Kicked him if he got in their way and abused him when they were able to lay hands on him. His remote nature might be a product of the trauma and natural distrust he had developed from years of abuse.

On our way out I asked Jenn if she thought that maintenance would attempt to rid the apartment of Odradek once and for all before they rented it out to the new tenets, whoever they may be.

“Oh, I doubt they even know he’s there,” she said as we drove away.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas #43: Instead of Bowing Out Gracefully

26 Monday May 2014

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In Boozo Veritas #43 by Teege Braune

Instead of Bowing Out Gracefully

Like Napoleon at Waterloo;

Like Truman according to The Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948;

Like Ahab lashed to the whale, waving the Pequod to its doom before being dragged to the bottom of the ocean;

Like Dr. Duke “alone in Las Vegas, completely twisted on drugs, no cash, no story for the magazine… I didn’t even know who won the race. Maybe nobody;”

Like Branca the on mound at Polo Grounds after pitching the shot heard around the world;

Like Orpheus gazing back down a strip of road through a field at Eurydice;

Like Faust fleeing Gretchen’s cell with Mephistopheles;

Like Javert after helping Valjean carry Marius from the sewers before diving into the Seine;

Like Julius Caesar on the floor of the Senate in the arms of Brutus;

Like the hundredth eye of Argus Panoptes growing heavy as Hermes sings his lullaby;

Like Amelia Earhart somewhere over the Pacific Ocean;

Like Bonnie and Clyde on some backroad in Louisiana;

Like Butch and Sundance with nothing but the Bolivian army between themselves and Australia;

Like Kowalski gunning a 1970 Dodge Challenger toward a roadblock of cops and bulldozers;

Like Henry Hill taking a bite of egg noodles and ketchup;

Like Superman after his final confrontation with Doomsday;

Like Jodorowsky’s Dune;

Like Macbeth before the man not of woman born;

Like Moses on Mount Nebo gazing into the Promised Land;

Like Casey Jones with his hand on the whistle of the Cannonball Express on a foggy night in Mississippi;

Like Hercules donning a tunic stained by the Hydra’s blood;

Like Sisyphus, shouldering his boulder, as he approaches the crest of the steepest hill in Dis;

Like Lot’s wife turning to take one last look at burning Sodom;

Like Donald Duck at every turn;

Like Adam and Eve biting into the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;

Like the gods at Ragnarok;

This is the week I have failed to write In Boozo Veritas.

Oh wait, here it is.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #42: Move It Or Booze It

19 Monday May 2014

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In Boozo Veritas #42 by Teege Braune

Move It Or Booze It

A fresh start, new digs, a clean slate, a hook to hang your hat on. Home is where the heart is, and sometimes a person comes to that time in her life, for any myriad of reasons, in which it becomes necessary or advantageous to pack up everything she owns, carry it to another place, and unpack it all over again. A new hearth can be a beautiful thing, but getting there is often a tedious, overwhelming endeavor. In short, moving sucks. I’m remembering this all too clearly as Jenn and I are in the process of doing this very thing as I type these words. In fact, I’m only pulling this moving train into blog station because John King has sworn sweet revenge on your troubled hero if I turn in another In Boozo Veritas past my designated deadline. Never fear, eager reader, for In Boozo Veritas must be completed at all costs, its weekly publication being the most important force in the current cultural zeitgeist. I shall turn the tables on John, though, when I ask him to help me move in the next couple of days. Jerry Seinfeld has famously said of moving: “That’s a big step in a male relationship. The biggest. That’s like going all the way.” Is John ready to take this intimate leap with his star blogger? We all await his answer in rapt anticipation.

I couldn’t be more excited to be moving with my lady love from our tiny, bohemian apartment in Winter Park to a tiny, bohemian house in the Milk District, but in the meantime, Jenn and I have an immense amount of packing that we have naturally put off to the last minute. Fortunately, we have a secret ingredient to make the time pass easier: I speak, of course, of alcohol. There’s no unpleasant situation that isn’t improved by a case of beer or bottle of bourbon and even the god-awful act of moving is no exception. I recommend making a drinking game out of it. Take one drink every time you get distracted reading old Christmas cards. Take another drink every time you try on every article of clothing you haven’t worn in several years. Have a third drink every time you jump on Facebook to see if anyone has commented on that picture of your cats dressed in sailor suits. Take a drink every time you’ve wasted more than an hour sitting around drinking. Before the end of the night wading through your own besotted mind will seem less possible than Moses parting the Red Sea as he and his fellow Israelites endured their own legendary move from Egypt to the Promised Land.

On second thought, maybe drinking heavily is not the best way to get from point A to point B, but what can I say? Procrastination has always been my modus operandi. Sheer panic is a hell of a stimulant. Never do I feel more fueled than when I’ve put off a daunting task past the last reasonable moment, and yet how many sleepless nights have found me typing till dawn, guzzling coffee at one in the morning, crawling to work the next day with red eyes and weary, burdened mind. Still, procrastination got me through college and we all know how much those four years resemble the real world outside of the halls of matriculation. Along with moving I also have to finish my piece about Donald Duck for the taping of next week’s Drunken Odyssey roundtable celebrating the 80th birthday of the world’s most beloved, emotionally-impaired, waterfowl. Plus, I have bartending, teaching, and of course, that weekly chimera, In Boozo Veritas. But you will be happy to know that I’ve already finished my story for There Will be Words Halloween Flash Fiction Spooktacular. In the end, we all must have our priorities.