Georgie K: The Kingmaker I Lost

One time I ran into an odd character in an elevator, at a community college where I was taking singing lessons. He was a little gnome of a would-be kingmaker who called himself Georgie K. Georgie was about 42, balding on top with long hair on the sides. He looked sort of like Ben Franklin without the dignity.

Georgie saw the music book under my arm and figured I was an aspiring superstar so he started dripping names like turds in a two-bit taco hut shithouse. He was just oozing showbiz cadences as he told me that he was no stranger to big time circles. He also claimed to be a masterful lyricist and performer, and he spewed some doggerel verse on the spot to show his massive talent.

When we got to the lobby he reached into his briefcase and pulled out a big naugahyde ledger with typeset names and addresses. He pointed some out to me. “She sings backup with Phil Collins. That’s Ornette Coleman’s address. I stay with him when I don’t have any money. Do you know Ornette’s stuff? This guy does lights for the Moody Blues and Willie Nelson. Cleavon Little, see? I’ve collaborated with him on some projects.”

In between name dripping he told me he was looking for talent and knew lots of key people. “Look kid, I like you and I think we can work together. I got some projects in development that could use your touch. But right now let me tell you something, maybe the only thing you’ll ever need to know. When you’re onstage you gotta get an audience where you want ‘em, right in the palm of your hand and then . . . you blow them away.” As he said this he slowly unclenched his balled up fist and blew on his hand dramatically.

I was an entertainment world virgin at the time, so this was some heavy chutzpah Georgie K was laying down. Although he came on like a blustering hack, he had the presence of a self-styled showbiz guru, a backstage griot who could tell endless tales about “the business” and its inner workings. I was fascinated and listened with reverence.

“But you gotta watch yourself kid. This business’ll chew you up like dog meat and spit you in the gutter. Paul Butterfield see,” he pointed to the ledger. “He stays at the Grammarcy. Real strung out these days. A while back, ‘68 maybe, he saw me at a gig—I think it was the Fillmore—and he drops some snide shit like, `Don’t I know you? Aren’t you a roadie or somethin’?’ So a couple years ago I saw the cat again and he grabs me, he’s like hangin’ on, beggin’ me: `Georgie man, Georgie please, clean me up, put me back on track. You’re my last hope; only you can make me big again.’

“Now I didn’t forget what happened 20 years before. Georgie K never forgets a slag. Got ‘em all catalogued right here,” he pointed to his head. “So I looked him right in his bloodshot eyes and I said `Only if you get me in to see Dylan.’”

“Bob Dylan? Why him?” I asked.

“We do the same thing, y’know. I write five novels and 50 poems a day. No one since Poe or Shakespeare is near me, man. But when they put a suitcase full of money on the table and said `We own you,’ I said `Nah uh, later man, that’s not my trip. No one owns Georgie K.’”

“Five novels a day? I don’t know,” said I.

“Hey, you heard me before,” he said, referring to his earlier attempt to impress me with his bad poetry.

“You think that was good or something?” I let slip an honest reaction to such overwhelming buffoonery.

“What?!!” he exclaimed with pseudo-big shot indignation. “I’m tryin’ to help you out and you’re runnin’ me down. You just cut your own throat, man. I was gonna turn you on to a free record contract, and you just cut your own throat.”

Then he stalked away with a wicked scowl on his face. “Hey wait,” I called, “I’m sorry.” And I really was, because I wanted to have coffee with him at least, and wade deeper into such fantastic delusion.

“No way man, forget it. You got the same attitude as everyone around here.”

Oh well. “Say `hi’ to Ornette for me,” I hollered.

New D-com* Acronyms: Glossary of UTN** Slang

Check out the latest slang making the rounds online/in text messages . . . Don’t be a CO (clueless one) . . . You don’t wanna miss out when she finally lights up your phone with: “TMC...HAK” (Text me cutie...hearts and kisses).

* Digital communications
** Up to the nanny [nanosecond] (“iPhone cases at Target tot UTN!”)


The Glossary is Here:

DSBY – Don’t stop being you (“Wicked fun yest. J. All i cn say is DSBY!”)

DIA – Does it again (“John Stamos DIA!!!”)

DOTI – Don’t overthink it (“DOTI Jill, pls.”)

TMC – Text me cutie

HAK – Hearts and kisses

OTC – On the corner

HTF – Hold the fort

HTP – Hold the phone (“OMG HTP – the mayor’s pissing OTC nr. the F train on 23rd!!!”)

M2W – Mark my words

SS – Some slammin’ (“SS totes at Walmart M2W”)

LMT/K – Lots more to come . . .

YouTube Haiku (No. 1): Lightspeed Medieval

▲ Rebel Brutality in Syria Posing Dilemma in West . . . Video Shows Assad Foes Executing 7 Soldiers After Capture.
— New York Times (Sept. 2013)


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Aphorisms

All the world's a stage — but real life is what happens backstage.

Some bowel movements can be life-affirming.

Masturbation is satisfying but uninteresting, like oatmeal.

The road to utopia stops at the Gulag.

There's nothing like doing nothing.

Don’t advertise your insignificance.

In order there is possibility.

Nothing focuses you better than a paycheck.

This sky’s the limit (but the gutter always beckons).

Writing is an affliction.

*Gunfire Lullaby

CNN: my gunfire lullaby. Snippets of fragments from the world-at-large mesh with belligerent voices from the street, waft through the window, snake under my bed, and into my dreams. A cavalcade of pageantry—the American celebration, featuring the whitebread teenybopper pop phenom, a scrubbed visage from the sun-kissed wasteland. Her insistent Republican gloss spurs a reaction at the awards show, a loud boo-hiss . . . The atonal Japanese band is waylaid and I feel the knife, the pummeling—blow for blow and thrust for thrust, in tactile lockstep with the subplot . . . More violence. Gangs of looters selling magazines on the street. I conk a guy with a toaster but he doesn't wince, so I catch up with my boys. I'm a rugged sort . . . A weird hybrid of Kiss and action films, lots of torso shots, writhing and leather-bedecked, gnashing to a bubblegum din, great heaping tubs of food backstage, an interview with the bandleader about how he was discovered, going crazy at a show with lots of flash and vigor . . . pan, wipe, zoom—vaudeville, superheroes, cartoons, childhood parties, an odd carousel . . . old faces morph into amalgams of the vaguely familiar and deeply unknowable . . . tapping the mother lode, a strange inner life, explosion from lethargy, farewell to sloth and jaded demise . . . military actions, storms of confetti, hounded by reporters; a dismal place with unmarked train cars . . . the chanteuse and the telerobic instructor battle each other for my affections in front of a childhood sweetheart's house . . . true love and populism triumph over cigar chomping plutocrats . . . Manson Family offspring, now young adults, discuss career plans . . . an emaciated crack whore with the face of Marcia Brady screams obscenities in guttural Spanish . . . RRRRRRing.

* Initial post for this blog