One Announcement Two Snaps

artwork by Harry Lewis

Hello friends who are in LA or will be next Saturday November 22,

I am hosting a reading event at my friend Marc Chiat’s studio one week from this Saturday in Frogtown at 7PM. Some really exciting writers and poets will be there and these events are always fun so please come if you can. If you have any friends or family visiting for Thanksgiving, bring them too, they will be highly impressed, I promise. And they will get to brag about visiting Frogtown when they go back where- ever they came from.

Thank you!!

I’m including two old posts about teeth which I was thinking about recently because I just watched Andre 3000 get inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I remembered I had written about him. I don’t know if it’s because of the gap between his front teeth that he is able to move so flawlessly between wild and calm, but it fits my theory.

Teeth 1

I think about teeth sometimes. Flawed ones especially. Some people have teeth that seem to be telling you something, teeth that you would be friends with, that feel like they could keep a secret. If your whole body is the front of the stage, then teeth are the back, they know about all the good stuff and are right there when it happens.

What is it about a gap between the two front teeth that instantly makes me love that person? I don’t know, but it does. I have a theory that it is a sign of superior intelligence and authenticity, and it’s a solid one, at least with the people I have met so far. This holds true for front teeth that overlap as well. Always a sign of genius.

I got to meet Sam Shepherd once with my dad in NY on Lafayette Street in front of the Public Theater. I was completely starstruck into silence. My Dad knew most of the actors in the show, Fred Ward and James Gammon and Beverly D’Angelo and a few others, and we stood on the sidewalk afterwards in the bitter cold, the actors lighting up and chit chatting and going over little moments. I was in my 20s but I felt like a kid. I remember wearing a beret and thinking at least I look great. (In a beret I thought this!)

Ed Harris, an actor known for his intensity, and who in fact had been very intense for the full 90 minutes of the play, walked past without saying goodbye. Even though it was the move of someone who was pissed off, there was something I recognized about it, he still had a lot going on and didn’t feel like standing around being social. I watched him walk all the way across the street, through oncoming traffic and then pace a little on the other side, blowing into his hands. He didn’t look back at us once. I watched him try and fail to hail a cab until he finally got one and drove away. I turned back and caught eyes with Sam. He had been watching the whole episode too. We smiled and then I saw those teeth, teeth like old friends you were happy to see. Nice hat, he said.

Teeth 2

I woke up thinking about an interview I watched with Andre 3000 a while back. He has a good sized gap between his two front teeth. He now plays a big woodwind instrument that sort of sounds like Japanese meditation music, which I recommend to anyone looking to lower their pulse. In the video he walked around his neighborhood and went to the laundromat playing this big stick like a sage pied-piper in pinstripe overalls. It was impossible not to love him. He still has a beautiful face, but now aged with graying hair and thick glasses like a grandpa whittling on the front porch. He said about his appearance and his meditation music: “this is what I’m feeling right now.” He talked about being an outsider and getting nervous around people. The interviewer, who was a great listener, said “but you’re an icon whose album was the highest selling rap album of all time.” Andre just shrugged, this is my vibe, he said.