Happy Tom Waits's Birthday To Everyone, But Mainly To Tom Waits!
He is pretty much the best.
Welcome to the weekend!
Once upon a time, in Rochester, New York, I met a fella who, within a very short time of meeting me, said, “I absolutely know who you are. You like Tom Waits and The Velvet Underground, you knit, and your favorite movie is Harold and Maude. I’ve met like 17 of you and you all have the same bangs.” This was so eerily correct at the time that I was deeply offended. I still maintain that he must have had some intel, because I’m pretty sure that’s not a general type of human that anyone besides that one guy is familiar with, but whatever.
That being said, I do really love Tom Waits, who is 76 years old today. So I am going to bring you some very good Tom Waits presents!
Here is his appearance on John Lurie’s Fishing With John. The idea of watching people go fishing generally seems even less appealing than fishing itself, but this is still pretty fantastic.
Honestly, these are actually all pretty good — there are also episodes with Jim Jarmusch, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, and Dennis Hopper, if this is the kind of thing you are into.
I’ve also got the only commercial Tom Waits ever did, which, confusingly enough, was a commercial for dog food.
This was something Waits did in a pinch, in 1981, after he dumped his manager and was trying to figure stuff out. Since then, he’s never allowed any of his music to be used in commercials and has gotten into a few legal tussles with corporations that have attempted to use his likeness in commercials — most famously Frito-Lay, which he sued in 1990 for putting out a commercial for Salsa Rio Doritos (which clearly did not last long, since I’ve never heard of them) on the radio with a Tom Waits sound-a-like, and was ultimately awarded two million dollars.
The court found in Waits’s favor, noting that his voice was clearly identifiable for sounding "like how you'd sound if you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack of cigarettes and swallowed a pack of razor blades ... Late at night. After not sleeping for three days."
“Commercials are an unnatural use of my work,” Waits said. “It’s like having a cow’s udder sewn to the side of my face. Painful and humiliating.”
He won that lawsuit in part due to the fact that Bette Midler had just recently sued Ford for using a sound-alike of her to sell a Mercury Sable.
That lawsuit, along with Waits’s, could also end up being the basis for preventing people and corporations from using generative AI to steal people’s voices for commercial profit. (Though for those of you who are also fans of McDonald & Dodds — AI is very far off from being able to accurately imitate Robert Johnson or anyone else to the point that an “expert” would not be able to distinguish between the two. Though it was also pretty obvious in that episode, IMHO.)
Allow me to leave you with the incomparable Tom Waits singing his classic “The Piano Has Been Drinking” on an episode of Fernwood 2night.
And, of course, everyone’s favorite holiday classic, “Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis.”
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Important question: if you were to give the Wonkitty a guitar, what sort of guitar would it be? I don't play, so I don't really know much about them.
Just dropped in to see what condition our condition was in. Here's a copy-and-paste from El Libro de La Cara:
"Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated with one another, with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.
But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. "Folks," he said, "I know you have had a rough day and you are frustrated. I can't do anything about the weather or traffic, but here is what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don't take your problems home to your families tonight, just leave them with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I will open the window and throw your troubles in the water."
It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who had been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other's existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?
Oh, he was serious.
At the next stop, just as promised, the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up but everyone did it.
The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.
We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it is extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don't know where to find it.
But what if you are the light? What if you are the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?. That's what this bus driver taught me, that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn't some big power player. He wasn't a spiritual leader. He wasn't some media-savvy influencer. He was a bus driver, one of society's most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.
When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world's troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can't personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can't control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other's name.
"No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated, one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river."
~ Elizabeth Gilbert