In typical Seattle fashion the first day of summer was 15 degrees below average with rain. I threw open the windows to celebrate and turned on the heat. Dried the bath towels over the vents and got up at 4, lit a candle, drove to the park. Was surprised and peeved to see another car in the lot and a guy just heading onto the trail, tracked him for a while unnoticed.

Lily and I rewatched The Big Lebowski, a character I told her I’m inspired to be hair-wise and lifestyle wise (it’s good to have goals). Noted the music legend T Bone Burnett did the soundtrack, and the background tune from one of the first bowling scenes is by an obscure mid-60s band called the Monks, five American GIs stationed in Germany, a kind of anti-Beatles theme band; the plodding guitar dirge is a song called “I Hate You.” Not your typical 60s act.

But I knew the tune because the post-punk band The Fall covered that song in the 90s as “Black Monk Theme Part 1.” Perhaps aimed at the singer’s ex-wife, Brit (“you maladjusted little monkey, you”). I’d spent half my life following The Fall in that same collector way I had James Bond books or stamps as a kid. You could happen upon different Fall titles in used record stores every weekend, and by the late 90s the F section on my CD shelf was the length of a small child.

The band had an ethos of anti-popularity, which jibes with the Monks, The Stooges, The VU, bands that inspired The Fall. It was convenient as an artist to snub mainstream success because either way you’d win. Maybe you could find it without trying or claim you didn’t want it anyway. I felt that way about my writing.

There are many things to like about The Big Lebowski; for me it’s the Dylan song that gets played twice (“The Man in Me”), or the psychedelic “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” by Kenny Rogers. How fun for the actors and crew, to put Jeff Bridges in that same costume as the film’s fictitious German porn star-slash-TV cable repair man, Karl Hungus—who doubles as a lead singer of the Kraftwerk knockoff “Autobahn.” Bridges in a drug-induced dream sequence shaking his rump to a Brünnehilde-inspired operatic ensemble and imagined porn film called Gutterballs with a bowling alley theme and dancers wearing bowling pin headdresses. Someone had to have real vision to conceive of that. Imagine the offstage after hours gatherings outside Aimee Mann’s trailer playing acoustic guitar, drinking canned beer. John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore with her Viking outfit and bowling ball bustier, her horned helmet. I still don’t track the plot line entirely and don’t want to. Sam Elliot’s handlebar mustache, his late-night DJ voice.

Now I understood some of John Goodman’s Vietnam references, having finished Michael Herr’s Vietnam memoir Dispatches. Not great content before bed. Funny to play back the Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush quotes justifying our invasion of Iraq, considering the Iran situation. And the wheel of fortune turns once more, another card drawn, all of us wondering what it means, what happens next.

It was hard to take my cold showers when the temperature dropped like that but I did it out of habit—then had to take a hot bath I got so cold, not a good use of water, or time.

The Monks, referred to by the name monks on their record sleeves, were an American rock band formed in Gelnhausen, West Germany, in 1964. Assembled by five American GIs stationed in the country, the group grew tired of the traditional format of rock, which motivated them to forge a highly experimental style characterized by an emphasis on rhythm over melody, augmented by the heavy use of distortion. The band’s unconventional blend of shrill vocals, confrontational lyrics, feedback, and guitarist David Day’s six-string banjo baffled audiences, but music historians have since identified the Monks as one of the most innovative rock bands of their time.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Humor, Memoir, music

Tags: Big Lebowski, Creative Nonfiction, The Fall