Things That Matter To People Who Matter
Clutch | George J. Kreier | Sam Shepard | Joan Shepp Boutique
Clutch
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Bands that stick with you are pretty rare. You might be into an artist right now, or you might return to a particular album again and again, but the bands that you follow over the long haul are of a different breed. I have a couple of bands like that, but the one that truly stands alone is Clutch. I don't know another living soul who likes them. It is one of those rare, happy and slightly unsettling occasions where enjoyment happens entirely in a vacuum. Maybe critics hate Clutch. I don't know, and I don't want to know. What I want is to turn them on, sit back and rock out.
George J. Kreier
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George J. Kreier was a master mold-maker here in Philadelphia and carried on the tradition of architectural ornamentation during a time period when the rise of modernism almost completely wiped it out. After his death last year, his studio was going to be demolished, and what a terrible loss this would be to future generations. Realizing this, George came back from the afterlife and somehow guided my friend Kathy, whom he never met before, to the auction of his studio — which was attended by only two people, and Kathy won all of his molds. I know this to be true because Kathy is one of the few people in this city who would know what to do with them, and I like friendly ghost stories.
Sam Shepard
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I always love a good short story, and the ones in Sam Shepard's Hawk Moon are really good and really short. These are strange and usually violent tales, which, in a few terse but loose pages, manage to crystallize the essentials of complicated and expansive experience. To me, they definitively capture the spirit of a distinctly American mentality — everything that one can love and hate about it. As each story came crashing through its denouement, I was rapturously exclaiming a string of expletives in my head as I raced on to the next one.
Joan Shepp Boutique
Every Wednesday I begin my day by stopping at Joan Shepp. This is to get me in the spirit for thrift-shopping. To my romantic mind, Joan Shepp is the only store that features truly spiffy stuff. I appreciated their 75 percent off sale last August, and the ripped-seam John Paul Gaultier dress for $20. Because I needed a special outfit for a book party that my family was giving me, I recently bought a "real" dress there. It's fabulous — long, black, with white (actually, transparent) stripes going down, across and around, in patterns geometric and topological. Since my new book is about math, that was the only possible dress for the party. I need to get out another book so I can get another Joan Shepp dress.
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