Mystery Brook

I fished one of my favorite small streams in northwest Connecticut this evening. It runs through private property and the landowner asked me not to publicize it, so that's why I'm being cagey.

There are two stretches: one upstream from a bridge that stays close to the road and is relatively easy to get into, and a much longer section that runs through a steep gorge. It is perfectly possible to clamber 20-odd feet up some boulders and get a look at the next pool from eye level. And if you've never watched a fly floating at you from water level, and have a fish take it, well, it's different.

The water was warmer than I expected, and the brook trout a little sluggish, but I managed to land a few. They are spirited critters, and shake a hook much more decisively than their cousins in the big rivers.

A Salty Salute

I haven't been to the ocean for swimming and lazing purposes in 30 years, so a week at Bethany Beach, Del. was an interesting change of pace.

There were herds of lifeguards doing drills. They'd charge around on the beach, running in that odd beach gait of short, high steps.

Then, at a signal, it was into the water, where they ceased being a herd and became a school.

The routine was quickly established: Up early and make the coffee, take a go cup to the beach and walk, smoking a meditative cigar. The town is the most regulated place I have ever seen, and smoking is at the top of the list of banned activities — except where the town fathers have placed those butt receptacle things at inconvenient places along the public beach. So discretion must be employed, but the only people out at 6 a.m. are surf-casters, the four percent body fat crowd getting a head start, and, well, visitors trying to enjoy a quiet smoke without killing anybody with their dangerous secondhand smoke that cunningly defeats the steady wind and miraculously goes into the lungs of everybody within 100 yards — with fatal results. Oh agony.

Then the morning fry. I tried to stay in the water, which was very pleasant. The rest of the time I sat under an umbrella, which helped some. I still got toasted.

To continue: The six-block walk to town. The search for the Washington Post and New York Times (for my elderly parents) and the New York Post for me (for Anthony Weiner jokes). The chintzy souvenir shops. The excellent bookstore. The French fries, with vinegar and salt, from Thrasher's. The afternoon fry. The stealthy slink through the residential neighborhoods, with cigar. The quiet dinner. The final beach walk. The bed.

The condo complex where we were was very comfortable and easy for my folks to navigate. although it had a sort of Stalinist tower block look to it, especially from a distance. On my own ticket I'd stay at an actual house — but on my own ticket I wouldn't have gone to begin with, unless there is a state campground somewhere nearby.

In six days I read nine detective stories and a big stack of New Yorkers I never got around to, walked a lot, and looked at girls. Not very exciting, but you'll have that.

The Hanging Gardens of Red Rock

The Hanging Gardens Look at Red Rock

Returning to the Woodland Valley brook always means finding something different, but in recent years, between Mother Nature and various state agencies, Woodland has undergone massive makeovers.

The good news is that the Red Rock pool survived. The chute that runs into it is intact, and if we lost a little space on the road side, the retaining wall creates cool, deep cover for trout during the dog days of summer.

The bad news is it's easy and inviting to get down there from the road; I have already seen worm-drowners perched on the wall. They were hipsters, though, so maybe it was a one-shot deal. I know they were hipsters because a) the car had a vanity plate for an art gallery — also promoted by a sticker — and b) the male half of the sketch was wearing a stingy brim straw hat.

Re-exploring the brook in the spring is like arriving at your favorite golf course, only to find it completely remodeled. Except, of course, that streams get redone by floods and men with machines, which is right and proper and manly, and golf courses are playpens for the pampered. I hate golf. Lacrosse, too.

Anyway — the pool across from the Roxmor entrance was also given the retaining wall treatment, with good results; a stream shift from last year plus a tree down has created a very tricky and deep hole downstream from Nakamoto's; road improvements above Red Rock led to disimprovements in the stream above Red Rock, which used to have a series of deep pockets that are now mostly gone, along with the streamside cover.

The weekend of June 3-5 I fished the brook pretty hard. The stocked browns in the Roxmor and Red Rock pools would take pretty much anything Saturday morning. Sunday morning they were slightly more selective.

By the following weekend the fish that remained in the obvious pools were far more finicky, and the fish had spread out. I caught them in the pockets between Nakamoto and Roxmor, and again in the very last stretch of the stocked water — both shaded and squirrelly areas.

So all that's good. The bad news is that didymo (aka rock snot) was spotted in the lower part of Woodland Valley last summer, which means that guys are not paying attention and streamhopping in the same gear they use in the Esopus.

I know it's a pain and runs into money, but I have repaired and rehabbed waders and boots so I have clean gear for any body of water I'm likely to fish. I dry everything out thoroughly as well — in the sun.

If nothing else, keep a bottle of Tilex Mold and Mildew in the car and give your stuff a squirt before you go in.

Roxmor pool

Below Nakamoto's — upstream and down, where the deep hole under the tree is. Combination of tree, depth and fast current makes it hard to get a nymph in there.

It's Spring! Oh, Wait a Sec...

We're having one of those springs where Mother Nature lulls the people into a sense of complacency with a short string of sunny days with the mercury getting into the 70s.

Then it clouds up and it spits and doesn't get much above 60. Hmm...should I try a light tweed today, or just stubbornly go by the calendar?

I picked up some cotton jackets over the winter, including this two-button, undarted Corbin number. Which is a little tight, as over the last couple of weeks I slacked off at the gym. Grrr.

Signs of Spring

Opened up the Catskill house. Lots of dead mice strewn around; my D-Con assault worked, apparently.

Esopus Creek above the Portal. Water temps still cold; chucked everything in my fly box out there and didn't see a thing. Still, it was nice to get out of Dodge.

Found a pair of madras pants from the great Trimingham's shop in Bermuda. They were a little chewed up at the bottom so I had Gabriele convert them to shorts. And I found a bucket hat that actually fits my absurdly large head. It takes very little to make me happy these days.

Bucket hats, madras shorts, and fishing. Finally.

The effect was somewhat mitigated yesterday by a forest fire in the general vicinity of Mt. Riga.

When Legends Bite the Big One

I picked up some used CDs at a tag sale yesterday — the Who's Quadrophenia, and a Jimi Hendrix collection, Voodoo Child.

A friend of mine in college was always a little out there, but by our senior year he had holed up in a single room, taking blotter acid and listening to Quadrophenia (and Sgt. Pepper) over and over. Somehow he graduated. How is one of life's enduring mysteries.

I haven't heard Quadrophenia in 25 years, except for bits and pieces on the radio. I popped it in on the way to a "Battle of the Bands" thing at the local high school.

Right away it was stupid — surf noises, and an alternately bombastic and syrupy Statement of Themes on the synthesizer.

The synth was set on "strings," I suppose. And Sweet Tap-Dancin' Jeezus does it sound childish, and amateurish. For anybody without the massive ego of Pete Townshend these interludes would be more accurately described as "ditties."

But "Can You See the Real Me" is a Who song. Not their greatest by a long shot, but it's the real thing.

And it's the last listenable moment on the two-disc set. I remembered "5:15" as pretty good. It isn't.

A "rock opera" was always a dopey notion. Real opera is bad enough — you think a back beat's gonna make it work? Just write your kick-ass three-minute song and shut up already.

(Quadrophenia is also a really long, really bad film. If you've run out of red-hot needles to shove in your eyeballs check it out.)



One of the flaws in the enthusiastic performances at the Battle of the Bands was the belief of the electric guitarists that they will, at some point in their careers, get paid by the note. And it's hard to argue the point after listening to the live disc of Voodoo Child, which presents Jimi Hendrix as the recipient of the Annoying Guitarist Guild's highest award, the Diddley-Diddley-Diddley Whoo-Ooo-Ooo medal (with wah-wah clusters) for "Most Egregious Waste of Everybody's Time."

Disc one is a recap of a different Hendrix: the innovative and — dare I say? (dare, dare) — economical player on three monstrously good studio albums.

Buried in the insipid liner notes, with a sanitized bio and lots of self-congratulatory splooge about how the great man's recorded legacy is finally in the hands of people who care, is an observation of bass player Noel Redding looking bored out of his mind while Hendrix went off on one of his endless, tedious workouts.

Charlie Parker and John Coltrane were geniuses, but after Parker all horn players started trying to play really fast, with few spaces. Post-Coltrane, horn players began playing really fast with no spaces.

And no point. Jazz morphed into chamber music after that. Has anybody danced at a jazz show in the last 50 years?

Listen to Hendrix's solos on these live shots without getting a headache and I'll send you five bucks. (You can't be drunk or stoned, and you'll have to prove it before I send the dough.)

No dynamics, no restraint, no thought. Just flailing away, as if getting paid by the note.

Brian Eno was once asked why Robert Fripp was his favorite guitarist. The answer: "He plays with his ears, not with his hands."

Salon Kitty Not Up to Scratch

I had high hopes for Tinto Brass' Salon Kitty (1976). I had heard through the underground film grapevine (i.e. fellow sickos) that it rivaled Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS in the Naziploitation genre.

And it could have, too. The "Salon Kitty" was a Gestapo brothel; the Nazis got the idea to bug the place and listen to the pillow talk as a way to ferret out spies, potential deserters and dissenters, and the like.

But somebody got the idea they were making a serious film, albeit one with lots of nekkidity. It's the same notion that sank Caligula.

So what you wind up with is two hours plus of sporadic weirdness, some of the most annoying Nazis in screen history and entirely too many cabaret numbers.

The big ol' orgy scene near the beginning is noteworthy, if only for the sheer number of writhing young members of the Master Race.

And one musical number would have been okay to set the decadent tone. But four? (Or was it five? I don't remember, I used the fast-forward.)

And Brass does not miss an opportunity to editorialize against the Nazis, which is not a particularly bold or unusual stance.

We're talking massive orgy, filmed a la Stanley Kubrick with a rigidly symmetrical long shot to establish the thing. Pubic hair trimming. Dwarf sex. Amputee sex. Breasts galore (lost count after a dozen). Nazi in Ubermensch/super hero outfit. Toe sucking. Bread dildo. Sex with "Triumph of the Will" showing on the wall. Shouting Nazis. Mincing Nazis. Cape-wearing Nazis. Luftwaffe brains blown out in shower by vengeful hooker. True love. Interminable musical nightclub intervals, and somebody took the time to write the songs. Way too much plot getting in the way of the story.

A grudging two coils, with a fast-forward caveat.