2000-11-28 - 02:26:25
high-ass voice like aaron neville, and i'm down with the devil

A bit of Unofficial Policy: I will almost always lie about what I'm going to write next. Tonight I will get through all three of my promised topics, though, if I can.

I'm finding Aristotle very interesting, much more readable than Plato in so many ways, but I find I don't have much to say about him beyond that, so far at least. A couple more books of the Nicomachaean Ethics and I may have more specific reactions to piffle about.

I saw Penn & Teller live on Saturday night at the Curran Theatre and I just cannot say enough good things about this show. They have a lot of great new material, including a spellbinding and thoroughly patriotic flag-burning trick (there was a lot of laughter and applause over the course of the show, but the denoument of the flag bit elicited the only awestruck *gasp* of the evening). All I have in me at the moment is that capsule review, though. Just go see this show if you can. (Their website is down at the moment, but should be back up soon with its list of tour dates.) I love P&T and want to have, like, 10,000 of their babies, so I'll probably return to this subject at some point. Maybe I'll write a review of Teller's new book.

The third promised subject was Joe C., and that one is harder to dispatch quickly. Joe C., for those who are unfamiliar with the name and didn't follow yesterday's link, was a member of Kid Rock's backing group, the little rapper who looked and sounded like an eight-year-old. He was three foot nine and 26 years old, and he died in his sleep about a week and a half ago. He was affected his entire life by celiac disease, a digestive disorder that caused his short stature (hence his continual, and generally unheeded, protestations that he was "not a fuckin' midget") and appears ultimately to have been the cause of his death.

I have been searching vainly, and not without some frustration, for an old article I read online in which this extraordinary young man first caught my attention. It documented everything he had to go through each day, swallowing dozens of pills and hooking himself up to machines and tubes as a matter of the routine that kept him alive. It also told of how he went from a fan yelling out the words to every song at the side of the stage each night to touring with Kid Rock and getting into little side projects like pro wrestling cameos as well. He was working on a solo album (he can currently be heard rapping on the title track of Kid Rock's "Devil Without a Cause" and "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch" off the South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut soundtrack). No word on whether he recorded enough material to release as a posthumous album.

I guess this sounds like some kind of slightly offbeat Inspirational Story of triumph over adversity, and suchlike, and in fact it is, but it's another story too. It's the story of a lively, funny, talented individual who managed to take his disabilities in stride, worked unbelievably hard, took on an active and adventurous life and made his dreams reality in spite of his disadvantages, began to get real recognition on his own terms, and then died at 26 of a digestive disorder before most people even knew who he was.

What a terribly stupid ending. Great beginning and middle, though, and not everyone manages that.

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not dead. - 2002-12-08