Arts & Entertainment
Monstrous Meat Puppets to attack Omaha
By John Payne
Senior Editor
For the past 11 years, the Meat
Puppets have been proving that they’ve
got more than a great name. The
Phoenix-based trio has consistently
impressed critics, while its raucous
concerts have made the Puppets under
ground favorites. Tonight they’ll at
tack Omaha’s Ranch Bowl, 1606 south
72nd St., with a live show that’s sure
to be monstrous.
coivwt
Led by the manic stylings of guitar
hero Curt Kirkwood — and this guy
really is something else — the Meat
Puppets have produced seven albums
on the SST label, their last being
1989’s “Monsters.” This year the
brothers Kirkwood (Curt also sings,
Cris plays bass), along with drummer
Derrick Bostrom, made the jump to a
major when “Forbidden Places” was
released on London Records. The
switch allowed the Puppets to spiff up
production values, while leaving their
trademark sound of guitar abandon
fully intact.
“We had a little bit more money,”
Cris Kirkwood explains from his
Arizona kitchen. “We got to go into a
nicer studio and just smooth a few
things out”
And “Places” is smooth. From
Curt’s Gatling gun vocal delivery on
“Sam,” to the pure guts guitar of
“Nail it Down,” the release is a real
house rocker. It also may come clos
est to capturing the spirit of the troupe’s
live show, which is just real damn
fun.
“We still don’tdo song lists,”Curt
explains. “I mean we have a basic
idea of what we should play, but we
just let the mood of the moment dic
tate the show.”
And the mood often dictates a round
of musical chairs, with band mem
bers swapping gear midway through
the show.
“Those guys are a little more crotch
ety about it now,” Kirkwood jokes.
"It’s like ‘don’t touch my stuff!’ Mostly
we just have big holes where what
ever wants to happen can happen.”
See MEAT on 14
_:_UE^aHD
Courtesy of London Records
The Meat Puppets will perform tonight at the Ranch Bowl in Omaha.
_ — 44 i • r*
1
Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
Portrayal or small town lire
succeeds with insight, humor
“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”
Peter Hedges
Poseidon Press _
By Sean Green
Staff Reporter
“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”
recounts the screwy small-town life a
lot of University of Nebraska-Lin
coln students know and love (or hate).
Peter Hedges’s debut novel con
cerns Gilbert Grape, a 24-year-old
grocery boy, and his life in the small
town of Endora, Iowa.
Told through Gilbert’s narrative,
the story is honest and straight to the
point. The thoughts and experiences
Gilbert relates are humorous, insight
ful and sometimes pathetic.
But what, exactly, is eating Gilbert
Grape? You name it. .
His family is dysfunctional, to pul
it mildly. For starters, his father hanged
himself when Gilbert was a child. His
mother, a former beauty queen, never
leaves her house, or even herrecliner,
and has become so enormous the floor
under her chair is on the verge of
collapsing.
Momma Gilbert has only three
topics of conversation: What’s for
dinner, the location of her cigarettes
and the 18th birthday of her retarded
son.
Gilbert’s older sister Amy cooks
for the family and keeps a shrine to
Elvis in her bedroom.
His teen-age sister Ellen is a sex
pot She becomes a born-again Chris
tian, only to wind up drinking beer
and having sex with Gilbert’s loser
friend Tucker.
Amie, the retarded Grape, lives
for pony rides at the circus, and after
spending the night sleeping in his
bath water (because Gilbert forgot to
take him out), refuses to go near water.
Aside from his family, Gilbert has
other things eating him.
He works at a small grocery store
that not only refuses to die, but cannot
compete with the Food Barn on the
edge of town.
Everything Gilbert knows about
sex he learned from his affair with a
middle-aged housewife.
Lance Dodge, a classmate of
Gilbert’s, returns a town hero be
cause of his television newsman fame.
Finally, there’s Becky, a new girl
whom Gilbert falls in love and lust
with. Only 15 years old, the sexy
Becky sees right through Gilbert’s
facade, much to his annoyance.
Hedges relates the problems in
Gilbert’s life matter-of-factly, writ
ing:
“All I know is that Amie’s big
18th birthday is going to be some
thing else. And if Momma hasn’t
fallen through the floor and if Amie
has died in his sleep and if Ellen isn’t
pregnant and if the other Grapes haven’t
gone further off the edge, maybe,
maybe we’ll be okay.”
The food metaphor is the unifying
thread of the story, and it goes far
beyond the names of the characters.
Every turning point in the novel
revolves around food, be it Momma
Grape stuffing her face with potato
chips as she asks Gilbert why he hales
his life, or the town religious nut
telling Gilbert, “We are all little bro
ken eggs till we turn to Christ”
The erosion of small-town life is
perhaps Hedges strongest theme.
Gilbert scorns the town’s pathetic
attempts to modernize and glamor
ize, yet he is uncomfortable when
Becky tells him it’s what’s inside that
counts.
As a first-time author, Hedges is
clever, talented and skillful. Hischar
acters have a haunting quality of
familiarity.
This novel will be sweet music to
those tired of hearing that their gen
eration is loo materialistic to produce
anything of artistic value.
Anyone who’ sever lived in a small
community will be amazed at Hedges’s
accuracy and brilliance.
Grocery headlines do not answer
question of who leads the world
Mark
Baldridge
“I WAS ABDUCTED BY UFO
ALIENS”
That’s what the paper said — at
'*fj**the headline. I couldn’t read the
y because 1 was in the express
Une.bwlcau„hllhegisl
minding™ own w *uy out
late wisicland * a a“°
space craft appeare?!n ihe^w!011*
beam of liahl&m on 0*
and next thing he knew, he wax vSS
out on a dissecting table in a creepy
daric lab. Here’s what was next: They’d
4
swap his brain lor a chicken s — and
he was a little worried about it. But it
didn’t happen.
These little guys came out of the
shadows and told him, “Do not be
afraid!” It was telepathy, of course.
They went on to tell him that they
were watching our planet, and that we
had nothing to fear from them; that
they were guides to help us through
this next hard test in our history.
Reading this, I was so surprised.
I’d never have guessed it.
It’s a complicated world. It’s nice
to think that someone has the “Big
Picture.” Space creatures see it all
from above; they have perspective. If
'"o could just contact these little green
^determinate gender, we might
Solution**01 slCP ^orvvar(* 'n human
Unfortunate*, l, _ . .
trial mentors oiler any clue, human
evolution may be not so fun. We’ll
have to give up noses, pinky fingers,
body hair and genitalia. But, heck,
we’ll gel ESP—and technology lhat’d
make corporate Japan green with envy.
Of course we’ 11 al 1 be green. For some
reason, that seems essential to higher
evolutionary consciousness. All the
aliens arc, anyway.
Maybe they’re really a shade of
blue, like Krishna.
If the prospect of moving up the
Darwin Scale does not appeal, or we
despair of help from beyond the bio
sphere, there is always just “The
Beyond.”
God has spaceships of Her own,
perhaps. And when the Almighty seems
loo distant, too unmoved by the human
See BALDRIDGE on 14
Lifts PytMc/ON
