Fern 'n Sir Tom

[Dwayner]

To Fern

Figger Eight

Funky Allison

Frontier Petey Puget

Fellow Cacophonic Cascadians

From Tom.

 

"I'm gonna lay it on ya, brothers 'n sista's like there be no tomorrow. You see, we be livin' in a monkeyed-up, lemur-striped landscape, festooned with soggy cosmic manifestations of the ultraviolet ceramic shower-head of garbled time itself. While we're twistin' and skating and manicuring our lima-beaned, straw-bent karma through the lycra-clad foamy nozzle of our tortured speculative existence, the radiation from the caged, tie-dyed chimpanzee within belches a *FLASH* of stuccoed insight. I looked into my sock, and I found a piton."

 

 

I kinda wrote this next song while I stopped at a non-descript coffee and doughnut emporium in Paris (or was it Grenoble) during my whirlwind lecture tour I've entitled, "Entrée vous, Sir Tom!" Actually, to be correct, I modified this song and it thus stands vastly improved:

 

"His friends say stop whining,

they've had enough of that.

His friends would say stop pining,

there's others crags to look at.

 

They've tried to set him up with Lynn Hill and li'l Katie Bro,

but there's something about Ferny that they don't know.

Ferny....there's just something about Ferny."

 

"Well, his friends would say he's dreaming

and living in the past,

but they've never been trad climbing,

so his friends need not be asked.

 

His friends would say be reasonable,

his friends would say just let go,

but there's something about Ferny that they just don't know.

 

Ferny...there's just something about Ferny."

 

"Go ahead...ask me about my colon. The answer is fine but go ahead and ask me!"

 

"Steven gave me the most luxurious advice today: shampoo and condition, shampoo and condition. NEVER condition and then shampoo! Are you going to eat that yummy crouton?"

"To all my trad friends, and hope-to-be-trad friends. Love...from Tom."

[Peter_Puget]

Dwayner - Again it is up to me to expose the truth

 

Witness the man revealed:

 

To learn more: Dwayners Hero

[iain]

good baker call petey.

[Dwayner]

This:

 

 

is NOT

 

this:

 

 

So, all guys with funky hair look alike?

Have a little respect for Sir Tom!

[Stefan]

Call me ignorant and a newbie to this Sir Tom thing. Educate me.

 

Who the hell is this guy?

[Peter_Puget]

The fourth regeneration of the Doctor. The good renegade Time Lord.( as opposed to The Master) Check out the site!

[Dwayner]

"Call me ignorant and a newbie to this Sir Tom thing. Educate me. Who the hell is this guy?"

 

Sir Thomas Stoppard, one of the world's finest alpinists. Just in the last six months:

 

N.Face Eiger solo, Hapgood Direct, 6 hours

N. Face Matterhorn, Travesties Colouir, 3 hours

N. Face Grand Jorasses via Arcadia Chimneys, 7 hours

all in one long winter day.

 

Southeast Face of Mt. Everest via Brazil arete.

21 hours round trip from Base Camp solo.

 

New Route on El-Cap, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern", VI (VII?) 5.12c, A-5+. Solo!

 

And the year ain't over yet, sparky!

 

And he's over 60??

 

As they say up at High Camp on Rain-Dawg,

"I.M.A.O.T.U."

 

Dwayner

[RURP]

This is RURP:

"I looked into my sock, and I found a piton."

 

It was probably mine. Give it back.

 

Shampoo and condition? You didn't know that?

 

Don't ask me about my colon. It is not your business.

 

RURP has spoken.

[iain]

Does that guy have some requirement to always have at least 1 hand on his chin at all times?

[erik]

fern rocks dude....

 

fern is a chick....

 

fern is a super fine alpine climber...

 

soo ummm you be wrong ole boy!!!

[Dwayner]

Dude!

The song is actually about the mysterious alluring qualities of Fern. Don't make me do one of those deconstruction things where I have to go through and deeply analyze and interpret each word and phrase. Nobody wants that. I don't really know Fern very well, but what I do know about her, she's VERY cool.

[Stefan]

That guy sounds awesome! What's his toggle name here on cc.com ???

[iain]

Dunno. Here he is getting ready to bivy. His alpine senses tell him rain is on the way!

 

[pope]

Donna Top-Stop on Tom (from a review in BACKSTEP):

 

I remember the night I fell in love with Tom Stoppard. He seduced me with shimmering language, ideas that revved my mind, and emotions that expanded my heart and left me breathless. Back in the spring of 1995, I sat through a preview performance of his “V10 Mime”, in which, together with the Bandaloops, he introduced to theatre audiences his unique blend of the artistic movements of bouldering classics with loosely structured, Broadway-review/neuvo-classical modern jazz, tap and ballet.

Who else could commingle chaos theory and carnal embraces -- his characters positing that sexual attraction may be the one variable Newton left out and contemplating the "action of bodies in heat" -- with such dexterity?

He waltzed through time with enviable ease, guiding characters and parallel ideas with a sure hand. The audience sat rapt, working hard to keep up -- afraid to miss a key idea in the fast play of underclings and gastons. Yet “Stoppard’s Mime” offers comfort: "We shed as we pick up," he says of our collective desire to learn and understand, "like travelers who carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind."

Stoppard provided no answers, but rather posed question upon question, allowing his characters to hold each one up to the light and watch the insights glance off its facets. "It's wanting to know that makes us matter," said a Stoppard groupie, summarizing his personal quest to understand the way Stoppard’s Midnight Lightening mime seems to defy physics during the mantle sequence.

I emerged at the end not at all the way I'd come in. Whole chunks of the audience walked out mid-play, not yet told by critics how to react and frustrated by its challenges. But others picked up the ideas that Stoppard had shed.

New York Times theater critic H.C. Esser said "Mime" was "like a dream of levitation: you're instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop-the-loops and then, when you think you're about to plummet to earth, swooping to a gentle touchdown of not easily described sweetness and sorrow."