Heck Of A Guy

Leonard Cohen’s 75th Birthday Impends

While Heck Of A Guy happily celebrated Leonard Cohen’s 73rd and 74th birthdays, the prospect of his completion of 75 years on the planet in less than two weeks (September 21, 2009) has us and Cohen fans everywhere giddy with anticipation.

Big plans, if not magic, are afoot. Poems are being written, paintings are being painted, a “multimedia internet based celebration” is being envisioned, sentiments are being inscribed, and birthday bashes, the highlight of which looks to be two days of festivities and frolic in Barcelona, culminating in the Leonard Cohen World Tour Concert in that city on September 21, 2009, are being organized.

DrHGuy, alas, will be covering none of these revelries in person and, that being the case,  may well forgo attendance in spirit as well.¹

His as yet uncommuted exile to the Northern Illinois Gulag notwithstanding, DrHGuy does sustain the hope of making some small contribution to the upcoming natal day commemoration by the denizens of Cohen World.  Given the absence of talent sufficient  to  create a work of art such as a painting or a poem² and a perspective so jaded by three years of blogging as to eliminate the possibility of constructing even a single serious, sincere, sentient sentiment, the potential avenues of participation are especially limited.

An epiphany, however, has now occurred, taking the unlikely form of LeonardCohenForum.  Surveying  that site, one cannot help but notice the hubbub about choosing the best birthday gift possible. Many fans are, for example, working together to create a special offering.³

DrHGuy, it turns out, is the sort of chap, that were he introduced at concerts by the appellation-slinging Mr. Cohen,  might be known not only as the Potentate of Posts but also as the Master of Mercantilism, making him the perfect candidate for administrator of …

The Leonard Cohen Birthday Gift Service

Heck Of A Guy announces the opening of the Leonard Cohen Birthday Gift Service and Registry, offering advice and assistance in choosing that just right birthday present, whatever ones budget or Cohenist preferences (e.g., early Cohen, post-1979 Cohen, “everything except Death Of A Ladies’ Man,” etc.).

Recommendations from the Leonard Cohen 75th Birthday Gift Service and Registry are based not on whims or guesses but on hard evidence and research. The party kit described in this extract from the 2007 Heck Of A Guy birthday post, while admittedly rudimentary, provides a sense of the thought process behind the list of items featured in the 75th Birthday Registry:

… at least every Cohenthusiast knows that Leonard Cohen was born September 21, 1934.

The question, however, is – are you prepared?

Growing up in the Bible belted-and-suspendered Ozarks, I heard the following question repeatedly proposed from the church pulpit and the Sunday School lectern: “What would you do if Jesus came to your house today?”

Well, the truth is I would have been creeped out, especially if he didn’t call first, but I understood the message underlying this query: we should live our lives in such a Christian manner that we would be prepared if Jesus dropped in for a visit to the point that the only change we would need to make would be frying up an extra pork chop for dinner.

I now find it more pleasant and enlightening to ask myself “What would you do if Leonard Cohen came to your house today?”⁴

Given that today is his birthday, a host would surely want to acknowledge that with a celebratory ceremony of some sort, but a generic funny hats and gag gift sort of affair just doesn’t seem to fit and, as far as I know, Hallmark doesn’t yet sell a Leonard Cohen birthday pack with paper plates, napkins, cups, and decorations all coordinated in a “Tower of Song” theme.

Stepping into the breach, the Heck of a Guy blog is proud to offer the

Leonard Cohen Heck of a Birthday Bash Kit⁵

For the natal day entrée, the kit provides a uniquely Cohenesque dish. As Anjani Thomas noted in a Pitchfork interview, Leonard Cohen is “the only man I know who pairs Kraft Macaroni & Cheese with a 1982 Chateau La Tour.”

And what could more effectively insure festiveness than a pitcher or two of Red Needles, the cocktail concocted by Leonard Cohen himself in Needles, California and the fuel that drove the process that created his album, The Future? The recipe, according to the authoritative LeonardCohenFiles, calls for Tequila, Cranberry juice, Lemon (and/or exotic fruits), and ice. As indicated in the lower right corner of the graphic, the hard core Cohenistas may well wish to pop for the deluxe edition of the kit, which includes the services of the drink’s creator as bartender.

This 2007 version of the kit also contains 73 of those thin green candles.

Finally, perhaps the trickiest question is what music does one play for Leonard Cohen’s party. An all-Cohen-all-the-time playlist smacks a tad too much of pandering, but blasting the kids’ hip-hop repertoire seems even riskier. Happily, Leonard has several times expressed his appreciation of one song appropriate to the occasion, noting, for example, in Martin Oestergaard’s interview, Leonard Cohen Gave Me 200 Franc, One of the greatest songs in history is “Blueberry Hill.’” “The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill.” I would be happy to have written that line.

Gift Recommendation #1

The first of the suggested items from the Leonard Cohen 75th Birthday Gift Service and Registry is scheduled for publication in tomorrow’s post, barring breaking news, the appearance of time-sensitive material, or editorial caprice.

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1. DrHGuy discovered some time ago that “being there in spirit” is a much attenuated and vastly overrated experience if the antecedent of “there” is something on the lines of “bacchanalia” – and if it’s something less raucous and bawdy, why bother at all? [↩]
2. DrHGuy does have in stock, along with other detritus from his romantic misadventures of years past, a number of homespun limericks falling in the risque to raunchy range which are, if ones assessment of ones own work can be trusted, quite accomplished and might, under a particularly liberal definition of the category, qualify as poetry.  On inspection, however, none of these efforts seems appropriate as a birthday ode to someone hailing from Montreal rather than, say, Nantucket. [↩]
3. No, I am not telling what it is. While blood may occasionally  be spilled at Heck Of A Guy, beans and guts are not. [↩]
4. Of course, the even more difficult question would be, “What if Leonard Cohen and Jesus came to your house today?” [↩]
5. Note: The Leonard Cohen Heck of a Birthday Bash Kit is also certified for celebrating the songwriter’s birthday in his absence or, if one prefers, ones own birthday, or the birthday of Jesus. [↩]