***Artist's Corner- "Nighthawks " -The Work Of Edward Hopper

and Tom Waits' Nighthawks At The Diner 

Click below to link to site that has information about the famous American realist (?) artist Edward Hooper. Tom Waits lyrics and Edward Hopper's art (at least his famous "Nighthawks At The Diner") definitely fit together.

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper.html

Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street) (Tom Waits 1975)

Goodness gracious...my bass player should be chained up somewhere I wanna take you on a kind of inebriational travelogue here Well, ain't got no spare, you ain't got no jack, you don't give a shit you ain't never coming back Maybe your standing on the corner of 17th and Wazee Streets, yeah Out in front of the Terminal bar there's a Thunderbird moving in muscatel sky You've been drinking cleaning products all night Open for suggestions It's a kinda about eh...well it's kinda about going down to the corner and say 'Well I'm just going down to the corner to get a pack of cigarettes I'll be back in a minute' Yeah, check out the street and it looks likes kinda of a... kinda of a blur drizzle down the plateglass And there's a neon swizzle stick stirring up the sultry night air Looks like a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon Rollin' maverick across an obsidian sky As the busses go groanin' and wheezin', Down on the corner I'm freezing On a restless boulevard in a midnight road I'm across town from EASY STREET With the tight knots of moviegoers and out of towners on the stroll The buildings towering high above Lit like dominoes or black dice Used car salesmen dressed up in Purina Checkerboard slacks And Foster Grant wrap-around Pacing in front of rainbow EARL SCHLEIB $39.95 merchandise Like barkers at a shooting gallery They throw out kind of a Texas Guinan routine "Hello sucker, we like your money just as well as anybody else's here Come on over here now Let me put the cut back in your strut and the glid back in your slide Now climb aboard a custom Oldmobile and let me take you for a ride" Or they give you the P.T. Barnum bit "There's a sucker born every minute you just happened to be comin' along at the right time you know come over here" Well you know, all the harlequin sailors are on the stroll In a search of "LIKE NEW," "NEW PAINT," And decent factory air and AM-FM dreams And all the piss yellow gypsy cabs That stack up in the taxi zones and the're waiting like pinball machines To be ticking off a joy ride to a magical place Like truckers welcome diners With dirt lots full of Peterbilts and Kenworths and Jimmy's and the like They're hiballin' with bankrupt brakes Man, the're over driven and the're under paid The're over fed and the're a day late and a dollar short Christ I got my lips around a bottle and I got my foot on the throttle And I'm standing on the corner Standing on the corner like a "just in town" jasper I'm on a street corner with a gasper Looking for some kind of Cheshire billboard grin Stroking a goateed chin, using parking meters as walking sticks On the inebriated stroll With my eyelids propped open at half mast But you know over at Chubb's Pool Hall and Snooker Well it was a nickle after two, yea it was a nickle after two And in the cobalt steel blue dream smoke Why it was the radio that groaned out the hit parade And the chalk squeaked and the floorboards creaked And an Olympia sign winked through a torn yellow shade Old Jack Chance himself leaning up against a Wurlitzer And he was eyeballing out a 5 ball combination shot Impossible you say? Hard to believe? Perhaps out of the realm of possibility? Nah Cause he'll be stretchin' out long tawny fingers Out across a cool green felt in a provocative golden gate He got a full table railshot that's no sweat And I leaned up against my bannister And wandered over to the Wurlitzer and I punched A-2 I was lookin' for maybe 'Wine, Wine, Wine' by the Night Caps Starring Chuck E. Weiss or maybe... Maybe a little something called 'High Blood Pressure' By George 'cryin' in the streets' Perkins, no dice "Cause that's life," that's what all the people say Your riding high in April, seriously shot down in May But I know I'm gonna change that tune When I'm standing underneath a buttery moon That's all melted off to one side It was just about that time that the sun came crawlin' yellow out of a manhole At the foot of 23rd Street and a dracula moon in a black disguise Was making its way back to its pre-paid room at the St. Moritz Hotel (scat) The El train tumbled across the trestles And it sounded like the ghost of Gene Krupa With an overhead cam and glasspacks And the whispering brushes of wet radials on wet pavement With a traffic jam session on Belmont tonight And the rhapsody of the pending evening I leaned up against my bannister And I've been looking for some kind of an emotional investment With romantic dividends, yeah kind of a physical negotiation is underway Well, as I attempt to consolidate all my missed weekly rendezvous Into one-low-monthly payment, through the nose, yeah With romantic residuals and legs akimbo But the chances are that more than likely Standing underneath a moon holding water I'll probably be held over for another smashed weekend