nancynall.com » Excitable boy.
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Excitable boy.


Source: Lis­aPal

Is it pos­si­ble to be friends with some­one you’ve never met? If you wanted to argue in the affir­ma­tive, I could bun­dle up my 12, 13, 14-ish years of cor­re­spon­dence with Ash­ley Mor­ris, for research pur­poses. You’d see how we “met,” back in the early days of the web, when I typed “war­ren zevon” into this mar­velous thing I’d just dis­cov­ered, some­thing called a “search engine,” and stum­bled across Ashley’s unof­fi­cial War­ren Zevon page. I wrote him a note. He wrote back. It went on from there.

Ashley’s WZ page had Easter eggs in it, one of which was a hyper­linked period at the end of a sen­tence. It took you to a photo of a crazy-eyed top­less woman doing the splits. He said it had been sent to him by another girl who’d started out a friendly cor­re­spon­dent and ended with abrupt ques­tions about his penis size and an unso­licited top­less pic­ture. So you can see, per­haps, why Ash­ley responded to out-of-the-blue notes from strange women — you never knew when you’d get another naked pic­ture in the e-mails.

That’s not how it went with us, of course. Instead, we wrote back and forth about every­thing and noth­ing. I guess it started when Ash­ley was fin­ish­ing his doc­tor­ate in com­puter sci­ence at Tulane, after which he moved to Idaho for a spell, then to Chicago, then back to his beloved New Orleans (while keep­ing the job in Chicago — he had a long com­mute). Along the way we cov­ered every­thing from his Audi Quat­tro (essen­tial for Idaho win­ter dri­ving) to his fond­ness for Cuban cig­ars (which may have been a plank in the foun­da­tion of his rad­i­cal left­ism — he must have thought any­one who could turn out cig­ars like those couldn’t be all bad) to his agony over the fate of New Orleans. Along the way, he went off to the Czech Repub­lic to teach at a con­fer­ence and came home with a fianceé, who stood over six feet tall. Did I have any sug­ges­tions on where she might find clothes to fit?, he wrote once. I told him you could find any­thing in Chicago, but for best results, ask a drag queen.

He was raised by his grand­par­ents, whom he thought were his par­ents, with a shift­less older sis­ter that he learned late in life was actu­ally his mother. She died a few months ago, of an over­dose. Ash­ley opened up her apart­ment to start putting her affairs in order and found a fresh two-gram pack­age of heroin on the kitchen counter. It’s a reflec­tion of the kind of guy he was that he man­aged to find the humor in such a discovery:

I called the cops who found the body, and asked them what to do with the heroin. They said I could bring it in to the station.

yeah, right.

That would be the time I get pulled over for speed­ing. “Yes, ossifer, I was bring­ing this brown tar to the sta­tion! Hon­est!”. Or maybe, I could just announce when I got there: “HI, I BROUGHT THE HEROIN!”.

When, late in his PhD pro­gram, he was diag­nosed with adult ADD and pre­scribed Ritalin, a turn of events that saved his doc­tor­ate from obliv­ion — he said he could never have fin­ished his dis­ser­ta­tion with­out it — he told this same mother/sister about it. She said, “Oh, they told us that when you were a lit­tle kid, but I just fig­ured it was bull­shit.” He said he wanted to stran­gle her.

He didn’t have an easy or long life, but it was action-packed. He lived in Los Ange­les for a spell, rode a motor­cy­cle he was nearly killed on, made music, cut a demo. The demo never amounted to much, but it did turn up in the sound­track of a porno movie, a turn of events Ash­ley him­self dis­cussed here (first com­ment). He had a huge heart. This you could tell from the get-go, and if it wasn’t clear imme­di­ately, it surely was evi­dent in “Fuck you, you fuck­ing fucks,” his cri de coeur from New Orleans in late 2005, which proved pro­fan­ity can be poetry in the right hands:

What about you fucks that don’t want to rebuild NOLA because we’re below sea level. Well, fuck­heads, then we shouldn’t have rebuilt that cesspool Chicago after the fire, that Sodom San Fran­cisco after the earth­quakes, Miami after end­less hur­ri­canes, or New York because it’s a mag­net for terrorists.

And fuck Kansas, Iowa, and your fuck­ing tornados.

Fuck you, San Anto­nio. You aren’t get­ting our Saints. When I get to the Alamo, I’m tak­ing a piss on it. You prob­a­bly go to funer­als and hit on the widow. Class­less fucks.

And so on. He hated all the bull­shit spewed into the air after Kat­rina, and wanted one thing and one thing only — for New Orleans to get its due. OK, he wanted other things, too. He wanted another beer and some great NOLA street food and a big cigar. Check out that pic­ture up there, that’s Ash­ley in his ele­ment — sweaty, cigar in his pocket, and some din­ner. You know the fun­ni­est thing about that pic­ture? The two lit­tle pieces of broc­coli. When War­ren Zevon said, “Enjoy every sand­wich,” Ash­ley always said, “Make mine a muffaletta.”

He leaves behind his wife, Hana, and three young chil­dren, along with dozens of friends, fans and fel­low travelers.

One last thing: A few years back, I went to Chicago with Alan and Kate, and had vague plans to meet Ash for a beer. This was in Feb­ru­ary, and it was cold and windy, and we’d just frozen our butts off all day, and at the end of it, I begged off. Stu­pid, stu­pid, stu­pid. I thought we’d have another chance, and had vaguely planned for this June in Chicago, but that had recently been tor­pe­doed, too. I thought I’d take Kate down to New Orleans later this year and show her what still had to be done there. I fig­ured Ash would give us the tour, and then we’d have a muf­faletta. Well, that didn’t work out. Maybe I should try for the funeral. I’m sure he’ll have a hell of a sec­ond line, it will rock the llama’s ass, and know­ing Ash­ley, there won’t be a fuck­mook in sight.

Posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
in Friends and family.

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33 responses to
“Excitable boy.”

  1. Dorothy said on April 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am

    I hope he & War­ren Z. are hav­ing a cold one in the next life right about now.

    That must have been a very dif­fi­cult entry to write, Nancy. Kudos, very well done. I feel sim­ply awful for his lit­tle ones.

  2. Sue said on April 3rd, 2008 at 10:42 am

    Oh my God, oh my God. I can’t believe I’m sit­ting here cry­ing for a per­son I’ve never met. I just showed his blog to my brother-in-law last week­end. Beyond a com­ment or two, I don’t think he was really aware of me, but I sure respected him and read his blog reg­u­larly. I loved his artic­u­late anger, just loved it. Thank you for “intro­duc­ing” him to me. I thought vir­tual friends would be eas­ier to deal with. Not so.

  3. MichaelG said on April 3rd, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Won­der­ful obit, Nancy. I feel like crap.

  4. virgotex said on April 3rd, 2008 at 10:48 am

    This is such a beau­ti­ful piece, Nancy. My con­do­lences to all his friends here. He sure does leave a big hole in the world.

  5. Jolene said on April 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 am

    Yes, a lovely piece, Nancy. I’m cry­ing for some­body I never met. The thought of those kids with­out their dad is heartbreaking.

  6. velvet goldmine said on April 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    Beau­ti­ful piece. May we all have some­one to remem­ber us this wryly and affec­tion­ately when our time comes.

    I’m one of the end­less read­ers here who didn’t nec­es­sar­ily have any exchanges with Ash­ley, but had a really strong sense of him. I always got a kind of “this will be warm and sen­si­ble, in a kind of pro­fane and grumpy way” flash when­ever I saw his name above the comment.

    And, of course, I always squirmed in antic­i­pa­tion when­ever some­one a) mis­took him for a gal or b) said some­thing neg­a­tive about New Orleans.

  7. alex said on April 3rd, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    I’ll remem­ber him fondly every time I utter the word “fuck­mook,” which recently replaced “freak” as my epi­thet of choice.

  8. Julie Robinson said on April 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    Crap.

    Here’s a quote from Ashley’s blog on March 31:

    “I have but one piece of advice today, from sunny south Florida, where there are no side­walks: make a will, and let your loved ones have instant access to it, as well as your safety deposit box. Lest your name is cursed over end­less glasses of Jameson.”

    Sadly it appears he didn’t have enough time to fol­low his own advice.

  9. Peter said on April 3rd, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Oh, this is just so sad. I can’t add any­thing pithy or poignant, so I’ll just offer my condolences.

  10. Dexter said on April 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Rise up against the fuck­mooks in your life, and set your­self free.

  11. LAMary said on April 3rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm

    This is really so sad. I thought of him as a kin­dred spirit and the sort of per­son I was glad was out there some­where, mak­ing peo­ple uncomfortable.

  12. michaela said on April 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    I don’t have any words for this emo­tion — I barely even knew Ash­ley in the vir­tual sense of the word, just read his stuff here and on the Wire blog, and I am gob­s­macked. I’m so, so sorry.

  13. oyster said on April 3rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm

    A won­der­ful, “tone per­fect” trib­ute. Thank you, Nancy.

  14. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 3rd, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Mak­ing muf­falet­tas for din­ner tonight in trib­ute, and i promise to savor mine and raise my son to make the most of his (or at least not spill most of it on the floor, but he’s 9 — Ash­ley would understand).

  15. joodyb said on April 3rd, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    i’m so sorry, nancy, and for his fam­ily, and the loss of the voice of a soul of NOLA. i say go and be in that first line. he would have wanted you there.

  16. michaelj said on April 3rd, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    Dorothy, they’re hav­ing a throat warm­ing Irish with a brew back. Since God pos­sesses the spec­tac­u­lar and uni­ver­sal intel­li­gence to pro­vide for the inven­tion of these balms and truth sera to go along with intel­lec­tual evo­lu­tion of humans toward cetacean lev­els, take it to the bank.

    Warren’s inex­plic­a­ble. To me, the first deal is his facil­ity with employ­ing (exploit­ing) the Eng­lish lan­guage. Made fun of manip­u­la­tion, and I know this sounds like some dum­b­ass How does the guy that wrote Jun­gle Work and Roland write Look­ing Down the Path and Keep Me In Your Heart? He knew every­thing he was tak­ing about.

    I tried to say this before but messed up. I don’t really under­stand chok­ing up bout lis­ten­ing to War­ren. I can under­stand feel­ing sad. I feel that way about what wouln’t Jimi have done. Jimi would have advanced music tonally and melod­i­cally, like John Coltrane. War­ren would have advanced lit­er­a­ture, cul­ture, and per­fect irony. What do the fans get out of Boom Boom Mancini.

    I know, lot’s of y’all think you love War­ren. Well, you do. And you’re right. Y’all that are such big War­ren affi­cian­dos: How bril­liant is he play­ing the twelve-string? Fero­cious, and in and almost as good as richard thompson.

    What I think about War­ren, and I’m just catch­ing up, because I’ve been buy­ing since about 1975. I love it when peo­ple get it. I can’t fig­ure out how nobody ever got Nils Lof­gren. He’s so good this seems like a joke.

    War­ren made songs where he indicted him­self as some sort of a jerk. But he made bril­liant shit up. Roland. Or he cre­ated his only inex­cus­able per­sona: Mr. Bad Exam­ple. Do y’all know every­thing this guy was think­ing about. My idea is the best song War­ren made was Poor Piti­ful Me. Women rule.

    and war­ren never thought so.

    Jeff, choose the olives care­fully, and leave in the pimien­tos, and add some Balsamic.

  17. liprap said on April 3rd, 2008 at 7:28 pm

    Oh, damn, this is beau­ti­ful. I wish you’d have met the man. I wish it had been Hiz­zoner da mayor of New Orleans, aka the Walk­ing Id, who’d have gone instead of Ashley.

    So many peo­ple are so upset right now. I wish this were a dream. If it is, I can’t wake up. I feel so bad.

  18. Maitri said on April 3rd, 2008 at 7:46 pm

    Thank you, Nancy. I’m still in denial, hop­ing he’s going to email us all with “Hey, I’m back!”

  19. michaelj said on April 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm

    Didn’t know the guy. Saw the pic­ture. Had some idea. I’d say try this:

    Nor dread nor hope attend
    A dying ani­mal;
    A man awaits his end
    Dread­ing and hop­ing all;
    Many times he died,
    Many times rose again.
    A great man in his pride
    Con­fronting mur­der­ous men
    Casts deri­sion upon
    Super­s­es­sion of breath;
    He knows death to the bone –
    Man has cre­ated death.

    Everybody’s a great man. I doubt everybody’s murderous.

    As I said, I didn’t know the guy, but Yeats on death and desider­ata, well, we could all do worse, but it doan mean shit. Things are frightening.

    I couldn’t sleep at all for days. Not to this day. That’s just me, but I expect y’all are intel­li­gent to under­stand the prob­lem. If it’s not inter­est­ing, no sweat, and the mob inter­ests in Grosse Pointe, well, I was an idiot to get involved in a high school pro­duc­tion with mob ties.

  20. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 3rd, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    Didn’t think of bal­samic — next batch. Thanks, michaelj. Tak­ing out the pimen­tos would have been an insult to Ashley’s memory.

  21. Huck said on April 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm

    Lovely trib­ute. Thanks.

  22. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    No dis­re­spect intended, but “The Wire” is fea­tured on “Ace of Cakes” tonight. Food, “The Wire,” skewed pop-culch — it feels in keeping.

  23. Dexter said on April 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    “And I wish I was in New Orleans, ’cause I can see it in my dreams,
    Arm-in-arm down Bur­gundy, a bot­tle and my friends and me
    New Orleans, I’ll be there”

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​e​S​a​C​Q​ooqVLY

  24. Dexter said on April 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    same song…better ver­sion for a tribute:

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​X​Z​f​w​s​L​v​7​I​c​U​&​a​m​p​;​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​r​elated

  25. LIsaPal said on April 4th, 2008 at 1:58 am

    Nancy, this was beau­ti­ful. Beau­ti­ful. Just like the heart and soul of our friend.

  26. ann said on April 4th, 2008 at 5:39 am

    News from DePaul is that it was a traf­fic acci­dent. He was in Florida to set­tle his mother’s estate. Thanks for the great trib­ute, Nancy.

  27. Marco said on April 4th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Great trib­ute, Nancy. I only knew Ash­ley through the web since the lev­ees failed. He made me laugh and was a into more things than I could ever imag­ine. He loved NOLA like no one else. I like the Easter egg pix and your sug­ges­tion as to how his wife could find clothes.

  28. Uncle Merlin said on April 4th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    Wow what a great trib­ute Nance! One is always lucky to find friends in life that shoot from the hips ( or the broccoli)

    Sorry for your real (vir­tual) loss. But the gift is truly in know­ing him.

    Uncle Mer­lin

  29. Jennifer said on April 4th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Oh! I haven’t been here in awhile and for some rea­son, some­thing made me think of your site the other day. As the thought crossed my mind, so did the names I so often saw in the com­ments… LAMary, Dorothy, Brian, among oth­ers, and most of all, Ash­ley. What a shock.

  30. whitebeard said on April 4th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    I am read­ing all of Ashley’s com­ments, thanks to your blog, Nancy, and his was a fierce voice for New Orleans, the city that should not die. Only Ash­ley could write “HI, I BROUGHT THE HEROIN!” in the midst of deal­ing with his mother’s death in Florida.
    I saw my old news­pa­per boss at his mother’s wake and funeral this week and he was sur­prised and very pleased that I had shown up and called me a great guy to work with, even though some­times I was a pain in the keis­ter. Ash­ley was plainly a pain in the keis­ter as far as those fuck­mooks in New Orleans and Wash­ing­ton were con­cerned, but they deserved every heap­ing plate­ful of scorn he served them. Just read­ing words by him makes me a lit­tle teary-eyed and I am so new here that I barely know all the players.

  31. Sophmom said on April 5th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    This was won­der­ful. I wish I’d known his ADD story. It’s very much like my own.

  32. Ashley Morris Family Fund | Squandered Heritage said on April 6th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    […] the voices from all over the nets con­firmed his impact, and the […]

  33. Marcia said on April 24th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    I was late to find out about Ash­ley, and so very sad.

    I’ve neglected all of my online friends as of late, and this is a wake-up call that some of you mean as much to me as those in my real life.

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