In praise of my playlist.
It's not just a playlist...it's the monster big daddy-O of playlists and includes practically every piece of music that I can claim as favorites, and it shouldn't surprise you that there are many. Very many. Like over 4000 songs/tracks. It's like a musical biography of sorts. The music I enjoyed best from before I was even 10 years old (which explains the inclusion of the Partridge Family). Almost 50 years of seeking and finding new music, this playlist is where I've stored all the treasures and it is a constant reminder of how versatile and varied my musical taste has been throughout the years.
I whip out this playlist and put it in shuffle mode to mess with my head a little (never know what's coming next and you have to prepare for the next song being potentially a buzz buster. It's hit or miss on that front.
But here's what I want to do here, and you can listen to all the music if you want, this next little bit are some thoughts I had about what the algorithm is picking tonight, as it's been good starting with Devo's "Wiggly World" and then reeeally slipping gears for John Denver's majestically beautiful "It Amazes Me". Denver is, in my opinion, the single most under-rated songwriter in popular music. He was so far ahead of his time with his activism, his love of nature. "It amazes me and I know the wind will someday surely blow it all away"...that line just knocks me right out it's so insightful.
Nazareth are up next with their micro-rock opera "Telegram" (from Close Enough for Rock and Roll). It's about the band in the hours leading up to a rock show they're headlining, the soundcheck and eventually the performance. More an action narrative than a philosophical libretto but it's to be expected with the harder edge to the music and the singer's gruff vocal. I actually like his voice and have since the days of "Love Hurts" and "Hair of the Dog".
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds step up to the plate with a ballad from The Good Son, "Foi na Cruz". "Love comes knocking, comes knocking on our door...but you, you and me love, we don't live there anymore". I don't know what "Foi na Cruz" means but I can sure relate to the rest. How can you not love Nick Cave? I should probably listen to a lot more of his stuff than I do. It's just that it leaves me with this impression that my soul has been soiled by getting in so deep with his bad seed clique. It's one of two songs from The Good Son that made it to this king playlist, the other being "The Ship Song".
Surely I'm the only one who remembers "Corporal Brown" by Toad the Wet Socket (still reigning champion of Band With the Most Idiotic Name)...you may not recall the song or even the band but it's worth checking out if you're into REM and that 90s Counting Crows Gin Blossoms sound. Worth 3 minutes.
Howza ya like my playlist so far? Well here's where it starts to get a tad trippy. The acoustic version of "China Doll" by the Grateful Dead on the Reckoning album is by far the best I've personally heard. When the band modulates into the major key after meandering in a minor for the duration of the song until that point it will give you goose bumps. The solos are on point, the band so relaxed you can bet it was Indica stuffed in that pre-roll they must have shared before taking the stage... Jerry's singing voice matches well the weary tale of the teller. Reckoning is an album worth having, especially if you like the acoustic Dead (the entire concert is all acoustic).
Next up... it's "Plowed" by Sponge. Never was a huge Sponge fan but this one was fantastic and they had a song called "Molly" that I dug. And yes, it was about THAT Molly (Ringwald), perhaps you've heard them? One other song they did that was kick ass, "Rainin'", all of which made it to the list. Congratuations Sponge.
I used to have a higher tolerance for songs like the Moody Blues' "Ride My See Saw", it's still pretty cool, I couldn't leave it off the list. Two other Moody Blues songs on the list that I can recall, "Story in Your Eyes" and "New Horizons".
Next up, Lindsay Buckingham performing one of his more bizarre songs, "Bwana". I will not pretend that I could ever describe this song using any language which doesn't utilize a multitude of platforms, you see, it's just making me write silly things. If you've ever heard "Bwana" you'd understand what's happening here. But I'm sure most of you will not have heard it. Somehow made it onto the playlist with a handful of other great Buckingham songs.
I got all genres on this list. Including this Alan Jackson country hit "Someday". I know it well, having played it in a country band for over a year so there's a sentimental value attached that insures it's inclusion on this list. I do reserve the right to click through cuz I'm not in the mood for country...
"I Hear You Knocking" - Dave Edmonds. Holy Moly I was rocking to this song when I was a little kid, I remember it well. I was fascinated by the effect on the vocal and face it, it's the kind of song a kid SHOULD like.
To be continued
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Monday, March 9, 2020
Trigger's Revenge - based on a true event...yes, based on yours truly
Looking out his front door that cold winter afternoon he found himself lost in the fields just across the road. They must belong to someone, he thought, but to whom? He hadn't a clue. There were times he'd taken a fancy to calling them his own, seeing as how his family had shared the house for most of his 55 years. But the livestock that grazed the dry Oklahoma "cold-weather grass" didn't belong to him, nor did the wild animals and feral cats which lived nocturnally in those woods.
He wished he owned horses. Equine beasts would make good companions for the cows and a particularly large bull penned in behind cheap farmer's wire line. Barbed wire kept them from escaping their universe...his universe...the one where his father raised a beautiful black mare and a shetland pony someone had named Trigger.
It dawned on him, perhaps for the first time, that he never knew who had named the small horse. It didn't seem like the kind of name that would come from the imagination of the same person behind Tootsie (the well groomed female) and Penny (the foal, only recently born and still a tad wobbly in the legs). "Trigger" had to have been from the mind of a child.
Who knows? he thought. It could have been me that named her.
It may well have been, or more likely from his father's favorite, his brother that the moniker had been fitted for the animal, although it must be noted that Trigger's overall sluggish demeanor never merited the kind of vigorous nature you'd expect from Roy Rogers' steed. Heavy odds would pay off for any gambler who made a bet on Mr. Rogers being the sole inspiration...the only triggers he and his brother had ever known of were clutched between the fingers of heroes like Marshall Dillon, the Rifleman, the Cartwright family on the Ponderosa (and just what does the word "Bonanza" even mean???)...Have gun will travel, it was a strange saying to their pacifist ears, unfamiliar with violence.
Though he preferred the Sunday afternoon Monster Movie on Mystery Theater he would sometimes hold back pestering his old man long enough so that the part-time cowboy could finish watching a western. Somewhere along the line he'd picked up a taste for them, though he could not recall when it had happened or over which overwrought melodrama the conversion was experienced. He came to relish the time spent with his father and grew to love the look that came over the bearded face when the bad guy hit the ground.
And the horses. Of course. All the cowboys seemed to have been assigned a horse to convey them across desserts and plains, like indestructable automobiles that seemed awfully fun to ride. In those younger days he couldn't conceive of the downside, the saddle soreness, the need to be groomed, not to mention fed and watered...those responsibilities did not come across well on the cheap black and white television his mother had bought at an OTASCO store.
Fact is he may not have loved horses so much if he'd paid attention to his father's burden in caring for them and less about Hollywood cowboys. Like Dracula and Frankenstein those horses were nothing like real life. Real horses can cause heartbreak and despair just as easily as they can win events in races and rodeos.
The "pacifist cowboy" had grown up. He continued staring at the pasture land. Even now, knowing full well the investment of a good, healthy beast, he persisted in his self-inflicted ennui.
He must have a horse!
I could take care of at least a couple now, his train of thought obsessed with the idea. At last he caved in to a memory that reminded him why it had taken most of his life to even consider owning one.
He was perhaps seven or eight years old. He measured the age by how long his family lived in the Morgan road house subtracted from how many years since the move to the west side of town. He knew that anything that happened before that migration would place him at no older than nine at the very most. The horses had to be sacrificed in that move because the house his parents had bought shared no adjacent pasture land. It surely broke his dad's heart to lose those animals...knowing him, he probably cried...
He knew he was awfully young and this was one of his oldest recollections...
A black and white photo of him astride the pony was further evidence that it took place "at the old house". Apparently Trigger had been tamed when that picture was taken...
Or perhaps it was taken just before...
On that hot summer afternoon he spooked the horse. Maybe he accidentally kicked him, he never knew what enraged the Shetland but most definitely something had.
Bucking like the most fierce bronco in the Pro Rodeo circuit he took off running as if ponies were somehow capable of winning the Kentucky Derby and the Remington Park Annual race in one fell swoop. His rear end rose from the saddle involuntarily.
He screamed but held on to the reins for as long as he could. Now that the memory had lost much of it's sheen he would not be able to tell you just how far he'd flown before being rescued by gravity. Lucky, however, that he didn't break his neck, it was an extremely young age to have cheated the Reaper but only now did he think of it in those macabre terms.
How his father must have worried. How his mother must have yelled at him for letting "the kids" get on those horses in the first place, obviously they were too young. But his father wouldn't hear of it. He'd been forced at a very young age, by a death in the family, to work the Arkansas farm land from whence his family migrated to Oklahoma. He had a lot of expectations for his own offspring but lacked the education to understand what his mother saw so clearly...they had not raised cowboys. They were bringing up rock stars and you know what that means: a latent inability to recognize responsibility in favor of the dream that never comes true.
Trigger had his revenge, that was for sure, and he continued daydreaming about the scene, playing it backwards and forwards in his mind. He chopped it into a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle and relished each piece he found that fit into what he'd been able to retain...
His father, calling out his name, leaving his brother and the horses free to escape the pasture to run towards the inert body. The fear that would have been inescapable and easy to detect in his face...one of those bad TV westerns turned all too real... The sense of relief he must have felt like a wave when it was obvious there was no serious damage here, only a few bruises and a miracle.
Father was gone now and he came to one last realization. It wasn't the horses he'd wanted to roam in those woods across the old highway. It was the memory of the times shared with the rough handed full-time cowboy who gave it up to raise his children.
The dream wasn't even his, it belonged to dad who had already proven he could more than hold his own with the best equine breeds in local rodeos and in parades through town on Festival day... A man who made a name for himself not just as a working man, which is exactly what he was, but as a friend to many and well beloved. To be respected like that, yes, that's what he hoped he'd inherited from the man.
He turned away from the fogged pane of glass which had become a time machine and looked at his wife sitting in his favorite chair quietly darning her worn socks. He felt a wave of love rush over him so much like a tsunami that he was compelled to walk across the room and surprise her with a kiss. No particular reason.
She accepted it with a smile and a look in her eyes he recognized as true love. Closing his eyes he said a silent prayer for guidance and strength. Before he reached the Amen one last image of his own father broke through and he couldn't help but interrupt the communion with a sincere, heartfelt sentiment...
"Thank you, dad".
Paternal Grandfather and Great Grandfather
My paternal great grandfather, I don't even know his name. In fact I know nothing whatsoever about him wouldnt even know what he looked like if my aunt hadn't given me this picture to scan.
(thanks Wanda R.I/P.)
Here are a few more with my grandfather. Might post more later.
Paternal grandfather Sol Casey and my grandmother Anna Jane, the sweetest woman I have ever and will ever know in my life.
Sol with his first wife...I guess divorce must run in my family...
Pretty sure Sol is the one on the left.
No idea who the other two are. The whole lot are from Arkansas so could be just about anything.
The Sympathy of MIke Watts - a memoir
So here's the deal. I've spent a lot of time with a blog I maintained for about 1o years and was surprised at how much anecdotal and biographical information I'd allowed through what tiny filter I may have had back in those days. Intimate stuff, like the goings on during a night on stage with the band (Mad Laugh, if you want to know) and the events of the afterparty. Like the true tale of Mike Watt's sympathy.
I was the opening act for the band and I did about as well as could be expected. I didn't get hit by any flying vegetables (or the more potentially realistic risk of being beaned in the noggin with a billiards ball or a sucker punch from another bands bass player). Mike was playing bass for Mad Laugh at that time, as he had joined up with them immediately after I stepped out. He's a solid bass player, though his frenetic onstage demeanor sometimes resembled Sid Vicious on speed. This never took away from the music, the songs and performances of which were well polished by then.
On this particular night...remember, the gig I opened for them at (LiT in Brickton, OKC if you must know)...It was a great show but the club owners only paid the band $20 each and were not paying for the opening act, which wasn't expected.
So we get back to the house, a party in the works, Mike walks up to me and starts in with how it's too bad the manager fucked me out of what I deserved. Then he pulls his twenty dollar pay day from out of his jeans pocket and hands it over to me. "You deserve this, man".
I tell him I'm okay, I'm not broke but he insists, saying it's the principle of the thing. No one should have to play for free unless they have to and you're too good not get paid". Now I realize that sounds as if I'm being a tad immodest to suggest that he looked up to me as a bass player but he was very much impressed with the first time he heard me play Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Of course how can you not love a fan when you're not even in a band, maybe he was hoping to make an impression with the outpouring of generosity in what I understood to be was his last cash money...
He poked that bill into my shirt pocket and walked away, what's done is done. Never turned back...
...until about 2 hours later just before I was about to get in the car and leave. Apparently the need for cash money had presented itself to Mike Watt because here he come swaggering towards the doorway to stop me. I will not divulge my personal opinion of why he needed CASH money now, but damned if he didn't and damned if he didn't feel like a total ass coming back to ask if I'd let him have that 20 dollar bill back, "Something's come up".
I knew the score. It didn't bother me, after all, I wasn't broke, I didn't need cash. It was SO typical of the impression I'd formed of him over the year or so that I flew by his radar. I had to laugh and had no qualms in returning it to his possession, no hard feelings, would have done the same for you, right? Well I could have told him I'd spent it during the party or just flat out made a scene but not for that amount of money...
TL:DR... I don't get paid. Dude I know gives me his pay. Dude I know hooks up, needs cash back. Asks and recieves from generous author of this autobiographical essay.
I spent a long time in those old blog posts and they inspire me to write about the banal things in life that age like wine and good music, things forgotten and interesting to know were happening at the time I was writing. Perhaps not today or tomorrow but certainly in 10-20 years will become fascinating? And if to me why not to someone else? I get views on some of those pages all the time... The idea of blogging was fascinating to me back then, I think I might just have to give that muse the reins again cuz I'm bored as fuck over here... just kidding. Trying to be edgy. Failing.
Later Folks
I was the opening act for the band and I did about as well as could be expected. I didn't get hit by any flying vegetables (or the more potentially realistic risk of being beaned in the noggin with a billiards ball or a sucker punch from another bands bass player). Mike was playing bass for Mad Laugh at that time, as he had joined up with them immediately after I stepped out. He's a solid bass player, though his frenetic onstage demeanor sometimes resembled Sid Vicious on speed. This never took away from the music, the songs and performances of which were well polished by then.
On this particular night...remember, the gig I opened for them at (LiT in Brickton, OKC if you must know)...It was a great show but the club owners only paid the band $20 each and were not paying for the opening act, which wasn't expected.
So we get back to the house, a party in the works, Mike walks up to me and starts in with how it's too bad the manager fucked me out of what I deserved. Then he pulls his twenty dollar pay day from out of his jeans pocket and hands it over to me. "You deserve this, man".
I tell him I'm okay, I'm not broke but he insists, saying it's the principle of the thing. No one should have to play for free unless they have to and you're too good not get paid". Now I realize that sounds as if I'm being a tad immodest to suggest that he looked up to me as a bass player but he was very much impressed with the first time he heard me play Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Of course how can you not love a fan when you're not even in a band, maybe he was hoping to make an impression with the outpouring of generosity in what I understood to be was his last cash money...
He poked that bill into my shirt pocket and walked away, what's done is done. Never turned back...
...until about 2 hours later just before I was about to get in the car and leave. Apparently the need for cash money had presented itself to Mike Watt because here he come swaggering towards the doorway to stop me. I will not divulge my personal opinion of why he needed CASH money now, but damned if he didn't and damned if he didn't feel like a total ass coming back to ask if I'd let him have that 20 dollar bill back, "Something's come up".
I knew the score. It didn't bother me, after all, I wasn't broke, I didn't need cash. It was SO typical of the impression I'd formed of him over the year or so that I flew by his radar. I had to laugh and had no qualms in returning it to his possession, no hard feelings, would have done the same for you, right? Well I could have told him I'd spent it during the party or just flat out made a scene but not for that amount of money...
TL:DR... I don't get paid. Dude I know gives me his pay. Dude I know hooks up, needs cash back. Asks and recieves from generous author of this autobiographical essay.
I spent a long time in those old blog posts and they inspire me to write about the banal things in life that age like wine and good music, things forgotten and interesting to know were happening at the time I was writing. Perhaps not today or tomorrow but certainly in 10-20 years will become fascinating? And if to me why not to someone else? I get views on some of those pages all the time... The idea of blogging was fascinating to me back then, I think I might just have to give that muse the reins again cuz I'm bored as fuck over here... just kidding. Trying to be edgy. Failing.
Later Folks
Monday, December 24, 2018
O King Ego
Rumbling, booming, bass-heavy music seeped through the walls behind the stage of the Boomer Theater. Partitioned by one of those walls was a room, sort of a dressing room, a place where the bands and their entourage would rev it up before shows and then wind it down when the curtain was drawn.
On this particular evening the band responsible for the racket on the stage was a quartet from Paden, Oklahoma calling themselves Red State Hypocrite. It was a great name, to be sure, though they're brand of neo-psychedelic funk was not sitting pretty at the top of any charts. That meant nothing, all they were concerned with was the music and anyone who didn't understand that or had a problem wih it was invited to state his or her case before being pummeled by 5 high school wrestlers and a cheer squad leader (just in case it is a "her" case we're talkin' about here). The Paden alumnus used to pay those wrestlers in low grade weed but the cheer squad leader insisted on a modest salary in addition to the marijuana. She was surprised they gave it to her but even more amazed that the wrestlers never said a word about it. She figured they'd each and every one on 'em to a man be as jealous as a coon dog of the majestic German Shepherd.
Most of the Red State Hypocrites' followers/hangers-on/leeches were congregated in the front row, thanks to comped tickets from the Hypocrites management. They looked like synchronized automatons with their heads swaying to and fro in rythmn with the driving music, so loud you could feel it jiggling your guts.
Of these "fans" (if "fans" you can call them) there were only three who remained in the backstage room I described so eloquently for you in a previous paragraph. Everyone called them The Lynn Triplets. This innocent appelation was the result of much consideration concerning the uncanny fact that each one of them looked exactly like Loretta Lynn. Juxtapose that with the knowledge that the three women had, until only a month prior, never seen or known one another. That's right, strange but true, these dead ringers for Loretta Lynn were the same age and looked so much like the other and yet THEY WEREN'T ACTUALLY TRIPLETS! Not even born of the same parents! So you can see why they would inherit the title The Lynn Triplets even though they were not related to Loretta or even to each other.
Loretta 1 was doing something the real Loretta Lynn may have done although she's never confessed to it so I give her the benefit of the doubt, though it's hard to imagine...and yet, that said, I'm pretty sure Tammy Wynette used to get coked up now and then, didn't she? She was married to George Jones, for crying out loud, how could she have avoided it?
Loretta 1 could have cared less as she bent over the mountain of cocaine on a mirror on the coffee table. As she bent over Loretta 1 deftly placed a rolled up hundred dollar bill in her nose and buried it into the top of the coke mountain. With an enormous snort she felt the snow travel through her nasal cavity, up and into the brain. I confess that I have never snorted cocaine so therefore am unable to describe the effects the drug has on the individual. I'm told it's pretty intense. Others have told me it's TOO intense and that I would be best served if I avoided it completely. The ones who gave me the latter advice were intelligent, sage men whose opinions I trust implicitly. Because I have respected these gurus of western thought I have very little trouble avoiding it completely. Based upon what I have learned beyond the shadow of a doubt from them I am compelled to tell anyone who is considering trying cocaine and who, by reading this, is now encouraged to put his money where his mouth is. Join me in abstinence of the Peruvian Powder.
Loretta 1, her eyes now like bloodshot marbles, would not be able to tell you the last time she considered cocaine abstinence to be a desirable choice. Did I mention she looked a lot like Loretta Lynn? Holy cow, you wouldn't believe it. I mean, it's so weird, if someone told me it was really her in here and I walked through that door to encounter...I thought it really WAS Loretta...I encountered a country music legend who is not known for debauchery snorting a third line from a Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Loretta 2 watched the woman who could have been her twin sister choke on an off-kilter snort and her mind was filled with visions. She never told anyone about these visions. They involved a host of incarnated Hindu deities, the inventor of Mister Coffee and his wife, Beverly Coffee ("You can call me Bev"), the man who wrestled Tim McVeigh into the rocket capsule they blasted him into space in, herself as the denim-clad object in Conway Twitty's "Tight Fittin' Jeans", the cast and crew of The Young and the Restless, among other hopefully meaningful oddites.
As the Red State Hypocrites bashed out the closing chords to "Men of the Night, Unite!" Loretta 2 considered joining her newly christened triplet sister in front of that snow-covered mirror. The vision was starting to fade, aided by the slow, churning introduction to "Just Some 'o Jerry Seinfeld's Blues". With the loss of the distraction Loretta 2 was even more tempted to stick legal tender up in her nose for the sole purpose of inhaling the product of the coca leaf... We have never forgiven Coca-Cola for removing the coca leaf from their recipe. It now tastes nothing like it did and caffeine is a pale substitute for Peru's Finest (The Kind you hear about in Steely Dan songs).
Loretta 3 turned to Loretta 2 and said, "Are you gonna hit that thang or not?"
Loretta 2 turned to Loretta 1 to ask about the drug's quality. Loretta 1 didn't answer because she was passed out. Loretta 2 took this into consideration. On one hand the stuff had knocked Loretta 1 clean out of the stratosphere. She knew "1" was no beginner when it came to almost any mind-expansion project, if three snorts knocked her out cold in less than a minute that means I could probably get away with doing just one.
That was her way of thinking and she was probably right.
That's when I broke through the door and actually woke Loretta 1 up. They were startled when I made my grand entrance, talking about what they were going to do with "1" and daring each other to use more and more dangerous drugs.
"Stop this!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. All three of the Lynn Triplets gazed up at me as if I were some newly-returned Lord of the House who treats them well but indifferently.
"Are you going to talk to us about drugs?" Loretta 3 inquired.
"Yes I am," was my reply. "How did you know?"
"Oh, don't you worry about that but if you're talking about drugs you need to drag those Red State Hypocrites offa that stage and round up about half of the front row out there, you'll be able to tell which ones I mean, you'd better get a net, you'd better know how to use it, if you're going to pontificate on the evils of chemistry I ain't about to listen to it all by myself, 'specially when I know everyone else come here with those crazy Hypocrites is a lot closer to dealin' with the devil than I am...and I 'spect either of these two Loretta Lynn look-alikes feel exactly the same way about it."
"Sounds fair to me," I said...there was something I needed to say. Something that needed to be said. Something that may have been said already but if so I don't think any of these musicians, hipsters, hangers-on, hat-and-coat check boys have heard it. If they did they need to hear it again, obviously. "Round 'em up. I want everyone who came to this dive with the Red State Hypocrites right here in this room. And that includes the Red State Hypocrites. You especially."
Loretta 1 spoke, though her words were a tad garbled through a cotton mouth. "You heard the man! Round 'em up! We ain't done here until the last cretin is corraled and presented to Porpoise Pilot."
I told her to drink some water and keep her mouth closed. If what she had was contagious I think we'd all be doomed...and I'm not talking about her cotton mouth.
Long story short, the headbangers in the front row agreed to cease and desist with an emphasis on the desisting. At the time of this writing no less than 10 of the 12 front row plants were serving hard time in one of the correctional facilities operating in the state within which they were convicted and sentenced, some to death by lethal injection, some by the electric chair, some will even beg to get a firing squad there. Lotsa ways to do it, that's for sure. Anyone want to doubt it? Come on, bring it. Pick up your best, do it for us! Any old way you choose it, but your end result is always the same, you don't go out in the same way you came.
The Red State Hypocrites swore until their faces were collectively blue that they had no idea why they were being detained. It's true, they had no idea and they never found out when it was finally over. When the clock finally stopped ticking, no more o'clock, it's a thing of the past if you don't count the past in the same way as you do the present moment and the future. These guys had not a clue what they were talking about. I got the feeling this was the case in many more areas of their lives than what we're talking about here...I'm sorry, I forgot what we were talking about here.
The Lynn Triplets, along with the Red State Hypocrites and their drug-loving soulmates from the front row, all a captive audience.
I pointed at the Star Fleet patch I had personally embroideried onto my shirt. "Men, Women of the Starship Enterprise, Law enforcement types, water-bearers, authors of New York Times Bestselling Books, talk show hosts, light-workers for Magnetic Service, THIS is what Kryon says to you...Open your ears to hear, your heart will follow. You've come with me this far, let's not stop just yet."
The throng before me had taken to chanting a nickname they'd given me. "O King Ego! O King Ego! " I didn't know exactly what it meant, this Ego stuff. I assumed they thought my aloof posturings were more endearing. But "King Ego"? Really? Do I have to live the rest of my life branded, as it were, in my psyche, in that there will never come a day when I won't think of myself as "King Ego". Though I have no reason to believe that this King Ego persona is anything more than a Jungian joke told in the dry confines of a Golden Dawn hermitage, nevertheless like good soil for the sower I accept the seed, now I am cursed with the harvest: a new name branded on the most vulnerable part of my brain and then chiselled into my skull...King Ego. Yes. I own it. That's me, alright. That's alright mama, that's me! I am King Ego! O King Ego! O King Ego!"
In unison the Lynn Triplets said, "We christen thee, King Ego. You said you had a message, King Ego. O King Ego! The message. Deliver the message. We await, yea, we await to go home."
"I do. I do have a message for you. Especially for the young lady who doesn't think we can't see the powdered mask of cocaine that's somehow found itself attached to her face. Young lady, I want to tell you that this lifestyle is killing you. Statistics show that young ladies with your particular habits and peccadillios won't last too long if you keep it up at your present pace. You got to slow down. You got to stay off the drugs and I mean the drugs, you know what I mean."
The others in the room looked slightly disappointed. I didn't ask them why.
On this particular evening the band responsible for the racket on the stage was a quartet from Paden, Oklahoma calling themselves Red State Hypocrite. It was a great name, to be sure, though they're brand of neo-psychedelic funk was not sitting pretty at the top of any charts. That meant nothing, all they were concerned with was the music and anyone who didn't understand that or had a problem wih it was invited to state his or her case before being pummeled by 5 high school wrestlers and a cheer squad leader (just in case it is a "her" case we're talkin' about here). The Paden alumnus used to pay those wrestlers in low grade weed but the cheer squad leader insisted on a modest salary in addition to the marijuana. She was surprised they gave it to her but even more amazed that the wrestlers never said a word about it. She figured they'd each and every one on 'em to a man be as jealous as a coon dog of the majestic German Shepherd.
Most of the Red State Hypocrites' followers/hangers-on/leeches were congregated in the front row, thanks to comped tickets from the Hypocrites management. They looked like synchronized automatons with their heads swaying to and fro in rythmn with the driving music, so loud you could feel it jiggling your guts.
Of these "fans" (if "fans" you can call them) there were only three who remained in the backstage room I described so eloquently for you in a previous paragraph. Everyone called them The Lynn Triplets. This innocent appelation was the result of much consideration concerning the uncanny fact that each one of them looked exactly like Loretta Lynn. Juxtapose that with the knowledge that the three women had, until only a month prior, never seen or known one another. That's right, strange but true, these dead ringers for Loretta Lynn were the same age and looked so much like the other and yet THEY WEREN'T ACTUALLY TRIPLETS! Not even born of the same parents! So you can see why they would inherit the title The Lynn Triplets even though they were not related to Loretta or even to each other.
Loretta 1 was doing something the real Loretta Lynn may have done although she's never confessed to it so I give her the benefit of the doubt, though it's hard to imagine...and yet, that said, I'm pretty sure Tammy Wynette used to get coked up now and then, didn't she? She was married to George Jones, for crying out loud, how could she have avoided it?
Loretta 1 could have cared less as she bent over the mountain of cocaine on a mirror on the coffee table. As she bent over Loretta 1 deftly placed a rolled up hundred dollar bill in her nose and buried it into the top of the coke mountain. With an enormous snort she felt the snow travel through her nasal cavity, up and into the brain. I confess that I have never snorted cocaine so therefore am unable to describe the effects the drug has on the individual. I'm told it's pretty intense. Others have told me it's TOO intense and that I would be best served if I avoided it completely. The ones who gave me the latter advice were intelligent, sage men whose opinions I trust implicitly. Because I have respected these gurus of western thought I have very little trouble avoiding it completely. Based upon what I have learned beyond the shadow of a doubt from them I am compelled to tell anyone who is considering trying cocaine and who, by reading this, is now encouraged to put his money where his mouth is. Join me in abstinence of the Peruvian Powder.
Loretta 1, her eyes now like bloodshot marbles, would not be able to tell you the last time she considered cocaine abstinence to be a desirable choice. Did I mention she looked a lot like Loretta Lynn? Holy cow, you wouldn't believe it. I mean, it's so weird, if someone told me it was really her in here and I walked through that door to encounter...I thought it really WAS Loretta...I encountered a country music legend who is not known for debauchery snorting a third line from a Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Loretta 2 watched the woman who could have been her twin sister choke on an off-kilter snort and her mind was filled with visions. She never told anyone about these visions. They involved a host of incarnated Hindu deities, the inventor of Mister Coffee and his wife, Beverly Coffee ("You can call me Bev"), the man who wrestled Tim McVeigh into the rocket capsule they blasted him into space in, herself as the denim-clad object in Conway Twitty's "Tight Fittin' Jeans", the cast and crew of The Young and the Restless, among other hopefully meaningful oddites.
As the Red State Hypocrites bashed out the closing chords to "Men of the Night, Unite!" Loretta 2 considered joining her newly christened triplet sister in front of that snow-covered mirror. The vision was starting to fade, aided by the slow, churning introduction to "Just Some 'o Jerry Seinfeld's Blues". With the loss of the distraction Loretta 2 was even more tempted to stick legal tender up in her nose for the sole purpose of inhaling the product of the coca leaf... We have never forgiven Coca-Cola for removing the coca leaf from their recipe. It now tastes nothing like it did and caffeine is a pale substitute for Peru's Finest (The Kind you hear about in Steely Dan songs).
Loretta 3 turned to Loretta 2 and said, "Are you gonna hit that thang or not?"
Loretta 2 turned to Loretta 1 to ask about the drug's quality. Loretta 1 didn't answer because she was passed out. Loretta 2 took this into consideration. On one hand the stuff had knocked Loretta 1 clean out of the stratosphere. She knew "1" was no beginner when it came to almost any mind-expansion project, if three snorts knocked her out cold in less than a minute that means I could probably get away with doing just one.
That was her way of thinking and she was probably right.
That's when I broke through the door and actually woke Loretta 1 up. They were startled when I made my grand entrance, talking about what they were going to do with "1" and daring each other to use more and more dangerous drugs.
"Stop this!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. All three of the Lynn Triplets gazed up at me as if I were some newly-returned Lord of the House who treats them well but indifferently.
"Are you going to talk to us about drugs?" Loretta 3 inquired.
"Yes I am," was my reply. "How did you know?"
"Oh, don't you worry about that but if you're talking about drugs you need to drag those Red State Hypocrites offa that stage and round up about half of the front row out there, you'll be able to tell which ones I mean, you'd better get a net, you'd better know how to use it, if you're going to pontificate on the evils of chemistry I ain't about to listen to it all by myself, 'specially when I know everyone else come here with those crazy Hypocrites is a lot closer to dealin' with the devil than I am...and I 'spect either of these two Loretta Lynn look-alikes feel exactly the same way about it."
"Sounds fair to me," I said...there was something I needed to say. Something that needed to be said. Something that may have been said already but if so I don't think any of these musicians, hipsters, hangers-on, hat-and-coat check boys have heard it. If they did they need to hear it again, obviously. "Round 'em up. I want everyone who came to this dive with the Red State Hypocrites right here in this room. And that includes the Red State Hypocrites. You especially."
Loretta 1 spoke, though her words were a tad garbled through a cotton mouth. "You heard the man! Round 'em up! We ain't done here until the last cretin is corraled and presented to Porpoise Pilot."
I told her to drink some water and keep her mouth closed. If what she had was contagious I think we'd all be doomed...and I'm not talking about her cotton mouth.
Long story short, the headbangers in the front row agreed to cease and desist with an emphasis on the desisting. At the time of this writing no less than 10 of the 12 front row plants were serving hard time in one of the correctional facilities operating in the state within which they were convicted and sentenced, some to death by lethal injection, some by the electric chair, some will even beg to get a firing squad there. Lotsa ways to do it, that's for sure. Anyone want to doubt it? Come on, bring it. Pick up your best, do it for us! Any old way you choose it, but your end result is always the same, you don't go out in the same way you came.
The Red State Hypocrites swore until their faces were collectively blue that they had no idea why they were being detained. It's true, they had no idea and they never found out when it was finally over. When the clock finally stopped ticking, no more o'clock, it's a thing of the past if you don't count the past in the same way as you do the present moment and the future. These guys had not a clue what they were talking about. I got the feeling this was the case in many more areas of their lives than what we're talking about here...I'm sorry, I forgot what we were talking about here.
The Lynn Triplets, along with the Red State Hypocrites and their drug-loving soulmates from the front row, all a captive audience.
I pointed at the Star Fleet patch I had personally embroideried onto my shirt. "Men, Women of the Starship Enterprise, Law enforcement types, water-bearers, authors of New York Times Bestselling Books, talk show hosts, light-workers for Magnetic Service, THIS is what Kryon says to you...Open your ears to hear, your heart will follow. You've come with me this far, let's not stop just yet."
The throng before me had taken to chanting a nickname they'd given me. "O King Ego! O King Ego! " I didn't know exactly what it meant, this Ego stuff. I assumed they thought my aloof posturings were more endearing. But "King Ego"? Really? Do I have to live the rest of my life branded, as it were, in my psyche, in that there will never come a day when I won't think of myself as "King Ego". Though I have no reason to believe that this King Ego persona is anything more than a Jungian joke told in the dry confines of a Golden Dawn hermitage, nevertheless like good soil for the sower I accept the seed, now I am cursed with the harvest: a new name branded on the most vulnerable part of my brain and then chiselled into my skull...King Ego. Yes. I own it. That's me, alright. That's alright mama, that's me! I am King Ego! O King Ego! O King Ego!"
In unison the Lynn Triplets said, "We christen thee, King Ego. You said you had a message, King Ego. O King Ego! The message. Deliver the message. We await, yea, we await to go home."
"I do. I do have a message for you. Especially for the young lady who doesn't think we can't see the powdered mask of cocaine that's somehow found itself attached to her face. Young lady, I want to tell you that this lifestyle is killing you. Statistics show that young ladies with your particular habits and peccadillios won't last too long if you keep it up at your present pace. You got to slow down. You got to stay off the drugs and I mean the drugs, you know what I mean."
The others in the room looked slightly disappointed. I didn't ask them why.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Man Outside of Time - Chapter One
Mom's, or simply The Minit Mart, as some preferred to call it, was located directly across the street from the High School. For a long time the students were allowed to walk to Mom's for a microwave burrito and coke in lieu of the tasteless cafeteria food they would otherwise be expected to eat. There was a safety issue, in that one had to cross what could sometimes be a busy road in getting to the store; since it was a round trip they were required to cross that road twice. Luckily no one had ever been hit by a car.
There were a lot of people who chose to get their lunch at the Minit Mart. So many that the manager of the store decided to put up a sign that read:
5 STUDENTS AT A TIME LIMIT, PLEASE
THANK YOU
A good idea when I think of it now. But at the time it seemed the greatest inconvenience, especially in colder weather, to have to wait outside until the next guy came out. He was limiting the number of students so that he'd have a measure of control and be able to keep his eye on as many as he could. He wasn't about to have some punk freshman find a sweet spot out of his view where he could stuff some merchandise down his baggy trousers.
Everyone's prep routine was basically the same. Pick a burrito out of the wall refrigerator, slam it into the microwave...and these were days before every home in America owned a microwave oven, these were the days when you could find them in stores like Mom's just before they began to be released to the public. They packed a lot more wattage than the typical home microwave model when they eventually flooded the market. I only bring that up to place into perspective just how searingly hot those microwaved burritos from Mom's Minit Mart were. The only kind of burrito they stocked was called a "red hot burrito" and it was legendary for it's slowburn. The heat of the food combined with the spices and peppers come together to exact mighty revenge upon your tongue and the inside of your cheeks and palate. No problem, simmer it down with a 150 ounce Dr. Pepper that's weighing down your right hand while your left burns with the unholy sensation caused by red hot chili peppers and the like.
Jerry didn't have a whole lot of friends. He lived in a very enviable position. He went to High School in that small town and was one of the noon throng who chose to get their grub at Mom's Minit Mart. As a bonus, his home was only a couple hundred yards south of Mom's. This meant that he would always have an excuse to stop at Mom's Minit Mart to...well, face it, he was loitering. But he liked to talk to the old lady behind the counter and grumpy old granny she was she nevertheless acted like she liked him a little bit. Jerry and Lola, for that was her name, enjoyed each other's company. He rarely bought anything during these stops.
Jerry would sit on a concrete block situated directly to the right of the entrance door. Coming home from school meant that it was natural for him to be carrying along a notebook and a school text or two. Lola surely presumed that's what they were for, he was a student, after all.
Next to Jerry and his concrete slab of a throne was the magazine rack. Jerry was extraordinarily fond of magazines. Most any kind. He'd read almost anything if it's in a magazine. So when Jerry was at Mom's he always enjoyed looking through all the new issues of practically every magazine on that rack as well as the new comic books that were on a separate wire rack.
If you knelt down in front of the magazine rack and looked underneath the upper level shelf you'll find a "hidden shelf" stocked from one end to the other with glossy magazines designed to titilate and facilitate the pubescent male. Jerry was the dictionary definition of the pubescent male, though he may not have thought of himself in this manner. Perhaps he did, it would not shed a negative light on his prior testimony. These periodicals performed their essential tasks through the use of excessive and completely gratuitius nudity, airbrushed and designed to reprogram the pubescent and adolescent brain to desire a very limited number of body types...like, maybe 2 if you're lucky...I've lost the thread of me issue.
Jerry didn't know one way or the other if Lola cared that he was bending down on one knee taking in an eyeful of the glorious magazine covers that teased him. "You have no right," he would think. "I can't stand this. I've been uber klepto before, I ain't lookin' to exceed any of those past glories, just to git wot I won't and want what I got to git."
He took in the rags' names, so many that had become familiar over the past couple of months. Playboy, of course, was a mainstay. Had to have that one, for the articles, you know? No kidding. I learnt how to read real real good from Hefner's stapled book. I read Joyce Carol Oates. I read John Updike. I think I read Kurt Vonnegut. Playboy Advisor, man, did I learn how to be an expert in all things sexual! Heady interviews, man, you can't deny that. Seriously, man, the Interview is worth the cost of the entire magazine, bro! This is the truth! Everything else is just the sweet, sweet bonus! Do with it as you will. You may want to keep it hidden between your mattresses or under a chest of drawers. Somewhere your parents can't find them. I made the mistake of being a bit too open with my penchant for "Adult magazines". I shoulda known they would disappear during the week I was at church camp. Mother...Father...how could you have betrayed me like this?
Mother...
Father...
How could you betray me like this? You hated each other before I was born. No love lost for the firstborn spawn. I grew up in a house and a yard with a tree in the front and a tree in the back. One year tornado came through and left that house as good as new but those trees, oh my Jesus, those trees had been uprooted, both of them, and laid down on their sides as pretty as you please.
Jerry...can you hear me? I'm starting to have doubts.
I understand. Keep pushin' on.
I got to tell you one more thing about that house. It's really about the tornado too. And this is the God's honest truth, if I'm lying I'm flying, I don't take this kind of thing lightly so I'd appreciate it if you'd do exactly as I do in those respet. But listen and behold, for gospel truth is about to be told...
My dad's bedroom faced the east. I'm not sure if there's any significance in that but there very well may be and if anyone who reads this knows anything about it I wish they'd contact me soon as they can...a day or two after the tornado and we were surveying the damage. It looked as if it was going to be mainly the trees. We'd been lucky. That season several twisters pestered Lincoln County, we spent an unnatural amount of time underneath the ground.
I saw something shining on the ground in the brush outside my dad's bedroom window. I bent down to pick it up. The most uncanny thing...a practically perfect circle of glass! It could only have come from one place...but no! How? How could it be that there was a circle the exact same size cut out of the window pane?!?! It fit beautifully.
To this day I can't suss out in my mind how that circle came to be cut from the glass pane. I've heard of many strange stories about the things left behind in the wake of Oklahoma tornadoes but this one, to my mind at least. is right up there with the most baffling of 'em.
To Be Continued
Thursday, December 6, 2018
[Verse 1]
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 2]
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 3]
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warning
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
I heard ten-thousand whispering and nobody listening
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
I heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 4]
Oh, what did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
And who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman who her body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 5]
And what will you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what will you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-going back out ’fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it, and speak it, and think it, and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
Bob Dylan
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 2]
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 3]
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warning
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
I heard ten-thousand whispering and nobody listening
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
I heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 4]
Oh, what did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
And who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman who her body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
[Verse 5]
And what will you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what will you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-going back out ’fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it, and speak it, and think it, and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
[Chorus]
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall
A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall
Bob Dylan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)