Egypt Cemetery by Michael Hendrick

 Dearest Readers,

It seems like all we do on this page anymore is to apologize for not keeping up to date and blogging as usual, like last year. We have even gotten a warning from Amazon.com that if we do not post another blog, we shall no longer be published on the Kindle page there, so let us explain.

The novel, Egypt Cemetery, is a trip through the childhood of Michael Hendricks (yes, Hendricks), as seen by the author, as far back into the 1950s as he can recollect and taking him up to the sad year of 1971, by which time JFK, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, along with the ‘hippie scene,’ were all dead.

It is a story, it is a purging of the soul, it is what kids did back when kids were allowed to be kids and grown-ups were still allowed to yell at strange kids whenever they saw them up to something wrong.

Today, if you yell at a strange kid for riding his bike into traffic and nearly killing himself without realizing it, it is as good as starting a Third World War. Parents do not care if the kids are safe. They just do not want you to yell at them.

When we were kids, we got yelled at everyplace we went. Sometimes we got chased. Somebody was always after us, one way or the other. We did other things back then, besides get yelled at, that the youth of today will never have the opportunity to experience…like making crank phone calls. The closest you can get to that today is watching Bart Simpson make a fool out of Moe over the phone at Moe’s Bar on The Simpsons.

Nobody asks if you have Prince Albert in a can anymore, of if your refrigerator is running. All the fun has been stymied in the wake of caller ID. There is no more fun anonymity. There is no more good music on the AM radio. Monsters are no longer scary.

Today, a big issue is bullying. When we were kids, it was a free for all, as to who could heap the worst insult onto the next kid. If you got insulted, you shot back. We actually used to purchase ‘insult cards’ at the price of 25 insults for a dime. They were the size of business cards and said things like, “Get rid of 20 pounds of ugly fat…cut off your head!”…of “Its nice to see your back…especially after seeing your face.”

There was a whole industry devoted to helping us insult each other. Another good one was to take the theme song from a currently-popular television show and insert the name of your victim into it, while adding assorted rhyming jibes to the tune of the ditty. Or take the case of the poor unfortunates who were marked from the start just by the spelling of their last names…like Randy Nipples, who was doomed to a life of saying, “It is ‘Nip-PELS!” Sure we had our fun with his name but we played together, too.

The message is that childhood has changed. It is not as much fun…or it does not look it, anyway. In many ways, we are glad to be considered ‘old’, since the new world is not as much fun as the old one. In Egypt Cemetery, the author tries to present those innocent days of youth, before everything had a double meaning and things were what they appeared to be. It is not exotic, it is not earth shattering, it is not politically correct…it is the way it was before the internet robbed us of everything from regional dialects to colloquialisms to regional pride. We are all one big country now. We are all starting to sound the same. In the sixties, you could tell where a person came from as soon as they spoke. Not any more…even the charming and warm southern accent is fading, and that is a shame.

The cemetery pictured above is actually the cover photo for the book, taken by the author in County Tipperary, Ireland. His love of cemeteries began at with the Egypt Cemetery in Podunk, Pennsylvania.

Mr. Hendrick is an integral part of the writing staff here at CFYSA and we look forward to his return in July, or maybe even in June, once he has finished all the editing and writing of the novel. If you are hungry for some new work from him, you can get a copy of Beatdom Issue 11 ~ The Nature Issue. You can enjoy the front cover he conceived of Arthur Rimbaud (painstakingly drawn by the back-from-the-dead fingers of illustrator Waylon Bacon) or look at the tables of contents, which he photographed at two places which are very dear to him, his local library and the raptor sanctuary, where he has been a volunteer for fourteen years.

On the back cover, you can see the cover of Egypt Cemetery, as it will be published, and inside you can read interviews he conducted with Beat writer Ann Charters, country music legend Hank3 and punk rocker Richie Ramone, who was the fastest drummer in the fastest of the original punk bands. He also recently conducted an interview with punk icon Patti Smith, which will appear in Issue Number Twelve of Beatdom…The Crime Issue. Part of that interview is posted on www.beatdom.com .

So hold onto your hats and the fun will begin again soon enough. We just need Michael here to inspire us with some of his insane views that somehow seem to make sense in an insane world. He is almost done with the hard work and misses his readers very much.

He says we should say, “Hello!”

Dylan Blog Featuring Handicapped Bullies And Linda Ronstadt

Gentle Readers,Who watch your parking meters,

We find ourselves half-blindly pecking at the keyboard to give you an account of the Bob Dylan/Leon Russell show the CFYSA crew took part in this evening, or last night or last month or whenever you read this…to all Gentle Souls.

The trip to the show began with the drive to collect Ferd, who dressed surprisingly normally for a victim of dementia (haha), with the exception of too many gadgets, which posed later problems, as you shall see.  Ferd  saw the last Dylan show in the area with us and it was a great show but this one was better. The sound was spot-on, although we still heard morons in the parkinglot after the show saying ‘couldn’t understand a single word’. Perhaps if one has a vocabulary, one notices words and understands them and if one does not read and has no vocabulary further than rudimentary gobbles and the drive-thru menu at McDonalds, it would be hard to understand. They should buy a dictionary and try to read one book a year, for a start…then see if they understand.

So, the show was great and the setlist is available on www.expectingrain.com …the link is on the page above. We shall comment more on the event as a whole, rather than the sterling performance of the most influential force in pop music over the past 50 years. Ferd played a key part in the fun. While ‘dressing down,’ he still managed to be turned away at the entrance when they scanned us for metal items and found him to be carrying a knife, among other contraptions…ironic, since earlier in the day, we had told our close friend and confidant, Electra, about his gadgets and about his cap with the four mini-mad-lights on the brim, with a flashing light for good measure, and the knives and radios and Three Stooges Zippo and the myriad of junk he carries. Electra was amused but nonplussed at why a person should outfit themself in such a way.

At the Main Entrance, he was sent away, instructed to hide his knife under a rock…which he did and after standing in line again - while we drank cider inside the venue - he entered and was proud to note that they only found one knife and that the better one was in his back pocket. Why do we need knives in this day and age…portable knives, not at the workplace, that is? They come in handy for crude types to pick their teeth with but are an inconvenience, otherwise, as evidenced by Ferd’s second trip through the entrance gate, where he still ‘beeped’ on the security equipment; but they were so tired of him they just flagged him through…terrorists, take note! haha…

As enjoyable as the show was (the highlight for me was Dylan playing guitar while singing Beyond Here Lies Nothing, the first song on his latest LP, and theme song for the first season of some hoodie-kid-vampyre=tripe show, the name of which escapes us in our slight inebriation, post concert…True Blood perhaps?) we were disturbed by an idiot urging us to sit down. Our seats were in Row 13, so twelve rows of standing flesh would have blocked our vision, were we to comply. It turns out the person was handicapped and did not want to sit in the section where he could have seen the show nicely. Perhaps he was being independent by shining his flashlight in the faces of four rows of people while hissing/begging, “sit down, you bastards!!!” …Not an effective approach!

He poked Your Humble Narrator in the back twice with his finger, Your Narrator being 6’4” and often suspect of shenanigans when tall people are guilty of things…but personal intrusions like poking are bullying behaviour and we had to inform the patron that his index finger would soon be handicapped, should he poke one more time…an empty threat but effective.       

Handicapped people at public events can be quite mean. They expect special attention but do not make arrangements ahead of time. Some people have themselves declared as handicapped just to get a good parking space. More power to them? Having cheated cancer the hard way, we have no mercy…we live on borrowed time, so do not disturb!

Also, another bully memory goes back to the 1970, when we were in the employ of a regional daily newspaper and, having carved a niche in entertainment writing, was sent to do a review of a Linda Ronstadt show, when she was at the height of her fame. This was in the 1970s and Ferd was home on leave from the Navy and we were bending the rules of chemical consumption and blending hallucinogens, when it occurred to Your Humble Narrator that a story was due at the city desk by 1030pm…Putting two words together was a challenge, much less opining on the performance of songs we were only half-familiar with. Heart Like A Wheel was her best LP to date but she had gone pretty commercial. While not knowing what to write, the City Desk waited…Deadline waited…and so we made our way to a payphone in front of an ice cream vendor and put a dime in it…yes, a dime, and yes…a payphone!!!

The editor, a true friend, was helpful, writing the story for us while pumping for details so it sounded like he was writing about an event that actually happened! The reporter’s notebook in my hand contained most of the names of the songs she sang, but that was it, aside from what she wore. He took the information and crafted it into an acceptable concert review, slapped my byline on it and saved my career - but it took a bit of time to get the facts over the phone to him.

Dimes were no problem, compared to what was to come next. A small army of handicappers in wheelchairs surrounded me at the phone. Our brain was split betwen two realms of psychedelia. These pushy, wheely cretins wanted to call to get their ride home.  They deserve the designation of ‘cretin’ due to behaviour, not handicap. 

The story was only half done and the phone could not be given up. By the time we finished phoning in the story, no less than ten handicappers were cursing me with tongues a-snarling and using language most foul, they waved canes menacingly…multiple canes ready to strike…it is always shocking to hear the infirmed curse you and wish you unwanted anal penetration and this is not a blanket indictment of all people in wheelchairs. They were mean. They were bullies in wheelchairs. They have a way of milking the sympathy out of a person to get away with anything. Shocking, is what it is!!!

It reminds us of Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo in Kiss Of Death…

If this blog seems intolerant, it IS. We paid close to $90USD for those seats and we do not need to be stressed in our post-cancerous state, It is stressful. It is mean. It is bullying…from now on, we think twice about “hiring the handicapped” and will only hire the ones who have good manners…because manners, Dear Friends, are the glue that holds society together!!!

 

Do Police Get Tested For Drugs and Steroids????

           Gentle Readers,

Forgive the fomatting, as the PC is still vexing us.  Speaking of vexations, many are disturbed by the presence of man-made monsters, one of the most famous of which is Frankenstein’s Monster.  Some people refer to the monster simply as ‘Frankenstein’.  There are a lot of these Franskenteins in the world, the most famous being the United States Government.  We create and enable them and then they rattle the chains, break loose from the stone walls of the government buildings and come create nightmares in our lives.

At one end of the scale we have Bracarat Obama, Disaster in Chief of These United States and on the lower, lower, lowest end of the scale are those we pay to protect ourselves and our property…the police.  Currently, the Obama administration is using these police as a tool of terror and fear as it employs them into the Neverending War we are involved in.  It used to be nice when wars ended. 

It also used to be nice when a police officer was a sign of safety, not a call for fear.  On Youtube, for instance, you have numerous instances of police beating innocent motorists because the civilians have the temerity to film the jackboot thugs in action.  These days, if you buy a gun or a camera, you need to buy both, not one or the other.  If you buy a gun, you need a camera to show the unjust way the police treat you when they try to take it away from you.  If you buy a camera, you need a gun to protect yourself from being beaten by officers wearing uniforms that you paid for.

We pay a lot in taxes, to the fed, to the stores but most disturbingly, to our local governments.  In our instance, we must pay several thousand to the school district, even though we have never spawned a child.  Why do we have to pay for the education of a bunch of little wankers when we had the good sense to ‘keep it in our pants’?  We pay for our trash to be collected and we just has an increase in our water and sewer bills.  So if you pay for the water, the schools, the trash and sewer – why do you have to fork over even more cash to have the township collect all the other checks we send?  We have to pay the police, of course.

Did you ever get pulled over for speeding or some other minor infraction of traffic codes and have some beast with ‘roid rage bark at you through the window, while flexing biceps which are unusually bulging with veins, like those veins in his neck as he screams at you for asking a question.  If you are like us, and have long hair and look like a liberal, it is even worse.

If noise comes from our yard, we are confronted by one of these monsters.  It has not happened for a long time.  If noise comes from another yard and we call the police, the chief tells us that they do not have equipment to measure decibels and so the ordinance is unenforcable.  So we are paying to have laws unenforced.  A judge told us to sue the township but the fear of harrassment stops us.  If a neighbor is persistent in destroying a section of our property and the cops are called in, the focus is not on the neighbor who is trying to build on my property…we get grief because the officer sees long hair and for some reason ‘roid ragers hate that.  Maybe because a lot of them go bald from using the stuff.

This is a bigger issue than our yard and long hair, however.  The drug war, which is the biggest waste of money ever to face a country which cannot balance a budget and even threatens to take Social Sevurity away from senior citizens. allow police to search homes, yards, automobiles, test your breath and your blood.  In all our years of paying taxes, we have never seen a breakdown which shows payments for drug tests on policia.  A lot of them are known to confiscate drugs and keep them for personal use and it is obvious that many of them use steroids in order to be bigger and stronger than the bad guys…they do not realise that the rage induced by the steroids makes them criminal in the cranium.

Office workers, Walmart workers, garbage truck workers, forklift operators…all of these people are subject to random drug testing…what about the police? The dangerous ones with the guns, pepper spray and lots of buddies to help beat on you.  If you pay a tax, you should demand that police be tested for drugs and, specifically, steroids.  Why would anybody be afraid to do this unless they were terrified of the thugs?

We know that not all police are bad.  Our own grandfather was a typical drunken, irish paddy precinct copper.  He used to beat his wife and kids and they did not even have steroids back then.  The thing is…just pay attention the next time you get pulled over or see somebody else in that unfortunate position.  See if the cop is red in the face.  See if the veins in his neck look ready to pop.  See if you can make him chase you by taking his photo.

They had cops like this in Nazi Germany and also in Russia, back when it was the Soviet Union.  Then, America was too good to allow such shit.  Not anymore.  This weekend, when you are on your way to a fun event and notice the ton of cops on the highway, earning overtime while getting high on confiscated pot, think about the fairness of them NOT being tested regularly.

Bullies and Insults and Bears, Oh My!

     Interested Entities,

     It seems like the national anti-bullying campaign is still gaining steam.  It has nothing to do with Beatdom, the cool literary journal pictured.  I couldn’t find a good bully photo fast enough so it seemed to make sense to remind you all to get your copy of the Beatdom Sex Issue, which features some fine writing, including a few pieces by Your Narrator.

     However, with all the anti-bully rhetoric floating around, we cannot ignore that a large number of readers are brought here by searching on ‘insult,’ due to a recent post.  As an insult maven who sharpened his teeth on gritty replies as early as the second grade, this is found to be an encouraging sign…people are interested in insulting each other again.

     First, let it be known that, as an adult, Your Beloved Scribe, myself that is, only insults people I like.  An insult can be used a little term of endearment…a psychic poke in the ribs.  As far as people who are not liked, they are better off ignored and the insults saved for better subjects.

     One recent blog here noted how ‘insult cards’ were once available at magic and novelty shops.  These were meant to get laughs on stage when your magic trick went wrong, we reckon, but personal use of them was limited to siblings and schoolmates.  One great moment, never to be forgotten, was finding a copy of 1001 Insults For All Occasions in the adult section of the Whitehall Library, in Whitehall, PA.  As a bad kid, reading and writing were the only redeemable values going for me.  By fifth grade, the children’s section was exhausted.  All the Henry Huggins,  Beezus and Ramonas and other serials had been exhausted.  My perception level was not subtle enough to appreciate adult novels but the non-fiction section was a big draw for me.  At that time, in the mid-60s, the library had maybe a half dozen books of insults.

     Needless to say, they were all devoured voraciously.

     There are many resources available to us today, for insulting people all around the world.  My close friend and publisher, who spent a lot of time dealing with Korean insults, may appreciate the following.  I think it is nice to have a site that allows you to annoy foreigners, for a change.  www.insults.net will help you swear in dozens of languages.

     This is what they give you to go up against the Koreans in a battle of words:

How do I swear in Korean ?

Ssibal-seki /
Samanes-seki            - Son of shit
eemee sheemee pek 
     poejee dah         - your mother has a bald pussy
Geseki                  - Son of a bitch

Yumago                  - fuck you

shibseki                - bitch, whore etc.

Ko-chu-pado             - suck my dick

Kochu                   - dick
Dong-mogo               - eat shit

K-sa-key                - bitch

She-pa-nom              - No exact translation but bad
Ja - shick              - You are a bastard.

     This is how they do it in Korea.  As you can see, they are not exactly a well-thought-out style of insult.  These are more like the type of insult you holler out of a car window.  You do not see much of that, anymore, either.  In younger years, one could not be seen in public, walking hand-in-hand with a girl, without some moron driving by and yelling out the car window, “Fuck her! I did!!!”

     You just don’t see this much anymore.

    

Facebook – Friends and Enemas, Part II

     Gentle Readers,

     Since so many of you were interested in the subject of the last blog and, since Your Humble Narrator had a nasty virus, we shall pick up where we left off – with poor, pissed-on Wankie and his appearance on the ‘friends’ pages of the same people who stole his car, poisoned him and pissed on his noggin.

     First, you will notice that today’s photo is one of a public library.  This is not the library I grew up with…this is just a library I happen to have a picture of.  It is the Reading, Pa., Public Library in the center of the city.  I have the photo because it is the first time I ever held a protest sign.  That is me, behind the sign with the Converse Chuck Taylors sticking out from beneath it.  I had two libraries as a child, a great one in Whitesboro, NY, which used to be an Underground Railroad station which had secret tunnels for hiding slaves; my other library in Whitehall, PA, was an excellent one, too,  since it was a brand new building and had tons of new material and a huge kid’s section.  This was the library where Your Narrator first threw up as a result of nicotine overload at age ten.

     When vomiting, you are pretty helpless.  Locked in that bright, well-lit library lavatory, spewing the broth with the librarian rap, rap, rapping on that door,  the puking was private until the door was opened by my ghostly form, sweaty and white as sun-dried bone.  It is best to be left alone in one’s misery.  Do Unto Others, as they say.

     So, that being said, mostly by way of ADHD-fueled diversion,  it was never my pleasure to see anybody suffer, aside from siblings when growing up.  My old man was a boxer in the US Marine Corps divisional matches.  My brother was a master of martial arts, Black Belt in Judo, Karate and Martial Arts Weaponry, all.  Much of this writer’s childhood was spent hiding from some bigger, older kids who were always rumored to be ‘after him’.  The urge to hurt others never took seed in me.  On the other hand,  my father and brother never got laid very much (judging by their childlike unfamiliarity with the sex act) and it is better to be a lover than a fighter, anyway.

     The kids who chased me were usually two or three years older, in high school and short…short as in sawed-off, as in runt.  Over six feet tall going into the seventh grade,  the target was on my back.  The library was devoid of this type of juvenile as well as most all the kids who went to school with me.  None of them cared much about reading.  Even in high school, only one or two were anywhere near approaching the state of ‘book smart’.  The library was sanctuary.  The outsider behaviour came early to me.  My friends were books and my dog, the ever-faithful Gus.

     But that is okay, since being an outsider kept me away from most scenes like the one described in the previous blog.  However, let us revisit that behaviour and ponder a few things.

     What real joy do we get from pushing somebody to the limits, using the most uncivilized behaviour?  Worse yet, how do we still find joy in incidents which openly point to our own depravity?  How do you find joy in what would be dubbed ‘torture’ if it were performed in Gitmo Bay?  We all do irresponsible things as youths but isn’t it a bit sick to revel in them forty years later when, as adults, we should own our actions in the name of either Karma, Christ or culpability?

     Worst of all, how do you ‘friend’ a person who has poisoned you and urinated on your shag hair cut?  How do you see the faces of people who stole your car, your weed, fed you treefrogs while hungover, laughed the whole time – how do you send a message to ask them to be your ’friend’?  Of course, we have always let bygones be bygones but some things are too warped to be bygoned.  Is it short memory?  Is it a desperate attempt to hold onto your school days?  Is it proof that the drugs in the 1970s were really that good and so such incidents are seen through a warm and dreamy haze of comfortability?    

     When queried as to why Wankie appears on the ‘friends page’ of these guys, they patently denied it…which was stupid since he was right there on the screen, in alphabetical  order.  When it was pointed out that they had to manually accept him as a ‘friend’ for his profile to show up there, it always seems to have been an accident.  “How did he get in there,’ they ask aloud. 

     Many of these guys married early, made homes, got taken by their ex-wives and are starting over.  Some of them hate women because of the grief caused by premature marriages which gutted any hope of an exciting future and bank accounts gutted by exes who got tired of coming home to hear the strains of Genesis drifting out of the windows.

     Can you get therapy for things like this? Certainly if you are the pissee as opposed to the pisser,  the need for therapy is probably a personal thing that begs to be answered in the recesses of the mind of the put-upon.  What kind of therapy do you give adults who still find this sort of stuff to be funny?  That is the real question.

     These days, ‘bullying’ is a big issue.  Considering the way kids acted when we grew up, the ‘bullying’ of today is small potatoes.  Kids need a certain amount of denigration to put them in place.  It toughens them up for the world of Facebook.