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!”

From the Poetry Corner ~ What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stranger

 Gentle Readers,

 While not every poem we write is a great one, sometimes we write them anyway. We realize it is time for a blog and Ferd hasn’t done anything noteworthy to report on today, so why not just take the time and take this rhyme and maybe enjoy it and maybe not.

 It was on a piece of paper next to the laptop when we woke up, so we may as well share it here and then we do not have to stick it in a drawer with all the other poems on loose leafs.

 Our eventual friend, Mr Happy Death, awaits us all, so we may as well give the devil his due and what better way than with some good, old-fashioned poetry?

 

Many times in this short life

I’ve put myself in danger.

Looking back, I came to know

what didn’t kill me

made me stranger!

 

Nobody leaves this place alive…

on that I’d always wager.

If you can say a better way,

tell me what it is.

I’ll trade you.

 

It always goes that way

but there’s still no need to pray

Earth is worth a dearth of mirth.

Why give birth to dismay?

 

Golden flowers on the quay

float, and bobbing, drift away.

They twirl and whirl, unfurled, then curl.

Surely, sinking ends their day.

 

~

And that is it,  Dear Readers, nothing heavy, nothing lengthy, just a little verse spilled over the wall. A short blog for a rainy day.

By Popular Demand (sort of) The Fabulous Ferd!

 

Since we started this blog about one year ago, we have introduced you to the ignoble character of Ferd.

While we are told we could not make such a person up if we tried, we often wonder why we would try.

 

Here you see a photo of the man, himself, drunken – on our money, as usual – on strawberry drinks at ChiChi’s, the once popular chain of ‘mexican’ restaurants.

Personally, we do not know how that chain lasted as long as it did, as to me no restaurant can call itself truly ‘mexican’ unless they have tamales on the menu.

ChiChi’s, coincidentally, is the only place where Your Humble Narrator ever worked in food services. That was enough.

 

So, about Ferd…what do we say, how do we explain?

First, let it be known that he has known Your Narrator since the tender age of eight years old. He remembers things that have vanished. He validates our (my) childhood by being the only other person who can remember it.  A year older, he claims he met Your Narrator at the Egypt Playground in the sandbox, when we threw sand on him

at age seven. It has been pretty much the same ever since.

 

We also went through quite a few psychedelic experiences together, even having had the same hallucination at the same time.

We believe this psychedelic connection formed a bond between he and we (the editorial we, as explained in The Big Lebowski by The Dude), as evidenced by the way we came into contact with him after 18 years of not seeing him.

An annnoying jackass was sending me drivel that he called a novel about his time in the US Navy. He sent me some every other day and thought it to be amusing but, as with many writers, he produced useless crap. His useless scribblings being about the Navy reminded us of the box of letters received from Ferd during his time on the high seas. One day, we dug out the box and looked at one letter. It was funny and showed a sense of style and humour which have long since been given up to the dementia of what is known as a ‘wet brain’.

Anyway, that very night we had a dream, a dream that Ferd was in some kind of trouble. It was not Ferd in the dream. The image was of Your Narrator, standing in a doorway, sweating. We knew it was Ferd, even though it looked like us. That is how dreams are.

It did pique the curiousity, however, and after 18 years we decided to look Ferd up…which is not too hard. We took to the internet and after finding a few embarrassing news articles which found him involved in strange behaviour, we procured the address and phone number.

Upon calling the number, we were greeted by the long-unheard voice of Ferd.  He was stinking drunk and had no idea who we were. We tried to make sense to him, until a shrill voice shouted from the background, “If you do not get off of that phone right now, I am leaving this minute!’…whereupon the phone was hung up on his end.

Imagining this to be a singular event, we tried the call the next day. Still drunk, we felt his mind reel over the wire. Then, using a phrase that was shared between only he and we, we managed to startle him into a brief moment of cognizance…”Mike…?” He sputtered. “Ferd!” We replied, to which he countered, “I had a dream about you the other night, you were standing in a doorway!” Amazing but true, how the common bond formed by the use of the funny stuff kept us so connected after so many years.

So, we made plans to get together and picked up our association with each other. He is too stupid to be a friend, so he says we are his ‘friend’ and we say, ‘He is our Ferd.’

 

When this blog started it had a slightly different title, which was Celebrating 50 Years of Substance Abuse. An opportunity showed itself, a while back, to see what LSD had become in the 21st Century and also to be able to achieve tripping over the course of four decades, just to be able to say so. We can tell all of the parents out there not to worry if their child has taken the acid of today. It is as weak as a baby kitten. We paid $20 a hit for what was called ‘triple-dipped’ blotter and had high hopes of a happy high.

Since Ferd had tripped with us a minimum of 400 times, we figured it best to employ him in the test of today’s intoxicants.

Not having used such stuff since the 1990s and way before the death of our parents, it was with a small bit of trepidation that we suggested to Ferd that we retire to our house to try the stuff. We arrived and, since it was supposedly ‘triple-dipped’, took a half a dose each. In the 1990s, a quarter dose of a single tab would be enough to elicit euphoric blissfulness.

We swallowed it and sat on the sofa, listening to Bob Dylan while watching him on Youtube. We started to feel a little ‘sproingy’ in the joints, that rubbery feeling in the elbows and knees, like there is great power there trying to take over us.

We didn’t feel much else, to be honest, and the whole affair seemed pretty mundane until the moment Ferd spoke.

“Opie got in trouble with his bike on the sidewalk,” he offered.

“What???,” we queried him, “the fuck are you talking about?”

“You know,” came his voice from his dazed haze, “When that rich kid told Opie it was okay to ride his bike on the sidewalk and he got in trouble with Barney.”

Incredulous, we thought about that last statement, until it dawned on us, “You are talking about the Andy Griffith Show? From the 1960s?…and you expect me to know what you are talking about.”

“Well, you know,” he countered, “Barney told him not to go on the sidewalk…”

Waves of laughter finally rolled over us, just like in the old days. Ferd sat there, uncomfortably wondering what was so funny. Everytime we stopped laughing and looked at him, we started involuntarily guffawing. It went like that for a couple hours. Everytime, we stopped laughing, we thought of Barney and the laughter returned, while Ferd sat – literally - twiddling his thumbs. It still makes us smile but it was also a sad moment because that was when we realized that the wet brain had affected Ferd to the point that he was no longer ‘with it’. He had gotten old in his mind. He had become the very thing we used to make fun of, with his beer-belly and tv addiction.

Having undertaken numerous attempts to bring him into this century, we finally gave up. We spoke to a shrink about it, who told us that Ferd was ‘demented’. Laughing out loud when the doctor spoke the word, we drove immediately to the home of Ferd to treport the findings.

“I am NOT demendet,” he insisted. His inability to say the word properly resulted in even more laughter and this was weeks or months after the Opie Incident. Since then, he asks regularly how to spell ‘demendet,’ so he can look it up and see if he really is. We do not give him that satisfaction.

 

One thing to consider here is that Ferd is probably the only person we know who we can post a photo of on the internet and he does not care. He does not have the internet. We created an email address for him and encourage him regularly to get a PC from the Veterans Administration or go to the library, even if it is just to watch videos of Bob Dylan or Barney. We tell him that we write about him but he is unphased. He does not care.

That is typical of Ferd, as one thing we can say on a positive note, is that he has never been known to do harm to anyone. He is pretty much incapable of being mean. He is too dumb. We will tell him we wrote this and posted his photo and he will blow it off like yesterday’s fish and chip papers. At least he remains himself and maintains his own character – which is a lot more than we can say for most people these days.

Thank The Supreme Court And Ferd For This Post (contains explicit language)

Gentle Readers,

Given the subject matter in this blog, we tried to find a nice ‘lunatic’ image but ended up with an image of a ‘luna kit’ and since it is a cool image we may as well just go with the flow and take what our graphics department comes up with!

Why a lunatic? Ferd is quoted here, that’s why the lunatic!

Ferd does not have a computer and does not even have an email address. We told him we were writing about him several times but he has never taken the time to look at the screen to see what we say. That said, let us consider that the Suprme Court recently took all penalties off of using foul language and determined that is is perfectly legal to write, type or speak the words ‘fucking asshole‘.  We find this reassuring to know that when we are pulled over for yet another traffic violation, we are allowed to exclaim, “Thanks a lot, you fucking asshole” to the ‘officer’ who has cited us.

Thanks to our cultural heroes, it is now legal to curse in public and it is with the blessings of the High Court that we relate the following:

One recent hot, sunny Summer day, we found ourselves at the door of Ferd’s domain. Outside and sitting in the sun with no water and not enough leash to reach the shade was his cat, Willie. After pounding on the door, waking and berating him, he unhooked Willie and took her inside (“her” because Willie is short for Wilhelmina). Willie flopped on the floor, exhausted. We questioned Ferd on the lack of water for Willie, at which point he filled a bowl and Willie immediately started to lap it up. Feeling sorry for poor Willie, Your Humble Narrator looked at Ferd and called him a fucking asshole.

Many people would take humbrage or offense to such a remark but Ferd took it in stride. In fact, he complimented me on it. He recounted a day, some 40 years earlier, when Your Narrator was with a group of school friends and Ferd. Pot was pretty unavailable and five of us stood in a circle while the bowl was filled with our last remaining stash. Putting a light to the bowl, we took the first toke and passed it to Ferd, who immediately dropped it on the ground, where the remains could not be recovered.  Everybody cursed him, even himself. This incident had long been forgotten, albiet in the the mind of Ferd. He recounted the occasion and how we had called him a fucking asshole forty years earlier.

“You know,” said Ferd, seemingly amused at being insulted, “Do you remember that time I dropped the bowl?”

“No,” we countered, “and what does that have to do with anything and why can’t you take care of your cat?”

Blowing off the bit about the cat, he related the story of the dropped bowl. “You sound exactly the same calling me a fucking asshole today, as you did when you called me a fucking asshole forty years ago. I can close my eyes and it is like going back in time.”

Great, we thought, a fucking asshole in a timeless warp…or ‘Ferd…An Asshole Through the Ages’…

We thought this was humorous enough but, more recently, we were moved to refer to Ferd as ‘an imbecile’ and he objected strongly to the remark. He had his reasons. He said that being an imbecile was a part of normal human development and that he had passed that stage.  As he put it, “You are born, and from the time you ‘come out of the shute’ you are an imbecile. Then, later you develop into an idiot, until you become a moron. These are the stages of a child’s brain development. I read it in a book!”

We are not sure what book Ferd had his nose in that time – or what he had his nose in before he looked at the book – but  we actually searched the internet to see how he could have come up with such a classic way of distinguishing between inbecility and idiocy. Being a master of both, we almost hoped to find something to support his jive but could not find a single thing to back him up.

He must be a moron. 

 

One From Far Left Field And Past The Poetry Corner ~ repost

 Gentle Readers,

Today we bring you a bit of poetry that has been hidden for decades like a gem waiting to be found or a snake under a rock, coiled and waiting to strike. A recent discussion of the film The Doors left us wondering if our copy of the Jim Morrison poetry book The Lords and The New Creatures  was a first print or not.  It was on a shelf in the bedroom, so upon retiring last evening, we pulled it from the shelf to find it is a second printing.

However, we did find a few curious things sticking out from inside, one being a poem scribbled on a Chi-Chi’s mexican restaurant receipt and the other was a vitriolic poem, apparently written as an insult to Your Humble Narrator, and judging from the timely reference to Phil Donahue, a TV celebrity from the 1980s, we estimate it was written somewhere around that era.

This is a poem left by an ex. It could be an ex-wife, ex-girlfriend…sounds more like an executioner…anyway, it was fun to fall asleep laughing, really laughing hard.  The poem is quite an effort and since we always are the first to laugh at ourselves, we are more than eager to share. The poet shall remain unknown and un-named but it could be the same character who appeared in Issue 8 of Beatdom, assaulting Your Narrator with a rubber chicken.

Let’s read:

 My Mind is a wasteland

so is my cat’s eye’s. (sic)

Snow drips off my chest

as my nipples are licked.

Fire in my microwave,

frozen in my freezer -

just pull the plug.

Rat poison in my wineglass

better put it in it Mom’s, instead.

Go ahead and try to distract me

you piece of ‘naive crap’ Poet!

Go rub your balls on frosted glass.

No wonder why women lick tweeter

instead of peckers…

less of a distraction.

Slime covers my earlobes,

you are not good enough

to lick off.

My chickens (sic) is better

than a ton of your

‘let’s get in touch with

our feelings’ crap.

Who’s dick do you suck anyway?

Phil Donahue’s?

Well, folks, haha, that is it. Now we can remember why the Humble Narrator married her to begin with…the sense of humour!!!

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!!!

 

From the Poetry Corner ~ You Do Not Know Me

                                                                             Gentle Readers,

     Once again we ask you to forgive our absence, this time due to the death of my Verizon modem, which served me for a remarkable six and a half years.  Once the problem was established, a new modem was ordered and we found ourself lost offline.  It took a full week, then sputtered and we were off for another day.

     We got a lot of real world stuff done, instead of sitting on Facebook but we did feel strangely disconnected.  We did see the first episode of the new season of Law and Order: Criminal Intent and we are making the prediction that Bobby Goren will find happiness this season and then find death.  You heard it here first, folks!

     Anyway, the poem is self-explanatory, unlike three poems I will publish in Beatdom in a few weeks.  They are strange poems and part of a longer story, which you can read in Beatdom Issue 9, the Drugs Issue.  In it, I present an essay which is a third essay, a third poetry and the final third is a bite of real life humour, all rolled into one conveniently titled entry, “At The Holiday Inn”.

     In the meantime, while you wait, this is one from last week, called You Do Not Know Me.

I only exist

in the words on this page.

That is my act.

This is my stage.

Very few know me -

it’s a very rare sort

who have looked in my eyes

and heard my retort.

You may know my name

but not what is inside.

A handful have loved me

with arms opened wide.

To most I am Phantom,

locked in my screen,

I  keep writing for you

for all that it means.

More Cute Than You Can Shake A Stick At

     Feline Fanatics,

     We remind you that no kitties were harmed in the making of this blog.  The kit on the left is just being adventurous.  The photo session started because he kept trying to nose his way into the frig everytime the door opened because he knew the milk was in there.  We scooped him up and got a few shots of him standing on the top shelf in the fridge, smaller than a pint of milk, sniffing the goods.

     The microwave was simply a photo opp which presented itself at the time.  We would never do, nor encourage, such a thing.  Cats have now outnumbered dogs in America by about a million.  More households have dogs but the data indicates that cat owners often own multiples, as we do with Inkie and Budderz, and that dog owners are also prone to have a kittie or kitty or two around, as well.  The cats usually dominate the dogs in any of these situations.  Many are horrified at the thought of introducing a cat into a house with dogs but the cats are crafty and take great advantage of canine idiocy, often doing bad things that get blamed on Fido.

     The folks at Animal Planet have siezed upon these facts and have, in the past few months, released a number of new cat-related shows which cater to pampering owners.  Last season, they produced Cats 101, which was an excellent rundown of breeds, studying the quirks, cuteness, foibles and follies each breed gets into most frequently.  It was a good show but, in our humble opinion, it does not hold a candle to the merriment involved in the new program Must Love Cats, which we wrote about in a previous blog and which you can search for and read on this very page. 

     One night last week, they introduced Too Cute, a documentary on three litters of kittens growing from birth to the tender age of eight weeks.  There are laughs, drama, bits of related information but it was mostly about kittens being cutesy…and it works.

     Tonight, they unleash MY CAT FROM HELL (sorry for the caps…that is how Animal Planet lists it).  Jackson Galaxy, the host, plays guitar – as does the host of Must Love Cats.  Why a human singing to cats about mice and birds and whatever else a cat thinks about is a standard for these type of shows, we will never know. Maybe it is the cute factor but it would be more cute to me if a woman sang.  You have to give Galaxy credit, though, for his creative use of barber tools, as he has no hair above the ears and is very creative with all the follicles which sprout from the temples down…we would post a pic but we expect if you read this far you will see for yourself.  We do not mention his tattoos, as they are pretty normal in that they seem to cover most of his body, the norm for the 21st century expression of individuality – cover yourself with tatoos like everybody else.  We do not know how that many tatts make you that individual since, viewed from a half a block away, they look the same as anybody else who is covered in ink. 

     Cats do not get tattoos but they appear in quite a few of them, most notably those cool ones that the punk/rockabilly band The Stray Cats had on their arms.  Those are the most notable ones we recall.  Some where out there is a woman with a tattoo of a cat on one asscheek.  It is in the hunting position and is reaching to catch the tail of the tattooed ‘half a mouse’ which is drawn so it looks like it is crawling into her butt to escape.  Trust us.  It is a big world.  This is out there somewhere and, if not, we suppose we are sick for thinking of such things.

     So do tune in at 9pm EST in the United States.  We are not sure how these things get broadcast worldwide.  One would imagine that tv programs would start to ‘synch up’ worldwide, rather than go from one country to another as they get older.  That should happen about the time some woman gets that tattoo. So watch! Enjoy! It is Kitties!!!

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.

    

Trending ~ Rock Stars and Books

     Rabid Readers and Word Worshippers,

     The regular delivery of this blog has been somewhat hampered by the introduction of about five fluid ounces of beer to the keyboard of my laptop.  Though blotted up quickly, after a few days the PC started making a noise like two rusty wheels grinding together and became a bit incooperative as regards daily use.  Thanks you for hanging in there while we deal with it.

     Last year, the world of literature saw debut writing from rockers Patti Smith and Keith Richards.  Patti won the 2010 National Book Award for her wonderful account of her life and years with Robert Mapplethorpe and the whole music world is happy for her.  She is currently at work on a detective novel, probably the first of a series, which is eagerly awaited.  Richards, too, made a splash with his 576-page memoir Life.

     In the past, books by rockers have been a ‘hit and miss’ affair.  Bob Dylan’s Tarantula caused a media frenzy until people tried to read it and found it to be too cryptic.  John Lennon fans enjoyed In His Own Write  and A Spaniard In The Works, although they are not too well-known among his fan base, generally.  We have not yet read I, Me, Mine by George Harrison but feel it should be mentioned, by dint of Dylan and Lennon being written about.

 

     This is all great and makes for lots of interesting reading for us rock’n'roll-loving types but it looks like musician/actor/presence Steve Earle has come up with a new twist to the publishing process.  Long known and respected in both country and rock music for his many highly regarded LPs, like Copperhead Road, The Mountain, El Corazon and Transcendental Blues as well as his pre-sober string of hit singles such as Guitar Town, Hillbilly Highway, I Ain’t Ever Satisfied, Goodbye’s All We Got Left and others.  Sadly, a huge number of people know his work but not his name from his work on the soundtrack of the Steve Martin/John Candy comedy, Planes, Trains and Automobiles; a lot of people know his face from his work as an actor on top-rated HBO hit, The Wire.

     True music/lit afficianados may also point to Kinky Freidman, the Texas Jewboy, who has been putting out detective novels and albums for years but, per the general public, lives in obscurity.  He is appreciated more by other musicians and writers than the public, it seems.

     Back to Earle…in April, he will release a new collection of songs, I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive.  Country fans will know that it is the same as the title of the Hank Williams song, which was Williams’ most recent release prior to his untimely death at age 29.  The Hank song does not appear on the LP, although Earle says it is the ‘most country’ album he has done in a long time.  That is the cover, pictured at the start of this blog.  Below is the cover of his first novel, with the same title as the LP, which will be released in May, just after the collection of songs.

     Pre-release reviews are very good.  Patti Smith said, “Steve Earle brings to his prose the same authenticity, poetic spirit and cinematic energy he projects in his music.I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is like a dream you can’t shake, offering beauty and remorse, redemption in spades.”  There are many other good reviews but a good one from Patti is enough for Your Humble Narrator.  Well, we did mention Kinky, so we should quote him, too, as saying, “Steve Earle is afflicted with the curse of being multitalented. A legendary musician, songwriter, entertainer, poet, and social activist, now with this debut novel he proves that he’s a novelist of the first order. Laying bare the emotional history of country music, he takes the reader through a dark seedy dangerous world and back into a dawn of redemption. Steve Earle writes like a shimmering neon angel.” 

     The title is not just a rip-off from Hank’s catalogue.  It figures into the plot, as does Hank.  Some of us still can’t get enough of Hank.  Since we have not read the book, we can not accurately describe it, so we offer the sysnopsis which is available on amazon.com. It goes like this:

Doc Ebersole lives with the ghost of Hank Williams—not just in the figurative sense, not just because he was one of the last people to see him alive, and not just because he is rumored to have given Hank the final morphine dose that killed him.

In 1963, ten years after Hank’s death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn’t as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc’s services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank’s angry ghost—who isn’t at all pleased to see Doc doing well. 

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle’s I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

     In reading this, it looks like they rewrote Patti’s review, the word ‘redemption’ is too coincidental and the use of the word ‘regret’ hectors the word ‘remorse’ in Patti’s review.  So that is how Amazon gets their descriptions…plagiarism.  I did not expect that insight to surface!  Anyway, get ready for some good reading and listening, too.