Tuesday, March 27, 2012

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME

I see an article that down in Florida, in protest for the Trayvon Martin incident, about 100 High School kids have ransacked a Walgrens Pharmacy, and several of them left their Student ID's behind. They should be easy to catch.
It reminds me of when I was 17.  I took a job at some kind of Catfish place, and my first night there as I punched out my timecard, I found the bank deposit bag by timeclock where the manager accidently left it. It contained 800 bucks and some credit receipts.
I did the wrong thing. I took it.
I got a mile down the road and threw the receipts out the car window. Cops were waiting when I got home. The man behind me had stopped and picked the receipts up. No charges were filed. It was 1974, back when kids got paid a lot of slack for doing stupid stuff.
I don't tell this one too often. Its probably not the worst thing I ever done, but I'm still ashamed after all these years.
Not just that I would be such a poor thief, but mostly of how easily I got caught.
And thats the most shameful thing of all.

Monday, March 26, 2012

"We do not do Bluebonnets"

I went to an Art Show this weekend in Arlington. You know, one of those outdoorsy things with tents set up for folks to display their crafts and hopefully make a sale. There is a stage set up for bands, and its all very festive, but no one really daces because the bands are usually cover bands doing bad versions of Fleetwood Mac songs,  and there is always a row of trailers where they are selling funnel cakes and sausages on a stick and turkey legs and other stuff that you wouldn't dare put in your body, but for today you will make an exception.
So you tour through the crafts, and stand there at the stage for a bit, tapping your foot and eating something sinfully greasy, and the sin drips from your chin in the afternoon heat.


My pal Gary Williamson had a booth there. Gary uses a unique process to create sculptures from scrap recycled paper, His company is called "Shatter'd Visages" after a Percy Shelly poem. Check out the link to his site, or to his Facebook page. I have a Melpomene done in Verdi Gris on my wall, and I like it a lot.

Anyway, there was a photographer from Austin. We stopped by their booth, and they had a lot of Texana stuff, and my friend Pam asked "Do you have any pictures of Bluebonnets?"
Bluebonnets are the state flower, and this time of year flourish along the roadways all over Texas. Everywhere you look there are cars pulled over to the side of the road, and folks all dressed up to get their picture taken in a field of these native wildflowers.
But the photographer looked at Pam kind of funny, almost offended.

"We don't do Bluebonnets" she said, matter of factly "We do junk cars and beat up cowboys. We do Lone Star beer and mesquite trees. We do Rusty Weir, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Guy Clark. We will even do the Alamo or the tower at University of Texas, though we prefer the Huntsville prison. But we do not, under any circumstances, do bluebonnets"

I assume they do not want to add to the 7 billion bluebonnet pictures already on the market, the way other photographers might refuse to do cute furry mammals..

I like that.

But maybe a shot of a graveyard, which also has bluebonnets, might be nice.
 


photo coutesy of  westtexasinsomniac

Friday, March 23, 2012

THE LITTLE HOSS RANCH

I haven’t said much about it, but I have been looking for a house to buy the last 6 months. All my stuff is in storage. I lived with Buckshot for a while, and the last month I have moved into a room with my friend Angel Eyes.


I haven’t written anything about that, I guess because I kind of have the Displacement Blues, this weird, sad, penetrating sense of not belonging where you are, which always leads you to feel homeless, eternally homeless, like you have never had a home at all, and that you are on an Exodus to Nowhere, and you may as well get used to it.

Even when I had my own place, it never really felt like home. That’s what you convince yourself of pretty easily when you start feeling the Displacement Blues. I have found my self quoting myself lately, that I haven’t felt at home in 20 years or so. That may be true, but it’s a terrible thing to say.

Anyway, at long last I have made an offer on a house , and that offer has been accepted, and it looks like I am buying a house. There are three really great things about it:

Location!
It is only three blocks from where I go to my 12 Step meeting and about the same distance from the Buttermilk cafĂ© where I go for breakfast on weekends. It is also only 2 miles from where I work. I haven’t rode my bicycle for a long time, but of I ever just had to, I could ride my bike to work again, the way I did for 4 years before I had a car. It wasn’t that long ago.

Its cute!
It’s a clean little house in pretty good shape, and has some personality.


And the price was in my range! I had started to look at home that were more expensive than I really wanted to spend, and then this one popped up. I will pay $100 a month less than my old apartment cost me.

And here’s something weird…I can look out my front window, to three houses down the street and see the X-Mrs Bulletholes house! She and her husband Jeff, the three of us, we all get along, and my daughter lives there right now but she is moving out, and she will have a room with me. It’s a pretty cozy little arrangement.

I haven’t written about my son too much either, because all last year he wasn’t doing so well, but he is in school and doing GREAT, and now when he comes to town we will all be very close, and like I said it’s a cozy little arrangement.

So lets take a look at this house shall we?

I told you it was cute!
 And it has little hitching posts to tie up yer pony when you ride over!

 And it has a nice big backyard, and I can't wait to have a garden again, and get my hands back down in the dirt.



It has a big back patio, and the previous owners had begun to cover it with flagstones, but never finished. That might be something I could do, and there are nice tree's with good shade as well
***

 The Kitchen is real Susie Homemaker style.
That floor might need level.
***

 The front room is large, with good light.
There is not really a formal dining area.
***

And they have turned the garage into a sunken den with a fireplace.
Its nicely done, with good workmanship far as I can tell.
********


So that's it! The inspection is coming up Sunday. Closing day, if all goes well,  is April 27. 
I think I'll name after my old Nursery School.
The Little Hoss Ranch!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

THE BEST PENNY I EVER SPENT

I am spinning from the memory of a summer, the summer I said GOODBYE to Bedford Junior High; that summer of the horse with no name, when the 'heat was hot"; it was a T-Rex summer with diamond star halos' and limes in the coconuts and having a coke while you taught the world to sing. Late summer nights ridin' bikes with my buddies and singing about a long cool woman, ridin' down to Buddy Whittington's driveway to hear him hammer out some song we never heard of called "Big Legged Woman". The summer Kandi and I played spades during the heat of the day, listening to Patches and thinkin' 'bout our daddies.

The same summer Wayne Newtons daddy walked too fast; that summer of some guy named Daniel Boone singing that slap-happy song " Beautiful Sunday" and the horrible chorus is bouncing around in the hollows of my mind...

Hi, hi, hi, beautiful Sunday
This is my, my, my, beautiful day
When you say, say, say, say that you love me
Oh, my, my, my it's a beautiful day

Its killin' me, it really is...
And that dude singing about kissing a truck at a Garden Party, and 3 Dog Night singing that damn circus music, and that song with some kind of cowbell...too much cowbell.
Yeah, OK,  "the ink is black"... I get it.
And I'd wake up in the morning, and coming from my sisters room were the sounds of Donnie Osmond, and I'd start to sing along:
 "And they called it"....oh, never mind.
And some British guy named Gilbert singing about throwin' himself off a tower and all I could think was "Oh Gilbert, please do"
I had no idea it could get worse until I heard Sister Golden hair a few years later.


The only thing good happened that summer was 'Baby, I'm a Want You" and Myra and her Annie Greensprings Peach Creek wine.

And the 12 albums Columbia Records sent me for a penny.
I think I still owe them.

One of my first 12 albums from Columbia. They saved me.




ITS NOT SAFE HERE




Captured at Lake Whitney yesterday after the big rains.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

THE WAR ON GOOD MUSIC

Last Saturday  we ran to Piggly Wiggly Supermarket for roast beef, and what are they playing?
 "Amanda" by Boston.
 ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Not something from their first two albums that only sucked 100%, but the third album where they took suck to a new low!

You know what this is?
 It's Obama's war on good music. Of course, it could be worse. Have you seen Mitt's playlist?  He would be well advised not to even release the short form.

I hear Obama is waging a war on Religion too.
We tried to go to church last Sunday but couldn't.
Snipers!
WAKE UP AMERICA!




Monday, March 19, 2012

REAL ESTATE 2008, A RETROSPECTIVE

This girl I know, man, she has been in Real Estate, and then Collections and Credit and now she is a Mortgage Broker. She has always been a real go getter. She can make the Earth and Heavens move. She's drivin' down the highway, weavin' in and out of traffic at 70 miles an hour and talking fast to a client:


'I can get you a 6.75 with no points and that's gonna' save you 58.64 on your monthly; or you can pay the points and go to 5.25 and that will save you 126.71. If we wait, I might get you in on a 4.85 No Down/Deferred and that will save you...hmm....lets see..."(now she's using a calculator, changing lanes and passing an 18 Wheeler that's carrying coffins, that right COFFINS, talking on the phone and sippin' a Red Bull and quoting Amortization Schedules)"...that will save you another 48.33 on top of the 126.71 and you'll get cash back. Yes, cash back. That's better than the EZ-Qualify, Zero Balance Floater we talked about before, and if we can get that in before the Bankruptcy you should be able to claim a Homestead, file for Zone 11 and get the Tax cut."

Now she has exited the highway and is screeching to a stop at a red light, and I am hanging onto the dashboard for dear life. I don't know what I find most amazing; how she does all this math in her head or the way she works a calculator while talking on the phone and driving, or that there is such a thing as an "EZ-Qualify, Zero Balance Floater" that will save someone who is currently filing Bankruptcy $200 a month on a house they are currently purchasing; or is the most amazing thing that President Bush just finished allocating 7 Billion Dollars to bail out the Banking Industry and someone is buying a house and getting "Instant Cash Back"

What I'm thinking is that they should put her in charge.



Heres a real nice foreclosure.



GO AND SIN NO MORE



"In one experiment, just telling a man he would be observed by a female was enough to hurt his psychological performance."




Friday, March 16, 2012

"I'm the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo"

“I was ready to play on,” Johnson said. “And I looked around, and I said, ‘Are you going to do a fill?’ I’ve got every chip in the tray. I think I even had the $100 chips. ‘Are you guys going to do a fill?’ And they just said, ‘No, we’re out.’”
He says he learned later that someone at the casino had called the manager, who was in London, and told him that Don Johnson was ahead of them “by four.”

“Four hundred thousand?” the manager asked.
“No, 4 million.”

Click here for the full story




Thursday, March 15, 2012

WAITING TO INHALE



I still have a book from when I was a boy called "Underwater Adventure" by Willard Price.
I've read it about a million times I guess, and there is something like this device in his book that was written in 1954.
The protagonist, Hal, or maybe Roger, rides it while searching for sunken treasure and is chased by a hammerhead shark, stung by a school of jellyfish, dragged through fire-coral and ends up with an octopus stuck to his back. Isn't that exciting?
And probably safer than a Cruise Ship.
Thanks to TYWKIWDBI for reminding me of this book. I may have to read it again this weekend.
Its a great book!








Wednesday, March 14, 2012

MITT


Has anyone else noticed how much Mitt favors Max Headroom?
He even ACTS like him.

COWGIRL IN THE SAND


Source~ West Texas Insonmniac

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

SPLENDOR ON THE HURSTVIEW BRIDGE

Me and that bridge, the Hurstview bridge that passes over 183, we go a long way back. I hear they are tearing it down next week to widen the freeway.

See, when I was 16 I had this pretty little girl friend, then one day she broke up with me and I was all heartbroke. It was like my world had ended. She had told me she was babysitting down the street from her house that night, and couldn't be reached, but being all heartbroke and forlorn, I wanted to talk to her real bad. So I spent a couple hours going through the Hurst phone book and calling every house on her street, asking whoever answered the phone if my girl was babysitting there, and sometimes my pathetic little story would come out, and the old man that had answered the phone would advise me:
“Damn, son, just go out a git you another girl, Hurst is full of pretty girls to call.”
It didn’t do any good, and I just kept calling every house on Oak street. I guess I must have missed one, because by the time I got to “Zystroski”, I had not found her.

So I decided the next best thing to do would be to just walk on over to her house, and sit in her front yard and wait for her to come home, where she would see my miserable ass, in the rain, sitting and waiting for her, and she would know then how much I loved her, and she would realize how unkind it was for her to put me through this horrible grief, and since she could not be so unkind as all that, she might take me back, and comfort and solace me in my time of melancholy, there, muddy sad and freezing in her front yard.
And maybe she would do that thing she would do, blowing in my ear and biting my neck because that really drove me wild.
I got to the Hurstview bridge. It was somewhere around midnight in the freezing rain, and as I reviewed my sorry life to this point I determined the best thing to do would be to just end it all, and just throw my heartbroke ass off the Hurstview bridge. It would be the ultimate demonstration of my undying love, equal to that like Dustin Hoffman had made in "The Graduate", pounding the glass in the Chapel, and running off with the stolen bride on a bus.

But something stopped me. I did not do a Billie Joe McAllister off  the Hurstview bridge, but instead walked through the drizzle the 4 blocks back home, and the next day I started taking the old man’s advice about calling all the pretty girls in Hurst.

So every day after 35 years I still pass the Hurstview bridge, and there are two questions that remain.
The first is this:
Am I the only one that ever thought of throwing myself off the Hurstview bridge?
And two:
Does anybody here really think she was babysitting down the street that night?
That’s really what I want to know.

.

Friday, March 09, 2012

BUGS HENDERSON


Much revered Texas Bluesman "Bugs" Henderson  fell to cancer earlier today.
He will be missed by many.

THE ACCORDIONIST

Photographer Robert Doisneau
I do love this picture.

And from his notebook~
" With the accordionist, the tone was different. Standing before folks molded by hard labour, who held their fingers clenched even when at rest, she luxuriated in a sense of idleness. Her cat-like nonchalance carried the slightest hint of cruelty. Back in the Middle Ages, the spell that woman cast would have sparked a bonfire."

Thursday, March 08, 2012

THE BUNNY TRAIL

I was tagged for one of these Meme things (I haven't done one in ages) by my friend SOUS GIRL and it was lke 11 questions long, and you know thats too many questions for me, so I'll just do the first one. Go check it out and play along if you'd like click here.

1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
My favorite is my freshest one, whatever it is I suddenly remember today that I had forgotten all about. It might be the nighttime walks down the street when I was four, with my dad, and there was a creek under the road, and on the road would be 1000’s of toads eating bugs drawn to the streetlight there. But I have remembered that before, so it cannot be my favorite memory today.

Maybe it was about the same time that dad showed me how to catch a rabbit by turning a wooden box upside down, one end held up with a stick that had a carrot tied to it, and when the rabbit went inside and grabbed the carrot, the box came down and trapped the rabbit so I could see him the next day. Only it never happened, that is we never caught a rabbit, and I’ve remembered it before, so it really doesn’t count.

Maybe it could be like when I saw the movie Godzilla, and the next day was a foggy day and as I looked out the garage through the mist I could see in my minds eye, as you may be doing now, Godzilla coming up the hill from the creek where the toads and rabbits lived, through the fog towards me. Coming FOR me.  I’ve thought of that before, but not too many times, and I don’t know why something scary like Godzilla headed straight through the fog for you is such a good memory for me.

I think it was that same week that they took the training wheels off my bike, and I was scared shitless and crying too,--"momma no!"-- but when I got on my bike and took off it was eezy-japaneezy, smooth sailing as I wiped away my tears and turned into the wind, flying down the hill to the creek by the toads, past the spot where I'd had the bad Tricycle wreck the year before, then hopping the curb, shouting laughing and bouncing down the bunny trail , headed straight for Godzilla and I think I had forgotten that, but now I remember and its alright.
Yeah, its alright.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

What a woman won't do, won't get done.

Right.

What a woman won't do, won't get done.
Woman has a busy day.
Gotta get up, nails, hair face. Talk. Shop, cook, clean.
Birthday cards, gift bags, All Occasion cards. Take a call make a call, talk, talk.
When you care enough, you send the very best and call just to see how you’re doing.
Talk some more. Check on this, check on that, decide on Birth Control. Call and talk about that.
Gotta bake those muffins, take 'em to people that don't feel good.
BusyBusy-talktalk.
I really love them all you know.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

WE ARE NEVER SATISFIED


That’s what my NA literature says about us addicts, and it’s true. I‘ve been in a real dither lately and it comes out in all sorts of ways.

One way is when the car in front of me wants to make a right hand turn. Do they not realize what this does to the traffic behind them? How dare they!

Another way I can tell I am not functioning according to Spiritual Principles is when I stopped for a coffee at the QT Store. They have really good coffee there, and I’ve really gotten hooked on it, so I stop every day. When I stopped on Saturday I noticed that the cups they had were different. Instead of having just a little sippy hole on the cover for me to drink my coffee from, they had upgraded to a cup that had a little stopper thing for the hole, and in order to get your first sip, you had to use your thumb to flip the little stopper thing and open the hole. What kind of design is that? Who thought of that, and why wasn’t I asked before rolling these piece of shit cups out?
What is wrong with me?

The NA literature also says that the core of my disease is my self-centeredness. I often wonder what is at the core of my self-centeredness.
That’s what I’d really like to know.

I go back and look at some of the horrible things I’ve posted the last week or so and I know there is something seriously wrong with me.
Who do think I am?
Rush Limbaugh?

Monday, March 05, 2012

THE RIGHT STUFF


"And the truck heaves and billows, blazing silver red Day-Glo, and I doubt seriously, Cool Breeze, that there is a single cop in all of San Francisco today who does not know that this crazed vehicle is a guerrilla patrol from the dread LSD.”
Tom Wolfe from "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

Follow the link for the full intro to what Ordinary Finds describes as Wolfes funniest book.

After I saw this post Friday, I went home and watched "The Right Stuff", a movie based on Wolfes book of the same name. I'd never seen it before, even after all these years of it being such a great movie and all; and even though my nickname in the 8th grade had been "Rocket Renfro", ; and I had no idea that "The Right Stuff" would be so funny.





Sunday, March 04, 2012

RED-HAIRED MAN AND SLUT SUCK FACE ON SNOWY EVENING AT HOT TUB


There is a back story to this poem some of you may be familiar with, which is written by the Editor of the small town newspaper that ran a few of my stories last year.
CLICK HERE for the backstory.

The short version is that she kept changing my titles. Click here to see some examples.

I asked her a few weeks back if I could post her poem (which I think is very good) and she said I could.
"I'm really pleased you like it that much " she said.
"Yes, I think its a great poem" I said "but I have to ask you one thing."
"Whats that?" she asked.
"I was wondering if it would be OK if I changed your title, the way you used to change mine? "
"No, silly" was her reply, so without further ado, and without having changed the title of her poem, I give you:

TRIMBLE
I saw a post tonight

From a friend who
Checked in at Trimble
Hot Springs and Spa
And I was reminded of
The time I went there
In the wintertime
With a guy - he had
a red beard - I met
Him at the coffee shop
He used to be a regular
But had moved to
Telluride where he
Drove a taxi and
Lived in an apartment
In an old Victorian
Downtown
So he liked me,
Of course, and
Invited me to the springs
And though I didn't
Care for him much,
One way or the other,
Because he seemed just
Too much into me,
I went anyway because
That was a time when
I was bored and trying
Hard to try hard
I met him at the springs
In the evening
And it was snowing
He drove an old BMW
His backseat was his closet,
From what I could see,
Clothes piled high
Around shadowy boxes
And boots and coats
Thrown here, there
A small accordian file
Tied with a shoestring
Or so I imagined,
Because it was dark
And I really couldn't
See very well at all
But anyway
I wore my bikini top
And shorts, flip flops
Slip-sliding on the ice
All the way from
The warm steamy
Dressing room, past
The Olympic-sized
Swimming pool, covered
For the season,
To the hot spring pool
It was cold, I tell you
My breath pretty much
Froze in the air
But once I got to
The pool and slipped
In, between clouds of
Steam rising through
The falling snow,
I was warm, and there
He was, red beard
Slightly damp, chest bare
Teeth glowing white
Through his smile
He was happy to
See me, I could tell
We stood next to
Each other in the pool
Making small talk
Learning about him
He learning about me
Our legs touching in
The murky dark of
Underwater, fleeting
At first and then
Deliberately, his hand
Finding mine, and
There we were, as the
Snow fell silently and
Other folks whispered
And cars passed on the road
Two strangers just
Sharing time and space
When we left
He kissed me
On the hand
And on the cheek
Softly on the lips
And said he'd call
When he could find
A phone, he did but
I never answered.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

CHAMPAGNE

I worked for Romanian Executive Chef named Gaspar. He was brutal. He smelled like Paprikash always, and when you looked into his eyes it was like looking into a well. He could make you feel like crawling through the grout to get away from him.


He would come into my Kitchen, take a look around, and in his thick accent ask:
“Esssstifff, (That’s how he said “Steve”) Essssssstiffff, how eees zee kwalitee tonight?”
And I’d smile and try to say positive and say “Great chef, everything is great!” and he would shake his head and mutter under his breath “Ohh shure, Essstifff, shure” and he would look at a plate in the window, and shake his head and just saunter away. And for the next day or two you would expect him to call you to his office and fire you.

Well, I got tired of it and decided to just go ahead and quit. I walked into his office and announced “Gaspar, you Romanian Bastard, I’d like to give you my two weeks notice, but if you want to shoot me out of here right now, that will be just fine by me”
Gaspar leans back in his chair and very calmly says right back to me:
“No, no, Esssstifff, you go ahead and vork out your two weeks, and on your last day ve vill have Champagne!”

Like I said, he was brutal.

Friday, March 02, 2012

TEXAS INDEPENDENCE DAY

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling t...hat Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans.” ― John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America

Thanks to Assorted for the image

Thursday, March 01, 2012

CAN I HELP YOU TEAR SOME FENCES DOWN

SEX DRUGS AND THE MONKEES

A RETROSPECTIVE ON THE DEATH OF DAVY JONES

The Monkee’s were like a “Gateway Band” for me. After the first album, “The Monkees” in 1966, I bought a tambourine. I beat the hell out of that tamborine, singing "I'm A Believer" at the top of my lungs. Then came “More of the Monkee’s” and I took my allowance down and bought some Maracas.


Davy Jones looked so good playing the Maracas, and he always got the girl. But it was Peter Tork, the really goofy one, that I was busy modeling myself after.

By the time “Pleasant Valley Sunday” came out on “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones”, I was beating the bongos pretty darn hard, and I was only 11 years old. Over the next year or so, I had completely given up my musical sensibilities that were so deeply rooted in Mary Poppin’s “Spoonful of Sugar”, and had moved from the Monkee’s to the Partridge Family, with a huge lust for  Susan Dey. . I advanced through the soloists like Neil Diamond, to the edgier Norman Greenbaum; I decided that even though "Sugar Sugar" was the sexiest song ever, the Archies were pure bubble-gum and fell for the mysticism of Tommy James and the Shondells; discovered the Hollies and had to hide my Frijid Pink under the mattress along with Sly and the Family Stone; down I went from ‘Chirpy-Chirpy-Cheep-Cheep” to “Indiana Wants Me”; deeper still to ”Me and You and a Dog named Boo” and it was no great leap from there to the really hard stuff, like T-Rex's "Bang A Gong" or  Chicago's “25 or 6 to 4”.

It was gradual, I barely even noticed the decline- hooked on The Beatles, and Three Dog Night, and god help me…the Grass Roots!

It wasn’t too long after that I traded in my bongos for a bong, and Tony Orlando and Dawn for Led Zeppelin 3.

And it all started with the Monkee’s.
Trouble with a capital T.