Yawn

Anybody listening to anything good these days?

'Tis The Season!

Massachusetts Mall Santa Charged with Groping Elf
BOSTON Tue Nov 26, 2013 (Reuters) - A man who worked as a Santa Claus in a Massachusetts shopping mall has been ordered not to put the red suit back on until a court resolves a charge that he groped an adult coworker over the weekend.

We Must Be In That Self-Destructive / Acting Out Phase of the Crumbling Empire...

Seriously: provoking China?

I've Got Your Black Friday Right HERE!

Proud of myself for getting Dave's gift at Walgreens before someone at corporate put up the "item no longer available".

...And Happy Thanksgivukkah!

As the token Gentile* in this group, let me be the first to wish you all Happy Thankgivukkah! We may not be around for the next one (in 79,000 years), except for Joe - who is timeless. Or unless Jay re-formats the Hebrew lunisolar calendar.



*I know, I know. But a little research on ancestry.com and the Ellis Island immigration database helped turn up the following surnames:

Beckerstein
Rowlandberg
Eisencurtis
McGlück
Rosen-Rosenheinz

It was pretty compelling.

Drunky Happsgiving!

May yer beers be merry and yer drinks be numbing. Anyone traveling in the nightmare that is the east coast weather system?

Go Here Now

Waste your whole day with this thing. I dare you.

Friday Jay Reatard Fix*

*Memphis bastards may notice this is not, in fact, Jay Reatard.

Shorter Post For The Time-Conscious Bastard

Well, This Is Cool

From Dangerous Minds:

MAD magazine was at the absolute height of its circulation in the mid 1970s—north of two million of each issue hit the newsstands then—so it was no surprise that television executives wanted in on the action. ABC ordered a pilot for an animated MAD series, but shelved it due to the “adult” humor and apparently because they didn’t want to piss off their bread and butter. Dick DeBartolo (“MAD’s maddest writer!”) said of the ill-fated pilot (eventually aired as a one-off “special” apparently) “Nobody wanted to sponsor a show that made fun of products that were advertised on TV, like car manufacturers.”

The Greatest Television Asset Of All Time

In one of television’s biggest syndication deals, “The Simpsons,” the longest-running scripted show in TV history, will finally be moving to cable television... Fox sold the reruns to its FXX network... and ... has acquired both cable and streaming rights to the more than 550 episodes. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a representative of one of the other companies that pursued the package said that the bidding was highly competitive and estimated that the per-episode figure reached $1.5 million to $1.6 million. That would put the value of the deal at close to $900 million.

World Toilet Day!

World Toilet Day

Definitely a bastard tradition.
You know what to do.

Photo Blog

I came across a pretty cool photo blog today.  It lacks some of the classier features of the pictorial sites I typically peruse (no naked female warriors wielding medieval weaponry, for example) and the photographer himself is probably a douchebag, but it beats a sharp stick in the eye. 

As someone who was making $400 million to make one movie once said, "I don't know if it's art, but I like it."  

Famous Paintings, But Funny

From The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fighting, an Australian sketch comedy show.

Bastards Assemble! Or at least two of us!

The cool bastards assembled in Durham this weekend. Above you'll see, from left to right, me, Joe and Eric. It was a swell time except when Eric discussed his nipples and when the Saints lost. Also, I greeted Eric for the first time in maybe 30 years whilst dressed as a golfing zombie. Otherwise, business as usual. Below, our requisite Fuck Jay pic.

Raleigh Rally

Citizens of the blog: I invited myself to stay with founding Basterd Dave AND run a half-marathon in 35 degree weather this weekend!

Please tell me these are wise moves.

Brilliant!

Talent Scout

I have a music club at school. Although most of the kids are well-meaning but warbly, occasionally I run across some really great talent. Vanessa is a sixteen year old junior who has performed in musical theater and has excellent taste in music. I got my NOLA band mate and producer buddy Dave to come over from Asheville this weekend to record her and a couple of other students. Here's a recording of her singing a One Republic song over at my Soundcloud page. Holy crikey she's good. Stay tuned for the third chorus where she lays on a big note and then a beautiful falsetto note. She figured out how to do harmonies and just generally made me feel like a total dick of a singer. I included my amp in the picture just so I could feel like I had something to do with this tornado of awesomeness.

More Shit

Marcia Wallace, a.k.a. The Simpsons’ Mrs. Krabappel. Fuck cancer.

Shit

Someone Get That Kid A Treat

I Know What Jay's Getting For Christmas

"Only classical composers were known by just their surnames, and this suited my mudlark temperament quite nicely."

Gravy. Err....Gravity.

I saw it last weekend and I liked it. Sure there are scientific holes in the plot (as if I'd notice), but it was truly suspenseful and, in a rare display of Hollywood moderation, clocks in at only 90 minutes. Definitely see it in 3D, if not in Imax. Good popcorn fare.

Yup

75 Years

Pretty cool.

What This Blog Needs Is More Russian Tampon Commercials

And I Like The Show

No spoilers! I'll be watching last night's episode this evening.

This Looks Kind of Good

On Location

So I'm just minding my bastard business one day recently when the above note appears on my door. I speak to a representative from Night Train Productions, and they're interested in using my old relatively undisturbed barn for a NASCAR ESPN Race for the Chase promo featuring country music artist Gretchen Wilson.

As Ms. Wilson has never appeared on Rock 'n' Roll Snob, I of course had never heard of her. But I'm informed that she's a grammy-winning singer whose most famous song is Redneck Woman.
10 million views.

So they filmed this past week. I expect all y'all to watch NASCAR and to whoop out when ya see ma barn.

Can't. Make. This. Shit. Up.

Sousa-FAIL!

I'm easily amused.

Looking To Get Away? Frustrated By The Government Shutdown?

Why not move to Middle Earth? Elves & shit!

So I Saw This...

And it was great.  There's a boot of it up on the ftp site.  The band came out in matching western shirts and orange (really orange) cowboy hats, with Paul and Tommy wearing pink skirts.  They then proceeded to rip it to shreds for 25 or so songs, including Shiftless When Idle, Can't Hardly Wait, I Will Dare, Borstal Breakout and others.  Paul came out on drums for a shambolic encore (Tommy on guitar, drummer Freese on bass) that made stabs at Hootenanny, Detroit Rock City and Substitute (Paul did his best Daltrey until the mike broke, which he promptly tossed out to the audience). It was all brilliant.  I should also mention that I enjoyed Iggy and the Stooges, Superchunk, GBV, Rocket From the Crypt, some other bands I can't remember, and legalized marijuana.  That will probably be my last travel to a show for awhile.  At least until the next one.

Bad Karmadillo

PORT CHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A theater manager says a stuffed armadillo that was stolen from Willie Nelson's band after a show in suburban New York has been returned unharmed. He says the band isn't pressing charges.

Who steals from Willie Nelson? And what's in that armadillo?

[Video of the armadillo bandit]

The Best Thing I've Seen All Week

I Said Goddamn

Glorious power pop from Red Kross. Thank you, Jebus.

Many Happy Returns, LC

During a triumphant three-hour show on the latest leg of his world tour, Cohen said:

"I hope I stay on the road a little bit longer - but you may not be so enthusiastic when you hear my reason.
You see I want to start smoking next year when I'll be 80. It's been a long barren time. I think it's the right age to recommence. I'd like to do it on stage and I'd like to be standing here like this, in front of sympathetic people like yourselves.
A nurse would come onto the stage with a silver tray. On that tray would be an open pack of cigarettes - the little cylinders gleaming like the pillars of a great temple.
She would approach me in her white pleated uniform, her little stockings and tiny white shoes. I'd take one of those cigarettes and tap it on that silver tray and she would light me up.
I'd say 'nurse before you go, would you mind tapping out a few of those bubbles in my IV'. Then I'd take my first drag and I'd feel extremely relaxed and I'd be able to review some of the disasters of my shabby past, especially my relationship with a certain woman I regret having disappointed."

A Bastardly 79th to the Canadian, may we all smoke at 80.

YARRRH!

You know what to do, seamen!

Joe, You Win

I'm pre-jealous of your Replacements/GBV sojourn. It looks like it's kind of for dirty hippies, though - with the on-site camping and all - so that makes me feel a little better. Weren't you supposed to get us all tickets?

Wise Up Ghost

Ok fellas, it's here. And it's good. It's really, really good. Now I know that all of you guys are white as hell, and you're definition of funk usually involves the terms 'vanilla' and 'ice', but I think you will dig what's happening here. For This Project, there's the album, Wise Up Ghost, and a live show from last fucking night in Brooklyn, which I've dubbed Brooklyn Bowl since they played at a bowling alley. At the live show, there are also Rootsified versions of Costello classics like 'Spooky Girlfriend', 'I Want You', 'Chelsea', and 'Watching the Detectives'. All fantastic. Favorite tracks so far: 'Tripwire', 'Cinco Minutos Con Vos', 'Sugar Won't Work', and the title track. Get ya some!

Who Knew?

 So apparently, Jim Henson was covertly introducing us to porn at a very young age. My sources are telling me that the "Mahna Mahna" song was from a Swedish porno from the 60's





I"m just as dumbfounded as beaker. And if in fact this is a Swedish porn flick, that answers a lot of questions about why the Swedish Chef was on the show.

Here's the clip from the film...

Har Har

Because we all miss Rock and Roll Confidential

“No, it’s cool Bethany, you just keep dancing and I’ll just keep looking for your fucking car keys.”

This had me laughing really hard. It does for indie bands what the Hall of Douchebags did for 90s and metal bands on RRC. 

Phallus Phriday

Phallocopters!

I'm Guessing This Is Comcast

Come on, we've all been there.

Yesterday's Apple Announcement Reminded Me Of This

Funny because it's true. Will I buy a 5s? Absolutely.

Sometimes The Conspiracy Theorists Are Right

Nap Attack!

Any of you young trendsetters got one of these yet?

The Force Is Strong With This One...

As I recall, we have some bastards with connections to the Northwest. Perhaps they can explain how the sith lord could find the time to learn to play the flaming bagpipes and unicycle all while laying down the moves on Natalie Portman. And since when did he move to Portland...


  

It'll Melt Your Car

Okay

Gratuitous picture of Barbara Bach so I don't have to look at that frame from the labor video.

Labor Day

How are you celebrating labor today?  Cooking out, cold bevs?  Football game tonight, Joe?  Hope no one is actually laboring. 

Labor Day Already? Give Me An Air Conditioner, A Couch, A Movie..

Stay indoors. It's too hot for bastards outside.

Lurker, Didn't You Already Do This Experiment?

Take credit for your research!

Brainfinger!

Mind control is finally here. I'll have minions!

[no sound on this video]

God Bless the USA

Nothing says Amurica like a bald eagle flying in a church full of God-fearin' people chanting U-S-A U-S-A! Then it went wrong. I feel bad for bird though. Apparently he's ok. Is it just me or would this not be out of place in a Simpsons episode?

Ermagahd

They sound fucking awesome! Praise the Lawd!

Action Figures, Goddammit

The Secret Story of TOYS from Anthony Ladesich on Vimeo.

Massive Alan Lomax Field Recordings Archive Now Online

NPR says ...

Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. It's part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.

Lomax recorded a staggering amount of folk music. He worked from the 1930s to the '90s, and traveled from the Deep South to the mountains of West Virginia, all the way to Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. When it came time to bring all of those hours of sound into the digital era, the people in charge of the Lomax archive weren't quite sure how to tackle the problem.

"We err on the side of doing the maximum amount possible," says Don Fleming, executive director of the Association for Cultural Equity, the nonprofit organization Lomax founded in New York in the '80s. Fleming and a small staff made up mostly of volunteers have digitized and posted some 17,000 sound recordings.

"For the first time, everything that we've digitized of Alan's field recording trips are online, on our website," says Fleming. "It's every take, all the way through. False takes, interviews, music."

The archive can be found here. I dipped my toe in and found this ...

"Come Out the Wildnerness," performed by Boyd Rivers and his wife Ruth May. Preceded by introduction of themselves and their music. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long, August 30, 1978, at the Rivers' home in Canton, Mississippi.

In The Not Too Distant Future

This was a graduation project for Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.

Passage à l'acte By Martin Arnold

Wikipedia says:

Martin Arnold (born 1959 in Vienna, Austria) is an experimental filmmaker known for his obsessive reworkings of found footage. He is also a founding member of the Austrian film distributor Sixpack Film. Arnold studied psychology and art history at the University of Vienna. He has taught filmmaking at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt, the Kansas City Art Institute, Bard College, and at SUNY Binghamton. His films are distributed by Canyon Cinema in the United States and by Sixpack Film in Austria.

Arnold's films are intensely cut sequences in which several seconds of found footage are taken and stretched out into much longer works. The figures on the screen flip back and forth between frames, as the motion is repeated, reversed, and numerous single frame cuts are made. His intent is to create, or possibly unearth, narratives concealed within the mundane films from which he samples. Passage à l'acte (1993) uses several seconds of the film To Kill a Mockingbird to create a bizarre story of aggression and tension within a traditional American family.

Martin Arnold is representative of the generations of artists making the transition between experimental film and video art. Pieces such as Passage à l'acte (1993) were composed on film, with Arnold writing an edit decision list (EDL) for a film editor, who then recreated the choppy and intense works from the found source material. In the mid-1990s, Arnold was given access to an Avid digital editing machine, which allowed him to work directly with the footage and cut it into the intensely repetitive sequences himself. His first digitally cut project, Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998), made use of footage of Mickey Rooney's character Andy Hardy from the popular film series.

Shit

Well That Explains THAT

I always wondered.

Friday!

I'm on the road for the third Friday in a row.

Records

Anybody listening to anything good?

Joe: Why Do You Live In That State Again?

Seriously. We may have to perform an extraction.

Let's review, 'cause, it's time to cook...

If you haven't been watching Breaking Bad, you're missing out. Former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan has put together one hell of a show. The final 8 episodes begin tonight on AMC. In case you've been watching Phish concerts online, watching cat videos on you tube, or hangin out at Rock ' Roll Snob in stead of watching Breaking Bad, here's a little synopsis to get you caught up...

AMC is running the first 8 episodes of season 5 prior to the new episode today. Yeah Bitch!

Cats Are So Weird

We're All Going To This, Right?

Kinda slipped by me, somehow-- but I'm more jacked about this than about Super Star Trek Man Vs Pacific Iron Wolverine Man or whatever else I've missed this summer. I'll watch Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in just about anything, (anyone else love The Informant!?), and this film has District 9 bloodlines...

Sharktroversy...

Shark Week on the Discovery channel pretty much blows. Turns out they faked a whole show. Sensationalized bullshit. This from the network that has a show about fishing with vaginas. Did you hear what I said? Fishing. With. Vagina. Setting my DVR. On a more positive note, Nat Geo Wild is doing shark week right.

I Don't Get It

As a live band, Phish just doesn't live up to the hype.

Enhancing Your Performance

A Bastardo on a questionable substance? Whoever heard of such a thing?!

I'm Back.

As you were.

Joe's On The Road, So ...

I'll take his Vintage Pinup Friday. Submitted for your approval, Lillian Parker (AKA Adrienne Stoute). Miss Parker was an innovator. If you Google her - and you should - you'll quickly notice that she was trimming the infield 40 years before that was an acceptable practice.

Bonus!

First X-Men: Days Of Future Past Teaser

Not coming out 'til next May, of course.

Shit

Eileen Brennan. The Big C.

Bill Burr Is To Funny As Water Is To Wet

Jesus Christ, this guy's hilarious.

Laterz...

...heading to the land of evergreens and apples - whence arose the poobah and the Right Reverend Dave - for a much needed Jaycation. Please keep the place respectable while I'm away.

Shit

JJ Cale.  One of the greats.

Vintage Pinup Friday

June Palmer.

Sure, Why Not

Exclusively Released on iTunes for 4 weeks only

The Rolling Stones are pleased to announce the exclusive iTunes release of 'The Rolling Stones - Hyde Park Live' album, following their two successful sold out concerts in London's Hyde Park on 6 and 13 July.

Highlights of both Rolling Stones concerts, which took place almost 44 years to the day since the Stones first played Hyde Park on 5 July 1969, is available to download from today exclusively from the iTunes Store (iTunes.com/TheRollingStones ) ensuring that concert-goers, and fans new and old, can re-live their memories and experiences of these historic hometown shows.

The two Hyde Park concerts saw Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood do what they do best: performing foot-stomping, crowd-pleasing sets packed full with hit singles and anthems including Brown Sugar, It's Only Rock'N' Roll, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Sympathy for the Devil and Paint It Black , all of which feature on the limited edition iTunes release. The Rolling Stones 'Hyde Park Live' is available exclusively on the iTunes Store through August 19.

TRACKLISTING
1: Start Me Up
2: It's Only Rock 'N' Roll
3: Tumbling Dice
4: Emotional Rescue
5: Street Fighting Man
6: Ruby Tuesday
7: Doom And Gloom
8: Paint It Black
9: Honky Tonk Women
10: You Got The Silver
11: Before They Make Me Run
12: Miss You
13: Midnight Rambler
14: Gimme Shelter
15: Jumpin' Jack Flash
16: Sympathy For The Devil
17: Brown Sugar
18: You Can't Always Get What You Want
19: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Fortuitous Timing, Perhaps?

Car Crash While Hitchhiking

A salesman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping... A Cherokee filled with bourbon... A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student...

And a family from Marshalltown who head-onned and killed forever a man driving west out of Bethany, Missouri...

...I rose up sopping wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than con­scious, thanks to the first three of the people I've already named—the salesman and the Indian and the student—all of whom had given me drugs. At the head of the entrance ramp I waited without hope of a ride. What was the point, even, of rolling up my sleeping bag when I was too wet to be let into anybody's car? I draped it around me like a cape. The downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts. My thoughts zoomed pitifully. The travelling salesman had fed me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out. My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it glowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside it I knew we'd have an accident in the storm.

I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.

The man and the wife put the little girl up front with them and left the baby in back with me and my dripping bedroll. "I'm not taking you any­where very fast," the man said. "I've got my wife and babies here, that's why."

You are the ones, I thought. And I piled my sleeping bag against the left-hand door and slept across it, not caring whether I lived or died. The baby slept free on the seat beside me. He was about nine months old.

...But before any of this, that afternoon, the salesman and I had swept down into Kansas City in his luxury car. We'd developed a dangerous cynical camaraderie beginning in Texas, where he'd taken me on. We ate up his bottle of amphetamines, and every so often we pulled off the Interstate and bought another pint of Canadian Club and a sack of ice. His car had cylindrical glass holders attached to either door and a white, leathery interior. He said he'd take me home to stay overnight with his family, but first he wanted to stop and see a woman he knew.

Under Midwestern clouds like great grey brains we left the superhighway with a drifting sensation and entered Kansas City's rush hour with a sensation of running aground. As soon as we slowed down, all the magic of travelling to­gether burned away. He went on and on about his girlfriend. "I like this girl, I think I love this girl—but I've got two kids and a wife, and there's certain obligations there. And on top of every­thing else, I love my wife. I'm gifted with love. I love my kids. I love all my relatives." As he kept on, I felt jilted and sad: "I have a boat, a little sixteen-footer. I have two cars. There's room in the back yard for a swimming pool." He found his girlfriend at work. She ran a furniture store, and I lost him there.

The clouds stayed the same until night. Then, in the dark, I didn't see the storm gathering. The driver of the Volkswagen, a college man, the one who stoked my head with all the hashish, let me out beyond the city limits just as it began to rain. Never mind the speed I'd been taking, I was too overcome to stand up. I lay out in the grass off the exit ramp and woke in the middle of a puddle that had filled up around me.

And later, as I've said, I slept in the back seat while the Oldsmobile—the family from Mar­shalltown—splashed along through the rain. And yet I dreamed I was looking right through my eyelids, and my pulse marked off the seconds of time. The Interstate through western Missouri was, in that era, nothing more than a two-way road, most of it. When a semi truck came toward us and passed going the other way, we were lost in a blinding spray and a warfare of noises such as you get being towed through an automatic car wash. The wipers stood up and lay down across the windshield without much effect. I was ex­hausted, and after an hour I slept more deeply.

I'd known all along exactly what was going to happen. But the man and his wife woke me up later, denying it viciously.

"Oh—no!"

"NO!"

I was thrown against the back of their seat so hard that it broke. I commenced bouncing back and forth. A liquid which I knew right away was human blood flew around the car and rained down on my head. When it was over I was in the back seat again, just as I had been. I rose up and looked around. Our headlights had gone out. The radiator was hissing steadily. Beyond that, I didn't hear a thing. As far as I could tell, I was the only one conscious. As my eyes adjusted I saw that the baby was lying on its back beside me as if nothing had happened. Its eyes were open and it was feeling its cheeks with its little hands.

In a minute the driver, who'd been slumped over the wheel, sat up and peered at us. His face was smashed and dark with blood. It made my teeth hurt to look at him—but when he spoke, it didn't sound as if any of his teeth were broken.

"What happened?"

"We had a wreck," he said.

"The baby's okay," I said, although I had no idea how the baby was.

He turned to his wife.

"Janice," he said. "Janice, Janice!"

"Is she okay?"

"She's dead!" he said, shaking her angrily.

"No, she's not." I was ready to deny everything myself now.

Their little girl was alive, but knocked out. She whimpered in her sleep. But the man went on shaking his wife.

"Janice!" he hollered.

His wife moaned.

"She's not dead," I said, clambering from the car and running away.

"She won't wake up," I heard him say.

I was standing out here in the night, with the baby, for some reason, in my arms. It must have still been raining, but I remember nothing about the weather. We'd collided with another car on what I now perceived was a two-lane bridge. The water beneath us was invisible in the dark.

Moving toward the other car I began to hear rasping, metallic snores. Somebody was flung halfway out the passenger door, which was open, in the posture of one hanging from a trapeze by his ankles. The car had been broadsided, smashed so flat that no room was left inside it even for this person's legs, to say nothing of a driver or any other passengers. I just walked right on past.

Headlights were coming from far off. I made for the head of the bridge, waving them to a stop with one arm and clutching the baby to my shoul­der with the other.

It was a big semi, grinding its gears as it de­celerated. The driver rolled down his window and I shouted up at him, "There's a wreck. Go for help."

"I can't turn around here," he said.

He let me and the baby up on the passenger side, and we just sat there in the cab, looking at the wreckage in his headlights.

"Is everybody dead?" he asked.

"I can't tell who is and who isn't," I admitted.

He poured himself a cup of coffee from a ther­mos and switched off all but his parking lights.

"What time is it?"

"Oh, it's around quarter after three," he said.

By his manner he seemed to endorse the idea of not doing anything about this. I was relieved and tearful. I'd thought something was required of me, but I hadn't wanted to find out what it was.

When another car showed coming in the op­posite direction, I thought I should talk to them. "Can you keep the baby?" I asked the truck driver.

"You'd better hang on to him," the driver said. "It's a boy, isn't it?"

"Well, I think so," I said.

The man hanging out of the wrecked car was still alive as I passed, and I stopped, grown a little more used to the idea now of how really badly broken he was, and made sure there was nothing I could do. He was snoring loudly and rudely. His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath. He wouldn't be taking many more. I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.

Before too long there were cars backed up for a ways at either end of the bridge, and headlights giving a night-game atmosphere to the steaming rubble, and ambulances and cop cars nudging through so that the air pulsed with color. I didn't talk to anyone. My secret was that in this short while I had gone from being the president of this tragedy to being a faceless onlooker at a gory wreck. At some point an officer learned that I was one of the passengers, and took my state­ment. I don't remember any of this, except that he told me, "Put out your cigarette." We paused in our conversation to watch the dying man being loaded into the ambulance. He was still alive, still dreaming obscenely. The blood ran off him in strings. His knees jerked and his head rat­tled.

There was nothing wrong with me, and I hadn't seen anything, but the policeman had to question me and take me to the hospital anyway. The word came over his car radio that the man was now dead, just as we came under the awning of the emergency-room entrance.

I stood in a tiled corridor with my wet sleeping bag bunched against the wall beside me, talking to a man from the local funeral home.

The doctor stopped to tell me I'd better have an X-ray.

"No."

"Now would be the time. If something turns up later ..."

"There's nothing wrong with me."

Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.

"There's nothing wrong with me"—I'm sur­prised I let those words out. But it's always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.

Some years later, one time when I was admitted to the Detox at Seattle General Hospital, I took the same tack.
"Are you hearing unusual sounds or voices?" the doctor asked.

"Help us, oh God, it hurts," the boxes of cot­ton screamed.

"Not exactly," I said.

"Not exactly," he said. "Now, what does that mean."

"I'm not ready to go into all that," I said. A yellow bird fluttered close to my face, and my muscles grabbed. Now I was flopping like a fish. When I squeezed shut my eyes, hot tears ex­ploded from the sockets. When I opened them, I was on my stomach.

"How did the room get so white?" I asked.

A beautiful nurse was touching my skin. "These are vitamins," she said, and drove the needle in.

It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.

Butt Hurt

Apparently this is modern medicine in Tennessee.

Goddamn Morrissey

Pulled in its entirety from The A.V. Club (because it's hilarious) ...

Morrissey has cancelled his upcoming South American tour, citing a lock of proper funding. The mope rock singer posted an open letter lamenting the tour’s tanking and the state of his life in general, saying, like only Morrissey can:

“In a year when far too many disappointments have been buried this really is the last of many final straws, and I am not alone in feeling this. The future is suddenly absent, and my apologies are now so frequent as to be somewhat ridiculous, and it is I who apologize because no one else would bother. It is agonizing to be responsible for imparting such news - especially when it springs upon me unexpectedly and inexplicably. But the collapse of South America rings the curtain down with a colossal thud, and the major problems remain as insoluble now as they were in 2009. The obvious conclusion stares back at me from the mirror, and the wheels are finally off the covered wagon. Cancellations and illness have sucked the life out of all of us, and the only sensible solution seems to be the art of doing nothing.”

The singer ends his by saying, “I shall see you in my dreams,” whatever that means. If you see Morrissey, give him a hug.

I Propose Vintage Pinup Friday

I'll start things off with Debbie Westmore.

Oh! Oh! Oh!

If I ever make it to the San Diego Comic Con, I'm fairly certain I'll need to seek medical attention for an erection lasting longer than four hours.