It's still good, it's still good!-That the name I assigned to the Valtrex commercials that used to run ad naseum on any given cable channel. Valtrex is a treatment for genital herpes. You know the ad where this attractive brunette and her boyfriend frolicked in the sand, rode bikes and went for romantic walks? They played in the surf and looked longingly into each others eyes and all I thought about was adding a voice over that said "It's still good, it's still good!"Of course, I am making a possibly incorrect assumption that she is the one with the gift that keeps on giving. Maybe he's the one whose carrying around a sack full of herpes virus. Perhaps her yammi's as clean as day she was born! Who knows? Anyway, the implied message of the the commercial is that you can have cock rot or a coochie full of bugs and still have an active sex life with the hunk/hottie of your choice.
I am going out on a limb here. I think the brunette in the Valtrex commercial is an actress named Michele Hicks. I say this because the actress that played Mara Sewell on The Shield in the third season bears a strong resemblance to Ms. Sand Frollicker from the ad. I got hit in the head with the Valtrex thing so often that I started to put two and two together. I looked it up on the net but I can't find a website that lists what actors do which commercials.

The Liberal Media and other Fairytales: The Liberal Media has reared its ugly head since the disasters in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. It pulled a sneak attack by playing opossum since the election of 2000 and thereby convincing everyone that it had indeed died a lonely death. The Liberal Media apparently died shortly after George W. Bush stole/bought the 2000 election and proclaimed himself the legitimate leader of the Free World. How do you come to such conclusions you might wonder? Reason and some logical thought may lead to such decrees. Situation: The World trade Center gets attacked on Sept 11th and what does our esteemed leader do? He sits in front of a class of school children for SEVEN MINUTES!! and appears not to have a clue as to what comes next? Shouldn't the Liberal Media have jumped on him and screamed "Do Something! Act like a leader!" No criticism from anyone (except Michael Moore and look how far out of the mainstream he is!) Situation: After the invasion of Iraq no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found. Further the Downing Street Memos indicate that there never were WMDs in Iraq. Even further, the alleged uranium Saddam was trying to buy from Africa turned out not to be true. So we have a sitting Republican President who has at least is in an embarrassing position and where is the Liberal Media? If they are indeed the enemy of the Republican State then they should have been jumping on this like white on rice. . Situation: The Tsunami hits Christmas 2004 and about a half a gajillion people in Asia die. Bush is on vacation and it takes about four days for him to dig himself outta of the snowbanks at Crawford TX and get some aid to those folks. Where's the outrage? Where was the Liberal Media? Situation: Too many soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq to support policies that vague and always changing. We got Saddam and we didn't get the WMDs let's go home. Maybe the real war in is Afghanistan or maybe North Korea? No Liberal Media here either! All of a sudden after Katrina, the Liberal Media is back with its nasty leftist agenda to smear the good names of Mike Brown and George Bush. I hear this bullshit from people who can't accept that their esteemed leader is not well versed in leadership. He chose poorly when he promoted Mr. Brown from the President of the Arabian Horse Club to the head of FEMA. I hear Brown is a swell guy, a great trial lawyer and he knows boccoos about Arabian horses. He didn't know how to respond to a disaster like Katrina and people died. It also appears to some that Mr. Bush may be a racist! I don't buy that argument. He's not a racist because a racist sees only the color of a person's skin. The only color that Bush and his kind are predisposed to favor is the color of money! If your bank account hasn't got enough zeros then you don't count in their book! So maybe there is no such thing as the Liberal Media. If there were ,do you think they would have had a field day since 2000? No Virginia, the bad old Liberal Media is a myth that is as old as the country. One of the chief proponents of the Modern Myth, Reed Irvine, died not too long ago. You think maybe the myth follows the man.

I got to wondering if anybody has addressed the issue of the "Lyndon Johnson" in cell phone etiquette. I think nobody has addressed it in these terms because I hope I am the first person to bring this up.
You are probably what wondering "what is a Lyndon Johnson?" and what does it have to do with my cell phone? I got this from a friend of mine who swears it was true of our former President. It seems that when LBJ ( that stands for Lyndon Baines Johnson for you young folks and trivia buffs) was President and he took a dislike to someone, he would meet with them when he was on the commode. He'd call them in right about time for a Presidential sit down, prop the door slightly ajar and conduct his meeting while doing number 2.
I got to studying about the "Lyndon Johnson" and how it pertains to cell phones. There are two kinds of "Lyndon Johnson's" for our discussion. First is the "unintentional" Lyndon Johnson. You are caught in the moment while doing your thing and the damn cell phone rings. You are struggling whether you should possibly breach etiquette and answer the damn thing (thus creating the unintentional LJ) or should you let it ring and go to the voice mail? If you like the person on the other end you might just let it ring. But if the caller has juicy gossip, the location of the WMDs or other pertinent info you may want to risk the breach of etiquette. However, if the person on the other end is Brutus to your Caesar then by all means give'em an unintentional LJ.

How about the intentional LJ? This is a special form of passive aggressive behavior and should be used in moderation. Let's say last week somebody ( not you!) totally fucked up some big case at work and you got the blame for it. You got reamed but good by your boss. You know he/she is mental midget with the cranial capacity of walnut and he/ she believes anybody but your sorry ass.
This week you know you have important info that the boss needs. When do ya give it to him? What do ya do? You get your cell phone and call him right in the middle of a good dump. Make it as noisy as you want. He may not ever catch on but you got the last laugh by giving him a Lyndon Johnson!

"Let's go home and have sex- my coochie's clean and it smells GOOD!"- Peaches.

What is the value of a clean house? Well, not owning one limits my knowledge of the subject. I have visited several in the course of 46 years and as a frequent visitor, I can say "Please clean the foyer on a regular basis!" Poor Vickie from Ponderosa was lax in that department and she (we) missed out on some great sex when we were 16. Vickie was everything any 16 year old boy could want -she had a pulse and she wanted to get it on! She really was sweet and she thought I hung the moon ( I still don't know who told her that!). Her foyer was not prepped and the ambiance was unpleasant. It reminded me of Venice, Italy (the old city by the sea) with the canals and the sea water and the eels. Did you know Venice had eels? I found this out when I walked through the ancient streets and saw the fishmongers with their wares for sale. The eels still had the heads on and one stood up and " Do I look familiar?"He sounded just like Big Pussy Bompensaro from The Sopranos.
Actually, I copped that last gag from the episode of The Sopranos after Pussy got whacked. Tony, Paulie Walnuts and Sal took Big Pussy on fishing trip and now Pussy sleeps with the fishes. Tony has a dream where he walking by a fishmongers cart and one of the big fish starts talking to him. It is the voice of Big Pussy. Actually, it's Tony feeling guilty for whacking his best friend but that's business.
We had a great discussion the other day about The Sopranos- Church Lady , Hermes and I. CL watched 10 minutes of an episode at a friend's house and decided the whole lot of 'em were going to Hell in a Handbasket in the Express Lane. I'm not sure who's going to Hell and who's not- it's not my job to decide that. It would appear that anyone who could kill another for money or to keep from going to jail must be a heartless sociopath. But that's what The Sopranos is about-the moral struggles of someone who kills, steals, and brutalizes people in the course of their business dealings. It like Tony Soprano said "You're born into this shit!"
In my humble opinion, lots of people get screwed in business deals every day- it's the American Way. Look at the Enron scandal, the Tyco rip off and Haliburton. At Enron and Tyco, the leaders ripped off the shareholders and made off with lots and lots of bucks. In an incident like that, there almost surely was bribery and lots of lying going on. Maybe nobody got whacked but still the wolves raided the henhouse.
Bob Dylan once said "To live outside the law you must be honest". Tony Soprano, even though he exists only on a soundstage in Burbank, is more honest to me than the pirates of Tyco and Enron. With Tony, what you see is what you get, and with these other thieves, you never know.

In the pre dawn rain as I struggled awake today, I dreamed Paul Lynde was yukking it up on my own version of Hollywood Squares. Before that I was riding in a school bus driven by my daughter. She asked me later today if that was the short bus. There is theme here and I am going to find it. Seems to be retards and fairies or retards and midgets.

"If there's two things I can't stand in the world. It's retards and midgets."- Doyle from Sling Blade. I love that movie. I quote it all the time. I like to go McDonald's and ask for "some of them french fried potaters". I try to do my best impersonation of Carl but it is difficult. It is difficult to do things like that right. I guess that's why we live in a PC world.

George C. Wolfe said in his book Spunk Three Tales by Zora Neale Hurston "It is suggested that the rhythms of the dialect be played instead of the dialect itself. A subtle but important distinction. The former will give you Zora. The latter Amos and Andy." Of course, Zora Hurston was a Harlem Renaissance writer and a contemporary of Langston Hughes. She wrote many important books on African American culture and documented Negro folk tales. She wrote a book called Mules and Men in 1935 which documented Southern beliefs in roots and root doctors. Spunk is one of her plays and Mr. Wolfe gives his thoughts on how to make the acting work instead doing caricature.
Zora Hurston died broke, employed as a maid in a hotel in 1960. Up until a few years ago, she was buried in a pauper's field in Florida. Alice Walker worked real hard to get her back in the limelight.

Where is all this going? Damned if I know-but enjoy the ride!

I bought a book at the flea market last week called Four Yoruba Rituals for the New World by James Mason. It set me back $5.50 and it was worth it. I got this as my companion to American Voodoo by Brad Davis. The book on Yoruba rituals documents four types of voodoo rituals practiced in America by the Yoruba practitioners. The Yoruba were one of the largest tribes in Africa and descendants are scattered across the Southern US, the Carribbean, and into Brazil. They were originally from Nigeria and carried their religious beliefs throughout the New World. It's difficult to make people give up their spiritual beliefs even if you kidnap, chain and beat 'em regularly. Slaves didn't give up much in the way of their beliefs-they just hid them and took them out when Whitey was asleep. Sure, alot of slaves "converted" to Christianity- I would have what with all the chains and ass whuppins. Somehow certain fundamental things survive calculated awfulness and these things still peer out at us on a good day. Keep looking!

Hunter S. Thompson is dead.

Those are four words I didn't want to hear for awhile. I feel shocked and ripped off because the way he went is the out the back door. Suicide is not heroic nor does it automatically elevate one's life above the rest. It's dastardly and wicked. I have survived three people committing suicide in my life and that is enough. I had a friend do it when we were barely out of high school. He was the kind of kid that was sensitive anyway and he tried real hard to fit in with a bunch of redneck hooligans. He failed at that and I guess he couldn't take it. The last time he I saw him he showed up at my door with a busted lip and a broken nose. This was courtesy of some long forgotten Neanderthals that lived on the periphery of our existence. A few days later he checked out. As for the Neanderthals they're probably driving around in their SUVs right now.

My uncle did it in 1995. He had a recurrence of colon cancer and just didn't want to go through it again. I guess rather than face a slow death in wheelchair and pissing in bag, he found the express exit. Suicide leaves a whole in the family fabric (if such a thing exists) and the edges never do meet up right again. I guess you can get used to most anything but it takes a long time and the going is slow.

My friend did about six months ago. She didn't go quietly either. She went out courtesy of the Columbia County Sheriff's Department. Kim holed herself up in her apartment with a loaded gun and some pills. She endangered the lives of a lot of police officers who were there trying to help her. She didn't take the help and should have. That's all I have to say about that.

There are certain stories that bear repeating and probably more than once. This one of those-the true kind that you just couldn't make up if you had to. The kind that still get a laugh on Thanksgiving or Christmas. This happened a long time ago in place that is not so far away but it existed in a time that is far off. I could take you to the gas station where this happened-it's just up the road where Highway 150 and the Stagecoach Rd (?) split off near Thomson, GA. Back in the day, there was no cable TV, no cell phones, or computers. This place was way out beyond the lights of town and there was no cultural sensitivity or anything like that.
I was about 9 years old and my family was out for a drive in the country. We had miniature poodle named Pierre that my grandmother had given us. Pierre had a dental problem with his lower jaw that caused his bottom row of teeth to stick out and he looked goofy enough as it was. That year we hadn't given Pierre his trimming yet so he looked like a giant cottonball with a huge underbite!
We stopped in this country store for gas and Pierre was sitting between me and my brother in the back seat. There was a young black kid about twelve years old pumping our gas and he looked in through the back window at the dog. He looked off puzzled and continued his work. He kept looking at the dog as he washed the windshields and he just had a puzzled look on his face. He finally came around to collect the money and when my father rolled down the window the kid said "Mister, that's pretty little sheep you got there! But he's got eyes just like a dog!"
We all were laughing so hard that the kid just looked at us like we were crazy! No one in the car was in control enough to tell the kid that Pierre was a dog and we drove away.

Pierre was a source of amusement for all the kids at my bus stop. He used to wander the streets(everybody's dog did it then) and he try to mate with every female he saw. I think he even tried the neighbor's cat a time or two. We used to call him Dirty Pierre and sang a song in his honor. It was set to the Frito Bandito tune and went something like "Aye ,Yay ,Yay, Yay, I am Dirty Pierre. I love to fuck bitches oh yes I do. If you don't watch out I will fuck you!" Of course to sing it right you have to haf an accent lika de Speedy Gonzalez!

I replaced "you yelled so loud..You scared my mule" with a new blog script. I got tired of the old one and after I heard this new one the other night. Well, it just made sense.

This past week people in our town have been playing golf in shirt sleeves and avoiding yellow green clouds of chlorine gas. That's how fucked up Karma can be sometimes. On one side of the world, 150,000 human beings lost their lives in the greatest natural disaster in our times. This shit is like the destruction of Pompeii or the sacking of Rome. The Tsunami is a major bigtime tragedy with implications that we won't even be able to understand. It makes the Titanic and even 911 seem a little smaller by comparison.
Closer to home- just over the river at least nine people died in that train wreck and subsequent aforementioned cloud of chlorine. No telling what the long term effects of that will be. It 'll be awhile before we venture over to the Blue Top Grill to eat. I look forward to that day. Graniteville will make a comeback but how will it change that beautiful village in the Valley? People will never see the Norfolk and Southern railroad the same again.

I have a theory that God must be like Mr. Magoo and he is armed with a giant rocket launcher. He knows all of us are fucking up one way or another but some like Ben Ladin, Saddam and the boys from Halliburton are doing things that effect everybody. 150,000 people in one of the poorest regions in the world did not need to die! God must be myopic or his aim is off! Think about it- a cosmic Mr. Magoo with a rocket launcher! Comforting!
Karma's funny that way.

It was a little hard to believe. The reason the dog barked all last night and most of the day was because of a opossum. Pepper from next door barked all night and way into this afternoon. I felt like someone beat me up with a baseball bat and I didn't want to have to go next door to find out why the fucking dog was barking. My neighbors weren't home( how convenient!) and I wasn't up to playing detective.
Finally, my neighbor comes home and wants me to go with her to catch said opossum. I am no Steve Irwin (croc Hunter) and I don't like these nasty things. Anyway, I have ulterior motives for doing it so off I go. She said the damn thing was in the backyard and had been there all night. We took a large dog cage/kennel thing and I held it while she tried to make it run inside the cage. It ran but not in the cage! She chased it down the stairs to the basement and I held the cage open. She backed it into the cage with a board while it hissed and bit at her. We got him in the cage and shut the door. My neighbor grabbed the end of the cage and we started carrying it to??? Somewhere. Anyway, the opossum doesn't want to play along and he(?) climbs out on my neighbors end. We drop it and the opossum goes under her fence into the six inch No-Man's-Land between our fences.
I got the BB gun (didn't really want to kill it!) and shot him in the ass a couple of times. This just annoyed him. He took off between the fences and eventually climbed up a tree. He seemed to be satisfied there and I was satisfied for him. I could have shot him with my deer rifle but we are in the city limits and I don't want to accidentally kill anyone this close to Christmas.
I hear my neighbor squawking about getting him out of the tree and the next thing I know there's a half drunk redneck walking in my yard with a loaded 9 mm and a 40 oz Busch! My neighbor obviously recruited some guy up the street or off the street to end this marsupial's life. The drunk says "I've got a .44 caliber". I don't argue with half drunk armed rednecks. He really had a 9 mm but at this point...
He and I make several attempts to chamber a round. These new fangled guns! Back in my day all you did was pack the barrel with powder, load the ball and pull the flintlock back... Anyway, he finally chambers a round and with one shot sends that opossum wherever opossums go. A big trash dump in the sky???

I saw Bob Dylan once when he was getting off the tour bus to play the Civic Center in Augusta Ga. I was hanging out back of the Civic Center waiting on Bob's bus to pull in and I was talking to two guys who were following the show. They said he just might come over and start talking to us and signing autographs or he might just ignore us and walk away. They said depending on what mood he's in he's gracious or not. When the bus pulled in we got "or not." We waited and waited for him to exit the bus. While we waited one of the guys said to look out for a guy in a hooded sweat shirt who will exit the bus quickly. I listened to these guys- they had been through this before. We waited some more and were about to leave when this short, skinny guy in a hooded sweatshirt got off the bus and ran in the building."That's him" one of them said. "Are you sure?" I asked a whole lot bewildered. "Yep. that was him." he reassured me.

My wife and I went to the show later that evening and sat in our second row seats! This short, skinny guy who looked like Vincent Price dressed as Ernest Tubb walked out and everybody went crazy. He was there 30 feet in front of me. I could "study the lines on my(his) face" I could have even "bent down to tie the laces of my (his) shoes".

I've seen him on the stage about four times so far but the bus sighting was as close as I'll probably ever get. When I think of the bus sighting- I am reminded of the opening chapter of Ratso Sloman's book called On the Road With Bob Dylan. Ratso talks about going to see Dylan when he was fifteen. He says his parents dropped him and friend off at the show and came back to pick them up. Sloman talks about how he wanted to see Dylan up close but had to settle for seats in the back row. On the way home, he was lamenting about not having good seats and his father says "I got to see him. I was about five feet away." Ratso writes that he could barely contain himself and demanded to know the details. His father tells him "I went in to see if I could find you and I walked up to the stage. I saw this Dylan. He looked like a shipping clerk." He looks like a shipping clerk- those are words I have never forgotten.

The concert in Augusta was in 2002 and I recently saw him on 60 Minutes. He looked like an older shipping clerk in this interview. He says he wrote Blowin in the Wind in about ten minutes. I believe him. Either the muse is with you or she ain't. He didn't reveal anything astounding- never has-probably never will. He was on the show hustling his new book, Chronicles. I've read it and I think it's a great book. I compare it to Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory or Seeds of Man. It's full of lies, half truths and complete honesty. Only problem is I don't know which is which. Chronicles is wide open and closed off at the same time. Bob shows you what he wants you to see and nothing more. What it lacks is details about lovers and friends, the great recording sessions are absent, there is nothing about his kids or his house. What is there are vivid, personal descriptions of things that left an impression on him. A friend's apartment is described so well that you can almost hear the heatpipes cough. He talks about a woman he watches out of the window and you can almost hear her breathe.

Bob has been described as ruthless, ambitious, cold, calculating and a user of people. One of his ex girlfriends called him a "raging alcoholic". There are plenty of people who have felt betrayed and hurt by his actions. Ramblin' Jack Elliot is one. He was the heir apparent to Woody Guthrie's legacy- some people even called him Woody's son. He was prepped and ready to take over when Woody died. But suddenly, his position was usurped by the shipping clerk from Minnesota. Bob Dylan blew into New York in 1961 and soon Ramblin Jack was just a footnote in history. Of course, none of this is in Chronicles. You'll have to rent the documentary on Ramblin Jack to get the full story.

Being a Bob Dylan fan is frustrating and difficult at times. Almost from the first time I crossed the line in 1975, it has been a hard road. One thing I had a hard time accepting is that Bob is not for everyone. He said in Chronicles something to the effect that some people will be driven away by his sound and some will be fascinated. Those who are fascinated will move closer. I am fascinated more and more. I used to think those who don't get it could be converted if they really listened. It don't work that way! Either you love it or you don't -there is no middle ground.
Some times being a Bob fan is embarrassing. In 1991 he accepted the Lifetime Achievement award on TV. The band played Masters of War- it sucked! Then Bob came up to accept his award and was obviously drunk. He mumbled and slurred something about advice his father gave him and stumbled off the stage. Just prior to the debacle , I was telling an 18 year old girl she about to witness the greatest songwriter of the 20th century. During all this she just rolled her eyes and walked off.

Would I stop being a Dylan fan? Do I have any regrets? Hell no! I think his flaws are just part of the picture. They just make him more intriguing and more honest. With Dylan, you don't get candyass fluff and feel good songs. You can't dance to it but you're not supposed to. His music comes from another place and time. A very old place, a vast place called America.

I woke up this morning thinking about Puritans, Pilgrims and the values this country was founded on. Actually, I was dreaming about a menage with me, Ella Fitzgerald, and a circus midget. We were at the Mustang Ranch in Nevada on a three day screwfest. All the drugs had been consumed and Ella was singing in the shower. Not Ella from Now but Ella from long ago or maybe that was Lena Horne. Anyway, there something about a FemDom and a bottle of Feena-Mints. The hashish haze in my mind blocked out the details.The circus midget was reciting Bob Dylan's It's all right Ma (I'm only bleedin') but he sounded like Milton Berle on helium. "Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon, the handmade blade , the child's balloon eclipses both the sun and moon...." It was just too much -I woke up.

Who were those damned Puritans? Why did they come here? What motivated them to pack up and come to a wild ,unknown country? It was religious freedom, I thought. At least that's what we learned in school. But then I thought "There are at least two sides to every story". What if it was religious freedom and something more? Then I thought "maybe it was mutual decision for them to leave Europe?" The Puritans were such assholes anyway. Maybe Europeans were just sick of their martyrish ways. Look, they wore black all the time; they never had fun; everything was sin; there was no sex just for the fun of it; they never danced. They were fucking miserable! They made everybody else miserable too. I mean for them it was always work, work, work and suffer suffer suffer. Could you stand to be around assholes like this? I can't stand the martyr trip- I just want to scream "Get down off the cross. We need the wood!"
Then they had that crybaby shit about "We're being persecuted". Of course, they were but they brought most of that on themselves. If they had smiled, danced, and sang once in while maybe others would have accepted them more.
I'll bet the royalty were glad to be rid of them. They probably thought "Good riddance! Maybe the boat will sink halfway there." I just don't see throngs of Englishmen on the dock shedding tears when the Puritans set sail for America.. If there was any crowd at the docks, they were probably cheering and then went to the pub after to celebrate! I would have done that if I had been there!

Thanksgiving- I have so much to be thankful for I don't think this blog is enough. I am grateful to be walking and talking and able to eat on my own. I am glad to be able to go to the bathroom on my own. I'm glad for a wife who will still put up with me! I'm glad my kids haven't dropped out of school, been to a rave, robbed a store, or joined a cult! I am thankful my parents and in-laws haven't gone to the nursing home or the boneyard. I am glad I have friends who appreciate the Tard Blog and some who love to get calls from Jimmy at the Group Home. I am glad Suzy is gone! I am glad Shane did the dirty work.I'm glad for friends who appreciate when I call them and pretend to be Charles Guiteau or Ron Jeremy. I am thankful for the "Bad Place". I am glad to know Peaches who is the best non-blonde Blonde I ever knew (What do you mean by that? I can hear her now).I am thank ful for the Simpson's chess set my friends gave me. I am thankful that we all went to Blue Top Grill. I am glad Jeffrey has such great parties.I'm thankful my car still runs and gets me to my job I hate. I'm glad I have a job to hate! I am glad to have co-workers to mock (Yoda, BJ, all the ugly people) I'm glad they haven't outlawed cigars and that some are still well made. I am thankful for mayonaise. I am glad Angie asked me to help with Praxis and the telephone test. I am glad to be able to read and write.I am glad to live on Ellis Street in my grandaddy's house with all the flowers and the yard. I am glad my cousin is moving back in with Willie Nelson ( his girlfriend looks like Willie)- they deserve each other.I am thankful for my studio and all the equipment needed to run it. Thank God for flea markets, yard sales, auctions, thrift stores and rummage sales! I am glad they are still making decent horror/suspense movies (Saw, Teaxas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and Audition). I am glad you stopped by and took the time to read this tome.

Damn I hate this cheap cock-knocker and I don't even know him!!!!

Dylan And I went to Tobaccoland tonight and as we walked into the humidor, we squeezed by this cute blonde buying cigars for her boyfriend. The store manager was giving her some help but after a while she turned to me and asked me if I knew anything about good cigars." ma'am I am here to serve" I thought to myself. I proceeded to give the eager neophyte a thorough but quick orientation to the world of cigars. I apparently was doing such a good sales job, the manager ducked out of the humidor and went about her dusting duties. CB (cute blonde) asked Dylan if he was old enough to smoke and he mumbled something and we continued with the lesson. She had a ten pack of Don Diegos and a pack of Ashton's in her hand. I gently guided her to the Montecristos and told her these were the top of the line. She said" My boyfriend usually smokes White Owl" to which Dylan replied "He smokes those gas station brands??!" We looked down our noses and shuddered. I told her this is a good way to introduce him to the better cigars so he won't have to smoke dogshit again. (I left out the part about the dogshit) She proceeded to tell us that not only was he getting cigars but she rattled a package in my face and said "Jewelry too!" Then she drops the coup de grace "I'm going to buy him some Scotch as well" " That motherfucker!!!" I thought "He gets Scotch, jewelry, good cigars and probably a blowjob. He's a cheap cock knocker!. I hate him!!!"
She danced out of the humidor and after I picked up a few Quorums and a Montecristo ( damn, he gets the best! So why not me?) Dylan and I went to the register. CB proceeded to quiz me about good Scotches and I told her "Get anything with the first name "Glen"'( but not Thompson!). She thanked us for our help and I told her "I hope he appreciates all this and if he is ever mean to you we'll kick his ass!" The manager rang her out and it was forty three dollars and eighty seven cents! She went on out the door and we just looked at each other.
We rang out and walked into the mall. "Forty four dollars worth of cigars, Glen whatever Scotch, jewelry and she'll probably fuck his brains out! I hate the cheap cock knocker!" I ranted as we moved down towards the bookstore. I kept repeating these figures to myself. $44 dollars in cigars and a good hard fucking- will this prick be impressed?? Does he even deserve this ?? Is he an undeserving asshole?
Hey you! yeah, you with the Glenfidic on your breath, the new jewelry, the Montecristo cigar and the lipstick on your fly. How was it? To show your gratitude you should wash the dishes for at least a week and go see about ten chick flicks!

I didn't inhale!

This is Scott Weathers and I when I was about 14 years old. He is Kim's younger brother and we used to hang out all the time. Then something called "Adulthood" got in our way and we haven't been as close as we could be. I hate that shit! Not that I want to be 14 again but for fuck's sake do all your friends have to disapper in the mist? What a way to reconnect! Our sister gets gunned down like a fuckin dog by the Columbia County Sheriff;s Department! That's too painful for anyone to bear. Anyway, pray for the Weathers family but most of all pray harder for Scott. He lost her daughter two years ago to brain cancer, now Kim and his sister, Lisa, has B-cell Lymphoma. He ain't taking it too good. It's a hard fucking row to hoe.

Columbia County Deputies murdered Kim Weathers:
Hurricane in the Atlantic-145 mph winds, G. W. Bush sucking up to fuck it up even more. Cops got the guns_ Kim's dead in a pool of blood on a hot August night. Motherfucking cops! Killers! "News Break this just in: Officer Friendly is dead! killed by friendly fire. Keystone cops sent to investigate." Pop Weathers frail old man with his head on the table crying his eyes out. He ll never see her killers. cause they hide behind a badge. congratulate themselves on a clean kill. Cops rubberstamp cops. Law abiding citizens under the gun. Cops got the gun. This ain't my country no more. fuck the cops. useless piles of pig shit. She wrote" Stay sweet and be the one." which one? Lord I m gonna die hard she wrote. Heartbroke! Bad dreams-dreaming of death at the hands of the cops. I’m a single mother please don't shoot. I‘m on Prozac please don’t shoot. Don't mourn organize! Joe Hill said. Took her to the prom. I hate coming home for this. It‘s a hard walk across that yard. I crawled it once a long time ago. The bathroom is still in the same place- some things even Wal Mart can t change. I went back home and the light had gone out .I just cried .Everybody hurts sometimes. Every cop is a criminal and all you sinners saints! Some people know what time it is and some don t. Don t give me no church jive. I want nothing from Readers Digest or Ann Landers. Don t give me platitudes or you ll get attitude. Kim s dead and gone and the world is fucked. That face and smile . Love hurts! I want to be your boyfriend 8 years old. Mind your business she gets me told. Kim smile! funky glasses and a checkered dress. The bright spots are few and far between. It s a mean old world. Amen Little Milton!

Cigars, CD's, and things going on

So much stuff goin on on all fronts. I found another cigar I like called Quorum and it is actually more in my price range. I smoke St Luis Rey most of the time but at $3.50 a pop who can afford this for long? Quorum is from Nicaragua and it is a good smoke. They are about half the price of St. Luis's and are just as satisfying. One day when the cash train makes a long stop here I plan to smoke Montecristos. They cost about $10-$18 dollars a piece! My hero, Kinky Freidman (cigar aficionado, musician, crime novel writer) smokes Montecristo#2 and always writes about good they are. I guess when you sell a lot of books you can afford the best.

I am working on my new CD as we speak. After all these years of putting it off I am going to put it out. I just plain ran out of excuses! I am going to do the whole thing myself and I mean the whole thing. I am going to pull a Prince and play all the instruments, do the arranging, producing and mastering. I have most of the drums ready to go, I wrote the songs so I have a basic arrangement in mind and I have the editing software. It's gonna take a while so be patient.

Peaches' Birthday or why are there two of her?

Disco Diva, Peaches/Papa Smurf, Ransom, Angie/Justin, MJ, Dicey, Papa Smurf's flight instructor, Leslie Delicious, Amy/Jay,Curley, King Louie /Connie and Faye/Me celebrated Peaches' birthday. We started calmly enough at Nacho Mama's with a few margaritas and food. Justin and I talked about hunting rattlesnakes in Burke county and made some vague plans about a mini roundup. We will only 'hunt' along the dirt roads and not off in the bushes. This is dangerous enough without giving Mr. Rattler any more advantages. We plan to use a pellet gun to the head to stun Mr. Rattler then we'll slip a noose on him (from a good distance). After that it's time to toss him in the bucket and close the lid.

The party had a change of venue when we left Mexico and traveled to Hale Tiki. There it really cranked when the scorpion bowls, mango coolers, and Fog Cutters started to flow. Scorpion Bowls are a community drink between 3-4 people (separate straws) and can help you feel in tune with others real quick! Leslie D and I drank most of one while Curley and Faye quaffed another. I think we had several bowls going at once between all the people and everybody got happy! King Louie got a Fog Cutter that tasted like insecticide but he bravely clung to the drinker's code-"if you buy it, you drink it". I tried that with La Florida but the cloying orange and chocolate flavors started to turn my stomach and I didn't want to miss Modjeska.

We stumbled to Modjeska after our time at the Tiki bar and finally arrived at the White Party. I had been looking forward to this all week. Everyone wore white garments mostly. Some were decked all in white while others had on the obligatory shirt or pants. Modjeska is/was a vaudeville theatre that has been renovated into a cool as hell disco. I can't dance worth shit but I love to go there and join in the mass of booties shaking. The music was loud as a jet plane and the decor has a 1940's vibe that gets me everytime.

For some reason, Amy/Jay didn't get in and that's too bad because the midgets were out. She confided in us last week that midgets give her the creeps. This was a very Dylanesque scene in the bar with everyone dressed in white, the fog machine blowing and two midgets dancing around. The circus atmosphere was punctuated by Curley dancing shirtless and Disco Diva just dancing. Leslie D.was a divine addition to our dancing party and she apparently had a real good time!

Faye and I left the club and stumbled up the street with Leslie D and Disco Diva in tow. We remanded said lovelies to the company of Dicey who drove them home.

Next time, we'll have to talk about dead Confederates, new studio toys, more records and smelly old ladies at yard sales.

Dreaming of Athens and Demented are Go!

I just woke up from a dream where Ort was saying he needed a copy of Demented are Go's Mongoloid on 45. I went to the website for Demented Are Go and that song is not on a 45. Isn't that veird? (Johannes Vander Smut- Austin Power's Goldmember). Anyway, that reminds me to write about last weekend's trip to Athens.
I did run into Ort at Copper Creek Brewery after stopping in for a cool glass of HeifeWeizen. It was about 150 degrees outside and Dylan and I were hot and thirsty. I was about halfway down the beer when Ort ambled in off the sweltering sidewalk. Hannah mosied in not long after that and we all caught up on the latest goings on.
The big Ort news is that Renaldo & Clara were due to be in Athens that very night! I call DJ Hack Renaldo because he is married to a woman named Clara. If you don't know about Renaldo and Clara look up Dylan, Bob/filmography. Anyway, it seems they made the trip from Brazil to stay with Ort for a month. Something got lost in translation and Renaldo & Clara were without digs. I heard from Ort that they had even planned a side trip to Augusta to vist with your humble narrator. Anyway, they ended up taking a car trip to New York and beyond that it is a mystery. I missed them that night I guess as I never got a call from Ort or anyone.
I got a great band/song name from Ort- he has thousands listed- Dance the Tired Clown. How about that for a band name? I like it better than The Neesie Mills Experience.

I visited Devlin Thompson at Bizarro Wuxtry and he schooled me about the latest DVD offering of Don Knotts movies. There is a triolgy that has The Love God and two other Knott's classics on it. I saw the R.Lee Ermy 12" figure (talking) of Gunnery Sgt. Hartmann from Full Metal Jacket. It was way cool but the $36.95 retail put me off. There were Simpson's figures and lots of cool shit tucked away in the best comic store in the world.

While we were there a little bird told me the greatest gossip about the last plantation at which I was employed (in serfdom I like to say). My former Massa was Athens Regional Medical Center where I was enslaved for 11 years. Ms. Betty was my overseer on the Psych Unit and I made lots of friends with the other serfs. I got to know Jack LaLaine real well and he and I kept the place in stitches for a long time. Jack had been there longer than me and he was there after I left. I guess that makes him a WillBee defined as "an employee who was on the job when you came and they will be there when you leave". Anyway, I always figured Jesus would come back before Jack LaLaine left the Psych Unit. The story goes something like this: Jack was pissed off about some new policy or something they were doing on the unit. A couple of weeks ago he had just come on shift and was waiting for report to start. All of sudden he got up and clocked out. He supposedly said something about going home and left. Allegedly, he called the next day and told them he wanted to go on a Leave of Absence.

The "official" story being floated by the overseers seems to leave out the bit about the LOA and makes it look like he walked out with no intention of returning. That's just about typical for that bunch-to spread half the truth around and try to sell it as the Gospel. Anyway, I worry about Jack, this is not like him to actually to walk off from a job he has had for so long.

Hannah and I paid a visit to Batman And Robin. They are the proud parents of Little Hudson O'Donnell who showed up on time and in very good health. Robin is looking healthy and motherly while Paulie (BatMan) is beaming proud. Hudson is a born and bred Southerner even if Mamaandem is from New Yawk. Mamaandem ain't that a happy word? It's a blending of the the phrase Mama and them and it is used in a sentence like this: We saw Mamaandem last night. Translated to: We spent time with mother and the family last night. You can be a true Southerner if you were born in the South but Mamaandem is from someplace else. I think Batman and Robin are going to be good parents because they are starting him off right by raising him in Athens, Ga. BTW, Batman- thanks for the CD's.All of them rock!

We did eat at the Grill and the Taco Stand in the same trip. We made trips to Wuxtry, Junkman's Daughter and X Ray Cafe. I missed Producto, Charlie Mustard, Ed Harris, Patterson Hood, The Globe and the Manhattan. Saved them for next time I guess!

Ba Da Bing! and watch them clear heels honey!
I went with some friends to a strip club last night and afterwards I came home and took a shower! I still can't feel clean. Augusta, Ga will never be known for its strip clubs as long as the same crew run the joints. For gosh sakes! hire me as a consultant, I'll fix it up quick.

First of all any potential strippers have to pass an IQ test(I know how smart do you have to be to take your clothes off?) You need to be smarter than a box of hair to work for me. If you're going to hustle drinks, you need to be able to at least be personable and able to interact with customers.

Second rule is NO FUCKIN' SKANKS ALLOWED! I saw eight strippers last night and only one was reasonably attractive! The rest were rejects from Fugly.com and Zombie net.There were two that I wanted to pay to put their clothes back on!
This one had a face that was like a halloween mask! Fuckin' Butt Ugly and she was supposed to be one of the better looking ones.
Two had fried eggs for tits and suffered from a malady called "No Assatol".

Third rule is Clean the Fuckin' Stage between the ass shakers! At Fantasy Show Girls, the dancers were writhing around on a dirty stage that had shimmering puddles of moisture that gleamed in the light! EW! They also were picking up money from that nasty stage and it just added to my disgust.
At Fantasy's, I almost got coldcocked with a clear heel. This African Amazon was shaking her pudenda in my friends face and she came across fast with the clear heel. It missed me but by only centimeters!

I've discovered that I have expensive tastes in cigars, coffee, liquor and strippers. Why shouldn't I enjoy the best?
Maybe I'll save my dough and go to the Gold Club in Atlanta. I'll get me a box of St Luis Rey's or Players, order me up a 7&7 and get ready for a good show.

I wonder if gay men have strip clubs like we do? I'm not that interested in seeing a guy take his clothes off. I do it everyday. I just bet you won't see a 300 pound stevadore named Al
wallowing in his bulk on stage. It doesn't happen. You won't see Flabbio writhing in his G-string and mouthing the words to "Hot Girls". I doubt gay men put up with that shit and neither should we. Straight men should take back the strip clubs, oust the perverts and fulfill our dreams of seeing young, firm, beautiful women shaking thier moneymakers!

Surf, sand, cigars, Sopranos, shitty bands and Helga the She Wolf

We rented a condo at Hilton Head SC for two weeks. The first week Dylan and his pals were supposed to have to themselves as a graduation gift. The first night some oversensitive neighbors called security and we got fined a $100.00 for noise ordinance violations! It appears the kids were having too much fun watching a movie and some old fart ratted them out. I think it might have been the Slovak woman in the lower apartment. She reminds me of Helga, She Wolf of the SS from those old '60's movies about the concentration camps. There were a series of cheapo exploitation films that used German prison camps as a backdrop for nudity, light S&M, and lesbianism.
Anyway, Helga is the likely suspect and I wanted to confront her directly but I had no proof. I did get off a good one within earshot of her- I told Dylan that someone is keeping a sharp eye out for trouble here at Stalag 17.
It wouldn't have been so bad if the owner of the condo wasn't my fucking boss! The security people called Dorf and woke him up at 7 am with this good news. He called my wife right away and pissed in her Captain Crunch! Being married means you share things like Captain Crunch that has been peed in.
We called my brother immediately and had him and his family go down there and stay for the remainder of the week. So here's is thing, Dylan had two girls and two guys with him. Both girls are hot and the guys were going home after two days! If they hadn't had the noise problem, he would have been down there with two girls by himself! As it turned out, he got my brother, his wife, and their children aged 11 and 3. Ha! Ha! He got his sister too but that's not a bad thing!

We got down there on Saturday and Dylan had a bad sunburn. It was the icky kind complete with blisters and oozing junk! He stayed in the house the entire week and played video games.

The beach was beautiful at night. I walked down there one night after a few large 7&7 to smoke my Te Amo cigar. There was a storm on the water and the moon kept hiding behind the clouds. Lightning flashed and the moon was so pretty over the water... I wanted to whisper sweet nothings in my own ear but I'd heard it all before anyway...I could have taken advantage of myself right then and there. I looked so hot with my gut hanging over my belt and my hairy feet.

The Goddess of Thrift was generous this trip. I scored an almost complete set of the Sopranos season 1 on VHS, a copy of The Brady Bunch first album, a copy of a Steam engine recording, and a real cool painting with an Afro Cuban motif. I almost bought a slightly used copy of a Marlon Brando album but turned it down. If I had known he was going to croak...


We saw Spiderman 2 while on the island. It was great and I loved Doc Ock. He was really intense with those mechanical arms. Kirsten Dunst was hot as always.

We ate supper at the King's Wharf Underwater Grotto. It was a decent seafood buffet and dessert bar. There was a twenty foot statue of Neptune watching you while you ate and there were plenty of plastic fish suspended from the ceiling. One of the perk of buying the buffet was you got a "free" ticket to see The Holiday Band. Now dig this, the band is so shitty you have give me a "free" ticket to see them?? WTF? We went in prepared to heckle them and leave but things quickly changed. There were two hotties sitting a table away from us and we kept trying to get Dylan to ask them to dance. They gave him the hairy eyeball more than once but he just didn't get the steam up enough. Finally, Hannah went over and told the cuter one that Dylan would like to dance with her and she squealed with delight. The next thing I know he's got both of them on the floor and moving!
During the break, I requested "Rip it up" by Little Richard and the guy looked at me funny and said they don't know it! WTF? It's I, IV, V, I in any fucking key with a bridge thrown in. How hard can it be? It ain't Mozart!
We endured this band for our children's sake (ain't we good parents!) and even got a few jabs in at them. The bad news is that the guy told me they had been at it for 12 years! 12 years and you ain't learned Little Richard!

A good time was had by all despite the efforts of Helga the She Wolf, shitty bands and bad sunburns. It was time well spent away from work and other fun shit.

Unfucking Real! The Truckers finally made it to Augusta.

The Drive Bys finally made it to our little corner of Hell and played the Imperial Theater on May 29, 2004. One Eyed Jimmy and Buddy made it to the Imperial in time for the ticket hand out and we ran into Patterson in the alley and caught up for awhile. It was great to see him and we did the old bear hug when we saw each other. We traded a few stories and I noted the personnel changes in the band. Patterson said "The road will weed them out". Pizza delivery (deliverance) came to the alley and we decided to wander off and let the boys(and girl) get ready.

Paulie and the Athens Contigent made it here about 7:00pm and we all decided to skip Stewart and Winfield and go drinking. We found a good watering hole at The Tap Room and I ordered us up some Heife Weizen which is good when it's hot as Hell. Heife Weizen on draft- note to self: remember this. The Tap room band was tuning and setting up for a night's revelry while we chugged brew.

About 9 o'clock we started to get antsy and decided to wander on down. One Eyed Jimmy and I had second row seat right smack in the middle of the place.

The Truckers kicked off with "Lookout Mountain" and I was singing along at the top of my lungs. They kept right on chugging with songs off Southern Rock Opera and Decoration Day. For me one of the highlights of the evening was "The Living Bubba" from Gangstabilly.I never met Greg Smalley in person- I know him through Patterson and this song. I wished I had gone to see him before he died. I heard he played 100 shows the last year of his life and that he could barely stand up. I think I even saw a photo of him with IV's hooked up and playing another show. He was shoving it back in Death's face as AIDs took him apart. "I can't worry long 'cause I got another show to do". Man, I hope I can fight like that when the time comes.

Any way, I am going to post pics of DBT as soon as I figure out how. Until then.....