The Wilderness Year's - A Marriage Proposal

When i met Audrey she was certifiable, absolutely off her nut and out of her mind, she reminded me of the Art School Girls from Hell, the little blurb on some show on MTV back when the channel actually played videos and before shit reality shows took over. The first time i met her i fell in love. She talked like a eastern shore white trash valley girl, she wore a black and white striped Cat in the Hat raver hat, large black boots and some hideous shorts/skirt ensemble, fucking hell she was a train wreck and i was more than smitten. That summer i was stuck working in some shit town in western Pa. while the family dissolved and my relationship with a girl dissolved and i had no money and nowhere to go so i took a job at the university i attended, a fable for another time as i like to say, but i managed to hitch a ride to the shore to see One-eyed Bob, my high school friend who was currently scamming the shit out of the register at the store he worked at. One-eyed Bobby and his frat brother had a room where i could crash on the floor for a long weekend and take acid and get drunk and try my damnedest to get laid and hopefully not commit murder while they debated the merits of Marillion songs and ridiculed my drug use.

Needless to say the young Audrey had better things and boys to do than some pie-eyed out of towner with little money and what seemed like even less game, it was one of those times when i was so smitten i was literally tongue tied and every time she was around that weekend i usually stammered like an imbecile and looked at the floor alot.

Fast forward to the next summer and a gang of degenerates has rented out the old whore house on 6th St. The owner of said building had been my boss on not one but three occasions and knew me well enough to put me in the back bedroom on the top floor, it was designated the smoke room so that we could keep the Ocean City kiddie kops off our ass and because as the owner said, "you're a fucking wastoid", there were 7 of us and a couple of stragglers who grabbed the last 2 rooms. Lucky for me one of my roomies had lived there the summer before and was friends with Audrey, who didn't live there this summer but lived close enough to come down on the weekends.

It was her first weekend and she was dressed smartly and her long brown hair hung down and we drank on the porch and talked as the usual array of low-lives partied around us. I was working the graveyard at at 7-11 and scamming it's register and the boss gave me weekends off so i wouldn't quit. It was friday night and as everyone slowly passed out the main room was left with just four of us. Audrey, me and my two newly graduated from high school roommates. The other 5 of us had either just graduated or were about to graduate from college, as the Nubes once told me years later, that summer was more educational than 4 years of college could ever be. Needless to say working the Sleven afforded one ample opportunity to steal not only cash but cigarettes and porn. The beat up coffee table was covered with it and as we sat around talking and listening to the ocean, smoking cigarettes and finishing the booze Audrey looked me right in the eye and said I've got four hits of acid in my purse.

By this time it had been established not by me but by my roommates that i was a madman unrivalled in my intake of illicit substances and i smiled and replied that i'd been taken from the moment i saw her last summer, a moment i'm sure she didn't remember and that i'd gladly take two hits and she the could take the other two and then in the morning when the courthouse opened we could go get married. Not once did her eyes move from mine or mine from hers and i could tell that my two young roomies were sitting there transfixed by what was taking place wondering would this fucking nut job really eat two hits and marry some hot, crazy chick 18 hours after they hung out for the third or fourth time?

She said yes, i'll do it and smiled but i stopped her and said not so quick my blushing bride and pointed to a magazine on the coffee table entitled Shaved Snizz. It was a classic in low-budget porn and i really wasn't interested in anything other than the title at this point, i calmly told her that i was a rational man and that before i took the plunge, in a show of good faith, that she would have to let me, well, shave her snizz, to which she replied that she wasn't all that fond of the process but so be it, was the least she could do. She rose from her chair across from me and her long 5'10 inch frame walked over and took my hand and led me up the staircase to my room. When i looked down from the second floor into the open space that was our common room the two young kids sat sitting with mouths agape.

Being the gentlemanly sort i will say no more than we consummated are impending nuptials that night and saved the acid for the next day, we never did make it to the courthouse but did manage to lay around naked for most of the day and night in my room which was literally an oven. Young and stupid isn't always a bad thing.

Over the next month and change Audrey and i would spend many days and nights together and i can honestly say she was a fucking gem, she was working on becoming a model and though a few years later i would ridicule anyone who said that was a career goal i'll admit i kept looking for her in magazines or catalogues, hoping somehow that i'd find her again, she said she loved the fact i was 6'4, said she felt like she was home every time i wrapped my arms around her and the two of us pie-eyed and out of our skulls on any number of substances i'm sure cut a lovely figure on the boardwalk, scaring the shit out of middle america. We listened to Ritual de lo Habitual and Nothing Shocking alot.

Like most things in Ocean City though our or more correctly my love was transient and soon i quit the Sleven after almost being held up at gun point one fine 4 a.m. and took a job at a french fry place which means i didn't have weekends off and for some reason i made the decision to politely tell Audrey that we most likely wouldn't be getting married and that in fact i had a date that night and she couldn't stay in my room and it got a bit messy and she chased me with a hammer and had this horrible vacant look in her eyes and though i'm not sure i really wanted to do it pride and some fucked up sense of macho stupidity made me walk away.

We hit the fast forward button again, job #7 of the summer, late into September, washing dishes in a breakfast joint, usually hung over and exhausted after busting my ass all summer when one morning a tall blond looks at me and says Kono, you live on 6th St. don't you? And i say yeah why? and she says You're the guy who was gonna marry Audrey. I give my best aw shucks grin and explain it was just a joke and ask why she stopped coming down. The blonde's smile vanishes and she says, you really fucked her up. I stop smiling and my mouth opens but nothing comes out and she tells me a few things about Audrey and she's not doing to well and i just stand there like a fucking muppet and stare at the my soggy shoes and the wet floor.

I don't regret much but i regret that i never really said goodbye or i'm sorry because you were beautiful Audrey and we were both young and fucked up and i still look at magazines hoping to see those eyes looking back at me and i often wonder if you got your degree in art and if things turned out the way you planned. That day sticks with me because there are times you wonder about the choices you make and how the lead you to where you are, i sometimes wonder what would've happened if we ended up at the justice of the peace and enacted your plan where i worked for 3 years and supported you while you painted and then you worked for 3 years while i played with the typer, of course i've also seen Sid and Nancy and realize that could've been us.

Regardless, thank you, it was beautiful.

4:05 in my neighborhood/ when shots ring out/ no one bothers/ a pop and a reply pop/ and no reply/ dinosaurs on the quilt i wore/ with a girl/ such a classic girl...

The Wilderness Years - Xmas with my Father

You can refer to the Late Night Maudlin St. post for the back story or you can just pick it up here but the years following the demise of my nuclear family is what i refer to as the Wilderness years, for both Dad and me it was a strange and rough time, Dad found himself in an apartment on the west side of C-town and i found myself bouncing from place to place, apt. to apt., from migrant beach work to rust belt grunt to self employed purveyor of fine contraband, the big D had hit the old man right in the gut and it was as if i was right there with him, a younger version of Mickey, Rocky Balboa's trainer, encouraging him to get up off the mat and live, he would, my old man is nothing if not resilient...

But this is not a Sad Panda kind of post so we'll get on with it... when i was about 11 or so, back in 81 or 82 ye olde family had a garage sale and one of the items up for sale was the old man's stack of classic Hustler and Penthouse which his young son had already discovered and took a liking to though he was not sure why, of course looking back i can bask in the glow of the pre-Brazilian days of porn when every woman was au naturel , i'm pretty sure mom wanted this out of the house before said boy hit puberty and locked himself in the can to flog himself mercilessly, she put the stack out and charged a dime for each one. They all sold in the first 20 minutes of the garage sale. At one point that fateful morn Mom had to go and hang some signs for the junk show so she cast an icy glare my way and stated that she had counted the stack of magazines and would count them when she returned and that they better all be there, i of course applied best poker face and said, What magazines?

Mom left and i waited for 30 seconds and Carl Lewis'ed it to the garage to get one last peek at the glorious golden age of nudie mags before some lucky bastard trotted off with the lot, of course as soon as the garage door buzzed i dropped the treasure and high tailed it back inside to sit at the kitchen table, sweat dripping down my temples and innocently studying the box of Trix as if i had just discovered the meaning of life and the rabbit himself was espousing on it.

We now fast forward 10 plus years to my Dad's barren apartment, what i loved about this time was though it could have been another maudlin affair of woe is me and why did it come to this it was some of the best X-mas mornings of my life. No tree, no lights, just me and the old man, boiling water in an old metal pan and drinking shit instant coffee and eating toast cuz all the restaurants were closed and the old man now being a bachelor barely kept any food in the house, we'd sit and have a cigarette, talk about the state of the world, philosophy, books, my mother and his ex-wife, ( of which he never said a disparaging word and encouraged me to re-kindle some kind of relationship with) we'd watch Sportcenter's Year in Review and Top Plays and when we'd had enough he'd retire to his room to sleep (he worked nights) and i would read on his couch between cat naps, glorious fucking days. The best present we had was each other's company.

Of course my job as a salesman, off the books of course, gave me just enough extra cash to buy the old man something, it wasn't the first year more likely the next that i showed up stoned out of my gourd, talking about my fucked up tooth which was on my right side while i stood rubbing the left side of the face, Dad just kind of chucked and said "wrong side son, musta been a helluva drive" and smiled at this gigantic wasted boy of his, i stopped, shook my head, laughed and said by the way i got you a present...

The old man looked at me quizzically, a present? he said, uh-huh i said and proceeded to pull a brown paper bag out of my travel bag and hand it to him, he pulled out the December issue of Penthouse, chuckled and said Alright. That's not all i added, i got you a subscription and the video should arrive in the mail shortly. The normally unflappable old man looked at me and said no shit. I stood beaming at him like a 5 year old who had just handed his dad an awful tie but this time i was old enough to know that the Old Man was thrilled with his present. I figured it was the least i could do since Mom made you sell all the old ones you used to have. He laughed again and i told him, third drawer down hidden under a couple of t-shirts, i mean shit dad at least i hid mine in a shoe box and covered 'em with baseball cards when i was at home. He laughed again and gave me a hug and while outside the world was awaiting the impending birth of their savior this x-mas eve and the snow fell on Cleveland, the Old Man and i cracked a couple of beers, heated up some pizza and turned on the tube.

John Katie Holmes

That's going to be my Halloween costume and it may dovetail into a band if i can find some people to play some instruments, band name: Top Gun, works beautifully on so many levels, yes a combo of Tom Cruise's wife and the greatest porn star of all time, i know some of you are pissed you didn't think of it but won't the neighbors be fucking gobsmacked when i take Kid A around for his treats to see daddy in a dress and heels while still rocking the lambchop sideburns, this could turn out to be a documentary or the most interesting night i'll ever spend in jail.

Keep the Unwwashed Masses Ignorant

Ah the beautiful state legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsyltucky, the largest employer of blowhard assholes anywhere, the largest state guvment you can find, all in a giant pissing contest where state employees don't get paid and the ever needed budget cuts are debated endlessly while nothing ever really seems to get done, oh the boys and girls in Harrisburg are really adept at grandstanding and trumpeting their minuscule accomplishments as if say they just parted the Red Sea but when it comes to things that actually mean something i quote Otto from Repo Man when he says "Fuck That".

Seems the latest plan to save money is to basically gut the state library system, cuz people don't need to read and shit, who needs books when we have T.V. and movies and the interweb, except of course if you happen to be a lumpen prole barely making it and hoping you don't get sick cuz you can't afford the doctor, then you might use these facilities quite often, hell even if you're not you might use these facilities quite often cuz i can't afford to buy every book i want to read, now if i was a state blowhard from Pennsyltucky that wouldn't be a problem cuz i'd have health care for life and vote myself a pay raise every six months or so and if there was a budget impasse and people weren't getting paid i'd say fuck it and go fishing cuz my checks still in the mail, right?

See the conspiracy theorist in me believes that some of these Asshats are simply giddy over the fact that we won't have to buy any more books an shit cuz those pesky books make people think and the last thing we need is the lumpen proles getting all uppity when they realize how much we like to fuck them over, books can be dangerous and in this day and age of terrible terror and illegal aliens the last thing we need is a literate body politic eh? so gut those fuckers, now i'm sure that most of our esteemed elected officials are nowhere near that smart to formulate actual ideas in their heads but i'm sure a few are and now it seems i might have to contact my local anarchist cuz this is a cause i can get behind, Save the Fucking Libraries, i know the legislators won't believe this but people actually need them and if we really need to save money i believe the best way would be to cut about half of the said elected officials and make a more streamlined and efficient guvment... of course you'd have to get them to sign off on that little number and i do believe we've got a better chance of a snowball passing through hell and not becoming a cup of coffee. Shit i just may have to run for office (and not just for the great hours, top notch health care and the ability to vote myself raises) but to save the libraries. I thinks we should vote out all these clowns. now. in a special election. see if that doesn't light a fire under their ass.

Holidays in the Sun - G20 memories

Has it been a week already? it must be cuz i don't see nearly as many cops all dolled up in riot gear nor do i see vegan kids all dressed in black running around all willy nilly, last thursday was like Mardi Gras in Bloomfield, all the locals filing in to bars to watch the protesters run this way and that way and this way and that way and god how summits implore you to let yourself be yourself, whoops Mozzer moment, while the riot grrrls aka John Q. Law ran this way and that way and this way and that way and god how billy clubs implore you to break some skulls break some skulls, ooops more Mozzer moments, while the indigenous people all stood, pints in hand watching some strange version of the Keystone Kops/ Protester follies, surreal, just a bit, it's not every day that i get to see Humvees with mounted machine guns and 60 odd riot police marching down my street all Pink Floyd like smacking said clubs off their armor just waiting for someone to step out of line, i myself stood on my porch with a baby in one hand and a PBR in the other watching the fun, sometimes i took a little video and at one point i dragged Kid A and Kid B out in the middle of it until of course the tear gas rumor started and my brilliant parental instincts told me that maybe i should get the kiddies off the streets and let them watch cartoons, much like dad was doing on the front porch.

As i count down the days to Forty i guess i've become a bit jaded or maybe alot jaded as i just don't give a shit anymore, don't get me wrong i'm sure i would've been tossing bricks and baiting police 10 or 15 years ago it's just the more i learn the less interested i am in all things political, it's pissing in the wind, you want a voice? get rich and donate money, follow the money and you find who really runs things, politicians these days are figureheads for the boardroom boys until of course the Private jet set fuck up so bad that the pols have to do something and i'm a firm believer in getting inside the system and spreading the disease, the thinking disease that is, it's hard of course cuz H'america is a land of dumb fucking stumps but as i like to point out the flu virus doesn't do shit floating through the air, only when you get it inside does it wreak havoc, so while i give the vegan kids credit for their enthusiasm i question the effectiveness of their methods.

That said the mob mentality that seems to prevail in situations like this was on full display by the lovely boys in blue, many of who volunteered to show up for the chance to beat the shit out of those vegan kids and anyone else who stumbled upon the blue rage that takes hold once the first window is smashed, i mean really some of these boys have been waiting their whole life for the chance to fire rubber bullets and beanbags or use the club on unwashed heads, do you really think they would pass up the chance? shit all you had to do was say hi or ask directions and you had a 50/50 chance of being arrested, they eyeballed me and i was holding a baby for shit sake, i'm sure there were some nice guys running around in full riot gear it's just like the protesters though, only takes a few bad ones to divert all attention and start the ball rolling, seems they really liked beating up the college kids over in Oakland but hell i've thought about that myself a few times, needless to say John Q. did his fair share of oppressing and dare i say law breaking and rights violating but in these little fiasco's no one comes out smelling like roses.

Now on to the Marchers. There were dozens of marches all protesting different things and a few marches protesting everything, what they need is a management and organization course to work out the kinks, i can't tell you what any of them were about cuz well i don't think the people in them really knew, which brings up the point that if you put your face on the news and try to talk about protesting the event you really should have some fucking knowledge of what's going on instead of stammering like a jackass about uh like global warming and uh banks and uh Cuba, really kids read a fucking newspaper, try the internet or better yet don't do the fucking interview and do a disservice to the people who are marching and do actually know something about the fucking topic, find the guy in the gas mask who looks like he's running shit and get him to do it, yes he can leave the gas mask on so he may remain anonymous.

The kids also need to learn how to police themselves cuz when the first Asshat tosses a brick through the first window all they hope to accomplish goes pfffft, cuz the media loves nothing more than showing smashed glass and kids all dolled up in black in Anarchy t-shirts, once again a little education may help, most anarchists are not about destroying things they would just like government to stay out of their lives, sounds like the Republicans really now doesn't it? but when you misinterpret the lyrics of John Lydon, suddenly get all righteous and shit and start tossing bricks you reduce your cause to a sound bite, a quick question? who were the most effective leaders of social change? MLK? Gandhi? The Jesus? what did they have in common? Non-violence perhaps? i give credit to the geezer who just sat down in the middle of the street in front of the police trucks, went all Tianeman square on their ass, that one image is more powerful than all the bricks kids, shows a bit more conviction cuz he KNOWs he's going to jail and doesn't care that they see his face, civil disobedience at it's finest.

Now when the "Anarchists" start tossing what the vegan kids need to do is grab them and shove them towards the cops, first it creates goodwill (well maybe see above paragraph about overzealous cops) second it keeps your march/protest front and center instead of "hey look at these anarchists destroying banks and Boston Markets and a local pancake house", and really when you smash up the local shit your line of "we hate corporations" goes right out the fucking windows you nitwits, those people who own it are not corporations and have loans and families and what not, also when you smash joints up the people who really get fucked are the lumpen proles manning the counter and working the fryer, they need the money trustafari, they don't have time to gallivant around the country protesting shit cuz they have kids and bills and rent to make and when you take away their ability to work what happens? you gonna pay their rent and bills?

which brings us finally to the professional protester. i know we all need a job but i prefer one where i get paid and how do these "pros" make any money, i met a few who went from place to place protesting whatever happened to be on the menu that day, i mean what the fuck? i'm sure we could all protest something every day, like assholes on cellphones who talk to loud, the incompetence of our boss, flowers, college football, baking soda, i mean the list is endless, it takes away the legitimacy to find out that a whole subset of protesters are hired guns so to speak, if i'm passionate about something i'll stand up and voice my opinion and march and sing and back it financially, i don't however protest shit just cuz i have nothing better to do, cuz at the first of the month i'm getting my stipend from mom and dad and now i'm going to Florida to save the Manatees ( a friendly sea cow who needs saving) since the economic summit's over, that just show's me how fucked it all is, in a nutshell.

So the big show has come and gone and now Pittsburgh is back to the same peaceful little city we all know and love, thankfully no hipster bars were damaged during the g-20 so the kids will have someplace to go to regale each other in tales of billy clubs narrowly missed and friends who were arrested and what Nazi's the law are and all kinds of fun stuff, i myself will miss all the action, i harassed everyone at some point, cops and protesters alike, i'm fair like that. G-20 we barely knew ya.

and one more thing... Woodie Guthrie got alot more accomplished with his guitar than any brick wielding idiot ever did.

Darkness at Noon

It seems every year around this time the ugly memories of late September pasts come rising towards the surface of my tiny melted subconscious and drive me into some sick and twisted state, maybe not exactly Mr. Samsa or Josef K. but somewhere in between, a lack of closure on a certain subject that will remain muddled most likely forever in the head of this confused boy, let's just say some 7 odd years ago that i was almost beaten, almost broken and if not for the Limey and a couple of other good friends and a refusal to throw in the towel, i could've easily laid down and let the train pass smoothly over me, metaphorically speaking of course, if September was dark at noon, October turned into a pitch black nightmare that gave way to an almost seething indifference of a November shaded candy apple grey, leading to a December that produced a resurrection more than a birth in the carbon stained slush and snow, needless to say i did a lot of wandering of streets and mind and when it was finished i came out the other side fucking steeled against whatever the world and the gods had to offer...



with any luck the rants won't make it this far and i'll keep this lovely space open to the hipsters, yuppies, carpetbaggers and locals who've come to know and love it so well, then again maybe i won't. Darkness calls.


That Joke isn't funny anymore/ it's to close to home and to near the bone...

B is for Bonehead

I think he really should be wearing a Nazi uniform cuz that's pretty much what he sounds like every time he opens his fucking yap, he is in a nutshell everything that's wrong with America, a complete fucking knob who thinks he's a genius and i can't wait till they bust into his house and well you know we've all seen the end of Donnie Darko right? That said i do believe he came up with the title for his book while staring in the mirror one morning, most likely arguing with himself.