The Wilderness Years - American Mary

This is a piece of Fiction i stumbled upon from about six years ago about the time i spent in Ocean City and yes it might be based on an actual event but i'm sticking with the story that it's fiction either way. Hope you enjoy.

    My skin was sticky with sweat and salt and her. These afternoon sessions were killing us. My member so red and raw it looked chewed on. Then again it was getting chewed on, chewed up in her. She was no better as she stood and examined her bright, red clit. "We've really got to take a break Leon, I can barely walk." If those words didn't make a man smile I don't know what would. Someone find my caveman club, me bad motherfucker with wonder cock. Like I said I wasn't exactly feeling tip-top but in the back of my mind i played the pleasure/pain game. Any good addiction became painful over time but as long as it was still enjoyable I challenge you to find one person who would stop. That's right, no one in their right mind would, hence the junkies, alkys, smokers and golfers of the world.

    Afternoons were the oasis in the desert of our day. The last time we could both lie about before one or both of us ran to work with our sore genitalia reminding us that tonight was the night we would just drink and sleep. Late afternoon on the eastern shore and the hum of surf and the songs of seagulls. The soft breeze blowing the sheet that served as a curtain in this one room flophouse. All my possessions locked in a trunk and nothing but an honor code among the criminals and drifters who inhabited this tiny sliver of land.

    We migrant retail workers of the world would congregate at these tourists traps for the season, for a chance to be close the ocean, for a chance to listen to her beat against the shore. An ocean we might never get in all summer through the 80 hour work weeks and late night parties. And sometimes we wouldn't just be random bodies waking up next to each other and trying to remember names, faces, fumbling with awkward words and trying to remember when we worked.

    Mary slid into her navy blue flowered skirt and white t-shirt. Her skin shining with sweat and me naked still semi-hard lying with the sheet pulled over my mid section and feeling the pool of sweat underneath my back. I watched her languid movements as she opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out a rolling paper. If she hadn't been so pale, if her hair hadn't been auburn and small freckles appear on her nose every time she went in the sun I'd swear she was from Jamaica. She rolled the joint that fast. She pulled her Yankees cap low over her eyes and lit the joint.

    "I'm gonna be late for work."

    "Fuck it, quit and get a new job tomorrow."

    She sat on the edge of the bed and passed me the joint. I'd say we were in love or something like it. It may have just been lust or the fact that I'd never met a girl who rolled such good joints and she never met a guy who made a stellar Kraft macaroni and cheese substituting beer for milk.

    She inhaled deeply and hit the play button on the CD player. J Mascis sang the words we both loved and pretended not to here. She was a student and I was not. I was a 23 year old child who lacked direction. I had long hair and thrift store shirts and not one decent pair of shoes. But please do not refer to me as a hippie. I didn't spend my time hustling acid or trying to bum peanut butter sandwiches. My job was not threading kid's hair with string and I was rather lousy at hacky-sac.

    "I'm leaving for school in three weeks."

    I took the joint from her and watched the smoke I exhaled waft towards a poster of Perry Farrell, dressed much the same as I am now. There were words in my head they just seemed to be stuck. I wasn't numb or frozen but I knew when she left that it would hurt. That the only meaningful human contact I'd had for the last few months would disappear from my universe. That the phone calls would start out okay but soon become tedious to both of us.

    "I'm serious quit your job and get back in bed. In fact don't even bother to quit just get back in bed and show up tomorrow like nothing happened."

    I leaned forward and slid my hand underneath her skirt and around her ass. I pulled her towards the bed. I could barely see her eyes squinting at me underneath the Yankees cap. I hated the Yankees. She was getting angry. I slid my hand between her thighs and felt the warmth.

    "Leon," she said.

    "There are other jobs you know." I smiled at her. "They have to pay you , you know it's against the law if they don't."

    She eased herself down on the bed. Her skirt sliding off as she did. Addiction is a terrible thing. So is work. She locked her arms around me and kissed me. We both started to sweat and the music and the gulls and the ocean all played. In three weeks it was a crapshoot, a game of roulette, a long shot and we knew the odds favored the house. We were rubbed raw. It was just afternoons were like the perfect song at the perfect moment and we just wished they'd last. Pain was inevitable so we opted for pleasure and the company of each other. She'd get fired and we'd both wince when we walked. Addiction is a terrible thing.

Goodbye Mr. Salinger

Upon arriving home today i heard the news that one of my favorite recluses had passed. I was not one of those kids who fawned all over Catcher in the Rye, it was a good book but not the life changing experience i've heard many spout off about, no i prefer Nine Stories, my favorite story being A Great Day for Banana Fish, if you've never read it you should. What i admire ole J.D. most for is his turning his back on fame, his utter disdain for the life that came along with being a top selling author in an era where that was like being a rock star. He stated it invaded his privacy to much and though he loved writing he preferred to write for himself and no one else, a writer of the No according to Enrique Vila-Matas, a bit like Gogol or Melville, J.D. from what i've gleaned liked to write and fuck and study eastern religions and didn't like people much, sounds reasonable enough to me, i wonder what he left behind seeing that he hasn't published a thing since 1965, i wonder if he has a room full of manuscripts or if he sat in his back yard in New Hampshire watching the clouds roll in, glass of whiskey in his hand, tossing pages into a big metal drum to watch them burn, laughing and thinking "Fuck Holden Caulfield."

The Wilderness Year's - Robert and the Mittens

The winter of 93/94 was a snowy fucking mess, cold and shitty, colder and shittier than usual and i remember it well cuz i had to walk back and forth to work, about 2 miles each way and usually i was hungover and stoned or both. I was young and stupid and broke and had just returned from the beach and spent a month sleeping on couches, homeless for all intents and purpose, all my shit loaded in the good Doctor's car, the Doctor being my best friend who acquired the nickname because he looked a bit like a mad scientist, when i had met him he looked like an extra in a Flock of Seagulls video, a man of few words but wise and well read and a complete recluse. Our ventures into the big bad city of Pittsburgh usually had us driving in circles until one day his girl came home from school and helped us find a place.

And oh what a place it was, a three story walk up, of course we lived on the third floor but it had a balcony with a bar and soon we'd add a grill and there was a large hole in the ceiling and during the winter we would watch the snow gently fall into our kitchen. Basically the place was three rooms, a kitchen and two bedrooms, i myself didn't even have a bed but lucked out when i discovered that the beat up leather couch was a pull out sleeper, i took the thin mattress off and threw it on the floor and bought an eggshell mattress or two and voila, i had a fucking bed. I also owned a small stereo that would keep me company through the night while i lay on the floor reading books and staring at the ceiling.

Needless to say the good Doctor and i were both destitute but we had lucked into the lovely neighborhood of North Oakland in which within half a block was located Mitchell's Tavern (quarter beers and $2 pitchers every monday and thursday), a grocery store, a laundromat, a liquor store and a diner. Damn near everything a couple of young bums needed, now all we needed was jobs and after a bad foray into the world of late night shelf stocking i had landed a job at a bagel store. The Doctor took to parking cars and we were off and running.

The bagel shop may have paid shit but it was the fringe benefits that made it worth while, i got to take home the mistakes and of course always being the grifter i soon started lifting bundles of meat and cheese, all portioned out nicely of course by the home office, so between the bagels, ham and swiss etal we were able to eat and still make the short trip to the tavern to enjoy the head splitting ale that was served on tap by a grumpy old man who once shit himself while tending bar and his relief who was a small Jewish woman with a penchant for the brothers, the place was right out of Barfly and you could often find bums taking a dump on the stall with no door and any number of stolen goods being offered at cut rate prices, it had beautiful Naugahyde booths that were perfect for drug deals or doing the crossword and during happy hour the jukebox was shut off so that the place could play Jeopardy, in a nutshell it was damn near Valhalla...

Of course soon the student loans kicked in and the finances got even tighter until one day an old college friend parking cars with the good Doctor asked if i would be interested in a business proposition and since i was always open for opportunity i took him up on it. It was small time nickel and dime shit but when you're big expenditure of the week was a $4 pizza from the "O" (Orignal Hot Dog Shop) that you ate all day sunday and into monday any amount of coin coming in was good. As i stated the Doctor wasn't much in the way of conversation with those he didn't know, couldn't work a scale and sucked at outside sales so to speak so i ran the operation myself and cut him in on the profits, he was my best friend and i figured it was the least i could do though he actually turned down the 50/50 split i offered and took less since i did all the work.

The bagel store helped out in other way's, namely by running a special that advertised 4 bagels for a buck, no tax, and since people would run in and throw a dollar or two at you and run off if you were slick enough you pocketed the coupons and the money in one motion and moved on to the next in line. This little maneuver was practiced by everyone but the managers and bakers and usually landed me an extra 10 or 20 bucks a day. Being broke ain't no fun and i was soon to learn that i didn't have it so bad...

Since i was one of the only guys working at the store i got to take the trash out back, which was beneficial in that it gave me time to smoke the one hitter and daydream in the alley's of South Oakland while catching fleeting glimpses of the college girls, it was in the alley i met Robert, a 46 year old black man, a guy who had lost his job and had his wife walk out on him, a guy who now slept on the street, the cold, snowy streets, a guy who i would talk to each day and who slowly told me his story, one that didn't involve drugs or alcohol, just some bad luck mainly that landed him with no place to go, a guy who's eyes lit up when he talked about his old job and his old life until he remembered that it was now gone, a guy much like my father only a year or two younger and with no savings when the roof caved in, he said that his mother had wanted him to move back in when it all came undone but that at 45 years old you don't move back in with your mom, a statement that gave me the chills as i had heard almost verbatim the same words from my dad's mouth.

Robert told me he stayed sober cuz out on the streets it was to easy to get rolled and once you started hitting the booze it all came undone, that then came any form of release, meaning crack or heroin and then the cycle was complete and you never got out, he talked of getting jobs but was stymied by the fact he couldn't list an address or phone, he talked a bit about God and was a more or less on the fence with this so called Creator, i helped him out by sliding him cups of coffee and bowls of soup, giving him the bagels that were misshapen, the same ones i ate, tried to give him a sandwich now and then. He never failed to say thank you and never asked me for a fucking dime. In the face of all the shit he wanted to retain his dignity, his humanity.

Then during a particularly brutal cold snap i saw him standing outside the windows of the store, something he normally wouldn't do, he was panhandling and when i walked out to see what was up his face was a fucking mess, a swollen eye and a split lip, his hands were so cold that his skin had actually split in one place and he told me that two days before while he was sleeping two guys beat the shit out of him for his blanket and gloves, two other homeless guys, i asked him who, told him maybe i could speak to them or better yet beat the shit out of them and get his stuff back, he shook his head, said he usually rolled alone and didn't want the hassle, didn't need any more trouble than he already had. I could see it in his eyes that the beating had taken it's toll, how he was trying to make sense out of this nightmare he was in, why one day he had a wife and a house and the next day he was getting the shit kicked out of him for the last few possessions he had.

I was shaken and worried cuz i knew that it wouldn't take much to break the poor guy, i told him to go round back and meet me and i brought him out some hot coffee, a couple bagels and a large bowl of soup, i asked him what i could do and he smiled and said nothing, thanked me for the food and studied the dirty ice of the alley, i said why don't i get you a pair of gloves Robert, i'll get them tonight and have them here tomorrow, he smiled and said could you get me mittens, they keep my hands warmer, i said sure man no problem and i watched him finish his soup and walk off with his bagels and coffee.

The next day i presented him with a pair of blue mittens i had bought. I was still broke but between the grift and the game i was actually starting to save a little money, of course if i lost my job in a month or so i could be looking at the same situation as Robert except i was young and had friends and girls seemed to like me and i figured i could find a warm bed to sleep in every night, hell i'd already done it for a month awhile back. He had a huge smile on his face and he gave me a hug and thanked me and i told him not to worry about it, that it was the least i could do and that maybe he should look into some shelters and the like and that they could help him out, at least give him an address to put down on applications, help him get a job, fuck even a halfway house or something and he smiled and said he was going to look into it, when i left work that afternoon i met him on the corner and handed him a couple of bagels and some coffee, he had on his mittens and he was smiling...

And then i didn't see him for awhile. He was gone. I asked some of the other homeless guys if they knew him or what happened to him but they either didn't know him or hadn't seen him for awhile either. Then in the spring i was walking home contemplating returning to school, grad school, for no other reason than i had nothing better to do and as i turned the corner there he was, passing a bottle of rotgut back to a friend, fucked out of his gourd, looking as if he had been fucked out of his gourd for awhile now, he looked at me bewildered, like for some reason he knew me but couldn't place where and i knew then that the streets had most likely got another one. I just kept walking. A long walk with a lot to think about. Part of me wanted to go back and slap the shit out of him, part of me knew i really knew nothing of his life and the shit he faced every day, hell most people would have given up long ago and really i who was i to criticize? i was no saint when it came to the bottle or the bowl or any number of other things, all i know is that i felt a sadness and that as i walked by him i saw a pair of blue mittens sticking out of his coat pockets.

All the people who died- RIP- Jay Reatard

Fucking hell, sometimes they drop like flies, Jay took a lot of shit for his name but anyone who grew up going to punk and hardcore shows know his name was pretty tame, Jay himself was a hell raiser and a bit of a dick but the boy could crank out kick ass garage rock tunes like a mofo, i highly recommend his singles albums, compiled after he released all the songs as double A side 7 inches, yes vinyl kids, Jay fucking dug it and being a bit of a music geek i gotta give him respect for that, needless to say i had a ticket to see him at a tiny, little place in the burgh once referenced in a post about carpetbagging hipster's, a non-smoking vegan joint that is usually closed Mondays but which i will say is bringing in good up and coming bands, it was a Monday and it was cold and i'm fucking old and have a couple of bairns so i ate the 12 bucks and didn't go, the local music critic named it as one of his top ten shows of the year and said Jay was a snarling, punk hit machine. Dead at 29. I'm guessing it wasn't natural causes. Some of us can live the rock and roll lifestyle and when we come out the other side we're just glad to be breathing. Some don't make it. Rock on.

The Wilderness Year's - How I Learned to Read Pt. 1

1990 was the year of enlightenment and heartbreak, well technically 1991 was the year of heartbreak, the year the war broke out and the family fell apart but before that there was this, a tall, shaggy kid who had quit playing basketball and had found himself floundering for an identity, steadily slipping away from the suburbs and into the seedier parts of the city and when faced with the prospect of a summer at home he pulled up stakes and headed to the beach with One-eyed Bob and Frat boy Dave...To call the three of us the WonderBread Boys would have been a compliment, One-eye was still sporting a rat tail, you know the little tiny shock of hair at the bottom of his hairline tied off with beads at the bottom of his other wise buzzed hair and Frat Boy Dave was a damn near dead ringer for Richard Marx, hair and all, yes that Richard Marx and Davey Boy could do nothing but ramble on about all his sexual conquests all the while emanating mommy issues that a dozen shrinks wouldn't want to touch, I had grown up with One-eye who ventured off to school in Kentucky on a bowling scholarship where he met FBD, who was also on a bowling scholarship and then joined the bowling frat... now nothing will severe the childhood bonds of friends like friends joining secret clubs with secret handshakes and strange rituals where i'm guessing they most likely tasted each others jizz all under the guise of brotherhood you know.

We jammed what we could into FBD's car and made the ten hour trek east to the cesspool of Ocean City where earlier in the year we had procured jobs and a place to stay. I had been going to OC since i was a kid and round about the age of 15 or so i met a guy who owned some t-shirt stores, a short Jewish guy from Brooklyn who would one day tell me that i should've been a Brooklyn Jew cuz he'd never in his life met a Goy who was such a smart ass, Little Jewish Businessman or LJB promised us a place to stay and gainful employment and upon arriving he showed us into a dump with stained mattresses, a kitchen filled with foul dishes and fruit flies and a bathroom that may have been Ocean City's worst, my first thought was that i was hoping to eat some crabs not catch them and we sat on the stained beds and drank beer and ate subs and though i wanted to stick it out One Eye and Frat Boy where not having it, who lived like this they exclaimed and since i didn't know what to do we got back in the car and drove home, while the whole time i berated them for being pussies and lobbying to find other living accommodations... no dice. The next morning i was back in Cleveland looking defeated.

My old man had taken notice of the his rather depressed son and since he had recently been laid off i don't think he was excited about the prospect of both of us sitting around the house all summer seeing as how he had earned a summer vacation after busting his ass for the last 26 plus years and told me to call the LJB and see if i still had a job and a room, i did and so we threw my shit back in the car and drove back down, my previous room had been rented and this time i lucked into a place above one of his stores, third floor with an ocean front balcony, people paid big money for this view and i'd get it all for 800 bucks for the summer, in fact it was the very same place that i would meet Audrey the following summer when One Eye and FBD lived there, of course mom gave the place the once over and ran out and cleaned it all up and bought me some food and the old man palmed me a few twenties and they got in the car and drove back. I didn't know a soul. That is until One Eye came down a few weeks later to get a prime spot selling t-shirts in one of LJB's stores while i slogged away in his warehouse over in west Ocean City. At that point it was to late though, i'd found a running mate and the childhood bond was gone. He got the good gig and i had the shit one.

I had come to the beach in search of action and had ended up in a warehouse far from the ocean breeze, the action and the girls, the heat was like a hot blanket that you couldn't shake and i spent my days in shorts and no shirt filling orders for LJB's six stores. In a nutshell, it sucked and little did i know it would be my first of many warehouse gigs but this one had none of the perks of the others like selling weed to co-workers or robbing the places blind and selling shit in corner bars, it was just me and a shit radio station and the hum of the bugs. But first...

We must introduce the first of my two loves that summer. Lucy. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Acid if you will. It all started so innocently one night and before you could say can i have another tab it was damn near a full time job, tripping that is, and damn was it a great job to have, soon i had gone from the guy waiting for the tabs to come back to the guy standing in the room with Space Ace and his Muscle scoring many hits, Space Ace and his Muscle took a shine to me for some reason, Muscle always standing in the corner with his steel tucked not so subtly in his waistband while Space Ace did his business, they'd sit there and run most people in and out as fast as they could but i would be offered beers and shoot the shit and end up getting a ten strip for free cuz i had organized my friends into buying all at once and Space Ace appreciated that fact, how i even ended up in the room is beyond me, needless to say it was beneficial to all of us and i can remember being there at 9am or 5pm or 4am and it always seemed to be the same...

Now being roughly 20, white and from the suburbs means that i had already read No One Here Gets Out Alive the previous summer and had been through my Lizard King phase which all us white suburban punks go through at one point or another, it was also a license to see how many checks the brain could cash and soon the tabs where being eaten every day but Sunday, usually around late afternoon so that i could trip through sunset and through the night so i could watch the glorious sunrise crack the eastern shore while listening to garbage trucks and soon i found that there were more than a few creatures like me who stayed up all night and drank beer and talked and listened to music and it became our own little tribe of whack jobs roaming the streets all night from place to place looking for parties that didn't exist or being denied entry to the ones that did do to the size of our pupils and failure to communicate and we'd all end up on my balcony staring at the ocean or in some apartment sweating our eyeballs out...

Of course i know what you're thinking, when did this upstanding young man have time to read and i'll explain but right now we must move on to other things, like the second love of that summer... MJ, her initials of course, she had one of the plainest names i'd ever heard and she herself was rather plain but in a beautiful way, with her dark, shiny hair and wired rimmed glasses that always slipped down her nose, her freckles brought out by the sun, she had what i thought i craved... an inherent sadness, a latch key kid who had had to deal with to many of mom's boyfriends and of course mom had to marry the biggest asshole she brought home all the while pushing her dad further away, she was the oldest of 3 kids from a shit town in western Pa. and had come to the beach to escape only to end up working in a store with an Israeli national who was always wanted a kiss if she wanted her paycheck...

The store she worked in was on 12st. and it was my last stop before i dropped off the shitty white Econoline with no air conditioning and got off work, it was also the one i looked forward to the most, i had taken to wearing a brown San Diego Padres hat to keep my Bernard Sumner haircut out of my eyes, you know the one, shaved and tapered up and all long and floppy on top, think Barney in 84 or so but with longer hair up top, my thrift store cut-offs were always dirty and all i had for a belt was a piece of fabric that i found in the warehouse and i was always covered in a fine layer of sweat, of course i was in fighting shape from working and sweating all day and i'm sure my lack of actual meals didn't hurt either, the store was tiny and it was just her and The National who barely spoke English and pined for his days in the army, i'd unload the boxes and then take his order for the next day and mill about hoping to talk to MJ, she would always smile and after a week or so we began to talk every time i came in and damn if i wasn't smitten..

She lived half a block behind the place in a closet with two other girls, a place so small i couldn't even stand up in, her friends by luck lived right below me, the party floor i called it though for some reason i had never really ventured down there, i lived up above with two brothers who lived down the hall and One-Eye who had moved into the room next door, he worked alot and we barely spoke do to what he and my boss deemed my "excessive drug intake", MJ stated that she often stopped by the parties and i told her that some night she should stop up and say high, needless to say i was hoping they'd have a party that night but for some reason they did not, the next night they did but i wasn't there and then on what i believe was a Sunday i was sitting in my room listening to the Velvet Underground and drinking beer alone, i had replaced all my regular light bulbs with either blue or red lights except a reading lamp i had found in the junk room, in the daytime i had all the light i needed cuz the room had no curtains, my door was shut and there was a knock and i said come in and my heart skipped a beat as she poked her head through the door and said hi...

She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a white t-shirt and in the glow of the blue light she was gorgeous, she sat down and we talked and she said she liked the music and hours had passed and she was like damn i should get back my roommates probably left and i was like sure and we stood up and me being like a bumbling fool kinda looked around and then she leaned in and kissed me... she didn't make it back downstairs to find her friends and a few days later after seeing her place i told her she could crash at mine anytime she wanted, she said she'd like that and laughed and told me how she thought i was the most interesting person she'd met in a long time, i smiled and said i don't know about that and she looked at me with these dark brown soulful eyes and said, just watching you unload that truck and swearing at shit when it fell out and that hat and the fact you were wearing a string as a belt and then you'd come in and be the most polite almost shy guy i'd met since i got here... like i said, i was smitten. To be cont...

2009 Obligatory Year in Review

First off i'd like to thank all three of my readers for sticking with me for another year, apparently it will be on to year 4 and we'll see how that goes, see i've made up my mind to write more and you could say that's my resolution except i've never had a resolution, i've been working on a bunch of shit which seems to help me neglect the lounge and as you can tell the bottles of whiskey are getting dusty and the draft beer gives you a splitting headache but i'll see what i can do in the coming year as i attempt to post a bit more than i have the past six months, of course it would be easy to blame Kid B for interrupting my sleep and keeping me busy but the little shit's such a mellow, happy dude i can't bring myself to do it...

What to expect? fuck if i know, more Wilderness Years, maybe some more posts about Late Night Maudlin Street and we may start mining a few of the Hardwood Diaries (basketball diaries was taken by Jim Carroll, RIP) but we'll see, anything would be a start now wouldn't it? we may even begin to delve into the evolution of the North Oakland Player into the King of North Oakland and my won't that be a treat for the masses.... and now on the the obligatory lists...

of course me being me some of these books and records won't be from 2009 they'll just be my favorites from the last year... and in no particular order...

Books- Hans Fallada-The Drinker, Hans Fallada-Little Man What Now, Thomas Pynchon-Against the Day, Michel Houellbecq- Platform, Arthur Koestler-Darkness at Noon, Georges Simenon-Dirty Snow, Georges Simenon-The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, Roberto Bolano- The Skating Rink, Roberto Bolano-Amulet, Will Self-The Book of Dave, Markus Zusak-The Book Thief, Thomas Pynchon- Mason and Dixon

Records- Morrissey-Years of Refusal, The Magnetic Fields-Get Lost, Lambchop-Ohio, Lambchop-Live at XX, Sunset Rubdown-Dragonslayer, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart-s/t, Dinosaur Jr.-Farm, Destroyer-Bay of Pigs ep, Los Campesinos-We are Beautiful We are Doomed, Stone Roses-s/t re-issue, Pavement- Brighten the Corners re-issue, Blank Dogs- Under and Under, Vivian Girls-Everything Goes Wrong, Brian Jonestown Massacre-Tepid Peppermint Wonderland

Top 3 Posts- 1) Late Night Maudlin Street Part 1 2)The Wilderness Years - A Marriage Proposal 3) The Hipster Bar/Moped Gang shitstorm that provided endless entertainment for a few weeks.

Top Moment - June 4, 8:06am, the birth of Nicholas Finn, watch his Dad cry like a baby when he lays eyes on his second son for the first time.... others include...

The Penguins winning Lord Stanley's cup, My always interesting conversations with the Kid, CBK's art shows and the fact that these two young bucks have helped push and inform my own art over the last 12 months for which i am much indebted, Furious getting hitched and the hurricane i drove through to get there, Arthur Guinness's 250th anniversary, The Limey and his usual genius and the fact that i've buried no family or pets and only one friend in the last 12 months (knock on wood)...

so while the naysayers and news makers tell me every thing's fucked i tend to think they might be lying, i've got my books, my tunes and a handful of good friends, two healthy and happy sons and dare i say a serenity that i've been looking for for quite some time, i'm drinking beer in my pajama's and for those of you who've never done it i highly recommend it and while much of the world runs around and celebrates i'm sitting in a quiet house with a cat sleeping behind me and two boys and the girl sleeping upstairs, come midnight i'll creep into their rooms and kiss Nicky Finn and his big brother I-mac on the head and smile that i've made it this far and look forward to hitting the typer in 2010. cheers. The King of North Oakland.

Vic Chesnutt 1964-2009

He died on X-mas day, apparently a suicide, Mr. Chesnutt had been milling around the periphery of my life for some time his songs floating in and out, heard on late night radio from college stations, it was the Kid that gave me some of his music and started a deeper appreciation for the man, an artist, in a wheelchair since he was 18 due to a car crash, re-learned how to play his guitar with gnarled hands, a victim in a sense of America, see in America we don't give a fuck about art and Vic Chesnutt couldn't get insurance and spent probably endless hours fighting for his right to live until he just couldn't put up with it anymore, until the mental and physical pain took it's toll and that was it... funny how in the richest country in the world some of us are denied the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the powers that be don't want us creating and thinking, they want us consuming and passively watching, so that if you choose to write, paint, make music you better have a gig on the side that gives you one of those little cards that lets you go to the hospital and the doctor and receive medication without having to sell body parts in order to pay for it. This is a website to donate to his family set up by Kristen Hersh.... Kristenhersh.cashmusic.org/vic/ or you could buy some of the man's music and hear how brilliant he was, how much humanity he had, how he could convey what might be called the human condition so well in his songs. The tragedy is it didn't have to end this way, the tragedy is that while the bible thumpers all worry about the unborn they don't give a fuck about the living. Thank you Vic Chesnutt for sharing your brilliance.