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The Worst People in the World

Worst People in the World

Why I Taste

Earlier this evening I attempted to make a video because...One, I haven't actually written anything in weeks and Two, because people are on my nerves...



That's all I could salvage but surely y'all have picked up that the question here is...which one of these are straining to be rock stars....



or


If that second one doesn't look like an official video it's because it isn't...they never made one for Summer Babe. Of course, it ends with a big toothy smile...lovely and appropriate.

I'll try to get my act together shortly.

I'm NO Yankee.

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 - Conclusion: I was alone on my bench. Being alone was no problem. In fact, given the company that I'd been keeping over the last ten days...it was...

Tweekers

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 - Installment 7: The talker looked at me like I had an answer for why is squirrely friend had split. Reflexively I shrugged my shoulders. He got up and went ...

Totally Wired.

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 Installment 6: I'd missed the train and there wouldn't be another one until 10 o'clock the next morning. Two minutes before I had edged my wa...

Jackpot

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 Installment 5: The only thing I remember between deciding to go back out and getting on the ferry the next evening was being woken up in the middle of the ...

Thank You...Thank Ya Very Much.

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit # 2 Installment 4: The sketchy budget I had devised for gettin' back to London was very delicate and did not include buyin' a train ticket. So, I playe...

Crows Don't Smoke

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 Installment 3: Crows don't stop off in Belfast on their way from Dingle to Dublin...but crows don't need money for cigarettes do they? I did...and ...

How Many Countries are in this Country

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 Installment 2: ...I was in Dingle lookin for the fish stand where I'd eatin late the night before. It was nowhere to be found. Then it started raining....

Escape From Ireland.

Flimsy Cups: Biographical Tid Bit #2 Installment 1: I'm pretty sure this is the Port/Train Station at Holyhead in Wales. It's also the place where I set a trash can on fire, where ...

I was looking for an old post yesterday and came across these. Some of my adventures in the UK and Ireland. I don't even think C was around when these were posted.

Do Not Be Alarmed!

These words are typed by me, not in a hospital but, in the comfort of my own back porch. I am alive and well...full of vim and vigor...rejuvenated by yet another failed attempt on my life by Satan's hand puppet.

Screwtape there is a young'n...he'll be black as lump charcoal in a few years...won't be any more full of venom though. He's already wired for sound. I stepped right over him looking for a golf ball. I heard the unmistakable sound of a snake moving over dried leaves right behind me...right behind me. Like at my heel.

F*&%$ER!!!

Long time readers, of this and the various blogs, will know this is not the first time the Devil has sent his dirty workers after me; however, this is the first time I've been tracked out of state. This attempt came in Georgia...Lake Park, Georgia.

Do not be alarmed...I survived the attempted attack...and sent him slithering back to his boss with a message...

In Las Vegas?????

No more grey haired pictures now.

I think it was B.B. Kings 16 Greatest Hits...a cassette. It was my Daddy's. I appropriated it...and the family tape recorder and played it everywhere I went...which, at this point in my life, was limited to the front and back yard.

This is the song that did it to me...I wrecked that part of the tape. Play, Rewind, Play, Rewind, Play...until I had every hiss memorized. Which was good cause I'd shredded it by then.



King was my Daddy's favorite and I remember one night as a small child being baby-sat so him and my Momma could go see him. It seemed like magic to me...that they could go and see a person from the records. I tried to imagine what it would be like.



Two years ago we were able to take The Boy to see him. It was a rough night on a four year old but, he made it long enough to hear King sing You Are My Sunshine...and that was long enough. It was priceless watching his face.


Keep an eye on your computer for this one...the first few minutes might melt your screen.

As a rule, I am loath to join in with moments of mandatory mourning but, King's music was an integral part of my childhood. As a corporate loss it's crushing, even if not shocking...you can't replace Southerners like this.

Black Tights

I guess if you had to choose....you'd take Andy Warhol over Charles Manson. Obviously you'd look better...and, honestly, isn't that enough?



Also, with Andy the body count was lower and, as with his art...it's not clear who's hands were actually getting dirty...no conviction.

In 1965, Andy Warhol met Edie Sedgwick at a party. Captivated at first sight, Warhol claims to have felt something like love for her. We know it weren't lust. My guess is that it was covetousness...an overwhelming desire to possess Edie's identity. Sedgwick's blood was a Founding shade of blue. Regal by nature with an effortless charm, she was everything the awkward, pocked, Andy Warhola was not.

Andy took her on as an avatar.

That's a dangerous position to be in with a narcissistic psychopath...so it ended badly. Of course, that's not all Andy's fault. She was a grown woman with her own capacity for destruction. She wasn't kidnapped and she benefitted from the associations..at least for a little while.

Still, of all the people in the world for her to have lighted on...he was the one almost guaranteed to knock at least ten years off her life.



"It's easier to go down"...Who is that moron?

All You Protest Kids!

Enough of the murder and mayhem...for the moment at least.

Right in the middle of all the nonsense we've been covering...the Velvet Underground, Venus in Furs, Heroin, White Light/White Heat, Sister Ray...that Velvet Underground, offered up one of the most precious songs ever recorded.



This final version puts Jack in the corset and Jane in the vest but it's still just a boy and a girl who want to get home to each other at night. The great anti-ideology...the anecdote to the murderous mass mind. The only place the individual can truly emerge...in genuine relation. Listen closely Protest Kids...as Jack emerges into his individuality with exuberance!

It's impossible to hear Sweet Jane without Chuck Berry's You Never Can Tell echoing in the background. They had a hi-fi phono...and they let it blast!



They call it domestic bliss for a reason.

It's Not All Pumpkin Spice Lattes

 

 

 

 

Leslie Van Houten...stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 12 times...at least.

 

 

 

"..might be one of the ladies I laid to make a communist." Jim Jones. 



Squeaky. That's What They Called Her.

This girl has just tried to assassinate the president of the United States...Gerald Ford. Of course, you might know her from her time with the Manson Family.

Squeaky was not directly involved in the infamous murders carried out by The Family. She never did any time for those but she doesn't seem to have regretted the association.

She was a piece of work in her own right. After the Manson murders and before her attempt on Ford, she was dragged in for the murder of a couple in Stockton, CA. Turned out everybody there was involved except the victims and Squeaky. A couple of years later she tried to kill Gerald.*



The story doesn't end there. In 1987, Squeaky got wind that Charles Manson had cancer in the balls. So she escaped from prison to be with him. This baffles me...more than the gruesome murders which, despite their grotesque nature, seem to have been about dope...bad dope deals.  What I don't get is the devotion of these girls.

 (Nancy Pittman, Sandra Good, Kitty Lutesinger, Catherine Gillies of the Manson Family) 

 

Them girls are outside the courthouse in a show of support for Manson and the others on trial for the brutal slaying of seven people. Squeaky's somewhere around there. She and others camped out on the grounds during the trial. Soon they'd all be bald with X's carved in their foreheads.

WTF? They are Baby Boomers...and that might be all the explanation we need but, still...
Just up the road Jim Jones' People's Temple is rockin', Ted Bundy is about to commit his first murder, John Wayne Gacey has just been granted parole for sexually assaulting a minor. There they sit...ice wouldn't melt in their mouths...in devotion to Charles Manson.



Despite the attempt on Ford and her escape, to help Charlie with his balls, Squeaky was eventually paroled y'all...God only knows what she's up to.

*Thirteen days later another woman tried to kill Ford...the most innocuous figure in the history of U.S. politics. For her part, Squeaky seems to have been chapped about the Red Woods...yes she was a confidante of Charles Manson, yes she was involved with dope dealing Aryan Nationers but, she loved the planet.

There is Another Side

Just to reiterate the ultimate point of my last post...

"Y'all sent me on this terrible bachelorette party and all I got was a snakebite."

 



I rest my case...you want surnames?

We know one of these fellas...in fact, the Boy has spent the night at the family's house.

DISCLAIMER: as I know it will be of great interest to many of our readers, not only were no snakes harmed during the filming but they're probably saving many non-poisonous snakes from being killed in the drive way. They deal directly, and question, the normal reaction that any sane person would have to seeing a snake...which is to kill it without a second thought...and suggest that it's an irrational response.

Sorry I'm just gonna confess here...I will kill them if I see them. I guess I'm a horrible person but I have been chased, have looked into the beady abyss and seen what a snake bite does to a human leg. The only way I'll grab a snake is with a shotgun.

I love the rowdiness and the decay that can be found from one end of Dixie to the other. It's not only beautiful but it makes an important statement about the impermanence of material and the foolishness of putting any faith in it. There is another side though.

There is a grandeur to The South that I am often guilty of ignoring here. There is the beauty of the dogwoods and azaleas, the magnolias and loblollies...and the live oaks. The unassailable taste and quaint manners...the old money beauty of it.

Nowhere is this side more gorgeously realized than during the Master's Tournament at Augusta National in Georgia.

Martha is, at this very moment, balling as Justin Spieth, this year's winner, hugs his Momma.

 

It is a cathedral...glorifying the natural beauty of The South and it is a celebration of it's gentile mores. Five dollars will still get you a pimento cheese sandwich...yelling "YOU DA MAN" or "IN DA HOLE" will still you get you an escort off the grounds. Mind you're manners...this is Georgia not the U.S. Open. This morning, Nick Faldo...that's Sir Nick Faldo to you, said that, off the course, it's the greatest sporting event in the world. "On the course," it's the greatest "by a mile."

 



There's a Thursday afternoon every year in the Spring when I have to fight back the tears. It's not just the overwhelming Southern Beauty of the place, though that does crush, but the memories I have with my Daddy and now with my son...being crouched around the TV (this hasn't changed despite the size of the TV and crispness of the picture) anxiously watching a putt hug the meticulous contours of a green, past the pink azaleas...through the shadow of a dogwood in bloom...watching, covering our faces, peaking....

EDIT...The Boy climbed up in my lap this morning while waiting for his momma to finish getting dressed. He wanted to see the Snakegrabber videos...he's pretty pumped about Mr. Brent...then he wanted see the video of Augusta. He said something about playin there....I would walk buck naked from here to Augusta if it meant getting to play just one hole. I asked him so..."you gonna play there one day."
He turned his head and looked at me, with the most serious expression he could muster..."I am going to win a green jacket." At this point I have no reason to doubt him.

If The River Was Whiskey

Grand Gulf isn't just a military park. They have lots of interesting local artifacts there.

Do we need any further proof that there was serious money in bootleggin'?

Prohibition didn't end in Mississippi until the 60's. That don't mean there weren't a thriving, and well regulated, brown liquor market in the state. Far from it... Black Market Tax . In fact, it was a raid on a Junior League Ball, attended by the Governor, that finally forced the state's hand. There was no rush to legalize akahol. The bootleggers were getting rich, the state and state officials were getting their cut, and the Baptists were happy (the last thing they wanted was to have to buy theirs in a public establishment...hahaha. Do you know why you always take more than one Baptist fishing at a time...because if you take just one he'll drink all your booze. :oohyeahthat'sagoodone:).

A family friend, who died recently, used to get paid 50 bucks to run a trunkload of whiskey from Vicksburg to Jackson when he was a teenager in the 50's. You can still get moonshine here without much trouble.

I think it's also important to mention that we have a short but significant history with submarines. The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was the first submarine to ever sink a ship. It took down the USS Housatonic....known up until that point for seizing a British blockade runner that was trying to deliver two ship engines for Confederate Inronclads. It was a serious blow. Take note Scots...it was one of your ships the bastards stole. Sadly, neither the crew or the submarine survived the exchange but they sank that b**CH!

While we're briefly on the subject, today in 1865, William Catledge of the 5th Florida Infantry, CSA, was paroled at Appomattox (one of 53 men that were left of the 5th). He was my Grandmother's maternal Grandfather. He wasn't the only Catledge that fought and her paternal side was also well represented but, it's William's name that appears, after about 6 pages of Campbells, among the list of those that were present at what amounted to the bitter, bitter end.

 You would be forgiven for thinking that this was a portable torture device carried by the U.S. army used to extract intelligence from the locals but...NO! This torture device was willingly worn by our Belles. That's what was under the hood of those old gorgeous hooped dresses.

Residents of the area remain on guard from attacks to this day. There's a nuclear power plant just a few miles from the park. She is ready for shenanigans...in fact, she kinda looks like she wakes up every morning hoping somebody will try her.

There's Yankees to worry about, terror attacks...it's like the Devil's petting zoo around there...

...it is going to Flood!

Then there's us....a danger that, while it may be unintentional, can never be dismissed.



We are them. Those of us who weren't kidnapped from West Africa are anglo-celts who were too poor and rowdy to live in Scotland, Ireland and t'North of England...who have spent the last 200 years procreating in swamps. We have moonshine, guns, submarines and a nuclear power plant! What could possibly go wrong. HA!

Not Too Pretty to Burn

On Good Friday, me and The Boy took a trip to Grand Gulf State Park. Grad Gulf is right on the river...maybe 20 miles south of Vicksburg. When I say on the river...I mean nervously close to the River. The water on Friday was up to the little two lane road opposite the park.

It won't surprise you to hear that my arch enemy took his most gruesome form on this lane a few years ago. I was in the car when Satan's House Pet crossed my path...the blackest, fattest, most ghoulish, ugggh...and it still gives me shivers.

There's not really a town here anymore. The first one was burned down by David Farrugut...Furragut, whatever, David Yankee, as part of the U.S. invasion of Mississippi during Lincoln's war.

It was burned in 1862...cause that's what they did. Then in May of 1863, they came back to seize the charred remains in order to use the gulf as a supply point for the invading army. Unfortunately for him and his...Georgia born, Gen John S. Bowen

had prepared the hills around what was left of the town. There Hoskins' Light Artillery, from Brookhaven, MS were splint between two small "forts."  Hoskins' gunners with 13 light pieces fought off seven US gunships, firing some 2,500 rounds into the Confederate positions...they even disabled one of the ships.

Sadly, it was barely a setback for grant. They just moved down river and landed unopposed and marched on Port Gibson ("Too Beautiful To Burn" - U.S. Grant. How cute.) where Bowen, severely outnumbered, was forced to retreat after a day's fighting.  Grand Gulf was evacuated.

I have to tell you...reading Bowen's CV is an exercise in excruciation for an unreconstructed Southron. He had predicted where the Yankees would attack and had repeatedly requested reinforcements from Pemberton in Vicksburg...DENIED. They weren't run out of Port Gibson...they were in an untenable position because of sheer numbers and had to withdraw. At the Battle of Corinth, MS...he had overrun a significant US position. Instead of exploiting the advantage...his commander Van &*&^&ing Dorn called a halt. At Champions Hill...Bowen led an attack that was on the verge of breaking the Yankee center but, AGAIN, he was not supported!

Taken prisoner after the fall of Vicksburg, Bowen died of dysentery after being paroled...32 years old. Did I mention that this Jedi was a Georgian?  Damn right I did...you want me to tell you again? :)

While we're here...let's hear from Robbie Robertson. A Canadian who has gifted The South with genuine treasure. About the song...he said he wanted to express the dignified sadness he often encountered in Southerners. He had Levon there for guidance I'm sure but, it's Robertson's song and it is cherished.*



Up on the hill behind the "forts" is an old cemetery.

It's my favorite place on the park.

As an aside for C...we saw the most outrageously yellow little bird I've ever seen in my life there.

Not far from Grand Gulf...just off the Natchez Trace is the site of Rocky Springs. At one time there were 1,500 souls there...between the war and disease the town was abandoned by 1930. There is a church there...built in the 1830's. That's a rare specimen in these parts. It has a fabulous old cemetery. There are a couple of Confederate Veterans buried there but they very recent additions compared to the others. It's in the same style but possessed of a more grand decay. I was gonna take the Boy by there on the way home but he was passed out by then.

There's an old Dog Trot or Cracker House on the property. We have fantasies of building one of these on a sandy piece of property, shaded by Live Oaks, somewhere along the gulf coast one day.

This picture has global significance. Those are azaleas....they are swarming with Bumble Bees. I've read that bumble bees are disappearing around the world. Well, it turns out, they are disappearing to Grand Gulf, MS. There must have been 100 of these fat stingers buzzing around the various buildings. The Boy finally couldn't take it anymore despite my insistence that they weren't going to sting him. I think he was just sleepy.

Halfway there he had generously offered to let me listen to my "disc." Big Star Third.

"Does he sing like this for every song?"
"Yep."
"This the worst singing ever."
By the time we got to Jesus Christ he had settled in to it. Ha.




See Charity Chic  for an interesting post on that other Canadian. :)

More on Grand Gulf to come....

Low Living, Sight Walking.

I've been out and about.

In front of a house on Plank Rd in Baton Rouge. It ends with an incomplete word...a syllable.

Broadmoor Theatre on Airline Highway...Baton Rouge.



A constant and faithful companion.

Pentecostal Church in Biloxi.

 

Raleigh MS...Rogers's Grocery.

 

 

Somewhere around Prentiss.

Between Rocky Mount Church and Winona.



Little Sammy Davis of Winona on Harmonica...not in the Delta but that don't sound much like the Delta anyway.

I Lay There in Pain but I Love It.

Peter Sellers is still a Super Star in our house. Ironically...maybe poetically, it was his absentee role in Trail of the Pink Panther that solidified his status with the Boy. I have always loved him. First, because he made my Daddy laugh...put him in stitches. Being little, few things brought me more joy than watching him writhe around in his chair...gasping and cackling, hands on his stomach, eyes welling...and then the high pitched "haaaaaaw....ohhhhhh."

"Do you have a massage for me?" He'd repeat to himself and be right back in tears. Magic.

Of course, as I got older and the jokes began to reveal themselves...I had my own troubles staying upright. Older still and the complicated nature that he brought to those roles...the subtly he imbued them with...reveal an absolute genius. Clare Quilty in Kubrick's Lolita....



So sleazy....Him and Natasha Fatale there...it might be my favorite exchange of dialogue ever filmed. Then there's Dr. Strangelove. How easily could this character have spiraled out of control...even in capable hands.



When he grabs his right arm and pulls it forward to bring the wheelchair back around...just kills me.

As comedy it's brilliant but there's also something profound in the grotesque nature of it. Never mind the wicked things these old Nazis had done or the highly dubious use of them in the U.S. defense department...what must it have been like in the minds of these f****ers after 1945? Moody I reckon. They had literally sold their souls for a future that was never coming. What a demented existence. It's there in Seller's performance...without breaking the tone of the film, there's something horrifying in the absurdity. .

Just for giggles...he's also playing the president in that scene.

I guess his own existence was slightly demented. I hope some of that has been exaggerated. There's a ridiculous romance attached to the tortured artist, the sad clown but, of course, there's nothing romantic about mental anguish. He does seem to have been genuinely disturbed. Abusing the poppers and cocaine surely didn't help and four marriages would be enough to put anybody in early grave...never mind somebody with a lousy heart.

All of that's over now and what's left is a brilliant legacy...the Goon Show, The Mouse that Roared, Being There, The Magic Christian, I'm All Right Jack, etc...making my son giggle uncontrollably and my Daddy laugh until he cried. I love Peter Sellers...a genius that's all.

Fever Dream

 

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent - Bruegel

 

This was supposed to be a post about the third season of American Horror Story. Set in New Orleans...the writers, for the first time, take great pleasure in slaughtering some of the locals. Locals in the surrounding area...not New Orleans. They all have a kind of shallow affection for New Orleans...generic shots of the Quarter and St. Louis cemetery, vague Jazz notes...but don't have any interest in actually writing a character that would exist there. They do take great care in reconstructing cliché's of Southerners and ripping them limb from limb.

I couldn't get it written...couldn't get a video made...so, there's this. One note...I do not let the Boy talk to me like this...unless I am goading him. Which I was without mercy. Ha.

  

 

We'll try it again tomorrow.

 

Keep Your Head Up!

 

 

 

Don't know why I'm torturing myself with this. It's half a year before another kick off. Usually, this time of year, I can do a pretty good job of pretending it doesn't exist...a duller universe but one that's  more manageable than unremitting anticipation.

 

 

A little taste...Reggie Nelson was one a the great defensive players that have come through Florida. He was a defensive back...part of the Secondary tasked with eliminating the passing game. A Headhunter...one of the best the Gators have ever had. Funny to think that the forward pass was introduced to make the game safer. Around the :40-45 mark you see how good he was when a Wide Receiver he's covering flops to the ground rather than catch the ball and be decapitated....and some LL Cool J. 

I'm still working on getting the colors right...especially the blue and there's a few details to be added but it's blocked in...it's set.

 

 

 

Without Correction

The second in a series of post concerning my favorite records.

 

Eggleston

Reviewing Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert for Allmusic, David Cleary tells us...

"...this release is a dreadful disappointment. Production values are among the worst this reviewer has ever heard: sound quality is terrible, instrumental balances are careless and haphazard, and some selections even begin with recording start-up sound."

Then, horror of horros...."Chilton's false-start vocal on "Boogie Shoes" is simply left in without correction".

"Without correction"? It wasn't left there on purpose for a purpose beyond Cleary's capacity or willingness to accept. There is a proper way to do things and this was not it...it was an error left uncorrected. I guess Jim Dickinson just didn't know what he was doing.

 

Cleary is well within his duties to point out the haphazard nature of the record. Let 'em know that if they're looking for The Ballad of El Goodo...it's not here. As for what's correct or incorrect Cleary can stick it above his collar...right up his butt.*

I wonder if he bothered with Bach's Bottom...surely his head would have exploded at Free Again (version 1)..."Put some kung fu on it this time"...or if he heard Chilton's sessions from 1970, before Big Star...



Throughout the sessions Dickinson would record players while they were warming up and use those takes. There's the oft reported anecdote that Chilton wanted Dickinson to play guitar because he still played like a teenager. The illusion created by crafting is removed. The false starts and uneven mixes...the overdubs to hide blank spots...it creates a level of uncertainty for the listener and when the whole thing comes off it is exhilarating.



I don't think there's any irony in the record...even the cover of Boogie Shoes sounds like earnest fun. How many songs have buried..."trampled" on even...by well crafted, precise production? Still, the potential for a meta reading can't be denied. They knew, Jim Dickinson certainly knew, what they were doing. Others got what they were doing too. It's impossible, at least for me, to see Slay Tracks hit with the impact it did and not think of Like Flies on Sherbert.**

Finally, one reviewer complained that they all sound drunk and high.

Playing rocknroll while drunk and high on the dope. Well...I swanny!

That's Memphis David...it may not play in Cincinnati, Oh-hyy-o but, nobody gives a damn.



*I've got the Trouser Press Record Guide from the 80's and the one they published in the 90's. In the 80's, Trouser's take on Bach's Bottom and Flies is as vitriolic as Cleary's...accusing the records of "trampling" on Chilton's songs. By 95, Bach's Bottom was an "intriguing stop/start" record.
** I think this is what they call foreshadowing.