Bigfoot, Big Man

My Love Is Like A Bigfoot

Honey, you and I
We’re all lost out in the woods
You want me to be romantic
I want you to deliver the goods

You say I’m a Neanderthal
But you don’t even know how to spell it
I see trouble up ahead
But I don’t know how I can tell it

You say I talk too much, baby
I don’t know why you even mind it
You know, my love is like a Bigfoot
It’s probably out there
But you just can't find it.


I’m gonna put me on some big feet
That I made down in my basement
I’m going to run through the woods out back
For the general public’s amazement

While the Bigfoot hunters come around
And make their plaster casts
You will slap me in my big face
For trying to move in way too fast

You say I only want one thing, baby
Well, you might as well know, too
My love is like a Bigfoot
But feet aren’t the only big thing
That I want to show you.


Well, the Sci-Fi Channel wants an interview
And the Enquirer wants an exclusive
But still you treat me like a missing link
I don’t know why you’re so abusive

I’m going to bellow into the night
I’m going to emit strange, guttural sounds
Until you give in to my urgency
And come and lay this big man down

You know you want it, baby
You want to do that mammalian rite
You know, my love is like a Bigfoot
It walks behind a big log

And then it moves on out of sight.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Big Feets Don't Fail Me Now

Monkey To Man

Two guys say they recently found the remains of a bigfoot in the woods.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

This was in rural north Georgia.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

The remains of a 7+ foot tall, 500 pound ape-like creature were pretty far along in the rotting process, so the fellas dragged it home and threw it into the deep freeze, right next to the ice cream sandwiches and the Totino’s® Pizza Rolls. Of course. The story didn’t say, but these guys are obviously not living with women.

The discoverers, a cop on administrative leave and a former corrections officer, released a photograph on the Internet of their find. Judge for yourself.

I know the people from History Channel’s Monster Quest are supremely pissed off about right now. All that painstaking climbing through the forest and putting out bait and putting up camera traps, etc., and nothing. Then two good old boys out for a walk in the woods down south trip over a carcass and cart it home and cause an Internet sensation.

This whole scenario has so many juicy and compelling aspects that I think I will quit now, and pick up the story again later on, after it has had time to “ripen” some more.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Like A Surgeon

I Guess I Should Cut It Out

I was cutting open a cardboard box with a knife today, and naturally before long there were seven or eight people standing around, watching me do it. After awhile, people got to talking about the worst times they’d ever accidentally cut themselves. There were some pretty good stories, including one where (part of) a digit was lost.

I didn’t have anything that good, but I did have a couple of stories to contribute.

The first one was from about 15 years ago. I was at work, cutting a box like I was today. I broke two cardinal rules of box cutting that day, however. One, my knife blade was really dull, and either I didn’t check it, or I wasn’t concerned enough to replace the blade; and two, I was pulling the knife toward my body as I cut. This is as natural a motion as there is, but every safety film you’ll ever watch on workplace practices will tell you not to do it. Here’s why – the dull blade slipped on the cardboard and I reflexively jerked it violently toward me. I cut myself on the inside of my left wrist, just below the “horn” of the palm. I felt like I had cut pretty deep, and I confirmed this when I looked at the relatively small cut on my wrist and noticed that instead of some red blood trickling out, there was black blood gurgling out.

I am not normally weak-kneed at the sight of blood, even my own; but I will admit in this instance, I was a little bit shock-y there for a moment. My co-workers were freaking out, meantime. One made a tourniquet out of a t-shirt rag, then three or four of them walked me out to the parking lot and threw me into the front seat of someone’s Corolla and took me to the emergency room. By the time we got there I was fine, and I felt a little silly, because there were people in there with real problems. Naturally enough, no one medical looked at me until five or six hours later. Still, I had it pretty good that day. Got off with two stitches and a butterfly bandage and a stern lecture about how to use a box knife from the ER physician, plus I missed almost a full day of work.

My second story went way back, to one of the first real jobs I ever had. I was working in an office and one day our copy machine jammed. I was the only male in the office at the time, so the office manager came to me and asked me to go look at it. I didn’t know the first thing about copiers, but I felt like I had to go look, like my manhood had been challenged or something. So I went into the mail room and walked around the machine for a few moments, in deep thought. Then I figured out I could pull the front off of it, so I did, and tried to look like I knew what in the hell I was doing. I could see a piece of paper, jammed waaay up in there, so I looked around the room for a handy tool. . . and grabbed the first thing I saw - a thin, sharp, 9-inch boning knife that was apparently being used as a letter opener (I was working for a restaurant supply warehouse.) I stabbed that thing around the innards of the copy machine for awhile, trying to free up the jammed paper. At one point the knife slipped and made a nasty gash across the drum of the copier before going straight in to my right upper thigh.

I knew right away the knife had gone all the way to the bone, because I could feel it. I found out later I missed an important artery by about ¾ inch. More importantly, I only missed my right testicle by about 2 inches. As it was, it must have gone through mostly muscle, because there was very little blood. I went into the men’s room to pull down my jeans and check myself, and it was the oddest looking thing. There was a neat, tiny ½ inch incision through my skin, which was still wrapped tight; but a big clump of muscle had popped through the cut in the skin, like a hernia.

I went to the emergency room for that one, too. Pretty much the same story – a quick patch-up job and a lecture from the MD about sharp objects. Missed some work. And that’s it.

At work today, my copy machine story was quite popular. Guys kept asking me to repeat different aspects of it, and they asked a lot of questions. “How sharp was that blade?” “It came how close to your nuts?” This isn’t surprising, really. Men think about their nuts, and what is attached to them, a fair amount of the time. A story like mine is somewhat horrifying to us, but compelling, too. The big joke after I told my story today was that I had once tried to emasculate myself. The rest of the day, anytime anyone saw me in the office, they would say, “Hi, Inca,” in a high-pitched, sing-song, eunuch-like voice. Hilarious. I work with comedians.

For some reason, it all reminded me of an article I once read about a Texas folk artist whose name I cannot recall. The artist was a primitive eccentric, who lived on the Texas Gulf Coast, Port Isabel, Port Lavaca, somewhere like that. He was self-taught, and painted crude and child-like but vivid and strangely compelling watercolors, usually of the ocean. The thing I most remember from the article, though, is that it was discovered that at some point this painter had, well, committed the ultimate act of self-mutilation. He had castrated himself, intentionally - God only knows why. Just took a sharp knife (I hope it was sharp) one day and, whisk, whisk, whisk. "And then he was a she," as Lou Reed once said.

I have always had an affinity for the creative side of life, you know. I might have even fancied myself as being creative. Maybe even thought once or twice I might have some potential as an artist. But then again, maybe not.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Talk Is Cheap

It's Just Talk, Talk, Talk, Talk 'Til You Lose Your Patience

I fell into a rambling conversation today with several people, standing around in the office. All happened to be male. Believe it or not, somehow or another the talk turned to when each of us had lost our, well, our “innocence,” I guess you could call it.

There was a lot of bullshit being proffered, in my judgement. At any rate, I am not sure why anyone would think someone else would be interested in the most intimate details of their sex life, now or from thirty years in the past. But some people do think that, apparently.

Anyway, the consensus in the group seemed to be 13-14 years old on the losing the virginity thing. If you factor in lying about it, that puts it more like age 15 or 16, which seems about right. If you ever see a group of guys standing around talking – either a bunch of lawyers or accountants or engineers in an office, or a gang of pipe fitters on a job site – there is a 50-50 chance that what they are talking about is something along this line.

My wife told me once that women talk about this kind of thing, too (she’d been drinking); and I told her I would like to listen in on a conversation like that. “No, you wouldn’t,” she said. It seems that the women often end up discussing how disappointing or unfulfilling that first magical time was.

Whatever. I’ll bet the guy thought it was great. And in the context of what we are talking about here, that’s all that really matters, no?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Oil Crisis

Little Fish, Big Fish Swimming In The Water

I was forced to listen to commercial radio for several hours today.

All I can say is, for one thing, thank god for XM. Also, I had not realized it, but there is an oil shortage going on. No, no. . . not the crude oil shortage, the one that is driving gasoline prices up to nearly $4.00 a gallon. There is, in fact, a fish oil shortage. Bet you didn't know about that one.

The way I know is, the FM classic rock station I was made to listen to today ran a commercial at least ten times for “Omega berry” fish oil. The spokesman, the president of the Omega Berry Fish Oil Co., said U.S. citizens are woefully behind their European cousins in the consumption of fish oil. I know I must be, unless fish oil comes from somewhere other than fish; because I pretty much gave up fish after Lent. Anyway, because of this dietary deficiency, me and a lot of other Americans apparently are missing out on the health benefits of fish oil. That’s right, fish oil. That nasty shit you wash off your hands as soon as you can after it gets on you. It apparently has health benefits. It is good for lowering cholesterol, it improves joint function, and I am pretty sure, either directly or indirectly, it improves your sex life. Assuming you have one to begin with, of course.

But this particular fish oil is even better than regular, every day fish oil, because it is fortified with Omega berries. I don’t know what an Omega berry is, and the dude on the commercial didn’t say. It sounds impressive, though. I am guessing it is something akin to the bio-engineered corn one is always hearing about on The X Files re-runs and elsewhere. He also said his fish oil contains no mercury; so we know for sure his fish aren’t coming from anywhere in the Sabine-Neches watershed.

The guy said he was so concerned about Americans’ health, he wanted to give a jar of his fish oil to every American to try out. Every single one. Wow. That is a lot of fish oil, if we all take him up on it. Probably not, though. This guy knows fewer and fewer people are listening to commercial radio, and nobody listening to XM or Sirius is going to hear about it because, oh yeah, they have no commercials.

What I think is, the Obama campaign ought to get ahold of this. They have been trying to organize voter registration drives around the country, to get people signed up who have not participated in the process in awhile, or ever (some of them for good reason, like being dead.) They should go door to door and offer everyone a vial of Omega berry fish oil if they will agree to register and vote.

Hell, for free fish oil, I know I would.

Hot August Night

It's A Summertime Thing

Well, the sun’s beating down on the pavement
Money in the bank, I ain’t gonna save it
Jenny coming by, I hope she makes it

Jenny coming by and I sure hope she makes it

It has been a weird summer.

Normally summer is a languid time for me. I work, and then I play. Go to the beach a lot. Fish. Drink beer. Listen to music. Read. Make love, when I can. Dodge hurricanes. It’s all very tactile, sensual even. Some of my fondest memories are from the summertime.

There’s a party next door and it sounds like its cookin’
I poke my head over the wall and take a look in
It was a five-piece band, and they was really rockin’

It looked like some kind of family reunion

I don’t know why, but I have been all out of sync this summer. I have never really hit my languid, lethargic summer stride. I’ve picked up a bad juju of some kind, from somewhere. I have been sick three times this summer so far, and I never get sick. Head and chest colds. Allergies, which I have never had before. I don’t like being sick, it makes me feel bad. I was sick for most of our vacation, too. Up at the lake. Laying around the lake house, reading magazines. Sucks.

That summer heat’s got me feeling lazy
The air is warm and the sky is hazy
People gettin’ down, gettin’ crazy

People gettin’ down, gettin’ stupid, gettin’ crazy

Hot this summer, too. I don’t believe in global warming, but I am having an increasingly difficult time maintaining that intellectual stance. And politics, normally a pleasant diversion, are FUBAR now more than I have ever seen. Both presidential candidates are seriously lacking, in their own ways. Seriously fucking lacking. Not only am I not enthused by either, I am dismayed to realize that, once again, it is down to voting for the one I find the least personally offensive at the time. Son of a bitch.

We’ll ask your dad for the keys to the Honda
Can your sister come along? How could she not wanna?
Put the Beach Boys on, I wanna hear “Help Me Rhonda”

Put the Beach Boys on, I wanna hear “Help Me Rhonda”

The Astros are mediocre this year, too. Godammit. This summer, I am telling you. . . ehhh.

Death is everywhere about, I have been laying low, I’ll admit it. I know all this shit is random, but when the GR is harvesting nearby and all around, my thinking is to stay out of sight and don’t give dude any more ideas. Three friends, all my age, just in the last two months. Whack, whack, whack. I’m going back down into my hole now.

Fuck this summer. Wake me up when September comes. Or maybe November.

We’ll drive to the delta
We’ll take off our clothes and jump into the river
Ain’t nobody around, ain’t nobody gonna see us
Take off your clothes and jump into the water

It’s a summertime thing

-- Chuck Prophet, Summertime Thing

**********

Crossfire Hurricane

The Season Begins

The National Weather Service (http://www.nws.noaa.gov) is predicting a normal to above normal number of named storms this Atlantic hurricane season; 11-16 all together, with 6-9 "major" storms, 2-5 of which will be Category 3, 4, or 5 in nature. They are basing this on prevalent weather patterns, but I don't think they really know. The science of predicting storms has come a long way by now, once they've got one spotted and moving. We at least know they are coming; it is hard to imagine, but a killer storm like the 1900 Galveston hurricane, or the one that struck the East Coast in the '30s, hit with almost no prior warning.

I would say the science of predicting where they will make landfall still leaves something to be desired. Rita (2005), remember, was up until the last minute supposed to go in somewhere west of Galveston, in the Freeport area. Humberto (2007) came up so suddenly many people went to bed the night before not even knowing a hurricane was in the Gulf, much less headed this way. I know this - next time one is predicted to hit here, I'll go if it does. But I am waiting to the last minute before I leave, just to be sure. Since Rita we've installed a propane generator that will keep us up and running for several days if the power goes out. It is going to take a lot to get me up on the highway with a half million other people trying to get the hell out of Dodge all at the same time. A lot.

Heavy Weather

I'm Stupid For The Rain

I wasted probably an hour and a half today, total, just watching it rain. Well, I say "wasted" because that is what my bosses would think, if they knew. I don't feel like I wasted the time at all. The fact is, I love when it rains; watching it happen takes precedence over work and career every time, sorry.

I am not generally a gloomy person, and I have spent a good deal of my time pursuing sun-worshipping activities in my lifetime; but the most beautiful thing in the universe to me is a gray, forbidding sky, big heavy clouds lumbering slowly by, and rain pouring down. I suppose it is a good thing I live in an area that gets around 60 inches of rainfall a year, on average.

I love the way rain feels, and smells, and looks. It is for me a sensual buzz. Sometimes I'll just go out and stand in it, which makes some people worry a little. I never carry an umbrella, and never have. When it rains, I just get wet.

Next time it rains, and someone says to you, "Well, it is a great day today. . . if you are a duck", remember, it is great if you are an Inca From Peru, too.

I do love the rain. It is just that there is just not enough of it. When I retire, I have an idea to move to one of the volcano/mountains in Hawaii, where I have read they get over 300 inches of precipitation a year. Now that is more like it.

Bang And No Blame

Bang Baby

Bang bang baby

We were off to see the sights

All the things made to entice us

Like a million shining lights

Wasn't worried at all baby

If we'd be okay

Because bang bang baby

We could always find our way

Our way home

On our own

********

Bang bang baby

Soon we're getting overgrown

And if we are not careful

We'll be out here all alone

But I don't care about that baby

I know we are the best

Even from the longest distance

We stand out from all the rest

On our own

And all alone

********

Bang bang baby

Watch the time go speeding by

Now even twenty-some years on

It comes quickly to my eye

Never worried, never wondered

No regets, regrets at all

Because bang bang baby

Our aim was true throughout it all

All on our own

We made it home

Get Out Of Denver

Requiem For A Lightweight

Since writing about John Denver the other day, I found to my surprise the thought of him kind of stayed with me. This was rather unnerving, and mildly annoying. Especially because, at first, I could not understand why he was haunting me so.

I finally remembered, or thought I remembered, that I had written something more extensive about him around the time of his death.

A two-hour search of the hard drive later, I had confirmed my recollection. The following is a reprint of Denver's "obituary", from a sort of column I wrote at the time. Seems I had a more complicated relationship with John Denver than I let on initially.

********

October 13, 1997

(A rather light, uplifting column had been planned and worked on for this week. . . Alas, that has all been pushed back for now. This is a special edition, conceived and released after we received the truly earth-shattering news this morning that that monolith of soft rock, the champion of mindless back-to-earth sentiment, Jacques Cousteau, soft country, and the environment (with a little "e") had crashed his plane into Monterrey Bay in California Sunday and perished. John Denver is gone, gone . . . "Johnny, we hardly knew ye.")

John Denver meant very little to me during his life, and his music even less. So it would be just a little bit maudlin, and hypocritical, for me to mourn him now that he has passed. However, the one thing we owe each person, the one thing we do almost inadvertently when the news comes that even the least among us has passed on, is to do a tiny assessment or inventory to see if that person had any impact on us personally when he or she lived, and thus we measure to what degree we should then mourn their passing. This sounds, on the surface of it, extremely cold and dispassionate, but thus is the human animal wired together. It is up to his family and close friends (and fans, if he still has any) to bury him and do the crying and serious mourning out there in California or Colorado or Idaho or wherever. For the rest of us of a certain age, we think about it for about five minutes over coffee on a Monday morning, before moving on to more uplifting news about Coffeegate and sexually rapacious drill sergeants and Bosnia and Uganda and everything else. For me though, to my surprise (and to my chagrin), the death of John Denver stayed with me a little longer than that. I thought about it some more in the shower, and then later at work and after. This is a guy who I had no regard for when he was in his heyday twenty-five years ago, and had given little if any thought to since, and yet here his death was kind of sticking with me, much longer than those of supposedly much larger luminaries (just recently, for instance, Jimmy Stewart or Princess Di).

When John Denver died, he was flying an experimental aircraft he had recently purchased. The single-engine Y-shaped Long EZ plane, built by aviation legend Burt Rutan, had a long history of pilot misadventure, crashes, and death. Reports said Denver had done a couple of touch and go practice landings at a Monterrey Peninsula airfield and had then radioed he would be flying for about an hour. Shortly after he turned his plane out to sea, his engined stalled, and the plane plummeted directly into the water. Denver's badly mangled body was recovered sometime later. A rather cryptic note at the end of the report stated that, as was routine with any NTSB investigation of a fatal crash, toxicology reports would be done on the pilot.

"D.W.I., D.W.I.,
National pastime of the average guy,
I measured point four-five
Man, I'm lucky I didn't die." -- "D.W.I.", The LeRoi Brothers

After he became famous and made his money and repaired to his palatial hacienda up in Colorado, one of the main things that kept John Denver in the news over the years was his numerous arrests for driving under the influence. He was only convicted of it twice, but he must have been arrested for it dozens of times. One imagines the Aspen cops and Colorado State Troopers had a sort of weary resignation about it. Denver would be pulled over again on a local highway for extremely erratic driving, and then shortly a call-in would crackle over the police band: "'Country Boy' is all out of his head again. . . I think I'll just drive him home, and save on the paperwork." "Ten-four." As it was, at the time of his death, he was awaiting sentencing on his second conviction.

I had always thought of John Denver, when I thought of him at all, as a sort of bloodless mercenary, who sang his pointless, limpid songs with zero emotion, and who was in it strictly for the money and the fame. I have seen or heard nothing since to change my mind any about this, but I must say when I began hearing of his drunk driving arrests twenty or so years ago, well, it is bad to say but, to my thinking at that time, his DWI's sort of painted him in a more favorable picture for me. It gave him some life in my eyes, and as a person who back then had no qualms about driving under the influence practically all the time, the thought of John Denver careening around the mountain roads of Colorado or Idaho (where he had another home, I think) with a bottle of Black Tower on the dashboard that he would periodically take long pulls out of was comforting to me, I guess you could say. In a sick sort of way, I regarded him as a brother. It makes me wonder, though. Even though he was famous and could and did presumably "get out of it" many times when he was stopped for driving erratically, he was still convicted twice. Take it from someone who, during his serious drinking days, drove around under the influence many times and, purely through luck and Providence, never got caught; I wonder if John Denver just had bad luck or how many times he was driving around those steep switchbacks half out of his mind on gin aside from the times he was caught. Hmmm. Like I said, to my twisted mind back in those days, thinking things like this made me think that John Denver was not such a bad guy, after all.

But he was, of course. He was mewling and maudlin and his songs were formulaic and had all the imagination of a fourth-grader's poetry and musical range that three chords could muster. He cared not one whit about what he sang about, but only the money and the fame and the security it could bring him. He would go do concerts and tours and act like he gave a rat's ass about his legion of adoring (if gullible) fans. All he really cared about, I guess, was getting back to the mountains, where he could booze it up and live a life of self-absorbed stoned leisure.

And now he is gone, and the world is not noticeably any worse off for it. Before I can leave him, though, and put him to rest, there is that issue of why the news of his passing lingered in my mind all day and drove me ultimately to compose this admittedly not 100% flattering eulogy for the man. I think I know why, and a person would have to be of a certain age to really understand it.

John Denver's seminal song for me, I guess you could say, the only one that had any (though little) merit at all and had any impact on me, was "Rocky Mountain High." This song came out when I was in 8th grade. I remember this because some of my friends and I did a poll of the guys who were in eighth grade at Memorial Jr. High at the time and came up with a Top Ten or Top Twenty of popular songs. I cannot remember exactly. I do remember that "Rocky Mountain High" was voted the top song (I think I voted for "Tumbling Dice", by the 'Stones, as a write-in). Now, you would have to go back through Billboard's archives or somewhere to find out what all else we had to choose from back in Fall 1972/Spring 1973. I am pretty sure you could come up with something better than John Denver for the top song, though. I remember thinking even then that "Rocky Mountain High" was a pretty stupid song to be Number One among my peers. But even though I was smart enough even at what? Thirteen years old? Fourteen? To know John Denver was worthless musically, I must in all honesty admit that "Rocky Mountain High" did at least indirectly have a lingering effect on my pubescent life.

What John Denver started, or at least engendered, with "Rocky Mountain High", namely a sort of "back to the mountains, back to nature" craze, was in full flower by a couple of years later.

And as much as I would really, really, really like not to admit it, I fell for this, in all its pretentiousness and vacuity; fell for it hook, line and sinker. Up to that point I had a more or less stylish haircut and wore more or less stylish clothes, but in the summer leading up to my sophomore year I grew my hair long and stringy and traded in all my trendy clothes for flannel shirts and fatigue jackets. I wore my dad's old army boots to school every day. I suppose in retrospect, and to be kind to myself, I could say I was affecting an un-style born of quiet rebellion, but that would be a lie. I had fallen for the mountain man thing. At that time, the leading proponent of this lifestyle, and my personal hero, was Bill Walton, the basketball player. He had come out of a straight-laced program at U.C.L.A. (Coach John Wooden), but when he got to the pros (Portland Trail Blazers, I think) he had turned hippie. He grew his hair long and lived in a cabin somewhere in Oregon and was kind of an iconoclast. Man, that was just too irresistible for me. Here I was, a son of the coastal plain, someone who should (and shortly thereafter would) have been imbued with the myths of my geographical upbringing; namely, you know, the beach and the ocean and all of that. But no, here I was dressing and trying to act like some guy 5,000 feet up in the Rockies, living off of the fat of the land. This is so painful for me to admit to; it was just incredibly pretentious, but there you have it. I used to watch, well, I used to watch "The Life And Times Of Grizzly Adams", perhaps one of the stupidest TV shows ever made. I used to watch it just because Grizzly Adams had left society behind (he had been wrongly accused of some heinous crime, I think) and had gone to live in the mountains, cradled by nature all around (and some old fat prospector and a remarkably benign and helpful Indian named Nocona or Kokomo or something). Of course, I did not know at the time, as I found out later, that Dan Haggerty, the"actor" portraying Grizzly Adams, was buying and snorting up vast quantities of cocaine, and apparently losing his hair (he has recently been active on late night infomercials extolling the virtues of some hair-replacement surgery clinic). It would not have mattered anyway, I was so into this mountain man thing.

I was eventually "cured" of this ridiculous mountain-man obsession; cured of it, as we so often are, by a woman. I got a girlfriend, and she engendered in me the desire to alter my hairstyle and my clothes at least to some extent, I think because, as men have known and done since the dawn of time almost, I sensed that in order to get what I wanted from a woman, whether it was intellectual stimulation or stimulation of some other kind, I would have to make a trade, and I gladly made it. I came back to the land of the living, and reality, and I have not until now thought much about those "mountain-man" days at all in the intervening years.

But now that I have, I can still sense how strong the allure of that was, and I am not sure why. I think it is some psychological kink of my own, actually. There is the tendency to want to be outgoing and ebullient. That tendency is absolutely balanced and at times, as we have seen, overwhelmed by the exact opposite impulse, to turn inward and silent and away. . .to do, as another enduring hero from childhood, Bugs Bunny, so often did -- to jump down a hole and then pull it in after me. And that is what my "mountain-man" days were really, an attempt to opt out of the often difficult transition from childhood to young adulthood. And the things started by that stupid song, "Rocky Mountain High", made it easier for me to do this.

And so the passing of John Denver cannot go entirely unnoticed by this now otherwise normally sensible individual. For he influenced my life at a vulnerable time, however indirectly. He was able, through his "music", to engender cultural events that drove me down and down. And so I can say on this day, the day after your death, with all equanimity I can say, "So long, brother. And I hope they bury you very, very deep."

********

And so it goes. John Denver has been gone ten and a half years now. Here's hoping I never think of him, much less mention him in my blog, again.

The Power Of Osmosis

"Country" Boy

The other day I was attempting to drive one of my kids to distraction, so I broke out into a medley of John Denver songs. "That ought to do it," I thought.

What was odd was how many of the lyrics to those songs were still retained somewhere in a dusty corner of my brain. I cannot remember my own cell phone number - really - but I still know all the words to "Country Roads" and "Rocky Mountain High". Crazy. Especially considering Denver and his "music" was always pretty much anathema to me.

My only explanation is I grew up at a time when Top 40 radio was still prevalent, and I probably heard Denver's songs, willingly or unwillingly, close to a gazillion times between about 8th grade and my senior year. Those bland melodies and namby-pamby lyrics are etched into my brain.

I always thought it was funny that a guy with such a scrubbed public image who drew the post-Lawrence Welk crowd to his later concerts in droves was also apparently a vicious drunk, who racked up several DWI's and other alcohol-related public altercations before finally auguring his homemade airplane into the Pacific Ocean about ten years ago, doing himself in for good. One of his arrests came after he registered a 2.0+ on the breathalyzer after being stopped for driving erratically on the roads outside his large Colorado spread. I guess life on the farm wasn't all that laid back, after all.

Or, as a friend of mine e-mailed me the week after Denver bought it, "Crabmeeeaaaaat in the ocean makes me happpppyyyyyyy!!!!"

Double Trouble

I And I

Me and my doppelgänger
Were walking down the road
When a man walked up
Who neither one of us knowed

I said, “Hey there, stranger”
He said, “You know me, friend”
I said, “No, not me, gov’nor”
“Maybe you know him”

He and my ghost commenced to talking
And it was plain to see
My ghost didn’t know him
Any better than me

That’s the trouble these days
When you’re out walking with yourself
There is always someone
Who thinks you’re somebody else.

********

Me and my doppelgänger
Were out taking a ride
In my big four-fifty-four
Electric power glide

When the cop pulled us over
I got a nervous blink
He walked up to the window
And said, “Are you who I think?”

I said, “No sir, I’m not
“And neither is he
“We are someone else altogether
“As anyone can see”

He ran a check, anyway
But there was nothing to be found
He said, “You boys can just go”
So I put the hammer down.

********

Me and my doppelgänger, we’re pretty tight, you know
Wherever he wanders, that’s where I go
We don’t take no crap, we don’t take no hell
We just head on down the road, moving parallel

********

Me and my doppelgänger are beyond the pale

We were born to wander and to live alone
Put together in time and dimensionally
We are proud to be out here all on our own

We make our own rules when we're out on the road
We don't pay no fines, we don't pay no toll

We laugh at thunder and dance in the lightning
When the weather gets too heavy, we hop a freight and roll

We’ve met a lot of great men who weren’t so great
We’ve met modern day saviors who couldn’t even stop the rain
We’ve heard the word of God from a surface-to-air missle
And felt the hand of Allah from a hijacked plane

We’ve seen the fire in the sky in the morning light
We’ve seen the buildings tumble into the maw of the city
And when the dust cleared and there was nothing left
We saw the sun setting down on the horizon so pretty

********

Me and my doppelgänger, we think alike, you know
Wherever I wander, that’s where he goes
We don’t take no crap, we don’t pay no mind
We just thank sweet Jesus for the sweet sunshine.

_____________________________________________


I saw myself walking alongside myself, I believe in June or July of 1984.

I was staying at a weekend farm my family has in SE Texas, located in the Big Thicket, a relative sliver of indigenous hardwood forest land, the remains of a vast aboreal forest that once stretched from Texas to the Atlantic Coast of the US. There were three other people staying with me at the farm that weekend.

The farmhouse sat in a large cleared area, amidst 40 acres of land in all. The rest of the acreage was heavily wooded, and the back property line bordered on millions of acres of replanted pine forest owned by one of the large paper/lumber corporations; but the property was not really isolated or secluded. A farm-to-market road ran in front of it, about 1/4 mile from the house. Three miles down the farm road was a four lane state highway.

Around 10:00 or so that evening, I announced that I was going to walk down to close the front gate to the property, along that farm road. This was something that was normally done in the evenings, and no one paid me any mind. I walked out the back door of the house, then down along a driveway to the open pasture, toward the gate. I was following the outline of the dirt driveway across the open land in front of the house. I had a flashlight but was not using it. The farm was far enough away from "civilization" that there was very little if any ambient light, and I was trying to see how far I could get in the dark without using artificial light. On this night there was a half moon, and once my eyes adjusted I could see fairly well.

About two-thirds of the way from the house to the front gate, the cleared area ended, and the rest of the way down the driveway was through thick woods on both sides and a heavy canopy overhead. It was sort of a tunnel effect, and I knew it would be too dark for me to see anything once I got in there. So I was reaching to my back pocket for my flashlight, when I had the distinct sensation someone or something was walking nearby. I immediately thought of a wolf, or a bobcat or a feral hog, all of which I had seen running around those woods at one time another, and none of which I particularly wanted to encounter in the dark. I stopped suddenly to see if I could hear a footfall. I could not. I was still about forty feet from the woods, out in the open, so I looked around in the moonlight, but could not see an outline of anything. I started walking again, and immediately had the same sensation of not being alone. This time, I kept walking but glanced to my right, and that is when I saw myself.

It was an exact copy of me, clothes, hair, gait, everything. I stopped, and so did it. I did not feel fear, but did not turn to face the apparition full on, either, for fear of somehow losing it if I did. We stood and looked at each other (an awkward way of putting it) for several seconds, though it seemed longer. My spirit wraith never spoke (and neither did I), but somehow I got the sense it was trying to tell me, "Do not worry too much. Everything will be fine." Then I felt the strong compulsion to start walking again. I was right up to the edge of the woods by then, so I looked over to my right once again. And it was gone.

I should say at the time I had just been through the breakup of a long-term relationship and some setbacks otherwise, and was fairly depressed and had been drinking a lot recently, including that night. I am certain whatever I saw was not a drug- or alcohol-induced appariton, however. Either my desperate need at the time for some positive reassurance caused me to imagine this second me, or it was some other external stimulus that caused me to see myself, walking with myself, that night. I can say that at the time all my instincts were that what I saw was entirely outside myself, but somehow connected to me. And unlike many doppelgänger stories I've read, I sensed no malevolence at all. I felt quite calm and somehow reassured, not only at what I think my twin was trying to convey to me, but also at the thought that there was another me out there, with another agenda entirely, but also concerned for my well-being. Something like that.

I have had my share of bad times since, along with the good. I had other periods of excessive alcohol consumption, as well. However, this is the only experience I have ever had involving anything that could even remotely be considered paranormal.

In addition, I have never discussed this incident seriously with anyone.

I don't believe in ghosts, or aliens, or any of the other standard paranormal things one thinks of. But to this day I am sure I saw something that night.

Phish Tales

Water In The Sky

(lyrics by Anastasio/Marshall)

Listen as she speaks to you
Hear the voices flutter through
The barriers arranged by you

Close the shutters draw the shades
Filter out the everglades
Glistening with evening dew

Thunder calls through waterfalls
Rising tides and ocean walls
I can hear you when you sigh

Listen as she speaks to you
Hear the voices flutter through
Watch them fall and let them lie

I can hear you when you sigh
Through the water in the sky

**********

Water In The Sky is one of my favorite song lyrics. The odd thing is, I don't like the song all that much. In fact, I am really not even much of a Phish fan; which, as best I can tell, for the serious aficianado, is something akin to a being a modern-day version of a dedicated follower of the Grateful Dead. . . Deadhead Lite, let's say.

At any rate, I can take or leave the band (save for this killer video of Trey Anastasio playing a twenty-minute version of Down By The River with Neil Young at one of the Farm Aid concerts), and am no fan of the song, but the lyric is beautiful and something I kind of wish I'd thought of myself.

You can hear me when I sigh.

Looking In

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

With the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries out of the way, it is high time for a quick and facile look into the 2008 presidential race so far.

Hillary Clinton saved her ass in NH, or rather older female voters did. According to polls, that group carried her to victory. Ms. Clinton was on the run after losing in Iowa, and really, really needed to win New Hampshire to get her groove back. Which she has done. In interviews she is confident again, even cocky. That is her at her most natural. The sort of humble persona she adopted after Iowa did not fit her well. The times I like Hillary best is when she is supremely confident. Glowing even.

One of the oddities of the primary season is that a guy like Barack Obama can be riding so high after Iowa, then get edged out in New Hampshire - not exactly a surprise - and so be put in a position where he almost has to win in the upcoming South Carolina primary, just to maintain a creditable candidacy. Weird. If you want to know the truth, I don't think Obama has the legs to make it all the way through the long, withering process leading up to the conventions this summer. One of the reasons I think Clinton has remained so confident is that she knows there doesn't appear to be a lot of substance behind the very pleasing up-front image Obama projects, and that the lengthy primary process will, in time, expose this. She (and I) may be dead wrong, but I would be very surprised to find it out.

John Edwards is a nice guy, has a nice family, has a few nice ideas, some very nice hair. . . but he creates zero excitement that I can see. Substance is very important, of course, but if you do not excite people to any degree, especially after eight wearying and acrimonious years of an us vs. them Bush administration, you are - in technical terms - royally fucked. Edwards has to win in his neighboring state of South Carolina, just to stay alive.

**********

John McCain winning New Hampshire on the Republican side is sort of like when some old '80s hair band reunites and has a big hit. You are thinking, well, it is nice to see they still have it in them, but. . . Who the hell is going to take this nomination, though? Mitt Romney seems to be faltering. I don't have any feel for Mike Huckaby, I need to pay more attention. Rudy Giuliani has something of the same problem Barack Obama does on the Democratic side - his "Remember 9-11" message was stirring at first, but it gets old after awhile, and then one begins to realize he has no real plan for what to do if, by some miracle, he gets elected. And, unlike Obama, Rudy appears soulless otherwise. I don't expect him to be around much longer.

The dark horse out there is Michael Bloomberg, Giuliani's successor as mayor of New York City. Bloomberg is rumored to be exploring a late run, either as a Republican or, more likely, an independent. He has no national recognition at this point, but shitloads of money. And money talks, of course. A run by Bloomberg might actually help Giuliani, in that it would throw things on the Republican side into even further disarray, which is the only scenario under which I can imagine Rudy reviving his moribund candidacy and making a real run at the nomination.

**********

How will all this turn out? Fuck if I know. You will just have to stay tuned.

On Freedom, And Flight

Some Notes From My Time in the Water Land

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,

How good, how good does it feel to be free?

And I answer them most mysteriously,

Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?

--Bob Dylan, Ballad in Plain D

**********

I hunt. Or rather, I used to hunt. Ducks, to be specific. Though, in this case, "hunt" is a rather misleading term, in the strictest sense. What I really did was hide myself in a bunch of tall reeds, or in a heavily camalflouged blind, in an area where I thought the ducks might be hanging out anyway, and then I waited for some to fly by. The upper Texas Gulf Coast used to be on a branch of the main southern flyway for ducks traveling from Canada to Mexico and beyond for the winter. We'd see all kinds of waterfowl flying through here in the fall - from mallards to spoonbills, gadwalls to widgeons, "black" mallards to all manner of teal to even canvasbacks, and more. Geese, too; mostly Canadas and snows and especially speckle-bellies. We almost always "limited out", and usually quickly, so I rarely remember staying out in the marsh past about 10:00 a.m. or so most hunts.

I eventually grew out of duck hunting. Which is to say, as I got into my later teens, my increasingly demanding social life dimmed my desire to arise at 3:00 a.m. on a weekend morning and go sit out in a windy, freezing marsh, waiting for some birds to start flying around. Also, the flyway moved east, for various reasons I am not really qualified to describe in any detail. But this meant less ducks in this area, overall. The hunting experience is diminished somehow when one goes hours without seeing what one is out hunting to begin with. Not that I was ever only out there for the shooting, mind you, but that is another story.

**********

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free.

-- Leonard Cohen, Bird on a Wire

**********

I don't think the virulent anti-hunting crowd quite gets it. They label hunting as inhumane, forgetting that humans, too, have their place in the food chain; and that for 99% of our species' existence, they way we ate dinner was to go out and kill it first. Hunting is part of our makeup (as is violence, by the way), even if what we mostly are out hunting now is a good deal on brisket at H.E.B. But if everything blew up tomorrow, while the anti-hunters dithered around wondering what to do without a supermarket, there would be hundreds of thousands of people who would know exactly what to do - they'd pick up the shotgun and go out looking for something edible to kill and bring home for dinner.

I am not one to argue the hunter's cause, though. I'm a non-hunter nowadays, as I said, and in truth I have little sympathy for the real idiots out there, who shoot and kill for no other reason than the thrill of it. The thrill killers. These are the guys who mostly make it onto TV and radio with their "outdoor" shows. They are the worst representatives for hunting one could imagine, and it is no wonder they drive anti-hunters to distraction.

One thing you will almost always hear from hunting apologists, aside from bullshit like they are necessary to "thin the herd", or they somehow benefit wildlife by pursuing and killing it, is that a large part of the experience is the joy of just being out in nature, truly in nature. And that without hunting, most people would not have this experience at all. That drives anti-hunters nuts, too; but it is absolutely true. I know this from my own experiences.

Killing the ducks was all right, but what I really remember vividly from my hunting days, over twenty years ago by now, is not some great shot I made, but rather a dozen little vignettes of being out in the marsh when nothing was flying, and really experiencing nature like I never could anywhere else. Shooting time was thirty minutes before sunrise, and in order to be ready, we would often be out in our blinds, ready to go, long before that. Some of my fondest memories of duck hunting were those times when I found myself all situated and ready for shooting time, with thirty minutes or an hour to kill before getting down to business. I would settle down into my blind, pull the Thermos out of the game bag in my jacket and pour myself a cup of warm black coffee, maybe fire up a cigarette, and then just pay attention.

The marsh may not look like much from a distance, but there are a million little things going on there at all times. In the minutes before sunrise, when the first light of dawn strikes, things begin in earnest. The place suddenly comes alive, birds and bugs and fish (and nutria rats, and alligators) all in the commotion of living. It is literally thrilling to experience all that. It was in my duck blind that I first realized one early morning that there is a species of spider that can literally walk on water. I don't know what they are called, but they are small and apparently really light. They skitter across the surface of the water without ever breaking it. That is pretty amazing itself, but what really got me, when I looked closely, is that each step by each leg created a small indentation on the water's surface. Each step would almost break the surface, but not quite. These guys were designed to be just the right size and weight to almost fall through, but ultimately not to. Whatever your belief system is, you can go ahead and praise the overseer for the genius of this design. I just so happen to be Christian, and so I would thank God just for being alive and having the opportunity to be out in that marsh on that morning, at the start of another glorious day. And also for the cool little spiders, walking around on top of the water, just like they say Jesus did.

**********

Sometimes, after I was done communing with nature, I still had some time left to reflect a little on my own existence within it. This was a pretty natural thing to do in the peace and quiet just before everyone started blasting away with 12-gauges. I was young then, a schoolboy really, and I usually had some burgeoning romance to deal with. So I would sit out in the marsh and think about that, sometimes.

There was this one girl, Diane. At the time I was crazy about her, totally infatuated. I would think about her, and what she was doing at the moment (sleeping, probably), and what she would do when she got up, and if she would wonder what I was doing, out in the marsh. Just goofy shit like that, and it seemed to make the time pass very quickly.

The time still passes very quickly, I am sorry to say. But to this day, when I see a marsh, I think about little spiders. And about romance. That is mildy crazy, I know, but for me there is no way around it. One of my enduring mental pictures of myself is of me 20 years old or so, in my hunting gear in the blind, long hair pushed under a canvas Duxback hat, smoking a cigarette in the near light. Cradling my 16-gauge and armed to the teeth, waiting. And meantime watching little spiders run around on top of the pond, while thinking about my baby.

**********

If you arrive and don't see me
I'm going to be with my baby
I am free
Flying in her arms, over the sea

-- Shuggie Otis, Strawberry Letter 23

**********

Earth Blues

Erda

Suspended globule
Sparkle and blue,
An ageless lady
Of delicate hue.

Timeless, and beauty
Created for sight,
Always to brighten
The forever night.

**********

It is freaking cold around these parts right now. Cold weather always causes me to become slightly pensive and distracted. Warm weather does this, too.

Low Sparks

A Gun That Didn't Make Any Noise

From time to time over the years I have had the experience of hearing a song I have listened to maybe hundreds of times before and maybe have even loved, except this time, for no particular reason, I suddenly really "hear" the song for the very first time. The long obscure-to-me lyrics make perfect sense, I can hear each crisp note in the song, the sum of them going together in perfect order. I don't even know what to call this. Sudden hearing? Reverse deja vu? Probably some phrase of Greek origin (the Greeks had a word for everything, after all.)

Recently I was driving home at 3:30 a.m. (don't ask), and the song "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" by Traffic came on, the long, 11-minute LP version. I have known and favored this song for close to 40 years. I even used it in the soundtrack of a movie once. But on this night, for some reason - pensiveness at a late hour? The fact I was practically the only car on the highway? I was really tired? - I really "heard" this song for the first time. I got so far into it, it was a little weird. The lyrics, which I'd long ago memorized, suddenly sounded brand new. Steve Winwood's thin, high-pitched delivery of them was just right. The words, long considered basically meaningless by me, suddenly seemed profoundly, well, profound. They made perfect sense. And the saxaphone that pops up throughout the song was very haunting.

The last of "Low Spark" played out just as I was pulling into my driveway. Perfect. I don't know what to call this phenomenon, this sudden hearing, or what causes it. I am just very grateful it happens to me every once in awhile.

I am assuming this is a fairly common experience for any serious music lover. If it is not, and rather is just another odd personality quirk of mine I have just inadvertently revealed. . . well, forget everything I just said, utterly.

Later.

*********

It wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest,

Was the low spark of high-heeled boys

Heeled boys. . .

Here We Go Now

2008, Just Great So Far

• I have averred in the past there should be a law prohibiting any car dealership owner from producing and/or participating in his own television commercials. My thinking was this would absolutely protect the interests of society as a whole, as the best laws do. In retrospect, that may have been a little harsh on my part. Of course, all locally produced dealership commercials are goofy to one degree or another, and the vast majority of them are downright annoying. But there is one currently running locally that I actually look forward to. In this one, instead of some moron jumping up and down and screaming about saving you money, the tone is low-key and the commercial is set up as a series of testimonials from supposed actual customers. There is a young woman who says her car is so "accomodating", her friends can even sit in it and stuff. Also a guy who says he wouldn't buy his parts anywhere else (????). But my favorite is a grandmotherly-looking woman who looks sternly into the camera and says, "The service at (so-and-so) Honda is better than you can get anywhere else in these United States." These United States? I love that line to a ridiculous degree, and look for opportunities to work it into everyday conversation as often as possible.

• I fear the days of the great (or greatly quirky/weird) infomercials are over. These "sponsored programs", which dominate really late night TV, have grown increasingly homogenized and indistinct over the years. More and more we are seeing them hosted by entertainers whose careers have apparently gone into steep decline, and less and less by entertaining oddballs and weirdos and nobodies. By the way, if I ever just decide I don't care what happens to me anymore, one of the first things I am going to do is get an assault rifle and go after whoever is responsible for the Extenze commercials, the ones touting a product that is supposed to magically grow "that certain male body part" to humongous size, causing everyone involved to become ridiculously happy with the results. Anyway, there is one extended commercial running now I actually kind of enjoy, something about a super chamois cloth which should replace paper towel usage ("which you are going to spend $20-$30 a month on, anyway," the host says. . . Huh? Who the fuck spends $30 a month on paper towels?). The super chamois absorbs 100 times its weight in liquid, something like that, plus you can wash it in the washing machine! The host of this commercial is engagingly odd, and anway I don't know how I have gone this long without owning a really big chamois cloth. Super chamois it is, then; if I order right now, they'll throw a second super chamois in at no additional cost.

• There are too many post-season college football bowl games anymore, and they are too hard to keep up with. Now we not only have the Mieneke something bowl and the O'Rielly Auto Parts bowl, but a whole group of these second-rate games are now lumped together now under the banner of the Capital One Bowl Series. Leaving out the fact that I fucking hate Capital One - they recently bought out the bank I had my accounts with, and customer service went from decent to exceptionally poor literally overnight - do we really need another tier of advertising for these mostly meaningless games? Add to that the big traditional bowl games aren't even played on New Years Day anymore, and you know what? I don't care, I have lost interest. I'm tuning in to the Law And Order: Criminal Intent marathon instead.