Was standing at my job the other day in front of my water jet cutter staring into a dark murky swirling pool of toxic water as it slowly cut a pattern into a large sheet of aluminum and experienced a series of out-of-left-field brain spasms. One of those out of sync thoughts that has absolutely nothing to do with what you are supposed to be thinking about; some people call them “brain farts” although even typing that phrase makes me want to get up and open the doors and windows.

But as much as I dislike the term “brain fart” I am forced to admit somehow to the accuracy of it; sometimes little bits of memory from my past make their way to the surface of my train of thought. Maybe it’s the melody of some old song that works its way up from my subconscious. Or I’ll start thinking about some old sitcom I have in the back room on an old VHS; whatever happened to the guy who starred in that?
Sometimes a scene from a movie I watched twenty years ago replays in my head as if someone had installed a DVD player in there and hit “select a scene”.

But sometimes I look at them and it makes being stuck inside on a nice day even tougher than it already is.

And it’s about moments like that something seems to short-circuit in my mind; weird bits of memory begin bobbing to the surface like wreckage from some disaster at sea. Like take the other day for example; this melody from an old song gets stuck in my head and loops for the rest of the day. What triggers these things? Boredom digging through the album collection like an unwanted guest? (“Are these all the records you’ve got?”) For example I got this melody stuck in my head recently :

After work I had to rush home and look this guy up on www.imdb.com ; whatever happened to that guy? I hadn’t seen his name anywhere in years. Turns out he has been married to the same woman since 1982 (how many people in the entertainment business can say that?) and owns a cattle ranch down in the Hill country of right here in my home state of Texas. Strange the circles these trains of thought weave themselves into. Is Brian Ben-ben sending me some sort of psychic message? Well if he is I wish he would stop it; can’t he see I’m trying to work here ?

Well yeah actually they did play Dallas within the last year; but that was on a Wednesday night. I had to work the next day, no getting around it. But this time was on a Friday night and when my friend Tom calls and says Let’s Go I am game. They put on simply the Greatest Show On Earth. Movies, strobes, and smoke machines; it’s never boring to say the least. We ride on that gleaming blur of lights and concrete known as I-30 and cruise east towards Dallas, detouring to pick up his brother James, who is married and has kids now. Oh boy a for-real guys night out. About a half hour later we are pulling into the parking lot of the Granada Theater in Dallas.
There is a small crowd hanging around out on the sidewalk in front of the box office. We see several people we know and stop and talk before going in. Many people are already wearing their Halloween costumes. What better time to see a show than on Halloween? I remember seeing King Crimson on Halloween back in 1995 and the image of the guy in front of me wearing the cow costume silhouetted against the band is forever imprinted in my brain.

The Granada is a very old movie theater; Tom and I used to drive to it in the late 70’s/early 80’s and watch double bills like ERASERHEAD and FREAKS. A few years ago they ripped out the seats and turned it into a live venue. I hadn’t bothered to check it out yet but then again since I find the majority of rock acts these days to be slightly redundant and tiresome. But when the Butthole Surfers are touring I will get off the couch.

Thirty bucks at the door got us in. We missed the first act but the second opener Peaches was interesting. Think of a punk Madonna ( who actually plays a number of instruments) with a frequent number of onstage costume changes and with a big emphasis on Gary Numan-ish electronic noise and you pretty much get the drift.

The highlight of the set was probably when two audience members in Halloween costumes (Elvis and Santa!) climbed up onstage and danced as the audience cheered. The Granada has installed additional screens to both sides of the stage and it looks like digital projection equipment now sits side by side with the audio soundboard so this is perfect for the Butthole Surfers multi-media assault on its audience sensibilities. I first saw them in 1986 and back then they had movie projectors (the old-fashioned kind with film reels) set up to show movies behind them. Now they had three screens behind them and one on each side of the stage, all with digital projected imagery being broadcast at once while they played. To the uninitiated the Surfers might sound like just random noise, but what amazes me is how well they reproduce that noise every time I see them. I get the same feeling listening to them I got the first time I ever saw a MAD comic book. Not the black and white magazine we know today but the color ones with that insane Bill Elder artwork. I get the same feeling listening to the Butthole Surfers I got the first time I ever read a National Lampoon or ZAP Comics. The feeling that it’s okay to draw/write/ paint/or play a musical instrument any way you wanted. Coloring outside of the lines if you will; that to me is a wonderful level of artistic freedom. When I listen to tunes like “100 Million Dead” or “Jimi” I smile.
Can’t really offer a you a detailed review of the show because I didn’t really take notes but I did take about a hundred photos. And good thing I took them when I did because during their final chaotic number, they turned on the fog machines and despite the two industrial-sized fans I saw mounted on the rear of the balcony reduced visibility in the theater to near-zero.
Security was almost not needed at this show; the Surfers audience is aging and it showed more than a little Friday night. In fact Gibby Haynes even said something to the crowd between songs about “look at how many people here are wearing glasses” (which included Yours Truly and three fourths of the Surfers) I saw no one moshing (thank Gawd) no fights and no one really visibly drinking to excess. Compared to some of their shows I have attended in the past, the contrast was as startling to me as the loops of exploding heads shown behind them as they played would have been to Tipper Gore.
Toms brother James ( who is a few years younger that us) was laughing at Tom and I while we were walking back to the car because we were both moaning and groaning like two old men after having to stand up for four or five hours (“Oy…for a couple of Naproxens!”)
“Is this what I have to look forward to when I turn fifty?” he wanted to know.
“Yeah and it’ll happen faster than you think  too.” I think to myself. The next day I awake with a slight headache and ringing ears; how’d that happen? I am talking to “K” on the phone long-distance when I hear the mailman at the door. Mentally chambering a round, I head for the door thinking: “this better not be another goddam bill” when I find a box on the porch wrapped in red and white tape. Someone has sent me a CARE package from Canada. Oh…boy!!!
After carefully opening it with a box cutter the first layer reveals two bags of Old Dutch dill-pickle flavored potato chips: manna from the Gods? No just obviously from their placement the first thing “K” wanted me to see when I opened it. I became totally addicted to these during my ten-day visit to Canada. While walking through the Vancouver airport on my way out, I walked past kiosk after kiosk that visibly had Old Dutch chips on their shelves but not a single one of them had the dill flavored ones. I didn’t fret about it too much at the time because I was already lugging a Canadian coffee cup, a beautiful but delicate-as-dinnerware oyster shell and an even more delicate sand dollar “K” found while we were sharing coffee on the beach at Tofino one heavenly morning. So sacrificing potato chips was a deliberate choice; I figured carrying three delicate objects 4000 miles was challenging enough.
Another souvenir I brought back from Tofino was a handful of Tazo tea bags I snagged from a shelf in the lobby of the hotel, specifically “Wild Sweet Orange” flavor. Hey two hundred bucks a night of my hard-earned cash for a room; I figured a few cups of tea would be an okay souvenir.
It wasn’t until I got back to the US that I bothered boiling some water and trying some. After taking the first sip I think I felt my pupils dilate; this stuff is like liquid candy. The pleasure sensors in my brain went into overdrive: “I want more of this stuff…” Now I was wishing I had snagged all the bags on the shelf back in Tofino instead of the half dozen or so I did take.

A quick inspection of the tea bag wrapper reveals (surprise!) “Made In Canada” Upon visiting their website ( which resembles a video poker game) it lists two local grocery stores that allegedly carry their teas. After driving to both of them I discover neither of them have the Wild Sweet Orange, only teas with weird names like “Tranquility” and “Bliss” etc. Dammit!
Bigelow makes an orange-flavored tea that tastes okay but the only way they could make this box any gay-er would be to have two Raggedy Andys smooching on the front of it:
“K” has thoughfully included a few precious packages of Tazo Wild Sweet Orange tea as well as three other flavors so I can quit trying to squeeze any more flavor out of the Tofino bags (“Come on, baby!”) She has also tossed in an assortment of three of my favorite Canadian candy bars: Coffee Crisps and my two favorite varities of Aero bars: peppermint and “milk lait” and two packages of chewing gum that have Maple leaves printed on them. Besides two packages of dill chips, she has included one of the ketchup flavored variety. These are really tasty with cheeseburgers. Since they don’t last forever I can’t really horde them; must eat them soon. I will make chicken salad sandwiches to eat with the dill chips; Sunday I will get a burger for lunch to eat with the ketchup chips. I love my CARE packages; will have to assemble one to return her way. A certain someone I know in Canada who used to live here in the States has told me she misses little things. Things like Almond Joys she can’t find in Canada…So okay so it’s Sunday and Halloween is over. Happy Halloween to you anyway !
This has been a memorable Halloweekend for me…

Musical genius Vic Mizzy passed away in his Bel Air home Saturday. A composer for many years he wrote songs recorded by Louis Prima, Perry Como, Billie Holiday and Dean Martin.

But it is probably his sixty second theme song for The Addams Family TV show that he is most famous and reportedly he was comfortable with it. In terms of familiarity his theme song for Green Acres is probably a close second. I loved Don Knotts’ movies when I was a child and Vic Mizzys soundtracks for those films is one of the things I remember best about them. He played many instruments although he wrote the majority of his compositions on a harpsichord and to this day The Addams Family is one of the very few if not the only TV show theme song to feature a harpsichord.

He also loved playing the organ and this is never more apparent than the unforgettable pipe organ soundtrack he composed for The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. He was also using heavily distorted guitar years before it was “cool” in his soundtracks. So I am dressed in black and my hat is off.

Goodbye Vic; you were a one-of-a-kind and you will be missed.

Saturday morning I couldn’t sleep. Laid in bed and tossed and turned all morning long.
My lawn which besides being covered in wet leaves (damn seasonal changes; can’t something be done about that?) hadn’t been mowed in over two weeks because of the near-constant rain. I was starting to go absolutely Hank Hill. My hands were trembling; I was ready to mow that lawn before it started raining again.

Really should have waited until Sunday to do this; the grass was still damp. Had to mow it in half-strips and even then had to stop periodically and scrape the wet grass out from underneath the mower. It was like trying to mow wet spinach. It usually only takes about twenty minutes to do this; I spent at least an hour out there. I knew damn well as I put the mower and the edger up that the fall leaves would cover everything soon and the yard would look awful again unless I raked up the leaves every day but hey head number two of The Beast was off.

Saturday night the temperature drops to the 40’s as it turns into Sunday morning. I sleep late and awake wrapped up like a mummy in my freshly-washed sheets and blankets. Start to write but sit staring at a blank document page instead. Writing for me personally isn’t exactly an automatic process. Sometimes the words just don’t flow; this Sunday appears to be one of them.
This Mexican stand-off is interrupted by “K” showing up in a chat window.
As we chat outside I watch it change from the half-light of sunrise to full-blown bright white beams of sunlight shining into my kitchen from outside. Our chat runs into several hours (as they tend to do on weekends) before she tells me she needs to go to the store. I tell her I am going to clean my apartment. We say goodbye and I sign out and shut off the PC.

Go as far as to get out the Swiffer and all of the other necessary implements and then make the mistake of looking outside. It has been raining almost constantly for the last two weeks. Fall is here and the temperatures have been slowly dropping. Open the door and step out; the thermometer in my carport says 70. The last two weekends it was raining; today the sun is out. It’s warm enough to wear shorts.
Step back inside, walk back to my bedroom and dig out a pair of shorts. Screw cleaning the house; I’m going for a walk.

Toss the jeans in my “wash” basket and slip into my black shorts. Grab the keys and I’m off. The sun already feels good on my legs as I slip the key into the dead-bolt.
Walking gives such a new perspective on my neighborhood; ordinarily I am zooming through it at 30mph. Walking forces me to actually look at my surroundings. Hey look is that a 1962 Dodge in that old mans garage? I get around the corner and find my first flattened 32 oz aluminum beer can in the street. Fish a plastic bag from my pocket and bag it. Hey 40 cents a pound…

Besides aluminum cans I find a large amount of nails and large screws when I am walking around my neighborhood. And even though I can’t sell them, I pick up each and every one; I drive these streets too. The city should give me some kind of award; I have over the years picked up a truly disturbing amount of these things from our streets. Who’s dropping these things all over the place?

Since today is Sunday, many nearby businesses are closed. This allows me to root through their dumpsters for the Diet Coke and Monster energy drink cans I will inevitably find. And since Texas finally passed an open container law, the streets are usually littered with beer cans especially later in the afternoon. The best places besides dumpsters are the areas around stop sign and traffic signals, bus stops and parking lots. The convenience store by my house is usually a goldmine in between their dumpster, their parking lot and the alley behind them where the homeless sit and drink.

In less than an hour I fill up three plastic shopping bags with flattened cans; not bad if I do say so myself. Come home and add them to the latest 55 gallon bag; the damn thing is almost as tall as me and getting full. I will wait until I have three or four of them to bother hauling them in. The weekend before I left for Canada I sold 46 pounds of aluminum in three large bags that filled the back of my truck for a mere 18 dollars. The price tends to go up in the winter months; it will be wise to sit on them until then.

My cats are waiting at the door for me as usual wanting food; give me a minute, will you? The sun is going down and I am tired from my extensive little hike. Don’t think I’ll be cleaning the house today.
I shove a frozen pizza from the dollar store in the oven and reach for a can of cat food for the hungry horde outside. Looks like an evening of falling asleep in front of the TV for me.

MONDAY…Go to my menial job, clock in and go through the motions. Kill ten hours, then stop and get orange chicken to go at my current favorite Asian place on the way home. Unlock the door and the cleaning implements I laid out the day before are all staring at me. Oh shit; I haven’t cleaned this place in at least two weeks. I DID drag out the cleaning stuff for a reason.
The food goes in the fridge and I go to work. Without missing a beat I begin to clean the bathroom, dust, vacuum and mop the floors. Two hours later my humble little bachelor pad is spotless and ready for a white-glove inspection.

Heat up my dinner in the microwave and sit down and look around my place. The three-headed dragon has been conquered. Everything has been washed, my badly-needed lawn has been mowed and I took an extra 24 hours to do it but my house has been cleaned as well.
Have some chicken and rice, boy; you’ve earned it.

DEATH TO THE BEAST !

I only found out about this because someone e-mailed me and told me about it ( Thanks Carolyn!)
Neither the local newspaper or our local free weekly had any mention of it, or if they did it slipped by yours truly. Now I’m on their mailing list.
And while the Fair here is pretty low-key they do a big one right around Halloween in Austin every year, and I know this because I’ve driven by it. It’s outdoors under tents right in front of the Capitol building and takes up several blocks; it’s consequently one of the best places in Texas ordinary Joes like myself can meet famous authors and celebrities plugging their latest puff piece autobiographies. Anyone and everyone who is plugging a book in any given year has a table at the Austin show.

It’s easy enough to look up some book you’ve been looking for for years on Amazon or whatever, but I love the intoxicating smell of ink and paper when I walk into a good bookstore. It makes me high in a good way. It’s a definite rush when I find some long out-of-print rarity at a garage sale for a hand-full of chump-change.
My eyes roll up in my head when I find a stack of old National Lampoons or Sex To Sexties at a flea market for a dollar each and the guy on the other side of the table is more than happy just to get rid of them. (“You WANT those?”)

Now walking into the exhibition hall at Will Rogers last night I knew better than to expect to find any real bargains. The people on the other side of these tables had a much better handle on what their books were worth than the flea market vendors. And since this was a weekend event none of these vendors were going to give themselves hernias moving mass quantities of heavy used books; most of them seemed more interested in handing out cards and fliers for their stores and websites.

The majority of the books I looked at were new, and the big emphasis seemed to be on all things Texas.
Books about Texas, books by Texas authors, books published in Texas; you get the drift.
Got to see a lot of autographed books; held a copy of Side Effects signed by Woody Allen. Saw a signed copy of Gone With the Wind, a signed Hemingway, a signed Faulkner, a signed Steinbeck, etc.
One vendor had a shelf several feet long and taller than myself of nothing but signed Steven King and Dean Koontz books; jeez, I knew those guys wrote a lot of books but….

I only bought one book: “Eddie Barkers Notebook” ( he was the first news reporter in Dallas to confirm the death of JFK, something that was more often than not credited to Dan Rather) which you can get yourself from 
www.johnmhardy.com and I have only started reading it this morning but it’s pretty riveting so far. He goes right into the JFK assassination as any book with Lee Harvey and Jack Ruby’s mug shots on the cover should.

It’s tough being a writer. You nag your friends and relatives to read your work and they act like you just asked them for their wallets. And speaking of which; just try selling your work. Today’s youth have no interest in reading; you’re competing with TV, the Internet and video games. You want to sell them a book, you had better be telling one HELL of a story ( or be able to sell it as a movie) It’s enough to make you wonder why anyone bothers at all.

But somehow bookstores manage to survive. There is a local chain here called Half Price Books that has managed to put the majority of the independent used book stores out of business by proxy of having a rather large number of locations throughout the state.
And despite having almost zero advertising, the fair seemed to have a decent crowd last night.

Maybe there’s a little hope for this Idiocracy yet….

In the movie PULP FICTION John Travolta tells Samuel Jackson how “the funny thing about Europe is all the little differences; I mean they got all the same shit they got here it’s just there it’s a little different.”

He tells him ( among many other things, but I’m paraphrasing here for brevity) about how they put mayonnaise on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup. Well I just came from a place where they put brown gravy on french fries and call them “poutaines” and that place was Canada.

On August 21st I got on a shuttle for the airport at 3am.and departed on a ten-day,4000-mile sojourn utilizing five hours of flying time, 45 minutes on a bus, two hours on a ferry and after one long, long day I finally arrived at Vancouver Island. On the other end of this journey was a woman I had been flirting with online for over a year. A ten-day blind date across an international border? Had I lost my mind? What was I thinking? Well I’m more than happy to tell you I was simply a bored, lonely man who hadn’t taken a real vacation in almost five years. And that it was the best vacation I’ve ever had.
For ten days my life took a total 360-degree spin. I saw things I’ve never seen and did things I’ve never done. And I also re-learned how to do two things I had forgotten how to do: smile and relax. For ten days I quit hating life.

Over the course of recent years Canada has taken a really bad rap here in the United States. There are a lot of untrue stereotypes portrayed and a lot of misinformation being spread about here by the mainstream media, even on some of my favorite shows that goes beyond “joshing” or “a gentle ribbing” that I find quite over-the-line having actually visited there and taken a good look around with my own four eyes. SOUTH PARK, KING OF THE HILL and even THE SIMPSONS have stood in line and taken some pretty cheap shots at Canada, most of it portraying Canadians as dull, boring non-people. Now anyone who knows anything about propaganda knows, de-humanizing the “enemy” is a fundamental first step to whatever angle you are pushing. So why all the animosity against Canada?

After looking around there for ten days, I’m ready to sell everything and move. Canada is beautiful.

Remember the postcard-colored scenery in that old Desi Arnaz/Lucille Ball movie THE LONG LONG TRAILER? That is what Canada still looks like: America 50 or 60 years ago before they bulldozed and paved over everything.

Oh and for ten days I walked around totally unarmed. Carrying knives through security at the airport isn’t the greatest idea these days so I was forced to leave the pocket-knife I always have on my hip here behind when I packed. And not once did I ever felt like I needed it with me except for maybe cleaning my nails. I’m sure there are some major assholes in Canada somewhere but I only ran into two of them in ten days. Once we got into a misunderstanding about a parking place and another evening some guy mouthed something at me for using the entrance driveway he was using as an exit at a Tim Hortons. Those two non-incidents aside I found the people of Canada to be warm and friendly for the most part. I’m still scratching my head over the US medias animosity towards our Northern neighbor.

Maybe the legendary “BC bud” came into the equation to an extent ( saw one red-eyed girl who looked as if she was having just a little too much fun with some children’s toy at a drugstore in Tofino) but the people there do smile a lot. Didn’t get suspicious “what’s your angle?” stares from anyone.
Mention of my hick Texas accent only came up twice in conversations. From the employees at the airport to the bus drivers to the ferry employees, if I had a question they were more than delighted to answer it or otherwise help me out. No question was too stupid, or if it was they didn’t point it out, and they seemed to genuinely care about whether or not I comprehended their answers.

Some of the accents made this a legit concern; I ate at one restaurant where the waitresses French accent was so thick I don’t think either she or I could really understand each other. Our brief interchanges stopped just short of charades. Also I never seemed to learn to quit asking for iced tea even when I never got it. Instead I would get room-temperature tea in a glass; the concept of ice cubes seems to have escaped Canadians.

It also bears mentioning I felt truly relaxed while I was there; there is an underlying tension in the States I didn’t feel in the air there. Could it be the Canadian really know how to relax, something I really feel gets little more than lip service in the States? Maybe it’s because they are better educated and live longer than we do? Or perhaps it’s because their minimum wage is ten dollars an hour?
Maybe it’s because they don’t live the same rat-race existence there we in the US are so proud of; that of borrowing money for college, then working to pay that off and then retiring and giving what’s left of your savings to the doctor when you get old? I don’t really know but I didn’t feel really worried about anything while I was there; their carefree attitude began to rub off on me.

Did a lot of things I’ve never done here while I was there. Played 5-pin bowling where you try to knock down (ta-da!) five pins instead of ten and with three balls per frame (not as easy as it sounds).

Got a first-hand look at their horrible “Socialist” healthcare system while I was there. My friends son had a “cat-scan” scheduled at a hospital. All he had to do was produce a “Care Card” then walk down a hall and they took him in right away. The cost? Nothing. We were in there maybe ten minutes; took us longer to find a place to park.

DON’T BELIEVE THE LIES BEING SPREAD BY THE INSURANCE COMPANIES AND THE MEDICAL INDUSTRY ABOUT UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE; THEY DON’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOU. Sorry, just thought that needed to be said.

But I’ve careened way off-subject. Or have I? As I said earlier, I didn’t feel the need to be armed while I was there. And my visit to Canada reaffirmed my awareness of that tension I spoke of earlier that I feel in the air here in the States. There is an underlying general anger I feel here. I’ve always known it was there but my visit to Canada made it so much more obvious when I got back.
The one morning I drove into work this week I could smell it when I opened the window on the freeway; I could taste it even. I knew I was back Home the first time someone gave me the finger on the freeway instead of waving at me like you-know-where.

Everyone here seems to be angry about something . (the guy in the middle of the above photo is my hero for life)

Sometimes they don’t even really seem to know what they are angry about, but I see it in the burning eyes in the hateful faces of the working class people here. They’ve been out-sourced and down-sized and ground under the heel of a fascist plutocracy and are just now realizing it. It’s taken them this long to attempt to put two and two together because they’ve been so caught up that whirlpool of making a living, putting food on the table, keeping up with the Joneses etc. And even when they find a few minutes a day to sit down and relax instead of reading a book they turn on the TV to watch reality TV, something they are so addicted to they put televisions on the dash of their cars so they can watch it while they drive.

But even the uneducated masses in this Idiocracy in the world are smart enough to know when they’re getting screwed. It just takes them a little longer to figure it out. And in the meantime I may or may not be standing around to watch, because they may or may not vent their anger in the direction of whoever is really screwing them and find it easier to vent their anger on me as a matter of convenience when that light bulb in their heads finally lights up.

When those ten days of admiring the beautiful scenery were over I walked through the Death March of Customs and Security at the Vancouver airport more than slightly over-whelmed. My friend “K” has lived there slightly over a year and still hasn’t seen everything. As the long line of travelers waiting to go through Customs lurched slowly towards the two-count ‘em-two customs agents on duty, I felt as if I were trudging slowly away from a beautiful dream. Would I suddenly wake up alone back in my bed in Fort Worth and it didn’t all just really happen? I didn’t see the wildlife or the wilderness; they were all just part of a dream….

After jumping through the Customs and Security hoops ( “GOOD Citizen!”) and checking in my suitcase, I walked slowly through the airport looking at the shops advertising their various “duty-free” goods. Had to stop at their Tim Hortons one last time for a chicken-salad sandwich ($3.00) and a large cup of their delicious coffee (about $2.50). Thought it was noble of them not to gouge the travelers; they were charging the same prices as their free-standing stores outside of the airport.
Hours later I’m walking through the Denver airport. The water in the drinking fountains is warm as piss. I look through the various kiosks there; micro-bottles of cold water are $3.00 and up. Sandwiches that the Quiznos up the street from my house sell for $5 are $9 at the Quiznos at the Denver airport.
I know, I know; overhead…the cheapest thing in the whole airport are hot dogs at $5 a pop.

And that I believe was the precise moment I knew I was back in America.

SEE ALSO: