The Victorian Squares

The Devil Went Down to Florida

2011-10-12T21:02:00.014-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Florida's a land of powerful contradictions, which of course suits me to a T. There's something about the mojo of this peculiar peninsula that attracts both the wealthy and powerful, and the downtrodden and fugitive. It's a land of great natural beauty and profound man-made tackiness.

The earliest known European explorers came with the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who discovered it on April 2, 1513 and named it La Florida. (You thought Cristoforo "Christopher Columbus" Columbo was the first European to set foot in North America? Go to the back of the class. He never actually visited the mainland, and the closest he came was Cuba) And yet, even in Juan's telling of this alleged first contact with Florida, weirdness ensues: he was surprised to find an "indigenous tribesman" here who already spoke Spanish.

Over the subsequent years, Florida became a free-for-all mess. The Spanish, the French, and the English were all mucking around here, trying to take it over. The native Americans were warring with all of them, as well as with each other. Africans who had been brought to America as slaves often sought refuge here. It wasn't until 1845 that the USA managed to fully get their lunch-hooks in Florida and claim it as a state, and we did so as part of an agreement with Spain that we would not seek any claim to Texas in the future. I guess you know how that promise turned out.

Though I shut down almost all my blogs back in July, I knew I'd be back here at the Victorian Squares clubhouse to file the occasional report. Having just returned from the Florida Gulf Coast and, by extension, Interzone, I have much data to relay. Unfortunately almost all of it's classified.

What I can tell you is, I drank a lot of the demon rum. It's really disconcerting for a Kentuckian to find himself in a bar with only seven bourbons but 44 different kinds of rum. I hung out with the ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald (and maybe, just maybe, the ghosts of Ernest Hemingway and Joe Strummer as well) on St. Pete's Beach in an old pink palace. Ignoring my own warnings about Corexit, I happily ate fresh-caught mackerel at the Anna Maria Island city pier and went back for seconds.

But did I get any work done? Well, a little bit. I thought this FL trip would give me the setting I needed to finish these still-in-progress novels I've been fiddling with all year, but what it really did was give me inspiration for other novels to write next.

I was constantly reminded of the dialogue from the Naked Lunch movie where Jack Kerouac says, "My novel's all-American as apple pie, Bill. I couldn't finish it here." And Burroughs responds with the bit about how America is not a young country and how before the settlers, before the pirates, even before the Indians, there was something here, something dark and dirty and mysterious.

I defintely felt that indefinable something while creeping around at night in the untamed jungles of Leffis Key. While chatting with an old Haitian voodoo guy who makes masks and sells them to upscale tourists who have no idea what they're bringing into their homes. While sitting on the dock of the bay at Rod & Reel Pier, seeing the enigmatic Egmont Key taunting me just out of reach. My biggest disappointment of this visit is that an expedition to Egmont got scuttled by high winds, storm clouds, and super-choppy waters that prevented our little catamaran from making the journey. Thanks to tropical storm (almost became a hurricane) Phillipe for that.

I was called unexpectedly back to the Commonwealth, alas, and had to cut my visit short. Missed out on the Salvador Dali Museum, as well as the Mote Aquarium. Next time. I got a lot more Floridizin' on the road to my horizon.

To put the gulf area in perspective for my Kentucky readers, think of Tampa as Louisville and Sarasota as Lexington, with Bradenton as the quainter, mellower Frankfort in between. Then you have your islands off to the side - Anna Maria, Perico, Key Royale, Longboat Key, Beer Can Island (pictured above), Leffis Key, Lido Key, Sand Key, Clearwater Beach, Treasure Island, Honeymoon Island, etc. - which mirror the rural-yet-touristy weirdness we have in Midway, Berea, Bowling Green and Cave City. But, you know, with beaches and sharks and dolphins and gators and women walking around in Wicked Weasels.

Dylan Williams In Memoriam

2011-09-15T14:14:00.001-04:00

by J.T. Dockery
from his Covertly and by Snatches blog

When I found out in making plans months ago with Tom Neely to share a table at SPX 2011, which happened last weekend, that we would also be representing Dylan Williams's Sparkplug Comics (my favorite publisher), I was giddy as a school girl. As it became apparent to me that he was in ill health, the giddiness gave way to a dark cloud, yet Tom and I, and I think most everyone who knew him, had so much faith in who he was and what he represented, there was light in that dark cloud as we all believed he'd make it...because we needed him to make it. The news came in toward the end of the first day of SPX that Dylan had died. What occurs to me in pondering his passing, is that, because of who he was, there is still light amongst the dark clouds.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of Dylan's death to me is that I never met him in person (I've spent most of my life "land locked" in Kentucky, far away from the centers of zine and comics culture). Yet, knowing him from a distance, as far as I can remember, began with the issue of Destroy All Comics which featured an interview with John Porcellino and Dylan's article on Bill Blackbeard. I wore that issue out in the 90s, reading and re-reading it. It caused me to take note any time I saw Dylan's name in print connected to comics. As Sparkplug developed throughout the oughts, I followed its progress and came to see that I admired Dylan's work as a publisher more than anything in comics besides simply the work of individual artists.

I kept up a correspondence with Dylan via mail, email, and Facebook. I treasured Dylan's Facebook postings so much I remember being upset when he'd get taciturn about it and disable his account for a while. If I never got to meet Dylan in person, I certainly treasured our correspondence. Whether it was bonding over obscure zines from the 90s we'd both read, or whether it was discussing horror movies and Dylan saying he'd repeated my musings at his store, Bad Apple, and jokingly confessing he didn't give me credit when "stealing" my ideas, or whether it was a discussion of the metal band Flotsam & Jetsam spiraling out into long autobiographical digressions into metal and music that devolved into statements of shared personal philosophies, Dylan, six years older than me, was like an older brother whom I much admired so that when we got on the same page, it gave me great joy.

When I started to do comics reviews in the past year, I ordered some Sparkplug books. When Dylan realized what I was up to, he sent me a huge box of books for free, which I did not want him to do. Even as I explained to him it was my intent to pay for all the books I reviewed, he wouldn't listen to me. Even as an arch critic of comic book culture, in microcosm, and the culture at large in macrocosm, Dylan always struggled to be big-hearted, inclusive, and generous, instead of giving in to cynicism. When Dylan went on record to say nice things about my work, it meant more to me than any review or any other sort of accolade (and even when he had criticism or disagreed with my approach, it always resonated). Did I tell him this? I don't think I did. I should have. I thought I would have a decade, two, or three to get to spend time with him in person; it didn't work out that way. The tragedy of untimely death.

On Sunday evening after SPX sitting outside with a group of folks, I remarked to Tom Neely that it was apparent that in 41 years Dylan had done a life's work. "More than a life's work," Tom corrected me.

To aspire and to be inspired to be more like he was, we can bring the chilling use of the past tense next to his name out of the past and into the present tense. Dylan did what he was born to do. The burden to do and be better, following his example, is on us.

Everything I will do in comics...the memory of Dylan Williams will be close to my heart.

Independence Day

2011-07-04T11:54:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Happy 4th of July!

In no particular order and off the top of my head, these are some of the things I'm working on for the future, goals for the next few years:

First and foremost, more books. Lots of them. Over the last year, the requests I've received for e-books has increased exponentially. I've not been a fan of e-books myself, but there's no denying that this is the way things are headed. And though I lament the death of paper, if people tell me they want e-books, I listen. I'm talking to several different publishers right now, assessing my options, trying to decide if I want to go through them or if there's any reason not to just start my own e-publishing imprint and cut out the middlemen. I continue to welcome your opinions on the subject of e-books and e-readers.

There are a lot of writing projects cluttering up my desk these days - a couple of crime-detective-noir novels I've been working on, plus projects devoted to specific local subjects like Springheel Jack, The Pope Lick Monster, and Kentucky artists. Theoretically Weird Cemeteries for Sterling is still a go, but it seems to be held up in Development Hell for reasons known only to my editors and publisher. My cemeteries book will see the light of day, however, in the next two years one way or another.

I'm still very excited about working for KyForward, a news website focusing on the Bluegrass area (Lexington and surrounding counties) with a consciously positive, upward-toned sense of civil discourse. Which, as you must know, is all too rare on the internet these days. If you'd like to support such a venture, potential advertisers, please contact them and inquire about ad rates! We're also kicking around the idea of doing video content, including an interview show hosted by yours truly.

And I still love Kentucky Monthly magazine! You can find my column, Commonwealth Curiosities in each issue. If you don't see it at your local newstand or bookstore, bug 'em till they stock it! (Having said that, though, it's a hugely popular magazine and getting more popular all the time; I don't think I've ever seen a reputable store that didn't carry it.)

I'm still a painter first and foremost, although hyping my primitive neo-expressionist outsider-folk-art flavored canvases has taken a back seat in the last couple years to everything else. I aim to rectify that in the weeks and months ahead, with a renewed drive to get these paintings in the hands of as many people as possible, by any means necessary. Do you want a JSH original in your home or office? Talk to me. It's so doable. I offer interest-free payment plans for every budget. (And my Happy & Froggie painting that was featured in the film When Happy Met Froggie is still available, although its price has gone up since the movie was released.)

Something else I've been slowly putting together over the years is material for an Unusual Kentucky museum - something that would be not only a legitimate educational and historical museum, but also take a truly "Weird Kentucky" spin on the whole thing, showing cultural artifacts of the Commonwealth that might be a little - okay, a lot - fringier than what you might see at the Frazier. There have been some nibbles of interest in the concept from parties in both Louisville and Lexington, but I'm holding out until I get a guaranteed deal that gives me control over the place if it's going to be using my name. There are some recent rumblings that give me hope this thing will actually happen, and sooner than later. Keep your fingers crossed with me; it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Those are the primary projects on my front burners, but there's plenty more still bubbling under. My interest in Kentucky's horse industry is going to manifest in some way sooner or later, we'll see. A couple more goals I have: I intend to operate a Steampunk-themed bar and a hillbilly/exotica miniature golf course (the crazy over-the-top kind with giant statues and weird gimmicks like you see down in Pigeon Forge) before I die. All in time. Wait and see. (And when that retro bar does come to life, my bartending blog Transmissions from Agent J will be pressed back into service.)

There's still more. A lot more. This'll do for now though. Stay tuned to JSH News for the latest updates on my dreams and schemes! And remember, I can always be reached, by anyone on the planet, at jshpaint@gmail.com. You can also text me on Twitter or just pick up the phone and call me at 502.649.3378. Find me.

That Was Then, This Is Now

2011-07-03T00:00:00.003-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Tomorrow, July 4th, will be my last post on any of my blogs, for some time to come. I'm increasingly busy with a lot of exciting real-world projects that demand my full attention, and I just don't have as much time to devote to the internet.

That may sound odd, since my internet presence has always been rather over-the-top. But the fact is, this is not the same Internet I originally signed on for. In recent years, it's morphed into something that I no longer am sure I want to be associated with. I was all for the digital revolution like everyone else, but that was before it destroyed newspapers, pay phones, the music industry, the book publishing industry, the antique mall/flea market business, the art of letter writing, the right to privacy, and any and all semblance of enforced Copyright laws. Most important of all, the internet has brought about a real end to basic civility. The term "flamewar" has even gone out of style now, because bickering, sniping, arguing and negativity has literally become the norm.

I've been mocked for my refusal to take part in social networking. Someone recently said to me that people who say "I am not on Facebook" are the new "I don't watch television" people, not realizing that I am one of those annoying anti-Facebook, anti-TV nuts. Well, now I'm going to really give 'em something to snark about, because now that Facebook and Google have essentially taken over the entire net and dumbed it down, I want off the carousel. Mostly.

I'll still be online plenty, of course, checking email and doing research. But as of tomorrow, my contribution to Victorian Squares will diminish severely but not entirely. My blogs Unusual Kentucky, Voraxical Theatre, Revelation Awaits An Appointed Time, Krampus the Cat, Whitewashed Windows and Vacant Stores, Creeps Records, and JSHNYC are going into cryogenic sleep.

The JSH Combo blog will probably return if and when that twice-aborted musical project reaches fruition. The Catclaw Theatre Diaries will also be updated when there's relevant news to report. Transylvania Gentlemen will eventually be retooled for the purposes of that organization, but by someone other than myself. I'm still looking forward to cranking out more fiber batts for the Etsy crowd soon, but the exploits will probably not be followed on my Appalachian Voodoo Fiber blog in the foreseeable.

Rebecca and friends over at the Telecrylic Foundation will continue operating my official JSH News blog (with my direct input, of course. I'm too much of a control freak), so that is now more than ever the place to go for the latest "News flash! JSH eats a turkey sandwich!" breaking news. I'm not sure what's up with the actual Telecrylic blog, but I suspect it's dead in the water since it's going to be superceded by another online archive of my paintings and comics.

I already saw all this writing on the wall back in the winter, when I got rid of all my dot-com websites, including jeffreyscottholland.com, jshnyc.com, jshdc.com, jshla.com, superfrothco.com, catclawtheatre.com, voraxica.com, voraxium.com, and more that I'm probably forgetting. I thought I would miss them all dearly the moment they went offline. I don't.

So what is surviving the purge? After tomorrow, other than JSH News, the best place to keep up with what I'm up to will be:

* My Twitter feed (I don't use it as a social network and you don't have to be a member; in fact, 99.9% of my friends are not on it, they just read it directly on the web same as any other of my blogs)

* My photo blog will also continue for the time being. The mundane details of my day-to-day life will still be over-exposed amply for the handful of people on Earth who care, so between this and my Twitter feed, my stalkers shouldn't feel shut out in the cold.

* My writing blog will still continue to exist. More details about this tomorrow.

Tomorrow, on the fourth of July, we'll get into the good news - all the fun things that I'm working on that'll be better than blogging, and things that I want you, dear reader, to feel free to get involved in! As Jack Lord used to say, "Be here! Aloha!"

The Kellerweis Device

2011-07-02T15:07:00.009-04:00

by J.S. Holland

It took a few years of me and other fans of Duvel-style bottle-conditioned ales to keep yapping and jawing and hammering our cause home, but finally it's starting to pay off. Check out how Sierra Nevada, a brewer I've never particularly had strong opinions about one way or another, now offers this here Kellerweis Hefeweizen with copious yeast right in the bottle, and with that Duvel quality through and through. (Previous supermarket-level hefeweizens I've tried have been OK, but lack that certain Ommegang charm.) It's less hoppy than Duvel, but retains that golden cloudy carbonated manna quality. I adore it. Nevada, to both your brewery and to your sierra, I say Bravo.

I got some of this the other night while pondering the life and times of intrepid landfaring heroes like Daniel Boone, and equally intrepid seafaring villains like Black Sam. I started out at Ernesto's but soon my usual Ern-buddies tipped back their last glass and went home to their wives and TV sets. Me, I stuck around a little longer and found myself soon surrounded by some tremendously hostile losers trying to play the bar's electronic trivia game. You learn a lot about your fellow man playing Trivial Pursuit, or some equivalent, with them.

And ignorance isn't bliss: these people were bitter, self-absorbed, filled with anger, filled with hatred, highly toxic and unpleasant to be around. In between trivia questions, they spent most of their time griping about their exes and insulting the celebrities on the TV screens. I heard them rage with acidic bile against all manner of stars (and for reasons totally unfathomable to me) but when the whole bar erupted into a transparently racially-charged hate-fest against my pal Tiger Woods, I downed my drink, tossed a bill on the bar and didn't stick around for my change. Call me an asshole, but everywhere I go now it seems, more and more people these days are psychic vampires, and when they walk in, I walk out. I used to think it was only about 2½ percent of the population, but I do believe the statistic is now much higher. And the more I feel their invisible tendrils of negativity sniffing out toward me, the more I prefer the company of dogs. (And cats.)

By chance I grabbed a six-pack of this Kellerweis, which my eyes had never beheld before, at a licka stow on my own back to the plantation, and went back to writing another Great American Novel (currently working on a crime-detective-noir novel called The Bartender, all about a solitary loner beer-puller who has a high sense of moral and ethical principles but finds himself tempted by an opportunity for larceny due in part to the perks of his profession.)

According to their website, "Kellerweis is one of the only American Hefeweizens made using the traditional Bavarian style of open fermentation. This difficult and labor-intensive technique adds uncommon depth and flavor complexity. Our hazy-golden hefeweizen is deeply flavorful, refreshing and perfect for a sunny day. To serve, pour two-thirds into a glass, swirl and pour the rest." I generally prefer to drink my froth from the bottle (stays cold longer) but yes, pouring a bottle-conditioned beer out into a glass is a must. Some like to painstakingly pour such brews down to the last quarter inch and then discard that last bit, choosing to avoid the yeast sediment. Me, I drink it all, the yeast, everything. I think Dan'l Boone and Black Sam would expect no less, and even now, I hear them calling my name.

(And if you think I'm just blowin' smoke with all my negativity about the negativists, tune in this here blog tonight sometime after midnight, cause ol' Jeffy has a big announcement to make.)

The Ubiquitous Dr. Graves

2011-07-01T00:12:00.011-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Hi there ho there, fellow travelers. You've dropped into the old Crap-Keeper's Vault of Unintended Horror at an opportune time; another specimen from the Inner Inner Inner Sanctum of my comic book collection has just been dug up for you to dig.

For you Ditkological devotees, I bring you The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves #22, October 1970, brought to you by those wonderful hacks at Charlatan - er, I mean Charlton - comics.

Dr. Graves, like Benway, Caligari, and Acula before him, may be a self-styled Doctor who got his degree conferred on him by unconvential means (perhaps from Johnson-Smith) but he's my kinda Doc. Unlike some horror hosts who are content to bookend a story with brief comments at its outset and finish, Graves just can't stay out of his own stories.

Almost every page has multiple panels in which Graves appears right in the midst of the story - sometimes hiding subtly like a "Where's Waldo?", sometimes lurking in the background or even the foreground, and sometimes just plain tromping around on the set in the middle of the action, making a total goddamn mess of everything. "CUT! Graves, get OFF THE SET!"

It's like someone pointed out to him that Hitchcock made a secret appearance in every one of his films, and Dr. Graves felt the need to keep up with the Joneses. And the really mentally ill thing (mental illness? Ditko? Naw!) about it all is the frequent insertion of panels that have NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE STORY and are usually just depictions of floating heads. (Ohhhh, okay, now the disembodied head panel in Hunk #5 starts to make sense - could it really be a Ditkonian homage?)

But is the comic any good? Frankly, I can't tell; it's too damn distracting trying to follow the plot when you've got this mustachioed bargain-basement Vincent Price hamming it up and mugging every other panel. The most normal and conventional horror story in this issue is the one that Ditko didn't do (and of course it has the fewest appearances of the floating head of Doctor Graves.) The others are, well, kinda wacky and convoluted, and in typical Ditkoic style one of them is heavy on rants about medical ethics and suggests that ghosts can be put to sleep by spraying them with knockout gas. The man had a certain reality principle.

However, if we take a look at the comic's debut issue, which some enterprising upstart has posted online in its entirety, we see that Dr. Graves was not only a Rod Serling-esque narrator, he also was originally an actual character in some of the stories, brought in as an expert in the paranormal to solve some of the mysteries. By the time we got to #22 it would seem that Graves' direct involvement in the plots was no more, and he was relegated to haunting his own comic like a ghost himself.

"Just Look Over Your Shoulder"

2011-06-30T22:54:00.005-04:00

KISS - "Stand"

The Jackson 5 - "I'll Be There"

Jimmy & David Ruffin - "Stand By Me"

The Monkees - "Hey Hey, We're the Monkees"

Blender is the Night

2011-06-29T19:50:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Last night I was at Ernesto's sippin' Blue Moon with my usual crew of East-end oddfellows. The lively bar-talk included such topics as Zachary Taylor, Zachary Taylor's daughter who married Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis' Inn, Pass-a-Grille, Valkyrie vs. Inglourious Basterds, and Steve Nunn avoiding the death penalty. Finally I wandered out into the night, and decided to confer with my friend Drew Estate under the starry skies. I slapped my shirt's breast pocket; it was empty. I'd forgotten to tuck a cigar into it when I left the house.

It wasn't that late, but it was late enough that Cox's was closed. I didn't feel like tootling all over the city looking for a noctural tobacconist, so I ducked into Walgreen's. I'm less picky about my cigars than my pipe tobacco - some of the drugstore junk I've discussed here, like Red Cap and Prince Albert and Middleton's Cherry, were so nasty I won't even smoke them. (You want them? Contact me, I'll give them to you. Only one briar bowl smoked from each.) But cigars? Eh. I'm easy. The only stogies I've really crushed out and walked away from are ones that are stale and taste cardboardy, and ones that were rolled so tightly it's like trying to smoke a roll of electrical tape.

Which brings us to last night's drunken drugstore selection: It's called Blender's Gold, and I got a 4-pack of 'em for a mere $9.99. Now, I firmly believe you get what you pay for, so I had every right to expect a $2.50 cigar to be a disaster, right? But me and the Blender had a real good time, and I daresay I'll invest in another pack of these after I exhaust my supply here. They're leathery, simple and no-nonsense, like something a boxer would smoke in 1921, or maybe like the boxer himself. Oscuro addicts would call these things unsmokeably mild; bland even. There's a disconcerting rubberiness to the texture, and there is a certain sensation at first that you're actually smoking cabbage or lambskin or something, but this passes quickly. The bulk of the cigar was fairly consistently tasty all the way through.

I know you'll probably never buy one, at least not in a 4-pack and at least not after I said "lambskin". C'mon over to the plantation and you can bum one of mine. You'll see. It ain't that bad. Check it, it really is gold. Especially for the price. As my bud Tom says:

This was an OK low to mid medium bodied cigar. Sure, it was one dimensional and this particular cigar had some burn issues, but as a whole they give you your $2.00 worth. It’s not like every one you smoke will have issues. If you are on a budget, I say give these a try.

I did, in fact, suffer the same burn issues he spoke of. Although I lit it precisely and evenly and it burned just fine for the first half, it began to get drastically sidegoggledy and falling apart in my hand by the end (as you can see in the photo.) Weird thing is, though, the ad copy on the packaging says "The rich maduro wrappers have been selected for consistency of taste and area found only in the best of the world's fine cigars." Maduro? Really? Uh.... guys, these wrappers are pale as Chai tea, what're you talkin' about Maduros?

Hunk!

2011-06-28T00:01:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Greetings once again, my friends. Close the giant creaking door behind you, pull up a cobwebbed chair, and make yourselves comfortable while I, the Crap-Keeper, fix a pot of spidermint tea and blow the dust off the cover of another entry in my deep, dark, labyinthine dregs of comicdom archive in my Vault of Unintended Horror.

I keep trying to find the most jaw-droppingly awful comic book from my files, to exemplify just how bad it can get out there in the hairy world of forgotten off-brand funny-books of a bygone age. Problem is, even when I'm certain I've hit upon the worst comic book in the world, I start feeling sorry for it as one would for the dumbest kid in school and then I start developing a working aesthetic for it against my will. I'm just too soft hearted for my own good.

Charlton's Hunk is one of those comics that you find yourself rooting for out of sympathy, like a special-needs little brother. As you turn the pages, you find parts of your brain lamenting that God ever allowed it to exist, and other parts of your brain respecting it for persisting in existing. These are comics that make you feel embarrassed for everybody involved - not only embarrassed yourself for even viewing it, but feeling pangs of the shame that the Charlton guys must have endured when their friends, lovers, and family members saw a copy of Hunk and leafed briefly through it before looking up with an expression that telegraphed, "You made this? This is what you do for a living?"

I don't even remember how this copy of Hunk #5 (May 1962) came into my possession. I probably lost a lot of I.Q. points and brain cells, including the ones meant to retain that information, on contact with it. Imagine a Flintstones kinda deal, with an anachronistically civilized caveman society, except that the focus is on two little Cro-magnon kids - Freckle-faced red-headed "Hunk" and his shaggy-haired best friend, er, what is his name? I don't remember and I already filed the comic back down in the JSH wine cellar and comics crypt. Oh well. Drink your tea.

Almost every page in this comic has at least one panel rendered completely in silhouette - a sure sign of a burned-out hack trying to finish entire issues of a comic in one sitting, racing a grueling schedule and facing a deadline.

I felt like I was tripping when I saw this panel:

The context of the story is that Hunk and his buddy have been implausibly nominated Chiefs of the fire department, and they're riding around on a dinosaur putting out fires - as you can see from the panel shown at the top of this post. But in the panel shown here, the artist just drew their floating body-less HEADS sitting atop the dinosaur! The hell? Is this some sort of deliberate motif, a heretofore unmined storytelling technique we're seeing here? Or was the artist just ripped on Rye and driven half demented by the sound of his screaming kids in his one-room coldwater flat in Milwaukee?

And yet, is it really that far removed from the works of modern-day scribblers like Ron Rege, Jr.? Is a man better off living today where one can make a comic like this that makes a big hit on the internet and in hipster galleries, or have we lost something by no longer living in an era where a brain-damaged comic like this got to be in supermarkets, drugstores, grocery stores and department stores all over, placed directly in the sticky grasp of virtually every kid in North America?

Touched by a Shark

2011-06-27T00:00:00.001-04:00

by J.S. Holland

This time I gotta disagree strenuously with those super-snobs over at Beer Advocate. Their gang of self-styled brew experts dismiss Landshark Lager with C- and D ratings, mainly because it "lacks complexity". This is rather like an overbearing cheese "expert" saying that no one should ever eat swiss cheese because it's blander than Gorgonzola.

Beers are tools, essentially, and one must apply the proper tool for the proper job. I certainly wouldn't order Landshark at a five-star restaurant to accompany my Lobster Newburg (not that they'd even be carrying it anyhow), but hey, I wouldn't order a Coke either, and that doesn't mean that Landshark or Coke sucks. Landshark's place on the beer scale is the same as Corona's, Caguama, Miller High Life, or Dundee's Honey Brown - a simple, unpretentious gullet-washing cerveza with no aftertaste yet not as soulless as a "dry" beer. Perfect for outdoor activities, like hanging out on the beach, as the whole oceanic packaging makes obvious.

I enjoy the stuff immensely, especially with a lime slice and accompanying spicy foods and cigars. I can drink a whole 6 of these and not feel like I'm about to turn into a loaf of bread rising in the sun, which is more than I can say for a lot of chewy brews that the beer intelligentsia assure us are superior.

I guess you might have to be part Floridian to get it, and I confess this Kentucky Gentleman's got a lot of Florida on his shoes in recent years. I've enjoyed Landshark on many a sun-drenched day in my primary Gulf of Mexico stomping ground, which is pretty much everything between Clearwater and Sarasota, and all the islands and keys in the area. I especially love Pass-a-Grille, Perico Island, Longboat Key, Anna Maria Island, Siesta Key, and Lido Key, and a sip of the shark transports me back there, to those baby powder beaches and that nautical nightlife.

Over Cracker Barrel

2011-06-26T00:57:00.005-04:00

by J.S. Holland

My pal Carla and I stuck our beaks into Cracker Barrel a couple days ago, and it was immediately evident that a lot has changed around the old roadside cornpone eathouse. Firstly, they had a bunch of their tack from the gift shop dragged out front for a sidewalk sale, with not one but two brown-aproned gals greeting you and urging you to stop and check out the amazing bargains before you go in. Seemed a little too hard-sell for the Barrel, thought I, but OK.

Then when we got inside, we encountered another greeter, who again pointed out that they have all kinds of exciting crap for sale in the gift shop. Okay, okay, crackers, I get it, I get it. Funny thing is, then when we got to the actual podium where you say "party of two" and they tell you there'll be a 20 minute wait, there was nobody there. Too many greeters and not enough cashiers!

Once we got our table and grub, I was saddened to see that the economic hard times has resulted in some severe cutbacks at the ol' C.B. and it ain't pretty. Their pancakes, once huge and clearly for-real with irregular crispy edges, are now the same lame perfectly-formed pre-made little flapjacks that they serve at Denny's, McDonald's, and Hell. Their sausage patties are now tiny pucks with about the same circumference as a can of Fancy Feast cat food. And the side order of french fries, formerly served copiously on a plate, was a bowl with about ten fries sticking out of it. I kid you not.

I didn't come here to gripe about all of this, however. No, what really appalled me is that Crackle Berra, supposedly the epitome of old-fashioned living and values, has jumped on the bandwagon of cyber-stalky technocracy with the rest of you data-packet-pushing chimps. According to this sign placed on all the tables, they're proudly announcing that they've finally caught up with the rest of the world and joined Facebook, like, big whoopty doo. Even more sad and embarrassing, they're actually requesting you to click "like" on them. The only thing more pathetic than having a "like" button in the first place, is to actually beg people to click it.

But it's not enough that they've gotten the figurative mark of the beast by getting all Facebooky with it; they actually have gleefully accepted the literal mark of the beast, the QR Code. I don't follow this nonsense myself, but apparently if you have a smartphone, you can actually use it as a bar-code reader, and these here QR Codes (which look like a Wordpress user avatar), once scanned, can do all sorts of useless, pointless things. (Example: Kylie Minogue's music video for her 2010 single, "All The Lovers", featured an on-screen QR Code which allowed you to point your iPhone at the TV and decode the word "LOVE". Big whoop.) Many companies now use them in billboards so that people can access websites, messages, and info on their phone simply by pointing it at the billboard, even while driving. In other words, more useless information and more ads that very dumb people and their very smart phones will happily embrace just because the technology that delivers it is the gadget novelty du jour.

When you point your smartphone at the QR Code on this Cracker Barrel sign, guess what it does? It takes you to their Facebook. Wow. Golly gee, grampa, that's really somethin'. All the kids are really gonna think you're hep now. Instead of spending cash on this purposeless gimmick, why don't you put that money back into the quality of the food?

Hank Williams played over the loudspeakers as I left the restaurant. Can you imagine going back in time and trying to explain all this bullshit to Hank? "I don't b'leeve I care for any of that, boys, if it's all the same with you I think I still prefer to just go ahead and die in the back of my Caddy. Thanks, though."

Fix the Cable

2011-06-25T13:45:00.009-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

"I said where'd you get your information from, huh?
You think that you can front when revelation comes?"
--Beastie Boys

"Man has sold his soul for time, language, tools, weapons, and dominance."--William S. Burroughs

"Together we shall save our planet. Or together we shall perish in its flames."--JFK

I'm not much of an activist. No sir, not built it for it, me. Which does not mean that I do not collect information and make decisions, which I in turn put into action, based upon my understanding of that information.

Human beings have not really devised a better form of transmitting information than marks on paper. Feel free to disagree with me. I don't argue points. But I'll discuss anything.

Symbols on paper which can be translated into the reader's mind act as a form of telepathy, just as recorded performance, be it film/video, spoken word, or music, act as a kind of time travel device. Until we conquer time travel or understand telepathy to an extent that humans can standardize its use for the average person (which, hey, is probably not necessarily that far off, if not, nefariously now (I'm talking for common, democratic usage)), marks on paper are the best gadget, insofar as it goes. All other gadgets, including the machine I make these facsimile "marks" on "paper" over the electric radio you're reading right now, appear to me as so much gadgetry, show business, and minstrelsy.

That leads me, cough, to the point of this transmission. Back to my own personal internal "activism," I have for quite a while now, based on too many facts, placed a ban on cable television "news" channels as an improper conduit through which to receive information. It rots the brain, jack, should be avoided at all costs, and I give you this advice like a brother (or sister).

Let's dispense of all tinkertoy arguments of "liberal" vs. "conservative." That either/or thinking is merely a shuck and jive and does not exist within any "news" corporation. Cable "news" channels exist to produce revenue through higher ratings and advertising which benefits the corporation of which backs them by manufacturing drama and entertainment under a mask of "information."

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for free market capitalism. It's just the synthetic network of corporate power style capitalism these cable "news" companies represent is not what I call capitalism. I learned in school that laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a good thing. I guess they don't teach that no more.

ALL of these cable "news" entities are selling me things I don't need, be it war or deodorant, and creating an environment of left vs. right which causes citizens to resent fellow citizens over goofy social issues which man has always debated and which keeps the citizenry with paranoid eyes fixed staring at each other and keeps them from turning those same peepers coldly towards its elected officials (outside of the parameters of soap opera drama) and the shadow government of corporations and industrial complexes which prop them up which get away with murder (for starters).

I fear the fix is in. That whatever was meant to be won or lost was lost long ago, and we just watch the residual maintenance of the status quo with this weird behavioral control and the regimentation of keeping on with the keeping on in a thought police state. But when one arrives at that conclusion, that's when one gets a taste of freedom, and one may just start making moves to split from the whole program. But speaking of a taste of freedom, turning off that idiot box, and at the very least those cable "news" programs, brother, it felt and feels mighty good. A lot of noise cut from my life. It made my teeth whiter, and gave me more confidence to win at business and at pleasure.

If you'd told me as a kid what we'd be using Star Trek technology for, I probably woulda walked off into the woods and never come back. That scenario may still not be entirely out of the question.

Booked Passage

2011-06-23T21:09:00.007-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Only a couple of you kids have gotten the full report on this yet - and I'll be disclosing more in the days ahead - but soon I'm going to be on the road like Jack Kerouac, and on the road again like Willie Nelson. I'll chase my fortune round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Antares Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give it up, but ultimately, you're looking at a man who's bound for Interzone. Yes, Interzone, land of enchantment, where the beer in the canteloupe lay. Where Jerry Lee Lewis is waiting, at the end of the road.

I've never been to me, but I have been to Interzone a few times before, and lemme tell ya, friends, the food there is exquisite. Any kind of cuisine you're lookin' for, they have it there, provided you like it spicy and with spices of the like you ain't et yet. Why, I bet they even have monkey-picked tea and weasel-chewed coffee. And Petula Clark wasn't just frontin' when she said the lights are much brighter there.

Son, I've seen water towers that look like martians, palm trees that looked like mummies, mummies that looked like Colonels, women who talk like zithers, and zithers the size of vampires. I've drunk shamanic cocktails with hillbilly secret agents in Croatian blacksmith shops, waiting on the Robert E. Lee. I've danced the Hades Ballet with the ghost of Ruth Etting and had our pitcher taken in wallet sized glossies.

I've seen saloon fights fought entirely with guitars, cathouse curtains made of the hides of Johns who didn't pay up, Karaoke bars where all the songs are solely from planets nobody really believes exist, pig races with jockeys, bullfights held in bathrooms, and mind-over-matter billiards matches with entire nations as the stakes. Good times.

I'll send you a postcard. I'll also send you a copy of the report.

The Man Behind the Mask

2011-06-22T23:26:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

"Man, Evil is real. It is out there. Evil has a face, a look of its own and nothing else looks like it. But for it to be truly terrifying, for evil to do its job it has to hide behind the mask. Evil has to function in society, it has to rub elbows with all the good folks and decent people, it has to been seen smiling all the time as it lurks and lives and breathes its fetid breath down our throats everyday. We live with the horror that at any moment, at any time, that mask will slip off the person next to us and we'll see the face of true evil, true horror."

- Tobe Hooper.

I say, chaps, this here Dollar Tree store is somethin' else, eh what? I was just in the one in Middletown, KY and scored this amazing hardcover edition of Dan Madigan's Mondo Lucha A Go Go for only a clam, a bone, a sawbuck, one American dollar. As a longtime devotee of the noble tradition of Mexico's masked Lucha Libre wrestlers, color me stoked. I researched my way into the genre backwards years ago, after discovering Kentucky's "Appalachian Voodoo" tradition which is definitely influenced by Mexican rasslers - especially Grillo the Clown.

Wrestling expert that he is, Madigan herein covers every conceivable aspect of the sport, from psychology to kitsch to genuine athletic prowess to humorous anecdotes galore. One that gave me a chuckle in particular: "Many times the referee counts at a very leisurely pace to get to twenty. I've been at a few matches where one Luchador was knocked out the ring and ref started counting to twenty. At six I got up, went to the bathroom, got some tacos, a beer, stopped to talk to a friend on the way back to my seat, and when I sat back down the ref was at eleven."

What exactly is my attraction to an obscure genre of Mexican wrestling dating back to the 19th century which rose to global prominence after it began to dovetail with the concept of the horror movie, and after fantasy and reality switched places in the looking glass and neither El Santo nor Rodolfo Guzman Huerta (as his mother knew him) could tell who was who anymore, and which was which?

Partially, it seems to go back to those same pre-Cambrian genetic memories that draw me towards Japanese rubber-suited robots and bug-lookin' cops. And on another level, I'm intrigued by these men who have sculpted themselves into something larger than life (or as Grillo once sang, "larger than big"). I'm reminded of one of my favorite flicks, Inglourious Basterds, where the Hillbilly leader of the Nazi-killing Basterds ("Aldo the Apache") and their evil arch-enemy Hans "Jew Hunter" Landa fight World War II by measuring it in part by their own celebrity. Both the good guy and the bad guy in the film are very interested in their legend and reputation, asking others, "Have you heard of me?" and "What have you heard?"

Lastly, the mystery that is Mexico itself has to figure into it all, obviously. This land packs a powerful mojo and when its ley lines intersect those of Kentucky, something magical happens. Something powerful. Something profound. Also absurd and silly looking. But who can say it isn't beautiful?

J.T. Dockery Sells Out

2011-06-21T23:25:00.008-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

Step right up, step right up. Well, friends, we heard that maybe you'd been spud crazy, that maybe you've been speaking in tongues and just don't know how to illustrate it. Well, friends, don't fret, cause we here at Doc HQ have just the deal to beat the heat and save a dime just in time before all time ends.

That's right. What you heard were not lies...for a limited moment in history, the here and that was then and this is now you can purchase both J.T. Dockery's underground art comix object, In Tongues Illustrated, and his collaboration with writer Nick Tosches (published by Institute 193, with an intro and a foreward by Richard Hell and Bob Levin, respectively), Spud Crazy. For the one low price, and we're not making this up: 30 American dollars.

And what say you there? You already purchased one of those tomes? Well, what the heck. Doc is gonna sell each individually for 20 and will toss in a modest original sketch to sweeten the deal. Ain't he nice?

What's that again? You already bought both tomes previously at full price? Well, friends, we can only say we sure do appreciate you supporting the cause to which we are all so dearly devoted. If ya feel short-changed, drop the man a line...I'm sure he'd lay some original art on ya for a decent price because he's a decent guy. Trust us on that point. Just email him.

Yes, fiends, Romans & cunt-ry men: we're talking about J.T. Dockery's summer of 2011 End Times sale.

The "Go to Hell" Defense

2011-06-20T18:33:00.007-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I'm still stunned that there's been such a hue and cry over Rep. Anthony Weiner's "twittergate" incident, and now I'm flat out astonished that Mr. Weiner caved in so quickly and gave in to the Klingon Politics that whipped the hysterical villagers into calling for his resignation.

Weiner had a perfect opportunity to force a national dialogue about sexual freedom of expression onto a nation unwilling to confront it. And he totally blew it. He should have aggressively gone pit-bull on the TV talk shows, and asked his detractors, "Hey sicko, why are you obsessing over my penis, anyway?". Instead of being cowed down by the media hate machine calling him a pervert, he should turned the tables and even more loudly started calling his attackers the real perverts - which they most assuredly are. He should have stonewalled the whole investigation at every turn, dragged it out as long as possible (think Blagojevich's style) and made his enemies exhaust themselves with their absurd smear campaign.

Unfortunately, Weiner's enemies seem to include half the damn Kool-Aid drinkin' country, including his Benedict Arnold colleagues who have now outed themselves as fake Democrats and fake liberals. A real liberal would have fought to defend Rep. Weiner's right to be as foolish and undignified a rake as he likes, as long as he breaks no laws. Is his conduct morally repugnant? Well, why not leave that up to his constituency to determine next election day? Rep. Weiner's sex life is none of my business, and it sure as hell isn't any of yours. And the fact that part of it accidentally leaked out into the public arena makes it no more anyone else's business than before.

Just once, I would like to see someone in similar circumstances walk up to the podium on live national television and say, "Yeah, I did it. So what? I may even do it again, what's it to you? Go to Hell. Thank you and goodnight." If you think you're going in flames, at least go down with your head held high and your principles intact.

I defended Weiner all through this insane controversy, but now that he's resigned, I've changed my mind and I'm glad he's gone - anyone that spineless doesn't belong in Government. If he can't aggressively stand up for himself, why on Earth would anyone think him capable of standing up for his citizens?

Celebrity Numerology

2011-06-19T23:41:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Okay, now this is creepy: I just found a "Celebrity Numerology" site that has a page about me, breaking down my personal numerology profile, astrological info, and biorhythm charts.

Even though I think it's all a buncha fried baloney, I have to say some of their observations about me are fascinating. Check out their "Soul Urge" page about me:

Jeffrey Scott Holland wants success in its fullest meaning - wealth, power, and material comforts. He has an enormous ambition. Jeffrey dreams of big projects, great undertakings, and rewards.

Holland is a visionary. He sees the horizon and the promise. In general, Jeffrey Scott Holland also sees the methods necessary to fulfill that promise. But he is not especially good with details; Jeffrey needs others to help him deal with the smaller parts of the picture. His challenge is to make full use of the full spectrum of his abilities, as indicated by his other core numbers. In the same way, Holland must bring forth the best from others and orchestrate their talents toward the realization of his vision. In short, Jeffrey Scott Holland must lead by example, demonstrating the standard for commitment, determination, and excellence.

Pretty wacky, eh? Wait, it gets wackier. This is from their numerological personality profile of me:

He is hard to get to know, and is often withdrawn. It is common for people to see Jeffrey Scott Holland's focus turn inside of himself in the middle of a conversation. Jeffrey has the makings of an intellectual and an aristocrat but he has to guard against arrogance and an attitude of "I have got it all figured out". There have been periods in Jeffrey Scott Holland's life when he had little concern for his clothing or fashion, while at other times he is very aware of his clothing and uses it to make a specific impression. Jeffrey appears dignified no matter how he dresses, but a well groomed seven with a touch of dash definitely has an advantage. Holland's confidence increases when he knows he is well dressed.

Jeffrey Scott Holland is recognized as spiritual and religious, with his very own ideas regarding the purpose of life and the Creator. He is an inspired speaker, but only when discussing subjects that really interest him. Otherwise, Jeffrey is not one for chatter. His love of knowledge and wisdom shows.

Wow, that's actually hitting a little too close to home. In fact, I had some trepidation about next clicking their "Destiny" page about me. Turns out I'm an "11", which it says here is "the most highly charged destiny number" of them all (say it like Jim Morrison):

Jeffrey Scott Holland has always sensed that he is different, but it was an indefinable feeling. Jeffrey is enormously sensitive and aware, especially as a child. This made Holland vulnerable to all conflicts and painful situations. For most of his upbringing, however, Jeffrey Scott Holland did not realize that other people did not possess the same sensitivity, nor did they see the same things he was seeing.

Holland compensated for his sense of separation in childhood by creating an elaborate fantasy world. He daydreamed more than other children. He had a lively imagination and even in adulthood has a hard time separating reality from fantasy.

Jeffrey Scott Holland's challenge is to bring forth his primitive, earthy strength. He needs to be grounded in order to deal with his lightning bolts. The more Jeffrey is able to call upon his inherent human strength, the greater his capacity to take advantage of his extremely sensitive awareness. Once this is accomplished, Holland's antagonist becomes his benefactor.

Jeffrey is highly emotional and dependent upon relationships. Emotionally, he goes up and down with the fortunes of his love life.

He is idealistic, impractical, and at times disorderly. Holland is often unrealistic in his expectations.

His reasons for doing things are usually born of a mixture of logic, emotion, and intuition, which can rarely be explained satisfactorily to his more rational associates.

I don't know whether to be insulted because the unflattering parts are absolutely spot-on, or to be pleased about the hyper-mystical stroking it's giving me at the same time. I think I'm just gonna try to forget about the whole thing and go lay down and listen to The Monkees some more.

Ruby Redbird Rules the Roost

2011-06-18T21:01:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Damn. Tough day at the office. I almost never say that, so when I do, you know, it was some fresh hell indeed.

Last night I, uh, overindulged somewhat with the Pinnacle Whipped Cream Vodka (It seemed so heavenly yesterday, but today, the day after, even typing its name makes me shudder.) But it was fun while it lasted, and much revelry was had as my compatriots and I really "tied a yellow ribbon round the Festivus tree with Jackie Gleason", as the well-worn adage goes.

Problem is, too much alcohol actually gives me a blood-sugar-bounce energy boost rather than a sick, hung over, sleep late the next day kinda thing. So I popped awake at 4:30am feeling ready to rock and roll. I should have fought the insomnia off (mind over matter, dontcha know) and rolled over back to sleep, because I crashed early today. The rainy gloomy morning weather didn't help, and neither did my car's driver-side door suddenly refusing to close - which means ALL DAY TODAY I've had to drive around holding onto the door with one hand to keep it from swinging out and smashing into stuff. Add to this a whole host of communication cock-ups that have been pluckin' on my last nerve string all day. It's the usual bit with Flakes and the realization that we're facing a dying nation like in the movie Idiocracy: people not saying what they mean, people not meaning what they say, people filing reports with non-sequitur information I didn't ask for, people just plain not understanding what I'm saying when I'm speaking the plainest English I am capable of mustering. Lay off the NutraBook and FaceSweet, y'all.

So when I finally trudge home to recline on the ol' JSH plantation, it's nice to have three bottles of Shiner Ruby Redbird waiting on me in the ol' JSH icebox. It's a new taste treat I've discovered this week, grabbed primarily on a whim. It's a limited edition seasonal beer brewed with grapefruit and ginger. Don't let that put you off - it's very subtle, and if I hadn't uttered the words "grapefruit and ginger" I think you'd dig it and just marvel at the notes that you can't quite put your finger on.

"The Perfect Summer Beer" is Ruby Redbird's tagline, and it ain't lyin'. I'm enjoying lounging around in the grass right now as I make some noise with the keys and touchpad (We have all kinds of crazy insectoid wildlife out here, from soldier beetles to weird bat-moths to dirty ladybugs, but fortunately one thing we don't have is chiggers.)

And now I'm going to finish my third one and head to the studio out back and throw some paint at some canvases. Maybe I can get something of value created before this day's a total dud. With the power of the Redbird coursing through my veins, I feel confident good things are about to happen.

Crack the Whip

2011-06-17T22:44:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

It's just one of those days where I feel like sitting around watching Luis Bunuel movies and drinking whipped cream flavored vodka. Just is.

I don't normally go in for the "flavored vodka" routine. All those multiplicities of variety that Absolut offers, for example, leaves me cold. But Absolut is pricey, and I got this Pinnacle on sale; I expected very little of Pinnacle and so was pleasantly surprised when I found it perfectly palatable as is, and not as a mere mixer. I've been sipping shots of it all day strictly on its own merits. I know should probably cook up some sort of crazy Ohio Riverwater Fizz-like concoction with it for my cocktail blog, but for now I'm content drinking it straight, no junk in it.

Pinnacle comes from the fine folks at White Rock Distilleries, who also brought the world exciting products like Sweet Carolina (a southern sweet tea flavored vodka) and Cherry Jack rum. Pinnacle's actually a relatively high-end item, quadruple distilled from French wheat from the Brie region and French spring water. á votre santé!

But now, the JSH Plantation Bunuel Film Festival is over, and it's time to set about watching The Ninth Configuration over and over for the remains of the night. I bid you adieu, my lovelies, and remember: if you're out tonight, on your bike, wear white. Evening, all.

Do It Now

2011-06-16T15:45:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

It's been over 20 years since mine eyes have beheld that old RE:Search "Industrial Culture" book, but a bit from its Boyd Rice interview has stuck in my craw ever since. I'm paraphrasing from memory here, of course, but he said in a nutshell that his basic philosophy was "Do it now". "Write a song, propose to a girl, whatever - do it NOW."

Many philosophers have expressed similar sentiments over the years, of course, including myself. But the old "Law of Attraction" positive-thinking bit has been proven scientifically, to my satisfaction at least, of being valid. Not that any thinkers of new thoughts ever cared about getting Big Science's validation, anyhoo.

This is not to be interpreted as a call for impulsive, thoughtless, reckless lunacy, of course; but if after giving any particular matter due thought, you still find yourself frozen in indecision and immobility, then get off the pot and pick a di-rection. And if there's no time to think, then just ACT. Don't drive yourself bonkers with this "Lady or the Tiger" junk, either door you pick you're gonna die in the end anyway. Yes you are.

(And if you keep yourself sharp and aware, chances are you won't be in any indecision in the first place - you'll immediately respond as if by reflexes with the best course of action. Don't think you're quite that sharp? Well, get sharp, Bucko. 'Cause later is now.)

You might tell yourself that you're living on Creeps Time like them Victorian Squares fellers; that you really are gonna do all the things you said you were gonna do someday. But Creeps Time isn't some high-falutin' quantum excuse to do nothing - it's the temporal indulgence of talking something to death that may not actually come to fruition for another decade. (Call it "pre-promotion.") With it comes the implication that while you're doing that, you're also doing stuff RIGHT NOW that you were talking about a decade AGO. Unfortunately, for most people "Someday" is, like my good friend and billiards partner Roy Miller says, "just a code word for Never."

Right now I sense there's someone reading this who wants to do something big, something great. Maybe it's running for office. Maybe it's opening a taco stand in Irvine. Maybe it's writing a blog that blows the whistle on the peanut butter conspiracy. Maybe it's just finding the rock of your dreams to crawl under in Utah and set up housekeeping. Don't just sit there like a knob, do it NOW before the whole house of cards collapses. Because doing nothing is the worst possible thing you could do.

Make a decision, Jack. I've already made my decision. I'm here to help others make theirs.

Through the Looking Glass

2011-06-15T11:55:00.005-04:00

by J.S. Holland

"You've been looking at your life through a mirror
It's time you started seeing things a little bit clearer.
I got some things I'm trying to show you,
But you fade away, how can I get to know you?"

"I'm better off alone."

"I'd like to thank all you good people for coming to my aid."

"My, my, the clock in the sky is pounding away."

"I've led a thousand lives, it seems
There's been a lot of broken dreams;
I've never made this kind of vow
That was then, this is now."

Two-Way Communication

2011-06-14T22:57:00.013-04:00

by J.S. Holland

People are scared to talk on the phone these days. I know this because I'm always learning too late of important time-sensitive messages and changes of plans from people who invariably say, "Well, I did email you about it. I hate talking on the phone."

Guess what, my Smartphone-spoiled chums? I don't live on the internet. I check my email every day, but if I'm supposed to meet you at Firpo's Pizza at 6 and you crap out at 5:30, you have to call me. Or even text me, for Pete's sake. I welcome text messages, for those of you afraid to speak to a live human.

I find that some of my most Facebook-addicted acquaintances are among the most glaring examples of people who practice telephone avoidance. Coincidence? I think not. People really are starting to prefer Facebook to actual interaction, even of the telephone sort. That frightens me.

And the really crazy part is, they'll sign away all rights to privacy on Facebook and the rest of the spy-laden internet, but they keep their phone number protected as if it's some sort of state secret. Someone I know actually said once on Twitter, "I don't want to give my phone number out here, it's too dangerous." Dangerous how? Werewolves hiding in the bushes? My phone number is 502.649.3378 and I don't care who knows it. Find me.

(Synchronicity dept.: as I type these words, Wendy Torrance on the TV just said "Our telephones don't seem to be doing so well.")

Awhile back I was monitoring a thread about a breaking news story on an internet message board. The crux of the discussion was over whether a certain business location was open on Sundays. Most went for pages on the thread shrugging their shoulders going, "gosh, if only we had a way to find out." Then a slightly smarter breed of geek said "Dude, you're on the internet. Use a search engine, dumbass." This resulted in conflicting data, however, and several pages more of the thread were taken up with bitter squabbles over how some web pages listed the business as being open on Sundays while others said it was not.

I settled the argument and chimed in to the discussion that I'd ascertained the place was in fact open. They demanded to know how. "Simple," I said, "I picked up the damn phone and called them."

"Oh. Ha ha. Cool."

It literally had not occurred to anyone to do that.

Wake up, people. You hold in your hand a tiny device that is capable of contacting almost anyone in the United States without long-distance charges (assuming you have a sensible flat-fee full-coverage calling plan, as I do) via a space satellite network. USE IT!

(The inevitable "having said that": I'm actually going to be ditching my land line (pictured above) very soon and will be working toward jettisoning my cellphone (pictured at top) in the next year or so. You wanna get ahold of me then, you'll have to call my secretary or personal assistant. I'll be on the high seas, gone fishin'.)

Cumberland's Wonderland

2011-06-13T15:13:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

My newest favorite restaurant in L-ville is one of my oldest favorites all over again. When I first transferred to this burg back in 2004, Cumberland Brews in the heart of Highlands hipsterdom was one of the first places I regularly made the scene. But with all the eatin' and drankin' that's come and gone down the pike since then, my old buddy Cumberland kinda got lost in the shuffle play; soon I became obsessively enamored of O'Shea's Irish Pub, then Spinelli's, then The Patron, then Mojito Tapas, then Seviche, then Havana Rumba, and Ernesto's and The Blind Pig, and well, a man can only support so many fine eat-houses on the salary of an artist/writer/ne'er-do-well.

Now all things old are new again, and I'm back in the saddle again at Cumberland Brews, picking up on some nice things I've missed. One of my recent fixations this year has been on fermentation, though you haven't heard me speak much of it - a project to home-ferment my own Mead, medieval-style, in a mason jar in my kitchen resulted in a rather foul-tasting substance. So, I may just content myself to sup the miraculous Mead offered here at CB's - it's 4.50 for a dinky half pint as opposed to a pint, and Happy Hour does not apply to it. So why get it? Because it's 670% awesome, and fermented from local honey. (Also, it's 7.0 ABV, as opposed to most CB offerings which are 5-ish.)

Oh yeah, I hear they serve food here too. My bison burger was good.

Now back to the booze: then I switched to their Belgian style Moonbow Wit, which had an extremely powerfully hoppy yet non-bitter whang to it. How did they do that? It's amazing. To say that it's like drinking Jasmine tea or flower-oil will put you off and give you the wrong impression, but remember, hops are flowers, and I found this to be the first super-hoppy brew I've ever quaffed that matches perfectly the delicate and mysterious Austrian nose-feel of Stammheimer Hopfenschnupf, that sniffy delight that's defined my decade even though I only discovered it four years ago.

(And permit me to strike a caddish tone for just a sentence, but it must be said, gentlemen, that the ladies serving the burgers and brewskis are each more beautiful than the other.)

Havana Affair

2011-06-11T15:58:00.005-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I didn't go into Macy's intending to walk out with an $80 bottle of cologne, but sometimes fate arranges these things. I was on a quest for a Stetson hat that came up fruitless, actually. But on my meandering way wandering out I stopped at the cologne counter to see if they had any Fahrenheit 32 (Henri Bendel aside, my scent of choice). I got hornswoggled into trying a buncha new stuff by a smooth-talkin' gal who was actually not in the employ of Macy's but travels from venue to venue setting up as a guest vendor, hyping various specialty lines of product.

I was actually getting sucked in to her sales pitch (no one can sell men's products to a man better than a woman) on a couple of different products like Burberry and Thierry Mugler A*Men, when she just happened to mention that she was also workin' a new ultra-limited edition A*Men line that smelled like cigars. Yes, cigars.

I was sold on it before she even sprayed the tester-bottle onto the paper card.

A*Men Havane, it's called, and it's part of this once-a-year series of small-batch smellums they put out for men (coffee and malt have been past themes). I can see why they do 'em in limited fancy runs - most people either avoid the smell of tobacco, or they smell like tobacco already. But this cologne has a musky vanilla undercurrent that the rich tobacco-leaf scent lays stretched out on, like a nubile Goth girl sprawled across a gravestone in some hipster photographer's portfolio. That is to say, I like it.

I confess I initially doubted the saleslady's forthrightness about the exclusity of the stuff, and ran down to Sephora real quick to see if they offered it cheaper and in a smaller bottle. Asked two different people there and neither had even heard of the stuff. So I immediately shlepped back to Macy's and plunked down the card. Sold American. Er, Cuban.

Closing Walls and Ticking Clocks

2011-06-08T00:13:00.007-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Sitting here sipping iced tea, enjoying my pipe on the veranda, and listening to Coldplay's "Clocks", I am reminded once again that sometimes things happen for a reason.

The other day, after having left a certain store that will not be named, in a shopping mall that will - Oxmoor - I sat on a bench to relax and watch the fountain for a bit. But soon I became aware that some chubby employee from said store had followed me, and was standing watching me with his cellphone extended. Either the man has a very peculiar way of texting, or he was taking my photograph. The hell?! But why? Did he think I was a shoplifter? Did he think I was an enemy agent working for Interzone, Inc. trying to steal the MacGuffin? Or maybe he just thought I was cute.

I stood up and made eye contact with him as I walked towards him and he got this panicked "uh oh, I'm busted" look on his face. Instead of confronting him, I decided to walk past him down another mall corridor. But I checked out the glass store reflections in my peripheral vision, and I'll be damned if spyboy wasn't still following me! So I ducked into the Oxmoor Smoke Shoppe, which is always a good idea anyway, even if one isn't being shadowed by some creepy geek in a blue shirt. Again with the peripheral vision, I saw fatboy pause outside the store, momentarily indecisive about what to do now. He continued walking on, and I turned my attention to Mr. Tucker's impressive array of apothecary jars filled with high-end high-octane fancy tobacco blends.

I lifted several lids and sniffed the heady delights of real pipeshag worthy of sailors of the seven seas, from the Gulf of Mexico to Aldebaran. I felt a genuine flash of past-life memory standing there, whiffs of the ocean, blood, unpasteurized milk, bay rum, ambergris, gunpowder, and some pilgrim guy who smelled like a goat. I don't mean that this is what the tobacco actually smelled like; I'm just sayin'.

I chose a blend called "Holy Smoke", so named because the formula was created for the shop many years ago by a religious gentleman from the local Seminary. It contains four different kinds of Virginia, just a little burley, and a little Cavendish. And, I reckon, some special kind of casing whose flavor cannot be adequately described in three dimensional communication. Ask a Monk.

By the time I've typed this far into the blog entry, I'm now listening to Men Without Hats sing "Lose my Way" which is rather appropriate because lost is a good place to be right now and a good place to be going; either lost in the stars like Kurt Weill or lost like LOST. And, of course, lost in the earthy delights of the Holy Smoke.

Holy Smoke is moist and coarsely cut, and somehow manages to be powerfully aromatic without being nauseting. Its room note is virtually identical to what you get when you sniff the bag, which came as a nice surprise. Its grey porous sweetness (that's my synesthesia kicking in) also has a salty, briny component that really snaps me to attention and makes me pause and go ".....oh!" like someone having a satori. Which, in fact, I am.

It set me back six-something for a hefty 2 oz. bag (I think he actually loaded me up with a lot more than that), and I love it so much that I could see cellaring the stuff by the jarful myself. I also plan on packing it along in great quantities when I pack up the plantation and go on the road later this summer, hopefully two steps ahead of all stalkers. But hey, what the heck; everything that's supposed to happen sooner or later does.

"If you smell the smoke, you don't need to be told what you've got to do..." - Devo, "Here To Go".

Back to the Basics

2011-06-07T15:32:00.002-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

It's been a while, so let me reacquaint you with my boxing/cigar smoking style. Luckily for me, this Transylvanian abroad, found a couple, Emily Sauter and Ryland Ianelli, who (along with Ryland's roomie, Bryan Stone), had me over at their place here in White River Junction, Vermont to watch the rematch between Bernard Hopkins and Jean Pascal (they had it downloaded and saved).

What a fight to get back in the boxing groove, sports fans. Pascal had somewhat controversially won by decision their first go, and Hopkins, at age 46, was back to prove himself (and take the record away from Foreman for the oldest title winning champ).

Usually when folks ask me who I am pulling for in a boxing match, my response is, "whoever fights the best fight." There is a chink in my scientifically neutral perspective, and that usually comes into play with older fighters. I can't help but feel sentimental if it's a boxer's last shot at glory. I always figure the younger guys can come back from a defeat. There was no way to spectate this fight, for me, without wanting to cheer on Hopkins.

Despite seeming to lag early on, he came back, dominated the fight, and from a panel of judges they seemed to have searched world over for neutrality due to the aforementioned controversy, he took back the title from Pascal. Exciting fight, maybe even in my top ten, at least top twenty, that have happened in my viewing lifetime.

We drank Narragansset lager; it's the "official beer of the clam," dontcha know (learning the ins and outs of regional northeastern beers, stay tuned for more on that later), and smoked Don Tomas cigars. It was a good Sunday.

The E-Decline of Western Civilization

2011-06-07T00:00:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Last month, after continuing to rail against the inhuman advent of the "electronic cigarette", I put my money where my mouth is and went out and bought one in order to prove to myself how stupid they are, then tossed the goofy plastic toy in the trash. But I don't think I'll be shelling out the cash for these examples of humanity's deeper downward spiral - an E-Pipe and a truly stupid-looking E-Cigar - if for no other reason than they're ridiculously expensive and they look rather crudely manufactured.

These foul items were photographed from a vendor whose identity I'll not reveal. But I will say that I told the young man behind the counter that I was a writer and would love to take pictures for an article about these items. He said "heck yeah" and proceeded to give me the grand tour of all the wares.

But suddenly, a foreign gentleman ran up to us shouting "no pictures! no pictures! you should ask permission!"

"I did ask permission," I said.

"Who?"

"Your man here." I pointed to the kid at the cash register.

"He cannot say. I am the owner. Only I can say."

I tried to explain to him that I was going to feature his business in an article for a major local website, and that it would be huge publicity and a free advertisement for him. His response was: "I don't want that."

Allllllllllllrighty then. I politely excused myself and moseyed on my way, but have been wondering all day just what sort of business fears publicity.

The Hijacking of Greenness

2011-06-06T17:38:00.009-04:00

by J.S. Holland

When I was a kid, see, back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the so-called "Green Revolution" meant that we wanted, quite obviously, to get rid of pollution and the evil individuals who control and pollute our food supply. Now, that's not rocket science, is it?

Back then, it was mostly the liberals who wanted to stop the polluters, obviously, and it was mostly the conversatives who wanted to let them keep on smoggin'. Somewhere along the way, everything changed and it's all topsy turvy. Nowadays, the people who are telling me what not to eat, what not to buy, what not to drive, what not to believe, what not to think, are the liberals.

Now, instead of being told that we need to fight the polluting megacorporations who are destroying the Earth, the burden of greenness is now being dumped on the citizens. Suddenly the focus is not on the smokestacks at Rubbertown, it's on how YOU AND ME are supposed to work harder to "reduce our carbon footprint." Suddenly the focus is not on the lies, coverups, incompetence and malfeasance surrounding environmental disasters like Fukushima, it's all about how YOU AND ME are supposed to work harder to recycle our trash.

Instead of bitching at me because I don't recycle my milk jugs, how about bitching at the companies who continue to create the damn plastic in the first place? And the politicians who allow it to go on? And the businesses who act as enablers for it all?

Look at this idiotic sheet of "green stamps" (heh) from the U.S. Post Office (who are, you know, just such a green organization) that suggest some green "helpful" hints, the kind that might come from Heloise if she was suffering lead poisoning.

"Reuse bags." Problem is, when I reuse an old grocery bag or bring my own cloth bag, the plastic bag that I didn't use IS STILL THERE. And it will end up in the environment sooner or later regardless. The solution to the problem is not to burden me with the duty of being bag-conscious, the solution is to eliminate the bags from being manufactured in the first place.

"Choose to Walk." Uh huh. "Ride a Bike." Aren't these the same thing, since the meaning behind them is "don't use cars as much"? Believe me, I love to ride my bike, but it's not a realistic mode of transport to go from Anchorage to Downtown every day. It just isn't. And I promise you, dear reader, I do walk - a LOT - more than you, I'd wager, and more than whoever designed these dumb stamps. But I do it because I like to walk, not because I think it's going to help the environment.

"Use Public Transportation." No. Fuck you. YOU go use public transportation. If I lived in a city that had a great bus system I might try it but I don't. I'm not standing in the hot sun waiting for the next late bus operated by an unsafe driver for the privilege of sitting next to a crazy person. Not gonna happen. And damn sure not for the sake of "being green." There are so many people on Earth now, even if we all switched to ride-sharing and bus-taking and in so doing cut automotive emissions drastically, it still would just be pissing in the ocean compared to what chemical companies spew into the environment on a daily basis. I will not listen to a lefty-hipster's spiel about "sustainable living" as long as Monsanto, DuPont, and Rubbertown are permitted to exist. (Not to mention the electromagnetic pollution field that we have been soaking in all our lives.)

"Use Efficient Light Bulbs." Aha! NOW we get to, I suspect, the real reason this whole sheet of stamps even exists - to promote these godawful CFL bulbs by presenting them side by side with other popular modern ideas of saving the planet.

And the inclusion of this light bulb scheme here furthers my conviction that "Green Living" is not only completely hijacked, it's long dead and buried somewhere in the desert.

Don't believe the hype, kids. The Earth does need saving pronto, and your health does need to be protected now more than ever, but the true solution has nothing to do with bullying citizens about their "carbon footprint". Wise up.

Ghost Brothers

2011-06-05T22:06:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Sometimes the creation of a deathless Southern Gothic play takes a lot longer than one might think. Especially if you're living on Creeps Time and you're acutely aware of the Spacetime Vortex that we are all swimming in at this very second.

Why, even my own juggernaut Cheeseburger & Fries: The Musical has been held up in Development Hell for two years now, even though it initially had an opening date booked at the Kentucky Center for the Arts and preliminary casting was already underway. And for those who saw my play Toulouse-inations and were puzzled by its lowbrow sparse set, I intended (and still do) to make Cheeseburger & Fries a true over-the-top Voraxical spectacle.

And that's exactly what caused the show's postponement. It calls for either a sophisticated rear-projection screen or a gargantuan mother of all flat-screen monitors, neither of which is available at the Kentucky Center's MeX Theatre. And my casting call for dead-on imitators of William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Dean Martin didn't bring the right people to my door. Furthermore, I was adamant that a genuine Bob Wills-style Western Swing band provide live musical accompaniment, and I was a little shocked to find that there are, so far as I know, no Bob Wills-style Western Swing bands in Kentucky.

I'm sick and tired of compromising on these things, so rather than scale down the production, I pulled it until I am able to stage it the way it was meant to be staged, and with my total control. So the project now sits on a shelf like a sleeper agent, awaiting the signal that says "green, green" to call for its activation. And it will come. All in time. Wait and see.

This is why it came as no shock to me to learn that over 11 years ago, Stephen King and John Cougar Mellencamp set out to create a play together, and it still hasn't seen the limelight of day yet. But it's almost there now. According to an article in The Canadian Press:

"John had an idea that he wanted to do a play about ghosts in a cabin and how sibling rivalries and resentments are carried down from generation to generation," King said.

He said Mellencamp told his agent he wanted a writer like Stephen King and discovered that the two had the same agent.

They got together and agreed to try to write the play, King said. "One of the reasons to do it was because I never had, and John felt the same way."

King said he outlined a story incorporating live brothers and dead brothers.

"John wanted it to be in the South because he's a big admirer of Tennessee Williams. I was fine with that because I'd been reading a lot of William Faulkner, and those voices were in my head."

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this production. King and Cougar? Southern Gothic? Could be a pip. Could. be. a. pip. King says the show is deliberately designed for "a small stage, a small cast and small tech requirements, sort of the anti-Spider-man." Thank heaven for that. Between the bloated excesses of the unlucky Spider-man Broadway show and the nauseating "I insult everybody, aren't I clever?" attention-whore antics of Trey Parker's Book of Mormon, professional theatre is really taking a suicidal swan dive these days. That this childish garbage is considered a shoo-in to win multiple Tony awards while genuises like Judy Kaye have yet to win one, simply sickens me.

Instead of opening in NYC, London or L.A., the King-Mellencamp production of The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County will open in my old hometown (I have several hometowns) of Atlanta. I like that a lot. The show was originally scheduled to make its world premiere at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre in 2009, but ended up being postponed over some serious and bitter disagreements with the director. (Hired directors are notorious for trying to hijack shows from producers.) It's now scheduled to open at the Alliance in April 2012, just in time for the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Before the Kiss, A Redcap

2011-06-04T22:14:00.007-04:00

by J.S. Holland

You'd think I would have learned my lesson after the gross-out smoke that was Prince Albert, but no. I had to make one more stab into low-budget tobaccos with Red Cap Blend No.7 - partially because I was suckered in by the old-timey graphics depicting a jockey and racehorse, but mainly because it cost only $1.50 and I just had to see what the heck that was about.

Now I know: it tastes like someone took ordinary mundane cigarette tobacco and sprayed a little perfume on it. There's supposed to be sugar-cased Cavendish in the mix here, but I sure don't taste it. You get a sweet bouquet when you open the pouch, but it doesn't translate to the taste. Ugh. Carry me back to old Carter Hall, please.

I'm hard-pressed to choose which is more repugnant - this, or Prince Albert. They're equally distasteful, but at least Red Cap is super cheap. Since this is "Blend No.7", perhaps Red Cap offers other varieties that might be better? Apparently not - as far as I can tell, they only manufacture the plain "Regular" and the aromatic "Blend No.7". If there once were others, they are no longer extant.

Okay, I really, really mean it this time - no more cheapo lower-shelf junk. From here the only way out is up.

Ypres 1917 Hangoverture

2011-06-02T22:35:00.009-04:00

by J.S. Holland

"Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
Oh, but that couldn't happen again;
We taught them a lesson in 1918
and they've hardly bothered us since then!"

- - Tom Lehrer, 1966

You never know what yer gonna get when you buy some unknown-brand Lager. A lightweight liquid like Budweiser, on one end of the spectrum, is actually classified as a Lager, while dark mucilage-gluey rich ambery treats like this here Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest have absolutely nothing in common with the King of Beers. Say guten tag to the Kaiser of Beers.

It's very coarse, very thick, very malty. Several gentlemen on Ratebeer say it's extremely sweet, but sweet isn't exactly the word I'd use to describe it. There's a bitterness to it, but a bready bitterness, not hoppy.

This sort of brew isn't often my cup of tea - if it were just a shade darker it would qualify as a Stout - but on the particular evening I imbibed it, Der Kaiser provided the perfect companion to an early evening reclining on the veranda doing some writing on another novel (tentatively titled "The Bartender") and enjoying the summer breeze. It's a sipper though, not a slugger. Approach its levee at your peril, like the Red Baron flying into Snoopy's airspace.

I think it's pretty weird to have a product glorifying Kaiser Wilhelm (I know, I know, it doesn't specify Wilhelm, and I'm not certain that's Wilhelm pictured on the bottle, but you know and I know that 99.9% of the population's frame of reference for the word "Kaiser" is with Wilhelm II and World War I). Many people think of him as a sort of generic and relatively non-descript sort of despot - especially since he was such a bumbling failure at international politics - but in fact, Wilhelm II was every bit the irrational psychopathic monster that Hitler was.

He literally believed that England was possessed by the Biblical Anti-Christ, and must be destroyed to be liberated. And in 1919 he pronounced that Jews were a "nuisance that humanity must get rid of some way or other. I believe the best would be gas." Clearly the young Adolf Hitler was listening. And years later, Wilhelm even took credit for having laid the groundwork for Hitler's empire. According to Wikipedia:

Wilhelm stayed in regular contact with Hitler through General von Dommes, who represented the family in Germany. Wilhelm greatly admired the success which Hitler was able to achieve in the opening months of the Second World War, and personally sent a congratulatory telegram on the fall of Paris stating "Congratulations, you have won using my troops."

But let us try to forget the historical abominations wrought by aberrated sociopaths like Kaiser Wilhelm and his ilk, at least long enough to enjoy this fine brew in our own private biergarten. It's only $6 a pint,and it occurs to me only this minute that I should have drunk it from my Austrian stein.

Prince and the Revulsion

2011-06-01T19:15:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Dammit, my luck at the leisure-class lottery is about as wretched as Tom Regan's luck at the racetrack in Miller's Crossing. After a string of successful pipeshag purchases, I'm suddenly rolling a gutterball I can't seem to get out of. My selection of Middleton's Cherry Blend was a major misstep, and last week the bottle let me down when I made a reach into randomity for St. Germain's sickeningly-sweet Chardonnay-ish swill, and at the price of a $40 bill.

So, heading once more into the breach, dear friends, I thought I'd go a guaranteed opposite direction from all that sweety-fruity-loopy stuff and grab something simple and solid and meaty and manly. The archetypal titular king of all tobacco, the mighty Prince Albert, seemed like the way to go. I couldn't lose, right?

Wrong 'em boyo.

Soon as I freed the flakes from their triple-protection of cellophane wrap, cardboard box, and foil pouch, I was struck by two things:

Number one, the stuff was dry as a funeral drum, just like Middleton Cherry. Doesn't anyone keep track of how long these products sit on a shelf at Cox's? Like M.C., the texture was somewhere between hamster-cage wood chips and the groat-cluster granola they keep in big alien test tubes at the Whole Foods.

And number two, soon as the foil was peeled to reveal, I was gobsmacked with an overwhelming scent of chocolate. Chocolate. Really. But, kind of moldy chocolate, like an off-brand hollow Easter Bunny at the dollar store. And the taste was, honestly, the nastiest, rankest compost it has ever been my misfortune to inhale. It tasted like straight-up poor people's cigarettes (like Capitol, or GT One, or those foul Floridian 305's) and left a nicotinous coating on my tongue that makes me wanna toss my bizcochos even now, days later, thinking back to the trauma.

I think this ends my swim in the shallow end of the pipe pool, the end that faces the Rexall. Clearly, I got lucky and managed to hit the high points of drugstore tobaccos early on; either that I'm just an lout-savant who managed to remote-view the tastes of these products aforehand with my idiot's intution. From here, I think the direction is forward into the fancy-ass candy-pants blends that can only be had from snooty purveyors of finer tobaccos.

Fortunately, I only bought a small pack and not a whole honkin' huge can; it would be a bummer to throw a whole can into the skip as I am going to do with this nasty package. On the other hand, it would have been so cash to be able to actually say to the clerk, "do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

Moe's Backroom

2011-05-31T01:46:00.008-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I keep seeing this Tap Room No.21 stuff at the supermarket, and finally succumbed to the curiosity. Most of that curiosity was incited by their packaging that celebrates the end of prohibition, aka "the Noble Experiment". According to their website:

"A tribute to “The Noble Experiment”, Tap Room No. 21 embodies an American spirit of perseverance. During the heyday of the Roaring Twenties, corruption was rampant, lawbreakers became icons and speakeasies replaced saloons. As an ode to the repeal of Prohibition, our best kept secret and most cherished contraband is available for you to enjoy among your crew of notorious bootleggers."

Well, actually, not much has changed since then, so let's not start sinking each other's battleships quite yet, gentlemen. Even as we speak, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for all nations on Earth to take draconian anti-alcohol measures. Today, by coincidence, happens to be "World No-Tobacco Day", a sophomoric celebration of smoking bans, also engineered by the WHO. And yet, this same organization is totally whitewashing the dangers of Fukushima radioactive fallout - to the extent that even the mainstream media is calling bullshit on them.

If this were the Wild West, people like this would have been hung long ago.

So yeah, anyway, therefore, it does my heart proud to see a fledgling young beer that openly acknowledges that at least during this time in history, the good guys were actually the bad guys, and the bad guys were actually the good guys. Black is white, up is down, through the drinking glass.

And it's a damn fine brew. Hoppier than I would have expected, which is a very pleasant bonus, though not nearly so much as Schlafly Dry-Hopped APA (another common find in higher-end supermarkets lately.) All in all it's a complex taste but disarmingly subtle at first. The "ohhh yeah" hits you a full 5 seconds after you've already swallowed it.

They have several varieties but I chose their pale ale. Creature of habit that I am, I will probably stick to their pale ale and not try their other offerings anytime soon. This stuff is tasty and I tend to stick with a winner. Sure, it's a mass-produced corporate brew trying to pass itself off as a "craft" beer, but that's life in this here dwindling spiral of a dying civilization. As Wanda Jackson says, "go to the store, let's buy some more."

When We Were Spud Crazy

2011-05-30T13:21:00.006-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

Like the last blacksmith standing, I still engage in producing paper products. But I'm not afraid of computers. You're reading this, ain't ya? But when people say the book is dead, that's simply the moment a form starts to come back.

Speaking of returns from the grave, while I spent plenty of time hyping the original art exhibition in congress with the release of the thirty page excerpt of the graphic novel in progress, Spud Crazy, in collaboration with author Nick Tosches, I never came back around to file a report on how it all went down. Part of that lapse was due to the fact that I was kindly waiting for Colonel Phillip Jones to get it up on the web shop of the Institute's website before we all get old. But then I figured I have copies that I am selling, so I just made a page for it over on my own virtual plantation.

Look up yonder, party people. Gaze upon the front of the Institute 193, located at 193 South Limestone.

Two views from opposite ends of the space, the artwork was all single file, forming an L shape. Without intent, the 30 pages fit perfectly in the space. If I had done one more, the approach wouldn't have worked.

That's Sara O'Keefe with the beverage, with the headcoat floating behind her on the head of her husband, Trevor Tremaine. Lexington, KY music scene power couple of Hair Police and Resonant Hole fame (for starters). A couple of some of my most favorite folks.

Phillip chose to install the entire essay by Bob Levin from the book on the wall in vinyl. I had a quiet moment early on during the opening reception in which I felt pretty emotional reading Bob's fine words on the subject of yours unruly. But being my own self critic, the old head didn't get too big; the flipside of that goodly feeling was me looking with a cold eye at all the pages on the wall and muttering to myself, "Well, two or three of these panels are okay."

Sporting my birthday 45, a gift from Brian Manley, that's me standing with Hunter Carson. He was in town for the Harry Dean Stanton film festival, happened to swing by the opening, and opted to hang out with us. That was a real treat, and we became fast new buddies.

That is a sticker on the back of the envelope that contains the book from the show, with 193's head honcho's text.

The soundtrack disc by the Spud Imperials that comes with the book. I thought this might just be a novelty, but I really enjoyed the process and the end result of the music we made. As a matter of fact, I'm offering up an early draft of Robert Beatty's mixing/sequencing as a free bonus download for the masses. But to get the actual finished soundtrack, ya gotta buy the book. A variation on the Spud Imperials performed some themes from the soundtrack, with the added element of a Theremin, but, alas, no pictures of the performance.

All laid out: the book, the soundtrack, the envelope as cover.

Handsome, if I don't say so myself.

Good show, good book, good music, good times. Look at that lightning. Did I mention you can buy this directly from me?

St. Germain

2011-05-29T01:18:00.008-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I've been most interested in St. Germain liqueur ever since having a cocktail made with it.... where? I can't remember now. St. Germain is distilled from the Elderflower - only one of two Elderflower liqueurs I am aware of - and is named after... well, I don't know that either. I used to think it was named after this guy or this guy, but is probably someone less interesting, like this guy or this guy.

Recently I went into Evergreen Liquors with the intention of getting a bottle of Angel's Envy bourbon, but found myself walking out with St. Germain. When I got home and poured a shot of it, though, I knew I'd made a bad play. The stuff is heavy, cloyingly sweet like a nectar, and tastes like white wine or champagne. I can't stand white wine or champagne. So I checked St. Germain's website and their recipes mostly suggest mixing it with... white wine or champagne. Their other recipes seem to be just taking a conventional drink - like a Mojito or a Gin & Tonic - and adding just a touch of St. G. That sounds to me like a waste of both good rum/gin and the St. G itself.

Their site, of course, describes their peculiar product a bit more fancily:

"Neither passionfruit nor pear, grapefruit nor lemon, the sublime taste of St-Germain hints at each of these and yet none of them exactly. It is a flavor as subtle and delicate as it is captivating. A little like asking a hummingbird to describe the flavor of its favorite nectar. Très curieux indeed, n'est-ce pas?"

At least we agree on the bit about nectar.

Finally I hit upon an elegant solution - mixing it with tea. When this bottle's gone, though, I doubt I'll invest in another. I will save the bottle, in all its Pope-hat-lookin' glory, and think fondly of this elixir... while I sip something else.

Not Very Cherry

2011-05-28T00:21:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

After a long series of positive tobacco reviews, I've finally hit one that doesn't do it for me: Middleton's Cherry Blend. Though Mr. Middleton scored a big hit on the plantation with Carter Hall, my experience with this stuff is a piece of puzzling evidence.

First thing is, it doesn't smell or taste like cherry. At all. And that's fine, because frankly, the idea of cherry flavored tobacco doesn't really tickle my tastebuds anyway. I only chose this pack because I appreciate the mythic resonance of its old-timer status, and largely on the good reputation of the aforementioned Carter Hall. But it does smell/taste like something, only I can't figure out what. It's more like apple than cherry to my olfactory, but it's more complex than that. There's a good room note, but the stuff is probably more enjoyable to innocent bystanders than it is to the guy actually smoking it.

Secondly, I wonder if my particular pack is just dried out from having sat too long on the shelf at Cox's (I did, in fact, get this pack from a different, less popular, Cox's than my usual one). The contents of the pouch are dry as a tinderbox, and there's a weird texture to it, like it's a mixture of old dessicated tree bark, stems and twigs! It's like smoking mueslix cereal, or wood chips from your hamster cage.

I do get a bit of the same raw, smoky, true-grit feel from M.C. as I do from Half & Half, but whereas H&H's anise-cased kindling makes me want to hitch a ride on a railroad car down to the confluence of the rivers and hobo like it's 1986, Middleton Cherry just makes me want to hork.

As is customary, I consulted the good panel of my fellow louts over at Tobacco Reviews. Several report exactly the same experience as me, especially as regards the dried-out crunchy nature of the product, and two different people suggest it would make a better mulch than a pipe tobacco. Yet others swear it's the greatest smoke they've ever had, delicious cherry flavor, and moist as a bundt cake in the morning dew.

I dunno. I don't even think I can make it through this pack. You want the rest?

The Future of Commerce Starts Today

2011-05-27T01:04:00.005-04:00

by J.S. Holland

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The more Google assures us that their motto is "Don't Be Evil", the more obvious it is that is exactly what they have become. Three months ago, Google agreed to settle FTC charges that it "used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers" when it launched the Orwellian disaster known as Google Buzz. And they're still pissing off authors and publishers around the world with their unprecedented Google Books project whose mission was to scan and place online every book in existence (including mine) without the permission of any of the rightful owners.

And we aren't just talking about wild-eyed conspiracy crackpots or tinfoil-hat loonies here. Ursula K. LeGuin resigned from the Authors Guild over their kowtowing to Google. The American Society of Journals and Authors has warned that we must "Stop the Google-ization of copyright law" before it's too late.

Now comes the latest volley in Google's technocratic mission to digitally zombify everything in sight: the Google Wallet, in which Google invites you to let them handle your money for you. (Oh, sure, right, I trust Google implicitly, don't you?) It's been in the work since at least 2005, and now, like a rogue comet, it's finally here, heralded on their website ("The future of commerce starts today!") in rather pompous and apocalyptic terms:

In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times — from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards.

Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.

And what might that be? "Google Wallet is an Android app that makes your phone your wallet. It stores virtual versions of your existing plastic cards on your phone. Simply tap your phone to pay and redeem offers using near field communication, or NFC." Hmmmmm. "Tap" your phone? Oh yes, they're assuming you have a smartphone. Of course.

"Eventually your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys will be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet." Uh.... no, no they won't. Because I won't be having a Google Wallet, nor will I be having a smartphone.

In fact, within the next two years I plan to phase out even owning a cellphone of any kind at all.

Live To Win

2011-05-26T11:42:00.007-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Several years ago I knew a painter who was having moderate success, selling an occasional painting here and there. But she frequently got discouraged, and often voiced despair about lack of recognition. Sometimes her gloom was so pronounced that she would think about splitting from the art game entirely.

One day while perusing her website, I found a bit about how she had won some sort of very prestigious national arts award, and posed for a photo-op in Washington, DC with the Governor of Kentucky and some other honchos. But it was hidden, deep in the labyrinth of her site, tucked away on some bottom corner of some remote page that no one was likely to ever see except by accident.

I called her up immediately. "Hey!" I said, "that's pretty damn important! Most artists, including me, would give their eyeteeth for such an honor! You need to have that up on your index page, front and center, and make sure the whole world knows about this!" She replied that she thought it was "too much like bragging" to do that, and that she didn't think artists should crow about their accomplishments. I haven't talked to her much since then, and her website hasn't been updated in years. For all I know she has indeed given up on art rather than engage in self-promotion.

I know another artist who does some fantastic work - I own a couple pieces of it myself - but he has always been very secretive and reluctant to show his work or to even talk about it. He comes from an old-school punk-rock background, and like clockwork, every time a grand opportunity falls at his doorstep, he deliberately shoots himself in the foot by minimizing its impact as much as possible. The few times he's ever sent out a press release for anything, it's been because he was instructed to by a venue - and even then, his press release amounts to "Hey guys, I feel like such a sell-out for even saying this, but for some reason the such-and-such gallery invited me to hang my paintings in the lobby of a fucking corporate skyscraper. I know you wouldn't be caught dead at a place like this, so I won't be offended if you don't show up for the opening. I don't even want to do this."

Remind me never to hire this guy for my PR staff.

And yet, if you ask him why he isn't an art star today, he says, "I have no chance, man, the system is stacked against me." Riiiiight.

Then again, perhaps people like this are hesitant to be vocal about their achievements, because they've learned from experience that when it comes to creative pursuits, the pathway is littered with negative people who love to attack anyone who shows any signs of rising above the herd. I'm not sure which field has the worst haters - artists, musicians, or theatre people. I've encountered some of the most messed-up minds on the planet in all three groups; endlessly sniping, gossiping, down-talking each other - especially the ones who are winning, and doubly so for the ones who aren't afraid to talk about it. Fortunately, the negativists are in the minority in each group - but though their numbers are few, their extremely vocal and bullying nature makes it sometimes seem like they are the status quo. Far be it from me to quote Richard Nixon, but there really is a "silent majority."

Gene Simmons gets a lot of flak for being an egomaniac. You can easily find online whiners who complain that he shouldn't talk so much about the things he does. Still others even go so far to say that he shouldn't even be doing the things he does. As if he should just do nothing because some slacker on the internet thinks it's "not cool" to have your own clothing line and your own perfume line and your own TV show and your own coffee company and to get to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. I'd much rather be like Gene Simmons than be like his online detractors and haters, broadcasting live from mommy's basement.

For some reason, most media sources maintain that stories of people going outside and doing things, building things, having achievements, and winning isn't news. But if some crackhead in Pocatello runs over someone in a truck and then shoots himself after a police chase, for some reason, we're told that this is very important breaking news that needs to be amplified to every corner of the globe. And yet I have absolutely no use for such information. I have no desire to read about the failed lives of others, and if you do, check yourself, because there might be something wrong with you.

I want to hear about people's successes. I want people to write them down, blog them, tweet them, shout them from the highest rooftop. I am genuinely interested in hearing about your wins. Are you working on a new project? Don't just sit there like a knob, Write it up. File a report. Talk about it. Send out press releases every time you sit on the toilet or eat a piece of toast. You may feel foolish and self-indulgent at first, but get through that and come out the other side - because this IS how things get done, and there IS a certain percentage of people who DO want to hear about it. Find them. Make friends with them. Help them amplify their own winnings as well.

You don't have to be an obnoxious jerk about it like Charlie Sheen. Just calmly and directly communicate your wins, and you'll soon attract kindred spirits. Just look over your shoulder.

(Even now, someone out there is reading this and laughing and saying, "Hyuk hyuk hyuk! Why is Jeffrey Scott talkin' like this? He ain't never done nothin' worth nothin'. Hey mayun, pass me that joint and go check my Facebook wall, cuz I just posted a funny YouTube video of two homeless people punching and kicking each other.")

The Death of Paper

2011-05-24T18:36:00.005-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Even though I am horrified by the new "e-book revolution", the requests I receive to get on that bandwagon have increased exponentially in the last three months. And some industry insider sources tell me that the printed-on-paper book will be DEAD by this time next year. So, I'm on the verge of announcing a new deal wherein I'll produce a series of new works in the e-book format. Watch these blogs for more details on that. I don't have to like e-books, but it's something that people seem to really want me to do, and like Gene Simmons says, "I do it all for the fans."

I still mourn the impending death of paper, and I still view with great wariness society's sudden zeal to reframe literature as imaginary pixels sent through the aether to be viewed on a yet another digital handheld gizmo. The act of having to go through all the hoops of getting an agent, getting a publisher, getting a book edited, printed, and publicized – while it sure was a pain in the butt for writers – actually served an important purpose in providing a natural "survival of the fittest" set of checks and balances.

Now that any teenager has access to better movie-making tools than Steven Spielberg had when he made Close Encounters, and now that anyone with a laptop can call themselves a recording studio, the quantity of indie-produced crap has flooded the market to the point that movies and music have become fundamentally devalued. And they get more and more devalued with each passing year.

Francis Ford Coppola once said he dreamed of a future where even little kids could have access to the same technology as he had, and that would level the playing field for everyone. Wonder if he still feels the same way now that the film industry is on its last legs? Oh, it "levels the playing field", alright – like a hydrogen bomb.

I’m already seeing a flood of tossed-off e-books that would never, never, ever have gotten a book deal in the old world, and for damn good reason. People who were typing whatever nonsense popped into their cabeza on a blog for free are suddenly refocusing that content and now calling what used to be blog posts "e-books". Some people are even reselling Wikipedia articles as e-book content, and some other people are even dumb enough to buy them. Everyone from criminals to crackheads are suddenly churning out e-books nowadays, simply because they can. And in so doing, the idea of the book itself is already becoming devalued. And it's gonna get worse.

I’m glad I got in on the tail-end of print media before it all collapsed. It was nice to be able to say “look, my book’s in stores around the world”, and to say, “look, I write a column for this magazine sold in stores around the nation.” Our kids won’t have that thrill or those goals to pursue, because there’s really nothing all that special about being "published" now. And when there's nothing special about a thing, it is by definition in a state of decay.

(Needless to say, MY forthcoming e-books will be different, of course ;) And I urge you all to flock to your nearest e-store soon and e-purchase them! They'll make great e-gifts!)

Lord of the Flies

2011-05-24T00:09:00.003-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Gene Simmons has always kept his cards surprisingly (for him) close to his chest about why Vinnie Vincent (you know, the Ankh-faced guy) was kicked out of KISS. In the booklet to the box set, he states that Vinnie did something so reprehensible it can't be repeated. And in the documentary KISS X-Treme, Gene says: "Vinnie was let go...to ponder his mistakes." Then he punctuates it with a highly significant look to the camera.

We still may never know what all of that was about, but Vinnie Vincent's latest burst of bad behavior landed him in jail this time around. The Nashville Scene is reporting that he "allegedly smacked [his wife] Diane in the face before dragging her by her hair through a pile of broken glass and throwing her to the ground repeatedly."

And that's not all: reportedly the cops discovered containers full of dead dogs on the property, and Diane Vincent explained that these were dogs that were killed by one of their more aggressive dogs. Authorities are looking into this. I can only imagine what it must smell like around the Vinnie Vincent Plantation.

Gene and Paul are probably furious about this development, and rightly so, since news stories and headlines are referring to Vincent as "KISS guitarist" instead of former KISS guitarist, and most numbskulls will repeat the story around the water cooler in the morning as: "did you hear that a member of KISS is a wife-beating psychopath who hoards dog corpses?"

Vinnie was a member of KISS from 1982 to 1984, briefly pursued a solo career, returned to KISS behind the scenes as a co-songwriter for songs like "Unholy" on the Revenge album, and then was promptly never heard from again until now. And he was living in Tennessee all this time?! Had I known I lived driving distance from Vinnie Vincent, I would have showed up on his doorstep long ago. We coulda saved Vinnie.

Paul Revere's Midnight Ride

2011-05-23T00:32:00.010-04:00

by J.S. Holland

The Paul Revere & The Raiders story begins not in 1770, but in 1958, when a rock-n-roll organist named Paul Revere Dick met aspiring rocker Mark Lindsay at a bakery (Mark worked there; Paul had come to pick up a shipment of hamburger buns). Paul fronted an instrumental band called The Downbeats, but by 1960 the name had changed to Paul Revere & The Raiders, with Mark Lindsay appointed lead vocalist and the whole combo decked out in Revolutionary War uniforms.

In 1961 they released their first single, an instrumental called "Like, Long Hair" that sounded like it was standing on the corner of Jerry Lee Lewis' "The Hawk" record and B. Bumble & The Stingers. The B-side, "Sharon" foreshadowed the British Invasion with a frantic electric skiffle sound.

In 1963 they had a hit with their version of "Louie Louie", recorded in the same summer and the same studio as the even bigger hit version by The Kingsmen. To this day scholars argue over whose version came first by a nose, but our partial panel of judges here at Transylvania Gentlemen HQ are tempted to call it a photo finish in favor of Mr. Revere.

The Raiders scored hit after hit across their golden decade of 1962-1972: "Ups And Downs", "I Had A Dream", "Good Thing", Him or Me, What's It Going to Be?", "Out On That Road", "Just Like Me" (which was a hit all over again for Pat Benatar later), "The Great Airplane Strike", "Let Me", "Louie Go Home", "Powder Blue Mercedes Queen", "Indian Reservation", "Country Wine" and "Steppin' Out" (which is a direct ancestor of the Billy Childish & Thee Headcoats sound.)

But there's two songs in particular that stand out for me in the Revere/Lindsay oeuvre. "Kicks" is my favorite Raiders song of all time, being a surprising anti-drug song in the midst of the swinging Sixties with very on-point lines like "Don't you see, no matter what you do, you'll never run away from you." Then there's "Hungry", which KISS simply has to cover - the song is pure Gene Simmons, with its lyrics that start out leading you to believe it's about sex addiction but then you realize he's talking about money.

Mark Lindsay had a couple of solo hits of his own - "Arizona" and "Silverbird" - but by the mid-70's both he and the Raiders were washed up. To this day their contribution to rock and roll history is all but ignored, and they're unfairly classified as a third-tier post-Beatlemania band. I had a girlfriend once who slagged them off as "no different from Sir Douglas Quintet", but hell, I love Sir Douglas Quintet too!

(Keyboardist Paul Revere never stopped touring the oldies-package circuit, and continues to do so to this very day, without Mark Lindsay. The less said about this version of the band, the better.)

The Three Minute Rule

2011-05-22T11:07:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

"DaByrdman33" over at B&B Cigar Club had some interesting comments about what he calls "the Three Minute Rule", a technique he learned from Jose Blanco of La Aurora Cigars.

"Jose went on to explain that most people that experience bitterness in the majority of their cigars is because they are smoking too fast. He explained that the flavor of a cigar is not in the tobacco but in the essential oils within the tobacco. By smoking at an accelerated rate, we lose the flavors of these essential oils and thereby reduce our cigar experience to that of smoking "paper".

So what is the "3 minute" rule? Jose asked me to take a few puffs of my cigar which I had been smoking at my normal pace. He said, "Make a mental note of the flavors that you get. Then, put your cigar down for 3 minutes. Take a few more puffs after 3 minutes and note the difference." Needless to say, Jose caught me at about the 2:40 mark getting ready to take a few draws and urged me to wait the full three minutes. Well, he was right. Not only was the smoke cooler, but I did pick up some notes that were present before but were more prominent this time. While it may not be a hard and fast 3 minutes for every cigar, I can certainly see where it makes a difference."

Regular readers here will know I've always espoused what I call "cigar-tasting", done in the same laid-back small-portion gradient-scale approach one takes with wine-tasting, over traditional smoking. Nice and easy. Slowly, slowly, it's too nice a job to rush. Don't feel obligated to devour a cigar as if you're some sort of idiot pothead whose feels every molecule of smoke gone astray is wasted.

That said, I think three minutes is a rather unwieldly and arbitrary rule. And as DaByrdman33 rightfully notes, it all depends greatly on the cigar. There are certain tightly-rolled stogies that require the smoker to continually breathe through the cigar just to keep the ding-dang thang lit. And on the other hand, there are some super-Maduros that are so powerful that the three-minute rule almost comes naturally; these are treasures to be savored, not something to be simply sucked down like a Lucky Strike on your ten-minute break behind the Burger Barn.

But all of us, myself included, can always benefit from an occasional reminder like this one, to slow it down once in a while. Space it out. You're not running in a marathon. Stop and smell the roses, and stop and taste the Four Roses in between.

Uncharted Territory

2011-05-21T19:08:00.020-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Some people have expressed curiosity about my seeming cognitive dissonance re: Fukushima. One minute, I'm retweeting the latest horrific news revelations about how the radiation danger is far worse than the media previously led us to believe. Then in the next instant, I'm bouncing around being ultra-cheerful and optimistic about the future - and talking about plans I'm making as if there really is gonna be a future.

Bad news first:

Everything you have been told is wrong. Despite weeks of press conferences and press releases assuring the public that there was no danger of total meltdown, TEPCO now admits that the reactors were in meltdown from day one, but they "wanted to avoid public panic."

All the misleading charts, phony statistics, and calm-you-down stories people tell, like "it's no different than an extra X-ray" are deliberately designed to placate the public. The fact is this: radioactive dust, steam, smoke, fumes, and other particulate matter have been emanating from the Fukushima nuclear reactors all this time, and continue to do so now. Intensely radioactive molten fuel and contaminated water are leaking out of the reactors even now. It's going into the ocean, the soil, the groundwater, the air, and by extension, the jet stream and the rain. And there's no sign that it's going to stop, because when it comes to a "China Syndrome", once the genie is out of the bottle that's pretty much it. It's in our food, our milk, our rain, our tap water, and our bodies, and it's not going away by itself. (Fortunately, something can be done about it, but we'll discuss that in a future post.)

When you hear some shill tell you to relax because Iodine-131 has only a half-life of 8 days, ask them if they know what a "half-life" is. Chances are, they can't actually explain the concept, and they think it means that Iodine-131 becomes harmless and/or magically disappears after 8 days. Then remind them that Iodine-131 is by far the least harmful of all the highly radioactive particles flooding into the enviroment: Curium-244 has a half-life of 18.11 years, Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years, Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 87.7 years, and Plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,563 years. Obviously, the less radioactive particles that exist on Earth, the better - and yet it's being spontaneously generated right now by this unholy molten fireball that has grown so hot that nothing can contain it and no one can approach it.

Worse still, the Japanese are using Plutonium MOX, a sort-of super-toxic speedball that is among the most dangerous substances on Earth. Once a place gets infected with this crap, you can never return to that place again, not in your lifetime, and probably not in the lifetime of the human race as we know it. There are unconfirmed rumors that Technetium-99 (half-life of 211,000 years) and Plutonium-244 (half-life of 80 million years) have also been released into the environment from Japan.

The good news:

You're still alive. Not only that, but you're intact and feeling fine and not suffering. You have plenty of good years ahead of you and there's no barriers at all keeping you from using them wisely, other than those you have put in place yourself.

As horrible as everything I just laid out is (and believe me, there's plenty more I didn't even bother going into), the human race has faced far worse. You, in fact, face far worse every time you step into a car and get on the interstate. If you told you I wanted you to get inside a projectile that was made of soft metal, plastic and glass, and send you hurtling in it at speeds of 55-75 mph, does that sound very safe to you? What if I told you that your projectile had to stay within very narrow boundaries that are only slightly bigger than the projectile itself, and that you would be surrounded by other projectiles piloted by irrational, uneducated, substance-abusing morons going even faster than you? Sounds insane, doesn't it? But you do it every day. So do I.

There comes a point when you've gleaned enough information about the Fukushima situation, that you no longer need focus on each little detail of each new grisly news revelation. I have long since reached that point, and only continue to speak on the matter occasionally for the sake of my brethren who remain unconvinced that we are at a turning point in global history here. But listen, friend, this turning point is a good thing if you want it to be so. Avoid the chaos and stay on your own path and stick to your game plan. Now more than ever.

It's important not to get overly entrenched in the bad news about the Japanese radiation - or, for that matter, anything else. For some of us, that's a hard trick to learn. After all, we want to be as well-informed about "what's really going on" as possible, don't we? We don't want to be one of the "sheeple", right? But I say to you that there are two levels of sheeple - one, there's the people who stay ignorant of the ugly truths behind the news, but two, there's the people who glimpse the truth but instead of benefiting from the wisdom, they let it ruin their life (people who spend way too much time on conspiracy-theory forums are usually among this second category.) Many lazy louts are just looking for a reason to "give up" on life, and the latest depressing headlines of doom and disaster are always grist for their mill. Others use bad news as a crutch to explain and justify their own apathy.

But every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around.

The Wooden Leg

2011-05-19T14:18:00.004-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

These are some snap shots I took with my phone while reading Wally Wood's "Cannon" in the Schulz library. Wait, did I say read (also, am I really that at ease that phone is a synonym for crappy camera)? I just absorbed it more like taking in an exhibition of paintings; it was not a literary experience. It was a visual experience, but who needs pop art when you got Wood drawing a spy adventure drawing the women naked for no simple reason other than he can? The art is in the comics.

I don't hide away from view in the shadows like some private and weird American my enthusiasm for delineating the female leg and its adornments, so I snapped the rare instances in which Wood chose to clothe the naked leg.

I imagine Wood day drunk knocking out each one of the pin-up poses in which he puts these ridiculous damsels, perhaps using a copy of Rogue or Adam for reference, and pondering how each panel was another shot of blood money, yet despite that still containing the essence of what is instantly recognizable as the artist's. Some people may not think Wallace Wood was cool, but I like him for these things others may find cause for disdain. And I wonder if people that poo-poo Wood ever had to work for a living or considered what it's like to make a living as a freelancer in a work-for-hire world that couldn't give two shits for Art.

Anyway, as usual, I'm not being a critic when it comes to comics; I'm being an enthusiast, an informal pontificator. I hide away theory in my own work. You want me to give that up to you for free?

Briar Jumper Done Jumped and Landed

2011-05-18T07:03:00.009-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

And thus begins the transmissions from White River Junction, Vermont. Center for Cartoon Studies. Toon town, they call it. D.W. Griffith, Kentuckian, filmed Way Down East here circa 1919. I win.

I have moved in to what is commonly referred to as "the red house" here, traditionally an abode filled with cartoonist folk orbiting around CCS. A good number of the parties surrounding the school/community are held here. I've been to two myself, one when I visited the place back in March which jump started this rapidograph packing briar jumper's relocation to Annexia (don't worry, I can prove I'm a cartoonist), and one last weekend the second night in the house the day of CCS graduation. You ever been to a party in which every person is a comic book artist?

This was my cocktail hour, a quiet drink along prior to that post-graduation party, in fact. When I showed this pic to JSH he quipped, "Duelling plantations." I often now sit and smoke and look at the house across the street looking back to me. Speaking of Dockery's plantations, one of the more remarkable things about being a 16 hour drive from the region of my birth is that the actual landscape is essentially the same as eastern Kentucky, just with actual mountains as opposed to hills (aka eroded plateaus).

I've already established the filling station in my room, a quiet spot to let a bottle of Kentucky whiskey rest between a vintage noir poster and a contemporary tribute to the original Dracula by Tod Browning. If you're a vampire like me, it's good to hit town and realize that a short hop across the river into New Hampshire, the local liquor store stocks a decent selection of bourbon, with prices actually cheaper than at home. Russell's Reserve was my first purchase to assist me in reacquainting myself with my style.

When I got here, I already had a package waiting for me. Geoff Grogan had mailed to the new address my contributors copies of the third issue of his and Kevin Mutch's Pood anthology, oversized and on newsprint. It made me feel like a modern day Winsor McCay, the space I invade, etc.

Last weekend I met both Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly. This weekend I'm heading with a gang of ink studs to Portland, Maine for MeCAF. Some say the world is ending, but me (besides being the self-proclaimed "cartoonist for these end times"), I'm just getting started.

The Fine Art of Comics

2011-05-16T02:00:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I think you'd better sit down, kids. I'm about to reveal a JSH trade secret here about my artwork that I've never divulged before, although I did hint broadly at it during my Small Voices exhibit of micro-miniature paintings in 2004. One of the biggest influences on my artwork - not just the miniatures, but all of it in totality - comes from when I was a little kid reading comic books and being fascinated by the glimpses of pictures hanging on the walls of the homes of cartoon characters.

As a pre-school-age child, I already had that peculiar literalist-extrapolationist kinda autism that nowadays you love me for and pay me money for. I was always the kid who observed, "hey, Dennis the Menace's living room looks totally different in this story than it did in the last one. They must have gotten a new couch and done some remodeling." And of all the little background details that I studied intently in each comic panel, none were so compelling as the pictures on the walls.

Some comic artists didn't delineate the pictures, they just put a frame on the wall and left it at that; maybe a couple of slanted lines to indicate the glare of glass, or maybe a hasty scrumble to merely suggest that something was there without actually bothering to draw it. But most comic artists seemed to take especial pleasure in placing weird pictures on the walls, drawn so tiny that it took a child's eyes to even see them properly. My eyes are old, but they're still nearsighted and I can still see very teensy-tiny things that might give an average adult the pig-eye. And thanks to the macro setting on my digital camera (I don't own a scanner, believe it or not), I've begun going back and looking for these little art-within-art Easter Eggs. I'll be doing art reviews of these specimens on an ongoing basis here as part of J.T. and I's neverending research.

For today's entry, we've here reproduced examples from Betty & Veronica #169, January 1970; and Sugar & Spike #93, December 1970. We're already sort-of cheating right off the bat here, because the painting seen at top in the Betty & Veronica comic is not a subtle background detail but the actual focus of the story. That's OK, I'm still intrigued by any representations of artwork in comics. Here, Mr. Lodge buys a $200,000 abstract painting by "Pablo Pickartzo" and Betty ruins it for him when she points out that it resembles Archie's head; henceforth he can no longer look upon it without mentally picturing Archie.

But elsewhere in the story, another painting is seen on Mr. Lodge's wall in the background - and what the heck is it? Some sort of creature with opaque eyes and enormous pointy upright ears seems to be crouching with its rear end to the viewer. I guess. Or something. Whatever it is, it's most assuredly art!

The other two, from Sugar & Spike (seen above) are prime cuts of our meat, now. One depicts a woman with such a hourglass wasp-waist figure that it seems to suggest she's wearing a corset. This, along with her enormous bouffant-hair, leads me to believe she's from the 1800s, or specifically the Victorian era. The other image, well, I don't know what quite to make of it, but who can say it isn't beautiful? A mustachioed man with giant fried-egg Svengali eyes and a Dutch-looking coat that has big collar flaps and even bigger buttons. It's enigmatic, it's engaging, it's art! If I had a large print of that, suitable for framing, I'd have it on my wall by half past ten.

Small Voices

2011-05-15T23:58:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

You're probably too young to remember this, but way back in 2004, I held an art exhibition called Small Voices: Microscopic Paintings at the Deatrick Gallery in Louisville.

These tiny paintings, though visible to the naked eye, required a magnifying glass or a microscope to see the details. Most were no bigger than a postage stamp. Others - such as Bug, Piggy Goes to Church, and Little Pink Clown - were only about the size of an aspirin. Among other half-inch-high masterpieces displayed that night: Boris Karloff Downtown, Skeleton on Telephone, Nude With Bowling Ball, Casper the Ghost Visiting His Own Grave, Drunk Detective, Clown Strangling Clown, Alien Pumping Gas and my personal favorite, Fred Flintstone in Hell.

The show is something of a paradox. It was very popular with the public, and the turnout was great (even though our opening night competed for attention with the Cinderblock's Rock Art exhibit opening right down the street, and I had a few pieces in that show too!) And yet, despite the popularity of the concept and despite the low, low prices, sales at this show were my weakest ever. Perhaps this was because no one knew quite what to do with a thumbnail-sized piece of artwork, or perhaps they felt they wanted something more tangible - some of the patrons at this show would eventually go on to purchase full-size paintings from me for considerable sums.

Nevertheless, I said back in 2004 that I would "soon" be doing further exhibitions of miniatures. Since I live on "Creeps Time" this might be a slightly more recombinant and possibly geological sense of "soon" than you are accustomed to, but sooner or later everything that's supposed to happen does. All in time.

So here we are now in a chaotic future, on the cusp of a new civilization, and I do believe it's miniature-painting time again. Watch my blogs for announcements of new original Jeffrey Scott Holland mini-paintings, coming, uh, soon. One good thing: in 2004 I didn't have a digital camera with a decent macro-mode for taking good close-up photos of the works; now I do. What few photos exist of the Small Voices pieces are not of the greatest quality in terms of picture focus or file size.

In the artist's statement for the 2004 show, I commented that it was my fondest hope that these miniscule paintings would someday end up hanging on the walls of the radioactive mutated intelligent cockroaches that inherit the Earth. I was half-joking then; it's not so much a joke anymore, is it?

Be seeing you.

E

2011-05-12T21:58:00.000-04:00

by J.S. Holland

On the face of it, everything about the "Electronic Cigarette" sounds anathema to everything I stand for. Now in this Buck Rogers age of food that isn't really food and music that isn't really music, we're supposed to embrace cigarettes that are actually robotic simulacra?

I have gone on record here as comparing the act of puffing an electronic cigarette as being the equivalent to marrying an inflatable wife, but just to show you all what a fair-minded soul I am (and because I am curious), I went out and got one of these 21st century geegaws for myself to see what makes it tick.

I selected the N Joy brand, whose very name put me off - it sounds a name for a sex toy company. Oh, wait, in fact, it is. But the guy at Cox's assured me it was the best.

The next thing that turned me off was the sheer stupidity of the design. For seemingly no good reason, it mimics the appearance of a standard cigarette: a white stick with a brown end, and a silly red light at the end that glows when you take a puff, as if to simulate the burning fire. Is this really necessary? Why not just design it like an asthma inhaler, so I won't look like a idiot in public with this Fisher-Price play-toy cig in my mouth?

Not that an E-cig hangs out of many people's mouths anyway. The damn thing is so heavy, you would never just walk around with it dangling from your lips. Not only does it weigh more than a cigarette, it weighs more than a fountain pen. You pretty much have to treat it like a pipe, and keep one hand it up to your face the whole time you're sucking on it. Thanks anyway, I'll smoke my pipe.

How does it work, and what's so "electronic" about it? Well, it's a miniature vaporizer powered by a battery that you can recharge by connecting it to your computer via a USB cable. There's something about plugging my cigarette up to a computer that just screams WRONG to me on many levels, but suffice it to say I don't like it. The battery is to heat up the nicotine inside, so the refillable E-cig can give you a burst of nicotine vapor.

Why would anyone want to suck vaporized nicotine through a plastic stick? That's a good question. Despite what the ads and testamonials for these things say, my E-cig experience was nothing like smoking the real thing, and it gave me zero pleasure whatsoever. Then again, I am not actually a real smoker, I'm just a dilletante; not being addicted to nicotine, I cannot relate to the motivations of those who are. (They say nicotine is more addictive than Heroin, yet I go weeks without even thinking about tobacco.)

I was surprised to discover that you can actually see the vapor as you exhale it, although it quickly vanishes. This exhalation does have a slight odor (the vaporized nicotine has a weird, sweet, almost vanilla taste) so I wonder how long it will be before some derpy-derp decides this counts as "second hand smoke".

The E-cig, as expected, doesn't appeal to me. In the spirit of the E-cig, however, if this is indeed the way this world is headed, let's start thinking about electronic pens that shoot vaporized vitamins into our mouths and do away with this whole "food" thing. Let's huff vaporized caffeine from mechanical doodads and do away with this whole "coffee" thing. Let's get high-tech turkey basters and... well, never mind.

From Home

2011-05-11T11:12:00.004-04:00

by J.S Holland

Lest y'all out there in the Peanut Gallery think Dr. Dock and I are overdoing it somewhat by treating his move to Vermont with the austerity of a eulogy, let me offer a most illuminating passage from one of civilization's great writers.

Milton? Shakespeare? Goethe? Yeats? Tosches? No, Douglas Adams, actually. Writers of sci-fi (or "speculative fiction", if you like) have always been among the smartest and wisest philosophers of our time, and Mr. Adams scored a cosmic-truth bullseye when he penned this passage:

Ford was very kind - he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth.

On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the near vicinity of Betelgeuse.

The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn't know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.

An inordinate - or what I would have thought inordinate - number of fans who follow my Unusual Kentucky blog daily are actually transplanted from their home state, and tell me how much they enjoy getting a daily dose of the wacky underbelly of their homeplace that they love and miss, having been transferred to another state for work or called by love or duty for country to be somewhere else. Kentuckians, more than denizens of most other states, have a keen acuity for the genetic "pining-for-home" aura. It's no coincidence that our most popular theme song is called "My Old Kentucky Home".

This, then, is why you might see us bowing our heads at the knowledge that Commissioner Dockery is headed for a dark eigenstate of the soul, even though he's gonna keep on rockin' in the free world more than ever, and he's Winning in ways that blowhards like Charlie Sheen could never ever wrap their head around. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and send him cash.

(photo by the most honourable L.Z. Bickett, esq.)

Transylvanian Abroad

2011-05-10T22:25:00.005-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

"I think I need to work it out so I can have my own place again, because there's just not enough room with any of my other options to fucking just mark my territory, and say the fuck with all yall, I'm just taking a walk over here and worrying about my own mixed bag of nuts...Ok, on every side of me seems like there's dagger eyes staring and shovel tongues digging at my brain. I need out. Somewhere where my thoughts are mine, whether that be at Glyndon Hotel, an apartment, a house, a goddam piece of cardboard under a tree."--from a letter by this author to Jeffrey Scott Holland, June 14, 1998, published originally in the chapbook Black Lung by Creeps Press

"Highlights included a slow pissed off version of 'Uncomfortable for God,' a slew of numbers featuring Eggroll (aka Brian Manley) in pig tails, a rousing country flavored rendition of Elton John's 'Crocodile Rock/Ode to Ninnie,' a lengthy medley of KISS favorites dedicated to the Herald Leader's David Minton, with other staple tunes and some unexpected surprises (including a made up on the spot song with JSH on banjo and Dockery on vocals with a title requested by one of the spectators, 'Paraplegics Are Us')."--from the short lived CH/FR newsletter, "Cheeseburger & Fries News" reporting on an Oct. 6th gig circa 1996 at the Hip Joynt in Lexington, KY

That's right, people, I'm going on a journey. I never really figured on leaving the state of Kentucky, literally and figuratively, but sometimes a colonist just gotta colonize elsewhere. Particles align and everything bends with movement.

Take a gander at yonder picture below. That's me and my grandfather the year he died, taken at Natural Bridge. I sometimes feel like I grew into his style of dress (makes more sense than me dressing the way I did then now, don't it?). But I've also grown in ways old grandpaw woulda never predicted.

What the hell have I been doing here, in Kentucky, my whole life, anyway? Well, friends, packing my life away like I have been in preparation for a departure, it makes a man ponder who he is, where he's been, and where he's going. I sure have knocked out a lot of small press writings, published a little mountain of chapbooks (something like over 30 pamphlets if you count zines and minicomics all in one lump). Played gutbucket music here there and everywhere on and off the streets, warbling reeling rocking and recording. Hung art on gallery and museum walls. Much of this was geared to get out of the state and the show has been taken on the road plenty of times, but it was all born of and in and I always returned to the dark and bloody ground.

But the past few years everything's been going more and more towards comics. And as that has happened it seems like music itself as an action is becoming more and more part of those comics; all these elements becoming part of one product. And somehow this disturbance in space-time around me and my (good?) works has led me to take steps out of the land of my birth and towards the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.

For at least the next couple of years, I will be your Kentuckian abroad, filing reports from New England. As Paul Stanley once said, "Goodbye is only for now."

Your reporter looks sideways at the future-past, Lexington, Kentucky, Virginia Ave. circa 1996. Snapshot by Brian Manley.

Back in Black

2011-05-09T14:14:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I was all excited a few days ago about obtaining a second pack of Captain Black pipe tobacco - of all the brands of tobacco I've sampled so far, my favorite has been Captain Black Gold, and now I was all set to experience the blue-packaged finery of Captain Black Royal.

But, much to my consternation, I found that I could no longer get a good draw on my pipe. I thought maybe this pack was too moist and tried to dry out the bowl with some very dried-out cigar butt flakes. That worked a little bit, it seemed, but soon it was worse than ever - totally clogged up and no draw whatsoever.

I took it apart, looked down the barrel, nothing seemed terribly amiss. The filter was black as night, black as coal, coated in gunky grasshopper juice, so I switched it out with a clean fresh one. Reassembled the pipe, and struck a match.

Nothing. Not even the faintest hint of a draw.

I didn't have any pipe cleaners around, but fashioned what I thought would be a suitable substitute from a long folded narrow strip of stiff cardstock. Not much crud came out of the stem, so I thought, "well, I guess that's not it either." Then while reading a cigar/pipe smoker's forum online, I learned that most of the serious-type people don't even use pipe filters at all, and look upon those that do as rubes of the highest order. Most complained that filters add too much additional effort to get a draw, without really making the smoke any tastier or safer.

Thinking eliminating the filter was the answer to my problems, I removed it. Nope. No go. Like trying to suck a building through a straw. Not wishing to go out and purchase another pipe, I was thinking it was back to cigars for me. I smoked a CAO Maduro at my Derby party and found it refreshingly simple just to snip it, light it, rev it up and go.

Then, on a whim, I bought a pack of pipe cleaners at Kroger in a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate my old friend. Sure enough, that did the trick! The tiny hole inside the bowl of the pipe had become completely covered over in black sooty cake and I hadn't realized it (apparently my screen went the way of Carthage at some point and I didn't know that either - I musta dumped it out on the ground when emptying my pipe in the snow back in the winter). My recent dalliance with Carter Hall, renowned for its cake-generating qualities, clearly must have been the reason for this abrupt and unexpected buildup.

I'm new at the pipe game, and am still figuring things out for myself. Now I know, when it comes to the accoutrement of pipedom, filters are unnecessary, but never, never, never skimp on the pipe cleaners. A must!

So what do I think of Captain Black Royal, now that I'm finally happily puffing away at it? Well, honestly, I can't tell much difference between it and the Gold. I think the Gold was a little sweeter and Cavendishy, but it's hard to say because I've already smoked up all the Gold and can no longer do a side-by-side comparison. Surely these subtleties will come to me in time. But for now, Captain Black, in any variety, still remains my undisputed heavyweight champion shagstuff of the world.

The Year of Hasil #2: Snapshots from "the Lexington Years"

2011-05-08T22:25:00.010-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

It is an accurate statement as any to anoint the last six years of Hasil Adkins's life "the Lexington years." He played Lexington once every year, recorded and posthumously released "Night Life" which many Haze fans consider the best of his latter day albums. As far as I know, he didn't play any towns that regularly, including the nearby Charleston, WV, in that time period.

In those years (1999-2005), it was an age of the internet growing to domination, but not quite yet exactly an age of social networking (which even now is an age Cheeseburger & Fries do not exactly, ahem, endorse, just as we weren't endorsing it in its infancy, Friendster, my butt) and, as we ourselves (we primarily being myself, Jeffrey Scott Holland, Brian Manley and friends) were all if not behind the times, out of step with the times (why else would we be pals with Hasil Adkins?)...not that that particular reality has shifted...so digital cameras and anal retentive archiving were not always, as they were not Hasil's, our priorities. Hang on to our coattails was our motto...

Making it happen was what we did. And as it is said, amongst Hasil's shows, the time spent with him and the recording sessions: if you didn't see it, you weren't there.

But none of us were allergic to archiving or snapshotting, just busy being drunk, being sober, being hungover, or else picking a guitar in some damn nightclub. And many of these images were online at some point, available on now defunct, and lengthily elaborate, urls from the "golden age" of free web hosting (kids, dotcoms were the stuff of wealthy insider go go go folks early on, haw). As a matter of fact the photo of Hasil below, taken in summer of 2000 by Jesse Saxon, was once online and some other artist in another town used it as a basis of a caricature of Hasil used for a poster for a show that Hasil had hanging in his trailer by the next year after the photo was taken.

Hasil liked to smoke. His philosophy was that it wasn't unhealthy for the smoker if one constantly changed brands. Not bad thinking. He certainly didn't die from lung related illnesses or cancer despite being one of the heaviest smokers this old boy has ever observed. I got him to sign this pack of Coronas, a brand I never saw him smoke again before or after.

One photo I was surprised to come across in my files, as I had no memory of it whatsoever, perhaps largely due to the poor quality of the snapshot, was of Hasil Adkins sitting in the audience watching the Smacks! in 2001 at the now defunct Lynagh's. Memories of this show include the fact that it was at a literary/music festival. Thinking Hasil might be uncomfortable sitting watching poets read their work, I offered to him to go to the bar next door. There was an attractive young woman performing at that moment. Hasil looked up. Looked back at me, suggesting we stick around as, "We might learn something." I also recall sitting down with Hasil but then immediately running out to get Haze another pack of smokes as he'd already burned through the pack we had bought for him before departing West Virginia. When I returned with a pack, Hasil stuck the whole thing in his mouth, miming lighting all 20 cigarettes. The Smacks! opened for Hasil. After this show, he started referring to me as his "favorite drummer." Hasil broke a string during his first song. Manley replaced it. Hasil, getting his guitar back on track, after Manley's swift improv guitar tech moves, then opened with an instrumental that blew Manley and I away. He went on to deliver a kick butt set. All previous festivals, SoUP fest this thing was called, had been recorded at the sound board by the club. For some reason this year they did not. Bugger.

The picture below was from later in that same evening. We all went to an after-party at a downtown loft inhabited by J.K. Mabry. Hasil ended up crashing at Cave Manley that night, them staying up to all hours baking home recordings with Manley on mandolin (I recall when I picked up Hasil the next day him saying to Manley, "Send me a copy of that tape so I can hear how drunk we was."). We are posing for a Polaroid with Manley holding a copy of A.B. "Happy" Chandler's 45, "Come Back To Your Kentucky." The frame is a goofy frame my mom gave me for some reason, and at some point when I was preserving the photo to hang in my studio, I felt it properly idiotic to frame this snap within.

I want to say that the photo below, in front of the Adkins Plantation with the infamous "Hazel Hotel" in the background, is from the same show, albeit from picking him up in Boone county on the way to it, the previous snaps was from. But, hell, who knows? I can say I drove down with Jessi Fehrenbach and Jesse Saxon to get him in a rented car. As my first name is, in fact, Jesse, that was the time a car full of Jesse/i's went to fetch him. My favorite anecdote in regards to Hasil and Jessi Fehrenbach was when I overheard the two of 'em down in our basement talking when Hasil was buying a synthesizer from Fehrenbach. I heard Haze out of the blue ask her, "How much do you weigh?" Jessi told him. Hasil pondered the information quietly. Later, on the ride home, just the two of us, Hasil said, "Jessi's a good looking woman. BIG. But a good looking woman." Which then begs the question: Did Hasil ever use that synth on any home recordings?

If anybody out there in radioland has pics of Hasil from "the Lexington years," send them on....we'd love to share 'em with the studio audience. Either way, I got more puzzling evidence coming on in this "Year of Hasil." Stay tuned.

Virginibus Puerisque

2011-05-07T10:08:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Some years ago I found this peculiar little book (literally little, measuring about 5x3 inches) whilst browsing Crazy Daisy antique mall in Butchertown. Yesterday, it floated to the surface of the ocean of my life's accumulation of crap during one of my periodic attempts to bring order to my storage units. I've been packing it around and reading it like the Bible, you know, opening it to any random page and happily jumping in.

The book in question is Virginibus Puerisque, consisting of a bound collection of four essays written by Robert Louis Stevenson across the years 1876 to 1881. Written in that florid, lurid, illucid, hypnotically verbose Victorian style I've come to adore, it's Stevenson's advice on love and marriage. I finally read the whole thing cover to cover this morning over my morning coffee and found myself in chuckling solidarity at his observations.

A choice example:

"Marriage, if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows and damps the spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being.... Twenty years ago this man was equally capable of crime or heroism; now he is fit for neither. His soul is asleep, and you may speak without constraint; for you will not wake him."

But lest you mistake his gender-candor for misogyny:

"Of the misbegotten changelings who call themselves men, and prate intolerably over dinner-tables, I never saw one who seemed worthy to inspire love - no, nor read of any, except Leonardo da Vinci, and perhaps Goethe in his youth. About women I entertain a somewhat different opinion; but there, I have a misfortune to be a man."

My copy of the book, in fact, was originally owned by a woman; one "Ethel M. Panter" inscribed her name on the front page in 1904 with an ill-functioning fountain pen.

There are other editions of Virginibus Puerisque out there that include many other of his essays, appended onto the original four treatises on romance, that my copy does not. One of these essays is called "A Plea For Gas Lamps", wherein Stevenson, most ironically from our standpoint in our own present context in which I recently find myself incapable of shutting up about the subject of light, looks back at the days of oil lamps and looks ahead to the approaching age of electricity, and decries them both. Instead, Stevenson beseeches mankind to embrace the gaslight as that most perfect of all photonic options:

"The conservative, looking before and after, draws from each contemplation the matter for content. Out of the age of gas lamps he glances back slightingly at the murk and glimmer in which his ancestors wandered; his heart waxes jocund at the contrast... The work of Prometheus had advanced by another stride. Mankind and its supper parties were no longer at the mercy of a few miles of sea-fog; sundown no longer emptied the promenade; and the day was lengthened out to every man’s fancy. The city-folk had stars of their own; biddable, domesticated stars. It is true that these were not so steady, nor yet so clear, as their originals; nor indeed was their lustre so elegant as that of the best wax candles. But then the gas stars, being nearer at hand, were more practically efficacious than Jupiter himself.

But the conservative, while lauding progress, is ever timid of innovation; his is the hand upheld to counsel pause; his is the signal advising slow advance. The word electricity now sounds the note of danger. In Paris, at the mouth of the Passage des Princes, in the place before the Opera portico, and in the Rue Drouot at the Figaro office, a new sort of urban star now shines out nightly, horrible, unearthly, obnoxious to the human eye; a lamp for a nightmare! Such a light as this should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the corridors of lunatic asylums, a horror to heighten horror. To look at it only once is to fall in love with gas, which gives a warm domestic radiance fit to eat by."

Duke of Oil

2011-05-06T21:38:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

You thought I was just being hyperbolic about this retro-lighting stuff, didn't you? I'm not just whistling Dixie here. (I have been known to whistle "Old Dog Tray" though.)

I went out yesterday and scored me this charming oil lamp, just like our grannies used to have in the living room. It's unfortunately filled with red kerosene, which I don't particularly care for because of the less-than-pleasant fumes. I didn't slog through endless antique malls looking for an oil lamp just to ditch one hazardous light source for another. So, I need to go find me some better quality, unscented, oil before I can make the scene like Miss Twiddle in her conservatory readin' the latest issue of Notes and Queries.

I was wondering who is credited with inventing the oil lamp and so consulted the Wikipedia. I learned that no one invented it; that is to say, we don't know the caveman's name. Soon after the discovery of fire and the utilization of cooking animals with it, someone probably figured out that a twig sticking out of a blob of animal fat burned a good long time. The earliest oil lamps were just a bowl of oil or animal fat, with something acting as a wick sticking out of it. The earliest bowls were probably skulls. Curiously, it took the candle a lot longer to catch on, even though conceptually it's really just an oil lamp on a stick. Says Wikipedia, the earliest known candles originated in China around 200 BC, and were made from whale fat and from natural waxes derived from insects and seeds.

The simplicity of the oil lamp concept is such that, honestly, I didn't even need to go out and buy this contraption - the internet is filled with tutorials on making your own which consist of little more than a glass of vegetable oil with a piece of string hanging out of it. But of course, such coarse neo-survivalist methods, applicable though they may be to, say, a hippie or an eskimo, lack the proper aesthetics I seek for the JSH Plantation - a place where the past kills the future dead on contact.

Dirty Electricity

2011-05-05T12:27:00.008-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I was a luddite even when I was a kid, and it brings me no pleasure to be able to say now that I was right all along.

I've never fallen for the scam of CFL light bulbs, but even knowing how toxic they were, it wasn't until this past weekend that I finally issued a statement to friends that I will no longer visit you if you have them in your home. Seemingly, a sort of generalized stupor and complacency kept me from taking such an obvious action until now. (And if that action doesn't seem obvious to you, you might be suffering from stupor too.)

Even without considering the environmental factors and the nutritional factors that both contribute to lessened physical health and mental acuity, there's another big fat white elephant in the room just begging to have its foot turned into an umbrella stand for the great room - it's electrical pollution that we're being bombarded with around the clock, twenny-fo' sev'na. I've always known that electrical devices generate their own electromagnetic field in an invisible aura around it - back in the 1980s I experimented with gaussmeters and a earphone device that translated leaking EMF fields into a sonic signal you could hear, and it was immediately made crystal clear that everywhere we go, our cells are being exposed to weird stuff they were never naturally meant to.

Of course, I was younger then, and adopted, as I still do today, Brian Setzer's wise rhetorical dictum, "How long you wanna live, anyway?" Buddhism, James Dean style. Dialectic physics a go go. But now that I'm no longer knee high to a grasshopper I plan to stick around this mortal coil long enough to watch the sky come tumblin' down, if I may be permitted a second Setzerian quotation in the same paragraph. So, then, a judicious balance between prudent and laissez-faire behavior must be struck.

We have no choice but to soak up the radioactive Iodine-131 (half-life: 8 days), Cesium-137 (half-life: 30 years), and Plutonium-244 (half-life: 80 million years), that continue to spew into the soil, water, and air even as I type these words. We do have a choice to eat healthier foods, but the sketchiness of our current world situation makes me more inclined to "live it up" while I still can, so I still continue to imbibe alcohol in moderation, smoke my pipe in moderation, and eat candy and cookies and cake and cheetos and crap, moderation out the window. (I won't knowingly touch anything with artificial sweeteners, however, needless to say.)

Electricity, on the other hand, now that's something I can do without. People used to think that it was only fluorescent lighting that messed with you, triggering migraines in some, malaise and depression in others, circadian rhythm disturbances and apnea for still others - but we now know that all artificial lighting contributes to these problems and many others. I got a taste of this firsthand during Louisville's power blackout of September 2008, when I realized how drastically better I felt when I suddenly wasn't soaking in fifty different electrical fields and bathing in unnatural light. I was perfectly content with having no electricity, although some of my friends were truly suffering withdrawal from their addictions to the presence of that subliminal electrical hum that you think you don't hear but on some level you do.

And so, recently I undertook an experiment and eliminated as many sources of electrical power as I could from the house here at the ol' JSH Plantation. I left the fridge and stove plugged in of course, and there will always be some EMF emanating from house wiring and sockets as long as your utilities are connected, but still, I reduced the magnetic fields considerably by unplugging everything else except my laptop, making it the only artificial light source in the entire house. Every other room was lit by candles. (If I had a fancy hand-held candleabra, I wouldn't even need 'em in every room - I could just carry the candleabra around from room to room as needed, just like in the old horror movies.)

As expected, I feel great. I sleep better. I actually feel refreshed when I get up, rather than feeling like death warmed over and forcing myself to crawl to the kitchen to put on the morning coffee to kick-start my nervous system into compliance. I think clearer, have more energy for walking and exercise, get more work done during the day, and I think I've lost a little weight too. No wonder Abe Lincoln was such a slim fellow.

I'm not likely to call LG&E and ask them to disconnect me from the grid anytime soon (although I dearly wish I could, and switch to a supplier of sustainable alternative energy sources), but there's no doubt my next bill will be a fraction of what it usually is. Try swearing off artificial lighting yourself for just a night or two, and see what happens in your own life.

Carolus Hopsinjoor

2011-05-04T10:25:00.005-04:00

by J.S. Holland

I've always been a big fan of Gouden's Carolus Belgian ale, mainly because it's so close to Duvel (the yardstick by which I measure all other liquids on Earth) that I can get it and feel like I'm actually drinking a variety instead of being stuck in my glorious Duvel rut. (Hennepin is another good one for that.)

Now I'm on their super-hoppy "Hopsinjoor" variety, which is even more Duvelicious, and I have to admit, it's every bit as good as the limited-edition Duvel Tripel Hop for a fraction of the price tag. I daresay it's even better - sacrilege, I know - because it's got a smoother, more well-rounded bite rather than the bitter sting of Duvel's megahopped incarnation of itself. And it's light-years ahead of more pedestrian stuff like Schafly Dry-Hopped APA, savory though that may be.

I'll most certainly be serving this at my outdoor cookouts here on the JSH Plantation this summer. That is, if it ever stops raining.

Ohio River Water Fizz

2011-05-03T00:39:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

In these times when the Ohio River is flooding right up against the back of Butchertown, and is increasingly laced with radioactive rainwater from the orient, it seemed like a good idea to order this river-water themed bev'age at my latest bar to obsess over, the Blind Pig.

And it sure does look like river water - it's dark, murky, cloudy, with a brown-gray hue not far off from the color of raw industrial sewage. The gigantic sprig of lovely fresh mint sticking out of it is almost perverse by contrast, like putting lipstick on a pig. But it's good. Real good.

It sounds as bad as it looks when you roll your grapes over the ingredients - it's Tanqueray and root beer, with coffee bitters and egg whites thrown in the witch's brew for kicks. I wonder how many of these they would sell if they simply called it a Tanqueray and Root Beer? But it is good.

I reckon at this point I'm just going to plow my way through the entire repertoire of house-specialty cocktails at the B-Pig. As much as I kvetch about places that have no specialty drinks at all, it's the least I can do. Their Bacon Manhattan is really yummy, but I have to wonder if anything can ever match the greatness of their Smokey and the Bandit cocktail.

World's Forgotten Boy

2011-05-02T21:37:00.015-04:00

by J.S. Holland

In those hazy days of the early 1980s when I worked at Berea's short-lived radio station WDNA, I did an alternative/new wave/punk mix show called "Birds in the Trees". It was there, in the not-inconsiderable WDNA vinyl library, that I discovered the already-defunct British punk-mod band Generation X. I was stunned to find that their lead singer was none other than Billy Idol, who was a "new" artist to us at the time - he had just taken the world by storm with his strangely 10cc-ish "Hot in the City". The cognitive dissonance of seeing a blond cross between James Dean, Elvis and Sid Vicious belting out this borderline-disco number was strangely appealing in that crazy mixed-up time, but we didn't really think he'd amount to much more. We were wrong. Soooo wrong.

To this day, I still hold Mr. Idol in very high esteem for some splendid timeline-blurring metachronistic records he put out for a good long run in the 80s and 90s. What makes Billy Idol truly one of the greats of our time can be broken down thus:

1. He gets the mix just right. Most of the time, anyway. I know of no other musical act that ever managed to mix elements of pop, punk, glam, techno, disco, new wave, garage, goth, metal, mod and crooner-balladry together and make it work as a unified sound without feeling eclectic or uneven, for as many years as he did.

2. The Voice. Unlike, say, Mick Jagger, who can only do the funky and rough stuff, Billy could and would abruptly snap into a smooth and soft crooning style that not only summons up shades of Elvis and Conway Twitty, but even goes further back to Bing Crosby and Whispering Jack Smith.

3. Steve Stevens. Every Strummer needs a Jones, and Steve Stevens provided much of the hair-metal cred to the Idol band for most of its glory years, pulling some wacked-out solos out of nowhere that melded the weirdest aspects of the styles of Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, and Hank Marvin.

4. Lyrical genius. He's a poet warrior. Billy wouldn't have been half the star he was if not for the fact his songs made you sit up and listen intently to what he's saying (as opposed to bands with simplistic lyrics like, say, Aerosmith, Motley Crue and yes, even KISS) and curse him for not including a libretto. From the nilihistic surrealism of "White Wedding" to the consummately spooky swagger of "All Summer Single" (which has been #1 in my car all week this week!), B.I. has a grip on a certain reality principle. I remember many years ago, sitting on a greyhound bus listening to him on my walkman and being struck by the absurd Blakean transcendence of this couplet:

I'm on a bus on a psychedelic trip,
Reading murder books, trying to stay hip.

It's easy to forget just how many bonafide hits our boy blammed in there over the years - for some reason you never hear stations playing "Cradle of Love", "Don't Need A Gun", "Eyes Without a Face", "L.A. Woman", "Rebel Yell", "Sweet Sixteen", "Flesh for Fantasy" or "To Be A Lover" (which he sang from a boxing ring, both in the original video and live on the 1986 Grammys. Billy also scored a huge hit with his cover to Tommy James & The Shondells' "Mony Mony", which in turn led to into membership of that most holy brotherhood of people who've been parodied by Weird Al. And of course, his quintessial career-defining song, "Dancing with Myself", with its memorable Blade Runner-ish video in which Billy zaps zombies from atop a crumbling skyscraper in a dystopian future.

And there's still plenty more rockin' Billy sides to be explored, like
"Baby Talk" (think of it as the hyperactive nephew of "Dancing With Myself"), "Blue Highway", (Jack Kerouac meets David Lynch), "Do Not Stand in the Shadows" (best S.S. solo ever!), "Speed" (the video for which he's actually wearing a T-Rex t-shirt) and "Fatal Charm" (which almost morphs into Elvis' "Viva Las Vegas" at points.)

But late at night, sipping Zwack, like right now, with all the windows open, listening to the sounds of the woods outside, I remember that Bill is a master of what Hasil Adkins called night music. Hear his haunting cover of the Jody Reynolds 50's cult classic "Endless Sleep". Harken to the melancholy magick of his "Catch My Fall". Tune into the shortwavelength of his mysterious "One Night, One Chance" transmission. Witness how Billy was Chill-Channel before there was a Chill-Channel with numbers like "Beyond Belief". And approach at your peril the knowledge that William was an idiot savant with his Fukushima-prophetic lyrics in 1983's The Dead Next Door:

Sunday was hot
Monday was not
For the dead next door
One error
silent terror
and we're the dead next door.

Down on Maple Street

2011-05-01T10:38:00.006-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Thus far, my empirical investigations into the noble realm of pipe tobacco have been of the stuff-in-papaw's-pocket sort; bottom-shelf drugstore packs like Borkum Riff, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Captain Black Gold. But now we're heading into deeper waters, for better or for worse.

Sutliff's Maple Street is probably considered just as plebian by the super-snobs who wouldn't touch anything but the exquisite and expensive blends stored in imposing glass canisters at snooty high-end tobacconists. But I ain't that snobby yet. This here tin of Maple Street set me back eight bucks, and speaking as a man who's already grown accustomed to paying a mere two-fitty for perfectly good smokes like Carter Hall, I consider this an excursion into snootville.

And a delicious excursion it is. You like pancakes? You like rum? You like to smoke? It's all here, Jack, combined into one big bowl of breakfast. I do love aromatic pipe tobacco, but I'm also not exclusive about it - in the end, I prefer my tobacco to taste like tobacco and not Adam Ant's incense boutique. But there's no denying the sweet Log Cabin-like punch in the face I got when I popped the lid off this kid. Even if you hated to smoke it, it would a fantastic house-freshener potpourri kinda thing; just leave the can open and soon your whole house will smell like a hot buttered rum cocktail or waffles in vermont.

Maple Street burns evenly, packs well, and has a genuine taste of rum and maple syrup, not just a room note. You'll note the contents of the can are packed loosely and rather parsimoniously, though, meaning you're not really getting as much tobacco as you think - as compared to brands like Half & Half that make a Herculean effort to compress as much product as possible into a foil-covered brick. This, then, also raises the question of whether Maple Street merits its rather off-putting price of eight clams a can.

Me, I reckon I'm worth it. How you feel about your own deservedness is between you and your shadow.

All this talk of maple syrup is making me hungry. As a great man once uttered, "Waffles, we must have waffles forthwith! We must all have waffles and think, each man, to the best of his abilities."

To the pantry, pipe in mouth, then.

Pig in the City

2011-04-30T19:19:00.007-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Around this time last year, we discussed the Bacon-infused Old Fashioned cocktails served at PDT in New York. Now here's a Bacon-infused Manhattan, which it was my pleasure to gargle with during a Don Draper-style late business lunch today at Blind Pig in Butchertown.

Whereas PDT uses bacon-infused bourbon for their confectious concoction, the Blind Pig uses bacon-infused Sazerac rye, homemade coffee bitters, and vermouth. Simple. Elegant. And delishmus. But was it worth ten dollars in an Obama economy? Wellllll... maybe for a one-time treat just so you can say you did it. And you really should try it at least once.

The bacon is very subtle, so don't worry, you're not going to get high blood pressure or trichinosis from this. Needless to say, however, the drink aint kosher and it sure aint Halal.

In the final analysis, I think I would have rather squandered my ten-dollar bills on their Smokey & The Bandit cocktail, made with my beloved Del Maguey Mezcal. Now that's a drink worth wasting your wages on! For this price, I really feel like they should have placed a generous rolled-up piece of fried bacon on a skewer floating in the drink.

Don't let my mixed message here dampen your enthusiasm for the Blind Pig - it may well be my favorite restaurant and bar in town. Tell 'em I sent you by!

The Henri Bendel Collection

2011-04-29T11:48:00.011-04:00

by J.S. Holland

In Victorian times, men wore fragrances like lavender, rose, lilac, honeysuckle, violet, mint and magnolia, daubing themselves from a tiny perfume-soaked sponge stored inside a silver scent box they kept in their pocket. Logical enough, right? Since, after all, these are things generally universally regarded as smelling pleasant.

I haven't really studied on the historical timeline of men's colognes, so I'm not exactly sure at what point it was decided that men should stop smelling like a rose and start smelling like diesel fuel and ass. I do know that most of the men's fragrances I first came in contact with as a child of the 60s and 70s - Old Spice, Trouble, Turbo, Woodhue, and whatever junk they put in those God-awful Avon bottles shaped like automobiles - smelled virtually indistinguishable from furniture stripping solution. Later offerings, like Chaps and Polo, don't smell much better to my nose. You may say my olfactory's gone womanish on me, but I'd rather smell like Lafayette than LaCoste.

And smelling like a waffle cone's pretty darn good too.

I do admit a certain fondness for Fahrenheit 32, one of the very few contemporary scents that speaks to me, for whatever reason. There are hints of that modern-stuff bitterness, yet also a certain spicy-floral charm that somehow manages to smell au courant and great-grandfatherly at the same time. It also appears to be what the KISS Colognes were shooting for in their formulation (now's a great time to get 'em cheap as they're in that limbo of being discontinued but not quite collectible yet.)

But for several years, my fragrance of choice was the signature series from Henri Bendel, who also is known for some of the most amazing candles in the Universe. Back in the day, like, those halcyon days of the year 2003, you could find Bendel products at any Bath & Body Works location. Then, one day, the distribution deal ended and they disappeared from the shelves. And why I've never known.

I'm down to my last two bottles of Bendel now; all that remains from my once mighty collection of nine or ten. There's hardly anything left in my Blackberry Cassis bottle, which means Vanilla Flower - my least favorite - is all I have left to remember Henri (is he even a real person, or is he made-up like Betty Crocker?) by. And looking at Bendel's website, it would seem that Vanilla Flower was everybody else's least favorite too. That and Rare Mimosa are all that's left. Wild Fig was recently available but has sold out. My favorite, Mandarin Verbena, left this world long, long ago.

Fortunately, new-old stock still can still be found on Amazon and eBay. I believe I'll dust my credit card.

Hall of Justice

2011-04-28T00:00:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Carter Hall was the secret identity of the golden-age DC Comics character Hawkman. Carter, an archaeologist, was studying ancient Egyptian artifacts when he suddenly had a past-life regression to a previous existence as King Khufu. Seeing the knife that killed Khufu restimulates his past-life memories and brings it all back home to him.

Using lost technology involving something called "Nth Metal" that originally came to Earth from an ancient saucer crash, Carter Hall resurrects the Egyptian secrets of anti-gravity flight, and becomes a hawk-masked superhero. (Years later, KISS experimented with drummer Eric Singer being a very similar Egyptian hawk-faced character as well, but never went through with it because it just looked too darn silly.)

In 1951, Hawkman is brought before the U.S. Congress at the height of the anti-communist hysteria, and refuses to reveal his identity as Carter Hall. He subsequently retreats to a series of complicated alternate-universe versions of Earth and after that, well, it gets to be like explaining Mongolian trigonometry. Somehow, during all this time, Carter Hall also manages to maintain chairmanship of the Justice Society of America.

Oh... wait. Wrong Carter Hall.

Start over.

Carter Hall is a grand plantation located in Millwood, Virginia and built on a 5,800 acre estate in 1782 - that's when a smoke was a smoke. It served as headquarters for Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War, but was raided and sacked by Union troops.

Not only is Carter Hall the only plantation I know of to have not one but two Navy ships named after it, it's also the namesake of here this fine, fine pouch of golden goodness brought to you by those geriatric gents at John Middleton, Inc.

Carter Hall, like Half & Half, is one of those stately old-codger boxed terbackys you've seen all your life at Walgreen's, gas stations, the bottom shelf at tobacconists, and on the dashboards of the trucks of retired railroad engineers, and wondered. Plunk down two and a half bucks and sniff for yourself - it's the next best thing to a time machine back to 1792. And I should know, 'cause I just got back from 1792 myself and everybody there is smokin' the stuff like it's goin' out of style. (Which, of course, now it is, two hundred years later.)

To open the pouch and breathe its powerful aroma, you'd think you're about to smoke a rough-and-tumble ramblin' rounder rag like Half & Half. But to my surprise, it's astonishingly mild. Tame, even. Almost too tame. But it's tasty and goes down easy like Sunday morning. It's an excellent compliment to my morning coffee, and is so soft-spoken that I can easily puff it in between bites of my breakfast. How many backies can you say honestly that about?

The yokels over at Tobacco Reviews are largely on the money with this one, with most voices rallying to its defense and championing it as a solid stalwart entry in the much-maligned "drugstore tobacco" genre. And I can testify that the "Kiowapipe" gentleman is spot-on when he says:

"...this blend is famous for building cake. The stories are true, CH is a cake-making monster. I don't know what it is about this stuff, but if you want to build some cake, a few bowls of this will have you on your way. Surprisingly, it's also pretty good about not leaving a ghost."

"Cake", for the novices (I was a novice myself just three months ago) is the tar residue that builds up on the interior of your pipe bowl. Just as you want a wok to be "seasoned" and just as you want a Griswold skillet to be "blackened", you want a briar pipe to be "caked". Once you get a good layer of that natural protective coating on there, it protects you from smoking the acrylic sealant that lines the bowl fresh from the factory. Yum! Next pipe I get (you're really supposed to have a whole armada of them and rotate them, actually) I'll break it in from the start with good old Carter Hall and get it cakey in a shakey.

Now that I'm cellaring tobacco as well as wine, C.H. will surely be a leading staple in my collection. Reports are that it cellars very well - one guy on Tobacco Reviews said he opened a box he'd bought thirteen years ago and it was still moist and delicious. Truly, a timeless taste that stands the test of time, for the end times.

Comics Round Up #4: The Horror of Sitting and Talking with Julia Gfrörer

2011-04-27T02:03:00.003-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

Oddly enough, when I started this idea of documenting my forays into reading what I consider to be the cream of the contemporary underground comics crop, I never thought I'd do an interview in this contex. I'd interviewed Hubert Selby, Jr., Ivan Brunetti, and Sexton Ming in the dim past of the 20th century, but it didn't seem to be a form that appealed to me anymore, at least in actually conducting them myself (I read and enjoy interviews regularly, however). But there was something about last year's Flesh and Bone by Julia Gfrörer from Sparkplug Comics that monkeyed with my mind. Ostensibly a horror comic book, it had a narrative flow, deceptively simple, that begged questions, which I didn't have to answer to enjoy the work, but they kept on begging me until I finally found myself begging the author with these questions. Ms. Gfrörer agreed to a conversation.

J.T. Dockery: Flesh and Bone reads on some levels as a gothic horror tale, reminding me of genre writers from the turn of and the early years of the twentieth century (and earlier) and early horror films. When I'm constructing stories or working on music I habitually put together what I term "totems of influence"--that is, touchstones of a few different sources and inspiration which I'm consciously allowing to inform the work. This may just be my autistic brain at work, but did you have any inspiration, or set of inspirations, which led to this story, or did it arrive less consciously? Is there any way you can describe the process (or processes) of its origin?

Julia Gfrörer: This is an incredibly challenging question because I feel like the details of Flesh and Bone are culled from a lifetime of trivial obsessions which would probably be boring for you and embarrassing for me to enumerate here. I guess the initial seed of the story was when Arcana Perfumes hired me to draw a label for a perfume based on the old Irish ballad "I Am Stretched on Your Grave" in early 2009. (The drawings are here, they ended up using the first one.) Around the same time, a friend had asked me to draw an eight-page porn comic for an anthology, and I had been reading about occultism a lot (maybe as a result of devouring Foucault's Pendulum a few months earlier? I forget) so I wrote it about a mandrake root. After it was thumbnailed out it didn't exactly look like porn to me so I didn't submit it, but that eventually became the penultimate eight pages of Flesh and Bone. (The final page scene with the mass grave came later.) When Dylan Williams asked me to write a forty-page book for Sparkplug, it occurred to me that the guy with the ghost girlfriend and the death erection guy could be the same guy, so I wrote the rest of the story with the goal of connecting them.

JTD: Well, don't hold back on further enumeration with me. I enjoy that kind of thing. That said, I realize that the process is sometimes an internal thing, more of use to the artist than is otherwise of use to a reader/audience/viewer. If that were the case, we'd all just publish lists of things that fascinate us instead of creating narratives.

JG: Well, one of the cultural touchstones that was influential on Flesh and Bone was the movie Antichrist, which came out at the same time that I wrote my book. I wanted desperately to see it but I had a newborn baby, which makes it tough to go to the theater, and I knew that the violence in the movie and the fact that the plot hinges on the death of a young child would be too much for me emotionally at that time. Fortunately I live upstairs from Sean Christensen, another comics artist and a beloved friend, among whose lesser known talents is included an ardent and insightful movie buffism. So he saw the movie and indulged me with a vivid hour-long retelling (immortalized in his diary comic here) and the vision I had of Antichrist in my imagination, the idea of nature itself as an antagonist by virtue of its unimpeachable amorality, became part of the story I was writing. (I did see the movie about a year later and I loved it, but it was very different from what I had originally imagined, which is good, I guess.)

I listened to Clint Mansell's soundtrack for The Fountain almost every day while I was drawing the comic (again, I hadn't seen the movie yet, and in this case I didn't know anything about its plot that was not revealed in the song titles), and that certainly had an impact on its overall mood. Or maybe I ended up with a book that's gloomy and takes itself too seriously. On second thought, I think those traits are inherent to me.

JTD: That said, I 'm interested to ask another question, which may pertain to your development. Do I understand correctly, and this is pure digression, that one of your parents was a Jungian analyst?

JG: Yes, my mother is, and she taught me early about symbolic interpretation, to analyze my dreams and to consider people's actions from a psychoanalytic perspective. It's not something I enact consciously but Jung's philosophy is fundamental to the way I perceive and interact with the world, and I'm sure that it comes through in my work. I also made my first zines with my mom.

JTD: One aspect of the work that is immediately striking (and I know this from passing around the book in social situations to other cartoonists or those interested in art/comics--which is a favorite hobby of mine with books that I enjoy) is the sexual content. In a contemporary age in which every movie aims for PG-13 and the United States seems at once caught in a dualistic whirlwind of free and readily available pornography, on one hand, and a repressive fundamentalism in regards to depictions of sexuality, on the other, was there any intentional design to the portrayals of sexuality in the book or, again, was it more natural? Much of the sexuality in the book, for me, brought to mind rituals of a sexual nature from old folklore.

JG: First of all, thanks for sharing my book with your friends. It wasn't until I read the reviews of my book that I knew my treatment of sexuality was peculiar. My personality is very earnest and matter-of-fact, and it's difficult to shock me because I tend to assume that all people are trying to act reasonably and in good faith. (Also because I wasted my adolescence on Usenet and Portal of Evil.) So I think that my attitude, towards sexuality and everything else, is simultaneously romantic, permissive and practical, and that's reflected in the way sexuality is depicted in my book, but I didn't do it on purpose, no. Frankly I was just trying to draw what turned me on.

JTD: Of course, this wasn't an "accusatory" observation about the sexuality. I quite like the frankness of the sexual content. I didn't realize it had origins as a porn story, at least not before my first reading of it, but I did note you alluded to that in one of your blog posts.

What I was trying to get at was that I felt the sexuality of the book flowed very naturally within the narrative, and I mean it as a compliment as I don't think very many artists of any genre, especially in America, deal with sexuality all that well. I like the idea that at the end of the day, you just drew what "turned you on." It's something I've noticed in your stand-alone images as well, a very natural sexual, overt or covert, content. I'm struggling for a question here, but instead it's more I'm just saying, "Bravo."

JG: Well, thank you. I feel like I'm taking credit here for something that I can't really help doing, but I'm glad it works.

JTD: The dialogue between the witch and the lion head's entity stuck in my brain, returning to me over the course of several days after my initial reading (and are we talking Jadwiga of Poland and Buer as in the Germanic demon here?). And each time I re-read the the scene with the Hansel and Gretel type children, I am reminded of how abrupt and brutal that bit is (my mind somehow wants to gloss over it so I get a little shock when I read it again), and also by how effective both these two digressions seem. Can you speak of these two scenes, what was the process of their creation and inclusion within the larger narrative?

JG: There are two questions I kept asking myself when I was writing this story. The first one was, "What would a witch do with herself during her work day?" and the other was, "What is the worst thing that could happen now?" When I wrote Flesh and Bone I had just had a baby, which can make you very empathetic, especially towards children, and the scene with the children was one of the worst things I could think of, so I put it in partly because it upset me so much. The scene with Buer was because the story needed a sustained moment of intellectual dread to balance the visceral horror the characters were surrounded by. My book and I neither endorse nor denounce Buer's gloomy view of love, but I think the possibility that he's right is the most gruesome of the horrors the book presents.

JTD: I like the visceral versus intellectual horror tension. That's what I was getting out of it as a reader but just couldn't quite articulate as a writer, couldn't elucidate it in a linear fashion. I don't have much of a tolerance for other people's pain as well...especially children. And even animals. I always think of the line from the film Night of the Hunter: "It's a hard world for little things."

JG: It was difficult for me to draw, but in a way it's also a funny scene. Jadwiga is so perfectly phlegmatic throughout.

JTD: I was reading the scene with Buer at a particular time in the throes of the painful death of marriage, and I found myself on a dry and cynical rebound, so that it read to me at the time very logical. To the point of conjuring dread, but in a cold clean manner. I'm a bit more hopeful now, but he touches a horrible truth, or at least partial truth. Also, I really enjoy the approach of the witch that you mention, that sort of "all in a day's work" mentality that she as a character and you as author treat the material. Giving oral sex to Baphomet out in the woods, as much as I love that opening and it makes an immediate statement, it's also just treated in the narrative as business as usual. Again, there's not much of question implicit here; I'm reflecting on your answer.

JG: Well, I'm sure there are plenty of things I do as a matter of course that an uninitiated observer might find shocking or strange, too.

JTD: I still don't grasp the significance of the hanky slipped into the pocket with the resultant dogs and men removing it. Does this speak to mental deficiencies on my part as a reader?

JG: J.T., I'm sorry, but yes. The kerchief is dropped by the little girl as she's running away from Jadwiga's house, does that help? I don't want to ruin it.

[JTD smacks his own forehead.]

JTD: And this is the reason that you are the first person in this "Comics Round Up" series of reviews that I've wanted to interview as opposed to just simply write about. Flesh and Bone plays tricks on me. Things that don't make sense, make sense upon revisitations to the story. I forget aspects which I then remember. And then I missed a very obvious point which I reread a couple times specifically trying to resolve. At first, while I enjoyed the book, I thought that it might be faults within the narrative, and the more I study the work, the more I realize that the narrative has some way of messing with my perceptions.

Is it just me, or does Flesh and Bone have a happy ending?

JG: It has an ambiguous ending, which is my favorite type of ending.

JTD: It does seem like everyone gets what they want. But that might not be a good thing. Maybe we'll leave it at that.

JG: Heh, okay.

JTD: I've not read Ariadne auf Naxos. Can you tell me about it? Is there a connection to Strauss's opera? Or is it better to be appalled at the ignorance of someone willing to interview an artist when that someone is only familiar with one book? Is the third volume the only one in print?

JG: Ariadne auf Naxos is my series published by Teenage Dinosaur. It's about me befriending my favorite characters from literature, history, and pop culture, it's completely self-indulgent and silly and I'm thrilled that it entertains anybody other than myself. Yes, there is a connection to the opera, in part because it's about overcoming the loss of one relationship by throwing yourself into the next, and in part because, like in the opera, the characters in it can't really agree on whether they're in a comedy or a tragedy. I think you can still get all three volumes from Tim of Teenage Dinosaur. I'm nearly finished with a fourth.

JTD: I'm looking forward to acquiring and reading them.

What can you tell me about your new book, Too Dark To See? I didn't realize it was available for purchase until just before sending these questions out to you. Being that I live on my own internal sense of the passing of time, I'll review it or ask specific questions about it a year or two from now, I predict.

JG: It's modern-timesy. It's about a succubus. Like Flesh and Bone, it subtly addresses the subject of supernatural procreation, which is a topic I find fascinating. Also like Flesh and Bone I think the scariest part is when the characters are just sitting and talking.

Hey Brother, Pour the Stein

2011-04-26T00:21:00.004-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Given that I'm at the point at which my disdain for contemporary culture has hit a new all-time luddite high (or low, depending on your viewpoint), and also given that my coveted giant-size KISS Army Mug got tragically broken awhile back, I think the proper posture for a gentleman such as myself is to start drinking out of oversized stoneware-and-metal monstrosities that look like Kaiser Wilhelm's hat.

This, then, is my latest acquisition in the quest for superior alcoholic technology if drink we must for a better Kentucky: a ceramic stein I've come to nickname "The Captain". It features a bas-relief mural depicting a good old lodge meeting of another era, and best of all, it has a music box in its base. (Someone should invent a country-music-themed stein that plays tear-jerking songs to cry in your beer to. And that someone will probably have to be me.) It bears the inscription auf der alm, da ist es schon which roughly translates from German to "On the mountain pasture it is beautiful."

Even though a man can only drink one beer at a time, I feel strangely compelled to start collecting these contraptions. I foresee rows and rows of them lining the walls of my wine cellar. Steins make good friends, and as Bernie Bernbaum wisely said, you can't have too many.

Bring your own next time you visit the JSH Plantation and we'll clank tankards and sing along with old Heino records.

The Year of Hasil #1: 6 Years We Knew Him, 6 Years He Died

2011-04-25T10:28:00.007-04:00

by J.T. Dockery

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the death of Hasil Adkins. The one man band from Madison, Boone county, West Virginia. Architect of the Hunch, He Who Proclaimed There Shall Be No More Hot Dogs, the Sultan of Slop. To put it country simple, Hasil single handedly made of rock and roll a personal post modern horror side show brain damaged boogie before personal post modern horror side show brain damaged boogie was cool. All within the context of the original first wave of 1950s rockabilly, even. It's prounounced, "hassle."

I met Hasil for the first time in 1999 at the Empty Glass in Charleston, WV. Jeffrey Scott Holland was running a record store in Berea, KY at the time, and he discovered in those heady days of the late nineties internet, when the big geographic divide of news betwixt Kentucky and West Virginia was falling away, that Hasil was to play this gig. We idolized the man, a figure prominent on our respective totems of influence and our hillbilly bred cargo cult sense of rock and roll. JSH laid some scratch on me to fund my field trip as Kentucky ambassador.

When I first saw him at the Empty Glass, what sticks out first was his dress code; a coon skin cap and white frame sunglasses. What I also noticed off the bat: Hasil was sitting off by himself to the side of the stage, although he was seemingly glad to chat with people walking by him. He seemed restless, completely comfortable with himself while somehow at once also seeming uncomfortable in his own skin. A peculiar energy.

I worked up my nerve and introduced myself to the man. We chatted about his records. I told him I played him regularly on my radio show at WRFL. He asked me to send him tapes of the radio program. I gave him JSH's business card. Told him we'd like to get him to play Lexington. On the following Christmas, he called Jeff thinking it was me to say merry Christmas. The rockabilly myth was becoming a three dimensional figure. The wheels were in motion for him to play his first Lexington at the now defunct Yats (which would be followed by several more on a regular basis right up to the last year of his life). This sixth year anniversary of Hasil's death also marks the point at which he's been dead for as long as I actually knew him: the last six years of his life.

Hasil's parents were originally from Kentucky. We can claim him. This is something he told me on the various drives between Madison and Lexington (that was always a condition with Hasil for shows, he never travelled to them on his own, or made arrangments for himself, other than you had to come get him if you wanted him to play). I think he also told me he was born in Kentucky, but did he really say that (Holland and I have searched high and low for some definitive record of birth which has only led to more questions and various dead ends)?

The problem with travelling with Hasil and trying to recall his stories is that Hasil ALWAYS TALKED. He never stopped. Especially when travelling. His mind was a run on sentence, peppered with anecdotes spanning the decades mixed in with jokes and surreal observations from having taken the dirt road less travelled in life.

All of this in a deep backwoods West Virginia dialect with a twang all Hasil's own. Even with somebody as well versed in deep holler hillbilly slang (in fact becoming often Hasil's "translator" when working together) as myself (the county seat of my stomping grounds growing up was pop 500, with one stoplight in the whole territory), yet even I sometimes could find following Hasil's dialect to be a head scratcher.

Hasil never gave directions ahead of time. He always said, "Get to Madison and call me." When I rolled into Boone county for the first time, before the era in which I was burdened with a cell phone, I found myself at a pay phone by the main road, trucks whizzing by, trying to decipher what Hasil was saying. Something about take a right at the guardrail past the second big curve to the left. This was dramatized with Hasil playing himself in the film, "Die, You Zombie Bastards!"

Oddly, those directions panned out, and after steering my car down a dirt trail that looked like a logging road, I was only sure I was on the right track when I saw the "Hunching Bus," a New York city transit bus (go figure), that Hasil made a few special modifications to himself that had been immortalized for me in the Appalshop documentary on Hasil.

Hasil had three trailers. One was for storage. One he actually lived in, and the other was the nice trailer which he was perpetually preparing to be moved into but never seeming to get there. Also, there was the original family shack that had been there as long as the property had been in the family, which was the late 40s: the "Hazel Hotel," he at some point dubbed it. There was a bathtub in the "yard." A creek ran through the property. Hasil fished it, keeping a monster of a bottom feeder he'd snatched from the water in the freezer, not stuffed or mounted, just flopped in the freezer. He'd pull it out to show visitors to prove the magnitude of fish swimming through the heart of the Adkins plantation.

The trailer in which he actually resided was a space which respected no void, filled floor to ceiling with memorabilia from a life time spent just a little southeast of show business. A reproduction of Joe Coleman's portrait of Hasil hung a few feet from the original first fan letter the painter penned to Adkins. A photo of Hank Williams the third was inscribed to Hasil, "my hillbilly hero." Album and single covers along with flyers and posters from various gigs held up the walls (later flyers I made would occupy space on these same walls).

Hasil had the trailer rigged with his own version of "surround sound," and he would blast demos of his home recordings for visitors...a special room in the back (the only one he kept locked) comprised his home studio. Hasil, in those last years when I would visit him, alluded mysteriously to a "one man opera" upon which he said he was working.

Hasil often had a reputation for being crazy and/or violent with concert promoters. I never had issues with Hasil. Perhaps it was because when I knew him, although sipping beer like water and smoking more cigarettes than any one person I've ever witnessed, he never touched "that vodka" which he ascribed to having caused him lots of problems in the past. Perhaps it was simply because he was in his later years, an older, more sedate version of his previous self. Perhaps it was because I was a hillbilly myself and he felt comfortable with me, or perhaps because I gave him respect and never let him pay for his beer and smokes and meat when in my care.

Meat, you say? That was one lesson a body learned quick around Hasil. Whenever you asked him what he wanted to eat he'd just say, "Meat." What kind of meat Hasil? "Any kind of meat." If you brought him a cheeseburger, he'd remove the bread and toppings and just eat the hamburger meat. I finally settled into a routine with Hasil in which I'd buy "family size" packs of bacon and constantly be frying them up for him on his visits (he would go through one of these in about two days). When travelling from Lexington back to Madison, I'd often buy him a large order of bacon from Tolly-Ho, which he thought was the best notion ever.

I think Hasil enjoyed his time in Lexington with me and my gang of Hasil supporters. We had some wing ding after-parties in his honor, usually with Hasil retiring early to what we termed the "Hasil Adkins suite" in our home on Preston Ave. But he wouldn't go to sleep. He'd be calling some girlfriend long distance on our phone, with us keeping him supplied in bacon. I'd sometimes get tired and hand over the bacon frying duties over to someone else. I remember Joe Turner, a pal and sometimes bandmate, taking over the duties and going whole hog and making biscuits and gravy for Hasil, taking them upstairs to the room like an offer to royality. At that house I had a shrine to Hasil on the wall. He took it in after the first visit and said, "Thank you, Todd."

One of the times he didn't stay with us, he stayed with my cohort Brian Manley, and those boys stayed up all night making home recordings with Manley on mandolin. The home recordings survive in excerpt with a funny bit of dialogue between the two as a hidden track on the Smacks! "Ejaculations" CD.

Of course, speaking of recordings, the real testament to these "Hasil years" of ours, was the album which would come to be called "Night Life," eventually released on vinyl with a different track listing on the french label Hog Maw and in an expaned official version in a limited edition package on compact disc by Creeps Records.

Hasil bought a banjo the morning before the recording session, so two tunes ended up on the record with banjo. JSH was ostensibly steering the ship, but I think the notion of "producing" Hasil would be like unto herding the proverbial cats. That said, Hasil liked Jeff's ideas, felt comfortable with us, and listening back to those recordings today, I think one can hear the fun he was having.

I'm not the first to suggest that it was the strongest LP of all new material since 1987's "The Wild Man." While because of Hasil's unexpected death, we never quite pushed these recordings as far we would have liked with the mission statement of including lots of instrumentation not usually associated with Hasil's discography, between the banjos and the keyboards and the secret weapon of Brian Manley's various stringed accompaniment (and to some extent my own drumming and additional percussion, which actually sounds a lot like Hasil's being that, despite what ever plans I had, it become apparent that Hasil had for so long developed his own peculiar percussive timing, I had but one choice to try and mimic his approach), so that instead of an album that sounded nothing like Hasil's past, it now sounds to me like a summary and statement of all that came before, with a few previously unheard of flourishes, a master at the end of his life capturing a broad breath and flow of what made Hasil whom we call Hasil. How was that just two sentences?

(above: JSH's portrait of Hasil used for the Creeps Records edition of "Night Life")

We didn't know it was going to be Hasil's last. With all the endless cigarettes, beer, broads, bacon, and the wild life and the night life, it seemed if he hadn't died by his sixties, he'd go on living like an Appalachian Buddha for years to come. It wasn't meant to be. Reportedly run over by an ATV on his property by a teenager 10 days prior to his death, and despite having gotten a clean bill of health at the doctor, Hasil left this mortal coil.

This stunned us all. We had no choice but to focus on the last bit of work that needed to be done on the album. After getting it out there, it seems like we all stepped back from his legacy and our involvement in it. Readers will note he's barely been mentioned on this blog, but JSH and I now claim this to be the "Year of Hasil" in which we pay respect both to his legacy and how we played a part in it. Expect more yarns and memories and recountings of anecdotes in the year to come. I'm currently sorting my archives to locate and preserve photographs and memorabilia that I will be sharing at this location.

Six years in, and I personally miss him now more than ever; it's sinking in, truly (ruly). Hasil liked to randomly call me up on the phone and talk for hours. He'd take it upon himself to ring and give me notes on recordings and demos of my own that I'd handed him, always enthusiastic to share his musings about that, this, and other things. The long car rides and endless monologues in which I'd sometimes wedge in a word. Playing roadie for him at his shows. Frying up a steady stream of bacon for him. Having a beer and a smoke with the man on my porch or in the backyard in Kentucky or his trailer in West Virginia. These moments are not going to come back this way again, lost like coal dust down the holler washed away by the rain.

McViolence

2011-04-24T19:30:00.002-04:00

by J.S. Holland

When you're living in a fundamentally uncivilized society, sometimes you find yourself putting up with more crap than you should - simply because you become used to it. After awhile, the crap becomes the status quo for you and for others, and it passes on into common use.

Take McDonald's, for instance. Please.

Chrissy Lee Polis, a transgender woman, was brutally beaten by a pair of women (one of them only 14) at a Baltimore McDonald's recently. According to the New York Daily News, an employee did nothing to break up the fight, but just watched and took video of the fight with his phone - not for evidentiary purposes, but for his own jollies. He can be heard laughing on the video as the woman is beaten and nearly killed.

Of course, maybe breaking up fights isn't such a good idea - Raymond Mitchell tried to break up two men fighting in a London, England McDonald's and ended up getting shot to death. According to the U.K. Mirror:

One neighbour, who saw the shooting but was too terrified to be named, said: “He was begging, literally begging for his life. I didn’t dare look out my window in case they saw me. I heard them laughing and swearing at him, calling him a ‘bitch’. I heard them laughing afterwards as well.”

Raymond’s partner, who asked not to be named, said: “I’m terrified. They’re still out there and they’ve not been caught. I’ve been told how they were laughing, actually laughing after they beat him and shot him. How could anybody do something like that?"

Two days ago, in Conroe, TX, Troy Bishop was shot multiple times by an assailant in a McDonald's parking lot.

Last week in Cleveland, OH, a fight broke in a McDonald's parking lot between four women. When the manager and the owner came out to break it up, Stacey Mathews got in her car and proceeded to run over everyone with it, and then fled the scene.

And yesterday, at a McDonald's in Sacramento, CA, a 60-year-old man exposed his genitalia to a 10-year-old boy in a restroom stall. According to KXTV, "the police who used surveillance video to identify the man, who they described as a transient."

Everyone - regardless of age, gender, race, or social status - pretty much openly acknowledges that a trip to Mickey D's can sometimes be quite an experience with the worst elements of our fellow man. In theory, it should be true that the same could be said for any other fast food joint, but in reality, it's just not so. Similar Google News searches for other places could only find one incident of violence at a Hardee's and two at Waffle House. But the McDonald's horror stories never end. I bet you have a few yourself from your own personal experience, I know I sure do.

Nevertheless, all fast food places could equally benefit from my advice to McDonald's: they need to clean house from the top down and completely restructure the way they do business. It's time for these places to stop being overrun by stupid teenagers congregating en masse, and homeless people taking up full-time residence. Restaurants are not babysitters. Restaurants are not homeless shelters. It also doesn't help that often the people running the place are themselves the same bunch of dumb kids and marginal characters, thrown together into an unhealthy and dysfunctional mix, usually half-assedly overseen by a slightly older manager who has become numb to it all and doesn't dare speak up because it's probably the best job they've ever had, sad to say.

Having been, shall we say, marginally housed myself more than once in the many lives I've lived, in no way do I mean to sound insensitive to the plight of the homeless. Far from it. But different people are homeless for different reasons. Some were sociopaths before they became homeless, and this contributed to their downward spiral. Others, driven into apathy at the seeming hopelessness of their situation, became sociopaths after hitting rock bottom. The distinction doesn't really matter, because unless you're mentally ill or have given up on your own humanity, no one should really be able to tell that you're homeless anyway. (You may disagree with me on that, and I'll explain it in greater detail in a post to come.) Then again, I also agree with Jerry Seinfeld when he notes that people who go out in public wearing sweatpants have essentially "given up" on life as well.

McDonald's has come to represent all that is dreary, depressing and dullardly about America. Anton LaVey said much the same when, years ago, he made a rather sarcastically Swiftian defense of James Huberty, who shot and killed 21 people in a McDonald's in 1984.

And hey, I love the food, don't get me wrong. I'm not of those knee-jerk liberals who protest McDogfood's strictly on an ethical or health basis, like the dope in the photo above. After all, my concern here is with incivility, and I consider obnoxious protests to be the apex of incivility.

I'll still eat there occasionally, albeit via the drive-thru. There's nothing more satisfying as a guilty pleasure than an occasional McDonald's cheeseburger, and I swear they must have some sort of a sweetheart deal with Coca-Cola to get superior-tasting Coke formula. Do a side by side taste test and you will find that a McD's fountain Coke kicks butt against a Wendy's fountain Coke every time. But as for the ambience and clientele, it's pretty embarrassing on a global scale that the restaurant most successful in the USA and most identified worldwide with the USA is well known as a haven for some of the most dysfunctional people on the planet, on both sides of the cash register. Until something major is implemented at McDonald's from the top down and bottom up, that "Safe Place" logo with that disgusting clown of theirs smiling on it is nothing but a very sick joke that has no place in the 21st century.

Mixed Martial Arts: a Symptom of America's Decline

2011-04-23T19:28:00.000-04:00

by J.S. Holland

There's a cancer on our society, and it's growing.

No, I don't mean artificial sweeteners or reality shows, though they do promote brainlessness and societal decay. I mean that mutant "sport" that's sweeping the nation, Mixed Martial Arts.

I first became aware of the creeping MMA infection a few years ago, when I got the all-channels cable TV package. After a few days of channel-surfing, I gradually became aware that boxing matches were harder to find than they used to be, and even wrestling now seemed to have a diminished role, both of them being eclipsed by this ultra-violent MMA crap.

It was humorous at first. I remember the first time I inadvertently tuned into a PRIDE match. I saw two barefoot men performing a warped and weak sort of bastardized kickboxing that seemed, like Calvinball, a mishmash of various disciplines randomly stitched together. At random intervals, the kickboxing would abruptly turn into a no-holds-barred wrestling match, but more often than not, it ended up with some sort of porn-star headlock between legs, with one guy's face buried squarely in the other guy's package.

"This must be some sort of joke," I thought. Sadly, it wasn't. This poor man's bathhouse floorshow is what passes for serious fight-sports nowadays. (And paradoxically enough, in my experience, it seems many of the people most drawn towards MMA are often the types who are the most aggressively homophobic.)

For a boxing enthusiast such as myself, the growing MMA-ization of everything is pretty frustrating. I went to Borders to look for boxing magazines and couldn't find a single one. Even wrestling magazines were few and far between. But there were no less than sixteen periodicals devoted to this MMA goofiness.

Even Butterbean, who used to be one of my favorite boxers, took off his shoes and joined the dark side a few years back.

I put boxing above all sports because of its inherently superior mythic resonance - which is sorely lacking in sillier sports that involve chasing after a ball like little puppies fetching a squeaky-toy.

It's always a great comeback, too, when some drunk at a bar gives you the condescending "whut's a-matter witchoo, boy, why don'tchoo lak the Cats?" or some such banter. There's no more gratifying response than to return their condescension and coldly reply that childish games of mere "ball" is for wussies and girly-men, and that you prefer the manly pasttime of watching two guys beat the holy hell out of each other.

And, of course, most importantly: betting on the winner. Now that's American.

Predatory Parking Meters

2011-04-22T20:56:00.001-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Couple years ago, I parked my car at a metered spot on Bardstown Road, with the purpose of quickly handing a flyer for a show to a shopkeeper. I put in a dime, knowing that I'd be back in literally a minute, two at the most. But when I came right back, not only had the time run out, but a meter-lady had swooped in, seemingly out of nowhere, and placed the Green Envelope of Death on my windshield.

On a hunch, I put a nickel in and this time, I timed it closely with my watch. Sure enough, the meter was off. Way off. And as the incident demonstrated to me, a meter only has to be a little off - even 15 seconds off - to be capable of causing you a ticket that could in turn lead to a restraining boot being attached to your car.

I then made a phone call to PARC and found out that the process to appeal a parking ticket is a real pain; enough so that most people for whom time is money, myself included, end up deciding to just pay the sharks and move on.

According to louisvilleky.gov:

Broken or malfunctioning parking meters can be reported to PARC (Parking Authority of River City) at 502-574-3817. Please provide the meter number that is found on a metal plate on the back of the pole. The meter number is usually a combination of letters and numbers that indicate the location. Example: J-601 is the meter located in the 600 block of W. Jefferson Street. Reports of broken meters are forwarded to the Louisville Metro Department of Public Works for repair. Reporting the broken meter will not keep the parked vehicle from being issued a citation. There is an appeals process (see Parking Tickets) if you choose to stay parked at the meter. However, it may be wiser to move your car to another meter rather than risk the inconvenience of having to file an appeal.

Unfortunately, what this charming advice doesn't take into account is that in most cases, one doesn't know a meter has malfunctioned until it's too late and you've already been ticketed. The majority of people victimized by faulty meters may not even realize that they've been swindled - when they get back to their car and find the meter has run out, most probably just grumble at themselves for having seemingly lost track of the time, and leave it at that.

And that's exactly what they're hoping you'll do.

Reread what it says on the city's site above. They're gambling that you won't want to go through "the inconvenience of having to file an appeal," and are in fact trying to steer you against it from the getgo.

It goes without saying that predatory lending is considered an unsavory practice, and a tool of usury employed by organized crime groups and credit card companies. Why? Because the game is played like this: the lender lends you money knowing full well that you may not be able to pay it back in time. And when you don't, you're saddled with exorbitant interest, known as "the Vig." And when you refuse to pay the Vig, then Paulie Walnuts shows up to rough you up and confiscate your belongings.

And how is the game played in the parking meter scam? Almost identically. The city charges you a fee to park on a street (that you as a taxpayer already partially own), knowing full well that you may not be able to make it back to your car on time. And when you don't, you're saddled with an exorbitant penalty fee, known as a ticket. And when you refuse to pay the ticket, then Paulie Walnuts shows up to confiscate your car by putting a boot on it.

Now, reread once more what it says on the city's site above. It states that there is an appeals process if you claim your ticket was a result of a meter that is broken or malfunctioning. And yet, when you go to the city's webpage regarding that appeals process, it clearly states in plain English:

Not reasons for an appeal:

1.Lack of knowledge of the City's parking regulations.
2.Appointment conflicts or tardiness going or returning from appointments.
3.Inability to find a legal parking space.
4.Failure to have appropriate or sufficient amount of coins.
5.Broken or malfunctioning parking meter.

Can you say Catch-22?

How, in the name of all that is ethical and legal, can the city claim that you have to put money in a meter, but then also insist that they are not responsible if the meter mischarges you?

The meters, and the regulations regarding them, are the city's. Regardless of any disclaimer language on their website, the city can - and must - be held responsible for the accuracy of their meters and for any hardships on citizens caused by inaccuracies.

Which parking meters in town are wrong, and how wrong are they? That's something I'm going to be investigating, dear reader. And when you report one of these faulty meters to the PARC phone number above, how much time elapses - and how many more tickets are given to other suckers - before something is done about it? This, too, is a question whose answer we shall endeavour to learn. All in time.

The Pros and Cons of Pubcrawling

2011-04-21T20:36:00.000-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Last year I learned to pace myself for the 2010 Transylvania Gentlemen Pub Crawl. As the cute bartender gal said to Agent Mulder, "you've got to work out for that kind of heavy lifting."

Even though I'm of hardy Irish stock just a few generations off the boat from Cork, I'm not as adept at power-pubbing as my ancestors - not to mention I actually don't approve of outright drunkenness. So, then, when bar-hopping or pub-crawling, what to drink is a huge concern. If you drink serious beer you'll get schnockered and fold in the stretch before the night is through, but if you drink lame-ass beer you'll just be sick, bloated, carbed out and pickled in commercial preservatives.

Part of the key is to drink medium-quality beers, neither soopa-fine nor soopa-sucky. Another big part is to go slow. Like the fella said, nice and easy does it every time. Don't be like those hipsters who swan into a place, throw back a quickie and swan right back out again to be seen at the next place. When I enter a joint I prefer to be there for the long haul. Which is probably another good reason why I'm not wired for pub-crawling.

And then comes the inevitable "having said that..." A couple weeks ago, I was romping around town with a couple of girlfriends and ended up paying the price for not staying put in one spot.

The festivities started early, with a Duvel at F.A.B.D. Smokehouse in the Highlands. The grub there is grrrrreat, but I was really put out when the woman there tried to serve Duvel to me in a plastic dixie cup. I don't mean to be a snob, but damn, get real. You gonna serve a fancy beer that costs as much for a single bottle as a six-pack of a gas station beer, you'd better pour it in the proper official Duvel glass. She rummaged around, found a regular (non-Duvel) beer glass of some sort, gave it a half-hearted wash in the kitchen, then handed it to me steaming hot from the hot water. Sigh. I thought about asking her to stick in the fridge for about 15 minutes to chill it - I was willing to wait - but she was already acting like I was Little Lord Fauntleroy or something over the plastic cup thing.

The whole experience was so unsatisfying that I voted (Ron Whitehead style, that is - when ol' Ron says "My vote is..." you know it's not really going to be up to a democratic vote) we go to Ernesto's and throw back some happy-hour margaritas. On the way there, however, while passing through Clifton, it was decided that we might as well hit Sol Azteca on Frankfort Avenue rather than drive all the way to the East End. Initially, I was thrilled with Sol Azteca - the place is beautiful, clean, modern and elegant inside, both waitresses were charming and helpful, and the menu was a cut above the usual Mexican restaurant fare.

I noticed that the tortilla chips tasted weird. Knowing that I should keep the foodstuffs stuffed in me to cushion the alcohol, I kept pokin' em in anyway. Then I noticed there were a few green chips in there. "Oh, no biggie", I said, "they're just leftover from St. Patrick's which wasn't that long ago". But at the bottom of the basket I hit a red chip. Green and red chips could mean Christmas leftovers. Ugh. And the margarita also tasted weird - in a way that I am simply unable to describe. Its color was also unusually opaque and white, rather than the usual translucent yellowy-greenishness. I didn't give it much thought at the time and slurped away at it happily.

A couple hours later, we made our way out the front door of Sol Azteca. One of the gals suggested we nip into El Mundo for a bit since it was right across the street. El Mundo's upstairs has always been a little hit-and-miss for me over the years, but I went along. I took the mission; what the hell else was I gonna do? But as it transpired, the drinks here were not only the best thing I'd had all evening, they were the best margaritas I've had in a long long time. We all got different margaritas and passed 'em around amongst ourselves sampling each other's, and they were all three superb. My favorite would have to be the Blood Orange Margarita, which I recommend the highest.

Then I'm not sure what happened. Inexplicably, I became violently ill and also felt far drunker than I should have based on the amount I had imbibed. Some unknown something was acting as a co-factor and heightening the effects of the alcohol. And that's the problem with having been to three different places that day: there was no way to pinpoint with certainty what happened and where. And none of the three places could have had anything to do with it, for that matter. But in doing some research online, I've learned a lot about tortilla chips made with genetically-modified corn, which can turn ammonia-smelling and foul-tasting when stale - combine that with alcohol and that's enough to explain it right there. I also learned that some frozen margarita mixes used in restaurants contain evil artificial sweeteners like splenda and aspartame, which are literal neurotoxins and should never be consumed with alcohol, says me.

Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying anything was wrong with what Sol Azteca served me. As I say, whatever happened to me could have been caused by any of the places I went to that night, and it could in fact be none of them. I do know that now more than ever, I'm going to take a greater interest in what's in stuff.

And by the way, yes, there will be a 2011 Transylvania Gentlemen pub crawl. Watch this space for details.

Dew Nuggets

2011-04-20T23:36:00.000-04:00

by J.S. Holland

Had a bit of a traumatic moment today. I was out and about running errands, and had a can of Mountain Dew along for the ride. I was parked on Sixth and Jefferson waiting for a friend. And then I took a slug of the drink and felt something solid, not liquid, transfer into my mouth along for the ride. I felt one of them go down my throat. I freak out about such things and immediately opened the car door to expectorate it all into my hand.

Sure enough, there in my palm were two tiny glistening nuggets of yellowy-orangey mystery WTF, with a slight tinge of pink and brown. I felt like vomiting right then and there, as the worst thoughts entered my mind about what this could be. I gently poked at these globs with a thumbnail, examining their texture and trying to identify this unwanted nostoc from Mt. Dew. I tried to tell myself that this was fruit pulp that somehow fell into the vats at the bottling plant, but parts of my brain screamed at other parts of my brain that I knew damn well there's no real fruit involved in the manufacture of Mountain Dew. Then I started having thoughts about it being mammalian in nature, like maybe these are fragments of mouse brains, or perhaps lipid fat from an errant possum caught in the gears of soda progress.

I took dozens of pictures immediately, as "evidence" for a complaint.

Feeling my blood pressure rise, I drove home in a panic. I opened a beer and chugged it, rationalizing that the alcohol might kill whatever deadly germs I was certain to have swallowed. I got online and started scoping out labs that could analyze the sample. I pondered which one of my attorneys would be best to contact about this affront.

And then I looked down on the floor. There, around my feet, were more of these identical tiny yellow globs. Then I remembered that while having some heated-up leftovers of Arni's Pizza just an hour prior, I'd sat the Dew can on the floor at my feet. These globs were bits of cheese off the pizza that had fallen off during my wild dog-like feeding frenzy, and into my soda unawares.

Oops.

Ahem. Yes, well. Movin' right along. Hated to waste these cool-but-gross macro shots though.

She Smoked Blue Velvet

2011-04-19T02:43:00.000-04:00

by J.S. Holland

You all know me, I'm not really a smoker. Oh, I puff a fancy cigar now and then for kicks, and I've been experimenting with a pipe, doing tobacco-tasting in much the same way that a wine fancier enjoys his/her hobby in moderation, as opposed to drunkenness.

Compared to these heady delights, I can't abide the shrill harsh nasty chemical radioactive formaldehyde crap that they put in the common man's cigarettes. (Brother Dockery rolls his own from big bags of the good organic stuff, so he's alright.) However, strictly in the name of science and all its wonders, I've bummed entire packs of Kentucky's Best from good old Vicki-toria and found them to mostly live up to their home-grown rep of being crap-free. They do have a rather raw Earthen taste though, even compared to the punchiest Oscuro cigars. And my dabblings in Florida with fly-by-night local cigs have been nothing short of a disaster - they tasted like smoking discarded diapers marinated in a colloidal suspension of asphalt and burnt urine.

But today, hanging out the offices of JSH World Headquarters, I noticed my attorney puffing some far-out crazy brand of smokes I'd never seen before. Berley Blue. What kinda Frito-Lay off-brand is that? It said on the side that it's manufactured by the Tantus Tobacco Company in Russell Springs, Kentucky, so I thought I'd give it a try for patriotism's sake. And though I'm still not a fan of cigarettes, I have to say these were an exceptionally tasty and smoooooooooooooth diversion, like smoking velour or velvet. (Well, no, probably not, really; it's a metaphor.)

If you wanna smoke local and not choke vocal, I recommend this Berley Blue whatever-the-heck-it-is. At least use it as a stepping stone to wean yourself off of corporate death utensils and get onto our good stuff.

Wait, What?

2011-04-18T22:39:00.000-04:00

by J.S. Holland

As the late Howard Finster remarked to me during my audience with him: "I'm an old man; I don't have time to listen, I only have time to talk." That's how I'm livin' now. It's approximately eleven-something in the p.m., broadcasting live from the JSH Plantation in sunny ('cept it ain't) downtown Anchorage, land of cold gin and warm women.

The reason I've gathered you all here today for this emergency meeting is to inform you that as of tonight, the Transylvania Gentlemen blog will cease operations as the official online presence of Cheeseburger & Fries.

However, as you've obviously gleaned by now, THIS is the new official online outhouse of Cheeseburger & Fries, so keep yer pants on, Mabel. Or not. We're following the example of Billy Childish and sidestepping ourselves like a crab. While the T-Gent blog goes on strictly as the official online vessel of that noble gentlemen's brotherhood, that will free us up to devote this blog to more holier pursuits like arguing about beer and gossipping about KISS and ranting about comic books.

Capish? No? All in time; you'll see how elegantly this works. Look at it this way - now you're getting two Transylvania Gentlemen blogs for the price of one. Now drink up, ladies, it's post time. LATER IS NOW.