A Young Man's Primer on How to Attain the Leisure Class.

[Powers of 10 Day.]

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:12:59 GMT

I had almost forgotten about this being Powers of Ten Day. Coincidentally I had been researching the Eames' to find out about their relationship with the Higgins' glass studio and was reminded that today is 10/10.

Next year will be even cooler to write.

[Let's Talk About Books.]

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:09:17 GMT

I have, maybe, 5 or 6 hundred books that I really don't have enough room to keep them. I got them yesterday and they are out on the back patio where I'm trying to sort them some.

You want any of them?

Illusions

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:56:28 GMT

One of the books that my father checked out from the library using my name was Illusions by Richard Bach. I learned that one pretty fast and it wasn’t as challenging as Ulysses was but I felt like since it was so easy it must not have meant so much. That’s obviously not true.

I breezed through that book not because it was easy but because I was a kid and I didn’t think anything it talked about was impossible. I wasn’t tainted or jaded as we become when we’re older and for me the idea of vaporizing clouds was an easy one to accept. Flying too for that matter.

Decades have passed since then and I’ve read that book plenty and I recently reread it just again. I was struck by how much I took the book to heart and how it absolutely shaped me as a person and defined a great deal about what I think and have thought since I was a small child.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever read anything by Richard Bach and I’m sure his work isn’t monumental literature but I am also sure that his work is important. To me it is, at least, and that’s enough. The opening passage from Illusions is just great and I loved the grease-stained pages reproduced for the thing and it looked like a real journal to me. The story of the little creatures that cling to the rocks is still an important idea that I’ve never not held in very high esteem and I figure it’s nice to post it here for you and for later.

“Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all–young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!” But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.” But they cried the more, “Savior!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior.”

It’s simple, of course, and it’s nice and it’s important and I like it very much.

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.

This Is What Salvador Said.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:36:18 GMT

“I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly.”

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.

What Matters Most

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:11:32 GMT

Some good conversations have come up after the post I made just before this one and I kept thinking of the perfect Bukowski line [and subsequent book title] ‘What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.’ This is as good of a mantra as you could have, I’d imagine, and I think that it’s sort of been ringing louder and louder as I’ve been thinking about the whole art thing. And it’s not just art but it’s literature too and, most importantly, it’s about life in general and as a whole.

Everybody has their own fires to walk through and what’s hard to you might be easy for me. What’s hot to me might be breezy for you. What’s art to you might be crap to me and what’s good solid work to me might be kid scribbles to someone else. I mean, really, I can’t hardly navigate through until the end of some of Allen Ginsburg’s writings. And I know plenty of people that find Salinger more ponderous than poetic. It’s all subjective, of course. And all we can do is just do our very best work and leave it at that.

But, in the interest of being contrary and while we’re on the subject of Bukowski, I cannot understand how anyone could ever just simply dismiss Bukowski as being little more than a misogynistic drunk. Have you ever really read any of his work or is that just some point of view you learned to express is your Womyn’s Writing Workshop?

[Why does all of this stuff always get me so goddam excited anyway? Sorry. Sort of.]

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.

[Headlight Green Light.]

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:00:05 GMT

This evening outside of the thrift store on 22nd I was loading up my car and sort of struggling to do so while not dropping my junk in the process. I see some guy that was walking around in the parking lot come up towards me and at first I think he’s going to offer to help me open the door. I finally just set the stuff in my right hand on top of the roof and he says something to me I don’t understand while he’s flipping through a book of some kind. At first I think it’s one of those ‘I’m deaf and please read this so you’ll understand that I am in dire need of gasoline to get home to my children’ kind of hustles. But then I realize it’s actually a cheap photo album full of pictures.

He stops on an open page to a photo of a headlight cover for a car. It’s taped off on the edges with blue tape as if the car was being painted or something and there was a date and time stamp but I never looked at it too hard.

So he points to the headlight in the photo and says that one just like it was stolen from the exact parking lot we were in. And then he pointed to my car and indicated it too looked just like the one in the photo. Now, I’m still confused about this whole thing even now but I asked him if he meant if had I seen anyone doing something like that. He said something else that I couldn’t make out and then I cut him off to say that I didn’t steal any goddam headlight if that’s what he was implying. It seemed like he was saying that he didn’t but then he asked me if I wanted him to clean the one on my car for me. [What for? As if to possibly protect me from the people that had their headlight stolen by proving in advance that mine was not theirs? What was this hustle all about?]

Okay, so I speak a fair amount of Spanish and I am conversational in it to a degree but understand a great deal more than I can speak. It’s not that he was speaking in Spanish or that he had some heavy accent that I couldn’t navigate. It’s just that he was this tremendous mumbler and I honestly didn’t understand him too well. But I did get the part about cleaning my headlight cover and, of course, this really confused the hell out of me.

I said, “Nah, man. I’m not too worried about it. It’s a company car and I don’t really care too much about it.” I turned away from him and and got in the car and watched to see if he was trying the same thing on other people. It looked like he had and was.

So what in the hell is that about? For me, on some weird level, I appreciate the idea of grifters and conmen and magicians and hustlers. Someone practicing and then perfecting some elaborate hustle is interesting to me in some way. I think most people probably think so too or there wouldn’t be so many freaking movies about that stuff. And I’ve seen or heard of a terrific number of scams and cons and I know enough about them to see them coming. But I’ve never heard of the old ‘clean your headlight routine’ and I don’t see what the bit could even be about.

So I guess he had a photo album with a lot of shots of various headlight covers. He had to see the car and then flip to the page that coincided with that make and model I’d guess. Because the one he pointed to was for sure a picture of a Lincoln Town Car from around the same year as mine. And I happen to know this because I’ve been driving this Lincoln Town Car lately and had just recently read up on it a couple of days ago. Three days ago, tops.

I was checking to see what the difference was with the Cartier Edition since that’s the kind that I drive and I think it’s totally funny to have a Cartier car. So I know for a fact that the headlights are this cat-eye, slanted kind that are super wide and run wide across the front and side of the thing. So he had the right kind of car in his book.

Man, I have no idea what this was all about. Do you?

[As Information.]

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:22:21 GMT

The Greeks figured out a long time ago that pieces of amber would strangely attract little particles of light if you rubbed them with your finger the right way. What happens is that the amber becomes electrified by what's called the triboelectric effect. This just means that regular static electricity is produced sometimes if you happen to rub some things together in the right way. Socks and carpeting are good for that. A wool sweater getting pulled over your head does this when it gets tugged past your hair. Amber is one of those things that also makes a good conductor in that way when it meets your skin and the Greek word for amber is ēlektron. That's where we got the word for electricity. Yup.

So the polarity and strength of the charges that are produced are differnt and they vary widely. It just depends on things like what the material is, the surface roughness, the temperature, strain, pressure and some other stuff. But it's just across the board on how and when it works and in what combination. And it's not a very predictable form of electricity at all. Only broad generalizations can be made. Take amber again as an example, it's safe to say that amber will create an electric charge by contacting and then separating it from something like wool. But you can try it 50 times and it may not ever happen.

It has to be just right and then it's just all shocking, sparking gangbusters with this goddam static cling. Crazy, right?

You can try this with other things besides socks and carpeting and sweaters and hair. Try using glass rubbed with silk and hard rubber rubbed with rabbits fur.

I've now got the new LiveJournal Messenger.

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:51:21 GMT

I've now got the new LiveJournal Messenger. My Windows Live ID is jasonwentcrazy@livejournal.com. Sign up now and we can chat!

Obituary

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:05:17 GMT

I had always sort of considered what I’d like to have written on my headstone when I am dead. It’s a big thing to consider and I have always refrained from having any text tattooed on my body after all of these years because I can’t quite come up with something perfect enough. Although I suppose that with a tombstone it might not matter as much since a tattoo is something you have to live with for a while and a tombstone is something that you get to make other people live with.

Charles Bukowski always was one of my favorites as far as epitaphs were concerned. His just says, “Don’t Try.” It beats hell out of Keats’ any day. And another favorite is the one that Bernoulli chose for himself and was a nice play on his Miracle Spirals as well as his belief in reincarnation. It reads, “Eadem mutata resurgo” which is translated from Latin to mean, “Though changed I shall arise the same.”And how can you not love Royal Tennenbaum’s inscription? [Go see it if you haven't.]

What I have so far would be nice to use on opposing sides of the thing and that way, depending on how you felt about me when I was alive, you can choose to be reminded of the good or the bad.

This is all of it so far:

A quiet man, not given to law, quarrel or wrangling, not vitious, but pleasant, neat and spruce, loving mirth in his words and actions, clean in apparel, rather drinking much than gluttonous, prone to venery, often entangled in love-matters, zealous in his affections, musical, delighting in baths and all honest merry meetings, or masks and stage-plays; easy of belief, and not given to labour or taking any pains, a company-keeper, cheerful, nothing mistrustful, a right virtuous man, often had in some jealousy, yet no cause for it.

Or, on the other side of things is this bit:

The man was riotous, expensive, wholly given to looseness and lewd companies of women, not regarding his reputation, coveting unlawful beds, incestuous, an adulterer; fanatical, a mere skip-jack, of no faith, no repute, no credit; a goldbricker, chronic malcontent, spending his means in alehouses, taverns, and amongst scandalous, loose people; a mean lazy companion, careless in the emotions of others and not careful of the things of this life or anything religious; a mere atheist and an unnatural man.

This is adapted from a 17th Century book by William Lilly called Christian Astrology. It’s somehow supposed to be how the planet Venus can change people depending on where it was when a person was born or something. And I have no idea why I was even reading that in the first place.

[I'll keep you posted on the developments and the final edits.]

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.

[Some Small Things.]

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:08:47 GMT

This is what we did the other day.

35 little mixed-media mini-canvases. I plan on doing at least 100 more tomorrow.

[If the embedded thing doesn't work the link is just HERE.]

Connection And Reconnection.

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:55:50 GMT

Addendum to the entry just before this one:

Just shortly after those things happened I get a great, brick-house beautiful email from Brandon [another Hospitality Club guest-turned-friend] who I have not spoken to in over two years easy. And later this evening as I check my mail I get news that Nes has finally been given the Spouse Visa she had been waiting over a year for. She got the news just before leaving Tucson for Diamond Mountain.

I never check my email much lately and I almost never use my Yahoo! account. I just happened to be at home and I had some time to kill so I fooled around online and decided to check my mail. That’s when I got the email from Nes asking if they could stay with me for the night as they were coming down from the mountain to see a show at the Rialto. It’s a freak thing that I ever even checked my mail that day. Seriously, I have over 150 emails in my inbox.

Something else sort of cool is that Nes and Ed stayed with me at Cybele’s because my apartment is more like my own personal fort and it may not be suitable for everyone. And I had a friend staying there already since he was in between apartments. So they stayed with me and Cybele at her place.

Another interesting thing is that there was a point where I had never even met Cybele in person and I invited her to come along with me to one of the teachings that Geshe Michael Roach was having. She was unable to make it and I eventually met her later but out of the blue comes Nes and Ed. [Maybe it's not that interesting the way I'm explaining it. But in my head it's so interesting it's crazy.]

Yet another small instance of this Connection and Reconnection business; I showed Ed the dollar bill I had ready in an addressed and stamped envelope waiting to be sent back to Gary. Ed added another dollar just because. [Full circle again.]

Later that evening I got another unexpected email from my past. After not being in touch for probably 20 years one of my best friends from high-school sent this:

I was had some Sigue Sigue Sputnik on my iPod the other day and it got me to reminiscing. How many times did we make that walk from your house on Patterson to Village Square? That was like 3 miles each way. I still laugh at the time we mixed bleach and ammonia to clean up the giant Adidas logo on your basement floor. We could have died then. I watched some dumbass janitor make that mixture when I was working for Sam’s Club and he was taken away by ambulance shortly after.

Other good/interesting memories:
Book Brokers (I still have the Kraven’s Last Hunt SpiderMan series, one of the only comics I still have)
Magnum 44 markers and the wrath that follows their trail
Listening to New Order’s Substance over and over and over again
Prank calling the Dierbergs pay phone
RPG marathons at James’s house (Do you still hear from him? I often wonder what he ended up doing.)
[Censored just to save a certain party any hurt feelings or embarrassment.]
Getting high more than is reasonable or necessary.
Taking an excessive amount of NoDoze and then going to see Mannequinn 2 which we walked out of.
The Central West End. I need to give my wife a tour of that place soon. I miss it.

Lots of good times from age 15 to 17. I have a 16 year old step son who loves to sit in front of the xbox 360 a little too much and wish he would go out and experience life. The TV and video games are sucking the life and real experiences out of the future generations. I wonder what souless bastards they will all become. Not saying we are perfect, but we can at least say we lived.

Just for old times sake, yell at the top of your lungs, “I am the prime male specimen!” Especially when the day is very droll. Works wonders.

But, yeah, I knew that there was something going on over these last few days. I’m not sure that any of this stuff means anything really. It’s not much more than a running theme for the day I guess. I just can’t not think, however, that it makes for a pretty beautiful reminder that the past is not always prologue and the past isn’t even the past.

Yup.

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.

The Distance Between Locations.

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:42:31 GMT

It took 3 Years, 341 Days, 11 Hours and 10 Minutes for my $20 bill to reach Texas. Today, after all of that time, someone found it.

Today my great, good [Bodhisattva] friend Nes [and her perfectly kind and wonderful husband Ed] has popped back into my life after at least a year.

[I will take these unexpected things from a bit back into my past as some sort of sign.]

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.

[Connection And Reconnection.]

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:42:04 GMT

Addendum to the June 17, 2009 entry:

Just shortly after those things happened I get a great, brick-house beautiful email from Brandon [another Hospitality Club guest-turned-friend] who I have not spoken to in over two years easy. And this evening as I check my mail I get news that Nes has finally been given the Spouse Visa she had been waiting over a year for. She got the news just before leaving Tucson for Diamond Mountain.

Something else sort of cool is that Nes and Ed stayed with me at Cybele's because my apartment is more like my own personal fort and it may not be suitable for everyone. And I had a friend staying there already since he was in between apartments. So they stayed with me and Cybele at her place. The interesting thing is that I had never even met her in person and I invited Cybele to come along with me to one of the teachings that Geshe Michael Roach was having. She was unable to make it and I eventually met her later. Nes and Ed were there that night too. [Maybe it's not that interesting the way I'm explaining it.]

And a small instance of this Connection and Reconnection business; I showed Ed the dollar bill I had ready in an addressed and stamped envelope waiting to be sent back to Gary. Ed added another dollar just because. [Full circle again.]

And after not being in touch for probably 20 years one of my best friends from high-school sent this out of the blue too:

I was had some Sigue Sigue Sputnik on my iPod the other day and it got me to reminiscing. How many times did we make that walk from your house on Patterson to Village Square? That was like 3 miles each way. I still laugh at the time we mixed bleach and ammonia to clean up the giant Adidas logo on your basement floor. We could have died then. I watched some dumbass janitor make that mixture when I was working for Sam's Club and he was taken away by ambulance shortly after.

Other good/interesting memories:
Book Brokers (I still have the Kraven's Last Hunt SpiderMan series, one of the only comics I still have)
Magnum 44 markers and the wrath that follows their trail
Listening to New Order's Substance over and over and over again
Prank calling the Dierbergs pay phone
RPG marathons at James's house (Do you still hear from him? I often wonder what he ended up doing.)
[Censored just to save a certain party any hurt feelings or embarrassment.]
Getting high more than is reasonable or necessary.
Taking an excessive amount of NoDoze and then going to see Mannequinn 2 which we walked out of.
The Central West End. I need to give my wife a tour of that place soon. I miss it.

Lots of good times from age 15 to 17. I have a 16 year old step son who loves to sit in front of the xbox 360 a little too much and wish he would go out and experience life. The TV and video games are sucking the life and real experiences out of the future generations. I wonder what souless bastards they will all become. Not saying we are perfect, but we can at least say we lived.

Just for old times sake, yell at the top of your lungs, "I am the prime male specimen!" Especially when the day is very droll. Works wonders.

[But, yeah, I knew that there was something going on over these last few days.]

[The Distance Between Locations.]

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:39:15 GMT

It took 3 Years, 341 Days, 11 Hours and 10 Minutes for my $20 bill to reach Texas. Today, after all of that time, someone found it.

Today my great, good Bodhisattva friend Nes [and her perfectly wonderful husband Ed] has popped back into my life after at least a year.

[I will take these things as some sort of sign.]

{A follow-up post is just HERE if you're up for it.}

[As Bloomsday Approaches.]

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:18:16 GMT

I scored some great old Time magazines from a thrift store just recently and have been looking through them like they were relics from another time. And they are relics from another time, really. I have a couple from 1930 and a few more from the 40's. The advertisements were almost all copy and were more like brochures and every other ad was for some sort of whiskey. And if not for booze then for cigarettes and they all are going on about how their brand of cigarettes are 'healthy' and doctor approved. There is another one that has Hitler on the cover and it's from 1932 and the article basically says that he's this up and coming guy that is getting a lot of Germans all riled up and we may need to keep an eye on him in the future.

I was doing some research and reading online at the Time magazine website and they have all of their old issues archived there. You can read them for free. I found the issue where James Joyce's Ulysses was finally off the banned list and was finally published legally.

Since Bloomsday is just days away I figured it might be a nice thing to read.

[Gary.]

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:44:20 GMT

I wonder how many takers Gary has so far on his little request? I'm so tempted to send the dude his dollar back. And I'm equally tempted to start the same campaign.

What can it hurt? I mean, I have been working on this little project where the goal is to paint one-million little paintings and then sell them off for a buck a piece. It'll take years and years I'm guessing. That's too long. I need to get Gary hired on as my new agent. He's obviously got some pretty good ideas.

[LP Cover Lover.]

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 08:41:13 GMT

I'm probably way behind the times on this one but I just now found out about this website. I do this quite a bit. I'll find something cool or interesting and then excitedly mention it as if I've personally discovered the thing and want to share it with people. Shortly afterwards I realize that it's old hat and common knowledge to everyone else. But so what?

We should live our lives with that level of excitement, right? We should act as if we're the first ones to have ever discovered horchata or oral sex or anything else, right? How can it hurt?

Either way, this site is so great. [Dig that crazy Colonel!]

Leshan Buddha Sketchbook Scan

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:35:41 GMT

Leshan Buddha Sketchbook Scan
Originally uploaded by smartwentcrazy

I have this weird way of meditating sometimes and I tend to do these quick gesture drawings of the same subject over and over. I remember doing the same thing for scarab beetles, my wooden carved Weeping Buddha statue and Ganesha. I probably made well over 100 drawings of each of those things. Most recently I'm really into the Leshan Bodhisattva/Buddha statue. I'm just so overwhelmed by this statue and the sheer scope and scale and magnitude of it. It's so beautiful to me that it seems like it can't even really exist. It was started in the year 713 and it took about 90 years to complete.

[I'm cross posting this to buddhists as well since that's where I was reminded of this.]

[Art Snob.]

Sat, 30 May 2009 07:54:20 GMT

I'm getting into this space where I'm finding myself more and more bugged by the things that people are passing off as art. I've always been a pretty tough critic and I'm sure I may come off as being all holier than thou when it comes to offering my view on what someone else is doing. I can be a bit mean sometimes but I just can't settle for the other option of just spouting off some innocuous compliment just to not hurt someone's feelings. That'd be worse, right? Yes.

I just don't think that you can buy Art at some hobby shop and sprinkle a little glitter glue around and fill in the collage blanks with assorted go-to, rubber-stamped words in flowery script like Breathe or Dream or Fairies or Love. And then add copyright symbols and watermark your images just in case anyone tries to swipe your lame ideas in the first place. It's just so goddam trite and expected and boring and I wonder when the last time I saw any new art that made me forget how to talk. [I have seen this sort of thing lately. Just a few days ago, in fact, and I'm lucky for it. I just meant that figuratively is all.]

It's enough to make me feel some compulsion to create if only for the sake of reminding myself that not all art has become so homogenized and watered down. It sometimes takes work and time and inspiration. I've been looking at a bunch of various mediums and shapes and sizes and I've got some good ideas about what I want to work on next. I'm hoping to sweat it out this summer. I guess I'll see what happens. You have to start somewhere I guess.

[You Should Go There.]

Thu, 28 May 2009 20:18:49 GMT

The Shady Dell was just perfect. It was way more cool than I imagined and every detail of the place was so thought out. Every single drawer in every single trailer contained some secret relic and that part alone was worth it. Cybele posted a couple of photos so far and and I'll collect more from everyone and get them uploaded soon. But, yeah, if you are able to visit Bisbee, Arizona then do yourself a favor and stay at the Shady Dell.

[Small Town Newspaper Obituary Writers.]

Fri, 22 May 2009 06:33:21 GMT

In all of this genealogy research I'm doing lately I'm finding that I've been reading more old newspapers than I probably ever thought I might. [Although, now that I think of it, I guess that part's not too surprising.] I'm not sure if it's because of the very distinct Midwest manner of speech and the sometimes unexpected usage of the language or if it's just the way that people talked back then. But either way you look at it I really am enamored by some of these writers and especially some obituary passages I found in a recent batch of old newspapers. A typical example has paragraphs like this:

Edna was one of ten children. She loved the outdoors and, as a child at home, would always volunteer to do just about anything outside to escape working in the house. She and Alva began their married life in a little log cabin in the Blackfoot Community. A cabin, which she had helped her father build. There three of her children were born. In 1940, they moved to a farm in the High Prairie Community and that was their home over fifty years. There is where their children grew up. She helped milk the cows, raised chickens, helped in the hayfield, and whatever else needed to be done on a farm. She worked for several years at Rice Stix Factory and then worked tying fishing flies for Blakemore Lure Co. A few years after her husband’s death, she reluctantly sold the farm and moved into Lebanon. Edna was very content with the simple things in life – food on the table (and when she cooked a meal there was plenty of it), her family together for the holidays or anytime for that matter; sitting on a river bank with fishing pole in hand; the fulfillment received by raising a bountiful garden from which vegetables were canned and frozen; nurturing her flowers; making quilts for the grandchildren; or taking a drive in the fall when the trees were at their peak of beauty. Several years ago she accepted Jesus as her Savior and was a member of Emmanuel Chapel. Edna was a loving mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She truly cared about others. She will be greatly missed but the memories she created we will carry all through life.

They are just these really long things that actually reflect upon the life of the person and tend to lean towards the sweet and human. Even though I've obviously never met these people [and most of them I'm not even related to anyway] I still feel something reading about them. It's just a lot nicer and it seems like a real shame that all we tend to get today are postage stamp sized tidbits that are concerned more about the column inch than the person they are attempting to memorialize. [I've got plenty better than that one too but it was just what I grabbed first.]

And, whoa, these newspaper editors seem like they were good times. Some of the articles just crack me up and some are almost surreal. I'm including one here and sticking it behind a cut because it's a big enough image file that I don't want to bog you down without warning. [Although isn't that a pretty dated thing to be warning somebody about? 'Warning! Very Large Image File! Please be advised that it may take up to 2 business days to download.' It's not like we haven't upgraded our 2400-baud modems. Sorry for my rut.] At any rate, the article is also typical of the late 1800's and you'll honestly have to read it yourself. Really. It's kind-of worth it.

And I bet if newspapers today printed lines like, "The head of the boy, six years old, was mashed to jelly and the little girl was struck over the head with a poker and left for dead." then they'd stand a much better shot at not going under. Or maybe.

[Ah, the good old days.]

[Found Tour.]

Thu, 21 May 2009 01:33:08 GMT

Last year when Davy and Peter made their rounds across the country they stopped off here in Tucson and it was just a blast. Found Magazine is tremendous all by itself but when you punch the whole thing up with original music inspired by some of the finds, slideshows and live commentaries then, man, you're really doing something then. Hoooo! This time they will be doing things a little bit differently but I cannot imagine it could ever be not worth going to see. They'll be here at Hotel Congress on June 26.

Attention St. Louis: Turn off your computer and hurry on down to the Mad Art Gallery in Soulard. The show is starting any minute probably and you'll be glad you saw it. [It's at 2727 S. 12th St. and you can call them to see what's up at 314-771-8230] Okay. Now go.

[Weekend Update.]

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:41:55 GMT

This weekend was sucky and cool and it wore me out. The first part of the weekend began around 4AM on Saturday when my phone starts ringing with questions about the situation with the vans. My job is spread all over but one aspect of it is to arrange and secure most of the trips for the luxury sedan service I work for. this weekend was probably the busiest two-day period the company has seen in close to forever. We didn't think we'd have enough high-occupancy vans to accomodate all of the guests that were slated to depart on Sunday. Saturday was one of the busiest days for Yellow Cab and that's the other company I work for. Saturday night was this huge charity event and every year Yellow Cab donates all of the transportation for that event. We drive everyone home that needs a ride and has had a bit too much to drink. Each company needed as many vans as they could secure and they would need them at the same exact time almost.

The charity event transportation would be going until maybe 2AM and the first hotel departures started on Sunday morning at around 4AM. I would need to make sure that all of the vans that were being used for the charity deal were immediately delivered to the resort as soon as possible.

I got stuck doing crowd control at the charity event and my job was to calm the people down and entertain them long enough until the next van returned from their route. I'd load the van with 8-10 people that were going to the same area of town and the drivers would drop them off at their homes and hurry back for another group. We had about 10+ vans working like this non-stop and it wasn't enough to keep up. We called in regular taxi cabs to help out and even they weren't enough. That same weekend was commencement at the University of Arizona and cabs were in short supply. [Yellow Cab is the largest taxi fleet in Tucson and we have about 150 cabs. Our next largest competition has around 15-20. And even being that large we still couldn't keep up with the demand.] I remembered pretty early on why I stopped bouncing in bars and dealing with squadrons of impatient drunks is a big task. Especially when I was completely sober and, unlike in a bar, I was not allowed to just grab hold of some jerks neck and drag them outside kicking and all. You can't do that to people that just attended a really posh charity event. It's not cool at all.

Every hour I'm swearing is my last and I am dying to get out of there. I was comped a suite at the JW Marriot Starr Pass Resort that night too and my girlfriend had already checked in and was waiting for me. My feet were killing me and I was quickly becoming the target of these impatient people who obviously blamed me for not having a ride for them when they wanted it. All I could do was ask them for their patience and explain the situation [that we had a fleet of vans out driving people home for free and they were hurrying back as soon as they could] and try and gather groups of people who would be in the same van when it arrived. We did a great job of handling everything under the circumstances and ultimately everyone was delivered home safely. But I didn't get done until around 1:30 or 2AM. I drove to 7-11 and made it just in time for a 6-pack. I was in some part of town that really only sold crap beer in mostly 40oz bottles. I settled on Newcastle and drove to the resort. I get there and the valet guy parks my insanely messy car and I grab some clean laundry from the basket on my front seat. I tuck the laundry and beer under my arm and drape some clean boxers over my shoulder and sling my backpack and laptop over the other. I trudge over to the front desk and they are staring like I'm nuts and I realize how I must appear to them. This is one of the most high-end resorts in the state and is where Tiger Woods stays. It's the kind of place that charges $3 for just a tortilla at their restaurant. It's fancy, see? And here I come looking stressed and toting beer and underwear around in the lobby.

One guy immediately asks me over his glasses perched on his nose, 'is that liquor?' and I say of course not. That it's beer. And he promptly chimes back that I cannot bring it in. Right then this second guy, the night manager I think, says to him that I'm Mr. McHenry and he says that I can certainly bring it up with me. And I was sort of shocked by the statement. I guess on their end I am responsible for a pretty decent chunk of business for them and I work with a good portion of the senior management at the resort. I make sure that all of thier guests are really well taken care of but I'm not sure why he'd call me Mr. McHenry like that. I suppose that it was also due to the fact that I was in a 100% comped suite by one of the main people at the whole place and regardless of who I was I must be somehow important. But either way, it caught me off guard.

I go up to my room and charge my phone and open a beer and hang out with a sleepy but patient Cybele. I need to go back to the offices soon to pick up a van and get it back to the resort by 4AM. It's about 2:30AM and I have maybe an hour to kill before I go back out again. No time to sleep so I just spend time with Cybele in this really nice room and I get cleaned up and change clothes and head back out. I look a lot better the next time the lobby guys see me and I actually look like a normal person. I get the van and rush back just in time to end up getting stuck helping some group get to the airport.

I take calls all morning and coordinate trips and reservations and everything goes smoothly enough. I finally stop around 7AM and I call it quits and go back up to my room. Cybele is up and we go for breakfast and pack it up for home. I am finally asleep by 10AM and since I took Monday off I sleep for hours and hours and go back to sleep some more.

We are going to the Shady Dell over next weekend and my best friend and his new wife will be visiting from Denver. Cybele and I got the Airstream and they got the Tiki Bus. It's going to be the opposite of this weekend and I'm hardly able to wait.

[Debbie Deb.]

Fri, 15 May 2009 05:35:13 GMT

Seriously, I'm back to being mildly obsessed with her and her music and I hadn't thought of her since I was in middle school or so. I hadn't thought of a lot of things since middle school and I'm sort of becoming overwhelmed all this past year or so, little by little mostly, by these fragmented, tiny reminders of a life that I lived back then.

One year I remember taking all of my birthday money and just pooling it all together with the hopes that I'd have the $129 I needed to buy the Best Gift Ever. I ended up with just enough for this perfect [holeemarymotherofgoditssofreakinawesome!] ghetto blaster radio. It was so perfect and so giant and it had dual cassette decks and more levers and knobs and switches and lights than I knew what to do with. But I could dub tapes on my own, that was for sure! [No factory recorded cassette was safe with me around and I'd grab whatever tape I could find and cover the side holes with scotch tape and record over whatever was on the thing to begin with.] And I could listen to everything I wanted to and I would. I'd just sit down there in my room listening to the radio, laying down directly in front of the thing on the floor. I remember being on my stomach with my arms propping up my head and my upward-facing palms cradling my jaw and my cheeks. I'd be motionless and silent and never breathing until I got lucky enough to depress the record button exactly at the most perfect moment. [Eventually I would have the most perfect everything tape.]

I'd wait for the radio commercials to be over and the DJ to stop talking and while I'm holding my finger on the [un]pause button in hopes of catching a song I wanted. I was this private, pre-teen, mixtape master. I'd zone out and listen to all sorts of music and I'd draw and read and imagine myself old enough to be able to have car keys and a $50 bill.

Car keys and $50 bills are still really big, symbolic things for me even today. They were two of the Main Things that I thought I would need to have in order to overcome almost any conceivable dfficulty I might face in my life. I knew this was true because I had worked it all out plenty of times in my head. I had made all sorts of crazy lists and charts and [I'm not kidding] I calculated the probability of everything that could possibly go wrong in a life and all of the things that could go right. And the results always seemed to come back to that lone, shining fact that car keys and a fifty could tilt a losing hand into a guaranteed winner. [Even today I get pretty fucking tickled when I'm slowed down in my life just enough to realize that I've got a set of car keys in one hand and a $50 bill in my pocket. I smile at myself just then and I make myself feel like I am an unexpected sweepstakes winner each time I think of itI'm glad that those things have grown together in my brain like they have. I'm glad that car keys and a $50 bill is always enough to send me walking away like I own the place and I can go like that for hours and hours. [Giant cranes.]

I realize now in looking back on it all that I was probably set entirley through with this underlying current of sadness and grief. I was just a small child when so much horrendous shit sort of just blindsided me and swallowed all of the things that I loved the most. I guess I was calculating how to not let something like that happen to me ever again and it's seriously pleasant to consider that the only magic wand or cloak of protection or secret formula in life I would ever need were the keys to a car and fifty-dollars. I guess that if I stopped distracting myself back then with things like music and reading and drawing and Space Camp and the Cold War and Dungeons and Dragons that I'd otherwise feel pretty fucking terrified by the idea of what life really was all about. As far as I knew there were absolute forces at work against you that were chomping hard away at you from afar. It took me years to not feel like I was being specifically singled out by some lesser demon who got big laughs from killing my family or having my bike be stolen.

I think it was around that time that I had some sort of emotional and spiritual moment of awakening that I'd probably call a satori right now but back then it freaked me out for a while. Like years even. So I'm all happy at school and I have my brand new radio zipped inside this giant duffle bag. It was so big that I couldn't even zip it closed all the way and I was trying to be secretive about the fact that I brought it to school to begin with. Kids soon found out I had it and they were chirping about how they wanted to hear it and I said that we could after school and that I had extra batteries too. As class was beginning to start I gather my composure and try not to look like I'm carrying contraband and I must have done this awful job becasue I knew the principal was walking down the hall. Towards me. I pretend to be busy getting a drink of water or something and the radio accidentally switches on in the bag. It's static at first and then you hear it loud enough to be heard in the other classrooms. It's Debbie Deb and one of her perfect break dancing songs and I sort of held myself in limbo there and I am struggling with this heavy, singing, freestyling, duffle bag slung over my right shoulder and I know I'm probably in big trouble. [I was recently in big trouble for something else. I forget what exactly?] And the radio just falls out of my hand and crashes to the floor exactly on the corner where it might do the perfect amount of damage. It went silent and I sort of didn't care at all. I didn't care about the principal or the teachers or anything else that once made me nervous. I just sort of gave up and I think it was a real satori because it was where I learned, for the first time for sure, that to really gain control over a situation you have to give up all control of it.

[I don't have any .mp3 files but in case you want to listen with me on Last.fm then Lookout Weekend and When I Hear Music were probably her most popular songs and I'm not kidding when I say that they are just as awesome now as they were back then.]

Let Me Tell You About My Mother

Sun, 10 May 2009 03:18:32 GMT

My biological grandfather died shortly before I was born and by then he had already left my family and married another woman who had just given birth to their newborn son. He died alone in a single car accident on a Missouri road after he lost control of the car and he slammed into a tree. Before he died he drank a lot and one of the main stories I remember hearing about him was when he decided to load the kids into the car and take them to the carnival. These excited little kids [my mother included] never knew what hit them when they realized that they were lied to and they were being dropped off at an orphanage. [I'm not making this up. I have photographs to prove it.]

My Grandmother Constance remarried as well and the man that she married was the man that I consider to be my true Grandfather. I also consider him to be the greatest man that ever lived and still to this day I am humbled by him to the point of near worship. [Maybe not actually worship but something pretty close to that at least.] He taught me about Art and Stupid Bunny and pancakes and how to be nothing but loving and compassionate and that in being those things I could almost never go wrong.

When I was a small child my mother and father got divorced. The deal was that my mom would work [in factories mostly] to support the family while my father went to medical school and worked part time as a paramedic for the fire department. This plan seemed to work okay for a while but soon after my father graduated from medical school he apparently decided upon a better plan and chose to leave for some nurse. He left my mother with me and my kid sister and with no money aside from a $5 bill that he left on the table with a note. And that was it. [And he apparently swiped my library card too but that's another story.] Leaving like that can only just suck for the people you leave behind but he left at a time that was and still is simply inconceivable to me. Just before he left my Uncle Cornelius drowned. He was on some float trip with his friends and one of the girls that was there was pregnant. She got a little too far out in the current and was unable to stop herself from being pushed away and under. My Uncle Cornelius went out to get her because that was just what he did. That was just how he was. And he did manage to save her from drowning but he was unable to save himself. They didn’t find his body for over a month. The time my father chose to leave was just then as my whole family had given up hope that he was even alive. They lessened their prayers by then and this time they were simply praying that they might just find his body.

Not too long after that [maybe just a few months if I recall correctly] my Uncle Alphonsus was murdered. His full name was Alphonsus Andrew McHenry III [most people called him Andy and his closest friends sometimes called him Al] and he had just given birth to his new son Alphonsus Andrew McHenry IV. While he was in the Navy he served on the USS Jason and I am named after my Uncle Andy and that ship.

Not too long after that my Grandfather died from cancer of the everything. And shortly after that my Grandmother died of heart failure.

My mom did the very best that she could under those awful and inconceivable circumstances of having your whole entire life just wiped entirely out in one fell swoop. She became an alcoholic and just couldn’t cope as well as she wanted to and I ended up being babysat quite a bit by my surrogate uncles. These were mostly bikers who owned tattoo shops and smut shops and dive bars and who were involved to the point of immersion in the pornography industry. I spent a lot of years in porn shops and tattoo parlors and bars. I saw some things that most people shouldn’t see and I knew a lot about things you shouldn’t know a lot about. On the converse I learned a great deal about the things that are truly important in life. Both of these facts contributed in, for good and for bad, creating a sense of fearlessness and detachment in me that has both helped and hindered me at times in my life. [And I don't regret a moment of it really.]

Years later my mom went through AA and became sober and she rebuilt her life from scratch. My sister and I never wanted for anything and although we were probably poor by most standards it never really seemed that way to us. At least a lot of the time for sure.

As I get older and I consider what my mother went through during that time I’m not sure how she ever even coped with it all. I hypothesize in my head about how I would feel if, for example, the top five people you love the most in life were taken in some horrific and unexpected manner. Gone. How would I handle that? How would you?

[Can you even imagine yourself ever being that strong?]

I went through the same things as she did, I guess, but I was only nine or so and none of it all really sunk in for me then. [And sometimes I doubt if it ever really has even fully sunk in. You know?]

I look back on my own life and all of the wonderful and awful turns it sometimes has taken, and surely will take in the future, and I always can’t help but feel even closer to my mother.

I love her more than I can even say and beyond the fact that I truly do love her I feel like I like her even more than that. And that’s pretty cool to me. I think most of us love our mothers because we almost have to but it makes me feel really great that I just like my mom so well. I think that she’s cool and funny and that she has one of the kindest hearts of anyone I know. I’m proud of her for what she managed to live through and for how she managed to ensure that my sister and I lived through the same. I feel like she did a pretty good job of being a parent and more often than not when I find myself feeling pretty good about myself, for some reason or another, I find that such a characteristic that I seem to somehow possess [and maybe even admire within myself] can somehow be directly attributed to something that I learned from her.

[I just wanted to remind myself of that is all. Again.]

Originally published at [Posted over at smartwentcrazy.com/journal.]. You can comment here or there.