drinkdrankdrunk: "EXIT THE HANDSOME" by The Midnight Rider

i realize that the focus of this story is cashpoint, but i’ve never written a novel without mentioning the big handsome (who is perhaps my most mentally ill friend) … the big handsome’s family is rich-as-shit, but he’s fallen on hard times in 2017 and had to move back in with his mom in kentucky … in the span of about 9 months, big handsome’s father and cats died, plus he was fired from another teaching gig in colorado (and i think the death of his beloved cats hit him the hardest) … we kinda lost touch over the years, and the only reason i know anything about him now is through his internet podcast … the disconnect certainly wasn’t my fault--i flew out to denver on spring break to stay with him in 2014, and the big handsome was too high to pick me up at the airport … i called and called, and he was ultimately too fucked up to drive the hour from colorado springs, and i wound up staying with another friend, alaska dave, in boulder … i haven’t seen the big handsome since 2013, and it’s entirely possible that i’ll never see him again (and that makes me sad) … per the podcast, big handsome is seeing a psychiatrist in 2017, but i don’t necessarily know what’s wrong with him (other than being high every moment of the day from 1990-2015) … other stories from other novels dealt with big handsome calling me a “republican” for not wanting to sit in 6-month-old puke while driving to a party, and his cats using his bathtub as a giant litterbox, but this particular paragraph will deal exclusively with the life/times of big handsome while teaching at a college in louisville from 2008-2010 … there’s no real connection to cashpoint other than they paid my salary, and i came back to iowa with some fucked-up stories to tell my students … this might seem like a diversion, but i promise that the big handsome is always worth it … at the time, big handsome was teaching english at government cheese university…..i don’t know how he got the job, but he only lasted 2 years … big handsome went to colorado to party the summer after his 2nd year and never returned … as the story goes, the head of the english department started calling big handsome’s friends/colleagues/former professors in september after the big handsome failed to show for the first 3 weeks of school--there was no official resignation or notification of any kind--big handsome simply decided to go smoke doobies and assumed his job would be waiting for him when he returned … i was only on their campus once, but government cheese was a helluva nice school--100 times classier than cashpoint and the kind of place where i would give my left nut to teach … my one visit to their campus was to see a play that big handsome had written about his cats as part of some “galileo festival” (and i have no idea what the connection to galileo was other than big handsome’s life revolved around his cats the way planets revolve around the sun) … i was high-as-a-bat, but big handsome played himself, and his cats were played by 2 hot coeds in slinky cat-suits complete with ears/tails … instead of smoking doobies, the character was a writer who drank scotch and played with his cats (who would perch on the furniture while sticking their asses in big handsome’s face wanting to be petted) all day--nice work if you can get it, yeah? ... big handsome even got a stipend from the university for writing the play (which seemed to be nothing more than his own life, but with hot coeds playing the parts of his cats) … i sat with one of big handsome’s students, and she seemed to think he was some kind of eccentric genius … she seemed to like me too--until i asked her if she wanted to go outside to get high (and then she seemed terrified of me) … after the play was over, we went to a local pub where big handsome let his students buy us drinks for the remainder of the evening … i didn’t have my car and big handsome was out-of-his-mind, so one of his students offered to drive us home (and, of course, big handsome paid the kid back by getting him so high that he wound up crashing on the floor next to me) … if you’re curious, big handsome’s apartment was just like you remembered it … there were 5’ tall stacks of dirty clothes in each room (complete with q-tips, dental floss or whatever other piece of garbage big handsome decided to throw into the pile) … big handsome was 38 at the time and had no idea how to do laundry--whenever he needed new clothes, he would simply charge them to his mother’s credit card … there was no toilet paper or cleaning supplies whatsoever, and i think big handsome shat at work and showered at the government cheese gym … the only food big handsome knew how to make was pizza, so his fridge was an assortment of (dripping-out-of-the-can) sauces, pizza dough, and assorted designer beers … whenever big handsome drank a beer, he simply left the bottle wherever he finished it (and there must have been thousands of empty beer bottles strewn across his apartment) … one time, big handsome’s alarm clock buzzed and woke him up, so he smashed it with his fist and the broken glass stayed on his nightstand until i returned again the following year … big handsome didn’t like junk mail, so whenever it was delivered to his mailbox, he immediately threw it on the front steps leading up to his apartment--the pile was 2’ high during my first visit and 4’ high for my second visit (and never forget that big handsome has a phd and his grandfather had once been the attorney general of kentucky) … during my second visit in the spring of 2010, i got to meet some of big handsome’s friends from undergrad … the most interesting of the pack were the son and daughter-in-law of one of big handsome’s english professors at the university of louisville … i don’t remember their names, but the dude had worked as a male stripper to put himself through college, and the chick had been a jockey at churchill downs until she failed a drug test (meth) … the groom’s go-to story was about once stripping for jeffrey dahmer at a private party in milwaukee whereas the bride’s had to go with doing lines off the winning horse’s saddle after winning a $1,000,000 handicapped race … the couple had 3 kids, lived in a victorian mansion full-of-books, and both worked as nurses as the local hospital … they were also huge cokeheads and hooked me up with their dealer in the bathroom of a dilapidated bar in the seediest section of town--then we went to the graveyard across from their house and did lines off the headstone of colonel harlan sanders (i thought it was disrespectful, and it made me uncomfortable, but party etiquette dictates that the needs of the drug dealer takes precedence over everyone else) … (daytripper) big handsome actually refused because of what happened to len bias and because doing lines off the grave of colonel sanders would be disrespectful to the great sport of basketball--hey, i guess we all have to draw the line somewhere

The Midnight Rider prefers to remain mysterious.  You could visit his website, but he won't say where it is.  You could read his books, but he won't say what they are.  You could email him, but I'm pretty sure spam@gofuckyourself.gov is not a real email address.  In a world where everyone is repping their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, sex tapes, line of clothing, new microbrew, virus panic vaccine status, and overall brand, I find that refreshing.  I am happy to have The Rider ride on drinkdrankdrunk.

Music Video: Canaries

 

Years ago I saw a tv series about World War I and found one of the aspects very interesting, so I wrote a song about it.  World War I is my favorite war, which is not to say that I like it--most if not all wars are pretty stupid and wasteful when you dig into them--but it is the most interesting with all the new technology being used to just slaughter people for no good reason, and all the powerful art and literature that emerged in the wake of that absurdity.  The Great War also pretty much set up the table for much of the rest of the 20th Century from World War II to The Cold War, and even the current issues in the Middle East.  Of course, the sane people such as James Joyce and the Dadaists just seemed to wait out the war out in Zurich.  We shouldn't feel too superior to those living a century ago though.  The virus panic was pretty stupid also and may actually result in a higher body count (just had a healthy friend die last month out of the blue, and I have my suspicions why).  If only we had a metaphorical Zurich today, eh?  I was surprised to find some public domain World War I footage of the women in the factories.  I thought I would have to use all photographs for the music video, so that was a nice surprise.

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7" or give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Spotify or Bandcamp!

drinkdrankdrunk: "ASSBURGERS GARY" by The Midnight Rider

 

i don’t know what story to tell about assburgers gary because assburgers gary is ultimately too neurotic to really do anything of note … that’s not to say that assburgers gary isn’t one of my dearest friends (as well as the last one left in town) … assburgers gary is 72 and received his phd from cal-berkeley at the tender age of 23 … is assburgers gary a genius?--i would say yes, but he’s also almost too “special” to be walking around amongst the proletariat (his word--not mine) … does assburgers gary really have assburgers?--not officially, but he’s old enough to have had “it” before new york invented the concept (to make money off neurotic gentiles) … is assburgers gary a virgin?--well, he claims to have lost his virginity to a swedish grad student under a bridge in stockholm circa 1965, but i don’t think there are any (living) witnesses … assburgers gary is most definitely a millionaire (the urban legend is that he has a $20 bill hidden in every book in his apartment with number in the tens of thousands), but lives like a pauper in the worst slum in eastern iowa … his neighbors are all criminals/drug dealers and my dad would say that one of them will soon “knock him in the head” and take all his money … he actually fell prey to a computer scam just last week--he was on a poetry submission site and his computer froze and a message popped up that he should call a number in canada for virus-protection--he called the number and he gave them his credit card number and they deducted $250 from his account before unfreezing his computer (which they froze to begin with) … gary then spent 36 hours writing a 14-page e-mail warning all his friends of the scam … if you want a better story:  gary organized a “co-birthday party” for wiseman and pastor ted a few years ago where we would all meet at the local movie theater for a movie and then go out to dinner afterwards … the three of us arrived at 6, but there was no assburgers gary … we waited until 6:30 and then 7 and then i tried to call him (knowing full well that assburgers gary wouldn’t pick up because the phone call could potentially cost him long-distance charges) … instead of going to a later movie, we decided to drive over to gary’s apartment and bang on his door … it’s also worth noting that, to my knowledge, no colleague of gary’s has ever been in his apartment since dean bell helped him move circa 1982 … when we knocked, gary unlocked the door, but wouldn’t remove the chain … it seems that there had been a tornado warning earlier in the day, and assburgers gary had retreated to the relative safely of a closet in his bedroom … since the tornado warning expired at 7, gary eventually joined us for dinner/drinks (and only ordered a glass of water since he was “dieting” that week) … there was also the story about the time gary almost burned his apartment complex down … he forgot that he was cooking noodles on the stove and by the time he realized it, the fireman were knocking at his door because of all the smoke … the fire marshal paid gary a visit later that week and told him that the 50,000 books (a rough estimate because i really have no idea how many books are in gary’s apartment) were a fire hazard and he would have to get rid of half of them … and much like the beaver from leave it to beaver, gary loaded thousands of books into his broken-down pt cruiser and drove them to school the day the fire marshal came back to inspect his apartment … gary also has a thing about weight (i think because he used to be heavyset as a child) … for the first year i knew gary, he would ask me at least once a week how much i weighed--he wasn’t afraid to come up and randomly say “282 pounds” in the hall either … on more than one occasion, i’ve also seen gary walk up to a random female faculty member and guess how much weight they had put on since the last time he had seen them (and i promise you that women hate that infinitely more than chubby kids--they don’t seem to understand that it’s just assburgers gary’s way of letting them know that he’s paying attention to them) … so what is gary’s life like in 2017 after the fall of shady state with no family and me as his only friend?--well, gary claims that he’s “busier now than when he was teaching” … he joined 3-4 book clubs and somehow talked his way onto the school board and the town human rights commission (not that a tiny, iowa town particularly needs a human rights commission) … he also has lunch every weekday at a different retirement home in the area … did i mention that he writes poetry and emails me 3-4 poems a day for proofreading?--once i proofread them, he sends them out to hundreds of people (former colleagues, retirees, and folks from the nursing home) to the point where i get 3-4 emails a month from his friends asking me how they can “get gary to stop sending them poetry without hurting his feelings”--and the only response is: that’s just gary, you can’t

The Midnight Rider prefers to remain mysterious.  You could visit his website, but he won't say where it is.  You could read his books, but he won't say what they are.  You could email him, but I'm pretty sure spam@gofuckyourself.gov is not a real email address.  In a world where everyone is repping their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, sex tapes, line of clothing, new microbrew, virus panic vaccine status, and overall brand, I find that refreshing.  I am happy to have The Rider ride on drinkdrankdrunk.

Music Video: (I'm Going To) Youngstown (To Get Fucked Up)

 

I had a hankering to make some music videos again, so I'm picking up where I left off.  "(I'm Going To) Youngstown (To Get Fucked Up)" is the first song off What's Your Flow Setting, Baby? so it got the new video treatment first.  The video is basically a tribute to the late 1980s/early 1990s Youngstown art/music scene.  If you were around back then, then you might recognize an artist, band, newspaper, or venue.  I also had to throw The Gargoyle in there, though technically that club was in Warren, Ohio USA and not Youngstown, Ohio USA, but then again many of the bands were from New Castle, Pennsylvania USA or Sharon, Pennsylvania USA anyway.  That whole area kind of mushes together.  Thanks to Crazy Carl for the professional wrestling photos.  They were from a show in Youngstown in 2002.  I am not involved in the current Youngstown music scene, but I would hope there are some folks making a ruckus there still.  The Chris Yambar stuff made me a bit sad.  I always enjoyed running into him at a local comic book convention and seeing whatever crazy project he was currently up to.  I hope Y-Town has some new crazy artists making that rust belt city interesting like Chris did when he was alive.  The video is lo-fi as usual, but I hope you find it more interesting than the A.I. or lazy lyrics video I've been seeing lately.  Come on, folks, it doesn't take much to make a reasonably interesting music video.  Don't be lazy!  Come up with as something creative as the song.  Look what I did with an empty beer bottle and some old newspapers.  You can probably do even better!

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7" or give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Spotify or Bandcamp!

drinkdrankdrunk: "DIRT DICK AND THE MACHINE ELVES" by The Midnight Rider

if the linguistics professor at cashpoint went to my undergrad, they’d call him “dirt dick”… brotherman has a 7-year-old son from a bartender at the punkrock bar in town, a 4-year-old son from another bartender at the punkrock bar in town, and he recently married one of his students who is 15 years younger (and from colombia) … there are plenty of professors at cashpoint who think they’re playas, but this dude really is one … i walked into a strange liquor store with him one time and the girl-behind-the-counter was ready to abandon her post and go to his house in about 30 seconds--there are conflicting theories as to his popularity with women, but i’d go with:  giant cock … he’s not particularly choosy, but who i am to judge? ... he’s also a weed dealer, but in general, i’m not a fan of the sour diesel (and generally only call on him as a favor to annie’s sister) … the last time i was at his house, he broke out the dmt (dimethyltryptamine)--you know, the psychedelic compound that causes the user to see machine elves (the humanoid hallucination of an elf-bouncing-a-ball first coined by ethnobotanist, terence mckenna) … well, i didn’t see any little/green elves, but i did see a vision of cartoon/technicolor hell when i smoked/snorted the compound … before i tell the story, i should mention that if you asked dirt dick what he thought of me, he would prolly respond that i was paranoid (and you would be too if your mother was peeping around the corner watching every cookie you ever ate) … conversely, sitting in a room with dirt dick reminds me of boarding school when one of the richer/kooler kids was trying to dare me into doing something that i didn’t want to do--perhaps i cosmically believe that dirt dick is kooler, but there’s something about his personality that makes me want to keep him at arm’s length … anyway, onto the machine elves … the first time i barely hit the bowl, and when i looked down, i could see red/cartoon swirls for a few seconds … dirt dick was in another dimension for about a minute, and when he came back, he asked me if i saw “it”--when i told him what i saw, he heckled that i didn’t do enough … we smoked again in a few minutes, and i did a little more … when i looked down this time, i saw the same red/technicolor swirls plus millions of tiny dilbert-style (like for office workers) cubicles … when dirt dick came back around the 2nd time, he seemed even angrier that i hadn’t seen “it” and implied that i was a pussy … after about 45 minutes of arguing, i agreed to snort the dmt--this time it “worked”, and i was forced to make a decision … i knew that if i looked down that i would see hell--it would be a red/swirling, tex avery version of hell, but it would still be hell … i knew that the effects of the dmt were only supposed to last 30 seconds or so, but i was afraid that if i looked down that i would be stuck in hell forever … and being the pussy that i am, i wouldn’t let myself look down … i looked up instead--thereby remaining on the right/rational side of the fence … over the years, i’ve prolly done over 200 hits of lsd, but i never did more than one even when my friend, nootie was doing 3-4 … i was always afraid that i would lose my mind and never come back … since doing the dmt, i’ve noticed a few subtle changes in my consciousness (and they say once you do it, you’re never quite the same) … the first change is in my rem “sleep”--usually when my eyes are closed and i’m nodding off, the vision i see in my brain is of my eyes as some sort of vehicle “driving” down a road … since the dmt, i see darkened figures shooting off to the left/right as opposed to a road--maybe you could call these figures “neurons”?--i really don’t know … the second, small thing i’ve noticed occurs when i’m watching a ghost show or scary movie on tv … for most of my life when hearing a ghost story that i believed, i got the chills--well, i still get the same chills in 2016 when i believe, but they seem to be 20 times more intense … i know this section is ostensibly about the life/times of dirt dick, so maybe i should end with the story of his wedding (to a 22-year-old, former student from colombia) … dirt dick decided to have a “big lebowski” wedding at the local bowling alley complete with costumes and memorabilia … i did my part by wearing the costume of the cashpoint mascot i had worn the day before at the school soccer game … one of the more interesting aspects of the wedding was that all the cashpoint nuns were in attendance and one of them even read a scripture verse--and he was marrying a student who was in his class at the time! ... wiseman, giada, and i all ate special brownies, but giada didn’t tell her husband, and i spent most of the evening encouraging her to eat-more-food (so her husband wouldn’t know she was freaking out) … the liquor store was right across the street, so i snuck away from the wedding for about an hour to hang out with my buddy, rob, whose dad owns the place (we watched tv in the backroom and smoked a couple doobies) … supposedly the bride and groom got in a fight at the end of the night because the bride refused a drunk drive home (while the local police circled the block) … the groom eventually made it home unscathed, but somewhere in the mix, he left both his guitar and driver’s license (and there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest because of a 1999 trespassing charge in illinois) … when dirt dick went back to the town the following monday, he was arrested and given a future court date … i never found out what happened after that, but in retrospect, maybe dirt dick really is kooler than me? … my wedding gift to the couple was the fabulous furry freak brothers compendium, so at least they knew my heart was in the right place

The Midnight Rider prefers to remain mysterious.  You could visit his website, but he won't say where it is.  You could read his books, but he won't say what they are.  You could email him, but I'm pretty sure spam@gofuckyourself.gov is not a real email address.  In a world where everyone is repping their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, sex tapes, line of clothing, new microbrew, virus panic vaccine status, and overall brand, I find that refreshing.  I am happy to have The Rider ride on drinkdrankdrunk.