The Official Hog Blog
Thursday, September 26, 2002
My records provide for me. In times of need, my records can bring me wealth. My records can bring me happiness. My records can bring me new friends, and possibly an evening of free booze. My records can provide me with a warmth in the rainey season. My records can inspire during a writer's block. My records can wield beauty and disgust in the same fifteen minutes. My records hold low bass tones and deep meanings that aren't worth the two-fifty I paid for it. My records can make a grown man cry. My records have the dizzying effect on me that only occurs when ingesting heavy amounts of drugs, or when you fall in love. My records smell like nostalgia, and conjure images of thanksgiving dinners with uncles who smoked reefer in the back yards. My records have been handled by some of the snobs in high society, and have had joints rolled within their gatefolds. My records have been stolen. My records are stolen goods. My records have been sampled. My records have been borrowed and my records have broken. My records speak eras to me and fill me in on the scenes I aint been introduced to. My records are a history lesson on what the cities were like years ago, and even today as the musicians tell the tale like a griot teaches the ways.
Monday, September 23, 2002
Drive down any of the back roads with corn on either side 'a ya on a heatful dog day of summer near the harvest moon's fullness and bound for the fog. There are maybe twenty feet you can see in front of you, and the noises make you walk slower. As if the fog held stranger creatures than what we could see outside of it. Richie would ask his poppa where the fog went as the car floated through it like in a cloud. His poppa would say its all around us, but we are a part of it right now, so it seems as though there is no difference between us. And then Poppa would laugh loud and hard for a long time. Poppa never told Richie that these philosophical answers to his very serious and rightly so as the young boy was at an age when each and every occurrence is a new and astounding event.
Questions were the nonsense of an aging man and his habit of smoking joints on his lunch breaks and on his coffee breaks and in the evening after dinner. Poppa would sit underneath the willows along the river and entertain the many questions his son could pitch at him. Can you eat a crawdad? yup. Where do winds come from? the west. What is a butterfly made of? same as you and me, just a bit smaller. If you were a robot what would you do? I'd get all my laundry done with a snap of my fingers.
Driving down the back roads, the moon rising above the tree line and the bats whipping from pines to barn windows. Cicadaes beat out rythyms in a chorus with crickets, each round becoming more furious than the last. The ranchero they drove was a speedy car with a booming loud stereo system. Poppa would blare ,jazz and hindi chants during the week, and on sundays nothing but the blues. That's when Richie's pop would take him down to Rupp's donut shop near the edge of town. Sure kids aint supposed to have no coffee at that age, but it was a special day...
"Sunday is God's day," Poppa would tell Richie, "and we aint got to go to work on God's day."
So, instead of going to work, on God's day, they'd get pretty hopped up on coffee and donuts, take the Ranchero out to Mason Road and haul ass to the end of it, kicking dust up and fishtailing around like hell on wheels. Built along the riverbed, Mason swerved along four miles of the dog-legged Klamath River. The dust would settle and the fellas would flip the bitch and hightail down Mason Road one last time,
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
I didnt expect him to say he would go ahead with the plan as we had concocted it under the auspices of pleasantries over whiskey. More or less like a pissin' contest until the one of us who had less to drink, which wasn't me, claimed I was a pussy and couldn't pull off a right crime if I came up with one. That I couldn't come up with a crime to begin with even! In response, I promptly came up with an idea that I was willing and able to pull off. Exclamating the arrival of this glory with a self-righteous "So, Fuck YOU anyhow."
I further goaded him with a couple of well timed jabs at his ego by mentioning his elderly status and that he was halfway home to jesus, and that his pussy ass wouldnt sit shotgun on this, what could be the charade of all charades...
"See how far it can go? Is that where we gonna have to draw that line, huh?" my drinking partner says, "I'm like a trusty dawg that acomp'nies the fisher, hunter or with a trapper. That guy is gonna make sure he gets the best damn dawg in the litter, he's gonna baby that puppy with love and than turn around and train him to kill at a command. That guy teaches the dawg heal. get, sit, kill, speak, and fetch! That guy gives the dawg a purpose and with it the dawg is grateful. He's gonna give that dawg everything and that dawg becomes that guy's best friend. When's the time, he aint gohn get up in that trap and wrastle a coon outta it, teeth wrapped around its legs. When's the time he aint gohn dive headlong into the lake after a shot goose? Are you gohn say to me that if you had a trusty dawg he wouldnt do that?"
"Shit fire, man. I didnt expect you to say you would go ahead."
"What'd you call me?!? Did you just call me goat head?!? I oughta kick yer ass! You would call yer own daddy a goat head!??!?"
Friday, September 06, 2002
go to heck of tastee, bro. its the bomb, diggity. dont forget your can of cheez whizz, neether.
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Greg McIlvaine had a art opening. and these famous people chilled out and talked about how fantastic it all is.
I was writing a blues song:
"I dont pay you no mind, while yer laughin at me.
I pay you no mind, while yer laughin at me.
you kick me when I'm down, and you dont even know my name.
you ask me to leave town, but brother I aint gohn play yer game."
