The Official Hog Blog
Friday, March 31, 2006
It may have been the weed, or might have been the weather, but the blues had become an obsession for me. It must have been raining for a week straight, and all I could listen to was Albert King, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Reed with a howl in his voice like he had a nail in his foot. BB King 7 inch records, heard at 45 rpms for two dollar and fitty. Flip side got a crackle in it, but it do, man... it do.
Found me a copy of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company Blues band. You know the one? Couple them cats left to form Canned Heat back in 1968. I got me the album called 'Get It On.' On Bright Orange Records, with a label that look like the fruit. Lead singer, Charlie Allen, had used to be the drummer, but sang like a ole blues cat and the rest the band tole him to get out and sing and stopall that drum-work. He can sing, too. He sounds like Sammy Cooke at one point and another he's got a Janis Joplin jones. Doing the moanin' and groanin' and carryin' on she do. This band was from San Francisco back in the summer of love. They cover this Booker T and the MG's tune called The Hunter. You got to hear it. It punches through with a steady, forward shuffle and trucks and trucks and the dude up front is begging you that there aint no place to hide. He the hunter, meng.
Mingus on the other day.
He hollers Eat That chicken!_________________________Eat that CHicken!
The entire band barrels
along as ragtag as Sun RA,
____________________________the father of boisterosity.
Thats the blues aint it?
I mean, it aint guitar and drums,
has a lot of brass and strange changes,
but its the blues somehow? Aint it? It gotta be.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
"I want you to get out there and smash that ball, Jacky," said Coach Casey, "Smash it into the stratosphere, you hear me?"
"I'm gonna get a home run today, coach," replied Jack, "for my dad."
Jack was smaller than the rest of the kids on his team, and the coach kept him off the field for the most part, but he was quick to dive for the line drives and he showed a lot of spunk at second base. Jack was willing to put himself in harm's way to win the game, and Coach Casey liked that. When the starting second baseman, Scott Polley, was put out of the game from a bouncing ball to the face, Jack had his rare chance to show his stuff. After a couple of good innings, and a few good saves, Jack was ready to get his turn at bat.
He wanted to hit the ball cuz he loved to play. Dad told him to hit it like he hated the ball, but Jack knew that to be a ball player you had to love the ball, not to hate it. Jack loved baseball, and he knew that the only way that ball was gonna get hit was as if he loved it. He wanted that ball to fly high as the sun, up and over the second baseman, up and over the right fielder, up and over the chain link fence, possibly so high that he could smash a window out of the factory building behind the diamond.
Now there was a good goal. Aim for the same factory building that his dad came home from every night, cranky and smelling of gear lubes. The same factory that took Jack's dad away from the family on weekends during February when the christmas bills needed to be paid. The same factory that took uncle Bob's legs before Jacky was even born. That was a good place to aim a home run at, with it's wall of opaque windows, and its tall brick outline.
Dragging his bat with him to home plate, a trick he'd seen Lou Whittaker perform during the Tigers run for the world series, Jack shook the jitters from his shoulders as he squared himself up against the pitcher.
"You aint gonna hit this one pipsqueak," sneered the catcher, a red headed kid from Onsted that nobody liked.
Jack ignored him and stared down the pitcher, his eyes also on the factory building he so wanted to smash down.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Breakfast
He put the coffee
In the cup
He put the milk
In the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
In the cafe au lait
With the coffee spoon
He stirred
He drank the cafe au lait
And he set down the cup
Without a word to me
He lit
A cigarette
He made smoke rings
With the smoke
He put the ashes
In the ash-tray
Without a word to me
Without a look at me
He got up
He put
His hat upon his head
He put his raincoat on
Because it was raining
And he left
In the rain
Without a word
Without a look at me
And I - I took
My head in my hand
And I cried
[this poem was written by Jacques Prevert.
as a friend of his found it
in one of his notebooks,
it reminds me of Ned]
Monday, March 06, 2006
Tonight there is talk of Shufflefuck and I wait
impatiently to match up with
SF Shufflefuck contingent, to show those mothers that all this
California foolishness won't fool an old Chicago salt who plays his shufflefuck
dirty and rough like a bull in a ring and
if you really want to see a bullfight,
take a cape and sword away from the matador and
that's the kind of fight I like—
straight up, no hitches, no bullshit, no games—
I take my own hits and I dish them out quick and plentiful,
toss a puck down the lane and I will take the greatest of pleasure knocking that bitch down into the pit of the damned,
my puck glides sure and confident, strong and steadfast.
Down they go, clustering up like a band of rock-headed brutes full of animosity and xenophobic rage, knowing no kindness nor guilt,
filled with bad breeding and bad breath, pucks that come on like stiff pricks, they arrive like a SF fog, quick and heavy, and I
thought I'd make those intentions, indications and reports known to all interested persons who might endeavor to tangle with,
challenge or otherwise impede the rise and ultimate conquering
of the coveted SF Shufflefuck Cup and I shall,
after the eventual and inevitable usurpation of said cup,
I shall return to the city of Wind bolstered on high by the powerful gusts in a throne of gold, holding the cup in hand, filled with the sweetest of wind and attended by rosy faced children naked in their innocence, winged and laughing, ringlets of their hair bouncing in the wind, their chubby fingers reaching for the cup and dipping in the wind, the clouds rolling in, turning gray, and as I gulp the Adam's apple working up and down as I drain the cup and as one of the little creatures reaches again to fill the cup and somewhere behind over Lake Michigan a peal of lightening, rolling thunder and Neo on high, sipping and laughing now with mischievous rambunction, spilling wine with wasteful carelessness, the elevated throne rising higher and higher, empty wine bottles tossed away into the sky and raining down toward the streets, laughter all around with thunder and crashes of waves and the laughter begins to take on the tones of Laughing Sal, erratic, insidious, no longer jovial, no longer light or naive, seeming to suggest a hint of evil, a hint of horror, and suddenly a round of coughing, Neo doubled up, wine streaming from the corner of his mouth, the child cherubim dispersing and abandoning him in fear, the throne veering off over the great lake where below the waters have grown dark and moiled, rain begins to fall and the chalice drops from his hand as he slumps back, his arm over the rest and his hand limp and stained with wine, and now the throne divested of it's angelic motivations beginning to plummet toward the waters where a frothy maelstrom begins swirling in its rage opening up like a whale's mouth and the throne caught in the whirlwind, twisting downward and is swallowed up by the upward reaching outward edges of the storm which engulfs Neo, throne, the velvet capes and scepter with it's golden embellishments and intricate carvings, in one vicious chomp and then retreating back into the water and the seas begin to calm, the sky's crimson rage fading to tranquil blue and life returns again to its silent idiocy as the cup rolls on the waves and arrives on the shores among dead alewives and cigarette filters, seaweed and
driftwood.
- Ned Foskey
Sunday, March 05, 2006
From the Train
A couch sits among trees, dark leaves, fallen logs rotting,
a young boy stands on gravel and cinders holding a stick in his hand watching the train as it passes, through an underpass and a dune appears, a boy on a 3-wheeler approaching the top amid a cloud of sand, then a building and high brick walls crowned with barbed wire, a penitentiary, and again past trees, the junkyards with twisted rusty metal, ghosts floating in an abandoned steel mill, dark inside, the windows shattered, figures spray-painted on the decrepit walls, clusters of crabgrass, the black soil, old painted advertisements on a faded billboard, a solitary pile of concrete bricks stacked in the woods, sand and leaves, a treated wooden post half buried in the sand and grown over with coarse weeds, a jumble of ragged tires, a country lane, a stable and horses, a barn roof tilting and half gone, torn at the corners like a broken skeleton, a boy digging in the gravel, a dirt two-track leading nowhere, a rusted car laying prostrate on its side, an embankment built into the land and the bricks black with mold and white with crusty bubbling lime deposits, an old ruined tavern set on a tiny forgotten marina, the dock sinking back into the sea, another underpass reveals a pile of soaked clothing, and past where the land dips and rolls, a stream passes through, a metal corrugated silo and little houses with yards filled with tarp-covered cars, a hawk follows the air current over a razed farmland, steel powerline carriers stand in formation like giant stick men in a military review, shredded canvas tacked to a storage barn blowing in the wind, old pick-up sinking in the mud, a plastic cooler trapped in a pricker bramble, a mallard stands alone on a slick rock in the middle of a tiny lake, fruit groves in hibernation, through the screen of trees a shack stands on the scum, a river down below, the waters dark brown, sticks and leaves struggling and swirling, an unfinished house above, rotting planks nearby in the pines, a rusted bedspring snagged and impaled further back in the tangle of woods, a wheat field spreads out golden and silent, then great oaks and a mobile home, trash strewn all about, a junkyard behind with a wounded mechanical crane, its neck bent and the cockpit window cracked at one edge, a river rapids emptying into a pond covered with green algae, grass sprouting out on the shores like splinters, a patchwork of storage barn held up by wooden poles and steel girders, an irrigation ditch cutting across the land like a suture, dark low hills in the far distance, punctured and dented drums laying about where a pair of train tracks suddenly end, a grotto where a plastic lawn chair sits alone in a cluster of trees, the black lines between the corn rush along with the train as it passes, past a poor hamlet, under a regional highway, blueberry bushes rolling up and down the ground, a sandy path rises and drops out of sight, an old nag meandering over the mud chomping on grass, an apple grove where a fieldstone fireplace stands, choked with weeds, and below a blackberry patch and further a swamp lays in murky dim-lit obscurity.
- Ned Foskey
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Ned Foskey versus Charles Bukowski
by Ned Foskey
I was in a small, low-ceilinged warehouse, dim-lit, dark in the rafters and many black steel support posts all about. There were many people either sitting on the clean concrete floors or mulling around slowly, waiting for something to happen. Charles Bukowski was there with a couple of his pals and they'd been playfully baiting me with light insults. This continued for a while until Bukowski's insults started getting nasty and ultimately he challenged me to a fight. I resisted until one of words hit home with me and I got up and followed behind him a couple strides to a nearby area where the sun shone through the windows set in the ceiling. Ten yards further I could see that the warehouse building ended with a glass greenhouse extension and the blue sky could be seen through the windows. As Bukowski and I moved to this brighter open area, I said, "I can't fight that well but I know how to take a punch." I said this partly joking, but also satirically, remembering that I'd read Bukowski saying this in one of his poems or stories. He turned without saying anything and squared himself up with me. "Listen," I said more earnestly, "I don't want to fight with you," as I squared myself up with him, and then, without notice, unloaded a balled fist straight to his face. He stumbled back and came forward and we exchanged a couple punches. Mine was the last and it sent him down to the ground. He fell over as I grabbed a folding metal chair and bashed his head as he tried to get up again. With that, the fight was over and I dropped the chair and I looked around me. All around the group of people had circled around us to watch the fight and I realized that this was a youth group that was gathering in the warehouse and that Bukowski and I were to be leaders of the group. I leaned down to Bukowski, still slumped part on the floor and part on a dirty brick wall, and quietly said to him, "This isn't a good example for the kids here to be fighting…and that's what we're here for--the kids--isn't it?" In his eyes, he seemed to agree with me, but he made no motion to express his agreement or dissent. I stood up and broke through the circle of watchers and walked back into the darker area and sat down on a secluded couch embroidered with golden fabric. Suddenly a beautiful girl with dark hair who I'd never seen before walked up to the couch and sat down on the arm rest right next to where I was sitting. She looked down at me and gently touched my swollen brow. "Did you fall down," she asked quietly. I looked away and then back at her in slight confusion. She smiled, bringing her face closer, and said, "I was just kidding." I was immediately attracted to her beauty and thought to myself, "Is she one of the kids or an older girl?"
Ned came to visit San Francisco in the winter of 2002.
My bandmates and I asked him to write up a little something to read
during our set at the Hotel Utah. Early in the morning, he and I went to
North Beach, where we sat in the North End Caffe, drank gallons of coffee,
sat with our notebooks and wrote as the hustle and bustle of the city passed us by.
That weekend, he read the following as our band played behind him.
Cliff House
San Francisco 02.22.02
Somewhere on a once fashionable coastline now choked with smog and
strewn with cigarette filters and dented cans, a boy walks up a crumbling stone staircase reaching up
to a decaying hotel built high on a rocky cliff
where Adirondack chairs lay broken and rotting on the terrace
where a bird’s carcass lay suspended in the dark briny stew of the swimming pool,
where the rusting metal skeletons break through the hotel’s cracked walls
and where a door streaked with dirt and time stands ajar,
the lock pried open and inside the rooms of the old penny arcade exposed,
empty save the dusty crates, the damp rubble scattered on the wooden planks and a
ripped canvas tarp nailed to the wall
the boy kneels spotting a crumpled slip of paper yellowed by the years and
delicately draws it from the trash and broken glass
and under the dingy blue light reads the heading which bares the name of
a long forgotten bohemian fortuneteller and below a fragment from the smeared horoscope reading
“makes you easy game for imposters,”
He rises first startled as a punching bag bell clangs
and then amazed as the oil lamps spark and flame
and a player piano strikes up a ragtime waltz,
a bowler hat and cane take shape on a walnut hook,
the life-sized Drunken Sailor in a glass case doubling over with resounding laughter that fills the rooms
already heavy with the smells of cotton candy and caramel corn,
and the shadowy outlines of the peep shows, the shooting galleries and the Chinese pinball games appear
as if struggling to materialize once again out of the distant past
outside under now cloudless skies potted palm trees luxuriously drooping over the whitewashed walls and
a ghostly man with a waxed mustache and wearing a swimming suit with shoulder straps puffs out his chest,
sucking in his stomach and putting his fists to his hips as a photographer disappears
under the camera drape and the flash powder exploding in the pan
The boy turning back as the punching bag bell rings again and the moment passes,
the oil lamps dimming and the piano notes dissolving into the musty air,
the arcade games bleeding back into another time with grainy disintegration
and the crates appearing again stacked in the dark corners
now there was only the strip of fortune, yellowed, damp and obscure
the boy standing at the shattered railing of the terrace looking down on the dreary sea and sky
and vaguely hoping to lift some curse as he releases the paper,
watching as it catches in the current and carries over the retaining wall and into the rocks below
lost now among beer bottles and Styrofoam cups,
gazing down now on the dusky beach where a man sits alone in front of a little fire bending and sputtering in the wind
and the boy strains to hear somewhere below the din of the crashing surf the haunted laughter of the Drunken Sailor still hovering in the cold misty air
- Ned Foskey
Friday, March 03, 2006
Once, as a child, before a trip to the lake, I collected a sturdy black ant, and a gurthy red one. I placed them in a used pill bottle filled three quarters to the top w/ water. I watched them all the way there, and pledged that the winner would go free. I watched and watched. They swam and paddled and fought, and plunged momentarily. when we pulled into the sandy parking lot, one had died. I immediately got out of the car and liberated the other. He was red. I've always loved the red ants.
Today,I can only smell oatmeal. Everywhere I go it smells like oatmeal. Its maddening. In the beginning I found it pleasant. I'd always loved the smell. Made me think of home. But now - I walk through the industrial district and all I smell is oatmeal. No sulphur burning my nasal passages. No phosphorous burning my lungs. nuthin', just oatmeal.
consequently, I've taken a dislike to quakers, but can you blame me?
-Ned Foskey
Thursday, March 02, 2006
A Handbook for Writers
by Ned Foskey
A hobby for the leisure class. Sit down, relax, imagine as a child does, something exciting and wonderful. Stroke silks as you do. Pass the day in a trance, or impassioned wildly, or in an athletic frenzy listening to Dizzy Gillespie, your shirt soaking in sweat and swilling rivers of coffee. Become eccentric; a personality. Grow your whiskers long. A goatee perhaps. Try wearing black, thick-rimmed spectacles. Or . . . bring back the monocle. Speak seldom in public and with drama when you do. Dress in grand style, if a bit threadbare; or see if the shabby look goes well with your face and body type. Swagger subtly when you walk—just enough to seem to mean it but not enough to seem to want it too badly. Have a black-and-white portrait taken of yourself looking off dreamily into the far distance as if seeing into the future with clarity and insight. Do things that other people hear about but never see. Take up drinking as a second job. Quit your first job. Try to avoid washing for a couple of days although the idea disgusts you. Force yourself on yourself. Be unreasonable. Rant occasionally without warning and stomp your foot uncontrollably. Insult Henry James loudly, saying that he was a pompous turd and a chronic masturbator. Act as if you're surrounded by fools without alienating them. Believe everything they've been saying about you once you've acted so as to make them say it all. And, finally, try to write a line or two between drinking espresso, smoking cigarettes and keeping your image together so that you'll have something to show them when they ask, "What do you write about all day?"
