Hookers or Cake

John Prine - Jesus, The Missing Years

There was a fat drunk mullet wearing idiot singing to a plate of pancakes at Denny’s. It was during bar rush so it didn’t seem that outta place. What made it unusual was is what he was singing, “I’m a human corkscrew and all my wine is blood, they gonna kill me momma, they don’t like me Bud.” I raised an eyebrow at my best friend. He smiled and whispered, “He’s singing John Prine.” Well that old boy sat there in his Starter jacket and Oakleys and sang 4 or 5 John Prine songs between mouthfuls of a late night/early morning breakfast.

We saw him a few more times after that, always drunk and singing John Prine. I even saw him one night at some small country bar about twenty miles outside of town. “Fucking Todd!” was all the bartender muttered. “You know em?” I said. “Yep, runs a forklift over at the mill. Sonafabitch comes in every Friday night. After bout three or four beers he starts playing John Prine on the jukebox and singing along and he don’t stop till I close up.” “Why don’t you just take the Prine outta the jukebox?” I asked. “Well,” he sighed, “Todd’s wife died in a wreck bout two years ago.” “Oh,” I said. “Yeah,” said the bartender, “whattya gonna do.” “I guess be thankful he don’t like Garth Brooks,” I said.

The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Last Waltz

I don’t listen to music the way I used to. These days I’ll hear something in a song that I’ll need to hear over and over again. I listen to it several times and then it just kinda plays in my head for a few weeks. I’ll play it every now and again during this time, I don’t really listen to anything else. Its like I’m using the song to polish a diamond or as a mantra to keep my bearings in a strange land.

This song is amazing in all the usual ways but what strikes me is that it’s a fairly elaborate structure built and designed to totally let yourself go in. Like designing an entire space program just to launch yourself into the sun.

Whatever it is, it makes me intensely happy.

Miami Vice  - 1985 - Cry - Godley & Creme

I thought this was the most awesome thing in the world when I was 13. Ted Nugent as an evil drug smuggler and Don Johnson. I even put together my own Don Johnson Miami Vice look and tried it out at the middle school dance. I had the knock off Ray-Bans that I stole. White dress slacks, a terrible bright Hawaiian shirt with a looser fitting white shirt over the top to act as a kinda suit coat. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but goddammit I was trying. I slow danced with a girl to Purple Rain. I was ridiculous, but I was in the game.

Tommy Jarrell at the age of 82 playing music on a porch somewhere… maybe in the bright shining heart of all things. Jump to :55 if you are impatient to hear Tommy sing a sweet melody.

“If I get drunk and I get drunk

just let me fall little darling on the ground

on the ground - on the ground

just let me fall little darling on that ground.”

I was eight years old and this was my favorite song. They had it on the jukebox at the Burger-n-Shake. It was 1 play for 10 cents or 3 for a quarter. Anytime I’d get a couple of bucks I’d go get a medium twist dip cone and sit by myself, stare out the window and listen to Love on the Rocks, three times in a row. I was a sad weird creepy kid.

Anyone else love terrible songs when they were a kid?

When Warren Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable cancer and only given a few months to live he decided against treatment that would have effected his ability to perform. He recorded one last record instead and lived a whole year, long enough to see his twin grandkids born. Here he is performing “My Shit’s Fucked Up”

My gift to the internet Gods on this most hallowed of days is a fully loaded Kenny Rodgers singing “Ruby” What kinda wonderful drugs do you suppose he’s on?

I was drunk because I’d broken a tooth and didn’t go to the dentist.

Its a crippling pain that shoots from my ringing ears, through my face, and throbs into the base of my neck. I finally broke down and had a pain killer. That didn’t do much so I poured a couple of whiskeys on top. Ahhhh, the warm relief of a manageable dull pain.

 I was listening to an old CD of The Frogs that Jesse had given me. How can I explain The Frogs if you haven’t heard em? Well, imagine some of your weirder, drunken friends got especially high and recorded a made up album from the point of view of a drunk old pedophile serial killer. Its horribly offensive, absurd, and pretty funny.

So I was loaded, listening to The Frogs, and laughing. But then I would see and hear my best friend Jesse, who died last year, laughing and then I would start crying. Of course The Frogs were still playing and I’d realize that I was sobbing while some song about goat fucking was playing. Then I’d laugh even harder about the absurdity of it all; the laughing and crying, the mysterious beauty of everything. Death and humor all mixed up with the people that you love. The people that you love, disappearing forever.

  My wife walked in on me and I laughed and cried a bit more in my explanation. I told her how all my thoughts and emotions were colliding…  the entire spectrum of emotion happening all at once. She smiled knowingly.

 “Thats exactly what its like being a women,” she said. And I laughed…

“24 hours a day,” she cried.