Mishegas Master

Du kan ikke fortælle spillerne uden et scorecard>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 13

2011-08-31T11:01:00.010-05:00

Before I go any further, I feel you should get to know the cast of characters along the way, at least thus far and who will show up in the next set of chapters. Not that you don’t know them already, but from my standpoint, it certainly will help you understand them a bit better. Besides, you just can’t tell a player without a scorecard, now can you?

Pedro Da Palma-bassist, lead throat and tour organizer>He’s the one person I stayed in contact with most, from the early days upon when we first met through YouTube all the way through now in person, here in Aarhus. He’s the one that did a lot of the footwork for setting up shows and interpreting & relaying messages back and forth between venues, band members and kept us all at an even-keel, for the most part. His disposition is a pleasant demeanor and truly one of the calmest Danes I ever have gotten to know.

Jacob Mulle Nansen-drummer and backing vocals>I did a lot a Skyping with him in the many months leading up to the tour and we had a lot of great conversations, so I thought. Took in a lot of background, learned a bit of language, learned a lot about the Clean Boys. Overall, his disposition can be a little rough around the edges and slightly abrupt, but what drummer isn’t?

Andrzej Morks-guitarist & backing vocals-family man, jazz guy, father of two daughters, but perhaps the most practical of them all, perhaps in terms of ideals. One of the most diverse guys I had met yet, but also one of the hardest drinkers and heaviest smokers I have ever known (apart from Pedro and Mulle)! And one of those guys that you’d want to get to know, especially at a party and there was certainly a lot of that going on in the early days before the actual tour began!

Kasper Hayes (AKA Baconslap Hayes)-when introduced to me, he called himself, “The Roadie From Hell,” the guy who “promised” to drink all your beer, take all your women and eat all your food. Took me a bit to get used to him, to grow on me, but a real gentleman in every sense of the word.

Karsten Lund-our tour driver. He drove the camper van for the lot of our tour, with the exception of Mulle a few times, but again the majority fell into the responsible hands of Karsten. Karsten taught me a few Danish customs, kept me from being arrested in Germany (but that comes later in the story), has the coolest Hammond B3-organ, works at a cool school and like Kasper, a true gentleman and a big, big heart of gold.

Cisco Gulløve-Safari Freakshow Adventure “official” photographer and temporary transplant from Brazil. Upon meeting him, his first words out of his mouth, were “US Bluff,” which translated into the United States is full of shit; not exactly a warm welcome to Denmark from him, no in fact, the tee shirt he wore to welcome me with, was one worthy that only a criminal mind could pull off. Outside of that, he was a friendly and frugally practical man.

Den Sorte Fane-friend to Clean Boys and a few others I met in the early days of the tour; a Food Not Bombs organizer, local Aarhus activist, especially May Day, punk rocker-also a hater/basher of the United States, but outside of that, he was truly a friendly guy!

Estrid Balslev-what can I not say about Estrid? Intense brilliant Danish performance artist who truly gave a damn about what she was doing in her work and made it work so others like myself who were “foreign,” got it pretty rapidly. Before, I flew over to Denmark, I studied Estrid extensively and intensely, mainly on YouTube, though I didn’t speak Danish, I watched the films she was in and was fascinated by her enunciation and movement. I kept up a correspondence with her shortly before I arrived, upon the suggestion of Pedro (I believe). She turned out to be a great friend and felt like a 2^nd mother to me (other than my own) and when we met, I felt the connection, almost instantly-a little cliché, I suppose, but it was true nonetheless.

Vitawrapmand (AKA Michael Persson)-poet and performance artist, the guy who wore more sausage in strategic and sensitive places on his body than I could ever consume on the whole of the tour! Wrapped himself up in Vita Wrap (Danish version of America’s cellophane), shrieked through a bullhorn with often hilarious witticisms and poetry. Danced and performed and made music with a female vinyl blow-up doll. Also the guy who published poems of mine in his collective Danish quarterly poetry magazine. Slam-danced & moshed with me the whole of the tour. All-around nice guy.

Frede Nielsen-Safari Freakshow Adventure record producer and funny guy-three days younger than my brother Benjy. Produced and engineered a few of the shows on the tour, specifically in Horsens and Viborg.

Okay, Fint Du Er Sådan En Guide, Du Kører Toget, Og Se Hvad Der Sker!>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 12

2011-08-30T18:33:00.003-05:00

Down below the Copenhagen airport, I found my way to the nearest train station. As I waited, I noticed how different everything looked. Pretty obvious being in a different country I suppose. But I also noticed how empty the train station was too. A little too empty, I felt. So I asked someone, who in turn, informed me that the reason very few trains were going by, is because someone less than an hour before I arrived decided to jump in front of a train and kill himself!

Only recently, had I listened to a segment of the American TV program 60 Minutes, in which they reported that Denmark was the best place in the world to live in, because despite the world’s problems, that their disposition remained happy and content. This was not the case, I gathered, as I dragged my airport cart w/my bags across the railroad platform and waited for another train to board.

If you’ve never traveled in Europe, let alone Denmark, their trains are much like America’s Amtrak trains-extremely roomy, fast, but with a bit of an old world style-perhaps similar to old Pullman trains from America’s golden years of train traveling, in that, usually during late afternoon or evening, a man would come through every train car with a service cart, selling a variety of Danish foods, candies, newspapers and magazines.

We got as far as Korsor, when an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the train was stopping, due to mechanical failure. Mechanical failure, I thought. The train was working just fine! Someone, whom I asked, explained to me that since Denmark is surrounded by water that if the train had actually broken down within the tunnels that it would take several hours to fix. Upon learning this, I tried my phone to make a call, but it didn’t work and I slightly panicked until I asked a stranger if I could borrow hers. Once I had her phone, I called Pedro to tell him I was going to be approximately 3 hours late. It was already nearly 4pm. He said not to worry and they would be there waiting to collect me when I arrived in Aarhus.

I could tell, however, that I was getting closer to understanding the make-up of Aarhus, just by observing the people on the train; like the three assertive artsy bikers who kept teasing the conductor about driving the train themselves, to which the conductor handed one of them the key and said in Danish, something like, “Okay, fint du er sådan en guide, du kører toget, og se hvad der sker!” Even though I didn’t understand the language so well, I understood the joking gestures, which is what Danes seem to have inserted within the stream of their language. It was a quality I admired.

So we waited and waited and waited for about another hour until a replacement train came in and boarded that one. Quite an adventure I thought thus far. Then as I boarded the train and found a place to sit down, I struck up a conversation w/a guy who actually knew who the Clean Boys were, a guy, in a leisure suit, with a button-down collar. He pointed out all the important architecture as the train sped along toward Aarhus.

And then the strangest thing happened. We pulled into a station named Middelfart! That cracked me up! Made me lose what little composure I had left. Middelfart! That city name made my trip at that point memorable! Then we passed by Horsens (where our record producer, Frede Nielsen) lived. It’s where the Danish state penitentiary formerly had been housed. As I continued to converse with the guy, the time seemed to go faster, as I drank in all the beauty that surrounded us.

At long last we were pulling into Aarhus, it was close to 7 pm and I began looking for Mulle and Pedro outside the train’s window. As the train slowed down, I saw them! I began to yell and scream for joy, which caused a few people to look at me strangely. When the train stopped, I grabbed my bags, dragged them down the steps and called out to them! And there they were! I was so excited and thrilled to meet them in person! We hugged each other and then Pedro & Mulle both told me in so many words that Morks would be picking us up within the hour and we’d be going down to the studio to rehearse.

I was weary, because I really hadn’t thought about doing that since I was so dead tired and dragging on my feet. After putting a bit of food in my stomach, Morks picked us up in his car and off we sped to Hi-Fi Cairo (Clean Boys’ rehearsal space). From there, we did a full take of Bite It You Scum, a GG Allin cover tune and even though I was terribly tired from lack of sleep and severe jetlag, I managed to belt out perhaps one of my coolest and weirdest versions of the song yet! Stumbling over words, I ended up creating a braggart phrase (though not intentionally) that would follow me wherever we went on tour (who the fuck do you think you are/just a Danish superstar) while in Denmark.

“Let’s call it a night,” Pedro remarked after the session.

I couldn’t agree more!

Flight To Denmark>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 11

2011-08-30T13:08:00.008-05:00

When I arrived at O'Hare Airport, I had my main bag immediately checked and went straight for the international terminal lounge-it had been a while since I last traveled overseas-London, 2000 and that too was one heck of a time, but the difference with London and Denmark, I wasn’t going over to just hang out on my leisure---I had a job to do, promote a record, build a fan base and show Denmark what it is that I do best.

As I went through the security detection system in the international terminal, a beep went off and I was asked to go through again. Turns out it was my fish hat-my lucky hat, hat that has scared off more people than is known to man, so I’ve heard. At least witnessed it on my cross country bus tour of 2002. I was asked to take it off. Why? It had buttons on it, which had metal on it, thereby it was a threat to potential passengers I would meet and/or flight crew. The TSA security guard sheepishly traded looks with me and muttered, “Go figure.” Only in Chicago, I thought.

I waited for what seemed like hours and the eventually, a call for plane boarding was announced and aboard I walked. The plane I flew to Denmark, was rather roomy. 3 seats across, lots of magazines and newspapers to read within the eight and a half hour flight and plenty of free meals and lots of good booze too-not that I drank, but I did receive a nice small bottle of wine during the flight that I tucked away in my backpack.

The plane of course was packed. And other than having a booklet of CDs and a portable CD player and maybe one or two good books to read, I felt I was set. Eight and a half hours was a mighty long time to be flying in the air. So, after the first hour of settling into the flight, I listened to music. Then read and wrote a little in my paper journal too. Slept off my excitement until at least 7 am, when the lights came back on and babies were being weaned by their mothers. It would be a long day, I was convinced of it. we’d already flown through two time zones, another few changes were coming along the way, that much I knew.

Even though physically it felt like I’d flown for more than 8 hours, I knew that it was considerably less due to all the time changes and besides, it was based on Danish time, not American. As breakfast was being served and the lot of us passengers were chowing down, Danish newspapers were being passed out. Not knowing a word of Danish at that point, I thought the best way to learn it was by reading a newspaper, writing the words down I seemed to like or wanted to know about and then perhaps asking Clean Boys or whomever I encountered later when I needed help pronouncing.

Out of the many newspapers being passed around, I decided to pick out Ekstra Bladet; not sure why, but I think it had all the appeal of a sleazy tabloid like the New York Post or Chicago Sun-Times. I began reading and lo and behold, I stumbled upon my first word: sneaglefart! I had no idea what the word meant and asked the guy next to me if he knew what the word meant. He sheepishly said he had no idea, since he was from Holland and didn’t speak Danish. He sure looked Danish to me, my first mistake in assuming that all Danish men looked alike (with the exception of Mulle). I continued to read and of course in the process I fell asleep, at least until we were close to landing.

At approximately 1.30 pm Copenhagen time (6: 30 am Chicago time), we landed! It took me at least half an hour to get my bag and then I had to get past immigrations and get my passport stamped. I was nervous at this juncture. All those what if questions began to formulate in my head. It was the moment of truth as I stood in line silently. One by one people went to the counter where the master passport stamper sat. Don't offer too much information my friends told me. They were right, as I watched one man, who was told to stand to the right of the booth. Kiss-of-death and most likely denial of entry for him.

Then it was my turn. I had all my bags with me, a bit overloaded and an armful of Danish newspapers tucked beneath my left armpit. I stepped forward. The man behind the booth in his thickest Danish accent, speaking English to me, gave me the once-over and asked, "Do you speak Danish?" "No," I told him. "Then why do you have all those Danish newspapers?" I was a little startled, but answered, "So I can read and digest the words." He looked up at me perplexed and studied me further. Then he smiled. "What are you in Denmark for?" "Vacation," I told him. He laughed, stamped my passport and waved me through. "Welcome to Denmark," he said.

I was in! Yay!

And that guy still standing to the right of the booth? He didn't look too happy as Danish custom agents began frisking him.

And now the adventure truly began...

Eyjafjallajökull-We Are The Curse Breakers!>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 10

2011-08-28T19:42:00.005-05:00

Nothing could have prepared me for the events that unfolded on April 14, 2010, 13 days before I would board a plane to take me to Denmark. Neither Clean Boys nor I could have possibly known this far in advance, that this crisis, the curse of all curses could dash our plans of a tour straight to hell.

I was in the beginning stages of packing my bags, one giant black bag with wheels, my small backpack and my laptop were all that was going with me. I decided; only take what I need this trip out. I’d be gone for nearly a month and also decided to pack light, knowing full well that I would be bringing plenty of trinkets back.

It seemed to be a running joke amongst others who knew me well, that I used to take virtually everything in the world that belonged to me, drag it halfway across America and then bring it all home again, on top of the other stuff I would pick up along the way. So when I told friends of mine that I was going to Denmark, a lot of them asked me if I planned bringing my entire apartment with me!

The morning of April 14 seemed like all the rest; I was lying in bed, listening to CBS News on my clock radio, when the broadcaster at the 7 am (Chicago time) hour, described something treacherous-something downright devastating and I nearly fainted the moment I heard it!

Eyjafjallajokull, an Iceland volcano, dormant for nearly 187 years, blew its top, causing European airspace to be shut down for nearly as long. I knew other things might have stopped me, but a volcano? None of us were prepared for this! Even as airspace was closed during of the first week or so, it affected millions upon millions of travelers around the world, several government agencies and airlines argued over the flight bans.

In the meantime, I kept in constant contact with Pedro and the rest of the crew. People all over asked me if I still had plans to go, now that the volcano had erupted; of course, I said at the time-Pedro was no different and told his fans the same thing---that tour was going ahead, even if it meant touring without me for the first few days or so.

Pedro offered a suggestion or two, such as, if I flew to Paris, he would drive all the way there, pick me up and then head back. Sounds mishegas, I know, but we had little choice in those early hours of the eruption.

In the days that followed, I monitored news reports and my airline, to see if my flight would be cancelled or scheduled as originally stated. As days wore on, European airspace opened up, airlines and European governmental agencies realizing that too much business was being lost and even though there were ash clouds floating all over, business resumed as normal.

We were relieved!

Pedro, as always would say, “We are the curse breakers!” how could I not agree with him this time?

As the hours ticked away on Tuesday, April 27, 2010, I knew I was prepared for just about anything. My bags all packed, my apartment locked, car dropped off a day earlier at a friend’s home, who would “take care of it” for me, while I was roaming around Denmark. As I rode the transit bus that mid-afternoon and headed toward O’Hare Airport in Chicago, I knew anything could happen at any time.

Yet, I also knew this would be greatest adventure I would ever embark upon. After April 27, 2010, nothing would be the same again.

Ever.

And that was indeed a good thing!

Mixing, Editing, Writing>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 9

2011-08-28T17:06:00.005-05:00

Between the time after recording the tracks for the still as of yet, unnamed album (at that point) and before I left for Denmark, there was still plenty to do, like, name the album, come up with a name for a tour, get the tour dates, plan a budget, figure out what to bring with, figure out what I can actually take with and so and so forth.

Correspondence with Pedro via text, Skype and email was almost a daily routine at this point, but since Pedro, Mule & Marks were taking care of the tour dates and the other tour related stuff-the only thing we had to settle on as a whole, was a name for the album and the tour, the actual recorded tracks, which were sent back and forth and writing the liner notes for the record which was left up to me. On or about March 7, I finished writing the liner notes for the record, which we at this point decided was going to be called Safari Freakshow Adventure.

Here is the original liner notes I wrote for the album---before they were edited…

2009 was supposed to be my year, top of my game-then my world fell apart. That fall, I decided I wanted to do something totally brand new and so I strung together what I dubbed as my own punk opera; my own life story, as it relates to my own mental illness: clinical depression.

We arranged a date at two venues; Swing State! In Lake Villa, Illinois, while they managed to arrange a Denmark TV studio. The date we set was February 6, a Saturday night at preciously midnight. For Clean Boys it would be at 7 am. From there, everything seemed fine as wine, until January 2, 2010, when a fire broke out at Swing State! My venue was in limbo for some weeks, so I shopped around for another place to perform/record. Meantime, Pedro told me not to worry, as I began to chant that this date was cursed. I soon secured another date through the mistaken kindness of another friend, only to be kicked out a week later, for what he deemed us, meaning me and Clean Boys as too weird, even for his eclectic tastes. I wrote at least half-a-dozen proposals, all to have them turned down flat.

Nearly a week before, our show, Swing State! looked promising, as they had re-opened their doors for business once again and I felt a great sense of relief. And, like me, Clean Boys were handed a pink slip from the Denmark TV studio, who for all intensive purposes, backed out on them without explanation and they themselves, had to resort back to their own rehearsal space.

The record itself was recorded over Skype, a free downloadable telephone software program, plus two computers on both ends. I had a both a sound engineer, Popz (Dan Lee) and an events coordinator, Hugh Kennedy on my end and they had approximately five technicians, which included the other two Clean Boys, Andrej Marks, bassist and Jacob Mule Nansen, drums.

At sound check, that’s when all hell broke loose! The Clean Boys, who kept telling me to use two computers, one to receive and one to monitor sound/performance, throughout the time leading up to our live recording session, had the unfortunate luck of having their internet system crash, leaving them in a bind! I found that too humorous because we all expected my side to crash and the technicians at Swing State! managed to hold it all together!

By the time all was said and done, we recorded the album, with about nine people left in the whole of Swing State! I packed my car up, got some food before I hit the highway, tanked up at an interstate oasis and arrived home at 3:30 am. Now, if I was told nearly a year ago that I would end up making a record with a Danish punk band and ended up going over to tour with them, I would have said, “Yeah right!” But here it is, for your very ears to feast upon, my record w/Clean Boys.

Sid Yiddish, March 6, 2010

Pedro for the past several months had been calling our collaborations a sort of freakshow and one night, as I had come back from a routine pick-up from a local Freecycle group member, picking up a child’s flashlight, on the side of the flashlight had imprinted the words, Safari Adventure. I inserted Pedro’s phrase and viola! It made total sense: Safari Freakshow Adventure. The four of us had at last agreed on something that would represent us, perhaps in the light (pun intended) that we were supposed to have shine down on us in the first place.

Mule and I had been calling each other over Skype and we both had pretty long talks that would last well into the night. They had been doing their research on me and I did my research on them, so overall, I felt there was an even-keel pace to continue checking each other out.

But with different countries come different complications and it was perhaps one of the more usual complications of the entire trip. Back in December of 2009, I had stepped into Andy’s Music, a local instrument shop located in Chicago and while looking at instruments, I had struck up a conversation with one of the employees, who told me, that I would most likely need a permit to carry my shofar overseas, since it was a genuine animal horn and according to some, animal parts carried disease and without it I might be sunk.

So, I decided to contact the locale Danish consulate in Chicago and ask them. I made an inquiry and lo and behold, they had no clue and suggested I try the Washington, DC consulate. When I called the DC consulate and posed the same question to them, no one there knew and after prodding them for a bit, they gave me the email address of a Danish veterinarian, who he himself didn’t have a clue and then suggested I write to someone at the top Danish animal behavior school in within the country itself. In the meantime, I posted ads on Jewish-Danish forums with the same sort of questions, but to little or no avail. I was getting nervous, afraid my prize shofar would be confiscated when I entered the country.

Also by this time, the final rough mixes had been edited down and put in their proper place on the record, the photos for the album, including the CD label, liner notes and proper credits that would morph into the CD booklet and tour poster had been settled on, as well as final preparations for the tour itself, including the four writing workshops which I was prepared to teach, were finally in place!

With only six days to go an email arrived from Lone Henninger, a veterinarian from a Danish university in Ringsted, which was located about 35 minutes outside of Copenhagen, read in full, effectively giving me permission to carry a shofar with me. By then, I decided to play it safe and I purchased three additional shofar s that I could easily transport and keep well hidden in the event something happened.

But then of course, nothing prepared the four of us for the ultimate and seemingly final curse that was about to come shortly before I left America and arrive in Denmark.

And I mean nothing!

The Recording Session>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 8

2011-08-27T20:12:00.004-05:00

It wasn’t particularly cold or snowy the week of February 1, 2010 in the Chicago area, as I recall it, but I am certain someone else will correct me-it’s called fading memory, but as always with the winter months, cold and snow always concerned me, especially since I had to drive 45 minutes northwest to the most important recording date of my life. And this day was no exception as I had to arrive to the space early, meaning, when the sun was still out, a strange concept to me, considering that I always performed at Swing State late and never ever saw the sun, but for this night, I had to be there early, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5pm, an hour or two before the regular show began.

We, meaning Clean Boys and I were scheduled to go on at midnight Chicago time, 7 am Copenhagen time, (February 7) but in the meantime, we had to do a sound check. For the sound check itself, Pedro had advised me to have two computers, one to receive and one to monitor sound/performance. So, I brought mine, a Lenovo top-of-the-line laptop at the time-I own a refurbished Dell now and our event coordinator stateside, Hugh Kennedy brought his laptop as well. The Clean Boys were to be projected on a movie screen, via Skype. A fool-proof plan so we thought!

And then of course, the inevitable happened at sound check on their side, apparently their internet wasn’t working so well. Try as they might, Clean Boys couldn’t get a good enough signal to transmit. It was the nearly the straw that broke the camel’s back, so-to-speak and especially for them, since they had been up for nearly 24 hours, testing and retesting everything, making sure their connection worked properly. All that work for nothing, so it seemed.

The night wore on-we continued to text each other, Pedro and I, now reduced to one computer on our end, discovering that one worked just as well as two. They had to have a little sleep, three hours to be exact and that’s probably all they had, by the time it was our turn to hit the stage. As always, I had my session at Swing State recorded. But this time, they recorded it two-fold: recorded full session recording in the left channel, live audience in the right channel.

In the midnight session, only nine people remained, mostly gathered around the bar toward the back-that was typical for Swing State, nobody seemed to care either way, except for a few of the more daring audience members who sat closer to the stage. A symbolic number for me, but even still. Before I hit the stage, I passed out plastic toy instruments; bird whistles, panpipes and maracas (for Jazz Haiku-A-Rama Part 1/Part 2 Swing State version), which I discovered later didn’t seem to pick up so well in the monitors-ah well, I live and learn.

The show began and so did the Skype connection. But as I also discovered throughout our session, nothing was perfect, as our calls dropped at least three times. However, as luck would have it, the calls would drop, just as we would finish each song, not a big worry, as I would call them back every single time, especially upon discovering later that when the call dropped during the recording of 75,000 Miles, the second part of DP: A Soundtext Punk Opera, they had a back-up plan, something that was partially recorded already.

Other than the call dropouts, the night seemed to go okay. Which were aces in my book. With a little time left to spare, I proceeded to throat sing the club owner’s girlfriend happy birthday, sadly she was too reluctant and rude for that matter, to even bother to come up to the stage, until she was coaxed to. After that, she went back to the bar and conversed with all of her friends as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

The session was filmed for posterity and to date remains unreleased. We had a good night. Clean Boys thought so too. I didn’t get out of Swing State until 2 am. Pedro and I continued to text each other, at least until I got into my car and drove back home. Our main job was now complete and temporarily in the can, until step two, which was for me to send the recorded files over to Pedro, who in turn, would get it over to the man (Frede Perle Nielsen) who would produce our record and make it sound sweet, sharp and clear.

Even as I fell asleep at my keyboard in that early morning time period, (I was to call Pedro over Skype and talk about the session-it was something we did in those early days of collaborating) it was one of the greatest nights I could have ever had.

And the world around me agreed.

Sunday Morning With Rick Kogan>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 7

2011-08-27T16:52:00.003-05:00

Being on Kogan’s program was a thrill, not to mention absolutely plain weird! After being let inside, I was led to what they called “the green room,” which was nothing more than a couch, with a huge gray filing cabinet. I sat and waited, occasionally seeing one or two other people, still texting to Pedro that I had made it inside and was just waiting for them to come collect me to take me to the radio broadcast room. Time ticked slowly and I just wanted it to come faster than it did, but that the trouble with time and how those things work. Finally, at twenty five minutes after seven, I was taken by the producer and brought over to formally meet Rick Kogan, the radio broadcaster-but not a lot had changed between the time I had met him back in the fall of 2008 up until now, meaning, he still looked pretty much the same to me, low voice-the kind of voice I admired and made me think of all those old time radio broadcasts that I listened to on varying stations around the radio dial.

We said hello to each other and then he instructed me to sit down and slip the headphones on and I waited in silence for the news to be read, the commercials to run and so on and so forth. At last it was the moment of truth, 7:35 am, when Kogan introduced me to a waiting and perhaps an unsuspecting Sunday morning audience. In his introductory monologue of me, he read from the beginning of an article he had written for his Sidewalks column, in the then-Sunday Chicago Tribune magazine, in which he said, “We first saw and heard Sid Yiddish at a gathering of writers and entertainers one rainy September night at El Jardin, the Mexican restaurant popular for, depending on whom you ask, its food, its brain-numbing margaritas or its proximity to Wrigley Field.

He was part of one of the series of events that eventually became a book, "Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting till Next Year," which also features a short piece by me. Yiddish did a bit of singing and played the Shofar (ram's horn). He fooled around with a Ouija board. His act was at once appealing and odd. Some people scratched their heads, others laughed and some did both. When he asked what I thought, I said, "I think you make Andy Kaufman look like Jack Benny." He took this as intended, as a compliment…”

At that moment, I felt weird, but defiantly proud and weird and tired at the same time, since I stayed up all night just to catch the night bus, having been performing the night before at a hair salon opening in the city. And then Kogan said something like, “Sid, welcome to the program. I’ve seen a lot of entertainers in my time, but nothing quite like you.” That was an understatement! And on top of that, Kogan, like many before him and many after him, didn’t seem to know where to begin with me, but he found his way rather quickly and the questions started. Somewhere in the midst of all that, as I rattled off everything that I do, he asked me about throat singing and asked me to explain it and so I gave him the quick, short answer.

Then I asked him if he wanted me to demonstrate it for him. As he gave the listeners a word-picture description, I stood up and began to do a quick version of “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer.” I had often wondered myself if I could actually throat sing at 7:45 on a Sunday morning and if there was any doubt in my mind that morning that I couldn’t, all of those what ifs were quickly erased, as I launched directly into it.

Another commercial & and a quick mad dash out-in cigarette break for Kogan and then in came Pedro, who had been called up by Kogan’s producer. Kogan asked Pedro how we hooked up, the concepts of the projects itself and a few other questions along the way.

By the time all was said and done-our mission was accomplished. Must have made a dent in something, because by the day’s end, I had 45 hits on my MySpace page-a personal best at that point for me. We were headed toward fruition-the Swing State recording session was right around the corner and while I had hoped for all the best the following Saturday night/Sunday morning, I had no idea neither what was in store nor what was waiting on the other side...as usual...

Promoting The Project>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 6

2011-04-14T14:19:00.004-05:00

I mean, it was alright for me, until Clean Boys were dealt a blow. Like myself, they intially had the better deal too; hooked up with a Danish television station, who had promised them a live feed and a potential audience; essentially, the whole nine yards. And then the week before, the bottom dropped out for them. The station handed them a pink slip, simply stating that they were unable to help them out. And just like that, they were left out in the cold. No further explanations. And so, they resorted back to their rehearsal space, Cairo Hi-Fi, in Aarhus.

The record itself, as stated previously, was recorded on Skype, a free downloadable telephone software program, plus two computers on both ends. I had both a sound engineer and an events coordinator for the session. Initially, we had done a Skype test on December 222009, to see how well Skype would hold up-that was done w/Mulle the drummer/percussionist and computer whiz, which I discovered later, whom, I was developing a better relationship via Skype, as we moved well past the “Sid Shittish” affair.

A week before we actually recorded, we brought our project public through the magic of radio, with help from Chicago Tribune columnist & radio host, Rick Kogan, who was intrigued with the whole project. How I managed to get on the program was still simply amazing. I had met Kogan previously at a venue in which I performed at in the fall of 2008. Talked to him for a bit afterward, told him who my brother was and that lead to months of difficulty, which amounted to an extremely hateful sibling rivalry on behalf of my older brother, Louie. But in the meantime, whilst Rick promised to get me onto his program, months passed by until, a cold, grey November afternoon, when I saw Kogan and Chuck Osgood, former Tribune photographer outside the opening of an exhibit that featured both his and Kogan’s work in downtown Chicago, close to the ICC rail station over on Randolph, just off of Michigan Avenue, where only moments earlier, I had emerged out of. Kogan was surprised to see me and I told him my story.

Me and my now former pal, Twitchy, were returning from a funeral/memorial of my late friend Scott Bapple Sr., who died from a freak accident; checked himself in for a routine catscan in Indiana and for some reason or another, fell off the operation table and cracked his skull; doctors didn’t give him much hope for survival-three months at the most, but it didn’t look good. And so, within hours after hearing the news, he died. Like Kogan, I too didn’t believe it. It was all just a little too mind-numbing for me. In any event, I told Kogan at the time that I was going to Denmark & Germany in the springtime and recording the album and I think I asked him again to get onto his show. He told me to email him the following week and for me to pick a date. And so I did, ironically and perhaps coincidently, picking January 31, which just happened to be the birthdate of Mykel Board, the man who put the four of us together to begin with!

I remember the night before the radio program-I was performing at a hair salon opening somewhere in the city (Chicago) and got home rather late. I had a feeling if I went to sleep, that I would never wake up, so I decided to make a night of it and just stay up all night. Around 3 am, I took a shower, got dressed, stuffed my backpack and walked toward Main street and Chicago Avenues, to catch the Evanston night bus.

It wasn’t terribly cold that morning, as I rode on into the Howard El and from there, a Red Line train down to the Grand Avenue subway stop, all the while, texting back and forth with Pedro Da Palma, bassist for Clean Boys, who would also appear with me on the program, via phone. I remember how concerned at the time Pedro was, in regards to the radio station calling him up, thinking it was a tiny radio station. Not to worry, I told him, as I knew better; this was after all WGN Radio, 50,000 watts of purepower-a superstation to boot!

From there, I walked around in the darkness for the next hour or so, looking up at the great majestic buildings covered in shadows. Then eventually made my way up to Michigan Avenue and stood across the street from WGN Radio itself-felt nervous and excited and from there, ducked into a local diner and bade my time until it was closer to 6:30 am, when I crossed the street and entered Tribune Tower. Got to the guard’s desk, where I was ID’d and then a call was made into the station. I’d be picked up by the producer. I had to tell them my real name. that was a hoot! No one knew who “the other guy” was, but the producer remarked, “it’s okay, your friend can come too.”

Oh! If only she knew...

Get Out Of My House!>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 5

2011-04-10T15:26:00.006-05:00

Turned out it would be. A hippie dance band that I had been a member of at the time; Atomic Theory Dance Band, to be exact, Eliezer Kaplan, the band’s leader, offered his home studio up for me to record the performance at. So, off I went on that Sunday afternoon to go look at the set-up, no sooner did I get there, when trouble began. On a side note, although I was a member of the group and I had some say about how songs were shaping up and offering suggestions and ideas, Kaplan was (and still is) a bully. Before I even entered his home, I was to call in advance, as he had two dogs, one named Mitzi, a small white friendly poodle and the other Buddy, a rather vicious dog, which Kaplan claimed was a nice dog despite his bark. He said I had to call in advance so they could cage the dogs and to keep them from attacking me. Kaplan, in that strange way, shared the commonality with Buddy. Both dogs were caged together, a rather cruel way if you ask me, but I digress.

I was let in the front door and followed him upstairs to the attic, aka the recording studio. From there, he read me the riot act, what I could touch, what I couldn’t touch or use. No problem, so I thought. So we decided to test the equipment. First the electrical outlet. I plugged my laptop cord in, then pulled it out. He nearly blew a gasket, complaining that the electrical wiring had cost him nearly a few hundred dollars and that I should be more careful. A few minutes later, I don’t remember if it happened by accident or on purpose, but as we passed by his full drum kit, a cymbal stand and a smaller drum crashed to the floor, causing him to go beserk! “Oh my god!” he screamed, “this is going to cost me a fortune! “Out! Out! “Get out of my house! No! I won’t help you! No! you can’t record here! You’re too weird for my eclectic tastes!” He began chasing me and down and out I ran downstairs from upstairs studio, only to be met head-on by his vicious barking dog. Kaplan cursed me out further, as I left and as I left, I heard the door slam hard, as his voice trailed off, still cursing me out.

I was back to square one again. No proposals had proved fruitful thus far. Our last hope for me was to record my enitre portion from my studio apartment. In other words, Plan B. I was no stranger to recording our performing in an apartment before, recalling the time I had my appendix taken out in September, 1998 and I was unable to drive anywhere for nearly a week.

My band and myself at the time, Tribal Screen Hens, were scheduled to perform live on WZRD (Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois) on a Sunday night. No problem I told the radio hosts; we’d just set up the living room like a recording stage and call in from a speaker phone. Problem solved, difficulty averted. But here I was stuck, all possibilities exhausted, ready for Plan B. that’s when word came from Swing State; it had reopened for business, fire department approved.

Yay! We were on our way!

We Are The Curse-Breakers:How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 4

2011-04-09T14:56:00.004-05:00

Not until we had a record, I wrote him back. But even before it began, I told him that we had enough material from the three performances combined for recorded material, but that wasn’t good enough for Pedro; he wanted to newly record the tracks. To me at the time and still to some degree, live recorded tracks are so much better than recorded studio tracks, simply because studio recordings can appear stilted, whilst a live track is tingling with the element of surprise and the endless possibility of wrong vocals or chords or any number of things.

I thought this would be so easy. All I had to do was book a venue to record live at, not perform for an audience-not that I would be able to get one; my biggest dilemma to date, but another time for this tale. And what venue could possibly be the place for me? None other than Swing State, a former 1920s speakeasy, now teenage non-alcoholic nightclub in the far northwest suburbs of chicago.

So I booked the date in advance, set for February 7, 2010, an midnight session for me; for Clean Boys, they would be online with us at 7 am Denmark time. I remember at the time, how a lot of my musician friends thought how crazy and cool the concept was. Who in their right mind would want to record a record on a Sunday morning?

That was the least of our worries. It had been a good New Year’s Eve, though, I can’t recall where I was, the day after, January 2, 2010, that goodness faded to a glimmer, when Swing State reported via Myspace, that a fire had broken out and as a result, the club would be closed until further notice. That was devestating to hear, if not think. Just five weeks away from our recording session and I thought that it was cursed.

Not so, said Pedro reassuredly told me both on Skype and in emails , “we are the curse-breakers,” he would tell me over and over. So, it was my job to find a new venue that would take us on; I must have written at least six proposals to coffeehouses, performance spaces and clubs. There were a few who dug the idea, but didn't have the Internet capability at the time, some who claimed their landlord would allow such a performance to take place because it was against the rules, according to their lease and the rest of them? well, they never bothered to respond. I was getting worried as the date inched closer.

Then another glimmer of hope sprang out of nowhere-an offer that seemed too good to be true.

DP-A Sound Text Punk Opera>How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter 3

2011-04-07T18:28:00.004-05:00

We didn’t get together until nearly one year later for Chicago Calling Four, Fall, 2009 in Chicago.

This time it was different; I wanted to do something completely out of character for me. So I strung together what I dubbed my own “punk opera,” entitled DP (which stood for the word depression)-A Sound Text Punk Opera, which was based on my own mental illness. I had previously toyed with at least one of the pieces beforehand and felt the other two pieces, one an actual unpublished essay on that very subject, plus a a poem, in which I changed one word so I could disguise it.

In mid-September, 2009, I asked Clean Boys to be a part of it and asked them to compose music for the first two parts; first part being a sort of rocknroll composition that would collapse suddenly at the end, while the second part required a jazz score; the third part would consist of the drummer hitting his kick pedal against his drum kit, whilst the other members of the band would speak in foreign languages other than their own native tongues. By this time, I had lost my job. We were communicating almost exclusively by Skype, texts and emails by now. Every few weeks I’d go to a local library, reserve a room and talk to them. Turnaround time on the compositions was less than two weeks. I was astonished, if not completely amazed!

We did one dry run rehearsal at the public library that nearly caused a riot! I had to not to blow my Shofar so loud though, that was the trick and of course, curious onlookers pressed closely to the windows to see what was going on. We were on our way.

In early October, we were ready. The show at Mercury Cafe in Chicago seemed to go off okay, but there was one catch; while one could see hear them physically, you couldn’t see them at all; we lacked a wall or a film screen to project them onto. That would change at the late October, 2009 performance that followed Chicago Calling at HyperMedia. Their images were projected onto a giant wall, appearing as if the four of us were onstage together for the very first time. That was experimental and thus began the task of negotiating for a decent time slot for both us and Clean Boys. Circumstances and time slots were not always negotiable, however when it came to dealing with hosts and artists running venues, however. It always seemed to be a matter of art snobbery and eggshell tiptoeing or groveling; not always a good choice, but such is the case in a city like Chicago. I managed to get them and us a total of 28 minutes, which by the venue’s standards, was already way too much time. Of course, Pedro kept the pressure on to get them even more time, but the more I pushed, the less responsive and more iron-fisted the venue became.

But I completely understood Pedro, because they were getting up in the middle of the night to perform. Shows that I would often collaborate on with them involved a six-to-seven hour time difference. If say for example, it was 9 pm in Chicago, it was 4 am in Denmark. And unless they were reporters, law enforcement personnel, firefighters or lumberjacks, getting up at early meant something completely different and so, 28 minutes meant little if nothing at all!

By the time all was said and done, however, Clean Boys and myself had a powerful product and that’s when Pedro proposed that I should come overseas to tour with them.

Sid Yiddish, You're Sid Shittish! Fuck Off!>How I Met The Clean Boys>Chapter 2

2011-04-06T13:39:00.011-05:00

From that moment on, we became fast friends on Myspace. It would be nearly a year before I would ask Pedro’s band, Clean Boys to collaborate with me at Chicago Calling 3 in Chicago. And so began, one of the craziest yet greatest partnerships I ever formed with men I never even met yet! And all of this totally by accident, due to technology! Who would have thought it possible?

Also, in 2008, I had taken and/or made a more different and interesting career turn; I performed on a fluke incident at an event entitled, “Lovable Losers Literary Revue,” a performance series mourning the 100 years since 1908 that the Chicago Cubs had been in and won a baseball World Series. Along the way, I had met a true cast of characters and became part of the show, but we all had something in common and that is, we loved baseball-not so much the Cubs for me, however. Among the connections I made, was Chicago Tribune columnist and WGN radio host, Rick Kogan, which not only would pay off positively, but negatively, to the point where I would eventually lose my livelihood, due to both personal envy and old sibling rivalry.

And so the phone calls begin; the traded thoughts ideas exchanged, both through cell phone and emails. Little did I know what was waiting for me on the other side, the night of the performance. Locally, I had put out a call for my own band, $2 Cockroach to come collaborate with us. Curiously, two of the three members came out; Mike Sviokla (guitar) & Rat Niptik (electric bowed bass). Wes might have been in Los Angeles by then and then the trio that made up Clean Boys. There was Andrej Morks (guitar), Jacob “Mulle” Nansen (percussion) & of course, Pedro Da Palma (bass). We settled on my poetry performance piece, "Jazz Haiku-A-Rama." They in turn, came up what they dubbed a little over two dozen "jingles" for the set. They wrote an intro and an outro for it as well. I was pleased.

The plan was simple. Broadcast hook-up via Skype (via the Internet). That was plan B. Plan A would have been holding my cell phone up to the microphone and have Clean Boys heard that way. When I arrived at Av-Aerie, (half loft/half performance space on Chicago near west side-now closed), I was told that the host venue’s Internet was down. Translated further: the owner of the venue didn’t pay his bill on time, so service was cut off. What to do? What to tell Pedro and his band mates? I chose not, thinking it would complicate matters. And boy did it; temporarily.

The whole of my night before we went onstage-me & my band here, Clean Boys there-and unbeknownst to my band here, was spent on my cell phone in the outside hall, either talking or texting back and forth with Pedro. When I was given the bad news, I texted Pedro and told him that we’d be going back to Plan A. They weren’t happy and I received the brunt of their anger when their drummer Mulle called me and we had the following exchange…

Mulle-Is this Sid Yiddish?

Me-Yes, yes it is.

Mulle-Sid Yiddish, you’re Sid Shittish! Fuck Off!

Bang! Down went the slammed phone. I began to cry and have a panic attack. Had several that night in fact. I didn’t understand why he was angry with me, when it wasn’t my fault to begin with. I didn’t know what to do. Again, my phone rang and I didn’t know if it would be a wise idea to pick it up. Slowly, I picked it up and on the other end was Pedro, who apologized profusely. He told me that Mulle was upset. Understandably, I thought, but it was no reason to curse me out. Finally, a miracle occurred; the Internet connection went up just as we were all going onstage; it was 10 pm Chicago time, 5 am Denmark time. Thank god, I thought. We did a quick nine minute live rehearsal in front of the entire audience and then performed together for an additional 23 minutes before Skype (Internet service) dropped again. Of course, being the last act of the night, we had a little upper advantage and poetic license to be a bit more creative. Shortly before we performed Jazz-Haiku-A-Rama as a “super group,” I passed out plastic toy panpipes, maracas & bird whistles to the attending audience.

The performance itself was maddening to say the least-not knowing which way it would go, as we plodded along, both Clean Boys and I were totally out of synch with each other. As a result, hilarity from the audience ensued, but all of us involved really dug it. One woman in particular was reallyintrigued by our performance as evidence from this edited (for space) rare email sent to me, one day later.

“Greetings Sid....

My husband and I were at the amazing Calling Chicago festival last night at AV aerie on Fulton Street. What an awesome evening it was. For us, it reminded us that art and thinking outside the box is still alive in Chicago...phew! We had a blast. What a cool concept of combining musicians from all over the globe to perform simultaneously. A positive effect of technology, to be sure. We enjoyed the evening immensely...We really loved the kind, open vibe of all those in attendance but we especially enjoyed your Haikuorama segment with the CLEAN BOYS and your group here. We only wish that we could have heard more of each...maybe next year. We feel very sad, and embarrassed that we had to cut out just as you were about to finish...forgive me, forgive us. We wanted to hoot and holler. (Our driver was not feeling well and had already stayed long after he was able to.) PLEASE pass on our kudos to your group and to the CLEAN BOYS. What a great group of musicians they all are. Hope you all had as much fun performing as we all did attending. And thanks for the maracas. How cool, fun and generous to give us each a music maker. So, no matter what happens, know you guys all did an amazing job. And once again, please pass on to your group of musicians and to the CLEAN BOYS just how great it was! You all rocked the world last night...literally!”

I remember getting a lift home from Mike that night-as we were headed north. We didn’t talk much. Mike isn’t much of a talker either in person or on a road trip, as I discovered later, I received another text message from Pedro. Would it be okay if he phoned me and we talk? Sure I said, even though I was kind of numb from everything else from beforehand and the performance afterward-I just wanted to think about it all silent and rest my voice and my mind. The telephone conversation didn't last long, but the gist of it was that working together was a good thing and we should do it again. And soon.

It Usually Begins By Accident: How I Met Clean Boys>Chapter One

2011-04-05T20:40:00.005-05:00

It usually begins by accident. Everything I have ever done in the past seven years seems to have been done by accident or found by mistake. Take my fantastic adventure to both Denmark and Germany in 2010 for example; one of the greatest accidents that could have ever happened to me! It all started back in 2004 really, the early summer of 2004, when I became a performance artist by mistake, while performing at a suburban poetry open mic, which instead of poetry for that night, I decided to create a game in honor of that bumbling fool of a president that all Republicans bow and grovel to now, none other than that dead corpse that used to represent life, Ronald Wilson Reagan. His funeral was that day. I was slaving away at my desk, trying to come up with an idea to honor him, but of course I had no poems, so I decided to create a game, entitled, “Pin The Quote In Reagan’s Mouth.” The grand prize was an authentic 1980 Reagan bumper sticker, while the constellation prizes were six Roosevelt dimes-the talk being at the time, that Reagan’s face was going to replace Roosevelt’s. Thankfully, that never happened.

And so when my turn came, we played the game and the audience loved it. The only person who was outraged was Babyshoes, the host of the event. He went outside and must have smoked at least half a pack of cigarettes in a span of five minutes. When the evening ended, he screeched at the top of his lungs and nearly lunged at me. A mutual friend of ours intervened and kept him at arm’s length. I was banned from using props that night. It never felt quite the same after that and I remember, just barreling out of there, grabbing a hoagie and eating outside at the stroke of midnight, scared out of my wits by his madness.

I knew then that I was meant to be a performer and not just a poet. Poetry readings were becoming too boring at that venue anyway-same old humdrum pretentious bullshit June-moon-spoon being read and everyone politely clapping, even if they didn’t understand what the author was saying. I had outgrown this scene. Later, I heard the guy actually came back, looking for me and that frightened me even more; he claims that he didn’t see me go to the greasy spoon that a few of us always go to afterwards and he came to look for me to see if I was alright.

I didn’t buy that. The guy went absolutely apeshit on me and I knew my number was up and I would no longer be accepted in his good graces. And so on that night, I was reborn. And I began performing little experiments here and there,

Right about that same time frame of 2004, I was taking piano and voice lessons from a music instructor I didn’t get along with at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago. She was very rough on me, a pathological liar to boot and a backstabber as I discovered shortly thereafter (refer to “Pain Is A Lingering Pill, Taking Its Sweet Time To Dissolve” elsewhere on this blog, for further explanation). As much as I tried to get along with her, meaning going to the lessons and learning what I could under these extreme conditions, it just went south, she soured on me and finally, it came to pass that we just couldn’t work together and she in turn made it difficult for me to be assigned to other instructors, which was mutiny in my eyes. That instructor should have been disciplined for her inappropriate behavior, but finally, the school’s program director intervened and just told me to pick another class. That’s when I chose throat singing, the most difficult, yet challenging music class ever, outside of tap dancing, which I would pursue a few years later. Sadly, that music instructor still works at the school.

Fast forward to late summer, 2006. I had just discovered Youtube and the art of digital photos/films, so I decided to begin filming myself throat singing, just as a way to study my technique. In previous years, I used to tape record myself, so this was just one step up. The first film I made was okay and I had sent it out to everyone on my email list; I was proud of what I had accomplished, even if it seemed kind of weird. So one late hot weekday summer afternoon, I decided to film myself throat singing my own Tuvin throat singing ballad, which at the time was considered more or less an exercise to better my throat singing chops. I named it Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer, after my good friend Mykel Board, more so because his first and last name has a total of four different vowel sounds, which fit the bill perfectly. And Weasel Squeezer? Well, don’t get me started on that!

I can say however, it is not sexual, despite the run-ins I would have a few years later with a certain band leader and his crazy fat-ass wife. It was and remains nonsense. So, about a year later, I received a comment on the video from a certain Pedro Da Palma of Aarhus, Denmark, whom I discovered was actually online himself searching for Mykel Board’s old band Artless, to see if there were any films of his band , posted on YouTube. When he discovered there weren’t, he punched in Mykel’s name and found my throat singing video instead!

I Am At Last Yours: An Occupational Hazard>Act 36

2011-04-03T00:22:00.008-05:00

Disclaimer: Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetime, is certain for those who are friends. Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye? Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand. Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age. Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that not only is great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending and should remember not to cry because it's over; smile because it happened.

In the end, life doesn’t matter. It’s the bad, weird and funny stuff that the rest of the population will always remember about you. I know that now and I knew it back then. What I didn’t know back then, was how much hatred and contempt they held for me, enough so that they wanted to kill me right on the spot. And when I was executed that afternoon, I remembered how sad I felt for five minutes, but how freeing my soul would be in the journey I would take into the next world.

But let me back up. Back up to early spring nearly two years ago-when I felt my demise was eminent, when I knew death was slinking around the corner, waiting to hook me into a grave quicker than I realized. I remember the time I was in the prison shower facilities drying myself off and talking to Dusty Rusty about the upcoming season prospects of the Devil’s Island baseball team, when The Most Divine One came in and for whatever reason at hand, began smashing one of the toilet seats up and down and back and forth, unabashedly wild, while looking at me angrily. Me and Dusty Rusty were perplexed and did what any human with their wits still about them, would do; we got the hell out of there and touched base later that night. Seemingly, Dusty Rusty, suggested that The Most Divine One was practicing what he preaches, his new practical theory about his own experience within the prison system, entitled, “Curmudgeon In A Can.”

Then the bottom fell out. And everywhere I went, The Most Devine One followed me; or had his foot soldiers or bootlickers follow me. Prison bathroom trips were never quite the same when I had to use the facilities only to realize I was being watched closely or followed. I had to think quickly and curl myself up in a fetal position upon the toilet seat, just to keep from getting discovered that I was relieving myself from new medicinal treatments I was receiving from the prison’s outpatient psych ward. I didn’t feel safe anywhere, not by a long shot.

The screws were being tightened. And the tighter they became, the more I dug in. The more I had to invent and reinvent ways from keeping myself from going mad or just plain crazy. And believe me, they were doing everything in their power to get me to commit suicide. My body couldn’t lie for much longer, as the longer I tried to hold it in, I developed the shakes; my nervous system was on overload and as a result, I started breaking down and that’s exactly what the plan was that he had in mind.

I knew too much; knew how the system worked; knew who was sleeping with who; knew about the great secret fraud that was being passed around like cocaine sprinkled upon a baby lying on a platter party tray. I knew everything; I exposed their secret lies, warned others before they met their untimely demises; I told the stories over and over and in different ways. I knew who they were protecting; who was under the radar and whose asses they kissed or bounced bellies with. I knew all of that just by observing and taking mindful mental notes.

I remember back to the day that The Most Divine One and the Fraternal Goon Twins found out that I was keeping track of them; just as they had been quietly keeping track of us; the harassment that followed for weeks after and the encouragement I received behind the prison walls, even as no one would step forward to back me up. They were all afraid for their lives and did whatever they had to survive-in other words, they were sheep. When I said blue, they screamed orange. That’s how I knew the tide was turning and my own tsunami was closing in on me, just waiting to drown me.

I remember all the fights, all the shouting matches, all the deaths, all the anger, all the hatred and yet, I didn’t care anymore-I did want out and I kept looking for other avenues of justice, but I never found any; they always led to dead-ends; even as others like Loud-Mouthed Lucy told me that I’d be alright; but I never was. Never was alright. Never would be. Not in this lifetime, nor ever.

On the day that I was executed, Suzy Scarecrow marched up to me and said we need to visit The Most Divine One. I didn’t understand why at first and then I knew. As I stood before the fat bastard, he threw the book at me and accused me of every dirty trick in the prison system that I ever committed; dirty tricks that he taught me when I first arrived on Devil’s Island oh so long ago-the same dirty tricks that he committed and passed onto every prisoner that he wanted to do his dirty work for him; like The Numbers Game. Who could ever forget that? Johnny Vegas (refer to Act 9 & Act 28 for further explanation) became his number one bootlicker for him; his golden boy, the boy who could never go wrong even when the rest of us knew damn well that he was skimming the tops for The Most Divine One. And then, he rewarded him handily by placing him in a golden cell, which Johnny Vegas took to like the glad-handing chameleon that he was. And what was the purpose of The Numbers Game? To skim the cream and let Upper Prison Brass know that he, The Most Divine One, was keeping the prisoners in line.

And who could ever forget the insanitary conditions of that prison? No ventilation. Sickness and disease spread casually, like herpes on a doorknob. And what about the X-5 Unit, that roving gang of mad idiots who gambled prisoners’ rights away, whilst Upper Prison Brass just sat on their hands, admiring the view? And what about The Thin Man and all the chaos he created? And old Twitchy who moaned and bitched a lot over nothing? And the Fraternal Goon Twins who bullied and intimidated the lot of us? And what about the great Broadcast Betty and her cohort, Dirty-Dishing Daisy, the greatest and slimiest gossipers on Devil’s Island? And Old Black Devil herself? The one who got me in this mess to begin; what about her?

Rumor had it that The Most Divine One and Old Black Devil were banging the bars at night, but I don’t know.

So there I stood, as the great fat bastard read me my crimes against humanity, while Suzy Scarecrow sat silently like an unplugged robot. And when my turn came to speak; I was laughed at and called a liar and in the heat of the accusations, he put forth a mountain of evidence against me. I too had evidence, but tucked away secretly that prolonged my life for another 24 months.

And now, that 24 months has expired; my march to the death chamber has arrived; I am wearing a straitjacket with shackles twisted around my arms and feet. There is no way out of this final mile to the end; everyone who wants to see me dead is at last getting their wish. No turning back. Tonight, I go out a silent hero, having told my stories to anyone who would listen and that means, you, you and you and her, too.

Take me Oh Lord. I am at last yours.

Where Do I Fit In The Plan: Here Comes Christmas Once Again!

2009-12-08T14:21:00.005-06:00

It’s beginning to look a lot like the holiday I don’t like at all has begun its slithery path and making attempts to hit me like a ton of bricks. But this year, I think I have the edge on it; this year, I believe I have it beat. This year I have a lot to be happy for and Christmas is not one of them.

But am I supposed to respect a holiday that a majority of Americans and the rest of the universe go ape-shit for? Some sides will tell me yes and some sides will tell me no and some sides will want to wrangle me into their personal vendettas as to why I should respect a holiday that those who celebrate it, worship it like a false idol.

False idolatry; well, well, well. It’s not the first time I’ve run across this before and it sure won’t be the last time. It wasn’t even that long ago in mid-September when I saw the first circulars come with the daily newspapers and in the weekly mail, advertising crap for Christmas.

Now tell me, why am I supposed to respect Christmas? Oh I remember; it’s a holiday for the children, always the children. That has got to be one of the biggest lines of crap ever! For the children! My ass it’s for children.

All Christmas is for is to make some corporate giant like Wal-Mart or Sears feel fat and happy and wallow in their shoddiness of a product manufactured & outsourced to China, India, Malaysia, Mexico or some other foreign country that has taken American jobs away for life?

You want my respect and hundreds of others like mine? Then give those Americans their jobs back! Give them back their self-worth! Give them back their dignity! Give them back their souls! Most importantly give them back what they’ve lost and that is hope.

Now, if you’re thinking that I’d be blaming this one on President Obama, you’ve got to be kidding! He didn’t get us into this mess to begin with. Yes, I know he promised in his campaign speeches to champion new hope and new inroads and all other happiness, and sure it’s not fast enough for some people’s taste that’s not what I’m talking about.

In the last position I held before the big collapse, I talked to hundreds of men and women, who personally vented their frustrations to me and I heard the same words over and over and over; where is the humanity in it all? Where do we fit into the plan? How am I going to survive?

Some were angrier than that; some blamed current their own state governments, their own local markets and some even blamed me for bringing it up with them, even as it was my job to collect this data for ongoing habitual nonsense.

And then, after the screaming was over, the venting and frustration was over and done with, they apologized to me; said they were sorry and didn’t mean to attack me. I accepted their diatribes and just filed them away for remembrance sake later.

And here they are; and as I write this now, I remember what many have said; what am I going to do with my life? It’s in ruins. I’m going to kill myself.

And sadly, that’s what some owners & workers have done, killed themselves. Those that have survived their own personal hells have also looked for new jobs and have given up looking because the market is so brutal.

Some rob banks. Some steal from the corporations that made them miserable. Some have relatives that have an “in” to the next possibility. Some sleep their lives away and become mentally unstable, unable to handle the pressure of no viable means of income.

And some people like me write poetry and essays like this, spilling our insides out on clean white electronic documents like these, that we hope someone else will read and realize that we don’t sit around all day and cry because we have dignity too.

So it’s all for the children, huh?

Merry Fucking Christmas my ass!

Haiku For An Early Sunday Evening

2009-06-28T17:59:00.004-05:00

Hello my friends, four haiku for a gorgeous early Sunday evening!

Any way I show off my brain,

Every other bitter pill

Will chew on me like raw wet leather.

Show-offs

Skip, from out to in

Hard luck

Awaits them all

What less you know?

More likely you’ll become

Pure eggheadedness

Morphemic light

Projects itself toward daybreak

Moonless shying shadows

Bad Ole' Boys Tour Diary Part One-Let's Hit The Road

2009-04-27T23:33:00.005-05:00

It was last fall when I first thought about a tour for the following year. 2009 was going to be my year; the year where everything would finally come together for me. It already had in terms of projects of mine that were up & running & off the ground. A triumphant return to the poetry scene in Chicago…a new band…regular performances…local & international press. I seemed to have had it all & I was in good spirits, despite what was just around the corner.

I’d been planning for a fall tour of the tri-state area (NY, NJ & PA) much earlier in the spring; I’d even had a contact that promised to help me out. Together we prepared a decent press kit & she promised to get me gigs. But then it happened. The bottom fell out & she disappeared. She continually sent me list emails, but stopped responding to my personal requests of helping me out with this fall tour & so I forged it alone once again. Managed to get a few gigs after a good thrashing from those who I thought were my friends. By then it was too late. Still I had a good time and came home happy.

It was about late December when my good pal Mykel Board proposed a new tour for 2009; but he wanted to go south. I wanted to go to Boston & all points east. Eventually I agreed to go south. We settled on Tennessee initially, but then again, I was the one who would be booking the tour. Just like fall 2007, when I booked that tour as well. Three dates in Chicago, four dates in Indiana. That trip was a true success for me; I’d learnt all the tricks of the trade in terms of how to book shows, where we’d stay, pay (if any) & many other miscellaneous tasks.

I was in my element. I felt we did well, despite small audiences at times & Mykel’s feelings of inadequacy with our last show in Indianapolis of bombing out completely. We’d received good press, whether we knew it or not. We met good people, had great experiences, great adventures, the kind of thing you’d expect when you toured with someone else.

So, in mid-January, 2009, the bookings began. We went back on forth where and where not could we go, due to distance. Once that was settled, it wasn’t long until I had lined up four dates for us; one in Knoxville. One in Nashville. One in Memphis and then one in Greenville, South Carolina. Mykel took care of all the sleeping accommodations via friends & couchsurfing.com & took care of all the sight-seeing activities for us. He said I had the harder part. I disagree, but I digress.

We went back and forth on tour titles until I settled on Mykel’s proposal of “Bad Ole’ Boys” Tour 2009. It seemed to fit in perfectly with the South; you know that mentality I’m talking about. Rednecks, inbreeds, Elvis, KKK, hillbillies, moonshine, gun lovers, hound dogs, Deliverance, Easy Rider, slavery, racism, segregation, civil rights-all the usual stereotypes, that I’d been used to as I’d never been to the South, other than passing though West Memphis once on a Greyhound bus coming back from Texas in 2002.

The furthest South I’d ever been to was Indiana, both visiting there as a child, living there in the middle 1990s and then touring there in 2007. Anything south of Chicago, I considered south. Most people never go out of their own backyard, or just dream about it, so I felt lucky.

Then in late March, 2009, my personal life fell apart. I was terminated from my job that I had held like a prison sentence for seven and a half years long. It was that job that kept me going just in terms of finances, in order to pay for things like airline tickets & rent & bills. Now what was I going to do? All of my friends were happy for me; the complete opposite of what one would expect. But they knew how unhappy I was there. I filed for unemployment and began looking for a new job. In this uncertain economy, anything might be possible. So I thought.

The following week, my group disbanded, due to creative differences. Happens all the time, my co-partner & friend said to me. He said he’d still be able to accompany me for future solo gigs, as his guitar-playing was getting better all the time. But I saw it coming too, as there were major divisions within. The band I had started over two years ago was pulled out from under me & became a runaway bastardized monster; something of course, that I didn’t want or need. Something that was not like me at all. More about that later.

I worried constantly. Lost a lot of sleep & had little appetite in the days that followed. Wondering if after all this time if Mykel would cancel the tour we put together. With no viable income, how could I go or at least afford it? Close to tears, I emailed Mykel and explained my situation that I couldn’t afford to pay for gas & car rental. No problem he said, as he proposed an alternative to paying for my half. All I had to do was give him eight promo radio spot records I’d bought last fall at a yard sale in New Jersey.

I was saved! All I had to do was pay for food and the little trinkets I saw along the way. I’d been hoping that this time perhaps people would either pay us well enough or at least buy my CDs, so’s I could have enough to live on throughout the tour. Unsure of myself, I left the morning of Friday, April 17, for O’Hare International Airport with only $20 in my wallet and three bags, hoping for the best.

What's the worst thing that could happen to two Jews touring in the Bible Belt?

And that’s when this adventure began…

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act VII: The Reality Of Indiana

2007-12-23T21:03:00.000-06:00

It’s 8am Sunday morning, October 14. I’ve just picked up my car from the Midway parking lot on the near south side of Chicago.

Pulled an all-nighter, driving back from Indianapolis, but it was Mykel who did the driving, not me. I slept a good part of the way back.

Let me back up; back up to the success of the Chicago shows, not knowing what was waiting for us on the other side of the border, the state line, rather, the loathsome state called Indiana.

Back in the mid-1990s, I lived there, fucked there and practically died there, mentally that is. It’s the state that I call the asshole of America; it seems to compete with New Jersey in many ways, but that’s another story for another time.

It wasn’t the best of times for me being there during that time period, living in a tiny town of 2,000 and being one of three Jews in the town. No future, a lot of bleakness and unfamiliarity in general. Even as I moved ahead to the next town, I ran into too much trouble, too much conservatism and unemployment was my friend.

Thankfully I retreated back to Illinois and found refuge and comfort in suburbia, but only for a short while.

Since that time I had visited Indiana a few times to go see the friends I had made there and like most things, one town I had lived in didn’t change all that much, while the other city was a boomtown, quite literally.

So, when I was planning this tour back in the summer, I had wanted to go to Wisconsin and not Indiana, but it was because of Mykel’s insistence that we go and so, we went, much to my inner chagrin.

Booking the Indiana shows were pretty easy; a converted movie theater in Bloomington, a hippie-style coffeehouse in Lafayette, a record shop and a punk club in Indianapolis. What more could an old punk like Mykel ask for and want and a spoken word performance artist like me desire?

We left mid-morning on the 11th, after parking my car at a secure lot near Midway airport. Our first stop was a lunch break in Hammond, Indiana at a pizza buffet.

The city of Hammond in Indiana is by all accounts weird; this place in particular was strange. On the 100-inch TV screen was Maury Povich’s talk show presenting the usual drivel; the bar was full of rednecks. The place was recommended to us by a Hammond local, when we stopped at the tourism bureau and it was relatively close in proximity to the interstate.

At the bar sat a rather large man with white hair and a long white beard, wearing a red, white and blue USA jacket. The rest of the people inside the joint looked like locals, what with their Gimme ballcaps and flannel shirts.

Somewhere in the midst of going for my third helping at the buffet, the large man was also standing there and as I was helping myself to a slice of pizza, he manically laughed to himself, but in a way that I was supposed to “get.”

I felt uneasy.

It didn’t get any better, when I went to wash my hands and looking for the men’s room, I came upon a little old man who spoke in an elfish kind of voice, who pointed me in the right direction, laughing manically to himself as well.

I felt out of place and wanted to get away from there as quick as humanly possible. We made it into Bloomington without further incident.

We drove to our host’s home and he met us so very graciously. He served us dinner, which I think consisted of a vegetarian meal and then it was off to the movie theater. When we got out and walked up to the theater, we saw that our names were right up on the marquee. That made me smile and I felt it was like one of the greatest times I would ever see my name in the spotlight.

The trouble was when it show-time, only three people attended, two young women and a young man. Mykel wasn’t too happy with that prospect, but I can’t say I don’t blame him; still I gave a performance that I felt was pretty grand, trying out a few new throat-singing pieces and a few new poems to boot.

After the show, I was pretty far gone and unlike Mykel who had his eyes on a friend of our host’s, I decided to turn in early, write in my journal and just sleep. We left the next morning after exchanging addresses, contact information and photographs.

Along the way, we stopped off at a Salvation Army thrift store and the Mongolian studies department at the University of Indiana, where Mykel dropped off a copy of his “Even A Daughter’s Better Than Nothing” book.

From there, we drove to our next destination, good old Lafayette, home of the Purdue Boilermakers and my old stomping grounds back in the mid-1990s. Not knowing what to expect at the coffeehouse, I made the best of it, as we hauled our props and merchandise into the venue.

This show seemed to come off a little better than the last location. Seven people and a few had enthusiasm. That was a relief! And to top it all off, there was a piano I made could use of.

Mykel did his usual spoken word and I did a limited performance consisting of poetry and performance art. After the show was over and both he and I sold a few items from our merchandise table, it was off to a local pub with a local fellow and our hostess, whom Mykel had found via the website, http://www.couchsurfing.com/.

Though she was short in stature, she was dynamite in many other aspects. She was a Purdue graduate student & visiting scientist & scholar from Brazil, she seemed to be a great ball of energy, wanting to go out and stay up all night.

It was the weekend after all, so why the hell not?

The next morning, as we packed up and took all the vitals down and with our cameras, the scientist wanted to tag along with us. At the time I thought, how cool is that? My very own groupie!

So, off we flew. Us in our rental car and her in her oversized SUV. Along the way, we stopped at a few garage sales and from there, made it into Indianapolis in record time.

We met the promoter, who was most kind, considerate and congenial; a true promoter’s promoter. He took us everywhere, along the way, meeting friends of his, stopping in shops and he even took us out to dinner.

Very cool indeed.

Our first venue was the backside of a record shop, where we performed in between bands. Though the set-up seemed kind of odd, I felt like I had to be right into the face of the audience, as we weren’t allowed to use the band space and instead use a side space.

And so that’s exactly what I did; get right into their faces and perform. It paid off. I got their attention alright.

After my performance, we packed up and headed off to the next venue; the historic Melody Inn, where in fact, we would be playing in between a host of punk & metal bands.

After sizing up the crowd, which amounted to several drunken punks, I decided to do my louder and more attention-getting pieces.

After watching Mykel perform and watching his increasingly odd behavior, which was extremely unusual for him, I felt it was in my best interest to not let it get to me.

As the 2nd band left the stage and I plodded up there with all of my gear, I immediately launched into two throat-singing pieces, “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer” and “Noam Colon Mud Puddle,” followed by “Beano,” a performance piece that utilized my shofar.

The drunken punks didn’t seem to care or weren’t amused. Then I launched into a GG Allin spoken word cover of “Bite It” (You Scum).

Not sure where I would do next, I decided to perform “Suite For Furby On Shofar In D Minor.” As I began performing it, I felt both nervous and excited inside.

Here I was in a punk club performing before a bunch of drunks who notoriously could have easily ignored me, which I sort of felt was happening anyway. But I pressed onward, kept switching my movement so I could keep on my toes and watch their reaction at the same time.

It was a learning experience to say the least. Still, the crowd seemed to like me and Mykel was energized.

“That was the punkest thing I’ve seen all year,” he later said to me.

Meanwhile, our Lafayette groupie slinked off with a dorky dancer and ended up doing who-knows-what-we-didn’t-ask-nor-cared.

It was 2:30 a.m., when Mykel turned to me and said he wanted to get out of there and back into Chicago, while I wanted to stay there and go to the place where we were supposed to stay.

But Mykel’s logic was simple; he wanted to go more than I wanted to stay and who could argue with that?

Though Mykel felt he didn’t do well in Indiana, I felt as if I had made a lasting impression and became a smashing success in process.

Touring, as I have learned in the past, can be hard and unpredictable; little or no money involved and many broken promises. But it can be an education too, in that you find out a lot about yourself, as in what works and how you get along with others.

I think I passed the audition.

Thanks to everyone along the way who we met, particularly Chris in Bloomington, Aaron in Lafayette and in Indianapolis, Bill Levin of Bling Jewelry who gave me a Furby (batteries included!) and to our Indianapolis promoter, Marvin Goldstein, who took us everywhere and was kind to us.

Sincere thanks to Mykel Board, who put up with me the entire length of the tour and my snoring.

For another look at our tour, visit this link:

http://mykelsblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/mykels-column-for-mrr-296-december-2007.html

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act VI: Quimby's Bookstore

2007-11-14T21:40:00.000-06:00

"It's better to play in front of a little crowd verses a big crowd, because at least a little crowd can hear what you're playing..." George Harrison

It’s Tuesday afternoon, October 9 & I find myself getting ready for my first-ever reading at Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago.

Mykel’s read there previously, but I haven’t. Still I have to say, it is one of the coolest bookstores in America outside of City Lights, in San Francisco, what with its vast array of fanzines, poetry chapbooks, alternative books, periodicals, photo books & kitschy knick-knacks, plus the free stacks toward the entrance of the shop. There's even a sign posted somewhere among the stacks that masturbating with erotica books is not allowed!

Back in my apartment, I pour through several manila folders filled with poems & essays. Considering I only have 20 minutes or so to read, I choose a few poems to read from the new poetry chapbook I’d published the previous month (September) entitled: Our Love For Liverpool, a book I had collaborated on with The Arizona Babe aka Mom, plus a few other choice poems & a couple of essays from my blog.

I don’t often read my blogs publicly, just very privately to friends, as it’s already out there to read anytime at the world’s disposal, so when I do read anything from it, it’s mostly poems I’ve written & posted on it. If I recall correctly, the only time I read a blog publicly, was when I did a reading with Mykel last fall that was entitled: The Art Of Writing Headlines AKA How To Be Witty, Cute And Stupid In 10 Words Or Less.

But tonight is special; it is October 9 after all & a year ago at this very time, I was in the middle of a mini-tour of venues in both New York City & Philadelphia, with free time spent knocking around New York City.

The 9th of October is quite special to me too; it’s the 67th birth date of the late Beatle John Lennon & back in 2006, for his 66th birthday, I was one of at least 600 people who gathered in Central Park within Strawberry Fields to celebrate his birthday.

Just my luck, Mykel can’t stand John Lennon or the rest of The Beatles, but we all have our imperfections, I guess!

It’s about 5ish when we leave for the bookstore & boom! We get stuck in the middle of rush-hour traffic on I-94; on top of that, my car starts to overheat, but then Mykel shows me a trick; he puts on the heater & the gauge goes down considerably. He tells me he learned how to do that when he was a cab driver in New York City and the cab engine would overheat.

By the time we get there, it’s about 6:50pm & wouldn’t you know? We luck out & find a parking space straight across the street from Quimby’s.

Although we’re supposed to start at 7pm, we don’t start the event until 7:30, in order to “fill” the place. But we do get a nice small crowd and Mykel starts with a familiar piece, one of his columns; quite honestly I don’t remember which one it is, but it is one of the three he reads throughout the remainder of the tour.

Then it’s my turn. I read a few poems of mine & Mom’s from our chapbook, a couple of other poems, & an essay on my experience of being in Central Park within Strawberry Fields in New York City for what would have been John Lennon’s 66th birthday (October 9, 2006) & the strange madness of the day.

The event winds down & people buy books; Mykel’s books that is. Afterwards, we are interviewed by a correspondent for the punk zine, Razorcake. Mykel invites her & her guy friend out to dinner with us, but she declines; school paper due in the morning & she hasn’t started it yet.

With the exception of the previous night at the open mic near home, we are also interviewed at The Green Mill, by a young woman from Northwestern University, though it’s mostly me that is questioned. On this night however, it’s Mykel who is mostly questioned.

We go to dinner a couple of doors down to a Thai restaurant.

Chalk up another great night!

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act V: The Morning After The Big Night Out

2007-11-13T22:30:00.000-06:00

It’s the morning after the big night out, Monday, October 8.

Still have to get up early to return the rental car to Midway Airport on the Southside of Chicago, and we have to leave at 8:30am in order to beat the 10:30am drop-off time and that’s hard, especially on a Monday morning, but alright, such is the life of touring.

We get to the airport by 9-ish and we drop off the car. From there, we take a CTA bus and head to the Museum of Science & Industry (MSI); we get lucky, ‘coz it’s a free day. I haven’t been the MSI in goodness knows how long & Mykel hasn’t been there for perhaps 30 years as he says, but still it’s one of his favorite museums in America he says.

We spend all day there; that’s a rarity for me, as I used to go there almost all the time with my father, Rex Pater Homo from my formative years up through my 20s & maybe at the most spend 3-4 hours there. It’s also Rex’s favorite museum in Chicago as well.

During the time that we arrive at MSI until the finish of the day, we begin and end our "Senility World Series." The person who forgets the most, best out of seven, has to buy the other person a box of aspartame; the sugarless sugar with an ingredient that helps one forget. For me this is the easiest game in the world; Mykel tends to forget a lot of things; like his hat in the men's room at the MSI or something he said earlier in the morning. he trips me up a couple of times, but it's me that's winning, hands down.

Eventually, Mykel wants to stop playing the game. He says i'm taking it too seriously and that bugs him. So, we stop. Perhaps we'll pick up the series another another time.

It’s unusually hot this time of year; near 90 degrees in fact! Not the temperature norm for Chicago. Usually it’s in the 70s. Mykel wants a beer and so we go out in pursuit of one, but soon I grow tired; tired and weak from walking, almost to a state of dehydration. I can feel my palms getting all tingly.

Finally, after walking for nearly two miles or so, we duck into Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap for a drink. He buys me a corned beef sandwich on rye and tells me to slow down and to take it easy. I suspect he doesn’t want to see me collapse. It’s a local neighborhood bar; kind of has that kooky college local yokel feel to it. I also remember sometime back, perhaps in the 1990s that they used to hold poetry readings here.

Ironically on the television set in the bar, there's a couple of news broadcasters talking about the past weekend's Chicago Marathon, in which a man from Michigan collapsed and died from heat exhaustion. The story made international news.

When I feel nourished enough, we grab a bus and head to the CTA Red Line. On the way home, a couple of high school-aged boys notice the slouch hats we’re wearing and playfully call us “The Blues Brothers.”

I grin.

We get our train and head north for the long trip home. I don’t do much, perhaps talk to Mykel or just look outside the window and point some local landmarks out to him. I can’t remember what if anything was said of that trip home.

Later that night, we go to a local open mic at a coffee bar near my apartment. There’s a man there, probably a little closer to my age, but I’m not sure. Mykel befriends him quicker than I do, due to the commonality of the love of literature he seems to enjoy.

He’s one of those shy guys that goes to open mics but never reads; just listens but never reads. Has a whole pocketful of work and then some, but never reads. Never wants to share his work with the world, yet, we trade CDs. I listen to it later and realize how good the music and the lyrics are, but again, he’s just one of those guys that works in a cubicle like some people I know, with other people that never appreciate what he does or what he writes, never shows him support and makes him feel frustrated enough to never go out and read, anywhere.

Period.

Inside I understand completely. I once stood in his place; well as a matter of fact, I’m still there to a degree; where I sit however, is different, in that I’ve been in and out of that box so many times, it’s not funny.

Sadly, the guy leaves before the open mic starts.

About 10:30pm, things start happening. The host sets up and people take turns singing, reading their work or doing stand-up comedy. When Mykel’s turn arrives, he does a piece from his column; I follow him with a couple of poems and a little throat-singing.

There’s a real variety at this open mic; including my personal favorite: an older gentleman, also a professor at Northwestern University, who composes songs on the spot, besides playing his own country & western music.

About 11:30pm, after the last poet reads and the last comedian takes the stage, the place clears out. I promise to come back to this open mic one night.

The problem I have with going to open mics every week, is after a while you lose the flavor of what you’re trying to accomplish; if you’re new at it, great, it’s a great learning experience, but if you’ve been going at it for months or perhaps years like me, then it’s a good idea to pull back and show up every once in a while; that way, you don’t wear yourself out or lose the novelty of whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

We walk home.

Another good night etched into history.

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act IV: "I've Been Waiting For This": The Green Mill

2007-11-10T18:30:00.000-06:00

“Who did you have to blow in order to get into The Green Mill?”-Fast Fingers Wallace

“The entire staff…”-Sid Yiddish

In order to understand my apprehensiveness about The Green Mill performance that took place on Sunday, October 7, 2007, I need to back up a bit. Back to the early days when I first went to The Green Mill; back in the day when it first back in the late 1980s. Back when founder & host Marc Smith roared each time I showed up with great sarcasm, he’d point me out and say, “There he is with his tape recorder.”

Back in those days, I used to record everything I did on tape, every scrap of cassette I could find, I would tape every performance of mine & others on my small portable tape recorders, that I would run through just as easily as a working woman runs through panty hose.

But in those days, The Green Mill was brutal. The audiences and the performers were like a bunch of Dick The Bruisers, all waiting to pin the next man or woman down to the ground and sit on them until he or she cried “uncle.”

That’s no exaggeration.

In the spring of 1999, I am competing for a spot on the Chicago Poetry Slam Team, that will go on to the finals, being held that year in Chicago; the city that is birthplace of the Slam.

I advance to the semi-finals; then the quarter finals; then the finals, at which point I am knocked out of the third round at The Green Mill. I get easily disgruntled & disillusioned by the entire process & notice that the folks who I call “the dramatists,” verses “the real poets” have won.

Some of those dramatists had egos the size of black holes; never-ending, while others remained friendly & polite. Not always the case; but they did it the hard way; the school of hard knocks.

Dismayed, I turned away from poetry entirely & concentrated on my own muse; refocused my attention on music; in particular voice lessons, followed by piano, song & lyric writing, music theory & throatsinging.

I continue this process & slowly re-enter the performance arena with a richer & wider range of talent and skill in 2003. Then I drop out of the scene again & go into acting & improvising, but come back full circle to performing poetry again.

Then I drop out. In 2004, I jump back in & decide to do out-of-town gigs only. I like the thrill of an unknown audience & the ability to try out new material.

In 2005, as you’ve previously read, it’s my good friend and fellow writer/MRR columnist Mykel Board who really encourages me to come back out & perform more often than not. So I do. I begin building up courage, work on my weaknesses & sort out my disillusions with the entire process of performing poetry.

These days they call it spoken word. Looks more sophisticated; sells more books & CDs, anyway.

Fast forward to July, 2007; I’m in the middle of booking 2 Jew$ Be@t Poet$ Tour 2007, when I decide to inquire about the possibility of performing at The Green Mill, but I wonder and all those wounds come rushing back. But I decide to inquire anyway & send an email off to Marc Smith, the founder of the Slam. I receive a response, but it’s virtually nothing and I press on with other venues. In August, I get another email from Smith with further inquiry & a phone number & decide to contact him.

When I tell him who I actually am, he asks me why I didn’t tell him originally. I explain that I’m going under the guise of my recently established stage name, Sid Yiddish. We talk for a bit & he tells me he’d like to see my new act & he’ll give me a shot.

Inside, I am screaming with joy, jumping up & down, while doing cartwheels, combined with summersaults. Yet, I’m still nervous. Not sure what’s going to be by the time the fall rolls around. When The Green Mill gig is confirmed, everything else, including other shows seem to fall into line, almost exactly into place. It’s almost too perfect.

Fast forward again to Sunday afternoon, we’ve just finished up the gig at the Chicago Cultural Center. I’ve parted ways with Rat & I’m waiting for Wes to pull up in his overstuffed station wagon for a lift to The Green Mill.

While, I’m waiting in the lobby a week-old baby wails in front of me, until I suddenly break out in throatsinging & it quiets down, that is until his parents look at me with astonishment & disgust all in the same breath, wishing they could do that.

20 minutes later, Wes pulls up to the curb. We load all of his & my stuff into his car. I plop myself into the front seat. Wes comes out to literally strap me in, as I throw both my legs & feet up on the dashboard & away we fly down Lake Shore Drive until we get to our destination. Wes parks the car a block away & out I pull my belongings & head toward The Green Mill.

When I walk into with all my luggage & props in tow, I open the door & am greeting by about 20 or so people who shout at the top of their lungs “Happy Birthday!” to me and start singing the song of the same title.

I am amused.

I get settled in and see Smith & talk to him for a bit. After conferring with him about something, I begin to place little plastic toy instruments on the tables within the club. They’ll be used for one of my performance pieces later in the night.

Another 30 minutes pass, then I see him; my buddy, my good pal, fellow adventurer & tour-partner, Mykel Board. We talk for a bit & then he sets up the booth where we hope to sell merchandise. I thumb through my work, to see what I’ll be reading, but I already know, as I sort of had a simple plan set up for The Green Mill show.

The hour grows closer. Then at 7pm, the show begins! Wes performs during the open mic. Before the break, Smith holds a contest; the best poem that uses the words meatloaf, Venus & volcano wins $10. He says he needs four contestants. Mykel, myself & two others volunteer. We don’t win, someone else does, but I whip off a quick poem about anal sex, while Mykel writes up a quickie with a Jewish-related theme.

During the break, I see my good friend, The Rev. in the front row; he comes up to me and pumps my right hand. “Hey Squirt,” he laughs, referring to my anal sex poem.

I smile. It gives me true hope, that knowing he’s in the audience, that I will do okay tonight.

After the break, Mykel is introduced by Smith & reads one of his prose pieces about plastic medicine from his book of columns entitled, “I-A-Me-Ist.” I’ve heard it before, probably half-a-dozen times; I never get tired of his work.

While he is reading, I get myself prepared; I am nervous, but calmer and more determined than ever.

Then I’m up.

The first piece I do is Jazz-Haiku-A-Rama; the crowd “gets” the concept of the piece & responds joyfully with the little toy instruments that I had laid out on the tables only hours earlier. I’m pleased.

I follow up with Moloch The Watchman. The crowd claps again. I’m intrigued.

Then I tell the audience that I‘m going to do a little throatsinging. That’s when I hear Smith say, “I’ve been waiting for this.”

I launch into my throatsinging mega-hit “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer.” I hear a deafening roar & thunderous applause from the crowd. I am thrilled. I’ve survived my comeback. Just as I am leaving the stage, Smith asks me if I might do another one.

An encore!

I stop & think for a minute and say, “Yeah, I do have another one, but I need a drink of water first.”

A man in the front row offers me his glass & I take a few sips from it. Then, another man comes over & hands me a tall glass of cool water. Smith says, “That’s the first time Pete (the club manager, I later find out) has ever brought anyone a drink to the stage.”

I start drinking while I hear choruses of “chug-chug-chug” along the way.

Then I tell the crowd that I will be doing a Yoko Ono cover, called “Don't Worry Kyoko(Mummy's Only Looking For A Hand In The Snow),” to which I hear murmurs of groans & laughter. I tell the audience that I will be doing the cover in two voices, first throatsinging, then falsetto, then back to throatsinging.

I eye the crowd and then I launch into the piece. The crowd is stunned, but in a good way. I finish the piece, to which the crowd responds with great enthusiasm.

I feel like I’ve conquered one of my greatest fears. During the break, I spy one of my co-workers sitting at the bar; he tells me I did well. Then I see The Rev. who tells me I was “smoking!”

Everybody else I talk to all say the same thing, different phrasings, but the same thing.

I am sitting on a cloud at this point.

Wes and Mykel both congratulate me as well.

But the night’s not over; no, not by a long shot or a rocky mountain slim, either. The first-ever baseball poetry slam is about to begin…

The teams are ready. It’s The Green Mill slammers verses the Bardball team. On my team, besides me, are Jim Garner & Stu Shea, both gentleman are well-established authors & founders of the website, in which people submitted poems during the 2007 baseball season.

The rules are simple. In order to get a home run, one has to have three placards held up by the judges that all say “Going,” but if they get two of the “Going” placards & one “Pop Out” placard, then it’s considered an out & no runs are scored. Of course, the worst case scenario can also be three pop-outs too.

One by one we all come to “bat.” I, for one of a better phrase, am batting 1.000 all night! Mykel is amazed; so is everyone else inside The Green Mill, including my teammates.

We get to the seventh inning stretch & I hear Smith mention something about a song. Without having to be asked, I stand up from our booth, hop up onto the stage & lead the crowd in throatsinging “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and hop back down.

The crowd is mesmerized.

We go to extra innings and I am sent up to bat for our side. Meanwhile, Smith pinch-hits for the other team & smacks a grand-slam within the slam & beats our team quite handily. Still, everyone goes home a winner.

As the night winds down & I pack up & leave The Green Mill & go out for a steak burrito at Garcia’s in Lincoln Square with Mykel, I am still on fire, stars in my eyes & the moon in my throat.

And I all I can think is, what a grand night!

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Faces In The Park

2007-11-03T13:00:00.000-05:00

hello friends, hello! time for a little tour diary break and instead enjoy a new little poem that I wrote last night after a visit to a throat specialist across the street from Millenium Park in downtown Chicago...as always, enjoy!

Faces In The Park

I want to take a picture

but instead I'll write a poem

about the people and their recognition

the tourists and the locals seem so astonished, as they point their perogitive toward the peculiar and in modest venacular, ask out loud, "What is that?"

A face within brick

A shining example of fantasticsm, but isn't that always the way?

Modern art isn't supposed to be anything but art

But why all these questions? Just take art for art and feast upon the soul of the depth

The hand-holding crowd will "get" it

The soda-sucking subterreans?

Won't.

And that too, is all part

art.

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act III: Suite For Furby On Shofar In D Minor; The Last Pre-Tour Date Before The Actual Tour Begins!

2007-10-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday morning, right about 8am; my cellphone has already buzzed three times. It’s my big brother Louie, leaving behind messages something to the effect that the Chicago Cubs have just been shut out of the divisional playoffs by the red-hot Arizona Diamondbacks the night before.

I’m up early because today is the day I’ve been waiting for a couple of months. Two performance dates; the first is set for the late afternoon downtown at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of John Cage's Music Circus Chicago 2007, with me and my boys…Furbies that is, plus the band, $2 Cockroach and the other is the evening date, the first night of the 2 Jews Beat Poets 2007 tour at the Green Mill.

It’s slightly after 8:30, as I run outside and make a few final phone calls to both Rat Niptik, the bassist and Dr. Wes Heine, the electronicist, to make sure they are on their way; both reassure me they are.

That’s the only trouble I’m having this morning, is making the calls; both the clouds and the wires don’t seem to want to cooperate. By the time I leave my apartment, it’s closer to 9am.

Walking to the El never seemed so exciting than today, as my backpack is tight, full of flyers, poetry chapbooks, my spoken word CDs and a full water bottle, with a dark green duffel bag slung over my left shoulder while dragging behind me and ever as noisily the baker’s dozen Furbies. It seems longer than usual walking to the El that is and I gather, that it’s probably due to the weight of everything that I am carrying, but all the discrepancies aside, everything else seems okay.

But of course not.

The real trouble begins. As I get to the corner of Main and Sherman in Evanston, I begin to notice the back of my legs and shirt are getting wet and I can’t figure out why, until I put my pack down and realize the water bottle wasn’t shut tight enough.

It’s leaked all over my backpack, causing everything inside to get wet, no drenched including the new and older poetry chapbooks, flyers, business cards and most importantly, the instructions for my band-mates to follow, when we perform this afternoon.

When I finally reach the El station, the security guard tells me that my backpack is leaking and I, out of spite, tell her “My oxygen tank inside my backpack has just exploded and if I don’t get another one soon where I’m headed for, I’ll simply die.”

She doesn’t believe me, as she angrily tells her friend on her cell she was gabbing to for several minutes before it looks like as I came in, that she has to call her back because of my wetness, silently grabs a mop and wipes the cement floor from where I’ve just passed through and shoots me a dirty look. I just smile.

Once I get upstairs, I rearrange my backpack and salvage what I can and put the rest into my duffel bag. The Furbies are still causing a ruckus, but nobody seems to notice, as the Purple Line train pulls up and I get on.

The only person who seems to notice the disturbance they are making is an older black man, who stares at the suitcase in which they’re housed in to see if I really do have an Asian child locked inside.

The train makes one more stop and then pulls into the Howard El. I wait about 10 more minutes until a long empty Red Line train pulls into the station, opens its doors and lets its waiting passengers in.

As more people get on the train, I notice they are carrying signs. Then it hits me; I forgot today is also the day of the Chicago Marathon, a smorgasbord of sweaty runners and their own personal cheering squads to encourage them toward the finish line.

Many are wearing homemade tee shirts with their runners of choice name emblazoned on it, while still others are holding placards and banners to wave up and down at them like a bunch of idiots one usually seems at a sporting event or the Today Show in New York, in order to get on TV. As we arrive at the Belmont stop, scores of passengers load in and I am beginning to feel the crush of frantic human traffic all trying to get to the same place at once and my third problem kicks in.

Claustrophobia.

I feel like a sardine in a tiny tin can on electric wheels. People are talking loudly to each other inside the car, when all of a sudden, my cellphone rings. I look at the number and I see it’s Wes. I tell him that the Furbies were nervous and have peed on me. A couple of people listening to my phone conversation look at me and laugh.

I tell him I’m on the way, but I’ll need to end the conversation as the train is going underground, so I tell him I’ll be there in about 10-15 minutes tops.

Meanwhile, I devise a plan on how I’m going to get out of the crowded train of over 300 plus, a train car that probably is only supposed to hold 100 at the most.

We stop at North & Clybourne, Clark & Division, Grand and Chicago, less people getting off the train and more are getting on. I start to sweat, in hopes I will be able to get out of the packed train with ease.

A few passengers nearby help me out; they will pass my luggage to me and all I need to do is try to finagle my way out of the car. At last, the train pulls into the Lake Street station.

I jump up, grab my luggage and in a loud, projected voice, I yell, “Out please, out please!” swinging my duffel bag like a giant purse, thereby smacking 10 passengers in the process. I apologize and smile as I get out of the stopped sardine can. At last, I am out!

I work my way up the stairs and out onto the upper sidewalk. Down State Street I trod, with luggage and Furbies in tow until I get to Randolph and hang a left and go east. I whip out my phone and call Wes. He’ll be there in 10 minutes, can’t seem to find parking. I tell him no worries.

It’s nearly 11am.

I get closer to the Cultural Center and take a short cut. As I get closer to the steps of the building facing the Michigan Avenue side, I see Rat is already there, waiting.

We talk and go inside to the designated “Green Room” area and sign in. I get a couple of water bottles and we settle in with the varying groups of people. They tell us, that if we leave, our gear will be safe, but Rat wants to see the space we’ll be performing in and asks me all sorts of questions, questions I can’t answer for the moment, as I myself haven’t seen the space up close either.

I tear out a couple of pieces of paper from a yellow legal pad and begin writing out an instructional set list for myself to direct with. It is similar to the one I emailed only days previously to Rat and Wes. My phone rings; it’s Wes; he’ll be there in 5 minutes to unload his gear and then go look for a parking space somewhere in the already altered parking situation in the Loop.

Rat and I head outside and wait for Wes, who shows up shortly thereafter. We grab his gear and wait inside. About 20 minutes later, after Wes has found a parking space, he comes back and meets us and together the three of us ride the elevator to the 4th floor, where we park our gear and move around a little.

We all come back into the space about 2.30pm with our requested gear; an extra table for the Furbies. Meantime, curious onlookers want to get inside the suitcase where they are housed temporarily, to see them all.

As the time gets closer to our slot, I notice that the group ahead of us shows up late, making us even later.

That doesn’t please one man, an older and presumably Jewish gentleman who has come to the show just to see me perform and insists I tell them to stop playing, just so he can see me perform and then move onto another performance he wants to see.

I politely tell him I can’t do that and it only makes him angrier and insists I do it. I tell him it’s not my call and sure enough, he flashes me a “dirty Jew” look, the kind of look I used to get by non-Jews when I attended grade school in the middle 1970s.

We begin setting up shop and about 3:10pm, we begin performing Suite For Furby On Shofar In D Minor. Rat and Wes take direction very well, as they fly hard on their instruments, trying to get my little Furbies to speak up.

After a couple more minutes and a few more set changes, the Furbies are taken out of their suitcase cage and placed onto the table, one by one.

A crowd forms, waiting to see what will happen next.

Not much does, as the Furbies actually cooperate with me, Rat and Wes for a change.
This almost never happens when they remain silent.

A true miracle indeed.

The performance ends. We take our bows and then let the Furbies bow.

As if they ever could.

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act II: Strangers In The Night

2007-10-27T01:33:00.000-05:00

There’s a certain special affinity I held for audiences that came to our shows all throughout our 2 Jews Beat Poets Tour 2007 earlier this month; they were all strangers.

I get along easier with strangers. God only knows it’s harder for me to get my friends to come to any of my shows and when they do come it’s a total surprise.

As in unexpected.

Planning for this tour was a challenge; a challenge I was up for and succeeded at with flying momentum.

But when it came to friends coming out to a show; well, that was virtually harder than taking candy away from a baby and giving it to Jesus Christ.

Lots of people promised they’d come out to support me, but…always that big but; they couldn’t. Something about having to work late into the night and getting up the next morning and then were the promises of co-workers who said they would come and didn’t bother to show up.

I quit asking co-workers a long time ago wherever I worked; just would mention it sort of off-the-cuff to closer co-workers than others. Enough had seen me to know what they wouldn’t be getting; something atypical of what they’re used to seeing.

So, when it came to this tour, I sheepishly and perhaps foolishly blabbed about it a little too much to co-workers. Enough people knew about it, but hell! Only two people showed up; my bass player came to two gigs, other than the pre-tour Sunday show at the Chicago Cultural Center in downtown Chicago during the John Cage festival, amidst the overheated runners from the annual Chicago Marathon, that became national news due to the death of a runner from Michigan and mismanaged plans.

Then there was the man I’ll refer to as “Dizzy Diz.” He’s the man that pushed me to try a class at the Peoples Music School in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago this past summer.

Dizzy Diz came to the Green Mill show the night of October 7 and had his socks knocked off; raved about the show as far as I remembered; he was impressed. A music man himself, one of the few men I can talk to at the spit sink almost daily about music in any form and he understands where I’m coming from.

Because I took up trumpet at the Peoples Music School, he calls me “Miles” or “Mr. Yiddish,” which other people refer to me as.

They see my work on YouTube and seem to get enthused, but to make it to a show?

Impossible.

Something always comes up. Excuses like, “I had to wash the cat” or “I saw you & Mykel (Board) performing, but I just didn’t bother to come in.”

I’m not saying friends or co-workers show up; they do, but it’s a more often scenario that some won’t come for one reason or another. I am guessing that the individual, who doesn’t show, probably believes it’s all the same; the doldrums of poetry; their inability to comprehend it or even grasp something that is not conventional or bad memories from their educational careers, perhaps.

Maybe it’s professional jealousy. I’ve run across that before and it’s a main reason I don’t mention it to certain colleagues I’ve befriended in the past. They seem to want to support you, but not really; words might soothe and stroke the ego, but in making it a known presence, actions count and by not showing up, the presence statement is almost louder than mere words alone.

My favorite among these folks, is the newly-self-styled film-maker with a Sony camera purchased from Best Buy, whose original use for the camera was for baby films, but has since graduated to fantasy baseball league documentaries and whose new film I’m in; the story based on his life (ugh!) and he had the nerve to tell me, “I’d love to support you, but I have to get up early and go to work.”

Like I don’t daily?

Still, he expects me to be part of his film, while taking off from my regular 9 to 5, cutting into my schedule and work for free.

I don’t think so.

It’s because of that school of thought, that I rely heavily on the kindness on strangers. It’s a way to build-up audiences. Try out new material; see what works and what doesn’t work. I can be myself in front of strangers, which is why I greatly enjoy performing outside my home territory.

They won’t know my work and will most likely be hungry for something innovative and different.

And that’s what I tend to work for, whether it’s an art party in Seattle, Washington, an open mic in New York City, a featured performance in my hometown of Chicago or a couple choruses of throatsinging amongst the silent cactuses and howling coyotes in the deserts of Arizona.

They will listen; listen with intent and curiosity, willingly and hoping to come away with something they haven’t heard before and apply it to their own lives.

That’s my intention. Expect the unexpected. Only then will one learn what is brought to the table and eat.

Eat heartily, that is.

2 Jews Beat Poets-Act I: Origins Of A Tour

2007-10-16T21:07:00.000-05:00

There’s a time in everyone’s life when you learn a new skill. Mine? Booking a spoken word/performance tour! Never did I think that I would do that, but here I am on the road, somewhere on the road, touring with Mykel Board, headed toward our first destination tonight in Bloomington, Indiana, after having spent the first half of the week performing in Chicago. But let me back up a bit, tell you a bit of history between Mykel & I, tell you about our performance history, a bit of booking experience and a bit of everything else in between!

It’s spring, 2007 & Mykel…no wait, let me back up even further to last fall, 2006, when I arrive in New York City to do a few gigs. Mykel meets up with me as I arrive at the venue via taxicab, with a driver who absolutely hates his job. Don’t we all?

The venue is a small studio on Times Square; I’m one of three features, while Mykel gets up on the open mic portion and reads some of his work. Vivianna Grell the host dubs Mykel, “Mykel Board The Bard.”

That same week, we perform at a friend of mine’s bar, Grey Lodge Pub in Philadelphia, a performance that took us five hours to drive to due to an unusually hard and long torrential rainstorm. That same afternoon, a light plane flying along the Hudson River, piloted by New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor takes a wrong turn and smacks directly into a 42-story apartment building on the upper east side of New York City, killing both men instantly.

Not knowing if it’s a terrorist attack or not, United States President George W. Bush takes no chances and sends fighter jets to protect New Yorkers. The plane accident ties up traffic for hours…

But back even further to Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois, late May, 2005. Mykel’s just published two new books, I-A-Me-Ist & Even A Daughter’s Better Than Nothing and is on a book tour filled with up with Illinois & Wisconsin tour dates.

It’s Mykel who encourages me to go back out on the performance circuit once more after a few years of sitting out, if for no better reason, for at the moment escapes me. He tells me he’s got a gig at the Reversible Eye in Chicago and wants me to be a part of it. So I agree to do it. We both do seemingly well, the audience is extremely polite and attentive and well; looks as if I’m hooked on performing again!

A few days later we drive up to Madison, Wisconsin with another friend, where I open for Mykel at Rainbow Books with a little throatsinging that ends up scaring away four potential audience members. Mykel doesn’t seem too pleased by that, but I figure if I can scare them away here, I can scare them away anywhere and do whatever I please in terms of performance.

Some hours later, Mykel goes on his way and I head over to an open mic with my friend and play an unmemorable, no-rules game of Scrabble in which I get the title for my next (and third) CD, I mean of course, the word, holfatzib.

I discover later that night, as my car radio stops working and to amuse myself and in order to keep myself awake, I sing at least 100 different versions of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame,” I realize that I am digging what is transpiring...

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>The Greatest Revolution In Birdland!

2007-05-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

Well, hello my good friends! A quick tip of the fedora and a great good late evening to you, one and all! Ah, Friday has at long last arrived and yet, it was not the day I looked forward to, but in many ways, it's a day I will long remember and will make me stronger in the days ahead. But, Friday! woohoo! It's come around again and so has our good friend, that crazy, capper to help us lift our spirits high and mighty for the next 48 hours. And speaking of poems, it's brand-spanking-new poem time!!! Remember my dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, always, always, enjoy!!!

The Greatest Revolution In Birdland! (For Jobie Hughes)

Once upon a dream ago
I was a jailed canary bird
Never thought much about flying, just laying eggs and strutting in line with all those other feather-brains.

One day, I heard a young finch's voice, so beautiful, so pure, singing a tune I ain’t never heard before, so I asked this finch where it learned that tune and the finch showed me, note for note, line for line.

I knew something was different, as I felt myself cooing inside, still I had this feeling, I hadn't felt in years.

So I spread my wings and began to fly around my cage, almost clumsily at first, then I got back onto the perch, directly into the line of fire, much to the chagrin of the prison raven's demonic (des) ire.

It was then that I began to sing.
And sing loud and clear.
Sung a song so dear and meaningful, that it rattled the rest of those caged birds, and so it began the greatest revolution in Birdland, that ever ceased to be.

And out of their cages they flew, they strutted, shook a tail feather or two and twittered and tweetered and cheeped and chirped.

And now, I fly and strut and sing on my own.

I looked around to thank that young finch, but it was already gone, flown the coop.

I was glad to have listened, knowing now that I can bail myself out of my nest in a pinch.

Oh! But this finch left me more than an inch, (more like several), still shoveling his poop, with a bag and a winch.

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Last Moments Spent With You

2007-05-04T17:42:00.000-05:00

Well, hello my good friends, hello! It's been such a very long time since I've made a visit to this space, let alone near my blog in many, many weeks, but I am back! Back with a new look as well, back with brand new ideas, opinions and poems to share with you, one and all! And speaking of poems, here it is Friday! That day that I as well as you look forward to and who should be here waiting for us? Why, it's that sweet capper, ready to take us into a busy & fun-filled weekend, that's who! And yes you guessed it, it's brand spanking-new poem time!!!Remember my dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, always, enjoy!!!

Last Moments Spent With You

I never liked sad endings, so let’s get this over with, just as soon as we can
Though I like it when it’s drawn out,
Nice & slow, so I can savor the last moments and remember, the happiness of the day, for what will seem like a lifetime
And in the end, as this is ending
I can shed a few tears in the brief moments left with you, privately
And thank you for everything
Walk out the door and feel nothing but happiness, while crying a river, then a flood.

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>E-Love

2007-02-14T19:54:00.000-06:00

E-Love

He made the mistake of letting her break his heart into one million pieces.
Sadistic statistic, e-love baby
He got his signals mixed, sank into the abyss
What is this thing called, e-love?
Online cupid? You expect him to believe that?
One million hearts all screaming out at once?
Well, he's not stupid, he's no dunce.
One million hearts all looking for the same thing,
a big fat wallet and a diamond ring

What Would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Do?

2007-01-15T21:11:00.000-06:00

I spent the latter half of my Saturday night after dinner and took in a long walk to the campus of Northwestern University, not far from my pad. Other than the hundreds of females I saw marching toward the student union as I was leaving, not a whole heck of a lot was going on there, other than movie night. After catching my breath and looking at the lovely artwork within the union, I’d have to say it was relatively dead night at the union.

During my brief sojourn there I noticed an upcoming event for today, which was centered on the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday in the United States.

Lots was happening at Northwestern University, the usual stuff, like speakers, films and other activities that concurred with the *legacy* of Dr. King, yet it got me to thinking; what would Dr. King do today if he saw violence on the upswing in sports? And not just the major leagues either? What would he think about the fact that there’s violence on the field and off the courts?

Dr. King aside for a moment here; the very idea of violence in sports on the upswing is alarming. Something must be done to quell the thirst of violence in sports once and for all, period.

Of the four major sports, baseball, football, basketball & hockey, hockey by far is the most violent, what with constant fighting game after game, blood splashed on the ice, broken noses, black eyes, fistfights, but the fans eat it up, strangely enough.

Then there’s baseball; all it takes is a baseball thrown by a pitcher at the opposing player’s body to cause a fight. A few punches are thrown, both team benches clear and voila! A good old-fashioned fight ensues. By the time it’s over, a few players are ejected from the game, suspended, and fined and that’s about it.

Although football and basketball are seemingly the least violent of the four major sports, that’s starting to slowly change and it’s not necessarily the players who are initiating the fights either.

Enter the fan; the end-all instigator of the newly-renewed violence in sports facilities, especially at baseball and basketball games. Often times the fan will taunt the players anyway they can. That’s nothing new, but to actually taunt the players with malicious intent, including and not limited to jumping on the court or field, showering the athletes with debris or inflict bodily harm, well, that’s just uncalled for.

But the violence doesn’t end there, oh no! The big leagues have passed the savings onto the little leagues too, especially when parents take a swing at a coach, an umpire, another parent or even another child. It’s outrageous!

Just because their offspring didn’t make the cut or are bench-warmers or a call wasn’t made in their favor. Parents’ responsibility should be that of support, not the role of beast-slayer; that’s what coaches are for and always have been for.

Violence does not belong anywhere near sports, period!

What would Dr. King do? Unlike today where sit-ins and demonstrations seem to do little, other than make the evening news in a five-second clip, with an equally effective sound bite, probably nothing.

After all, you can’t hypothetically play guessing games when you’re dead.

New American Yarnprose>Frankenstein Boy Wonder Emerges With New Screw-On Wrists

2007-01-11T21:04:00.000-06:00

There are some feelings you try to fight off like a bad cold & you struggle hard to be rid of those germs, but sometimes they never escape you & you come under viral attack in many varied ways.

I’ve been wondering lately where I belong, who I belong to, why I belong, what do I belong for & when I can stop belonging. Thinking too much gives me headaches. Crying too much gives me sadness and frustration & lately I’m full of that.

I’ve been trying to unload a rather old home full of baggage lately, but it’s been frustrating when roots get in the way. The trouble with roots is that they cling to you, like the way vines cling to walls & sometimes pulling these roots out can really hurt, especially if it’s not done correctly.

Within a circle of destiny, there are places I tried to get into, but they were never available; there were opportunities made for me, but I never took advantage of them; there were so many initiatives I tried to make on my own, but I failed, failed miserably & so I withdrew.

And I kept withdrawing. Withdrawing was much easier than facing the world. As I found myself withdrawing more, I discovered a whole new world within myself, but along with that I also found half a dozen other vices that just about ruined me.

Still, everyone needs a fix & lord knows that I have tried every legal fix there is, but it’s only quick & temporary, leaving me desiring more. Those fixes made me sick, putting me into strangleholds I didn’t want to be in, dug holes so deep & wide, that I wondered if I would manage to climb my way out alive.

The strangleholds are harder to slip out of though, because you can strangle yourself for the longest period of time & not even realize what you’re doing, until someone takes you by the hand, stands you next to them & forces you to look into the mirror & shows you how your reflection has become jaded & cracked.

You need new blood. Perhaps a transfusion or an injection of some kind, a shot in the arm that will make you a new person is what they tell you, like say Frankenstein Boy Wonder, a positive, passionate, peculiar person, who might energize an aging skeptical nation full of amazement, ready to take on anything he is handed.

Time is on his side, sometimes, but often as the Frankenstein Boy Wonder gets his feet wet, there are plenty of wolfmen, phantoms and bitter old Draculas, just waiting to take a bite out of him, a him who tries his best to be all positive and happy, because they themselves cannot have those desires and are determined to bring them down to their level, just like a fallen house of cards.

Frankenstein Boy Wonder knows that situations happen for a reason; that success is not overnight & that working out the kinks is far better than taking everything handed to him as is.

There are one thousand, million, billion, zillion, gazillion other Frankenstein Boy Wonders out there, all roaming around, trying to accomplish the same darn thing, with the same darn results, but they fail, due to lack of originality.

And they try to ape him, but can’t.

And he’s so darned glad.

Do The Oz! Do The Oz! Do The Oz! An Occupational Hazard>Act 35

2007-01-04T21:36:00.001-06:00

Disclaimer: We become innocent when we are unfortunate. In innocence there is no strength against evil, but there is strength in it for good. What can innocence hope for; when such as sit her judges are corrupted! O God, keep me innocent; make others great! Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that if powers divine our human actions, as they do, I doubt not then their mind of innocence consciousness laughs at the lies of rumor.

Do The Oz! Do The Oz! Do The Oz! Sadly, as the shouts rang out in and around the execution chambers recently here on Devil’s Island, it seems as if the execution chambers have been reactivated in the most jovial of spirits.

To listen to The Ozman tell his story just moments before he was led away in shackles amid shouts and cheers of “Do The Oz!” you’d swear they were executing an innocent man.

The Ozman came to Devil’s Island long ago and far away on a trumped up charge of perjury, back in the day when such issues were one-sided and rarely checked, so he was sent up the river for a spell.

The Ozman developed a likeable personality everywhere he stepped, trotted and walked in and around Devil’s Island; that is to everyone except The Most Devine Heart, whom never did see eye-to-eye, rather going for each other’s throats many years ago at the annual Devil’s Island’s Prisoner Men vs. Prisoner Women Softball Charity Game, whose proceeds went to lining the pockets of the most finest of thieves in and around Devil’s Island.

It seems that The Ozman who managed the men’s team, disagreed with a game call made by the game umpire, The Most Divine Heart. At first the disagreement was light, then it became heated; mostly cursive in nature by The Most Divine Heart.

Apparently the play the two were disagreeing about was a deliberate pitch from Lugsy McTurk that turned out to be a bean ball against the head of Danceman Daryl, which knocked him down to the ground flat! That cleared the bench and a brawl ensued.

As Lugsy McTurk was led off the prisoner field, The Toothless Terrorist & Broadcast Betty could be seen moving in and around the crowded field, interviewing other prisoners, who of course were potential witnesses full of details and that always pulled in the attention of The Toothless Terrorist & Broadcast Betty.

In the meantime, the argument became more heated & cursive, when suddenly, The Ozman was ejected from the game. As The Ozman slowly walked off the Devil’s Island prisoner field, he said to himself that “enough was enough,” took a quick look around to make sure the coast was clear, scaled the turned-off Devil’s Island electronic fence and walked free.

During his brief time on the lam, The Ozman worked odd jobs; fixed cars, pumped gas, washed dishes, walked dogs, swept streets and shined shoes, until one day someone recognized him from a “Most Wanted” poster placed on a bulletin board at a local post office near the shop where he shined shoes.

Devil’s Island Upper Prison Brass was notified and The Ozman was promptly arrested, taken back into custody and placed straight back into solitary confinement for several months, until it was deemed he was safe enough to be placed back into the prisoner population once more.

The Ozman turned out to be a model prisoner, kept to himself, but made a few friends along the way, but when the snap decision came down to execute The Ozman quite suddenly, no one was able to stop it.

As The Ozman was escorted down to the execution chambers, prisoners shouted, “Do The Oz!” “Do The Oz!” “Do The Oz!” from every corridor possible, thereby forcing The Most Divine Heart to hear the love of the innocence about to die wrongfully.

When asked if he had any last words, The Ozman turned directly toward The Most Divine Heart, as he was preparing the execution chamber emotionlessly. The Ozman looked at him square in the face and said, “Yeah man, as a matter of fact, I do! Do The Oz! Do The Oz! Do The Oz!”

An innocent man he was.

A Quick Happy New Year Note From The MishegasMaster

2007-01-01T19:11:00.000-06:00

It's a reasonable assumption that I haven't been writing that much in the last 17 days, mostly since I have been trying to tie up loose ends from the previous year and it's been rather difficult these past three weeks between sickness and the recent death of a friend's spouse, so before I get carried away with another one of my essays, I'd like to step away from the messy entanglements and wish all of you, my dear readers, a very, healthy & prosperous new year.

In the coming days there will be a few last minute leftovers from the previous year and then from there, on we shove off into the new year, with lots of new stories to share, plus a few new features here in this very space.

Until then, see you soon, gang!

The MishegasMaster

New American Yarnprose: Lefty Dizz And The Morning After>Act One

2006-12-27T20:08:00.000-06:00

In the realm of the big picture, the morning after has come and gone and already, I feel sick to my stomach. I actually slept straight through the night for a change, but my mind is laden with such heavy decisions now.

Not that it wasn’t before, but this time it’s very life-altering, changes that would take me far beyond what I have always been used to in previous years. I live a simple life now; as simple as can be. I go to the harvest, come home from the harvest and do whatever I feel is necessary to live out the rest of the gospel based on the harvest.

The last two weeks haves been very difficult, as I’ve been dragged down from walking right into a black sea of pneumonia, stuffed up with a bad head cold and in general, unable to function properly.

It’s cost me dearly: two lost weeks of no writing anything; no poetry, no essays, no songs, no nothing! Still the flow of ideas bubbled over in my brain, but now, now it’s the long morning after: Fidel Castro is extremely sick, more American soldiers are being blown to bits by another god-damned homemade bomb in Iraq for George W. Bush Junior’s “Quagmire For Freedom,” retail stores are cashing in on day-after Christmas sales and like everything else, it’s business as usual.

But is it really? I feel less grim. I had a great night at the neighborhood saloon with my pals the other night, one of the best nights I had in years, coming home sloshed with a girl on each arm and the antics that followed, hoo-boy!

It’s the morning after and I feel sick, upset stomach I think, though maybe it was stress and not the effects of the booze in my head. I get some shortbread and that does the trick, turns the key in the keyhole and I’m ready to face the day, though the day is the night and another night, the night after the morning after, is bound to be adventurous!

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Secret Stories

2006-12-08T23:59:00.000-06:00

Good extremely late evening to you one and all! A quick tip of the kippah and yes, it's Friday! Here we are in the second week of December and only 14 more shopping days until my birthday! Our friend, the happy capper has been waiting patiently all day to take us into a busy weekend! And now, yes you guessed it, it's brand spanking-new poem time!!!Remember my dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, always, always, enjoy!!!

Secret Stories

If you let me kiss your lips
I will tell you stories with my tongue
When you tell me I'm a bad little boy and you bite my ears,
I will bite you back, so have no fear
Oh! You ask me, do you love me?
Oh! You want me, like I want to get inside your heart oh-so-much
It is clear
I need no crystal ball
I know where my future lies,
All snuggly in your arms asleep

Post-Partum New York Stories>Act Three: Strawberry Fields Forever

2006-12-07T21:30:00.000-06:00

Earlier today, marked the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, while tomorrow marks the 26th anniversary of the murder of musician John Lennon. In light of these two tragic events, I’d like to share something positive that occurred while I was in New York City back in October.

It was a relatively warm day in Central Park, as I walked briskly to Strawberry Fields, specifically to a spot I call Imagine Circle, a site that was dedicated several years ago by Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, which has turned into a memorial where fans of Lennon can gather and assemble peaceably in quiet reflection.

It was sometime after 10 am, on Monday, October 9, 2006, when I watched the day slowly unfold. Self-designated Unofficial John Lennon Celebration Day organizers had already begun setting up shop and I snapped a few photos, as the organizers were confronted by Central Park Rangers & representatives from the New York City mayor’s office, explaining to the organizers that on no uncertain terms would they allow, according to the mayor’s office, “no electric or acoustic guitars or any other instruments,” still the Rangers and the mayor’s office said, “a capella music would be allowed.”

After the Rangers departed, the organizers made a quick plan, whereas one man acted as lookout scout for signs of the cops in case trouble brewed, while the other men began to set up shop.

Not a moment was wasted as musicians with acoustic guitars began arriving in droves, as well as people came trickling in little by little, until a small crowd gathered to celebrate the birth of one of the greatest men to ever step in front of a microphone with a guitar in his hands and a song in his breath, but would often yell gibberish into a microphone, yet the whole world listened.

The songs were all familiar; they were his songs, along with his writing partner’s songs and sometimes his band mates’ songs, plus the songs he wrote and recorded after he split on a permanent basis with his band mates.

Those songs were written for pure enjoyment, but as you listened to each song, they expressed compassion, love, pain, happiness, hilarity, sadness, depression, silliness, innocence, color and finality.

Wherever he and his band mates went, so did the overabundance of the screaming girls and cops and never enough time to enjoy their privacy. Ah, such was the life of a musician who wanted to be heard and listened to differently than all the rest. He most certainly was, as fans would hang onto his every word and every breath he omitted from his lips.

Sometimes, his words got to the best of him, taken out of context and then he’d have to apologize to everybody saying that wasn’t what he meant. He was so used to it back then. After him and his band mates split, he and wife kept on making statements, whether they were appropriate or not and took the consequences of his words in stride and didn’t care what the critics though, just as long as they heard the message loud and clear.

The crowd kept on growing all afternoon, swelling to almost 600 people, 10 deep within the Imagine Circle, as I stood on my feet singing for nearly seven hours, throat dry, while sucking on slippery elm, but it was those words and his music that kept me fueled. I even saw my old friend the Howard Stern impersonator within the crowd.

At approximately 3:30 Eastern Standard Time, the song Strawberry Fields Forever, started to be strummed by at least one dozen guitarists, accompanied by a portable keyboard, light drumming and over 550 voices.

As the vocals grew louder and more distinct, without warning the sunshine that we felt on our faces all morning and afternoon was suddenly blotted out for the entirety of the song and the whole of Central Park. Oohs and ahs echoed throughout the crowd when that occurred and just as the song wound down to the final chords, the sun had mysteriously came back from whence it disappeared.

Stranger still, was that the 3:30 time factor, for it was also the approximate age (33) that Jesus Christ had died. Could John Lennon have indeed predicted the truth that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus and proved his point by blotting out the sun?

A lot of us in the crowd wondered aloud and to ourselves as to what had just happened, but all in all, we knew that indeed someone was listening to us, listening to our message of love and appreciation of the man and his music.

And the man, whomever he was, had definitely approved.

Merry Christmas? Try Merry Axe Mess!

2006-12-06T20:30:00.000-06:00

"All nature is a gigantic struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak..." Adolf Hitler, Christmas, 1944

This time of year seems far more gloomy for me than any other time of year, but not because it’s the end of the year and this is right about the time I’m making my year-end assessments of what good and bad I did or didn’t do, no! It’s more like having to deal with the disease of Christmas and watching others behave irrationally, based on the holiday itself.

I’m so fed up with the same dreadful old crap, that I’ve even switched radio stations to avoid getting bombarded with messages of Buy this! Buy that! Buy this useless piece of crap, when I first wake up in the morning.

And that’s a problem whether one realizes this or not; perhaps people have built-in immune systems to ward off the commercialism of Christmas, mine comes and goes in spurts, but it’s everywhere I turn, from the workplace, to the gas station, to the next door neighbor’s house, to Internet banners.

There’s such a slick phoniness to Christmas and the complaints that circle it like Conestoga wagons and though mine might sound that way, mine are of a legitimate concern because as much as anyone can stomach with their eyes and ears, it’s really nothing more than a carefully planned attack by CEOs of mega-corporate companies and retail giants along with their public relations teams who carefully execute their plans so as to not miss their mark or targeted audience, who buy their mutant wares that are manufactured in other lands for a relatively cheap rate and keeps them rolling in the dough, all fat and happy, while the lowly consumer becomes penniless and ends up paying for a piece of crap that falls apart in days and pays for it the next six months.

It is often said that Christmas is designed for children, but whoever said that was lying through their pearly whites, because everywhere you travel, the message is quite clear, buy, buy, and buy more.

“I need this Harry Potter DVD,” says Cousin Mitch. “I want this GG Allin CD,” says uncle Lew. “I’ll just simply die if I don’t have Sony PlayStation3,” says Brother Jason. “I’m gonna kill myself if I don’t get a new set of golf clubs this Christmas,” says Father Tim.”

What is the one universal message that comes out of all those wants and needs?

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Christmas has nothing to do with buying gifts for family or friends. It has more to do with the celebration of the birth of the savior Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the line, Christmas became distorted, interpreted badly, exploited by the big business monkey who have robbed and ridiculed the simple of idea of Christmas totally.

It’s a hijacked holiday as far as I’m concerned, full of competition; changes people into greedy evil monsters for approximately one and a half months, until the first of the year and then those feelings of joy splatter like loose bowel movements into the toilet bowl until they turn back into hard stool full of grim and ugly facial expressions, ready to spew anger, disappointment and dismay because all of those Botox Frankenstein-like injections that they were given in early November to appear happier, have all petered out.

Yes, there is no Merry Christmas; it’s more like Merry Axe Mess and we have corporate America to thank for that. God bless America, the land of several million gentle souls all marching to the beat of corporate attitude and spend, spend, spend and never get out of debt. I doubt Jesus Christ would have liked what he would have seen, if he were walking on this earth today.

Heil Wal-Mart! Heil Sears! Heil Tweeter! Heil Sony! And Heil to all those other corparations who couldn't give a fuck about all those American jobs that they exported just so they could save a little pocket change!

Makes me want to puke.

The Hiss Within A Leak Within A Crack: An Occupational Hazard>Act 34

2006-12-05T21:50:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: Beware of the little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. One leak will sink a ship: and one sin will destroy a sinner. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Lucia The Magnificent has the whooping cough. We seldom lose our faith by a blow out, usually is just a slow leak. We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not. Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that lying down and listening to the crabgrass grow, is like listening to babies who leak at both ends; the drips, the leaks and the dew drops do catch up with each other eventually.

It is often said that there is slickness to The Most Divine Heart, a slickness that tends to ease up once certain criteria is in place, say like something pleasing to the eyes or ears. Mass confusion consumes the tragic priest, but unlike the Lochness Monster or The Jersey Devil that is rarely seen, The Most Divine Heart makes sure it is seen, heard, felt and will stop at nothing to punish the innocent and praise the guilty.

One might believe that the opposite would be true, but not for The Most Divine Heart. While the feelings appear to be mutually gratifying, underneath the surface of it all, there appears to be a leak within the system, a crack within the pipes and a slow hiss that can be heard throughout the echoing walls on Devil’s Island.

A hiss so loud, that The Most Divine Heart is doing its best to cover it up. Ah, the cover-up! Even Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Bros., Abbott & Costello & Borat combined, can do a far better job of covering up than The Most Divine Heart!

But that doesn’t matter; The Most Divine Heart has its work cut out for it; but to help with its campaign of misinformation, Broadcast Betty & Dirt-Dishing Daisy are already spreading the foundation quickly with false rumors, left behind or perhaps designed to trip up the most hardcore of prisoners on Devil’s Island.

Tripping up prisoners is nothing new for The Most Divine Heart, as it has spent most of its life averting, diverting, skirting and otherwise avoiding the inevitable, that yes, someone else knows what it is up to and that not only tripping up tactics combined with false punishment and misinformation is cause for celebration!

So let us rejoice! Rejoice in the mere fact that punishment is good! False information is excellent! Still, covering up a crack in the pipes is merely a temporary fix. A temporary fix, added onto so many other fixes, piled high and deep, until the original fix is compounded by complications and unknown pressure.

And once the pressure starts to mount and mount further, there’s no telling when the leak will balloon up, explode and expose the nasty hiss that’s been hidden all this time. The Most Divine Heart has been avoiding this moment for so long, but then again, how does one know for certain? The nasty hiss is mirrored in its eyes; etched in its brain; spoken in its swagger; stained within its swaddle!

Yes, that is how!

You can see it for yourself when The Most Divine Heart passes by with its ominous stare of doom and despair; a look that Broadcast Betty & Dirt-Dishing Daisy seem to have adopted quite handily when they scour Devil’s Island for miniscule clues or mindless details on any given subject matter.

The Most Divine Heart wants to make itself known, other than what it is, but in order to do that, it must work harder to rid itself of its nasty demons, such as the demons that persist in its mind; snap at its heels; flail upon it every chance that it opens itself up for.

Far too late to hide the hiss, the hiss has exposed more than The Most Divine Heart would want to show in its hand.

Devil’s Island lifer Lucia The Magnificent sums up the situation at hand like this, “Exposure of the skin is the greatest single weapon one can use in destroying its enemies.” Lucia can be so brilliant at times, so very brilliant.

For The Most Divine Heart, having a hiss within a leak within a crack is thrice what could have been forecasted and in a way, that’s kind of cool.

For many know, the future on Devil’s Island is unpredictable, yet that being said, The Most Divine Heart knows what it must do to keep afloat. Its days are numbered, dark and mysterious. God help the day when the hiss is awakened like a dormant volcano and spews forth its wrath upon all those that crossed its path previously.

That could only happen in one place; Devil’s Island!

Death Comes In Threes: The Slow Demise Of The Retail Music Shop

2006-12-04T21:47:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, I drove out to one of the northwest suburbs to go and trade some musical stuff for store credit at Music Recyclery, only to find out to my disappointment and dismay, that after several years of being an anchor to a particular mall, that the shop was closing its doors for good.

Similarly, Tower Records declared bankruptcy and decided to shut down all of its retail locations worldwide. Midway in the year, a favorite local record shop hang out of mine, Hi-Fi Records in Evanston, close to work also closed its doors for good.

Sign of the times sadly, but I still don’t get it, once pride-beloved record shops, where we used to wait with anticipation for the latest hot band/heartthrob’s new single/album to arrive, are folding up little by little, until one day, all record shops will soon be shadows of the past.

I first discovered Music Recyclery a few years back when there used to be a plethora of used CD/vinyl shops along the Belmont/Clark/Halsted/Broadway corridor in Chicago. I had just come from Reckless Records, a record shop that prides itself on carefully picking and choosing carefully only the finest & best and leaves you holding the bag, literally!

So, after getting a pithy amount of store credit, I stopped inside Music Recyclery and unloaded everything else I had and received a much better store credit from them and of course I was hooked!

The CD stock wasn’t exactly all that great, but as I learned later on, the stock varied depending on which neighborhood you were in. Of the many finds in those shops, I always found that the most extraordinary, were the CDs in the jazz, vocals & easy listening sections, as they seemed to be virtually untouched.

That weekend, as I entered the store, the prices had been slashed to $2 per CD, plus the ever-popular buy one get one free CD was set in place. What a great deal I thought, as plowed my way through hundreds of no-name bands and eventually found enough CDs to make me happy…at least for the next few weeks.

According to management, the only stores that will remain open are the ones strategically placed throughout the Illinois Tollway System’s Oasis’s and the web-store, which is good, considering I still have a considerable amount of credit left with them.

Similarly Tower Records, a mainstay in the retail music industry for at least 30 years, decided to close their doors too and of course it was bargains galore, once the store closing announcement was made.

It turned out, the weekend I was there, Thanksgiving weekend; the deals were sweet and sharp, with plenty of good music still to be had. The discount went deep; 40 percent off of any CD, plus if you bought four CDs, you get a fifth CD free, depending on the cost of the lowest-priced CD. That is a great deal by far, plus I picked up a bunch of great music and saved a load of dough to boot!

For all the good that Tower Records has done, I believe the greatest service they provided me with, was when they took my fanzine, Cops Hate Poetry on consignment for a few issues. Overall, Tower Records was extremely open-minded when it came to the plethora of fanzines on the market, both great and small, and dared to carry them, long before giant retail stores would have ever considered carrying them.

On Memorial Day weekend of this year, local CD/vinyl music shop Hi-Fi Records in Evanston on Central Street closed its doors forever, sadly due to its poor sales figures purportedly noted by the shop’s owner, who has a shop in Chicago. Most items in there were reasonably priced, plus they had a freebie box, always overstuffed with magazines, vinyl, posters, CDs, promo items and other cool stuff.

It’s sad when you think about how decent record shops with good knowledgeable staff, great selections reasonably priced are going the way of the dinosaur, closing up little by little, just like good jobs that are shipped out overseas for cheap labor.

Pretty soon there will be nothing left, but giant corporate mega-world music shops, where all the prices will be the same and everyplace will carry the same thing.

Hmm, funny sort of thing, it’s already being done as we speak. It’s called progress.

The City Of Evanston Throws A Snow Emergency Party And I Wasn’t Invited!

2006-12-03T22:49:00.000-06:00

Thursday afternoon, winter weather advisory, six to 16 inches possible…oh shit!

I’ve just moved to the city of Evanston within the last few months from next door neighbor Skokie and already I’ve experienced the maximum that any person could possibly experience, both good & bad. But nothing could have prepared me for the snow emergency that was declared this past weekend in the city of Evanston and the aftermath that followed.

Thursday afternoon most Chicago radio stations forecast a winter storm warning consisting of everything that I didn’t want to hear; snow, more snow and even more snow for the entire listening area.

So I prepared for it righteously. I called my landlord the day of the impending forecast and asked him where it would be *safe* to park in the neighborhood. He told me where it was generally safe to park and where specifically to avoid, both being ticketed & towed.

By all means he told me, avoid Asbury Street, he said.

After I arrived home Thursday evening, I parked in the safe area. I got home, laid out my winter clothes, made my lunch and even went to sleep early, a rarity for me on a Thursday evening. My logic was simple; get to work on Friday in one piece and not slide all over the road.

The snow was expected after midnight, so I had an even break; just barely. Strangely, I awoke at 3 am, slipped on a pair of jeans and went up to the lobby of the building to survey the damage. It didn’t look that bad, I told myself and went back to bed. Two hours later, I awoke again and it looked as if the snow was getting heavier, so I decided to get ready, clean off my car, start the engine and let it warm up.

I left my apartment at 6 am and went according to schedule. At 6:15, I saw a local taxicab do the unthinkable; the driver attempt to do a U-turn by turning into an icy, snow-covered alley and then back out halfway, but of course, the car became stuck in the snow.

As I watched him struggle, I walked over to him gingerly and asked him if he needed a push. At first he declined, but then when he saw he was spinning, he gladly accepted the offer. He asked me in broken English, “You want drive car?” I politely declined and give him a good firm shove and out he went from the alley and into the street. As I walked back to my car, he passed me, honking at me enthusiastically, as I gave him a thumbs-up for good measure.

I brushed the snow off my car with my gloves & the extra snow brush I brought along with me & once the car felt nice and toasty inside, I prayed that I’d get to work safely, pushed the automatic stick to *D* (drive) and off I flew. But I didn’t fly that fast, more like 20 miles an hour, with a line of cars in back of me, none to happy I suppose.

But, snow is snow and it’s one kind of weather I don’t mess with. I made it to work in record time, 45 minutes ahead of schedule; I took no chances and waited inside my car and took several dark and terribly bad photos of the street near my workplace.

The rest of the day flew off without a hitch; it was a light work day & not that many people came in nor were there a lot of cars on the road neither. People at last heeded the advice of both the weathermen & newscasters; avoid driving if you can; take public transportation if at all possible. This time it had worked.

By the time the work day had ended, the roads were clear. It looked so picturesque outside, almost like a picture postcard from the early Twentieth century. And thinking it that the roads were clear, I parked in front of my building as did a few other cars; on Asbury Sreet.

The next afternoon, as I went to start my car and get my afternoon going, I found a ticket attached to my driver’s side car door; due to a snow emergency the city had declared & according to the sign, I wasn't supposed to park there and yep; I was ticketed accordingly.

When I spoke to a Evanston police officer that afternoon, after picking up an item from Freecycle, the officer explained to me that since the city was still on the *declared* snow emergency, that was the reason I received the ticket, even if the street had been cleared.

That didn’t make any sense to me and I told the officer that it seemed as if that was interpretive law, meaning that those in charge could make and bend the law to their liking. The officer then told me that I was lucky I wasn't towed. I agreed and hung-up.

In late September, when several funnel clouds were reported in the area, tornado air raid sirens were sounded. When it comes to snow it seems we citizens have to find things out on our own. I guess snow is far less destructive, other than the fact that a person can get frostbite or freeze to death.

Funny how that is really, when considering I live in a town where a mayor doesn’t even show up to her own city council meetings and the aldermen take turns *playing mayor.* Funny how it is that neighbors don’t say hello to each other and act unfriendly to new neighbors, even if they dress they alike or look slightly different. Funny how it that people in million-dollar mansions still behave like Howard Hughes and never come out, other than to get their newspapers.

Funny, how pathetic it really is. Really and truly sad. A terrible statement on America in all reality, that is, that nobody really cares and supports apathy. And in honor of their apathy, I want to puke my guts out on their sidewalks, pee & shit in their bushes and walk away whistling as if nothing bad ever happened.

Apathy can be such a good friend at times and I suppose it’s better than jumping into Lake Michigan, while screaming a curse to the sky.

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Final Notes

2006-12-01T20:45:00.000-06:00

Good late evening to you one and all! A quick tip of the snowy kippah and yes, it's Friday! Here we are; a brand new month and just think, only 21 more shopping days until my birthday! Oh yeah, and Hannukah too. Okay, alright and that OTHER holiday too, heh-heh. Our best buddy that sweet-loving dapper capper has been waiting patiently all day to take us into a busy & joyous weekend! This being World AIDS Day, I thought I'd share this poem. Remember my dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, enjoy!!!

Final Notes

As I pen these notes, I recall
All of the goals I had set
When I was a little boy…
Marriage; a big family, a country home
But now all I can do is write about it in some stupid, meaningless little poem
What words can you use, when your body decays day after day?
Perched on a chair, I now watch outside my windowsill as a brown robin zips on by, nearly crashing into the tall green grass, just to dip into the cold black ground, for a tiny muddied earthworm!
I watch it quickly slurp it up and see it head back toward the sky…
Color is more than just color, it’s…

ALIVE! VIBRANT! FLOWING! LOVE! DISTRACTION! STILLNESS! HATE! DEATH!

I babble and ramble these days about everything in my life…

MY LIFE…HAH! DID I EVER HAVE ONE!

Time, time, time, babble, babble, babble. Puppet on a string, frustration is all it brings. No pills can cure me, oh sure pills can keep me around for a little while longer…WRONG! WRONG! THIS WHOLE THING IS FUCKING WRONG! FUCKING CRAZY! I NEVER DID UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF LIFE!

As I think, suddenly I remember a poem and it goes like this…

From the earth I rose
In the sky I flew
To the dust I settled
The cycle is complete

As I close with this entry I write…

Time doesn’t matter when you’re wasting away

Fondly Remembering An Old Friend

2006-11-29T21:55:00.000-06:00

Back in late August, 2001, I had a dream; a dream so colorful, a dream so magnificent, bright and brilliant, a dream so visionary, which at the same time was sad, deep, dark, intense and so troubling like a unintentional premonition forecast that was prematurely cast in stone of what was to come.

The night was hot; hot and sweaty as I lay shirtless in my boxer shorts asleep on my futon, inside the already balmy third floor apartment, 1243 Rosemont Avenue in Chicago. We were all getting ready to part company, my roommates and I, parting on three separate journeys into the outer stratosphere, ready to explore the cosmos that guided our lives.

In this dream, I was in India, guided by an old familiar friend. Even though we hadn't met, not formally, anyway, we connected through the music he created. I had known his music for many years.

He'd been in a popular band for many, many years and like many things, times changed, as he and his bandmates were tired of each other and moved onto bigger and better passions. In later years, when one of his bandmates passed away suddenly, he withdrew from the public eye for nearly a decade and became a gardener, among more important tasks.

When he emerged with a new record, he was met with tremendous accolades, as reviews go, but he took it all in stride and rekindled interest in his music occurred almost immediately. He disregarded what people said usually, as if it were no big deal; it wasn't. Not for him.

A few years later, he toured overseas with an old guitarist friend of his for the first time in 16 years and again was met with high praise, accolades a-plenty, again taking it all in stride. Along the way he produced a few more albums, a handful of films, kept up with the gardening, hung out with old friends, popped up on television & radio talk shows, made a cameo here and there, slowly pressing the flesh once more.

Late in the twentieth century, there was renewed interest in his old band, not that anyone ever lost interest in them really, but three box sets of their music were produced, which included 150 unreleased songs, plus a television film of based on the band's history. It would be the last public appearance of the three remaining band members in the public eye.

In this dream, we visited all of the locations where he had traveled to, where he created and was moved to inspiration to play music and write music, hang-outs with his bandmates, friends and his girlfriend who would become his first wife one year later.

He told me how beautifully gorgeous the time was that he spent there, how he did treasure and would treasure those moments forever. He wore a beautiful orange-colored silken robe. His long brown hair flowed wildly like an untouched mighty river in the early days of a warm spring.

An acoustic guitar with him, he sat down and began strumming a few warm-up notes, before he launched into a new song I had never heard before and told him so. He said that nobody had ever heard them either except for a few close friends, but it would soon be heard by many. He affectionately referred to it as "a warm blues song," he'd been tinkering around with for some years and felt that the time was right to let it be heard.

That tune was beautiful and melodically crafted and so full of powerful energy from a man who had seen the world many times over as a relatively young man.

He then turned to me quietly and candidly said that he'd had such a good life and was ready to pass into the next universe. I felt a cold chill across my face, as I stared ahead blankly. I knew he had been sick earlier in the year, but he had beaten the sickness back, so he all told us.

In a moment's notice we remain happy and content. He remained that way the night I was with him and when we parted. As I awoke, I was covered in sweat, as well as tears that had been streaming down my face for many moments, knowing that my dream was a pre-cursor of a major event to come.

Exactly three months later I received a telephone call from my friend Iris in London, England.

"Did you hear the news," she asked cautiously and slowly. "Yeah," I said glumly, "I heard it three months ago." I didn't tell her about the dream I had, as she filled me in as to what the people of England, his home country was doing to honor his passing.

Rest in good spirits, my friend, rest in good spirits.

The Word Nigger: Term Of Endearment Or Self-Inflicted Deprecation?

2006-11-28T22:15:00.000-06:00

I’ve been doing both a lot of listening to, thinking and reading about the incident between comedian Michael Richards aka Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld & the group of club-goers he “allegedly” insulted by reacting to their interruption as he performed at Los Angeles comedy club, The Laugh Factory 11 days ago.

It’s all very troubling and puzzling to say the least.

Whether Richards apologizes 200 or 2,000 times, it doesn’t matter. Even if his intended targets aka victims Kyle Doss and Frank McBride sue Richards for “emotional duress” on the behalf of their lawyer Gloria Allred, who once represented Amber Frey in the Scott Peterson trial, and try to shake down a television comedy star for dough, it doesn’t matter.

Even after the films have been viewed and reviewed and favored and commented upon by hundreds of thousand of people who saw it on YouTube, it doesn’t matter. Even as so many famous and not-so-famous men & women weigh in with their oh-so-important views, opinions & visions, it doesn’t matter.

Kyle Doss, one of Richards’ victims suggested there should be limitations on freedom of speech. This however, does matter!

Limitations on freedom of speech just because a comedian called two men who came to his show late and interrupted him with their group of 20-odd people, as they made their grand entrance, a nigger? Please!

The Laugh Factory management should have known better than to let 20-plus people into the club during the performance; in fact they should have made them wait until a break in the performance or make them wait accordingly. But who knows? These clowns might have made it a racial issue, that they weren’t allowed into the club because of skin color, not because of their tardiness, thereby creating a true diversion to the real issue at hand (get it?), which is the issues of the word nigger and limitations on freedom of speech.

The word nigger alone scares more people, including blacks who call each other nigger as a term of endearment, but get so outraged when a non-black uses the word. Why is that? Do blacks own the sole rights and exclusivity to use that word as they so choose to use it? Or is it more like a friendly put-down of each other, like the way men & women greet each other with self-deprecating jokes?

Yeah probably, because I have never seen it explained anywhere else in the public eye before, but if someone has seen it, please be my guest and correct me, by all means.

When John Lennon released the song “Woman Is The Nigger Of The World” in 1972, it was banned worldwide, not for the content of the song, which was about women’s rights, but for the word nigger and Lennon used it as a way to describe how women were treated by men and society, as he said many times from 1972 until his sudden death in December, 1980.

But many years earlier during the Great Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, poet Carl Van Vechten, penned a novel in 1926 about life in Harlem called “Nigger Heaven.” He was met with much criticism and anger from many within the community and ostracized for the reminder of his life. Funny thing however, was that the Vechten himself was black.

In the 1950s, comedian Lenny Bruce used the word nigger and other obscenities throughout his act and was arrested many times; not necessarily for the use of that word, but for far worse words, which paved the way for comedians like Richard Pryor, Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite and Red Foxx who used the word nigger in their careers.

In 1964, comedian/civil rights activist Dick Gregory penned the book, “Nigger.” Nobody seemed too upset at that time either and yep, Gregory is black.

In rap songs & cable television programs like Def Comedy Jam, the word nigger is tossed around so many times like a hot potato that one has to wonder is it being used for shock value or a term of endearment. Nobody seems to know.

If blacks are so offended by the word, they should stop using it, plain and simple. Sure, groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party & other hate groups are going to use the word in their literature and on their websites; the word will be studied by scholars, by students in high school, colleges & universities and debates will rage on for decades to come, just as it always has.

Still, I have five questions for Kyle Doss & Frank McBride: 1. Why were you so late to the club? 2. Does calling (Michael) Richards “a cracker” justify his use of calling both of you niggers? 3. If you win your lawsuit, will you donate your proceeds to a civil rights organization? 4. (For Kyle Doss) If you believe there should be limitations on freedom of speech, do you also believe there should be limitation on frivolous lawsuits like yours? 5. Did you know that if you took the word nigger and juxpose a few of the letters, the word nigger becomes ginger?

Just thought you fellows would like to know that, for future lawsuit possibilities against, say, the originators of the word ginger, or perhaps maybe media companies, who publish cookbooks with ginger-related recipes.

You just never know these days who is wrapped tight and who isn’t wrapped tight, you just never know.

Black Friday-Cyber Monday-Cheaply Made Crap=A Happier You

2006-11-27T22:27:00.000-06:00

Ah yes. With the last bones of Thanksgiving turkeys stuffed into trash cans and the big empty boxes folded and stuffed neatly into recycling bins, you know what’s already underway; that ever-loving holiday shopping season that makes big business executives pee in their rubber three-piece pants suits, hoping you’ll buy from their stores, so you can make them fat and happy, bankrolling their IRA accounts, just like those oil companies did to those of us who needed gasoline in their tanks this past summer.

It’s Cyber Monday in a nation that just endured the onslaught of Black Friday coupled with all of those advertisements brightly blaring about savings galore on newly manufactured crap that most of us really don’t need, but many go out and buy anyway.

Where does the need come from? For what reason is there such a need? It comes from a “want” list given by kids to parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles and from cousins, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners to each other and so on and so forth.

Want list? Whatever happened to being surprised with whatever gift was received? It went back long ago and was exchanged at stores for something more desirable or attainable.

Attainment of desired gifts? Sounds serious to me! Gifts for the most part are materialistic, unless of course you receive a book, a music CD, food or something that has a better chance of surviving with a backload of happy memories, verses that HD 100-inch television that will undoubtedly take heavy abuse during sporting matches or porn film festivals.

But what’s the point of desiring something bigger, when it’s not necessarily the best? Flashy features and up-to-date improvements are all well and good, but is it so much better than what you have now? If you take care of a product, it’s more than likely going to have a longer shelf-life.

Most of my belongings have lasted a good long time. Out of the many things I own, here are three old items that still work with relative ease.

I have a 1950 Zenith radio I bought at an auction 25 years ago. The radio itself is over 50 years old and I can still get in my favorite radio stations, both on the AM and FM dials with no problems at all. Imagine that!

Then there’s the General Electric clock radio my dad, Rex Pater Homo bought for himself and The Arizona Babe when both of them were still working stiffs in the 1980s. After they moved and retired permanently to The Valley Of Golden Happiness, the clock radio was given to me and great thunder! After 20 years, it still works!

Finally my Saturn, a car I’ve probably taken better care of than my first vehicle, a Geo Prism that lasted me all of five years with over 92,000 miles on it. I put new tires on my Saturn, replace aging parts or equipment and change the oil every 3,000 miles. Sure it has bumps, scratches and a scar on the right front hood from a driving accident during a snowstorm a few years ago, but I still have it, nearly seven and a half years later with 51,000 miles plus and it works!

Overall, you don’t really need to go out and buy new things when there are things you already have that work so well already. Try gift-giving alternatives like www.craigslist.com or www.freecyle.org. Re-gifting is okay in this day and age too. Everybody else does it, so why can’t you?

Save a landfill! Save an American worker’s job! Be creative this holiday season! And most of all be good to yourself, for after all you deserve a little happiness once in a while!

All Communications Were Cut Off 10 Minutes Ago-An Occupational Hazard>Act 33

2006-11-26T21:34:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me. It takes your enemy and your friend, working together to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules. Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost. Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that friends are like television. Some are like PBS and always asking for money. Others are like the news, with sad tales to tell everyday, some are like that one station with the foreign language; you don't understand a word of it but you listen and watch.

Ways to communicate in and around Devil’s Island have been exceedingly difficult in the past and present, that is of course, you chose to subscribe to the monopolizing network of Broadcast Betty, which up until recently had exclusive rights to broadcast Devil’s Island official news and information; but not through the standard method, rather through the old-fashioned whisper-whisper ubidee-ubidee the tree method.

Up until one week ago, Broadcast Betty had broadcasting exclusivity rights to every living, half-living, late and former soul that once made their home on Devil’s Island, but no longer.

Enter Dirt-Dishing Daisy, one of the meanest and most lowdown broadcasters ever to hit Devil’s Island. Not since the days of Tamara The Toothless Telepathic Terrorist have the inmates of Devil’s Island seen such a true dogfight for the rights to broadcast information relatively unknown to others.

Dirt-Dishing Daisy, a former member of the now disbanded OCTOBER Sisters, acquired broadcast power in her own right after the suicide of fellow OCTOBER Sister Chimney-Smoking Martha. The other OCTOBER Sister, Loudmouth Lucy turned a deaf ear and went mum, when Broadcast Betty, as well as Dirt-Dishing Daisy came sniffing around her cell for information leading to Chimney-Smoking Martha's suicide.

Unbeknownst to Broadcast Betty however, was the mere fact that Dirt-Dishing Daisy had already set up her own prisoner broadcast network. With a trailer-trash demeanor and leathery skin to boot, Dirt-Dishing Daisy is the kind of broad you wouldn’t want to meet in a darkened prisoner yard upon Devil’s Island.

If you look toward Dirt-Dishing Daisy’s way even for a second without her permission, you be forever encoded on her “broadcast with intent to do harm list.” Whether you asked for it or not, she will inflict as much broadcast pain as possible upon you, so as to make you not forget your crime anytime soon.

Sometimes broadcasters are like that. They want and desire so much power, that sometimes it gets to a level where they have to prove to the population around them that they are the greatest egomaniacs they can be and being broadcasters, well this just fits the bill perfectly!

Lately the broadcasting competition on Devil’s Island has become fierce! Broadcast Betty has had to update her entire broadcasting network and protect herself from sabotage, thanks in large part to Dirt-Dishing Daisy who has made every effort to shut down Broadcast Betty both on the broadcast level and under the table.

Under the table execution is part of Dirt-Dishing Daisy’s plan and she thinks nothing of undercutting her competition by making offers to the likes of Upper Prison Brass, The X-5 Unit, The Barnaby Boys, Mugsy & Lugsy, The Great Divine Spirit, The Sorcerer Sisters and Sister Tootsie Footsy, primarily misinformation that leads a collective bad taste in prisoner circles and cut-throat style political broadcasting that make the aforementioned seem like saints.

Yes, friends, Devil’s Island truly lives up to its name. At last, truth in discretion has risen to the top where merde once predominately fermented. And the stench couldn’t be any finer than it is today!

Dr. Lord Poetmonk Throatsinging Industrial Spyboy Bingo's Assessment Of Virtual Jerusalem>Act One

2006-11-25T23:59:00.000-06:00

I am a former Internet chat-room addict…I gave it up last month after much self-concern that I wasn’t accomplishing anything within my own life and frittering away my time and energy arguing with idiots. I had been frequenting this chat-room for nearly a decade.

Not any old chat-room mind you, but particularly, a Jewish chat-room by the name of Virtual Jerusalem, www.virtualjerusalem.com In previous years it was called Jewish Chat and then Jewish Street before its current name. A chat-room chockfull of Jewish men and women chatting based on their faith alone, not how they practice it.

And the subject matters they discussed! Well, that’s another blog for another time. In previous blog entries, I have blogged extensively about some of the chatters who frequent this chat-room and their mannerisms.

But, let me back up. There are a lot of stereotypes that I’ll never understand, especially Jewish stereotypes. Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t understand these stereotypes at all and going into that chat-room, I got it from both sides, Jews snapping at my heels and biting my ears off, just for the simple reason that I had a difference of opinion. Imagine that; someone who has a brain of their own and can think.

In the past there were times I would be kicked out or banned by the moderators, due to my opinions and to the mere fact that I didn’t behave “Jewish enough.” Not Jewish enough? What the fuck does that mean!

Inside the chat-room, this is usually what I came up against:

Me: As young Jews, we get drilled into our heads about how Israel is our homeland, it’s not.

Chatter: You should visit it and support it financially.

Me: Give me one good reason why I should support a country that I’ve never been to?

Chatter: Um, ‘coz it’s your homeland.

Me: Um, sorry; America is.

Chatter: ‘Coz you’re Jewish?

Me: Dumb reason.

Chatter: Oh well, you have to support Israel as a country and support them financially.

Me: Oh no I don’t; why anybody does is beyond me. We need to support America first, before it’s too late.

Chatter: Well, then you must be a self-hating Jew.

Me: I don’t think so!

Chatter: Oh, but you are!

Me: And what pray-tell makes me a self-hating Jew?

Chatter: Because you don’t support Israel’s right to exist.

Me: What!?! Where did this come from?

Chatter: Well, since you don’t support Israel financially and you believe it’s not your homeland, therefore you feel it shouldn’t be a country that shouldn’t even exist! Why I bet you’re not even Jewish!

Me: What!?!

Chatter: Yeah, you must be an Arab or Muslim, you Anti-Semite Jew-hater! Why are you even in here? Get out of here! I’ll report and make sure you’re banned!

I’m lost, completely lost. And that, in a nutshell, is the mentality of the majority of people who frequent that Jewish chat-room. Most of the chatters there ganged up on me and called me all sorts of names, filled with hatred from a cause or purpose that perhaps they themselves don’t understand.

For one man to stand alone and to say what’s really on his mind is a scary thought for the packs of gazelles that graze on the stereotypical bullshit that grows all around them.

For one gazelle to leap from out of the packs and suddenly nod its head and agree that the man who stands alone may be partially correct, is an omission that someone else has a conscious within the gazelles.

To date, I’ve converted over half-a-dozen of those omissions to loyal friendships. Friendship is built on trust, not religion. And on that principle alone, I am winning the war on stupidity, assumption and good old-fashioned human values.

Thank goodness I’m out of that virtual madhouse!

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Give Me Your Hands I Want To Hold Them In Mine

2006-11-24T12:09:00.000-06:00

Good afternoon everyone! A quick tip of the kippah and yesiree, it's Friday! Hip-hip hoorah! We've made it to the end of this fourth week of November, a decent shortened week indeed, but the madness persists all around us, as only big business and its cast of characters would have it. Our good friend, that post-Thanksgiving capper has been waiting patiently all morning to take us into a busy, but gentle weekend! And now, yes you guessed it! It's spanking brand-new poem-time! And remember dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, always, enjoy!!!

Give Me Your Hands I Want To Hold Them In Mine

You cry softly so that no one will hear, but I do
I always do
One million miles won’t keep us apart
I cannot nurse your broken heart, for you won’t let me

(So girl please)

Give me your hands
I want to hold them
In mine

(And tell you that I love you)

Oh sadness in your soul
Dig deep into the hole, that broken shell
That you never want to come out of

You walk in the desert, as the sun burns your eyes
But you don’t feel it
You fall to the ground
I cannot heal it

I lift you with my hands
You lift me with my heart
Your breathe a sigh
I ask you to let me inside
You refuse
You suffer in peace
I go to pieces

(Oh please girl)

Give me your hands
I want to hold them
In mine

(And tell you that I love you)

What I’m Thankful For, Thanksgiving Day, 2006

2006-11-23T00:06:00.000-06:00

Today is Thanksgiving Day, November 23rd (even though I wrote this Friday, November 17, 2006) and often we get asked the question “What are you thankful for?” Funny, I don’t ever remember reading that this is what the Native American Indians asked the Pilgrims when they invited them to celebrate a joyful harvest in 1620 with them. Still I’m thankful for a lot of things, really.

Thinking about it over a period of 52 weeks or 12 months, here’s what I’m truly thankful for.

I’m thankful that I have a job in this uncertain economy. I’m thankful I have a roof over my head and a place to sleep comfortably and a place to store all my belongings, making my studio seem more like a storage locker than living quarters!

I’m thankful that my Saturn still runs after 51,000 miles on it. I’m thankful that I have my health intact. I’m thankful for my friends Mykel Board, Lew Brickhate, Blog-19, Iris, Nechama, Joe & DiDi, Stewart Brodian, Scoats, Tim D., Noam Gaster, Scott & Marla, Cathy, David V., DMX Dave, Adam G., Brian & Leah Grover, Michael Brownstein, The Rev. & Mrs. Rev., George Weister, Favour, Peggy, Venus, Menachem, Jade Spotted Owl & Big Chief Bluefoot, Wayne, Wes and everyone else who I’ve befriended over the past year.

I’m thankful for my previous mentor Vida Wolk and my current mentor Miss Firefly, who have helped me to see the light and point me in the right direction over the past several months.

I’m thankful for my hunger for starting to perform again and I’m thankful to everyone I met and treated me well (and not so well) on my recent tour to New York City & Philadelphia. I’m thankful that Sid Yiddish is fast becoming a household name, thanks in part to this trip, www.youtube.com, my plethora of readily available CDs and of course, word-of-mouth.

I’m thankful I can still write, create and make others believe that the magic still flickers inside and I’m thankful I haven’t as of yet lost my mind and I’m thankful I’m left-handed.

I’m thankful that I have a family who loves me, even though a few of us are far apart on some personal issues, but I’m thankful that my father Rex Pater Homo is doing well & that The Arizona Babe is as equally healthy & that Louie & his Missus, Naomi & her Mister, Benjy & Joey all have their health, their joys and their happiness.

Most of all, I’m thankful for you, my dear and loyal readers out there in blogland who have shown me what you like and what you don’t like and that makes me happy that there’s at least one other person out there reading this, besides myself when I edit this down and post it each day.

It means a lot to me that some of you actually care what I see, hear and feel, day in, day out and know that whatever I post comes from my heart and soul and not some cheap fall-apart toy from a dollar store.

Happy Thanksgiving To You, One & All, My Dear Readers!!!

What I'm UnThankful For, Thanksgiving Eve, 2006

2006-11-22T22:55:00.000-06:00

This being Thanksgiving Eve, Wednesday November 22nd (though I wrote this last Friday, November 17th), I thought it might be suitable to list what I’m unthankful for this year, as a sort of opposite to the whole “I’m so thankful for” biz we voice aloud on Thanksgiving Day at the dinner table.

Thinking about it over a course of a year or 365 days, take your pick, here’s what I’m truly unthankful for.

I’m unthankful that my relationship with Alice didn’t work out. I’m unthankful that my rent in my old apartment rocketed sky-high and caused me to move yet again, due to a paranoid world market. I’m unthankful for my new unfriendly neighbors who hide in their million-dollar mansions, who don’t come out of their dwellings to say hi, but let their dogs run loose at other citizens’ expense.

I’m unthankful for all 23 mice I had to endure over a course of a two-year period at my old apartment and all the unjust criticism I took as a result of it. I’m unthankful for being on the receiving end of much hatred & criticism of my faith from both strangers online and my immediate surroundings.

I’m unthankful that I held onto false friends for so long. I’m both unthankful that US armed forces still are situated in Iraq & that George Bush is still our President. I’m unthankful that CBGBs in New York City closed down this past October. I’m unthankful that the Evanston mayor doesn’t bother to show up at city council meetings, yet will show up at official city functions like ground-breakings or police academy graduations.

I’m unthankful that there’s still poverty and hunger in the world and still very little is being done about it. I’m unthankful that for expressing my opinions and standing my ground in what I say, feel or act upon and not getting the support, instead of hearing those who tell me I should refrain for their own personal fears of safety, myself being arrested, beaten up or dragged away from my home.

I’m unthankful that illegal immigrants get more sympathy and respect for wanting to stay in the United States without ever wanting to become American citizens.

I’m unthankful that I’m still undecided about my future. I’m unthankful that I carry with me some very deep and personal tragedies that will stay with me for a little while longer. I’m unthankful that my car radio busted on me this past summer. I’m unthankful that Terry Dickerson is no longer with us.

I’m unthankful for that gig in Seattle that fell through. I’m unthankful that some people still don’t *get* me. I’m unthankful for so many other things, people, places and objects that are too numerous to name.

As I stated earlier, I’m not airing out any dirty laundry or sour grapes. On the contrary, my declaring of being unthankful is a healthy way of getting the negatives out of my system once and for all.

All things must pass; pass away. And ultimately, they do.

Spam Jam Word Cram-Herschel Mustachio Vs. Bob The Blacksmith Vs. The Dinosaur Rockers Vs. The Circulatory Drama Queen>Act 3

2006-11-21T21:06:00.000-06:00

Oh those glass warts! The last time I conferred with them, they drummed and slapped archival doctrinal theories that were so insatiable, that even the promiscuous unidemensional Leopard Almighty Tambourine Man drank chloroplast-free batteries! The Great Heschel Mustachio poodle-pulsared the cortex hamburger, declaring it the brainchild of actions racing like circumspection lollipops that even the most congenial hospice potato farmer from the former Soviet Union could support!

It was purple last time I looked, continually flowing like a Christian dustbin vomiting its destablizer anyplace it could get a clutch to stick. Bob The Blacksmith attentively and god-like tends to vilify and demand that Sam & Ella honey up their sachets of beatitude or else mourn the empathetic cargo of featherless birds so ravenous and cross-strawed, that even being ashamed of sawdust droppings will be banned by the FCC in an amorous attempt to refection themselves behind gaudy exo-skeleton-like cornucopial billion dollar iodine eyeglasses, that even the Republican Party can ask the average Hypocycloid Ashman if he's copyrighted the last phosphate citrate eulogy beer alliance to please the ductwork gong-workers union so proud!

Couldn't believe it with my own eyes or ears if I saw it, but there they were on the bandstand, The Dinosaur Rockers with total abandonment. Amazingly, anal as it seemed, the band pass they provided me with was so gregarious, that even the puniest ant could punt the most irksome and cuddly lukewarm erector set straight into a bottle of Brand X and send it smashing right into a diffeomorphic integrated bravadoed declarative kindling wood that those white Earth streaks can dance rabidly in the plight of its pursuer, an alter ego stuffed in its craw!

Oh! What is it with that circulatory drama queen, anyway! One minute she acquits the sultry murderous drywall assailant and then switches into overdrive the latest inception of a combined effortless freak consisting of outrageous juggling and the essence of a single-backstiched pterodactyl crossway sensor and then demands counter-examples!

Spam Jam Word Cram-Mettlesome Monica Vs. Great Daddio Pooh Gibson Vs. Campbell Manama>Act 2

2006-11-20T20:25:00.000-06:00

The ridgepole tacky like The Manhattan Project, like ice tossed over the railing of a flimsy hotel banister. Well, I'll be dipped in fishcakes! If it ain't that old Mettlesome Monica, biblical cultivation, sewn like interpolant hydrolysis bags that are so morphhemic after stargazing amongst the robotic diachronic flagerant diatribes that have just consumed a dozen high velocity brownies!

Legend has it that the late Great Daddio Pooh Gibson once impractically clotted an entire apathetic keyhole as Kim & Jacqueline Horn called out for revenge! Miss Daphne was so struck by Daddio Pooh Gibson's parental awakening, that she pried open every crevice she could get her nimble fingers into and astutely inserrectioned a Christ doll to each vendor waiting on the Memphis balcony wrapped in signboards, advertising wooden dreadlocked circumspectionized bulls! Well you know what? a little tint dispersive doesn't hurt every once in a while.

Campbell Manama stuffed a banana where the sun don't shine, tucked Colby-patterned afgans designed by Puritan gang gentila crotchsniffers, loaded inside chiasmic telephone dissipated birthplacemats, flown directly to Beijing & Indianapolis to the attention of one Olivetti Kingfisher who insists that Avon products are the mere ace in the hole; that is of course if you drink Nairobi earmarked opinionated Unitarians under the table, coupled with counterargumentive canister celluloids of bondholders all rejoicing in the mysterious artistic contraband ratio of 9 to 1, that any aversion that embattles the fruited majestic emphysematous flagwavers, will undoubtedly head East!

Spam Jam Word Cram-Poodle Protector Vs. Monogamist Panhandlers Vs. The Alumnus Economist Vs. Yee Sick Trammel>Act 1

2006-11-19T21:32:00.000-06:00

Poodle protector poaches in dreamscape of ebony Nebraska naked nuptials, following prostate fatal Confucian smashmouth inside the fail-soft yearbooks. The plush sketchy smelly villa burdensome hostage mockingbird Orion moccasin like chord progession that Lenny Bruce felt inside the hinderance kit of Tim McVeigh's gape keys, betrayed by the mackintoshed-locked mammoth salmonella groves flowing beneath the influent meltwater in magnesia Zoloft bowls.

Monogamist panhandlers erupt merrily along the prolifigate acumental bikini-clad whimsical gradient chicks named Rachel, Venus, Imogene, Sally, Betty & Jennifer, whilst indigene quadripartite ratify and adore, as in defectation digitated delivery, downsizing.

The alumnus economist usurpathioned himself handily, as Levitt the Formica whitetail benched whale addressed Elena's dowry before all of mankind. "You alliterate critter," said he, "Why are we all resistive casualties standing behind the baseline beheld by the mere fact of batchless desultory top-notch bandaid kits for Geo Metroed emboldened and emblazoned Bahamas go-go dancers with saucers pointing skyward? Is this not the ultimate litmus test for the brain-fried children to seethe frothy and demand punk jazz cigarettes!"

Ahh, yee sick trammel! It's all a sick fabric plot behind Watergate, told elusive by none other than that combantant devolutionary profiteer himself, the John Forbes Kerry of sullen devious inexpedient electrician wing-walkers before the luxuriate has gone mental! Only hours before the late great Muselix O'Shea discerned herself from wanton derogatory hygiene palette dips between inductor partooken colloquial octagon polarimeter ledge systems infused with Edison blush applicators, auger bits and Elmer's Glue, doth she made the historic Trans-Atlantic panty raid to Minneapolis!

The X-5 Unit Returns! An Occupational Hazard>Act 32

2006-11-18T21:45:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: A man should never neglect his family for anything. A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room. In other words, all but one participant will be bored, all but one mind underused. A salesman minus enthusiasm is just a clerk. All lasting bargains are built on friendship. Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that cannibals prefer those who have no spines.

Strange events have been seen here in recent days on Devil’s Island. Closed door meetings held by Upper Prison Brass. Curtains & shades drawn in many prisoner’s cells as an ominous feeling seems to permeate the air, almost as if the prisoner population was expecting someone to drop in…looks as if the X-5 Unit is back in business!

The X-5 Unit controls for one of a better term, the goods & exchange traffic within the Devil's Island prisoner system. Need a pack of cigarettes? No biggie, you’ll have it in a jiffy; no strings attached, honest!

You say however, you need a cigarette carton? Well, that’s going to cost you plenty. But don’t you fret the X-5 Unit will set up a payment plan, guaranteed to shake you down for the rest of your time spent here on Devil’s Island.

The same goes if you need booze, company a debt paid off or someone kept quiet, well, don’t you worry, the X-5 Unit can do that all for you too, for a price that is!

Seems as though the X-5 Unit has been living underground, working out their previously difficult task of being caught red-handed for illegally shredding documents & evidence that was to be turned over to Upper Prison Brass & The Barnaby Boys for possible indictment charges against them.

Who got them those documents, well no one seems to know and the trouble with that is, that so many prisoners & members of Upper Prison Brass are involved with the X-5 Unit, that no one knows who to trust or who is aligned with whom in which faction.

Broadcast Betty takes all sides because she has to; how else will she get her information?

It was said shortly before The Pontificating Princess was paroled, that she was summoned to appear before the Upper Prison Brass and speak about all she knew concerning the X-5 Unit, but before she could even speak, the X-5 Unit speeded up the process of her parole papers and gave her the royal bagged carpet send-off, before she was able to speak to the Upper Prison Brass.

The X-5 Unit walks around the whole of Devil’s Island, as if they owned the joint; as if they owned and pocketed Upper Prison Brass, The Barnaby Boys, Mugsy & Lugsy, The Great Divine Spirit, The Sorcerer Sisters, Sister Tootsie Footsy, Broadcast Betty and practically everyone they know that would or could speak ill-will against them.

Therefore, when any of the X-5 Unit is seen together giggling, gaggling or gambling someone else’s own will, they will tell you on no uncertain terms that they run the show. It’s their game to be played with their rules and their rules only.

Unbeknownst to many prisoners on Devil’s Island, there is already a movement to change all of that, and that’s something the X-5 Unit fears the most is change, for change means less control. To counter that movement, the X-5 Unit has seen to it that all prisoners are happy on Devil’s Island by not charging them anything for their services.

Too little, too late is what the FBI has been saying for weeks and has gathered enough evidence to stop the X-5 Unit dead in their slippery & slimy tracks.

Be afraid X-5 Unit, be very afraid, for once the FBI infiltrates your gang, there’s no telling what direction they’ll go in and there’s no telling how long your reign of corruption, terror, scandal and shakedowns will last. You have two choices; go back underground or get off Devil’s Island completely.

A little friendly advice from those who have gone before you!

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Death Train

2006-11-17T21:15:00.000-06:00

Well! Good extremely late evening to everyone! A quick tip of the kippah and yep, it's Friday! Hip-hip hooray! We've made it to the end of this third week of November. Our good friend, that sweet capper has been waiting patiently all day to take us into a restful weekend! And now, yes you guessed it! It's spanking brand-new poem-time! And remember dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, always, always enjoy!!!

Death Train

Knock twice for hope upon the coffin lid
There's no dry eyes in this room
For a little boy
Who went dancing, dancing
Late one night with the train
Thought he could beat it out like they do so much on TV
And the child did he see
His own finality
For that is part of reality

I cannot overcome this madness

Now Appearing On YouTube: Sid Yiddish & A Cast Of Thousands

2006-11-16T21:15:00.000-06:00

"YouTube is a popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. Founded in February 2005 by three employees of PayPal, the San Bruno-based service utilizes Adobe Flash technology to display video. The wide variety of site content includes movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging. Currently staffed by 67 employees[1], the company was named TIME's "Invention of the Year" for 2006.[2] In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock, the deal closed on 13 November 2006..."--From A Wikipedia entry on YouTube

There’s this great little phenomenon called www.youtube.com which allows one to be an instant superstar via your digital camera or camcorder and I suspect it was only a matter of time before this next step in how to entertain the masses for free was coming.

I accidentally stumbled upon it one day, but discovered that it would be to my advantage to use it to gain ground and a new audience for my performance side and my newly created stage name, Sid Yiddish, as well as to push my blogspace, the one you are currently reading, http://themishegasmaster.blogspot.com just a touch more.

I can’t say whether or not more people are reading it or not, but I’ve gone back to a regular writing schedule since I returned from New York City a little over a month ago.

The first film I uploaded was a little home film I made specifically for my throat singing teacher for him to view and critique my throat singing skills this past July (2006). In the meantime I sent the film out to most of my friends and what comments came back were the usual ones I expected; words like “cool,” “freaky” and “priceless,” amongst others.

From there, I decided to test the waters of America and reach out to a wider audience and decided to upload the film to YouTube. I waited until mid-September (2006) to upload it and the results have been fantastic!

One week later, I followed it up with my super-mega throat singing hit “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer” and let the chips fall wherever they decided to fall, as I left for New York City the following week.

My third and most current film I posted was a tiny five-second film of myself in a gorilla costume serenading a woman who is dressed in a leather Cat-Woman outfit at my workplace during a Halloween costume contest.

Due to the hype surrounding my costume and the hype I received shortly thereafter for my stage name Sid Yiddish (and that’s no lie), I’d say it’s my fastest viewed film to date on that I uploaded on YouTube.

The viewing stats for each film are astonishing to say the least for the little time period all three have been on YouTube.

Film three has been looked at 165 times, since November 1, for an average of 10.3125 views per day, while film two has been looked at 222 times since September 28, for an average of 4.72340426 views per day and film number one has been looked at 164 times since September 21, for an average of 3.03703704 views per day.

But besides my own films, one can find virtually any film on anyone on YouTube, anyone from the famous to infamous, to the virtual no-names (like so many thousands of us) to up-and-coming talents (again, like so many thousands of us).

YouTube is far more addicting than any chat-room or television program could be for me, granted I have four television sets collecting dust within my apartment.

In the last week or so, I’ve watched film clips of Groucho Marx, Muhammad Ali & Liberace, Jack Benny, Jack Kerouac, Howard Stern & Tom Snyder. Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Eddie Murphy, Little Richard, Tiny Tim, GG Allin & Jerry Springer, The Beatles, The Simpsons and countless others.

Anybody that you think of who might be on there is on there, even the most obscure person in the world is on there! It is totally amazing, really it is.

Do I have a follow-up film in the works? You betcha! Will I expand my horizons even further? You betcha!

In the meantime, if you haven’t seen any of my films, here are the links to all three, plus the film of my friend, the Howard Stern impersonator…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niEP2Y6t06E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-BnnztltTU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yx631XwlzE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmQKD0HjgGY

Enjoy!

There’s No Such Thing As Bad Luck, Right God? Right, Devil?

2006-11-15T19:30:00.000-06:00

There are complications in life, some we can foresee, some we can not, until a negative demon stares straight into our face and the demon seems almost too happy to see us. Perhaps it’s a demon of bad luck, a demon by choice or a demon of consequence.

Some people believe that the chips fall where they fall due to lifelong bad luck or consequence. My good pal Cathy feels that way. She feels that anything that has ever happened to her, is because of lifelong bad luck.

Yesterday, Cathy slipped and fell in her shower at home, shattering a recently replaced kneecap in three pieces and a bone in her leg, sending her into emergency surgery; she’ll be laid up for a while. Cathy has been shortchanged in life for sure, but it has nothing to do with bad luck, rather bad choices.

A lot of people make bad choices and then choose to suffer the consequences.

Is there a role God plays in all of this or is it perhaps the Devil? Well, let me let you in on several secrets. God and the Devil don’t deem a given set list and christen people with bad luck; nor do they pick out names at random; nor does God and the Devil play craps and the loser has to do what the other tells him to do; nor does either play Truth Or Dare; nor does God and the Devil agree on a secret pact for a secret amount of money for God’s favorite charity and instructs the Devil to do whatever he pleases to a person.

Case in point; the lovely Venus while still in her youth fell to the street one day because she had lame feet and Mars helped to pick her up. Did Venus fall because she was earmarked to? Nope. Venus was wearing new shoes and she wasn’t yet comfortable in them. Did she fall down because God and the Devil were quarreling and the Devil pushed God, who in turn bumped into Venus while the Devil cast an evil spell to make Venus to face up to pain and humiliation? Of course not!

Then there are writers, poets, artists & musicians that I know of who struggle financially, even if they hold down a day job or two or three and partake in group and medical studies for extra dough, but still cannot afford all that life has to offer, like trips abroad or fancy cars or decent places to live or not enough food to eat. Is that bad luck too? Doubtful! It’s more like choice to live the lifestyle they choose to live and enjoy what they can while they can still enjoy it. Memories are sweeter than the money memories cannot buy.

As many of you readers know for the past two years I had a mouse problem at my last apartment, 23 mouse deaths in all. Was it my bad luck that the mice came to my apartment especially, since I lived on the second floor? Partially, only because I still had overlooked a few boxes that had food packed in them that I hadn’t yet unpacked and stored away properly.

Was it my fault entirely? Nope. As I set the many traps in and around my apartment, I found many previous unplugged (there’s that word again) holes all around the floorboards of the space and later, during the final days there before I moved, I actually did see a mouse squeeze into the wall with virtually little or no room to do so.

Did God and the Devil create a mutual pact to send me so much vermin within a period of 24 months? Heck no!

According to the some of the tenants who lived there, mice had always been inside the building and up until the time I left, management chose to do nothing about it. But even harder to fathom was the mere fact that neighbors across the way were ground-feeding stray animals and that of course attracted rodents, including mice and rats that conveniently lived nearby at the local sewage plant, not too far from the apartment building, so naturally…

But you get the idea; there’s no such thing as bad luck. It’s bad choices and bad situations that create chaos and havoc when they’re not tended to fast enough.

Right God?

Right, Devil?

Of course, right!

Unplugging From Stressful Holidays-What A Great Revolutionary Idea!

2006-11-14T22:48:00.000-06:00

"If you think the holidays are a bit much, do what I always do; relax and unplug. It’s the best solution without going mad," The MishegasMaster, Monday, November 13, 2006

Unplugging from the stressful holidays seems like a great idea, but nobody seems to want to do it, that is, nobody, but me…just imagine if I did it; I think I’d be onto something. If I myself and another person unplugged, we’d be a double dynamo!

With three, we’d be a set of triplicate tempests in tin teapots and with four, whoa! We’d be a quadruple bypass steamroller and with five, wow! Five! We’d roll along in a quintuple caravan and six, just imagine six people my friends, unplugging, raising a ruckus, but not yelling, screaming about how the holidays are so fucked up; can you imagine it?

We’d be six rebels who’ve decided to unplug from the holidays and everyone else would have to listen to our silence as we went about our busy lives with smiles and joyfulness within our hearts and souls and pretty soon thereafter we were noticed, they’d start to cover us in the local press; people would blog about us; people would criticize us and then we’d get filmed for the local evening news and it would only be a matter of time before our movement caught on nationally and every television and radio talk show would want us to appear on their program and ask us “how we did it” and what are secret to success is.”

In acappella & unison, we’d tell everybody the same thing; that there is no secret recipe or no miracle cure and their viewers & listeners would demand more and pretty soon we’d be offered exclusive book deals to write about our rags-to-riches success story of how our movement begin way back when we first unplugged.

The book of course would be a New York Times bestseller and movie producers would seek us out, wine us and dine us until we agreed to a multi-billion dollar movie deal based on silence and the movie would be shot quickly and released just as fast and would be number one at the box office for weeks on end and then at the Academy Awards the following spring, we’d sweep the awards ceremony with our “golden silence,” thanking our mothers and fathers in the process.

But oh, no! It wouldn’t stop there; it would cause an atmosphere disturbance, one for the better. All wars would stop; all fighting would cease to be; all violence, all anger, all hatred, all crimes against humanity would quit immediately; people would be work together all at once and be happy in their little affairs. There would be no need for lawyers and their frivolous lawsuits.

All negative influences would vanish into thin air. Cheaters, adulterers, liars and sinners would be subject to hearing babies cooing, birds twittering, field mice squeaking and horses neighing until they confessed their evil ways and promise they would never be so evil again.

Yes my friends, all it takes is one little idea, one little grassroots movement to get the concept rolling and soon, as you well know, the whole world would know about it! And this little idea grows in other directions, all positives, no negatives.

Unplugging---It’s the best damn idea since the beginning of time itself. You ought to try it sometime. Unplugging from stressful holidays! What a great revolutionary idea!

The Hell With The Holidays!!!

2006-11-13T20:13:00.000-06:00

Being Jewish is fun this time of year as, the holidays fast approach. Of course, when most non-Jews speak of the holidays they mean Thanksgiving Day, Xmas & New Year’s Day.

Jews already had their New Year’s celebration in early October, so that takes care of that and Xmas? Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffttt! So, that leaves just Hanukkah and Thanksgiving Day, but since Hanukkah’s such a minor holiday, all that’s left is Thanksgiving Day, but before I gripe about Thanksgiving Day, let me bitch about Xmas for a spell.

This weekend was a rather busy one for me in terms of running errands and stuff, but no sooner did I enter a lot of the places I went to such as the supermarket, did I start hearing Xmas music and it’s not even close to Thanksgiving Day yet!

It makes me cringe that some retailers have no respect for other religions, other than those Xmas-loving lunatics, especially when it comes to retailers like Wal-Mart who bowed to pressure from some Christians who weren’t happy last year and boycotted them just because their employees didn’t wish their customers “Merry Christmas,” but wished everybody “Happy Holidays” instead.

This year it will be different though. In order to make everyone happy, Wal-Mart will wish “Merry Christmas” to everyone, including Jews & Muslims. Got to keep the Christians happy, I guess!

How insulting is that! But before you side with me totally, as most of you readers know I do collect and listen to Xmas music and I listen to it year-round, as I listen to Halloween-themed and Hanukkah-themed music too, plus a huge plethora of other holiday music too, still Xmas music tends to get overplayed a little too much by retailers everywhere I frequent like gas stations, supermarkets, dollar, thrift & department stores & bookstores.

Sometimes retailers get all token on us and play Hanukkah music for those who celebrate, but they need to; how else will we be fool enough to buy plastic or paper gifts that fall apart within weeks of buying it? Besides, they need our business, so they do what they have to in order to get us into their stores otherwise, they come crawling or slithering to get us in and in a way, that’s kind of cool!

Still, we have Thanksgiving Day to contend with and it’s certainly not one of my favorite holidays, as it can be a most frightening and scary experience for me, as witness to years’ past.
As I get older, I wonder what the holiday really means besides stuffing my face with turkey, eating pumpkin pie and telling everybody what I’m really thankful for.

The last two Thanksgiving Day holidays for me, were anything but normal for me, but this year promises to be much better as a couple of friends have already invited me to their apartment for a Thanksgiving Day meal that promises to be fun and relatively normal.

Thanksgiving Day can be quite stressful because people put so much pressure on themselves to please others and put on a miniature stage show, with all the shticks timed just so. Of course, the shticks can go wrong too; in fact they always do.

Holidays are holidays and just that. Take them as such and don’t try to kill yourself in the process; your friends, family and other relatives do understand. It’s just a meal, not a reality show!

And if you think the holidays are a bit much, do what I always do; relax and unplug.

It’s the best solution without going mad.

Petty Thievery: It's Everywhere You Go>Act Two

2006-11-12T20:57:00.000-06:00

As you well know, there’s plenty of petty thievery on the Internet too, which is what inspired me to write to write this particular essay to begin with.

A lot and I mean a lot of criminals are safely harbored within the electronic superhighway, but to use an example to illustrate, I’ll use this one, provided to me by the strange logic of a moderator within a Freecycle group I belong to.

It stems from a misunderstanding of mine from a post that was made, but of course it got me to thinking and I asked the moderator how anyone could give away free items like priority boxes that are already available at FedEx Kinko’s copy shops and local post offices?

And here’s what the moderator said, verbatim: “As for the priority mail boxes, yes, they are free, but free things are definitely allowed on Freecycle. The point in this case was that she got more than she needed and was offering them to someone else who might need them rather than throwing them away. I believe this is a perfect example of the purpose of Freecycle. If she just put them in a recycle bin, energy would be needed to process them to create new boxes. By offering them, she was preventing a waste of resources.”

Well, as I could see by that answer, the moderator was telling me how okay it was to do such a thing; I mean the poster could have returned the boxes to wherever she got them; they were created for free to use for a specific purpose and the poster took advantage of the purpose and gave them away without giving back what she didn’t use. It was not the poster’s choice to do whatever she wanted to do; she took more than she should have and should have returned them as such, but since she didn’t and decided to dump them online under the cloak of Freecycle, this makes her a true petty thief!

Just imagine if everyone followed that philosophy; it would be total anarchy. People would be stealing free stuff in droves and dumping it online under the cloak of Freecycle (or Craigslist) without total respect for the law. Whatever happened to the old adage, “Take what you need and leave the rest for others?”

For all that “energy” that the poster supposedly saved, did the poster realize that she’s a petty thief in disguise? Probably not.

The very idea that Freecycle is saving the world from creating more landfills is applaudable, yet advocates the dumping of other companies knowingly free property onto unsuspecting souls, is just plain wrong! Don’t want to be caught or be responsible for the crime? Well, then just don’t do it!

Freecycle’s main purpose is to peddle off one man’s crap to another for free, not to peddle potentially stolen property! Call it what you will, but with rules like these, it won’t be long before Freecycle becomes what law enforcement agencies used to call pawn shops and that is "fencing operations."

All it takes is just one chance to steal and boom! You got yourself a thief! So keep on Freecycle, keep on advocating and condoning petty thieves. I sure hope that someone notices what Freecycle is condoning and that Freecycle will have all that “energy” to take the consequences responsibly like everyone else does when they steal something that isn’t theirs.

And where does it stop? People steal ideas form each other all of the time! Corporations rip-off their shareholders and their employees constantly; Enron is a classic example of that.

So you think petty thievery is okay? You think no one will notice? Think again and think again and then after a little more time, think again.

And if after all this time you've thought about it and you believe that rules, regulations, ordinances and laws can be bent, broken or loop-holed, well then, you’re probably a thief!

Petty Thievery: It’s Everywhere You Go>Act One

2006-11-11T23:44:00.000-06:00

Petty thievery; it’s everywhere you go…in the workplace, in the supermarket, on the Internet, at the post office, in the coffeehouse...well everywhere and I mean everywhere!

Stealing is nothing new, but acknowledging that it is happening and what one intends to do about it, instead of harboring these actions, are two different matters altogether.

Believe you-me, I’m no saint, I’m as guilty as the rest of the bunch, but no one it seems wants to own up to their responsibilities or consequences; at least I can admit to it, but I still ask, how many others can?

But it's not pickpocketing, muggings bank heists or jewel theives that I'm speaking of or referring to, rather it's pure and simply put; petty theivery in modern times, mid-to-late 20th Century, early 21st Century style, that is.

In the workplace, people steal all sorts of stuff like pens, pencils and other office supplies, but not necessarily in big globs, but in tiny caches, so no one really notices it gone, just as long as long as it’s being used, is all that really matters.

At the supermarket, it’s a little more complex because it involves unsupervised children that not all parents realize they have and I don’t mean all children, I mean the child who pockets a candy bar or rips open a box of cereal to get that plastic super-duper prize out of the box and just leaves it behind in a mess.

Parents don’t often find out about it until much later and as far as blame goes, whose fault is it, anyway? Certainly not the child, for the child learns from his/her parents who are supposed to teach the child right from wrong, left from right. Yep, but those kind of parents tend to schluff it off and blame it on the media, while in the meantime, the child will have learned a bad habit that will be attached to them for a lifetime.

At the coffeehouse, is a personal favorite; favorite of mine that is, because it’s so easy to walk out of a coffeehouse with extra packets of sugar and honey, as logically the owner will replace it, but keep on doing that and the sugar dispenser will end up on the other side of the counter with the coffee ingredients.

And they do watch you, let me tell you, for in my quest for a little extra sugar one time, I took six extra packets of sugar and was told to put them back or the clerk would have the owner call the police and have me arrested for stealing! So sure enough, I put them back, laughed in the clerk’s face and walked out of there, but it wasn’t a true coffeehouse anyway, it was a 7-11.

Restaurants are far worse, as people steal everything there that isn’t nailed down including; napkins, eating utensils, bread baskets that contain rolls, muffins and bagels, extra pats of butter, jams, jellies, packets of ketchup, mustard, relish, mayonnaise and of course sugar, coffee creamers, salt and pepper.

And believe it or not, that stuff all adds up, though I suspect that stealing condiment packets is far cheaper than buying a bottle of ketchup or mustard in the long run…

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Helping Myself With The Harvest

2006-11-10T22:33:00.000-06:00

Well, well, well! Good late sloppy evening to everyone! Ugh! that white stuff has found its way to our fair city, way too early if you ask me, A quick tip of the kippah and yep, it's Friday! Hip-hip hooray! We've made it! And believe you me, I am quite happy it's here! But still I remain just as busy as ever for the end of this second week of November and after a long absence, it's nice to be back here on Friday nights. But you know what? Our good friend, that sweet capper is here to ease us into a gentle weekend! Stay warm (those of you in the Midwest & the East)! And now, yes you guessed it! It's spanking brand-new poem-time! And remember dear readers, please tell someone you love them and always, always enjoy!!!

Helping Myself With The Harvest

The sun makes up poems for me
When I cannot
And lately that’s been a lot
Leaves make poems for me
When I fall silent
And all I can hear is the wind whistle through the trees
The gentle breeze frees my spirit,
but every time I try to record my movements, with a pen and a pad
All I can think about is wanting to be had
Do you think that’s mad?
That’s why I rely on the sun, the trees and the falling leaves to make up poems for me.
because if they couldn’t,
I wouldn’t exist and simply would not get close to the soul who once resembled the man
I set out to be

The Day After The B-I-G Dem-OOO

2006-11-08T22:49:00.000-06:00

So, the day after the B-I-G Dem-OOO, the dust has settled in most local and national races and thankfully, the 2006 midterm general election is over. The Democrats control both the United States Congress, and the United States Senate.

Out go the scandals and the idiots who relied heavily on the commander-in-chief and all his nice wonderful friends to get their seats back.

But, Oh-my! Oh-my! George Bush couldn’t and failed miserably.

Sure, the undefined mission to Iraq and the war on terrorism probably did Bush and his pals in, but Bush didn’t think so and well, now…you, see, when the leader of the greatest nation in the world takes his own armed forces and places them in harm’s way without a back-up plan, well that just seems kind of ridiculous and dangerous, not only to me, but thousands of Americans throughout the USA.

Oh yeah, and by the way Mr. President; where are those WMDs anyway?

So, the Democrats are back in control, eh? Big deal!

Change is imminent of course, but tell me what will they do, since they have regained control? Raise taxes? Make promises they can’t keep? Get embroiled in scandals? Pay people off to keep quiet? Tell bad jokes and not apologize right away? Resign?

Hmm. Well, they might be like the idiots the American people just voted out! Both parties are the same; have the same amount of slick-talkers, bull-shitters, rising, contemporary and fading party stars that of course the press will continue to focus on.

But on the other hand, is there such a thing as a politician who isn’t a former/present banker, lawyer, real estate agent or son of a politician/millionaire that hasn’t had some kind of atrocity in their background?

Makes good profit and ratings for news organizations anyway.

And what about Joe Lieberman? He came back from the political morgue alive and kicking as a winning independent after losing the spring primary in the state of Connecticut as a Democrat! He’s a sorry sad sack of a person if there ever is one. He’s boring and orthodox; a token politician who should have retired long, long ago. So Joe reinvented himself as an independent? Gee Joe, think you’ll run as a socialist if you get your ass voted out of Congress in 2008?

Locally, we seemed to do well, as all the local Democrats won, although two of the candidates I voted for, both Republican by the way; yes I said Republican, didn’t seem to fare all that well. I am for change and not for personal views of a candidate where the personal views don’t apply.

One of those Republicans who I voted for was Cook County Board Commissioner Tony Peraica, who ran against Chicago alderman Todd Stroger, son & heir-apparent to his stroke-retired father, John (Stroger) for Cook County Board President. Hand-picking your own son to take over your corrupt kingdom? Shades of Daley-country USA, shudder to think!

But what Stroger threw at Peraica that angered me so were things like abortion and gay/lesbian issues. What does a Cook County’s Board presidental candidate's personal stance on abortion & gay/lesbian issues have to do with balancing a budget? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! And yet, the heir-apparent-elect pulled these zingers throughout his campaign. Diversion to the real issue at hand; whereas Peraica has true experience and Stroger none, Stroger gets elected.

Reminds me of the corporate working world; when someone is hand-picked by executives, not for their combined skill & talent, rather for their abilities to rubberstamp company policies, swallow company bullshit and above all, suck-up.

So, in reviewing the situation, those damned Democrats and those repugnant Republicans, are just going to have to get along, somehow. I don’t care how they do it, just as long as they smile for the camera on cue, shake hands before they come out swinging and get all pink, naked and dirty.

That is after all, how American politics works.

If there’s any constellation prize or fallout from this election, United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned; meaning my personally autographed photo and letter from him when he was CEO of Searle Labs in Skokie, Illinois is going to be worth a pretty penny.

Talk about luck!

A Letter To Miss Firefly

2006-11-07T22:06:00.000-06:00

Dear Miss Firefly,

I’m sorry you have a broken heart. Broken hearts as you well know are not easy to fix, but I will do my best to offer you some suggestions. Sure we can rely on our families and friends, for they are easy to lean on in times like these, but getting over a love you feel deeply for, isn’t always the same on the opposite side of the fence and it truly hurts like a kick to the groin and stings like cologne or perfume on cut skin.

I know that pain well. I’ve felt it many, many times before, as the last three summers have been three true heartbreakers and yep, the devils are out there in force enjoying the pleasure of sticking it to me good and hard, because they want to see me suffer, just as I supposedly made them suffer. I call them sick and disturbed and they need hospitalization ASAP!

Everywhere you step there will always be reminders of them of that there is no doubt, so please do yourself a favor and keep busy. Immerse yourself in a myriad of projects; it helps put your mind at ease and takes away the focus of the negative and turns it around to a positive!

Work-out at the gym, listen to music, although be advised to stay away from sentimental love songs and ballads; for they will drive you to tears for certain. If you feel the need to channel your anger, let me show you how to throat-sing; believe me, it works when push comes to shove!

Some years ago when I had a bad luck streak in dating, I adopted a philosophy in which I repeated often both aloud and to myself, “my wife is the universe,” meaning the world she is my sole partner in keeping me in check, teaching me right to left on this treacherous life adventure. As with myself, I am sure that you will find someone better and more in tune with what your soul desires. There is someone out there for you, I know it!

And remember, Miss Firefly; it takes 76 muscles to smile and two to frown.

Sincerely,

The MishegasMaster

Truth, Justice And The American Way

2006-11-06T20:05:00.000-06:00

Linus Van Pelt to Charlie Brown: “You'd either be the hero, or a goat.” Snoopy to Charlie Brown: “Baaaaaaa!”

Tomorrow dear friends, you can make a difference; the difference of choosing to be a super hero or a super goat, that is, when it comes to voting in tomorrow’s general election.

Goats are a dime-a-dozen, as are average heroes, yet the word hero is an overused, misguided word. Heroes not only fight for freedom and save us from peril, but heroes can be looked up to as role models.

The days of truth, justice and the American way have been horribly distorted by the likes of all major, minor and in-between political parties, special interest groups, minority factions, the press and illegal immigrants.

You name it; there’s been every sort of ram-rod effort to break apart the very strength of that great foundation. that we know and love as truth, justice and the American way. We’ve heard the same noises, barking, lies and shifting movements almost every time there’s an election on the horizon. Too many allegations fly and too many revelations spring suddenly forward within days of the actual general election.

These revelations are always saved for a crucial mind-blowing brain-bomb guaranteed to cause a diversion in the overall political race and guaranteed to swing the outcome of the race toward another outcome.

Politicians hire outside firms and use their friends (besides the press) to do the dastardly deed of digging up dirt on their opponent. So when I see this in every election known to man in America, I have to ask myself one question; where is the truth, justice and the American way in slinging mud and all the negatives all around the neighborhood, when it’s the issues at hand that matter the most?

Yet, politicians rely on these negatives to get themselves elected and re-elected to office, both in local and national elections. Truth, justice and the American way; we as citizens of this sovereign nation should demand that, not this petty bullshit scare tactics and yeah, there ought to a law passed against such negative campaign tactics, as it only creates diversions, confusion, chaos and wasted energy.

So, still want to be a super hero? Want your kids, wife, husband, significant other to worship the ground you tread upon and love you for life? Well, pal, get your tuchas out there and vote! That’s a real hero for you.

And in the eyes of truth, justice and the American way, you’d be a true super hero by stepping up to the plate and doing your part for the team by going out and voting!

Basic Fascism 101: Welcome To The Egress>Act Two

2006-11-05T21:32:00.000-06:00

The President of the United States is helping his country straight down the path of righteousness. Yeah right! Straight to hell, rather. I’m not the only person that once sat on the sidelines in the scattered bunches of minorities who have raised their voices loudly, screaming “See? Told you so!” Now, the minorities have grown to thousands, all screaming the same thing, basically for the fascism to stop and let the healing to begin.

And how do you heal? By forgiving, but that doesn’t always work for everybody, myself included. Lately, I’ve been the punching bag for a plethora of idiots who seem to want to blame me for their own sorry lives and their own mess of problems. And it affects me everywhere I go; home, school, work and playtime too.

Sometimes it takes a great incident to get a tiny spark to fly, setting ablaze a bonfire of protest or action to be taken before any results come forth with a solution to a bad situation.

But it’s the very kind of depressive state of being that others try to keep you down with by disassociating with the very idealisms you stand for, by ignoring, banging the telephone down on your ear, slamming the door in your face, name-calling, telling you that you smell bad, that you’re no good and that you’re not like the other good little girls and boys who are trying to step on you in the economical rat race as well and get ahead.

I go through this cycle after a seemingly endless streak of happiness and when the bleak blank blackness of reality washes over me like a bad drink I had in New York City nearly three weeks ago, but I piss it out of my system virtually overnight and then it’s gone, for the moment. I don’t let the negatives get to me; not that much anyway and I salvage what I can of the negatives and recycle them into positives!

A few weeks ago, I received a free local magazine from a female friend with its theme revolving around forgiveness. I put it aside and chuckled to myself and then phoned her up and asked, “Is this a hint or something?”

She mumbled something to the effect that I should forgive someone else for crap that the significant other shat on me some months ago. I shot back, “My life is scot-free of additional bitterness and anger and I should be forgiving? I don’t think so!”

She hung up on me.

Success is an enemy to the losers of the day. When the enemy admits they were wrong to begin with, then maybe I’ll think about being forgiving, but I won’t be waiting for a “sorry” anytime soon. Drama is always distorted to what one wants to hear. It’s always different in the enemy’s eyes. They’re the ones filled with eyes of hate, hearts of jealousies, while committing acts well beyond the sanity boundaries just because they’ve had a bad week and they expect me to be forgiving them?

Let them say sorry first and mean it with compassion.

In the meantime, I look forward to the future. Good stuff is headed my way and no massive flood or blinding blizzard of negativity will hold me back from achieving what journey I’m about to embark upon.

Critics cry on their own blogs with self-inflicted wounds of disdainment and unforgiving words. It is after all part of their fatal cycle that they cannot break.

And for this I smile with a putrid sadness in my eyes.

The MishegasMaster Presents Guest Writer Ifeoma Okoro: The Light In The Tunnel Has Turned Into Darkness

2006-11-04T23:31:00.000-06:00

It's not often as I, yours truly, The MishegasMaster gives up this very space to just anyone I created one and a half years ago, but today I do, as I'd like to introduce to you, my audience another great writer within my circle of friends.

I first met Ifeoma Okoro (Favour as I call her and as she likes to be called) nearly a year ago through a penpal service. Little did I know what was in store for me as we began corresponding with each other. As I have discovered over the many months, Favour is a brilliant writer in many aspects, especially in poetry, prose and essay-writing, as well as a loving, warm-hearted soulful woman.

She has authored a couple of books, including a touching book on grief and loss.

We think alike on many levels and I feel very fortunate that we have met. Not only can she write, but she runs her own foundation for widows, (www.widowadvancecare.org) all this at age 23! What a marvel she is! Of course, Favour doesn't live in America, she lives in Nigeria, a country that has been taken as an unwilling hostage by turmoil and unrest. It is number two on the United States' State Department list of places not to travel due to the deterioration of the country itself. Ironically, the government of Nigeria modeled their country's democracy after America's. Nigeria's president (Matthew) Olusegun (Aremu) Obasanjo behaves like a Neanderthal, similar to our fuck-up of a president, George W. Bush, Jr.

Among the many projects Favour works on, including ghostwriting books, she also freelances for newspapers. Last night we had a long talk as we usually do and she told me about an opinion that she submitted to one of the newspapers she writes for, but they said they couldn't print it, due to heavy criticism of the of the Nigerian governmental body and Obasanjo, for fear the newspaper might be shutdown, censored or other governmental interference. It always works that way, doesn't it?

Having been a causality in the battle of censorship over the years, I told Favour that I would be happy to publish her opinion here in my blogger space without worry or fear of those evil censors. As you my readers know, I am a heavy critic of America, the government and Bozo Bushman himself, so I am not worried if someone attempts to "get me" or not, as kooks are everywhere we step, even those in official-looking uniforms.

Feel free to comment. And now, I pleased, honored and thrilled to present to you, dear readers, Ifeoma Okoro...

The light in the tunnel has turned into darkness where the train cannot pass even within our own country. Nigeria the light of our country, is gradually turning into darkness. We all are getting blind. Even the train cannot pass through her tunnel anymore. The air we breath is getting too hot for us and our nose and eyes have been swallowed up to the fact that we cannot see the truth of our predicament.

Oh God! What is future of our young ones if the cloud would not be bright? The cries of the innocent ones have changed the sky into a dull moment. The cloud is very moody, even the birds of heaven feel their pains and hear their cries. The green grasses are scared of what will happen next. Even the iroke trees are scared of what will happen next.

Dear people of Nigeria; a lot has happened in just few months. Our country has lived and is still living through tragic events. The bitterness has been aggravated by the political and economic mistakes of the past, the remedying of which was imperatively demanded by the condition of the country and the general desire of our people.

The grave situation in which we find ourselves is characterized by the fact that various elements are mixed up in it, both the one we know and also the one we do not know about. In just one year, a lot has happened. The sky was cloudy, even the wind was storming. The plane crashed with souls of the innocent citizens of Nigeria. What a great loss we have had. The people that matter in our country are gradually dying out one by one.

Who is behind this tragedy?

In the east, west, north and south, souls were crushed like a peanut. What is happening to our aviation? The most painful one was the events that took place on the September 20 2006, where the souls of our dignified men (General) crashed without a trace of it.

This particular event has never happened in history of the world, where 13 major generals died in a plane crash. Here lies 13 bodies of major Generals side by side, in the chapel of the cemetery. I counted them one by one, and stopped in front of each of them. All of them were prominent people, people who would have impacted knowledge to the young ones growing in the military, as far as I could judge.

The smell of blood mingled with the scent of the flowers, which the population and their relatives had brought and pervaded throughout the cemetery chapel. Here lies 13 martyrs who made one of the most glorious pages of history of military chapter as well as demonstrated the insurrection in one of Nigeria's provincial towns.

To all Nigerians, government, United Nations, delegates of the people! In the coming hours you will decide about the life or the death of this country while some of you, your children are at peace and cultivate happiness. We the citizens of Nigeria, our country is falling under the cruel fire of terrorist bombers. Our country has been attacked from within. We turn to you, who are our last citadel of hope.

Kindly exercise the opportunity, which our country have given you and save our country from destruction and slavery! We are asking for immediate and effective help to save us from further bloodshed and give us back our neutrality.

Let us not be our own enemies. Children are hungry. Clothing and shoes are wearing out, fuel is getting scarce, and kerosene, gas and electricity are nowhere to be found. People are dying everyday, tragic things happen here and there.

What will happen to us, if the country is paralyzed, its economy run down; what will be our fate? We certainly do not want this to happen and we cannot allow this to happen!

Hello people of Nigeria. The future of Nigeria does not only depend on the shoulder of the government, but on every honest worker, every patriotic youth, every communist has a new task before him. Let us join hands together to put an end to this disaster that has befallen our country.

Do all you can to prevent further bloodshed, publicize the amnesty decree and convert those who still hesitate. Every minute is precious; the fatherland needs the life of every worker and all the citizens of Nigeria.

Professor Babaloa Borishade (Nigeria's Minister of Aviation, formerly Nigeria's formerly Minister of Education), we are tired of plane crashes! Our brains and souls are yelling for help. We need more of your effort to help us to produce a good operating environment and incentives should be given to your staff to complement competitive remuneration and training.

And please, we need more of our youth to be trained in order to fill the gap created by aging personnel.

I plead with our government to help the civil aviation authorities to push for an accelerated manpower development program across Nigeria and set a goal on a given number of professionals to train likewise.

Men of honor cannot be found where there is no peace, no love, no transparency in a country that is not united. We need transparency in our country. We need light in the tunnel again.

Post-Partum New York Stories>Act Two: Spot Them! Jew Vs Jew!

2006-11-02T21:39:00.000-06:00

1. Find The Jew Who Wears A Wig.
2. Find The Jew Who Spreads Loshon Hora.
3. Find The Jew Who Is Happy With Their Life.
4. Find The Jew Who Is Outed Just For What Their True Beliefs Are.
5. Find The Jew That Doesn't Support Israel's Right To Exist.
6. Find The Jews With Beards.
7. Find The Pretty Jews.
8. Find The Ugly Jews.
9. Find The Jews Who Don't Practice What They Preach.
10. Find The Jew Who Smokes.
11. Find The Jew That Speaks A Foreign Language.
12. Find The Jew That Isn't Afraid To Speak Their Mind, For Fear Their Reputation Will Be Smashed By Some Stranger With Either A Typewriter Or A Keyboard.
13. Find The Jew Who Supports The War In Iraq.
14. Find The Jew Who Hates Those Who Aren't The Same Skin Color As They Are.
15. Find The Jew Who Keeps Kosher.
16. Find The Phony Jew.
17. Find The Sick Jew.
18. Find The Whacko Jew.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, well can you find those Jews? Can you? Can you?

And The Winner Is…Post-Halloween, 2006 Pumpkin Brain Drippings

2006-11-01T23:22:00.000-06:00

Every year, Halloween comes and goes. Vibrant energy ebbs and flows within our hearts and souls. People dress in costumes, march in parades in cities, towns & villages, collect candy, compete for prizes in costume contests, have lots of fun and put their costumes away for another year.

Some people dress up in the same costumes as they have done in previous years, while other people change annually like the four seasons of nature. There’s an old observance that suggests that we are those personalities that we dress up in, but that’s a lot of hooey.

Then there are those who don’t dress up and frown upon those of that do. Still, there are others who live vicariously through those of who do dress up, for perhaps a plethora of odd reasons including; afraidiness of the self; afraidiness of their reputation; feelings of being too old to dress up and it’s a devil’s holiday, which is ironic considering the holiday originated in Ireland over 2,000 ago under entirely different circumstances.

In the past few years, I’ve dressed up as a wounded soldier from Iraq, a rock and roll party girl, to varying themes on a cow, but last year, I skipped dressing up, because too many people relied heavily on me to dress up for them. Dress up for others? Sounds silly, huh? Over a dozen people bugged me last year, asking me what I was going dressed as. I told all that ask, I was going as “me,” but no one believed it until October 31 came and sure enough, I was myself.

This year was no different, as I struggled with the dressing up issue, because as I see it, I am already many idolatries to many people; a son to Rex Pater Homo & The Arizona Babe; sibling to Naomi, Louie, Benjy & Joey; friend to many; ex-boyfriend to women who either married or dead or perhaps both and enemy to those who hold grudges against me that are eons too old to remember or recognize.

So acknowledging all of that, I wondered deeply about the implications of dressing up and wondered perhaps if the stakes were pushed a little high & the pressure had been increased in multitudes against me. But am I a role model to those wishy-washy wiggle-worms or just their august clown boy who isn’t afraid to show himself to the world?

Last weekend, when I was doing my usual errand-running in and around town, I stopped into a Halloween shop and looked at all of the costumes and didn’t see anything I really liked, until one costume stopped me dead in my tracks, but due to its high price, made me pass it up. I told myself, that if the costume was still there on the following Monday, October 30, The Arizona Babe’s birthday coincidently, I’d buy it.

Monday evening fast approached as I went to the shop and of course the costume was still there, so I bought it with a couple of other separate accessories that seemed to fit with the costume itself.

Tuesday morning arrived and I awoke early. Dressed in a basic under-lining of underclothes and drove to work. Changed into the costume in the parking lot. Had to have a co-worker help lead me into the office, as vision in a mask can sometimes be difficult.

The workday went well; many interruptions as usual. Fellow co-workers dressed in costume wanted to take videos and photos of me; deflected two disparaging remarks and then of course there was the costume contest in mid-afternoon, where I was deemed by the company president as “a demented gorilla.”

When I went out for lunch later in the afternoon, I was helped across the street by a male crossing guard, whom crossed two streets himself and nearly was run over in oncoming traffic; two cars bumped each other when one driver saw a gorilla in a tutu walking down the sidewalk and didn’t bother to look at the traffic behind him; received candy; spoke to a toddler and his nanny about his frog costume; had photos taken of me with a young girl dressed as a princess and I spoke to a group of smoking workers from a neighboring company from ours and wandered back to my office.

After work, I went to see my mentor Miss Firefly, whom I looked forward to seeing all day. The building I waited in, is shared by a clinic, so as I was waiting for her, a young couple passed me by and the man looked at me and said, “Hmm. You should really ask for your money back. I can see that treatment is really not working for you,” while the woman, presumably his wife laughed.

As I saw Miss Firefly walk out of the elevator, her face appeared more solemn and stoic than her usual pleasant demeanor. I knew right away something was wrong, but didn’t mention anything to her until later in our session.

To put a smile on her face was my main objective, so I looked at her and said through my mask something like, “C’mon, let’s go!” Miss Firefly then realized it was me and lit up like a glowing candle in a vastly dark room.

I took third place in that costume contest, beaten out only by a witch, who ironically, looked like my second-to-last ex-girlfriend and a leatherized Catwoman.

Happy All Saints Day, everybody!

Post-Partum New York Stories> Act One: Sid Yiddish Visits Mykel Board

2006-10-30T07:00:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while you take a vacation that is so fun, so exciting and so memorable that it stays with you long after the reality of the world kicks in. I had one of those a few weeks ago, in New York City. What I hope to present to you from now until the end of the photos I will share with you, 441 in all, some of the more outstanding highlights and lowlights.

I'd been planning this trip for over a year. I was originally scheduled to go last fall. I had been previously scouted by poet & venue host Roxanne Hoffman at a previous poetry event at The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City April, 2005, but the surgery and extraction of three wisdom teeth drained me of my trip funds so I had to postpone it until the following year when I knew I would be on solid financial ground.

This trip was a two-fold purpose; to perform at a few nightclubs and to have fun, the latter of which I did everyday. New York City despite all its criticism by those who either used to live there or those who disdain it otherwise, is a very vibrant, beautiful city. Sure it's had its share of misfortunes like 911 and losing baseball teams, but there is no place on earth like it. Other cities pale in comparison to it and that's no lie.

I left the morning of Saturday, October 7, just excited to be going there once more. For a long time I hated New York City and for the life of me, I cannot remember why now. Well, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I love it now.

I stayed with my good friend Mykel Board. Like me, there are many sides to him, most notably author and columnist for Maximum Rocknroll. He's a good guy, no-nonsense and everytime I see him, he teaches me a new trick or two.

But I had two requirements; get him a bottle of Everclear and don't be a pest. Being a pest I did my best not to be. The Everclear was another story, as my friend Pierre who owns a liquor store in the town I live in, didn't want to sell me a bottle as I told him I was transporting it in my checked luggage.

"I don't want you to be arrested, man! That stuff is 120 percent proof," he exclaimed. Mykel suggested that I put it beneath my clothes which I did. I also snuck my screwdriver set and my Furbies inside. Just imagine all the possibilities you can have with a bottle of Everclear, a six-piece screwdriver set and two Furbies all stowed away beneath a jetliner carrying tons of fuel! Think of all the terroist possibilities! Well, I solved the problem. I bought a couple of ice-like holders for the Everclear, kept them inside my freezer, while I kept the Everclear in the fridge until the morning I left town.

But where to put the car? Seems the city I live in has a some sort of obscure law, that says you cannot leave your car on the street for more than seven days undriven! Stupid law, considering the last few places I've lived I never had a problem leaving it on the street when I went on vacation. So, only having lived here for less than a month, I found a friend who knew someone who let me put my car in her garage during the week I was gone. I hate stupid laws, not laws in general, but stupid ones!

Mykel Board's apartment is like a living inside a museum or a thrift store! Every possible little trinket or book you might imagine is there, plus a lot of Yankees memorabilia. Naturally, he's a Yankees fan, but I still don't know why.

He also collects Negroes. Yes, you heard me right, Mykel Board collects Negroes. Not the human kind, but the trinket kind as you see by some of the photos here. In this first act, besides photos of yours truly, you get a mini-photo tour of the inside of Mykel Board's apartment& his trinkets.
Enjoy!

The Obscure Derelict Diversion: An Occupational Hazard>Act 31

2006-10-26T18:56:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: Obscurity brings safety. The street to obscurity is paved with athletes who can perform great feats before friendly crowds. The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance, that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph. What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity. Fiction can be that way sometimes. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental & should not be taken or misconstrued as such. Anyone who thinks otherwise probably believes that obscurantism is the academic theorist's revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity a way of proclaiming one's superiority in the face of one's diminished influence, more so that darkness is to space what silence is to sound and obscurity is the realm of error.

Well, it is said that lately in and around the great prison walls of Devil’s Island, prison guards have been harassing prisoners at breakneck speed. Often the harassment stems from personal vendettas, jealousies and Acts of God. Some of these actions are leading prisoners to commit great acts of obscurity, including their own untimely deaths, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

It is a common practice for prison guards here on Devil’s Island to let certain prisoners slip by with violations a-plenty and a smile, while other prisoners are ordered to follow obscure rules simply because they were not smiled upon.

It’s called the obscure derelict diversion and it separates the men from the boys; the women from the girls; the phonies from the honest, the good from the evil and the saps from the lackeys. The prison guards have been doing strange things to amuse themselves lately and that includes accidental and untimely prisoner deaths, but after all, what’s another prisoner death on Devil’s Island anyway?

It apparently stems from a trickle-down document that surfaced recently during a locked-door meeting held by prisoner guards, which of course Broadcast Betty had privy to be invited to. After all, good misinformation scares Devil’s Island prisoners. The meeting primarily focused on old and often overlooked obscure prison procedures to more speedily execute longtime prisoners taking up good cell-space on Devil’s Island.

Take Trixie Pixie for example; always attentive to every prisoner’s needs; always the one to go above and beyond the call of what skill required within the Devil’s Island prisoner labor camp; always a shining asset to Upper Prison Brass, yet some unknown obscure law caught her full of too much juice one day and due to an extremely obscure prison procedure, she was executed.

Then there was The Anglican Choir Boy, who was recaptured after many months of being on the lam. Once he was placed back into the system, they brainwashed him into thinking everything was okay, but of course it wasn’t, as one day a trigger-happy prison guard “accidentally” shot The Anglican Choir Boy in the back, similar in style to the coward who shot famous outlaw Jesse James in the late 1800s. No one ever made mention of the “accidental” incident ever again and the trigger-happy guard was rewarded with his own watch office.

And then of course there was the unfortunate death of Mother Hen Martha that broke up the infamous choking-smoking, wheezing-sneezing OCTOBER Sisters, based on a pressurized psychological noose that prison guards kept tightening around her neck. It went on for weeks, until one day without warning, Mother Hen Martha swung herself hard off a chair and the rest as they say, is history.

Often times I find myself in their rifle scope between their well-placed obscure procedures and boundaries of falsehoods. But where is truth on Devil’s Island? Is there such a movement as truth? Be it so done my friends, that there’s enough obscurity to be placed upon the entire prison population here on Devil’s Island, including the self-appointed and anointed prison guards.

Be it so said that some might try to decipher or decode what is written here. Let them. Beware however, of the felled obscurity that will boomerang back into their spineless bodies, thereby giving birth to the affliction commonly known as the great obscurity dereliction fruition that infects only those who set foot onto Devil’s Island!

Five Years And Counting: Where The Fuck Is Osama Bin Laden!!!

2006-09-11T19:19:00.000-05:00

"More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East. The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they "personally are more angry" at the government than they used to be. Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Suspicions that the 9/11 attacks were "an inside job" _ the common phrase used by conspiracy theorists on the Internet _ quickly have become nearly as popular as decades-old conspiracy theories that the federal government was responsible for President John F. Kennedy's assassination and that it has covered up proof of space aliens..." Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.
Today, as our nation observes a horrific anniversary puppeteered and masterminded by the United States Government and all their foreign hot-tub buddies (911), there are still three questions that permeate the stench around Ground Zero and my brain; number one: WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! Okay, got it now? Good!

Secondly; when will the truth surrounding 911 come out? This is perhaps one of the greatest most single tragic events in my lifetime (besides the assassination of President Kennedy & John Lennon 17 years later). The trouble with 911 however, is that it’s a lot like the Kennedy assassination, in which a nation divided will have to come to its own conclusions individually and that’s the sad part really and as church bells rang out this morning in memoriam for the 2,973 who perished and the those 2,973 names were read at Ground Zero where the World Trade Towers once stood in the heart of the financial district in New York City and the sales rang briskly of “God Bless America These Colors Don’t Run Etc.” paraphernalia by the shitload and the mainstream press continues to rehash the same old sound bites of that terrible day, the other question is; Did an airplane really hit The Pentagon that day as the U.S. government wants its citizens to believe or was it smacked hard by a missile?

Did the 911 Commission really tell us anything new about stories that were already available in some way, shape or form available elsewhere? That elsewhere of course being the Internet and if you really wanted to know whether or not how The Pentagon was hit, all you need to do is Google the words “Pentagon” & “missile” and click on the word Images and you’ll receive back at least four pages of photos that clearly show a missile hitting The Pentagon and not an airplane.

Funny how that is, really; just hours after The Pentagon was struck, The FBI promptly snatched nearly video surveillance camera tapes from hotels and other businesses within the area in the name of “national security” and only recently released tapes that shows an explosion, but there’s no visible sign of an airplane. Could The Pentagon airstrike be a Roswell waiting in disguise? So! Where is the airplane! There is none! Or was there? We'll just never know for certain, that's all!

As I write this essay, some of my friends worry that I can be arrested for writing such ideas or views and so I say this onto them and others; whatever happened to the 4^th Amendment, you know; freedom of speech? It’s still there. Until the day arrives that I am physically arrested and stand before a magistrate with a good lawyer by my side, I will continue to write such essays.

There are people in these United States, good, close friends of mine who used to be so radical and tough, but not anymore, since the government began whittling away their rights to the point where they have them stopped dead in the tracks.

So I write for them, as I write for myself!

Fuck the U.S. Government and their false sense of patriotism! Fuck George Bush! I didn’t vote for this clown! It's easy to blame Bill Clinton for not catching him to begin with, as it takes the burden off of Bush, our fuck-up of a president, but he don’t mean shit in my book! Woulda, shoulda, coulda and all those what if questions don't matter at this point.

All I care about is him finding Osama Bin Laden and bringing him to justice, so as I stated much earlier…WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN! WHERE THE FUCK IS OSAMA BIN LADEN!

Okay, got it this time, Georgie? Good!