Hello everyone. I haven't posted or kept up for a while. Just thought I'd say hi and can't wait to see those of you who I'll be seeing soon. Also hi those of you who I'll be seeing "someday." And even to those of you who I may never see again, sadly. Hell, even to those of you I've never met. Hi, everybody.

Anyway, I do have this one Johnson City memory that is worth telling. I wonder if it's been told already. Some six or seven of us were looking for something to do one night back in 1988. I don't remember what month, but I believe it was in the late Spring. Kurt Hagardorn had some Pabst Blue Ribbon in his fridge, and we went to get more. The idea was to sit under the overpass and drink it, sort of like a group of scary loser trench coat teenagers in some bad movie about youth angst and disaffection. Yep. So, we go drink the beer under the overpass, which turns out to pass time a lot less well than you might imagine. After maybe a half hour or so, we decide to get up and go to a minor league baseball game or something. I don't remember. Just some other idea, but I think it may have in fact been a J.C. Cardinals game we were headed to. Doesn't matter. Anyway, Lisa Williams was last to get up and start making her way back to the car. We didn't notice when she got up, she totally clonked her head on a concrete beam and wound up back down on the ground.

She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She did nothing to alert us to her distress. We kept walking. When we made daylight, we all sort of gathered up and noticed that Lisa was still back there on the ground. She wasn't passed out. Just holding her head and saying something like "That wasn't good" over and over.

Pabst and concrete don't go well together. I can report to you that Lisa made a full recovery, but not that evening. We broke apart and gave up on the other idea (baseball?) that we had in mind. I took my belly full of Pabst down to Quarterback's, where Bleu Jackson was playing. Would you believe that Mr. Jackson walked over to me that night and said, "Man, you are WILD with all that 'Italian Women' and 'Moonshine Still'. Totally wild." Do you think it's possible that the people who created the character of Boomhauer on King of the Hill modeled his speech patterns on those of Mr. Bleu Jackson? Just a thought. Love ya, Blue.

Again, nice to "see" all of you. As ever.

I will say for "Mulholland Drive," I felt I understood Lynch's fascination with red curtains truly for the first time. Those heavy velvet drapes used to be standard issue on every auditorium stage in like, every school in America. Did anybody get through grade school without the experience of waiting behind those curtains at least once for some performance to begin? It's probably the first time most people have a really focused awareness of there being two worlds, one "out there" in anticipation of which one is breathless with fear and/or excitement, and one "in here" which is hidden and safe at least for the time being. I now think the red curtain motif is a direct visual referent for that precise moment not just of perception but of actual experience of two different, simultaneous realities.

Just yesterday, I was groovin' on my "March Hare." It's a small white plastic rabbit bobble-head with evil orange eyes. It was my birthday present from Barbara Herd this year. It is just the coolest thing that ever was. I have it stuck on the dashboard of my tiny white Metro, and it bobs along to whatever music I have on without ever missing a beat. People stare at it at intersections and cross themselves. I keep my pitch-dark glasses on and just snap my fingers off-tempo. What's really weird is that it came in the mail about a day after I saw "Donnie Darko," went to the "Donnie Darko" website and took the "Find out which Donnie Darko character you most resemble" quiz and the answer came back, "You're FRANK! Have a nice day!"

Brook, I feel obligated to inform you that under The Patriot Act, a sick bone in your back is simply not allowed.
Good to see you on your own blog again.
That said, I just want to mention that your last post enthralled me. By the end of the last paragraph, I felt absolutely STONED.
Meercats...

Cheery e-cards on the way!
Let's show Brook some love!

Ms. Hines has been in the hospital recently, but is now home, an encouraging bit of news. It has been a scary time, I gather. I'd be willing to bet a cheery e-card or two from Blogsville would not go unappreciated.

Does anyone know how Brook is doing? It's been quite a while since she posted, and she wasn't feeling well last month.

Well, is anyone going to be picking up Al Franken's new book?
We'd better hurry before the 'fair & balanced' powers-that-be make the publishers change the cover...

Don't hold back Tony, tell us how you really feel......

Kinda quiet round here,,, heard any good jokes lately????

Without a doubt, my most Lynchian vision of JC and environs would be the flock of birds that flew into the ground. I see them laid out in V-formation on a sidewalk or a parking lot, little numbered tags attached to them and fluttering in the breeze, military brass standing around, lab-coated underlings roping off the area, taking photos and scribbling on clipboards...

Next to that, there was an occasion when many messed-up kids were sitting on a large porch in the wee, wee small hours of the morning and through the hedge came a skinny, twisted-looking guy on crutches. He was something of a low talker and he kept a distance between us, standing out in the yard, making us strain to hear him. He complained about his sad lot in life and asked if someone couldn't go inside and make him a sandwich. "Just a sandwich." A sandwich seemed to me at that time a lot to ask, involving bread, meat, mustard, mayo, lettice and tomato...Who did this guy think we were, the fucking Kings of Siam? If we had ONE of those ingredients in the house, it was probably mayonnaise, and it was probably twenty years old. We told him so and he didn't believe us. He wanted to go in and see for himself. "I know I could find something to eat, just a sandwich..." He needed a reality check, bad. We told him it was up a lot of stairs, but then that seemed like more information than he really ought to have. The offensive capabilities of those metal, brace-like crutches were occuring to me about that time; they seemed not unlike double-length nightsticks with a hook on the end, and he had TWO of them. The more he kept talking about "JUST a sandwich," the more convinced I became that his economic standards for sustainance were ludicrously higher than mine, and it was starting to piss me off. He was letting us know in no uncertain terms how shitty he thought we were to not even offer him a sandwich, and it was clear that he was really taking advantage of the situation of being around people who, for reasons of their own, were reluctant to call the cops to make him leave. It went on and on in a slow-motion car-wreck kind of way and it became impossible to maintain a sense of how long he'd been there, harrassing us. Finally someone told him that if we had sandwich stuff in the house, we'd be eating sandwiches ourselves at that very moment. With this, he huffed off into the night on his largely unnecessary crutches, leaving us to ask, "Did all that just happen?"

My vote for the two most Lynchian places in town: The Mecca and the Downtown Restaurant...

To my knowledge, no one has shat while talking on the phone to me. However, I could have missed some important clues. Knowing I could have unknowingly taken something of a number two position of importance in a conversation has given me something new to lay awake nights worrying about. "Talk Now--Shit Later" for a bumper sticker? (This is assuming everybody's seen the "Drive Now--Talk Later" ones.) Full-page ad in the New York Times with a laundry list of things you shouldn't do on the phone? Retro fitted cell phones with special shit-sound detectors and alarms? "Warning - this conversation will terminate in 3 seconds, unless you remove your ass from the porcelein." How about keeping a tape loop of massive diarrhea to fight back with? "That's see AND a raise, buddy!"

Ah, the fair. The smells, the rides, the food and the...well, the smells. I haven't been to it in years. Too crowded. Too hot.
Most of my memories of the fair revolve around an old friend, Lisa Harkelroad. My freshman year in high school, Lisa and another girl decided to run away and leave with the fair. Their parents were frantic and everyone who was known to be close to the girls was called to the office and interrogated. Meanwhile, Lisa's mother figured out where they were and they had to travel out of state to pick the girls up where they found them staying with carnie guys in thier 30's or something, smoking copious amounts of dope and listening to way too much Molly Hatchet.
Years later I would see Lisa at the fair again, working the ticket booths. She was a junkie by this time, all sunken eyes and needle tracks. She was in pain almost all the time, but she would always talk a good game about how delightful her life was and whose ass she had kicked recently. Because of her, I stopped getting on the rides, since she explained to me exactly how shit-faced the guys were who put them together. I always imagined my ferris wheel car crashing to the ground because of one loose screw, no pun intended. Lisa actually became a full-time carnival worker, traveling the country and getting more addicted. She overdosed almost three years ago, and at her funeral, people who like to think they have class spoke in hushed whispers about what a terrible junkie she was. How you couldn't really be surprised that she was dead because of how she had lived. How the only thing they were surprised by is that it had taken her so long to finally get to that point. And of course, all of the horrible things she had done to support her habit. All of this within earshot of her then 14 yr. old daughter.
That daughter, now 16, has been staying with my family for a bit this summer, which is why all of this is so much on my mind. She's a wonderful, well-adjusted girl who misses her Mom terribly and still thinks of her as being a parent who tried her very best. I love to get her tickled because when she laughs, she sounds just like Lisa. And if Lisa were standing over my shoulder reading this she'd start bitching. "This shit is sad as fuck, Nicky!" She would not be impressed.
I won't be taking her daughter to the fair, by the way.

Oh, and to change the subject, I really hate to be talking to someone on the phone and have them start grunting because they're taking a shit. Is nothing sacred? I don't know about any anti-shitting on the phone bumper stickers, but you'd think some sort of group could be started of people who oppose this.
Just say 'No' to shitting while conversing. You would think that you wouldn't have to remind folks of that.

Blue Velvet,, no doubt about it! Why recently we had a pair of very gristly murders revealed by the discovery of body parts... heck, we found the whole head, not just an ear! "Heiniken? Fuck that Shit!!! Pabst Blue Ribbon man!!" 'nuff said.....

I tried to email this to you, Tony, but it bounced back so I'll post it here.

You are just too super-groovy cool...Did you find this in JC Press on-line archives? I didn't think they went back far enough, but I did try "Beauty Spot," "Erwin," "Unicoi," and "murders" and "shooting" (which was all I could remember) in all possible combinations, so I'm curious as to how you found this.

I greatly appreciate your contribution towards restoring my sanity. Next time I see a fur-lined waffle iron, I'll get it for you.

OK Elizabeth Brook,,, yes a couple got shot at Beauty Spot,,, I think it was early to mid 90's. As to the birds flying into the ground in formation, I think you are crazy, I don't remember hearing that one. It seems that the shooting was band related, but I don't recall more than that. I would note that the last place Wade Jenning was seen was at a Hindu Rib Roast; thats not really relevant, but I think it should be mentioned from time to time...

Help me, bloggers of the Johnson City variety, confirm that my memory is not wholly shot to shit...two incidents in the mid-90's. One, a couple got shot at Beauty Spot. The girl's name was Marcia and she sang in a local band called "Crystal Visions." Two, a flock of birds flew into the ground in or near Erwin. They were still in V-formation on the ground and the story was picked up by the AP and some military specialist was sent to examine them to try to figure out why fighter pilots get disoriented and lead formations into the ground or the side of a mountain sometimes. Somebody tell me they remember either of these two things or I will go really crazy.