Rosenbush Cafe

Static from an Atlanta FM radio station faded in with a soft feminine voice singing an unknown by jazz-infused poem, wherein she advises:

I don’t need to be extorted, exalted or supported. Complicated contemplated, tolerated or liberated but I do need to be penetrated, elevated and appreciated.

I was instantaneously seduced by The Succubus learning that “fantasy only aborts reality” as the song detailed about all manner of equipment, drugs and fetish clothing the singer does not need to turn her on!

Annette Peacock is a consummate poetess with lyrics about significant existential subject matter. A genuine poet, singer and songwriter who was my ethereal traveling companion, for the next half hour, in an era when a few stations played entire albums, rather than hit singles.

It would afterwards before I’d learn the name of the artist.

In a circuitous manner, I would later learn that I had heard her before, eight years earlier, but was unaware it was the same artist.

A true innovative artist, Annette would become a close associate of Timothy Leary, at the psychedelic center in Millbrook, and would receive a prototype synthesizer from its creator, Robert Moog, that augmented with her singing voice. Annette, inventor of the freeform song, also composed and arranged her own music and was a pioneer in the live performance of electronic music.

Survival was wonderful late-night-driving-while-stoned music and it was around eleven thirty in the eastern time zone when an Atlanta radio station, which was playing the last two tracks on side two, The Succubus, which I have included, and Survival, which every version I have located are truncated from its original length. Trust me when I say it is too good to hear edited.

Comfort in memories of melodies

Music has always comforted me, especially in times of sadness, stress and pain, and it wasn’t surprising that hearing these songs, while driving across Georgia for a newspaper job interview in Camden, South Carolina, in 1980, provided a superfluity of memories. It did then and those so now.

I would later get a job as copy editor for The Camden Chronicle, a daily newspaper, in what would actually be my most intensely enjoyable and impressive assignment, albeit briefly, in the Fourth Estate.

Relevance of harmony and hurting has perpetually been supplemental to my augmentation of amplification, and any existing sophistication in the lost art of getting pleasure from music exclusively to the original occurrences when hearing it, has shaped my appreciation for symphonies of solitude.

My three and one half year love affair with a lady, with whom I expected to spend the rest of my life, ended after an intense night of lovemaking on New Year’s Eve, 1980. I had quit my newspaper job in Cullman, Alabama, because I was too distraught to continue and in January moved in with my aunt, in Birmingham, who detested having company, but accepted me for a short time while I took several courses at UAB, including Philosophy, a writing course under the famous southern writer, Fred Bonne, now deceased, and a class in Stress Management, where I learned the crafty art of self-hypnosis, and also met and cultivated a good reefer connection in Southside, near the campus!

By the end of March, my aunt “threw me out,” thanks to the intervention of a cousin who alway enjoyed manipulating her and I begrudingly moved back home with my parents.

In the final week of June, I was called early one morning by the Chronicle, ostensibly, to give references for a former employee, named Emily, who worked with me in Eutaw, Alabama, when I was the editor of the Greene County Democrat. It was an unexpected surprise when the woman caller, after I gave Emily a wonderful reference (she was hired as a typesetter), said:

“I understand you have newspaper experience and that you are looking for a job. If you are interested, our editor would like to speak with you!”

Was this woman psychic?

I did not hesitate and said yes. Bill Bryant, a wonderful and seasoned journalist (he covered the Civil Rights movement in the sixties) gave me a brief interview was so impressed, as he later toldl me, that he invited me for an interview around the Fourth of July.

After getting off the telephone, I learned that my mother had intentionally lied, on my behalf, rather than tell the caller I was asleep at 730 in the morning (it was an hour later in Camden). I had been out late the night before smoking reefer, drinking beer and shooting pool, but she said I was out on a job interview and convinced her to call back in an hour.

Bless that woman.

I had already worked four newspaper jobs in Boaz, Alabama; Laurel, Mississippi; and Reform, Eutaw and Cullman, Alabama (the longest in Eutaw, 9 months; the shortest, Reform at two months) so I was euphoric to have another opportunity to maybe succeed rather than fail. (I had a bad habit of wanting to be an honest newspaperman and lost three out of the five jobs because I refused to fabricate facts).

I made a reservation at a small motel in Camden called the Mona Lisa(!) and drove over two nights before the interview. I would travel to nearby Columbia, with two gay traveling salesmen in next the room next door, and the three of us nearly got ourselves killed going into a rough straight bar in the very wrong side of town near the USC Gamecocks Football Stadium. We also tried a gay bar and were turned away because I was straight! All this in 1980 South Carolina!

So, what does all this have to do with Annette Peacock?

Peacock.

Gamecock.

It’s all in the quaint memories of music.

I was very depressed on my drive across Georgia, already expecting that I would not get the job even though I had yet been interviewed. I was also sad because of the breakup and even a bit annoyed because I was down to my last quarter ounce of pot.

I was bored with the music on my cassette deck and decided to listen to the radio and as I scanned the dial stopped on a song that so energized me that I was no longer downbeat and on my return trip to West Ala I would stop in Atlanta, at a arbitrary record store, and actually find a hip employee who said, “Yeah, we have a couple of albums by Annette Peacock. You must have heard her on the radio the other night!”

Today, you go into a local record store and ask for any artist before 1990 and chances are they will have to consult a computerized discography because they weren’t even born when these albums were released.

Annette was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942 making her eleven years older than me. As it turned out I had heard her before but was unaware when I purchased The Perfect Release (1979), the album I had heard on the radio.

As was often the case, whenever I went record shopping, if I found someone who was knowledgeable and cool, I’d end up in an extended tête-à-tête about music. This would be no exception; it was a small venue, with only a few customers, and the scent of jasmine incense took me back to 1970 at The Dickery, in Tuscaloosa, and the memory of black light posters, psychedelic music, marijuana smoke and strobe lights.

We talked about Ultimate Spinach, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and King Crimson and even sneaked into the store office for a hit off some pot I had rolled in joints for my road trip!

Unsurprisingly, the long pony-tailed guy, who turned out to be a guitarist, said, to the effect, too bad we don’t have “I’m the One” Annette’s 1972 album and that since I like the acid rock era I probably had heard her before but was too stoned to remember!

By the wildest of coincidences, he had a recording of I’m the One, on cassette, in his car, and when he played it he was correct: I did recognize the psychedelic treasure.

The only other album in stock was her previous, X-Dreams (1978) which I also purchased.

Every time I drove through Atlanta, on I-20, I promised myself to drop by that record store again.

I never did.

I would learn that it finally went out of business, unable to compete with larger stores in a nearby mall.

I am gratified for having visited once and acquiring those two vinyl collector’s items. While looking up information last night I found out the vinyl of the Tomato Label goes anywhere from $20-$125.00, if you can find it!

In 2003, while in Toronto, I procured An Acrobat’s Heart (2000) her eleventh studio release; 31:31 (2006) to date is her latest.

I have included, My Mama Never Taught Me How to Cook (X-Dreams) and I’m the One.

Ending this week’s music memory tour is a one more acid tune. Those of us who lived through the psychedelic era understand that while music could evoke hallucinatory visions with introduction of the proper chemical additives, it did not mean there weren’t messages in the songs.

The San Francisco based-band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, formed in 1965 was not as critically successful as other psychedelic groups of the era but they nonetheless had a profound impact of the genre. The title track off their fifth album, What About Me, (1970) is, in the vernacular of that era, “pretty heavy, man.”

You poisoned my sweet water.
You cut down my green trees.
The food you fed my children
Was the cause of their disease.
My world is slowly fallin’ down
And the airs not good to breathe.
And those of us who care enough,
We have to do something…….
(Chorus)
Oh…….oh What you gonna do about me?
Oh…….oh What you gonna do about me?
Your newspapers,
They just put you on.
They never tell you
The whole story.
They just put your
Young ideas down.
I was wonderin’ could this be the end
Of your pride and glory?
(Chorus)
I work in your factory.
I study in your schools.
I fill your penitentiaries.
And your military too!
And I feel the future trembling,
As the word is passed around.
“If you stand up for what you do believe,
Be prepared to be shot down.”
(Chorus)
And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live like an outlaw.
An’ I’m always on the run…
An Im always getting busted
And I got to take a stand……..
I believe the revolution
Must be mighty close at hand…
(Chorus)
I smoke marijuana
But I cant get behind your wars.
And most of what I do believe
Is against most of your laws
I’m a fugitive from injustice
But I’m goin’ to be free.
Cause your rules and regulations
They dont do the thing for me
(Chorus)
And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live just like an outlaw.
An’ I’m always on the run.

The Obsessive Collector contains drug themes and some profanity and trippin’ musical selections. Groovy, baby. Far-out, bummers, bad trips and beat poets, man. Its ladies night tonight and all girls in mini-skirts, go-go boots, mesh hose and long hair will be featured on our dance floor. “Sock it to me, baby!”

When I started collecting vinyl, way back in the late fifties, I started with soundtracks; “Around the World in 80 Days” being my first, and naturally being a kid, children’s records like The Flintstones, Gingerbread Man, Peter Churchmouse, Quick Draw McGraw and thanks to my parents and aunt, classical, jazz and ballet/opera music. I am unashamed to admit I had no interest in Elvis and was confused as to why, when he played on Ed Sullivan, his “pelvic area” was not shown on television.

My, my how time flew into a temporal warp of excess since days when parents were afraid the Elvis gyrations would make teenagers want to do naughty things…like they needed an excuse once natural hormonal changes were implemented. Unless they were into time travel they could not have dreamed acid rock, Viet Nam flag-burning protests, women burning their bras as women’s liberation evolved, the Age of Aquarius and Woodstock (I’ll admit, that I did not attend like so many liars. I do have the triple album and sequel set and saw the documentary movie by Michael Wadleigh; Martin Scorsese was one of the editors) trans-mutated the musical landscape.

Even those wild days would be sandblasted into infinity by gangsta rap, hip-hop, with sexist and violently profane lyrics that would make Spiro Agnew’s skeleton do a back flip in his grave (he was the first person to want advisories on record labels to clue parents to drug lyrics), and the era of music videos with scantily clad bimbos dancing in such graphic sexual gyrations they probably would have embarrassed “The King.” I still remember my mother seeing an early music video and saying: “Like a virgin? It looks like she is fucking!”

Yes, my mother, who was not prone to saying fuck, really said it and she was correct.

I can only imagine Ed Sullivan telling “the virgin” to get the fuck off his stage had she tried her moves in 1960.

Of course, today’s music lovers may be unaware of myriad shows like Dance a Go-Go, Hullabaloo, the short-lived Music Scene (with comedian David Steinberg hosting), the California Jam Concerts, Monterey Jazz Festivals and other venues that promoted rock music on television from the 1960s into the 1970s. Music videos, which one may believe arrived around the beginning of the 1980s, as the new record label promotions for music groups, were already in existence long before: even a Buddy Holly song that was recorded and played back could be considered an early music video.

There are so many sub-genres of music today I’ll bet musicologists get migraines just trying to make a definitive list!

I grew up in the era of hula hoops, bobby sox, hoop skirts, bullet bras, beatniks and beat poets like Kerouac and Ginsberg, greased back hair and, sadly, the crew-cut mentality. I was fortunate to have wavy hair and a “curly q” that hung down from my forehead. Now balding, I kind of miss that one curl that allowed other kids to make sarcastic remarks. How fortunate to see one of the guys that kidded me so much a few years back: totally bald and with most of his teeth missing. Fighting after school accounted for many boys reaching puberty with fewer teeth than brain cells.

I would later only have two albums by The Beatles (The White Album and Magical Mystery Tour) and both would be stolen from my college dorm room.

In my teen years I became intrigued by what was originally called “acid rock or psychedelic music,” even though I wasn’t into drugs at the time. In fact, I became so paranoid after smoking a joint, at a 1969 party, I thought my hands were my feet and I was trying to walk on them!

Mis-take.

My friend at the time, Ronnie, said something to the effect, “Just mellow out, man,” and he gave me a pill to chase with a bourbon.

“What in the fuck?” So, now I had gone from straight to a joint and Quaalude popper in one fateful evening.

Everyone was listening to Jefferson Airplane, before they became a Starship and crashed to earth, and I had a huge crush on Grace Slick. Who didn’t? Fleetwood Mac was still a stone groove in this era and soon I was experiencing levitation without getting off the couch.

Fucking Ronnie. I always wondered what happened to him. He fled town after a life-changing hook-up in New Orleans and when the “girl” he picked up on Royale turned out to be a trannie.

It has always been a unique flashback at how fascinated I was with music that was intended to be listened to under the influence when I wasn’t. Let me digress back two years before I was introduced to herb and ‘ludes, when in 1967, I bought what could be considered my first rock album, “The Bee Gee’s First,” which was nothing like the disco songs they would score for the film, “Saturday Night Fever,” and instead a collection of ballads and more rock-infused folk song hybrids.

“First” is still in mint condition and evokes great memories of my late Aunt Virginia who when asked what I wanted for my birthday and then gave me the $7.98 for the album. I only knew the AM Radio hit, “Turn of the Century,” not realizing the entire album would change my perspective on music forever.

My cousins, and a neighborhood friend, all had bigger allowances and bought every new “hit” album that was released. I was more selective in my purchases and was always interested in anything different. Most every rock group - straight rock or acid rock, all produced tripping music: The Rolling Stones, The Who, 10 Years After, Pink Floyd, The Yardbirds and naturally, The Beatles were always entertaining with music that was just a bit “out there.” Even Emerson Lake and Palmer’s debut platter had some trippy tunes, like “Knife-edge” and “Lucky Man.”

ELP was a great fusion group, started when the trio left three other groups, only one of which still exists today; King Crimson. Keith Emerson left The Nice; Greg Lake, King Crimson; and Carl Palmer, Atomic Rooster. When I saw them in 1974, by then under the influence of plentiful pot, especially since an ounce was $15.00! Talk about changing times, when I scored my first lid, in the early seventies, it was $13.50 (the half dollar, to cover baggies, if you can believe that in 2010) and when last I checked that amount probably wouldn’t cover a 1973 matchbox, which was just that, a matchbox for five bucks, containing enough reefer to rolled a couple of jays.

Those were the days my friends and they did in fact end.

Rock groups had discovered the moog synthesizer, named for creator Robert Moog, however, only a few groups learned how to use it and were it not for Walter (Wendy) Carlo’s amazing “Switched on Bach,” it might have been as short lived a technology as Quadraphonic.

10 Years After’s “50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain,” would signal that music could be esoteric and simultaneously commercial and they produced one particular album that was in everyone’s collection: “A Space in Time,” featuring “I’d Love to Change the World” and “Here They Come,” and of course I had it on long playing and 8-Track (so I could listen to it in my 1970 Cougar XR-7). “Stonehenge,” with “There Are No Words,” would introduce me to the mystical rock formations and The Stones would take me “2000 Light Years From Home.” Pink Floyd was always expanding the mental landscape with their early works and anyone who has ever listened to “A Saucerful of Secrets,” can attest that stoned, or not, you can see the flying saucers landing in your backyard during one particularly cool and ethereal guitar riff.

Thanks to the video age, PF would release an album and vid, “Live at Pompeii” which answered the burning “secret” question as to how Roger Waters and David Gilmore achieved specific sound effects. The selected video gives away the secrets by the saucerful and was profound for me to realize that what I thought was an organ or synthesizer was guitar!

The Stones, who I saw in 1973 in Tuscaloosa, were always pushing the envelope and once they became hugely successful I lost interest. The last album I bought by them was “Exile on Main Street!”

Iron Butterfly would bring us the lengthy “In A Gadda Da Vida” (don’t listen to the single version unless you want to learn how to fuck up a great song; the mid-section with all the solos are cut) and Jethro Tull, whose albums were full-length operatic experiences (”Thick as a Brick” and “Passion Play” with the later a fold out newspaper that today is as wild as it was over 35 years ago).

Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher” could almost qualify as the first “anti-drug” message in a rock song with it’s lamenting lyrics: “God damn the pusher man, I’d cut him if he stands or shoot him if he runs…” Most radio stations played an edited version because “god damned” is prominently featured throughout.

It could take a thousand posts to try and explain just how much psychedelic was being produced because every artist had music that sounded different with a tab or acid, a tightly packed bong bowl or a Quaalude. Suffice to say, I would never suggest to anyone to take drugs to enjoy music but in this particular era even 3 Dog Night could sound like Ultimate Spinach under the proper circumstances. “Mama Told Me Not to Come?” Listen to those lyrics and it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize what kind of party mama warned against! “That cigarette you’re smoking is about to scare me half to death!”

Hmm, cigarette, eh?

Next Wednesday: Part 2 of Psychedelic Flashback: Trippin’ in Fantastic Galaxies with a look at other influential acid rockers, including Ultimate Spinach, Cactus, the Mike (Suzi’s brother) Quatro Jam Band, Genesis, PFM, Hot Tuna and Van der Graf Generator.

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Will there be profanity and adult themes? Oh, yes, and soon, very soon

“For fuck’s sake.”

Those three words were said moments ago for the untold number of times today; actually, well seventeen now. Why, you may ask? Why the fuck does anyone say why the fuck or for fuck’s sake? Because they have reached that wonderful dimensional zone where “gosh” and golly gee whiz” will no longer suffice.

I promised myself today I would work on “site management” which is a euphemism for fucking off rather than writing checks to pay bills that need to be paid but can easily be paid tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but not the day after the day after tomorrow. Once the new theme was implemented Saturday I realized that for reasons only known to code writers on crack the categories across the top felt more at home traversing below the header into the first post headline. I knew I was going to remove three categories anyway and earlier today I removed one that I foolishly believed would help me sell expensive antique furniture.

In Alabama?

All together:

“What the fuck?”

I also took my real estate site offline and purchased a new domain name at GoDaddy (and wave at Danica, who was too busy to wave back), which is where the cafe is protected from the myriad hordes of unhappy bastards who wanted to name their waitress-themed porno sites ROSENBUSH CAFE.

In a few weeks, when the chill will thaw everywhere except in the hearts of man, I will have The Henry Apartments, LLC as another site, just in time for the rental season. After much deep thought, which is another euphemism for “I’ll do that tomorrow” which lasted three years, I finally accepted that at some point potential tenants, or as is often the case, their parents, will visit the Cafe and before selecting my little apartment complex for their co-ed daughters or stillborn sons would decide to sample my bill of fare and piss themselves with my off the planet diatribes, intellectual felines and graphic profane musings guaranteed to unamuse those who possess no sense of humor, or are the target of the aforementioned denunciations, of all that annoys me which is roughly the size of the Western Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Anyone who visits this site knows that when I write in the Dadaist style of “automatic writing,” which is just another form of stream of consciousness, the word fuck will be the least of their worries. This is not a world war; however, I never take prisoners and execute anyone within the realm of my hostilities towards the carbon based life forms who agitate me deeply.

I take hatred into a transduction matter anti-matter microcosm where it is torn into little pieces and thrown into a cement mixer before being molded into outlaw art for a millisecond. With my focused energies and a disdain for prejudice, bigotry, mistreatment of gays and lesbians, abuse against women and children, daytime television, politicians, attorneys, judges, high-paid actors and actresses and sports retards who squander their wealth on cocaine and jewelry, religious fanaticism (I am in the Bible Belt which is worn too tight around over-stuffed bellies of the unwashed illiterate milieu) and a myriad of other societal ills, and with nary a care, opened a temporal warp, transported them all into a black hole where they are stretched beyond infinity before appearing galaxies away as infinitesimal displaced atoms and just in time to be sucked into a White Dwarf and disintegrated.

This was my afternoon.

Probably not too different from the average existential nilhist absorbing caffeine and chain smoking Danneman Sumatra Speciales to a degree where the smoke made my office look similar to a balmy London evening during the era of Jack the Ripper or Winston Churchill.

Suddenly, I thought, why is it dark outside?

Oh, right, nighttime.

The last time I took a coffee break it was daytime. It was cloudy and cold today so the sun was having her way with me while the femme fatale felines (Kitja, Katja, ShyGirl and PinkToo) watched the ferals standing in line at the outside office food bowls and while awaiting their turn to eat were pissing on unsuspecting tenant’s steel-belted radials.

One particular tenant, who shall remain nameless, but we’ll call him Buddy since so many people in the south have that moniker that it could be anyone within one mile of The Henri Villas, and who has stretched my patience in the similar manner of that Black Hole scenario where I sent 186,000 useless sentient beings to their much deserved doom at 4:36 p.m. Central Standard Time, must have no karma. The cats marked his car by pissing on two tires four times in three minutes.

Aaaah, I do so love cats.

I learned anti-social behavior growing up Jewish in a town where the KKK was still burning crosses in black neighborhoods and restaurants had colored and white sections. I recounted some months ago about getting chastised by a crew-cut white trash motherfucker in 1957 for drinking water from a “Colored Only” fountain. I realized early on that if I was going to survive the catfish-eating, Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking cultural cesspool that was the deep fried south of West Ala I would need to accept myself and insulate my brain from anti-Semites before it imploded.

And so I did. My tolerance for such behavior is somewhere north of nil and as I grow older I find myself less likely to make new friends in the town of my birth. Whew, worried there for a moment I might actually join a garden party or country club.

I worked, in the late 1970s, as a newspaper editor in such backwards parallel universes as Laurel, Mississippi; Boaz, Reform and Cullman, Alabama and Moncks Corner, South Carolina. How backwards you may inquire?

Boaz? A biblical name. In 1977 I was the only Jew in town and there was only one black family so I was outnumbered 5 to 1. Reform is pronounced REE FORM, not Reform and the locals will castigate you for mispronunciation with: “It ain’t Reform. It’s REE Form”

How intelligent to use a negative contraction to correct a newspaperman. Heh, heh.

Laurel, my second job, after Boaz, was the first time I actually wished nuclear fallout on an American city. There were eight Jews in Laurel, including my 89 year old landlady, who rented me a one-room apartment with a slanted floor. By slanted I felt like I was trapped in an M.C. Escher woodcut. The hatred I encountered was so bad that the day I lost my job the police department planned to bust me for possession of pot. Luckily, it was a dry period and I didn’t have any but naturally Detective S had access to plenty of mythical mind-fuck reefer since he smoked pot in his squad car. I was also in Hattiesburg, crying on my girl friend’s shoulder and enjoying getting stoned later with a bunch of biker friends who were never without drugs.

I loved those motorcycling demons.

Cullman was a Klan haven, yet for some reason I was never mistreated by the locals. I was, however, by my employers, one of whom was a Deacon in a Baptist Church and whose wife, my editor, had a phobia for such words a “delicious” and “beautiful” so they were banned from publication! All this and for $150.00 a week and I was hired as news editor but they always called me their “reporter boy.” See what a $28,000 Journalism and English BS degree would buy you in the late ’70s? Gas was under sixty cents a gallon, Variety was only 75 cents and today’s cost for 25 pounds of cat food would feed you for a week. My car was under $11,000!

And the college costs? Dear friends, $28,000 wouldn’t buy you two years at a junior college today, if there are any junior colleges still in existence.

The photographer was a gay grammar school teacher (no one cared then before the Conservative Christian sheep dip set took control) and one of the nicest guys I ever met as a journo. Although I am not homosexual, we would hang in gay and lesbian bars in Birmingham with the lesbian cocktail (she hated that term) waitress at the Birmingham Press Club. In those wonderful days, in the Magic City, there were still adult book stores and bars with delighful names: Gizmo’s and Mabel’s Beauty Shop and Chainsaw Repair! The straight bars were boring and let’s face it, most heteros are, too. “Hey baby, what’s your sign?”

Those were the days my friends we thought would never end, but they did.

Before Cullman, I was the editor of a newspaper in Eutaw (pronounced Utah, but without the Mormons), Ala, which was so bad I had to carry a .38 to work because of death threats from the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Council; how’s that for a paradox?) and was generally the only white person when covering the school board meetings. Talk about a role reversal of prejudice. The blacks I grew up with were not anti-white and were my friends but in Eutaw I was forever bombarded with white racial slurs so much so that I was once told I had a “white racist heart,” to which I replied to the lady that our hearts were the same color.

The next day I was followed home, down U.S. 11 by a gopher who pulled a .32 on me from his speeding Mark II Lincoln Continental. Mistake. My .38 was loaded with wad cutters and when he saw it out my driver’s side window he nearly crashed. The following morning I had to display my permit to the sheriff who was satisfied that I was in legal possession of a firearm. I won’t say it made me happier or safer but no one called me a racist anymore. A sad day when a small town newspaper editor has to carry a gun just to cover the news but that was 1979 in West Central Ala.

Moncks Corner, South Carolina. Aaah,such wonderful memories of the best and worst job of my twilight zone of a career in the Fourth Estate. Where else could one work while the FBI had four ongoing investigations into political corruption and still have plenty of other news to cover?

Such fun I had as a DEA Agent threw a bale of marijuana against my chest in the Frances Marion National Forest after a drug bust?

You could live two lifetimes and never even see a bale of pot from Aruba, South America much less spend a Sunday morning pulling dregs of supremely potent weed off your shirt front. The cops had the most fun and for all they confiscated and all the arrests, which included four SC Wildlife Officers, some local fuzz and politicians and a host of low level pushers, many lids kept showing up nine months later. It was not a surprise that the only media covering this event was me and a girl and videographer from a Charleston television station because when I arrived (ahead of the TV staffers) it was obvious the law enforcement officials had partaken in the booty.

Imagine surrounded by a group of heavily armed stoned uniformed officers from the Wildlife Department, Sheriff’s Department, DEA and Coast Guard (the drop off point was not too far from the Edisto River), all giggling like girls drinking the punch on prom night.

Funny, yet alarming.

I spent the afternoon scratching flesh off my legs from chigger bites and smoking my cotton shirt to alleviate the pain of the little blighters that would later fall off in a haze of a tightly pack bong bowl and succumb to the music of Steely Dan.

Now, 29 years later it still does my heart good to recall that several months later I came into possession of a nickel bag from the stash of 110 bales (22,000 pounds was never “recovered” and purportedly was on the streets of NYC days later) and realized after one toke why these cops were laughing so hard. I still laugh at the fact that not all of it made it to New York.

*Cough*

I received the “gift” one late Sunday night, while I sat alone in the office editing copy, from a friend in the school system. Long time before mandatory drug testing on everyone. Somewhere George Orwell is laughing his ass off, that is if his posterior followed him into the after life. He’s probably smoking a bowl of Intergalactic Pixie Dust right now reading this post from a comfortable vantage point in the ether.

So now you know more about me than you asked and past musings will only confirm I am a “supercilious slut.” I actually stole that line from an interview in American Film Magazine with silent film icon Louise (Pandora’s Box) Brooks. Well, maybe not a slut, like the Todd Rundren song: “S L U T, she may be a slut but she looks good to me,” but men rarely get called that so I will appropriate it now for the amusement and distress of readers who though this post was about how I was removing and relocating posts on this site.

And by the way of that introduction, I did begin that arduous process of reorganization. Gone is the apartment link and the antique group and by tomorrow Journalistic Jargon will again be just a stock expression in my lexicon of madness rather than the host for 57 stories, many of which had nothing to do with reporting or terminology.

Element: Goddesses grant me the serenity remain inspired in the face of adversity
Leitmotif: Dadaism spiced with an attitude of nefarious posturing
Primary goal: to alleviate migraine headaches through chemicals, caffeine and chocolate-coated salt peter

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Warning: the usual cynical themes and the profane ranting of an individual who believes absolutely nothing at face value and enjoys writing stuff that is off the planet, earth that is….

My morning started with a cat, Pink Martini, sitting on my chest and exclaiming, “Man, you talk some crazy shit when you are having nightmares.”

I had barely enough time to move before realizing my entire left side was paralyzed, that I was experiencing my first migraine of 2010 and that I had dreamed about an old dope-smoking friend from twenty plus years ago and how in the dream I swiped several joints from him of supremely potent Columbian and not from South Carolina, but South America.

I haven’t seen this dude since he was busted the third time for possession and hit the road rather than take the jail time. We’ll call him Steve, even though his name was Stephen(!) and I can only recount that I came within ten minutes of getting busted with him one cold winter’s night in 1989. It was the difference in taking a left turn rather than right and I will always thank the Goddesses of Chance for the fact I actually went the wrong way and got lost in one of the most dangerous sections of the Magic City.

So, I wake up and begin recalling the dream to Pink, while he shows his interest by licking his balls. I know how to captivate a feline’s inner muse.

There we sat, Steve, his girlfriend of that time, who we’ll call Leigh, although her name was Lee, who was one of those redneck babes who was a slightly masculine bi-sexual but surreally sensual. She was always armed and one could ever guess what she would say next while under the influence. Case in point, one night after Steve had crashed, she and I sat, smoking some herb and listening to Rush, who was her favorite group and if Neil Peart had dropped by looking for directions to the Interstate she would have tied him to the love seat and ravished his drum stick, when out of the proverbial left field offered:

“You know, more men wear women’s panties than you might suspect.”

Taking a toke, I replied, “Izzat a fact.”

I expected her to ask me if I had ever worn women’s underwear and I almost asked her for a pair for the 60 mile trip home but that was the end of that conversation!

Uh-huh. Maybe Steve wore her clothes although he never looked like the kind of guy who would look good in drag with his Fu-Manchu. I know that hasn’t stopped men from dressing up but it was typical of Leigh, who loved to drop unexpected gems into any conversation.

Her next sentence was about a lesbian friend who had attended a rock concert with her and how they were accosted by a foolish would-be rapist who they both beat senseless and held at gun point while they relieved him of his coin purse! Got to love these kinds of women. Her friend wanted to castrate him but Leigh implied they did a few less emasculating, but properly humiliating, fun things to him in the darkened alley where he made his futile attempt to be a dangerous man-fuck, concluding, “When we were through with this asshole he would think twice about pulling a .22 on two women packing 9 mils!”

Fuck me. She wasn’t kidding either.

There is an intrinsic camaraderie in this era when most everyone in South Side were either a doper or supplier of all things illicit and for every five dwellings with pot-smoking-acid-dropping-coked-up tenants there was at least one straight Christian with their middle finger on 911, ready to call the fuzz on their drug-infused neighbors.

Aaaaaah, those were the days.

Well, the dream had nothing to do with these real life incidents, but if was fun seeing the two of them again, even if it was a dream and Steve and Lee parted company a fuck load long time ago.

Madness seems to follow my dreams and I have inscribed my recent nightmares into a diary called: “Hell Basket.” On the morning of January 14th I awoke from a particularly enthusiastic hypnagogic state to scribble incoherently, “Hell basket for ‘aw, hell, not again.’”

Dupa volova.

Look it up, it’s Ukrainian. Oh, no Ukrainian translations guide? Lazy fuckers. It means ‘cow’s ass.’ Next time, I won’t be so forthcoming so go out and get your own U-E trans guide.

So, here I am, vacationing on the shores of Hypnos, Planet Thanatos, wondering why I suddenly dream about people I once hung with but not for a very long time and then I realize how truly blessed I am to be mad. Not insane or angry just Barmy.

Pink finally finishing licking himself, looked up and mewed: “So that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

and just like that, the migraine ran away, afraid i’d make it wear women’s panties….

I neither condone nor criticize the smoking of marijuana and viewers of this documentary who are not regular pot smokers may experience a contact high. This is normal so don’t freak out just have plenty of munchies available. Some viewers will find the documnetary bias but whether it is one-sided or bullshit, watching the blond journo Nicky getting stoned, paranoid and acting foolish is a high point! Guess she forget this is some of the most power reefer on the Planet Earth. You will also notice how much better people sound ripped with British accents. And how about Bowie, the coffee shop cat?! Puffing Meow. Let’s face it, nobody in the world rolls better jays than these people.

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Journalist Nicky Taylor travels to Amsterdam to investigate the growing debate about the legal classification of cannabis. The British journo has taken on everything from binge drinking and plastic surgery to not washing for six weeks and in this doc helps out in a coffee shop selling cannabis to discover first hand its effects on daily life.

Can you go mad?

Is pot worse than alcohol?

Is it stronger today than in past years?

What about the genetically modified cannabis skunk?

Does Cannabis prohibition work?

Nicky takes part in a month-long medical trial to find out “Should I Smoke Dope?”