Freewrite 8/15/09

by | Aug 15, 2009 | Poems, Poetry

I’m sitting on a 3.99 plastic Wal-Mart chair
on a concrete balcony
on the third floor of a Courtyard motel
in Eastern North Carolina
watching rainbows smear the asphalt
across the parking lot
as oil and water play stubborn
through the summer thunderstorm.

I’m drinking a lukewarm Miller Lite trying not to notice
the fat woman testing the superstructure of her halter top
and the suspension of her ’93 Yellow Geo Tracker.
Her flip-flops thwack-splish thwack-splish
across the parking lot looking for a vacancy
and maybe a little shelter from the storm.

I put a little Jessica Lea Mayfield on the in-room iPod rig
and prop my bare feet up on the wet wrought iron railing,
letting the dog-daily 4 o’clock shower
wash 300 miles off my tired feet.

A dragonfly wanders by for a sip of my beer.
I share.
He doesn’t drink much, but it looks like enough
’cause he flies off in a meandering besotted path
beating his wings in time to the music
and dancing between the raindrops.

That’s kinda what the last half of my week was like. I put in somewhere around 1,500 miles from Sunday to Friday, and had more than one project crisis to deal with along the way. All in all it was the kind of week that you’re really happy to see the back side of. So now that I’m looking at the back side of it, we’ll see if there’s any ammunition for stories or poems in there.

Taking applications for wingman/woman

by | Aug 9, 2009 | Music

So last night I found myself in a somewhat familiar situation of late, I wanted to go see a concert and Suzy didn’t want to go with me. Since I don’t really have a designated wingman in these situations, I took the comp tickets I had to the Avett Brothers show and went by myself. I was pleasantly surprised when I got there to see that my free tickets were next to my friends Gillian and Douglas, so at least I had someone to chat with between sets.

BTW, I’m taking applications for wingman. There’s a lot of good music out there, and Suzy and my sister don’t always wanna go. Lemme know if you’re in.

Regardless, this was supposed to be the album release/homecoming party for the Avett Boys, but label things/tour and tweaking caused the record to be pushed back another month. So all the folks that bought tickets got a coupon for a free download of a live EP from the show and a free poster. The show didn’t sell out, looked like it was about 5,000 strong by the time the Avetts took the stage, but there were plenty of seats available. The boys had a good time, playing some old favorites and about half a dozen tracks off the new album, too.

This was the first time I’d seen the Avetts with a drummer. The drummer for the album came out and played on a bunch of the more rock n’ roll songs with them, and it added a ton to the sound. Having a full drum kit backing up the band was a huge adder in my opinion, and something I hope they will keep in the future.

I like everything I’ve heard off the new album, but I can see where some of the long-time fans are going to have issues. There’s a lot more straight-up rock songs, and the sound is a little more poppy. There’s a lot less of Scott on banjo in the new songs, and more electric bass and drums. I think it’s a good move, as it will broaden the band’s appeal to a wider audience, but it’s gonna piss off some people. Of course, it’s impossible to change anything without pissing somebody off, so fuck ’em. As long as the boys are having a good time and writing killer songs they’ll be just fine.

Anyway, the video below is from last night. I didn’t shoot it, just embedded off YouTube.

Vegas plans – December

by | Aug 7, 2009 | Vegas, Writing

Now that the lovely April has confirmed the annual degenerate’s poker tourney at Caesar’s Palace for 12/12/09, it’s time to lock in those Vegas plans! Now I booked a room for Suzy and I at the MGM Grand a while back, and got what I thought was a pretty good deal – $149/night with an all-day buffet pass for each person in the room. That works out to be at least $100/day worth of free food, so in essence we’re staying at the MGM Grand for $50/night!

I know, I won’t be eating all my meals there, but I can certainly schedule my life so that I’m eating most of them at the MGM buffet, and even if it just covers breakfast and one other meal for Suzy and I each day, that still covers at least $50-60 per day. Plus after our trip last December, we swore we weren’t staying at fleabags anymore. So sorry, IP, I must depart for softer beds and better food choices.

So we’re going to arrive on Thursday, party like rock stars for several days, and head back to the CLT on Monday. Now I had a crazy idea, or more to the point the vivacious Betty had an idea, that maybe we could find a place to set up tables and sell/sign our books at some point over the course of the weekend. Then I got to thinking, there have been a bunch of books published (or in the process of being published) by our blogger brethren and sistren over the past couple of years. So here’s the question – would any of the other bloggers that have published books in the past year or two like to go in on a reception area for a couple of hours? You know who you are, lemme know if you’re interested in a concerted joint book-pimpage.

Then afterwards we drink like college kids. Of course we do that anyway. See you in December!

Decisions, Decisions

by | Aug 7, 2009 | Writing

I was at the beginning of a long, drawn-out post on whether or not to start writing chapters of a book on sales here or keep this as a more focused fiction/poetry blog, when I remembered something April once told me. I think her words were “It’s your blog. Fuck ’em if they don’t like it.”

See? We don’t just like her because she’s really cute. With good shoes.

So there will be some stuff coming in the next few weeks about how to sell things. If you like it, read it. If you sell stuff and find it helpful, great. If not, oh well, there will continue to be poetry, fiction and random stories from my life floating around as well.

And one day I might get the chance to play poker again and have something there worth writing about. Maybe.

Houseboat Blues, Part 2

by | Aug 6, 2009 | Fiction

It was some time after anything that could be considered early morning, so the boys decided to forego breakfast, rummaging through the economy-size cooler in the lower levels of the houseboat to find a pack of brats to grill up. John Roy manned the grill, Joe Don being barred from anything having to do with fire after the unfortunate fart-lighting incident that cost John Roy his favorite sofa a couple years ago. The brats were nearing the perfect mix of plump and sizzly when Joe Don called down from the roof of the houseboat.

“Hey! Car comin’!”

“I can see that from here, dumbass. Can you tell who it is yet?”

“No. Car’s all I can see.”

“Well, that ain’t gonna be nothin’ good.” Nobody John Roy was interested in talking to drove a car. Unless you count a hearse, and with all the jackin’ up Elvis had done to his hearse, it was more Gravedigger than anything a real-life undertaker would be driving, so it most likely didn’t count. John Roy’s suspicions were furthered when the Mercedes S-Class sedan pulled up in front of the houseboat in a cloud of red Georgia dust.

The door opened and a shapely leg extended, followed by the rest of an equally shapely woman in her late thirties. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she wore rimless glasses that gave John Roy a few unfortunate Sarah Palin fantasies and he tried to still the stirrings in his cutoff shorts as he wiped bratwurst grease on his apron as he approached the woman.

“Hey there. Somethin’ I can help you with?” John Roy extended his hand, but the woman just looked at it hanging there like a hopeful trout, and after a minute he put it in the pocket of his shorts.

“Are you John Smith?” the woman asked, looking at an envelope in her hands.

“Yes ma’am. John Roy Smith IV, at your service.” He sketched a rough bow, punctuated with a flourish of his grillin’ fork that came within an eyetooth of puncturing the woman’s impressive bosom. She jumped back and uttered a little squeal, startling John Roy, who lost his balance mid-bow and had to correct a little to keep from sprawling in the dirt.

“Ahem, yes. Mr. Smith, my name is Cynthia Johnson-Martin and I am an associate with Martin, Beckwood, Averett and Vincent from Memphis.”

“Woooo, Memphis. That’s a long way away. You must be tired from all that travelling. Why don’t you come on over here and set a spell. Joe Don! Throw me a beer for the lady.” He yelled over his shoulder. Joe Don tossed a PBR in a perfect spiral to land in John Roy’s outstretched palm.

“Hey, asshole! This here’s a lady! She needs a glass, too!” Joe Don followed the beer with a vintage Burger King Star Wars glass featuring Princess Leia in her slave girl costume. John Roy had a complete set of eight of these glasses. But only the ones with Leia on them, because in his words, all the rest of them Star Wars dudes were homos. Except R2D2, he was kinda cool. John Roy poured the beer into the glass and tossed the empty up onto the deck of the boat as he steered the woman into one of his webbed lawn chairs.

“There, that’s better. Now, what can I do for you? You wanna brat? They’re almost done.” John Roy was at his most solicitous, somewhat concerned that this woman was here to serve him with divorce papers from the temperamental Erlene. He didn’t remember marrying Erlene, exactly, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d ended up in court over something he couldn’t remember doing.

“No thank you, Mr. Smith. Now, as I mentioned, I am with the firm of Martin, Beckwood, Averett and Vincent in Memphis. I am here to inform you that you have been named a beneficiary in the estate of your grandfather, John Roy Smith, Jr. Our firm had handled Mr. Smith’s affairs for some time now, and with his passing last month we are now dealing with the final dispensation of his assets.”

“Wow. Well, I sure do hate that you came all the way out here for nothin’, but my Grandaddy died before I was born, so I’m afraid I ain’t the John Roy Smith IV you’re looking for. Too bad, I coulda used some beneficiary-in’. As you can see, we done seen better days ‘round here.”

The woman took a long look around the dry lakebed, the houseboat, the fraying lawn chairs and the grill with its feet mired in what once was the bottom of a lake, and couldn’t help but agree.