MICROS AGAIN

 

Anyway, so once again, dipping my toes into the Micro Novel Pool. I was scrolling down the blogs to see the first time I'd done one of these only to discover I'd never actually done Micro novels on the blog 'til the last blog. Sweet Jesus, I must have started those on MySpace, or Facebook Notes, or some similar sinking ship......

As such I'm kicking off with an oldie. This is one of my favorites.

EXISTENTIALISTS AGAINST NEUROPATHY

A Micro Novel 

Neil tore across the second floor hallway. “Fuck this shit,” he roared, “I’ll take on all comers!!!!” He flung himself headlong down the stairs. It was a good day to be alive.

The rest are new:

FIVE STUPID TURKEYS DROWNING IN THE RAIN

A Micro Novel

It wasn't a move of great intellect, but you had to give me points for ambition as I scaled the levels of the queen to access that small stack of glass bowls & then lost my footing and went careening to the floor....careening? Carombing? Either way it was one helluva rush....the glass bowls went carombing (carooming, maybe?) off to the side and I think they may have broken....to make things worse the plastic pitchers rained down on me, bonk, bonk, bonk, all off my noggin.

Monique picked me up with her strong, sturdy arms and sat me up, asking if I was okay. I tried to be all nonchalant & I may have been concussed. Mild concussion, maybe? Yeah, I think so.

“I'll have to figure that out later,” I told her, “I think my brain's in the butter right now.” And I laughed & she laughed & we kissed.

REVALATION ACCORDING TO CHARLES

A Micro-Pseudo-Gospel

Some rank amateur on AM Radio callously supposed one day we as a species might all blow ourselves to Kingdom Come in a nuclear war, well, buddy, that's my reality day in day out, no joke. Every morning me and my brother strap on our power packs and head out the door with our ray guns and we spend all day firing nuclear rays at people and objects. I mean, we clock in, power up the guns, spend the whole day skulking around the ruins shooting rays and then, after about a twelve hour day we punch our cards and go home, eat beef stew, etc. Rough days. The apocalypse is really that banal.

You should see the shopping centers. They're in warehouses that are only open two or three hours a day---randos set up stalls as they can grab them and everyone gets to haggle over what's left. One guy had a couple of lobsters. Real, according to Hoyle lobsters. I've already got a battalion of testy ocelots. I don't need any pets. Someone needed lobsters, though, I'll betcha. Someone always needs something.

They have upside down bowling alleys, it's nut, I don't know how they do it. The lanes are all on the ceiling, they're all lined with blue and white neon. Folks are up there in the middle of everything, rolling balls around, knocking over pins that fall up. I dunno....anti-gravity fields, or something.

I have seen the future, skeezix, and you're not gonna like it.  

GURVITZ (An introduction)

A Micro Overture

About eight cars from two towns, plus the feds, pulled up outside the bungalow. Right away it felt like no place anyone actually lived.

We'd all taken our places by the cars and hadn't yet gotten our shit together when people started moving out the front door---the perp, on his knees, pushed forward by Gurwitz and the other kid, what was his name? Nally. Gurwitz, I mean, right from the outset, is pistol whipping the guy, and it's terrible. You're not going to get a confession out of a guy if you knock all the stuffing out his noggin, and Christ forbid his damn lawyer's on the scene, right?

But Gurwitz keeps pistol whipping the guy, and the guy almost seems to be laughing at the whole thing......stunned, I guess, maybe concussed. Nally's not doing a goddamn thing, he's coming down the steps with his arms at his sides, watching the whole thing. Anyways, so there's this whole pull-apart and they cuff the guy and start reading him his rights, and as far as I can tell he was lucid enough to understand it....everyone kept having to hold Gurwitz back and he collapses into a pile, weeping like a baby, and he just keeps saying, “the bodies, all the bodies, Jesus Christ, the bodies”...

So we went inside.

Copyright 2020, Molotov Editions   

That last one is to be continued, obviously. You'll see.

     The rest of the year, obviously, is dedicated to finishing two books. Seeya on the flip, assuming we don't all die. Screw it----it don't matter....

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

1. MO' HEVY CRUD: THE SEQUEL STRIKES BACK (comp)

2. TRICK OR TREAT: MUSIC TO SCARE YOUR NEIGHBORS-Vintage 45s from Lux & Ivy's Basement

3. ALICE COOPER-PARANORMAL

4. SNFKR (homemade comp) 

JEZEBEL'S WIG (A Caustic Lament)

1. I'd gotten tired of peoples' expectations, which is to say everyone expected me to get over it, and none of them would have settled for my dirty shoes on a bet. They're soiled; they're venal. I'm white napkins on spiffy tables. And I know they want to railroad me.

“Deal with it,” she says, and he eyes are all gethsemane, e.g. don't pass this cup under me, Dad.

I grow weary of explaining these things.

Bustling multitudes of walking, phlegm-blasting, yellowjacket casualties ghost over the desert and beat on Jerusalem's door. They're carted off to well-wishing and tea on 18-wheel hearses of sad glory and obligatory fish fountains.

She readjusts her interchangeable coiff and that makes her blonde this week. She likes being a blonde. She excels at being a blonde.

The bodies stink around her, but even in the puke-and-piss-mired nightfall she retains a kind of infernal, unflagging stature. She'll burn all the bridges she must to get her heap of flapjacks. All others be damned, she is the Quintessential Entropy Device.

(Here it should be noted my Better looks over my shoulder and prods me, reminding me of the danger involved when one objectifies an individual as a “Device”. I hawk an erudite loogie and continue)

She rides in state among the festering carnage, trying to be subtle as she pulls up a stocking.

2. There are too many Bathroom Gods wielding ball peen hammers to impress the compulsions of the weak. We need renovations.

Give me strange dogs, a la Bunuel and Dali. Throw it all out in the open. Give me the primal play of a baby's eye. Give me nails and tacks in technicolor.

Give me irresponsible rhetoric and action—only through unreasonable maneuvers can one hope to subvert the zeitgeist.

Give me a piss-and-vinegar outlook and a mask, a cap and a burlap bag so I might be a burglar of th latent mind. Give me actions above and beyond the deadweight of conscience and consequence.

Give me a horrific effigy god with a blunt barbecue tree stump snout. This deity will be the last word in terror. So terrible that he causes mean-spirited little men to weep in supplication and reconsider their paths in life.

Give me a crew of soaked miscreants too get drunk, ridiculous and sentimental with while oldsters in traditional lederhosen honk on alpine horns and batter accordions with percussive, padded cell furor.

Give me the raw of the movie stripped past the mind's vain distinctions of time and place, revert personage back to archetype, subtle aberrations of nuance and characterization to the most base level of grunting moral and skeletal campfire yarn.

Give me a life without apologies, a clear, uncut conscience not hampered by the nervous tremors of Should.

Give me a premature, hereditary widow's peak. Give me the best thighs on the regional poetry scene after she gets done fucking his image off her body. Give me the knife of her words to twist hard. It's the only defense I have left.

Give me a quaint coastal town, the platonist dream, the dullard standard of a writer's paradise, to strafe and raze and obliterate along with its entire population of fishermen, franco-american blue collar yobbos and yuppie tranquility fiends. What sane scribe can write in paradise?

Give me the ability to piss on a tiara and get past all of this.

'96 or '97, early days in Fayetteville, I think. Never published.

Copyright 2020, C.F. Roberts/Molotov Editions

OLD MAN DELPRETE

Another chunk of the “Brookdale Mythos” or “Brookdale Cycle”, here....this one is more or less a kind of “Prequel” to my novel, HELLO, UGLY, taking place in the '60's. Old Man Delprete is kind of a peripheral “character” in the book in that the teenagers who are the main characters bust into what, according to urban legend, is an old, abandoned “murder house”, wherein they find sheets over a lot of the old furniture and they party, socialize, wear the sheets and run around acting like ghosts....they drink a toast to Old Man Delprete, the historic murderer the urban legends are all based around.

This is Old Man Delprete's story.

In the act of compiling short stories for two collections I've decided to drop this one from the list (so I'm putting it here). Reason one is that whenever I revise HELLO I'm probably dropping the section in the Delprete House...it's excessive and heavy-handed and I don't think it adds anything of substance to the story. So “OMD” ends up with less of a context. I also have my doubts as to how well the story, as a whole, “works”...kind of overwritten, and I'm not too sure the multipart, multivoice structure functions well, particularly the kind of dark folk ballad sections---you could tell I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave at the time. Does it work? You tell me....

Nothing earth-shattering went into the guts of this---a little Faulkner here, a little Bloch there, some Selby frosted over the top----the “cake” of it all is my interest in the case of John List, and if you don't know who he is, you should look him up. It's an interesting case and I'm not gonna say anything else.

Oh---yeah---because you can't take such things for granted these days, the “N” word gets used in this story. Sorry, I'm not taking it out. This character's entire motivation is his fear of all the change and social upheaval around him....that's the way he thinks and that's the word he uses. I'm not in the habit of self-censoring for the Politically Dainty, so rather than engage in mealy-mouthed apologetics

I'm doubling down. The word stays. I don't think I should have to lecture you lot like a goddamned grade school teacher but evidently these days you need to preface everything because everyone's like a goddamn child.

And get offa my lawn.

Anyway, enough ranting. Here's “Old Man Delprete”.

OLD MAN DELPRETE

I

Old Man Delprete sits with his wife and two sons in the basement sitting room he has constructed for them. He leans forward in his easy chair and scowls at the television set. His boy Liston once again failed to beat that uppity, loudmouthed commie nigger who'd claimed he was a Muslim rather than fight for his country. Disgrace, yes, a disgrace. And funny business, as far as he could see. That wasn't any kind of a punch. Dirty Italian Mafia Fixers, no doubt---anyone could see the Mafia were in cahoots with the Commies. They ran everything now----ran the U.S. Mail, ran all the shows in Atlantic City, for sure. Just as well, he figures. If this were the old days he'd have most likely gone down to Sully's and shot his mouth off. Old Man Delprete isn't much for going out these days---more content to stay home with the family and watch it all go to hell from the basement.

Still, it's a disgrace about Clay, or whatever it is he's going to call himself now, and he tells his wife so. No reply. No reply needed. She's smiling and she understands. He loves her so much. And the boys. Perfect young men.

Old Man Delprete sits back and reflects upon the ominous state of the world. Portent, he believes the word is. It's different from the old days. Can't tell who your neighbors are. Crime. Immorality. Widespread acceptance of Communism.

Where are our values going? Old Man Delprete asks himself this a lot.

But a man shouldn't dwell on the negatives, he supposes, but instead look on his fortune and thank the Lord for simple things. Home. Family. The things that have real meaning.

Old Man Delprete thinks this and smiles at his wife. He looks at her, closely. Something's wrong.

II

The obsidian cloud settle over the small town of Brookdale. Visitation of the evil and the madness O woe O day O woe to little Brookdale. The shadows clutch n drown poor little Brookdale.

The grass grow long an a monster keeps his little hell in Brookdale. The secret cloaked in a decayin paint on a quiet little street in Brookdale.

III

Old Man Delprete takes a walk over to his workbench and looks for the needed instruments---oh, he must heal his wife---the larger ones----no, he needs the finer ones.

A few minutes later he returns to the sitting room and heals his wife. Magic. The magic of love. He touches up her face, the perfect shade of red, replenishes her winning smile...

Much better.

IV

Mabel Watson put down her teacup. She thought about the friends she'd known all her life, those she'd grown up and gone to school with, how it seemed that all moved away a long time ago. No jobs in Brookdale. No life in Brookdale. Honey, thjis town just isn't going anywhere. It'll die where it is right now.

Even young Agnes had stopped coming over to play Rummy, like she used to.

Mabel's son and daughter said they wanted to move her into a rest home. They said they'd been worried about her.

Terrible. Locking her in a rest home.

She thought about looking for Irv out in the back yard and calling him in for lunch. Then she remembered that, of course, there was no point to that. Irv had been dead for at least five years.

Maybe ten.

Could you blame a girl for getting lonely? And now all this business with the rest home. Just look at the way all her old friends had moved away, as had her children---so long ago.

Even young Agnes had stopped coming over to play Rummy, like she used to.

V

Enter the Electric Man.

Christ, thinks the Electric Man stalking through tall grass headed round back the house to read the meter, don't these people ever mow the lawn?

Finally he finds the meter next to the window and takes the reading

Job done the Electric Man turns to go one stray bored eye peering casually in the basement window

Storefront display

What the----?

VI

Horror, freezing cold, digs deep into Old Man Delprete. It was there. He's sure, this time. Again. The phantom. The pervert. Peeping.

The face. The face in the window.

God almighty, a man and his family aren't safe in their own home anymore.

Old Man Delprete frowns, grimaces with iron resolve.

--I will not, he screams, will not lie down to the decay the immorality swallowing America---they can't do this to me!

Gun

VII

The Electric Man doubles over and weeps.

VIII

The children in the schoolyard loiter and talk.

--Yeah we went downa the cranberry bog yesterday tryin to catch some frogs. Didn't find any.

--Aw, man, the cranberry bog? Down by Delpretes?

--Yeah, An' what about it? Ain't nobody lives down there.

--I hear Old Man Delprete still lives down there.

--Oh he died years ago.

--You mean 'e's a ghost?

--Naw, I don't mean 'e's a ghost. Grow up, will ya? All I'm sayin' is there ain't no Old Man Delprete an' he's just dead, he ain't no boogeyman in his cave, stewin' kids, is all.

---That house is empty an' has been for years. Ain't no Old Man Delprete, he was just this old fart moved away a long time ago.

---Scary house, though.

--Pshaw!

IX

Old Man Delprete finds the pervert cowering by the side of the house. Grovelling. Drooling.

Aims, fires. Justice is dispensed.

X

The boys gather 'round Sully's after work for a few rounds of beer.

--Well, sighs Levesque, godda go back to the missus before she starts suspectin' . Round of laughter from the boys.

--Ah, Levesque, chuckles Thibodeau, ya Missus is in good hands. Another round of laughter. I gotcher Missus right here.

---Seeya. Hi to the wife. Etc.

More drinking. Talking. Reminiscing. The boys grow a little older and smile. They are the old boys of Brookdale. Pushin' for that pension. Every night work. Every day Sully's. They are comfortable. Waiting to die.

--Ah, says LaPierre, ain't the same. Alla good people, the ole folks, movin' outta town...

--Ain't what it used to be.

--Nope.

--Know what we could use around here? Asks Old Jean.

--Some life, cracks Thibodeau.

--We could use ole Delprete.

--Ah, go on.

--No, no! Hear me out!

--Get outta here. Delprete was a crazy old cuss.

--He was one of the boys! An' lemme tell you he had some life in him...

--All Delprete ever did was go on an' on about this'n'that'n'the world goin' to hell an' such.

--Here, here.

--Delprete was a bore. An' he only got worse after his taxidermy business went under. Went buggy. Good riddance.

--No, no! Says Old Jean. Ain't nobody could replace Delprete...ya may have disagreed with his grumpy ass on the time of day, but you remember every conversation you ever had with him, yeah?

--Can ya believe this?!

--Ain't nobody could replace Delprete, nobody. Look at alla you, ya deadasses, you go from here to there an' back again. Whaddya do, huh? Whaddya do? Delprete, he was a character....

---Ah, go on....

XI

Old Man Delprete manages to weigh down the Electric Man using cinderblocks from the cellar. The cranberry bog sucks him down.

XII

A hole opened up where a life once was, and a name, a tiny world, is blotted out in Brookdale.

Ravens in heir solemn ritual pace dropping roses down 'round Brookdale's shame....

XIII

Legend.

The children for generations will ring their laughing, dancing plague circles round, chant the grisly legend of Old Man Delprete.

The stories vary. The number of victims shift. The misdeeds grow and distort and intensify in Legend.

XIV

Old Man Delprete sits and beams at his fine family. Agnes smiling, starry-eyed. The boys now perfect young men. Steadfast. Tall.

When things get too much, one must fight. There are very few things in this world that are of lasting importance. A man must defend and protect those that matter. Nothing must come between a man and his home, his family.

Sometimes, one has to make the hard decisions. One must sacrifice. Sometimes harsh measures must be followed in order to teach those who might make wrong turns, so that they might eventually pursue the right course. He has no doubt about that now.

Old Man Delprete frowns thoughtfully. He figures he ought to tend to the lawn.

Maybe later. It seems to be one of those things he always puts off. Maybe later.

Thooming raps on the front door upstairs. Damned IRS. Best to just ignore it.

XV

cranes in the cranberry bog. The yellow line. Brookdale opens its eyes and screams at its face takes up the mask nails it to its face in terror, never to remove it again.

Smash the mirror, little Brookdale.

XVI

In the tiny room Old Man Delprete sits frail in the wooden chair and he smiles a nervous smile. A parade of men walk in and out.

It all frightens him a little bit.

He asks when he might be allowed to go back to his family.

XVII

A tiny, hunched and humble man crosses the threshold on a gray horizon and shuffles into myth.

copyright 1992 C.F. Roberts,

2019 Molotov Editions

“Old Man Delprete” was picked up and run by a zine out of Maine called GOTHICA. Don't know what ever became of it----the editor, who's apparently one more person from back then who just dropped off the face of the earth, ran a couple of things of mine---she respected me as a writer although for some bizarre reason we never got along. A lot of it may have been our different approaches to the word “Gothic”, which to her meant Anne Rice----to me it meant The Sisters of Mercy and the Cure, or on a literary angle, Goethe, the Bronte Sisters, et. al. So we didn't necessarily get off on the right foot...she always perceived us, for some inexplicable reason, as being diametrically opposed on some ethical or philosophical level. Even her glowing mention of me in editorials were undercut by bizarre little “digs”. Hey, my ethics and philosophies amounted to this: I'm just some fucking guy who writes stories.

However, the lady was kind enough to publish me in her mag, and she also supported a good many writers I knew who were worthy of the attention. So wherever she may be, hats off to her.

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

THE KINKS-Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

FAITH NO MORE-King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime

FAITH NO MORE-Angel Dust

CIRCA MID '90S

THAT'S HOW THEY GETCHA

and so i'm slamming away on the
assembly line packing books in
boxes--i've got it down to a system,
now--fitting in configurations of five
like clockwork--it took me a while
to get the hang of it but here i am
slogging away for the next three
hours---wiley is falling behind after
showing me a few useful tricks and
i'm impressed by my increasing level of success--
--rat in the proletarian maze of industry,
hammering away on pointless activities run
by a clock---it gets boring, naturally,
so i turn it into a private game,
exceeding wiley's progress and as i get better
and better i'm thinking, i've gotcha,
wiley, you old fart, i've really
gotcha, i'm catching up to your slow
old ass--then i realize, hell, i'm
a rube of the first order--i fell
for the game, hook, line and
dead brain cells--that's how you
become a cog in their machine;
that's how they getcha.



HOW CHRISTIAN OF YOU!

the graffiti in the bathroom
read, "let God show you fuckin'

fags the way home...
                               ...Hell"




WHY I HATE TV TALK SHOWS

the bleachers are packed with a greek chorus
of screeching baboons and barking dogs
exercising loud righteous indignation,
braying hellacious disapproval and
otherwise passing judgment on guests who
look differently, act differently, dress
differently, raised some hell, broke some
rules, fucked someone, killed someone,
dared to do ANYTHING
            but stay home and watch TV.




Copyright 1995, 1996, 2018 Molotov Editions

         In my last several months in Nashua, NH I was living in this slum for about $100 a week. I had quit my 14 year hotel job in a 3-month master plan to cash in my 401(k) and relocate to Arkansas. In the months while I was waiting for that money to get cut loose I was frequenting this fly-by-night temp agency around the corner, who would bus us all out to this book binding plant in Westford, Mass. They paid you by the day and a neighborhood bar down the street would cash the checks. After I left the state my Mom told me that agency had folded up as if it were never there. No huge surprise. These poems are some of my output from around that time.



THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
STARCRAWLER-S/T
OMD-DAZZLE SHIPS
COM TRUISE-ITERATION

The Fault in Bodie's Stars and Other Wrongdoings

Been working, off and on, with several novels-or-novellas-in-progress...the one that seems to be picking up steam is INDIGO. These passages concern the character of Bodie Lewis----think of him as the Robert Cohn character-----not to compare INDIGO to THE SUN ALSO RISES, but just looking for a butt-of-all-life's-bad-jokes thumbnail to roll with. Enjoy or whatever.

 I'm not sure I like Bodie. I like him but I don't.

As the get-together (I'm loathe to call it a “party”) wears on I hear him in the other room and he's in a heated discussion with this girl---I don't know who she is. She'd been having a loud conversation earlier about pheromones---how you give off a pheromone when you're involved with someone and people are attracted to you---you can't beat suitors away with a stick. When you're single, however----and apparently this relates to the fact that she'd broken up with her boyfriend---you can't give it away-----nobody's interested. Again, the mystery of pheromones.

Maybe there's something to all this jargon, I dunno. It imposes too many tacit rules and suppositions for my blood. You just need to be careful what you lay out there in front of Bodie, though, because now he's trying to get his foot in the door and it's not a pretty tableau.

“You said you can't give it away, right? I look at you, I look at me, I see two nice people who should just cut the shit and try being happy, you know? What's wrong with being happy?”

“I know, but, y'know.....no.”

“Come on!”

“You're just not my type, dude, no offense, just, y'know.....that's life! Oh well.”

“ 'Oh well', what the fuck's that supposed to mean?!”

“That's life, man, you just move on. S'not a big deal.”

“It's not a big deal for you, you can just shrug your shoulders and forget about it! I'm stuck here with this shit forever!”

“Yeah....maybe you are. I gotta go, dude.....”

Yeah, Bodie, maybe you are.

Eventually we all head down to the University Computer Lab, shanghai some terminals and fart around on the net. So we're all sitting at various points in the lab separate and yet gloriously together. Crazy Ed is in Goth Chat under a female persona then he cybers with some guy who thinks he's a 16-year-old hottie. He busts the third wall and scares the hell out of the guy. No one ever hears from him again.

Some guy from a Christian Chat site comes in and starts preaching at us, haraguing us, telling us we're all evil and going to hell. Why? I don't know-----because we like The Cure or some other nebulous reason. This prompts a mass exodus to the Christian Chat site where we heckle everybody there. Some cat calling himself Count Othmar starts calling himself “The Lion of the Tribe of Shecky”, which is a hoot and a half.

Bodie tries cybering with a whole slew of girls and they all laugh him off the net. He slams the table and leaves the lab in disgust, probably to the joy of several kids who are around waiting to work on their papers or do research. Life is tough.

The rest of us are there entirely too long. When we leave the lab it's early morning. The sun's not up, yet, but the night birds are scaring up one helluva racket. I'm almost sober again, and that just will not do.

                                                                    ***

    Bodie gets up and delivers some long, pompous, anal-retentive preamble about “intellectual property”, and how, if you relate something he said it's very important to tell people, even if all he said was a comment about the weather, that “Bodie Lewis said that,” that this is just as important as telling people “Bram Stoker said X” or that “ee cummings said x”. And by the point where folks are catcalling Bodie to get on with it we've all been appraised of how important all of this is to Bodie.

When the poem comes around it's a lot of rhymey doggerel about feeling one particular woman's “hot breath” on his neck (which he has never felt, obviously) and describing the look and feel of her legs (which he has also obviously never felt or seen)----the mystery woman is never mentioned by name, but I imagine it's Bessie.

                                                                   ***

                   “You really like that one girl, huh?” Says Bodie, and I'm getting a distinctly creepy, polluted vibe off him.

“Do what, now?” I don't look up at him, which is a more and more frequent occurrence in my interactions with Bodie. I can smell him, though, from the doorway. He smells like jerky, hotdogs, Budweiser, stale BO and stale, jizzed-in, unwashed underwear.

“That one girl,” he says. “I don't know her name.”

I choose not to fill in the blank for him.

“You're a cuck,” he tells me, a hint of practiced contempt in his voice.

“Do what, now?”

“I'm a MGTOW,” he says, with what I imagine to be a kind of subdued pride.....I misunderstand him at first and think he says, “I'm Big Now.”

“Proud of ya,” I offer.

“It means I'm a Man Going My Own Way,” he elaborates, correcting what I'd initially inferred. “I don't need women to make me happy. My eyes are open. I've taken the Red Pill.”

My first comeback to “I don't need women to make me happy” might be to respond, “Bodie, how do you know?” But I guess that would be mean.

“You know, that girl you like, she'll dump you. You know, that's what they do.” He repeats it, as if he's trying to implore me to listen. “That's what they do.”

“Nice to see you've got that figured out,” I shoot back.

“I do,” he says. “I see it all the time. It's my world. It always will be.”

“I don't doubt you're right.”

“Yeah,” he says, in a quieter voice. Whatever's going on in the next room draws him away, where I imagine he'll tell everyone out there he's big, now, and that he's taking red pills. He's no longer trying to pry Gayla's name from me, so....the desired effect.

*********************************************************************************

As of this writing I've got my irons in a few fires.....first and foremost “The Abbey of the Lemur” is BACK!!!! This is our first show since 2014 and we're hitting a string of milestones....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6OwLCpJ-0s

        This is the first-ever episode of the show where we embrace cellphone technology. The centerpiece for “Lemurs at Monte Ne” (the 15 minute video of our trip to the ruins at Monte Ne) was all shot on my phone. It's not great video, by any stretch, but it's one more stab at putting the production and dissemination of art and culture in the hands of whoever wants to do it.

It also marks the first appearance with written sketches of our little friends, the Devil Goats, since their brief origin in 2014's “The Megalithic Bamboozler” Beyond that we just padded it about with old stuff. Have fun.

Past that, expect two more episodes in 2017....one will be a tribute to late TAOTL cast member Adam “Dead Guy” Jardine----the other will be related to our 20^th anniversary on the airwaves in Fayetteville. Past that I couldn't tell ya, but like Joe Strummer said, “the future is unwritten”.

This also marks the very first episode of “The Abbey of the Lemur” to be uploaded on to YouTube in its entirety....all thanks to our wonderful providers at FPTV. You'll need to sign in to YouTube as an adult to watch it, and that's just what we gotta do. Prior administrations in the city (perhaps illegally) didn't offer the privilege of being shared online to VDA shows, so we're happy to let FPTV set up that precaution.

        ENJOY!

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          The SE Apocalypse Krew's album----tentatively titled “RISE”----is officially in the can! Yeah----it only took us 30someodd years!

You're gonna have to wait a little longer for the official release....right now I'm wrangling with the visual art aspects and then there are other logistics....but HEY! Lemme know if you're interested in covering this thing/reviewing or helping to promote it. Who knows? We could hook you up.

I'll personally tell you Mike and I are happy as hell with this beast----and it is a beast. 17 songs in 58 minutes and the thing just BLASTS. Mike had been floating me dailies on the production and even I wasn't ready for the face removal that is the final product, mixed and everything else. I spent over a week with it in the car, blasting it up and down the streets of Fayettenam. At long last, we're the monster I'd always hoped we'd be.

Heavy metal sprouted from the blues, originally, and in some respects, even as it's evolved into sort of a post-rock'n'roll genre, it is, in a lot of ways, similar to blues. Metal has its indelible conventions and tropes, just like blues does---its musicians and fans love these tropes and conventions and are dedicated to their perpetuation and preservation.

Mike and I, in that respect, are more jazz guys. Push to shove we'd rather hear someone break from the old tropes and take things in a direction we don't expect, and we like to do that ourselves. Not that you can't hear our influences----you'll hear a little Black Sabbath here, a little Black Flag there----a little Dead Boys here, a little Jimi Hendrix, there----a little Wes Montgomery here, etc., etc., etc. And yet at the same time we're our own animal.

Stay tuned.