for the dreams of the weedking we all sing


Stephen Miles, William Burroughs, after dinner joint

A Thanksgiving Prayer
-- by William Burroughs

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

the water is warmer than it has been in weeks


Jozsef Bullas, untitled, 2006

* Nice Breeze: pictures from our show last week with Dudes at Red Onion Records.

* JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound covering Wilco's I am Trying to Break Your Heart.

* "Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with." -- Bob Wells

Holly came from Miami FLA
hitchhiked her way across the USA


Robert Coddington, Holly Woodlawn, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2008

Calvin Trillin Wakes Up
From a Coma as Paranoid as Nixon
-- Klipschutz

DICK CHENEY HAS NO PULSE.
TRUE OR FALSE?

“You’ve been through a lot.
You’ve got Dick on the brain.”

HIS LIFE'S ONE LONG BLACK OP!
TOO ILLEGIT TO STOP!

“Look at the calendar. See?
Give it a rest.”

HIS GODS ARE STEALTH AND WAR.
DICK DON'T SPILL ON STORYCORPS.™

“Take one of these. Some water?
Another guy took over.”

THE BITCH IS BARKING MAD;
A THROAT ON FILE IS NOT A MOUTHWASH AD.

“Chew on another bone.
And don’t call me at home.”

HE'S STANDING BY MY BED!
HE'LL WHEEL ME TO THE MORGUE!

No rest, I need a spree.
Relax, I wouldn’t kill a flea

unless it bit my cat.
(Go on Dick, bite my cat.)

They say I’m out of rhymes,
off the beat, stuck in the past,

chasing my White Whale, my Dracula.
Deadline, my ass.


Cell Anatomy
-- Eric Hansen

Alison stayed home from school
with the flu, nothing dangerous.
Her father the warden worked
giving orders down the road.
The girl lay feverish and cold
listening to the patrol truck
circle the perimeter every eight
minutes. A guard tower watched
over the front yard. The girl got
up, too frail to bother changing
out of her pajamas. Turned two
locks on the back sliding door,
lifted the bar from the frame,
sat on the patio in a chaise
lounge. Surrounding the yard,
inmates snipped the azalea hedge
into walls. The men, mostly
black, saw the white girl and kept
their sheer cutting. In America
everyone lives with regret.
She opened her bones
to the sun. Wished nobody
had to know this sickness.

If I could be anything in the world that flew
I would be a bat and come swooping after you


Amy Sillman, Ocean 1, 1997

* Lou Reed's Hair, by Angel Corpus Cristi

* From Vanishing Point by David Markson:

"From a Hemingway letter, on T.S. Eliot: 'A damned good poet and a fair critic; but he can kiss my ass as a man.'"
...
"At 37, in Key West, Ernest Hemingway badly marked up Wallace Stephens' face in a never fully explained fistfight. Stevens was 57 when it happened."
...
"'As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.' Begins an Orwell essay dated 1941."
...
"In 1490, a Rome census showed a population of roughly ninety thousand, including 6,800 registered prostitutes."
...
"Not long after Scott Fitzgerald's death, Scribner's let 'The Great Gatsby' go out of print. And then rejected the collection called 'The Crack-Up."
...
"No single book or manuscript is listed among Shakespeare's possessions in his will."
...
"James Baldwin borrowed money from Marlon Brando with which to finish his first novel."
...
"There were 954 booksellers in Paris in 1845."
...
"'An uninteresting, and one may almost say, a justly exterminated race,' was how the New York Times described the American Indian in a 1855 review of 'Hiawatha.'"
...
"J. Edgar Hoover lived with his mother until her death when he was 43."
...
"The first Gauguin ever sold was to Degas."

* "I don’t know where jazz is going. Maybe it’s going to hell. You can’t make anything go anywhere. It just happens." -- Thelonious Monk

the story begins
i did not know who she was
the story ends
i did not know who she wsa


Alexandra Jacoby, Her, 1999

* Another Nice Breeze Show: Nice Breeze, with Dudes at Red Onion Records Saturday November 16, 2013. 5:15pm. FREE

* Henry Rollins Lou Reed tribute show podcast, from KCRW.

* You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and so on. Your winnings accumulate. But do your losses? Not at the racetrack—there you just lose your original stake. But in life? Perhaps here different rules apply. You bet on a relationship, it fails; you go on to the next relationship, it fails too: and maybe what you lose is not two simple minus sums but the multiple of what you staked. That’s what it feels like, anyway. Life isn’t just addition and subtraction. There’s also the accumulation, the multiplication of loss, of failure. -- Julian Barnes

I fought a duel
against the rules





* Congratulations to Michael, Matt and Dave of The Caribbean for having their new single, Jobsworth, featured today by Rolling Stone.