Come bedtime whatever is Me climbs into its skull, pulls up the ladder and bolts the trapdoor, then settles in for a long night of home movies.
Don’t expect any reviews. We’re not talking not Oscar contenders here. Art-house stuff, shot using iPhones or Super 8 with Byzantine plots and weird camera angles. Definitely not suitable for anyone under the age of 69 without a history of substance abuse, terminal confusion, and attitude poisoning. Popcorn is not served.
Then come morning whatever is Me shuts off the VCR, glances at the dashboard to see if all the idiot lights are green, and then pops the hatch, drops the ladder, and starts pulling the body back on like some tattered and patched Iron Man Halloween costume badly in need of a laundering.
“Jaysis, are we trying to put this shit on backwards? Toes, report! We still got 10 of you guys? OK, there’s No. 10, hung up on a snag somewhere around the right calf. Someone trim that nail! And what about that left knee? More snap, crackle and pop than a bowl of breakfast cereal. Hands, you still at about 70 percent? Sixty? Well, it’ll have to do. Time to open the eyes, we’re redlined on the pressure gauge down in Holding Tank One. Windshield wipers, stat! No washer fluid? Buckle up, we’re gonna have to do this on instruments. … Sound the alarm! We’re going in!”
It gets harder every morning. Well, no, not that. But everything else. Especially in February. All the lubricants are low and/or congealed, the various belts loose and skipping on their sprockets. More bad noise than a haunted house. There is a certain uncertainty in the landing gear, down where the rubber meets the road.
And then you finally get the old ambulatory junkyard to shake, rattle, and roll … only to find out that Mojo Nixon has gone off to join Elvis just as The Supremes start tuning up for the Orange Fartblossom Special. Died on a country-music cruise that he was co-hosting? What? Mojo’s gonna get together with Glenn Frey before Don Henley does!
Mad Blog Media 
Went to the grocery store and recycling center this morning and listened to the supreme’s oral arguments in Colorado vs the turd. My only takeaway was that life time appointments to the supremes are not working. There were some, well, pretty silly questions wrapped up in Latin bullshit wrappers. This isn’t a court of originalists because the 14th amendment language is pretty plain to me anyway. Must be a political court.
As far as your assessment of aging, I think we are in our golden years. I think Alfred E. Neuman was over 70, if not in age in attitude. So, all this political and legal noise will sort itself out, the country will survive. If one must worry about something, climate change ticks all the boxes. Whether the country will survive it is debatable.
I regret to say I think this round goes to Adolf Twitler. Charlie Pierce thinks so too. The 14th seems pretty clear to this non-lawyer, but to be honest, I would like to see the sonofabitch run and lose the old-fashioned way, if he’s not in prison before Nov. 7.
Without French press coffee and a heating pad I’m immobilized come 6:30 am. Only to be stiff and sore would be welcomed since I’m instead seized up like the front hub bearings on a 1953 JC Higgins newsboy bike. By 7:30 am I’m mobile enough to begin the never-fekking-ending stretch routine. BTW-Yesterday I did Patrick’s Dance of The Sugar Plum Geezers when putting on some sweat pants and LUCKILY fell back on the bed instead of the hardwood floor. In other useless news-first ride of the year here as temp hit the magical 50 degrees and….the roads were dry. Both criteria necessary for this Sugar Plum Geezer to mount the bikes.
Once what passes for consciousness returns I send my little virtual scouts up and down and all around the carcass to conduct damage assessments before cautiously rolling out of the fartsack. Next I peek out the window to see if the Angels of the Lord have descended from Heaven to sort things out. If not, I proceed to the bathroom to pee. I don’t even think about pulling on the drawers until I’ve offloaded some ballast. Don’t need all that water weight sloshing around in the middle of the structure. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Meanwhile, I like Mojo Nixon’s assessment of himself, as supplied to Variety:
“Mojo Nixon wanted to be Richard Pryor. He’s like Richard Pryor’s stupid cousin if he was white and played in a rockabilly band. I’d say things that simultaneously shocked people and spoke the truth. I don’t have that much talent, but what I do have is an enormous amount of enthusiasm.”
The biggest mistake that I make is getting out of bed. After convincing the body that it can move, it’s breakfast & off to work. Sadly, a McD’s Sausage & egg McMuffin is often breakfast. After 8.5 hours at a Park Bike stand its limp back home to try to halt the advance of the jungle that’s threatening to overwhelm my garden. Golden years? I don’t think so.
The fabled sausage-and-egg McMuffin. Just reading those words conjured up the aroma and flavor of Daze Gone By.
In the late Eighties I was living at 13th and Clayton in Denver and working at the Northglenn-Thornton-Commerce City Sentinels, part of a smallish suburban chain, with offices near 84th and I-25. Didn’t cook much in those days and it was the first time I’d had a semi-serious commute — about 10 miles and change — since 1980, when I was in Tucson at The Arizona Daily Star.
So I would often grab one or two of those bad boys en route to work. Yum yum eat’um up. There was an outfit near the office that did killer cinnamon rolls, too, about the size of my head. The sugar buzz off one of those would ferry me through the morning like a couple-three lines of the Devil’s Dandruff, but it was legal as hell and you could even do it in front of the publisher, a vile old hag who laid me off the first chance she got.
How was that commute back then? Wasn’t there a sketchy area or two to go through? 13th and Clayton doesn’t seem like it would have been too bad an area. You had the two big parks nearby. Back in the early 80’s I saw the Coors Classic race ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTB2c9AFNN8 ) when one of the stages was held in Cheeseman Park. A few years back a couple of my solid hardworking financially fiscal friends built a big new place just a couple of blocks to the south of where you were at. Wasn’t the North Valley mall up there at 84th and I-25? I remember going there in the early ’70’s.
Fortunately the closest S&EMM to me now is well out of aroma range so it is something that may be considered a very rare treat. Perhaps now that I am reminded, I will imbibe in one to relish good old American fast food empire-ism.
It wasn’t too bad at all, Shawn. If I drove it was mostly against the flow — I was going from the city to the suburbs instead of the other way around, so the drivetime was mostly spent actually driving, not inching along in first gear. If I biked, there were some bike routes and occasional stretches of off-street path. I slid out on wet RR tracks once and spent an uncomfortable day at work, sticking to my clothing.
The neighborhood was fine — very walkable/bikeable, with affordable eateries and watering holes just a few blocks away. Two nice young gay women lived below me in this old two-story and told me tales of cycling to Santa Fe and back. I was just getting into riding centuries and time trials and stuff, and usually rode out east toward Saudi Aurora or south through Cheesman to Washington Park, where the roadies did laps and collected speeding tickets from the cops.
My bros mostly lived in Glendale, which was not far off, within walking distance of the Bull & Bush, which collected quite a bit of whatever disposable income we hadn’t already disposed of in other areas, like the G-strings at Shotgun Willies or with other purveyors of morally questionable pasatiempos.
And yup, the North Valley Mall was right up there at 84th and I-25. One Italian-American bro’s parents lived nearby in Thornton and his mom would feed us at the drop of a spatula. We had to journey south and west to Alamosa to get our Mexican bros’ mom to make us enchiladas, though, so we usually hit the Blue Bonnet or Las Delicias instead.
I saw Mojo back in the early 90’s at the Continental Club in Austin. Pretty fun show. He woulda been a great guy to have as your uncle you only got to see once a year that your mom wouldn’t let you talk to.
Sounds like Mojo took it in hard and fast, high-siding into The Beyond. From a family statement on Buttface:
“How you live is how you should die. Mojo Nixon was full-tilt, wide-open rock hard, root hog, corner on two wheels + on fire…,” his family said in a statement on Facebook. “Passing after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners + a good breakfast with bandmates and friends.
“A cardiac event on the Outlaw Country Cruise is about right… & that’s just how he did it, Mojo has left the building. Since Elvis is everywhere, we know he was waiting for him in the alley out back. Heaven help us all.”
Finally coming up for air after a days-long orgy of Mojo videos, tunes, toasts, rants, etc.
Not all that many people seem aware that Mojo (who adopted his last name about the same time I gave up ever saying it ((2 days after the Watergate burglary)), back when he was still Kirby MacMillian) was an actual bike racer from Danville Virginia. AFAIK we never actually met, but we did have a mutual friend or two. I’m thinking particularly of Rick, a one-time state road-racing champ who was himself the funniest guy I’ve ever ridden with. He did a dead-on impersonation of a dead drunk mountain biker, swerving all over the fire road, bumping into and leaning on you while riding and making me laugh so hard I damn near fell off the bike. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to ride with both Kirby/Mojo and Rick at the same time. Good times. We’re all poorer for Mojo having left the building.
Thanks for marking his passing.