Mister Boo’s recovery continues nicely, thanks to some timely musical therapy from that Over-Nite Sensation Frank Zappa on this, day three of Zappadan 2014.
The cone comes off more often now, and a neighbor who saw him motoring along like the happy little guy he is proclaimed that The Boo was “walking tall.”
Do, however, feel free to mess with the UCI for this hash of a press release. Jesus H. Christ, it takes talent to say less than fuck-all while using 714 words to do it.
I remember discussing a semantic analysis of the Budweiser jingle during my college days. What it boils down to, the professor explained, is a list of the various Anheuser-Busch trademarks for Budweiser that says absolutely nothing about the quality of the beer. A masterpiece of obfuscation that remained unsurpassed until the UCI came on the scene. Well done.
After yesterday’s launch was scrubbed, Orion finally got it up today, so I thought I’d post this horn-fueled version of “Stairway to Heaven” from FZ and the gang on this, the second day of Zappadan 2014.
When I was a squirt and sci-fi nerd, I watched as many launches as I could get away with. The old man was pretty liberal about that sort of self-education, bringing home plenty of autographed pix of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts, and it was one of the things I really liked about growing up in an Air Force household.
I’ve always wondered how much further we might be along today had we spent a little less time blowing stuff up and a little more sending it up. Instead of contemplating a few unmanned laps around the Earth and moon, which is slightly old hat, we’d have had at least one Starbucks on Mars by now, on Podkayne Fries Boulevard, and a share apiece in Venus Corporation.
Ozzy Osbourne turns 666 today (OK, so he’s only 66; sue me) and I expect that this surprises him nearly as much as it does the rest of us.
Now, you all know me as a discerning connoisseur of the arts, whether culinary, graphic or sonic, but there was a time in my misspent youth when I was something of a headbanger.
By laughing Satan’s spreading wings, ’tis a wonder my family was not chased from the ‘hood by angry villagers brandishing crucifixes, pitchforks and torches when I spun the volume knob all the way to the right for “War Pigs,” quite the anthem to hear thundering from the home of a WWII veteran.
You could actually see the picture window thrumming like the drums out of which Bill Ward was beating the shit, and Tony Iommi’s guitar licks killed all the flowers from Constitution to Maizeland. A neighbor’s canary almost chewed through the bars of its cage before exploding like a feathered M-80.
Today, of course, my tastes have become a good deal more refined. Either that or I’ve gone stone deaf. What?
It was 4:20 p.m. (smoke ’em if you got ’em) when I fired up the Forester for the latest six-hour drive from Bibleburg to Duke City.
Herself and I had been in the old hometown to prepare Chez Dog and The House Back East® for new tenants, a project I’d hoped would take only a couple of long, hard days, but I got there on Friday and didn’t get gone until Tuesday afternoon. Herself beat it on Monday, having one of them obnoxious “job” thingies that requires regular attendance.
So there I was, once again piloting a heavily laden Japanese automobile solo through the starry American night. It reminded me of the good old days, when all I needed for a cross-country jaunt was a bridge burned at one newspaper, a job offer at another, and a battered old rice-grinder that was nearly as full of shit as I was.
“What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” — Jack Kerouac, “On the Road”
I used to love those long nights behind the wheel, in part because I generally enjoyed some sort of illicit chemical assist, having studied at the feet of Jack Kerouac, Ed Abbey and the redoubtable Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Once a friend and I even took a page from the Good Doktor’s book — to be specific, a page from “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas” — and ate some acid before stalking into the old MGM Grand to see what we could see, which proved to be much more than was actually there.
In short, it was a bad idea, like so many of the Good Doktor’s, and we quickly jumped back into our auto and drove straight through the inky darkness of the Intermountain West to Alamosa, Colorado, for a steaming plate of enchiladas and beans served up by my companion’s mom, who either didn’t notice or didn’t care that we were horribly twisted on LSD and Budweiser.
After a few hundred thousand miles of that sort of thing, coupled with deteriorating night vision, a bad back and a considerably diminished drug intake (I’m pretty much down to a cup and a half of coffee in the morning these days), I lost interest in snorting that long white line through the windshield and sleeping it off under the camper shell in some rest area or unpatrolled parking lot. When the sunlight started fading, so did I. A motel bed sounded a lot better than drumming on the steering wheel with ZZ Top, Bob Seger or the Allman Brothers cranked up to 11.
But I got a little of the old love back Tuesday night. As I motored southwest with the cruise control set at a safe and sane 75 mph a banana moon hung brightly in the sky dead ahead, the highway stripes rising up as if to meet it on the hills. Where to go? Mexico? San Francisco? Albuquerque, as it turned out. I left the stereo off and listened to the music in my head.
A journalist, runner, world-champion burro racer, ranch hand and foodie who lives in the Upper Boondocks of Crusty County, Colorado, Hal is also the father of an autistic child, Harrison, and the book gives us a glimpse into how he manages all of this without winding up in a Nudie jacket with wraparound arms, playing lonesome country tunes that only he can hear for an audience that only he can see.
“Full Tilt Boogie” can be had in a variety of ways. You can await an old-school dead-tree edition or a digital version from Vook, or contact Hal directly via email or Facebutt and get a special-edition PDF that has more pix than these others.
Perhaps best of all, you can pay what you please, a la the Live Update Guy/NPR revenue model. I think you’ll find his story a worthwhile investment.
• Extra Special Boogie Treat: Here’s a little something to get your feet moving on over to PayPal: Catfish Hodge’s legendary 1973 album, “Boogieman Gonna Get Ya.”
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