My man Ken Layne says in his latest episode of “Desert Oracle Radio” that he got the idea for his podcast from (wait for it) Tom Waits.
Somehow this fails to surprise me. Mr. Waits casts a wide loop. Wasn’t that long ago that people thought he was Leon Redbone. Turns out he was Ken Layne. Frank Zappa was Leon Redbone.
Not really.
Here’s Ken Layne:
One of the initial inspirations for this radio show was a Tom Waits interview I read in an alt-weekly newspaper three decades ago.
So Tom Waits has these bits that he’s doing for the press tour so the reporters aren’t too annoying. They can’t keep up because he’s just rolling out these little stories, tall tales, routines. And one of them went something like this. He says, and I’m quoting incorrectly for memory:
‘Oh, I’ve got a radio show now, out in the desert, in a little desert town, it’s called ‘Strange and Unusual Facts.’ And then he’d say some oddball factoid about lemurs or the height of Big Ben or how many legs a centipede has, which is variable, turns out. Then, Tom Waits tells the music writer for the alt-weekly, ‘It’s a small station and the signal doesn’t get far, but people are enjoying the show, and, in fact, a number of people are moving to this desert town just to hear it.’
That always sort of stuck with me. Because somewhere up ahead would be this radio show in the little desert town of Joshua Tree.
And you know what? I’ve had a number of people tell me in person, to my face, that they moved here because of this radio show.
So, Tom, if you’re out there tonight, thanks for the idea.
I’ve taken a few ideas from Tom Waits myself, not all of them good. Never went with the soul patch, though. That was Frank Zappa. Or was it Leon Redbone?
Our Chinese pistache is not quite in “Last Leaf” mode, but it’s getting there.
I fight off the snow I fight off the hail Nothing makes me go I’m like some vestigial tail I’ll be here through eternity If you want to know how long If they cut down this tree I’ll show up in a song
Not a lot of snow or hail to fight off in these parts lately.
Christmas brought a record high temperature — 65°, eclipsing the old mark set in 1955(!) — and it wasn’t even The Duck! City’s first record high this month.
Herself and I went out for a little pre-feast hike in the Sandia foothills with a couple hundred of our closest friends, their extended families, and their dogs. Only saw two cyclists in just under five miles, and their rigs didn’t look new to me, so, maybe not a festive holiday season for the local IBDs.
The good news is, we’re delivering the teachings of Jeebus to the Nigerians in the usual explosive fashion. So, at least the Military-Industrial Complex is ticking along nicely, if only in terms of supplying shiny objects to the news media, since it’s a little late to carpet-bomb the Epstein files.
The bad news is … well, not all that bad. I couldn’t locate any crosscut beef shanks for my beef vegetable soup, so I had to call an audible and run with another recipe that proved to be not quite as good as our favorite, which is from a “Better Homes and Gardens” cookbook with a 1981 copyright. After a week’s worth of chile-infused dishes I was striving for mild, and overachieved for a change.
However, Herself’s cornbread was superb, as was her salad, and thanks to exchanges with neighbors and colleagues we had an extensive menu of possibilities for dessert.
With the second season of “Fallout” finally available, we’d thought to revisit season one, since we’d forgotten what all the fuss was about. Alas, our Amazon Subprime Video membership is not ad-free, and the viewing experience was peppered at random with multiple sales pitches for depression meds, Range Rovers, and other shit that we don’t want, don’t need, and/or can’t afford, some of them running more than two minutes at a stretch.
Which was really a stretch. So this morning we decided to bring capitalism to its knees by signing up for the ad-free tier, then binge-watching both seasons before finally canceling the service entirely.
¡Venceremos! You’re welcome, comrades. Just crawl out through the fallout, baby.
Albuquerque shows its small-d democratic contempt for the royal pain in its ass.
O, the hate, terror, and anarchy were fierce Saturday at the No Kings thing down on Central.
We saw young and old and in between; placards, flags, and banners; bicycles, scooters, and wheelchairs; T. rexes, frogs, and Statues of Liberty; walkers, talkers, and watchers. The odd pooch delivered a few remarks. No, not me — actual dogs of various breeds and temperaments.
“Liberty, autonomy, equity.” Sounds good to me.
At least one drone was aloft to document the sheer size of us. I don’t use Facebook, so if this link doesn’t work for you feel free to blame that putz Suckerberg. The local blat went with “thousands,” so as an old inkstained wretch naturally I’ll accept that as gospel.
It wasn’t much of a story, but a crash shut down I-25 near the Lead-Coal exit just as the march got under way and I expect the weekend crew at the Journal was busier than Rep. John Block of Alamogordo, who, when asked to comment for no good reason of which I can think, immediately stuffed both feet into his mouth — no easy thing, even for a Republican, because his piehole was up his asshole with the rest of what I assume is his head, if only for the position it occupies at the top of his neck.
But I digress. We were talking about hate, terror, and anarchy, yes?
I saw one hateful sign. I’ll confess it made my top-10 list. It read: “Hey, Trump, I’m not getting paid to be here. I hate you for free.”
While we’re in the confessional, I’ll also cop to hating the “Hey hey, ho ho” chant. We haters, terrorists, and anarchists need more poets on the front lines.
Hamas never showed. Well, I remember when Dan Fogelberg didn’t show to open for the Eagles at Red Rocks, so it ain’t like they were getting a cherry. Instead we got Tom Waits, who just happened to be in town and available. No, not in Albuquerque — at Red Rocks.
I did see one dude wearing a black bandana as a mask. Could’ve been an anarchist, I suppose. Maybe just a victim of late-stage capitalism and fall allergies, like me.
The dude waving the anarchy flag, now, he might have been the real deal. Looked to be a solo act, which is a dead giveaway. But it was a really pro-looking flag, which implies some degree of organization.
“We don’t kneel down.”
I should’ve snapped a pic but you don’t want to be taking surreptitious photos of anarchists, even if you’re wearing a red Marx Brothers T-shirt (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Karl). That’s just the sort of shit an elderly undercover cop would wear. Yeah, that old dude, over there, with the yin-yang earring, Ray-Ban shades, and Carhartt boonie hat.
Mayor Keller was there, as were other political types shilling for various candidates. But mostly the crowd was regular joes and janes like Herself, Your Humble Narrator, and a friend and neighbor, all of us marching counterclockwise around downtown Duck! City, (nothing but left turns, natch), chatting and chanting, singing and dancing, gleefully asserting our rights as citizens, not subjects.
The only royalty we saw was a family trooping along wearing cardboard crowns from a well-known burger joint. It’s not for me, but hey, this is still a democracy. Anyway, the Burger King is miles better than that tinpot tsar who thinks he’s the big cheese. Cheaper, less greasy, and easier to dispose of once you’re sick of it.
Why, hello there, October. Nice to see you could finally make it.
Yesterday we enjoyed a chilly eastern breeze, which by evening was expected to pack a bit more of a wallop — say, 30-40 mph with gusts to 55, plus rain — and with any luck at all this seasonal weather will strip our pines of their remaining brown needles.
On Thursday I filled three 39-gallon bags with downed needles from the last blustery day after a friend complained that she needed 4WD to scale our driveway with a load of product for Herself’s eBay sideline. The bags filled our trash bin to overflowing with three days before pickup. I had to pull one back out to shoehorn a sack of kitchen garbage redolent of jambalaya fixins into the sonofabitch. The raccoons will rejoice.
Not so the deer, who have eaten all the class foliage in the back yard. They’ll have to settle for silverleaf nightshade going forward or start mowing the lawn.
But yeah, rain. I can’t remember when last it rained. Mid-September, maybe? That’s the most recent mention I can find in the training log. I described it as “a short, sharp downpour” that I just beat home at the end of a 25-mile ride.
This latest blessing from heaven started coming down around bedtime last night and it hasn’t let up yet. We might see a quarter inch before the second cup of joe, which, yay, etc.
I can almost accept that it’s 45° outside, and that the sun doesn’t show its face until breakfast is a fading memory, and that I may be forced to start wearing pants in the morning.
No, not that. Not yet, goddamnit. It’s not even Halloween, f’chrissakes.
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