Hey

Hope everyone had a nice Valentine's Day- or as the kids at Carmody Hills Elementary school used to call it, Valentime's day, which used to drive Little Mr. Precision Speech here crazy, I got sent home from school in second grade over it, disrupting the VD party with my futile nutcasery, "It's ValenTINES, dammit, ValenTINES!". I remember it like it was yesterday- pretty much all I can remember anymore- sitting on the couch in the living room watching (what else) Cap'n Tugg, no foolish Grandma's around to interfere- as my Dad got home from work-

Mom: Billy got in trouble at school again today (she never could wait to tell him).
Dad: (Big sigh) What for this time?
M: Yelling at some kid for saying "Valentime's Day".

This went right by my Dad, as he said Valentimes Day himself. He walked past me shaking his head, on his way back to the bedroom to change out of his work clothes . . .

D: At least it wasn't that King Kong shit again. Crazy kid . . .

So don't call it Valentime's Day around me if you can help it, okay? And as I said, I hope all of you had a good one. Since I'm currently sans sweetie (and think I'll keep it that way), I hope you all fucked yours twice, once for you and once for me.

Got a lot of mail since last issue, I think I'll just address it as we go along.

What's Bill been doing?

Not a lot. Still not much work at the scrapyard, or at least there wasn't. Phil went in for some heart testing last week so I ended up working four days- had twelve customers on Monday, two each on Wednesday and Thursday, none on Friday, and you're right, that is no way to run a railroad, but it is how it is. Phil's going to have to have bypass surgery Monday afternoon, so again, I enjoin all of you to send good thoughts his way.

You might want to send them my way as well, as this means I'll be working all day (8-4:30) M-F at the scrapyard for the next six weeks or so, which is going to push our Monday fishing, David, back till April I guess. Of course I don't fucking want to, it's work, but I said I'd do it, and I will- although only Bill would bitch about getting paid to read all day. How's the job at the bar going, you ask? I got fired my first fucking night- details at the end of this issue.

(THAT SHOULD KEEP 'EM READING)

Either that, or they'll skip straight to the end.

Ronnie continues to speak in his own tongue, he was complaining about how Nancy treats him (fair enough, he's been there over twenty years and is pretty essential, still doesn't get paid shit)-

Ronnie: Nobody cares about us pecans.
Bill: Us what?
R: Pecans. You know, the little people.

Speak for yourself there, Ron. Later he was talking about this cousin of his, "has that disease makes you want to jump out of a car when it's still moving? I know there's a name for it . . . "

(IT'S PROBABLY CALLED BEING IN A CAR WITH RONNIE)

No doubt. Oh yeah, and Jason, he's one of your subjects, from down Marmet way, says he knows you and your family (although he wasn't aware you're the King Of Marmet until I told him), his last name's Gibson, he's got a son also named Jason a couple years younger than you, who sounds like he's a chip off the old blockhead, probably was a Wild Banchee (pow pow, fuck it). I STILL laugh my ass off at that.

As for Sarah, she's doing okay, having some trouble concentrating on her school work, jeez, it's not like she didn't just FRACTURE HER SKULL or anything, but she's adamant about graduating in May, so, more power to her, I guess. As for Rachie, she got a bit miffed about me calling her out last issue, which I can understand, although as my Dad once said to me (pretty cogent for the old man), "If you don't want to be embarrassed, don't do embarrassing things", well, I knew that was never going to happen, so I just quit being embarrassed instead.

I really don't have much room to get on Rachie anyway, considering my own miserable record at Marshall, that pot/kettle thing, so I won't. Says she's liking her classes better, and is doing better this semester, which is good to hear. She'll be in the weekend of the 28th, we should schedule a MC.

Met Danny- DANNY, you say?- yeah "Sex Farm"- Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm"?- is #3 in Japan, and if you don't get the reference I can't help you- at Cold Spot week before last, that really is a nice place to drink (during the week when it's not packed out) as long as you get there early enough to get blasted before they close, cos they close early. Drank eight of the big draft PBR's, had both a driver and a buyer so Bill was in pig heaven, PBR still does a number on my head and bowels the next day, but it sure did taste good (great buzz, too). We need to do an after work MC there sometime soon.

Went up to Chris's for the Super Bowl- as much as I love you, Jason, we could never watch a Super Bowl together that the Steelers are in- drank a bunch of black and tans and some Harpoons, smoked some good- I forget- cigars. Actually, I probably watched less than ten minutes of the game, spent most of the time in Chris's back room reading JSA's and being careful not to spill beer on them. We then watched The Racket with Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum. Great stuff.

Probably everyone knew this but me (it's that way about a lot of things), but I just found out Niles from Frazier- David Hyde-Pierce- did the voice of Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies. Now that I know it was him I can hear it. In the same interview he kept talking about his husband, you know, Clive Barker talks about his husband a lot, and some other gay guy recently was talking about his-

(HOW DO THEY DECIDE WHICH ONE IS THE HUSBAND?)

How do you think?

(OH)

-and . . . you fucking distracted me. Now I can't remember what my point was.

(YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT GAY GUYS AND THEIR HUSBANDS)

Yeah, but I was going somewhere with it.

(PROBABLY BEST YOU DON'T)

Probably.

"The plain fact is that I am not a fair man and don't want to hear both sides. On all subjects, from aviation to xylophone playing, I have fixed and invariable ideas." H. L. Mencken

What's Bill been reading?

With The Old Breed, that Chris loaned me, written by E. B. Sledge, who was with the First Marine Division at Peleilu and Okinawa, which does an excellent job getting across just how dehumanizing those battles were- I don't see how those motherfuckers didn't all lose their minds, seriously- as well as illustrating what one Marine said to another when asked why the Japanese had run up a white flag and asked for medical help, then ambushed and killed the Americans who went to help them, "Cos they're the meanest sonsabitches that ever lived." If they weren't, they sure as fuck were in the running. I'm holding off on Ghost Soldiers for a while, don't want to start WW II back up if I can help it.

Also 800 pages of True Crime, An American anthology, The Pluto Files, by Neil Degrasse Tyson, the guy who started the whole mess that led to them saying Pluto is no longer a planet- I mean, they can SAY whatever they want, it still is, fuck 'em- he includes some hilarious hate mail that he got from these grade school kids, one, after ripping old NDT a new one, concludes, "It'll be all right." Funny.

Also read the last two mystery anthologies I got at JR last fall, and Here, There And Everywhere, by Geoff Emerick, who was the engineer on the Beatles recordings. It was very entertaining, although how John Lennon got through the 60's without someone beating his brains in is hard to fathom, cos talented or not, for all his peace and love public persona bullshit, from everything I've read by folks who were around him then, he was a stone prick. I've read of Lennon getting punched out twice, incidents corroborated by numerous eyewitnesses, not just, "I heard from a guy who heard from a guy" stuff, once was by some geezer in a South African band who were opening for the Beatles early on, Lennon smarted this guy off and he, being just some lug from South Africa who didn't realize he was supposed to be impressed, punched JL's lights out. I also read about wee little Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, taking offense at the way Lennon was shitting on his (Lennon's) wife Cynthia at some party, when John said what're you gonna do about it Marsden knocked him on his ass, and when he then offered to take Lennon outside and teach him some manners, John backed down.

(HE'S LUCKY HE NEVER MET DFZ)

We all are.

What's Bill been watching? I was watching second season Night Gallery till I somehow fucked up my computer and it won't play DVDs now. They're all good from the nostalgia standpoint, I remember vividly coming down here to the rec room on Wednesday nights and watching Kung Fu at 9 and then Night Gallery at 10, 71-72 was my sophomore year in high school, not a bad year, lot of good memories (like Terry Sword and Vikki Dawson in hot pants, sweet Jesus).

As for the shows themselves, some are kind of plodding here in 2009, but some are still quite good, and I truly love the 71-72 styles, the cool cars and the wild decor and those crazy, CRAZY clothes we used to wear back then.

What's Bill been listening to? Well, the you.tube feature has turned out to be really popular, folks have been thanking me for turning them on to great old songs they were unfamiliar with, which is really cool, seriously. I got a real nice e-mail from some guy right after last issue, going on about how much he loved "I Ain't Marching Anymore", which he'd never heard before- by the way, Phil's last name was pronounced "Oaks", not "Ox"- not trying to be a smarty pants (I know, I don't have to try) but he asked me, he also asked how I could have a problem with the politics of an anti-war song, isn't every thinking person (thank you for including me in that group) anti-war?

It was a serious question from what seems to be a nice guy, so I was going to give him a serious answer, and I still will, but just the short version. First off, I never served in the armed forces (to once again quote my Dad on the subject- my gosh, do I miss him- "Boy, you'd be the worst soldier there ever WAS", and "Anyone who'd hand you a loaded rifle would have to be out of their mnd", neither statement one I can disagree with) so it may seem a bit specious me advocating others do it, but my problem with the song- not Phil, who I believe was a hell of a good guy- he hung himself, did you know that?- is that it equates the Indian Wars and the Mexican-American War with the Civil War and WW II, and that's just ignorant, if not outright stupid.

Sometimes you gotta march- unless you think Hitler shoving people in ovens, and the Japanese killing and torturing and enslaving half of Asia is okay, and as a thinking person, I doubt that you do.

Anyway, this issue's you.tube hit is "Jezebel" by Frankie Laine, the b/w Early Video version. It's a great song that's been mentioned in here before, but old Frankie is just on fire in this video, (when I mentioned watching this to my Mom, cos she always liked Frankie, she said, "Remember 'Mule Train'? He used to go to town in it, too ", going to town beng high praise in both her book and mine), waving his arms and making google eyes at the camera like he's in an Ed Wood movie- in fact, he looks like Ed Wood in this- while behind him this corny/great morality play is going on, all these hot, well built women in filmy, low cut, high slit dresses are Jezebelin' all over these poor saps . . . great stuff.

Speaking of well built women, Joe, I'm going to send you this picture of Salma Hayek that Chris send me, to put in this NL. Every time I look at it, my mouth fills up with spit.

What's Bill drinking? Green tea. Crazy, I know, two NLs in a row sober, but I drank a lot last night (Rolling Rock), and I have to get up early tomorrow to go read all day. Plus I'm probably going to be drinking a couple nights this week.

(YOU SOUND LIKE YOU'RE APOLOGIZING FOR NOT BEING DRUNK)

Well, I do have an image to protect.

As for DFZ, I think I've turned a corner. Viper called me last Sunday all excited, had a bunch of bookings he wanted to get me in on, the best of which was in Chicago, they'd pay our trans plus, depending on the draw, $200-$300 each. I turned all of them down. I've had a couple weekends off lately and you know what? It's been NICE.

It doesn't help that my right leg is all fucked up again, I pulled my groin the other day lifting, it's not a bad pull, but it still hurts, if I move it wrong it's like a bar of fire down the inside of my thigh, from my nuts to my knee. One of the things that aggravates it a lot, strangely, is driving, moving my foot from the gas to the brake and back.

(SO STOP USING THE BRAKE)

Why didn't I think of that?

Worked at Ayash last Wednesday, twice, the DeathStars did a beat down on Team GAY in our match, then did a run in on Buff Bagwell when he was wrestling Wes, to set up a six man main, DS and Wes against Buff and Gay, it was okay, Buff's a nice guy and works really light. And they drew over 100 paid on a Wednesday night. Working in Parkersburg next weekend, plan on seeing Santana again, although both Jock and Mike told me Wednesday, "You better call her, man, she's wondering why you haven't." You mean other than Bill being Bill and just not thinking to? So I guess I'd better call, don't want to get run over by a car.

I'm getting tired, so we'll go to the Bill and the bar story to close.

Bobby's is in a small strip mall, and is actually three rooms, the main one, also the largest, which was the original bar, then as they did well, they expanded into the store next door, and then into the one next to that. The main bar, beer and liquor both, is in the original room but on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights they open a second, beer only bar in the middle room to take some of the pressure off the main bar. Bill is assigned to work this second bar.

Everything's going fine my first night- I mean, really, how hard is it to stand behind a bar and dispense beer? The crowd's a little rowdier than I expected, I thought this was more a family type place, but still, it's nothing compared to a lot of bars I've been in. Trouble starts when this guy comes to the bar really fucked up, wanting a beer. It wasn't that late, maybe 12:30 am, but he'd been in there a while, and he was hammered.

I know this is more pot/kettle stuff, but I was on the other side of the bar this time. Now, I NEVER told the guy I wouldn't serve him. What I asked was, "You got a way home tonight?" I mean, I'm trying to look out for him, seriously. Well, he flies all up in my face, "That's none of your fucking business asshole, just give me a fucking beer and shut the fuck up, fuck you, bla bla, woof woof", crazy drunken shit like that, all out of proportion to what I said.

I take a deep breath and calmly- honestly- tell this guy that he needs to settle down, I'm just trying to take care of him, and he really, REALLY needs to get a grip and stop talking to me like that. Well, that was a waste of time, he's still just bad mouthing me, and I can see number one I'm not going to get through to him, number two I'm not at all comfortable serving anyone that drunk, whether he had a ride home or not, nor would I at this point anyway cos he'd pissed me off, and number three, a lot of people there in the bar are watching now to see how the new guy handles this situation.

So I killed him.

Actualy, I didn't, but I bet I had you there for a minute. No, I just took him by his shirt front and dragged him to the door and tossed him, which I think I was wholly within my rights to do. HE didn't think so, but fuck him. I told him if I saw his ass again that night I'd kick it, and hoped that was the end of it. I should be so lucky.

Numbfuck- I don't remember his name- was apparently a regular of long standing, so he gets up and goes in the main door, to the main bar, and starts crying to Patsy about how her new bartender just roughed him up. Shit, if I'd know I was going to get in trouble for it I'd have gotten my fucking money's worth. So Patsy comes over to my side and without even asking me what happened gets in my shit for tossing this guy, one of her quotes being, "It's not our practice to put our hands on the customers". Yeesh.

Instead of just going, "Okay, sorry," like I should have, dumbass Bill got back in HER face- they may call it Bobby's but Patsy's the boss- telling her she should be thanking me not bitching at me, and if it was their practice to serve assholes so damn drunk they couldn't stand up, maybe I was working in the wrong place. Apparently, I was.

And yes, I KNOW, I have a mouth far, far too big for my own good, and no, I will never, ever learn. But between the two of them, they got my fucking Irish up.

Actually, I was never told I was fired, so maybe I'm not, I was just told at the end of the night, "We'll call you when we need you," and they haven't called. But they might, right?

(AND JESUS COMING SOON)

So I've heard. Hope he's as nice as they say.

I'm out of here. Got eight and a half hours of reading to do tomorrow.

Later

Bill