The New Spring Break

 

It’s late January, and all across the fruited plain oldsters are busily making plans for their annual invasion of the beaches and bars of sunny Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach and Panama City for the riotous extravaganza the media has dubbed “Spring Break.”  For Sunshine State motels and beer distributors, this is their Super Bowl; for local police, a headache of unmitigated proportions as they try to keep drunken senior citizens from toppling off hotel balconies, drowning in swimming pools or crashing their Cadillacs into Indian River fruit stands.

Oh, I hear what you’re saying.  “Bill, those were the good old days, the province of our youth.  All that has been taken over by the youngsters, the college kids.  Now, we just hang out in Boca and play bocce ball or shuffleboard.”  Well, whose fault is that?  When did they hold the meeting where we decided to curtail our activities?  After all, we’re the ones who STARTED Spring Break.  I have evidence.

 

Where The Boys Are

In 1960, a fellow with the curious name of Glendon Swarthout decided to devise a novel recording the  hijinks of a group of Michigan college girls, led by Merrit (“of the U”), who barnstorm down to Florida during their Spring break from college on a mission to find sun, surf and, hopefully, a little romance among the thousands who gather there each March.  But how and when did all these pilgrimages get started? Well, seems Fort Lauderdale had been a mecca for competitive swimming as far back as the 1930s, possessing a mammoth pool, one of the largest extant, and by the late thirties more than 1500 student athletes were gallivanting on down to the city’s College Coaches’ Swim Forum, which was held during Spring break.  The first of these was hosted in 1938 and word of Florida’s Spring charms (during often-severe northern winters) soon wafted up north, inspiring a few non-swimmers to make the trip.  The phenomenon slowly grew and by 1959, Time magazine mentioned it in an article entitled “Beer & the Beach.”  Swarthout’s novel precipitated a movie of the same name, though far from the book’s quality, which emphasized the raucous, booze-and-sex-filled proceedings.  The movie appeared in 1961 and contained a song also called Where The Boys Are (Someone Waits For Me), sung by Connie Francis, which became wildly popular and further romanticized Spring Break.

Before long, a relatively small gettogether which had previously extended less than a week had exploded into a monster of over triple the original length owing to the different break dates of various colleges.  Dustups with the police became common as officers of the law grew a little testy chasing college kids out for a night of neighborhood pool-hopping, naked beach romping or assorted traffic-blocking pranks.  As Lauderdale got meaner, other Florida beach hotspots, primarily Daytona, conveniently located much further north, gladly opened their doors to the pocketbooks of thousands of guests who were willing to show up during the slow season.  50,000 college students visited Daytona during Spring Break 1961.  The President couldn’t get a room.

 

 

Where The Bills Are

In 1963, Marilyn Todd and I arrived in Gainesville, conveyed by the famous Iron Maiden, my 1950 Cadillac Superior Model hearse.  We got there just in time to haul about 10,000 copies of an off-campus humor magazine called The Old Orange Peel to Daytona for its publisher, Jack Horan, who had somehow been able to finagle a couple of beachside rooms.  Horan foresaw exceptional sales and had his publication distributed all over town, even sponsoring expensive contests in local bars and coughing up extravagant fees for jacked-up radio ads.  When the hearse, heavy with magazine, crossed a little bridge into Daytona, the brakes promptly went out, necessitating a circle of several revolutions around the nearest used car lot before settling to a stop.  We fed and watered the old girl and she settled down, allowing us to proceed to our motel through massive throngs of near-naked celebrants, most carrying paper cups not filled with orange juice.  We visited the bars at night with Jack, who didn’t sell a third of the magazines transported even though we tried real hard, not wanting to re-haul them back to Gainesville.  Nonetheless, a good time was had by all.  People-watching opportunities abounded.  It was better than Times Square.  The cops, ubiquitous to the max, were nonetheless massively outnumbered by troublemakers and pranksters.  While most of the frenetic activity centered around the numberless hotels, groups of students were occasionally able to rent houses from poor fools who foresaw dollar signs instead of the potential wreckage of their domiciles.  One such place was the site of a riotous party of 80 celebrants, many of them underage imbibers.  When the gestapo arrived at the behest of terrified neighbors, the party animals began fleeing out the lone back door until several became stuck and were immobilized, making themselves and those blocked in behind them putty in the hands of police.  One inebriated celebrant, laughing on his way to jail, was asked by Officer Krupke if he thought it was funny to be arrested.  “It’s a lot funnier than March in East Lansing!” the kid replied.

If the property tax appraiser is coming in a couple months and you’re looking for a quick way to devalue your property, you might want to consider renting the place to Spring breakers.  The tax guys almost always deduct for properties smelling of alcohol, vomit and urine, especially when there is pizza left under the beds and cigarette butts in the flower vases.  In the cases of a few leased Daytona edifices, the owners might be getting a rebate.

 

The Senior Break

“Inside every Senior Citizen is a kid wondering what the hell happened.”

Okay, so we all know Daytona Beach is a glutton for punishment.  Not only does the city host the annual shenanigans of tens of thousands of lunatic collegians, it adds to the gore with the nefarious Bike Week, during which the town is inundated with thousands of motorcycle mamas and papas racing through the streets, smashing into one another and busting up the bars.  Why does any municipality do this? Well, the bikers have more money than the college kids.  And then, of course, there are the twice-a-year NASCAR extravaganzas at the famous Speedway, the iconic Daytona 500 in February and the Fourth of July weekend ex-Firecracker 400, now named for Coke Zero, whatever the hell that is.  Truly massive crowds attend the proceedings, to the extent that rental car companies in the area surrounding Orlando actually run out of vehicles.  If records were kept for beer-drinking—and we don’t know that they aren’t--it would be hard to beat the weekend consumption by all the bubbas and bubbaettes who show up for these things.

In light of all this mayhem, it seems to me Daytona Beach should be enormously receptive to a late February/early March Senior Break.  The time is right, placed directly after The 500 and just before the invasions of the cyclists and students.  Senior citizens are mostly polite and, except for the Rolling Stones, almost never trash hotel rooms or time-shares.  Moreover, while we still have some drinkers in the crowd, very few of us will be found lurching through the streets at two a.m. looking for our lost vehicles, let alone engaging in trashy bar activities like dwarf tossing or wet t-shirt contests.  The women might insist on better wine menus, of course, and there would be a definite need for mobile smoothie carts and yogurt vendors.  The larger hotels would be expected to provide free Yoga classes and water aerobics in the pools, and hey, don’t forget the Bingo.

We’d need entertainment, of course.  And please, no music recorded after 1980.  Arlo Guthrie is still rambling around singing Alice’s Restaurant fifty years from the date it was originally recorded.  The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley yet tours and he still hasn’t Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.  Gary Lewis & The Playboys are running loose out there and The Stylistics still promise to Make You Feel Brand New, although that will be a significant challenge in some cases.  If you can’t get anybody else, there’s always the rechristened Motels, although Marty Jourard is the only Original and God only knows what they play these days.  If we play our cards right, maybe we can even get the city to put on a modern Rock Festival featuring a bunch of those imitation bands that still play the old stuff.  We’d probably need more medical tents but they wouldn’t be for drug overdoses any more.  More like catheter problems, heart palpitations and granny’s trick knee going out during The Peppermint Twist.  Medical marijuana would be available, of course, for the serious problems which almost everyone would have.  And there would be no shortage of merchant tents surrounding the facility, what with the the urgent need for arthritis products, incontinence devices and condoms.

Oh yes, condoms.  And lest you smirk, we’d like to report that right down the road here at that mecca for Tea Party Republicans, The Villages, serious social disease problems arose just last year.  If you think these senior citizens aren’t grousing in the goodie, you’ve got another think coming.  It’s the new Free Love Era, accompanied, of course, by a batch of jellies and creams, all available at the Astroglide booth.  Easy to find, it’s right next door to the Big Blue tent offering Viagra and right across the aisle from Vibrators ‘r’ Us. 

Frankly, we can’t understand  how any Florida city eager for winter tourists can turn this inspiration down.  It’s an idea whose time has come.  Maybe it will all happen.  Maybe someone will write a book about it.  Maybe even a movie….and, ultimately, a song.  I can hear it now.  “Where The Septuagenarians Are.”  It will have a good beat.  You can dance to it.

 

Photo Of The Week (contributed by Harry Edwards)

 

Big Hair Days In Texas

 

 

That’s all, folks

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

The Doctor Is In

I am the very model of a modern patient medical,

With doctors urological, vascular and general.

But only for the past ten years or so.  Before that, there was thirty-five years of relative abstinence, disturbed only by a sporadic physical.  God bless The Great Middle Years because these physicians have an unerring way of showing up at the beginning and the end of things.  When we were kids, they were there from birth through the early grades of elementary school, wiping runny noses, dispatching pills as big as footballs and jabbing us with needles straight out of a Frankenstein movie.  Chicken Pox.  Doctor.  Measles.  Doctor.  Whooping Cough.  Doctor.  My sister, Alice (the Republican), had terrible bouts of asthma and had to carry her own personal physician around with her on the back of her tricycle.  My own doctor told my parents I had Rheumatic Fever in the second grade, causing me to miss all but the first and last months of school and all the fun from the greatest snowfall in the history of Lawrence, Massachusetts.  I still don’t believe him but it did get me started reading comic books, so there’s that.

Everybody trusts their doctors implicitly, but not me.  I keep an eye on ‘em.  That’s because when I was about five, Dr. Leonard Bennett Ainsworth told my parents I needed to have my tonsils taken out.  Do they even do this any more?  Well, they did in those days, there was tonsil money to be made.  You couldn’t walk around a third-grade schoolyard without bumping into someone who’d had his tonsils ousted.  It was like The Black Plague of Early Youth.  Doctors kept adding new wings to their houses.  Tonsil money.

All well and good.  But at least they could have been honest about it.  One day, I noticed a strange car parked in the street in front of our house.  It had a green cross attached to the license plate, warning alert children that a dreaded doctor was nearby.  I asked my mother about it but she feigned ignorance.  I smelled a rat.  Eventually, of course, the doctor is going to actually have to come in and the plot is foiled.  This is how I discovered that I would be having my very own tonsils removed and it’s pretty scary business for a little kid.  You have no time to prepare, no opportunity to hide in the cellar or run away from home.

Anyway, after admitting the sordid truth, they finally pick you up, plunk you on the kitchen table and gas you with ether, a popular knock-out drug of the day, applied by viciously clapping an ether-filled rag over your nose and mouth until you are out cold.  In the meantime, of course, I fought like a Tasmanian Devil and used words thought to be the province of only seventh or eighth-graders. 

After this barbaric experience is over and you awaken, the wretched transgressors try to ply you with ice-cream and such, hoping you will forgive the atrocities visited upon you, as if that were even a remote possibility.  I did eat the ice-cream, of course, albeit with feigned reluctance, since I am no fool.  But the experience did not leave me a trusting patient, a big fan of the medical profession.  Or parents, either.

When I was a Junior in high-school, I got a touch of asthma, myself.  I tried to blame it on Alice, but my mother said asthma didn’t work that way.  Instead of taking me to the doctor, for some reason my mother began hauling me to a venerated chiropractor in Salem, New Hampshire, just down the road from Rockingham Park Race Track.  To say this guy was fairly popular was like saying a few girls thought Elvis was okay.  There were buses in the parking lot.  BUSES!  One of the reasons, I discovered, was that instead of paying a set fee, the patient was allowed to place any amount he wanted in the payment box, a nifty trick which worked pretty good on the conscientious people that walked the Earth in those days.  Try it now, you’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t steal all the money and piss in the box.  Anyway, this guy operated out of a barn-sized edifice full of moaning oldsters with bulging discs.  Most of them emerged from treatment with smiles on their faces, almost as if Oral Roberts had delivered God’s Medicine.  He fixed me, too—for a couple of days.  I told my mother to ramp down her contribution because I was only cured 20% of the time.  Anyway, this asthma came and went, never too tough a customer until I was in my late twenties and spent a few days at the Miami Merchandise Mart, a building still in progress with clouds of plaster dust floating throughout.  Back in Gainesville a few days later, I wound up in the Alachua General Hospital Emergency Room, where they pumped me full of adrenaline and got me breathing again.  Dr. Melvin Dace admitted me and I laid around not much improved for a couple of days.  Dace came in one day, looked at me and told a nurse to move me to Intensive Care if there was no improvement by that night.  A big double-gulp to that.  When I hear “Intensive Care Unit” I have a funny habit of thinking “Next To Death.”  For the rest of the day, I concentrated on simple, regular breathing.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Think of nothing else.  It worked, too.  After I few hours of this, I was breathing much better.  Doctor M.D. came in and was pleasantly surprised.  “He’s much better,” smiled The Man.  An appraisal which proved to be true two days later when girlfriend Patty Walker assured me it was possible to have sex undetected in a hospital room and proved it.  After that, thanks to modern asthma medicines, decades of bliss, disturbed on just a few occasions by punishments for those trips to Mexico.  I never thought about doctors much in those days.  After all, the personal weather was warm and sunny.  But those thirty-five years were just the lull before the storm.

 

A Day In The Life

Those legions of us who have been tarred by the Demon are required to make a pilgrimage every three or four years to the Shrine of the Chemical Stress Test.  You will fast for several hours before going and you will not mess with coffee or other caffeine products for twenty-four hours in advance.  My personal adventure was this Tuesday and I decided to read up on the test even though I had experienced one about three years ago.  Sometimes, this is a bad idea.  In the process of investigating, for instance, I discovered that the drug Adenosine, which I would be getting, sometimes “flows to healthy areas and may leave obstructed arteries with low blood flow, potentially triggering a HORRIBLE HEART ATTACK!”  Okay, the capital letters are my invention, also the adjective and the exclamation point.  But even with lower-case letters, you’re just as dead.  I asked Justin, the tester-to-be, about this and he just laughed it off, as 27-year-old people are wont to do.  “Hardly EVER happens,” tsked Justin.  What a relief.

CSTs are performed for a variety of reasons.  Some people cannot physically tolerate a treadmill stress test, others with pacemakers can’t get a proper evaluation and those of us with stents need to have an occasional look-see to find out whether the little critter is narrowing, etc.  It’s a good idea to shave the front upper part of the body for these things prior to showing up for the test since an EKG is recorded at the start and constantly monitored on a screen during the test.  An intravenous line is also inserted in the arm and a blood pressure cuff placed around a wrist to observe blood-pressure throughout the approximate half-hour of the test.  The testee now lies on his back on a setup not dissimilar to an MRI or CT Scan machine.  When the test begins, the subject’s body is moved into the machine up to his chin, hands placed over the head.  People are advised a day or two prior to testing that anyone with notions of claustrophobia (or people who don’t want to be bored for half-an-hour) can be sedated.  This, of course, prohibits the poor guy from screaming and hollering if the adenosine is causing a big problem (for which the testers have an antidote).  No thanks, fellas, I’ll just stay awake and keep an eye on things, if you don’t mind.

After several minutes of machine foreplay, the stress-producing medication is introduced through the IV and the patient’s heart rate accelerates.  When 85% of the target heart rate is achieved, an isotope (radioactive material that helps make images of the heart) is introduced intravenously.  A drop in the diastolic blood-pressure is generally awaited before the administration of the isotope.  Images that were taken before heart acceleration are called “resting images; those taken after are called “stress images.”  The two can be compared to find problem areas.  The medication given during the test dilates the heart arteries, giving evidence of any potential or existing blockages when the heart is stressed.  If the subject has a stent, blood flow through the stent is examined (if insufficient, another stent can be placed inside the original).  And if an earlier stress test has been performed, comparisons to the latter test will be made and doctors can proceed accordingly.

For the boring first part of the test, I was looking for the cartoon channel.  Then for about ten minutes, I thought about the surprising buildup of toxic pollutants on the Kamchatka Peninsula.  When it finally came time for the heavy breathing, Justin entered and said the hour had arrived.  I should report any untoward incidents, however minor.  I could feel the slimy juices doing their dirty work.  All of a sudden, deeper breathing was required.  Much deeper breathing.  You have a tendency to wonder if you can keep breathing fast enough, which is one thing when you’re on a treadmill and can stop any time and another when you are lying a helpless captive in a giant cylinder and there will be no stopping.  You concentrate on breathing in and out for about five minutes.  Gradually, the breathing slows.  After a few more minutes, breathing returns to normal and the test is over.  Drinks all around.  You are Not Dead Yet.  The workers remove the EKG tentacles, the blood-pressure cup and the IV.  Justin, who is not allowed to discuss his interpretation of the results, smiles.  I ask the question anyway.

“Well,” says Justin, “all that is for Doctor Van Roy to interpret.  But at least you passed the first test.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I asked, curiously.

“You got up off the table.”

 

The Thomas Center, Gainesville

 

One Last Word

Before we close the books on The Year That Was….2014.  As discussed earlier, 2014 was a very good year for Marty Jourard, The Rise Of Marijuana, Flying Pie readership, professional soccer and goats, the latter of which spread across the Greater Fairfield area like a raging forest fire, but without the ashes.  Siobhan’s own personal herd rose from five to nine with the births of a quartet of newcomers who continue to thrive in this goat-friendly atmosphere.  Soon, they’ll be off to school and picking up part-time jobs at the car-wash.  As previously advertised, Siobhan bought additional property to expand their horizons, then added an exciting new seesaw for the recreation area and a heavy-duty plasma TV for the goathouse.  We originally tuned it to the Animal Channel but the kids kept asking for The Flash so it’s up to the general population to sort it out.  Enough with the goats.

Vacation Time took us to the California Coast, where we survived a two-hour rental car wait at SFO, walked across the Golden Gate Bridge (twice), ferried to Sausalito and back, laughed at the uproarious Beach Blanket Babylon, stomped around Golden Gate Park, revisited the energetic Haight and bought our friend, Greg Poe, a PECKER cap in the Castro.  Well, it had a picture of a rooster on it, so what’s the problem?

From San Francisco, we drove down the coast past Castroville, the artichoke capital of the world, and holed up in Monterrey for a couple of days, visiting the unforgettable Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur and checking out the sea otter colony at Point Lobos State Reserve, with an afternoon visit to ritzy Carmel-By-The-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was not in evidence.

After that, onward to L.A., where my sister Alice dwells, tossing darts at Nancy Pelosi photos in her rec room.  We took Alice to Venice Beach, the Santa Monica Pier and Hollywood Boulevard, all in one day.  She said we walked too much.  Republicans don’t walk.

Finally, it was down to beautiful Laguna Beach, current home of boyhood friend Jack Gordon and his wife, Barbara, a very pleasant woman with an annoying habit.  She never reads The Flying Pie, not once, even when we talk about Jack.  Gee.  What is it with some people?  We’re hoping to see Jack again—he can even bring Barbara—this July in our old neighborhood in Lawrence.  We’ll undoubtedly write a column about the experience and we might even include a bunch of stuff about Barbara.  Bet she reads that one.

Last Summer, old pal Chuck Lemasters told us it was imperative we gather up all the Old Gainesvillians for one Last Roundup before everybody was dead. Good idea.  We’re trying to coordinate this spectacular festival—I’m thinking the old Thomas Hotel grounds in Summer—with the publication of Marty Jourard’s tome, Gettin’ Down In Gatortown , but the editors at the University of Florida Press are poring over the copy very carefully to make sure Marty didn’t put too much sex and drugs in with the rock ‘n’roll.  And here I thought they’d want it to be anatomically correct.  So far, seven hundred people have told me they’re coming for sure but there’s always that guy with the hoodie and the scythe to consider.

Siobhan Ellison, whoever she is, had a big year in 2014.  So big her old accountant, Myron, told her she was getting a little too large for him to handle, so now we’ve got a younger guy named Russell who has an actual office that is not in his house.  I guess that’s progress.  Pathogenes, Inc. is moving forward, if at a glacial pace, in its dealings with the moribund FDA, whose officers get paid whether they work or not and we suspect it’s mostly the latter.  She’s working with over 1200 veterinarians across the country, however, and her success rate in dealing with EPM horses is still over 87%.  And she even got a new truck.  Siobhan still goes to yoga on Thursday nights so she doesn’t have to sit home watching me reread The Flying Pie sixty or so times looking for possible mistakes.  She says to say “hi.”

So we’re done with 2014, but we keep it close to our hearts.  The New Year brings Infinite Possibilities.  A few things are known.  Bull Ensign will continue his brief career, starting Sunday at Gulfstream Park.  Cosmic Saint (aka Serena), half-sister to Flash of the same cosmos, will hit the racetrack by April.  Kathleen Ellison will graduate from medical school in May in the home town of Court Lewis.  Vacation Time in late July will find us visiting Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor, Maine, with stops in The Big Apple, Beantown and Lawrence on the way.  And Marty Jourard’s book will finally be published, leading to the arrival of the Grand Gainesville Reunion sometime this summer.  It will, won’t it, Marty?  The Whole World Is Waiting.

 

Photo Of The Week

You Can Keep Your Miss Americas.  We’ll Take A Subterranean Circus Girl Every Time. 

Linda Hughes And Debbie Adelman Yuk It Up, Circa 1972.

 

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

All Goats, All the time: http://pathogenes.com/GoatCam/View.html

Bucks Dump Ducks

 

 

Nope, it’s not more trouble in the Animal Kingdom, just College Football’s last gasp of the 2014-15 season.  Coach Urban Meyer’s fourth-ranked Buckeyes, who barely sneaked into the four-team playoffs, pummeled Oregon’s jazzy Ducks 42-20 at the Shangri-La Football Palace (also known as A.T.&T. Stadium) in Arlington, Texas to capture the collegiate National Championship.  This is the third national title for Meyer, who won two of them here at Florida before falling out of bed with some Mystery Disease after losing the Southeastern Conference championship game to Alabama in 2009.

The nature of Urban’s illness was vague but some thought it might be Lackaquarterbackitis, a dreaded scourge which causes previously successful college teams to fall on hard times when their star field generals graduate, as megastar Tim Tebow did following that game.  His replacement, Cam Newton, had earlier been dispatched by UF officials when somebody else’s computer was found residing in Cam’s apartment.  He said he bought it from a wandering purveyor of damaged goods who had passed through campus in a horse-drawn wagon full of rags and newspapers but administrators raised a wary eyebrow.  Next QB in line was John Brantley, a high-school hero from nearby Ocala who possessed a good enough football pedigree but turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.  Meyer must have been prescient about the matter, citing his illness as a cause for his sudden retirement from coaching.  Shocked to the core, Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley rushed over to Urban’s posh estate with strawberries and cream, asking his pal to do nothing rash.  Meyer reconsidered, then coached the Gators to a miserable 8-5 season before quitting again.  Nobody cared this time.

Though the sick and weary coach said he would now be “spending a lot more time with family,” he immediately took a job with ESPN, zipping around the country talking about college football.  When the Ohio State job opened up a year later, Meyer, a native of Ashtabula, Ohio jumped on it, reinforcing Florida fans’ suspicions that he bailed out on a bad situation.  They now root for anyone OSU plays, not that it seems to help those opponents much.  Meyer’s 13-1 team won the game with its third-string quarterback, the other two having been sidelined by injuries, and despite a raft of turnovers.  Oregon, meanwhile, had not scored less than 38 points all year except in its only loss, 31-24 to Arizona in early October.  Cad or not, Urban Meyer has ascended to become the best college football coach in the country.  His Buckeye team is young and talented and will be right back for more next year.  Ah, well, the world turns and its inhabitants ponder what might have been.  What if that ragman had steered his horse down a different street?  What if Mom had given Cam a new computer for Christmas?  What have they done to the rain?

Meanwhile, sympathetic Gator hearts go out to Deb Peterson and her Oregon Ducks, a colorful crew, fast-paced, high-scoring, possessed of a Heisman-Trophy-winning quarterback.  Just not all they’re quacked up to be.

 

2014 Again

But we were talking about the Old Year before we were so rudely interrupted, even if it was last week.  In 2014, thoroughbred racing had another Triple Crown contender.  And yeah, even you rookies know that nobody ever wins the thing, but it’s fun speculating.  California Chrome certainly looked the part, a gleaming chestnut colt, named for his abundance of white markings.  He promptly made off with the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on the First Saturday In May and then Pimlico’s Preakness, before faltering in the mile-and-one-half Belmont Stakes in New York, won by Tonalist.  The three-year-old who finished the season strongest, however, was Bayern (named for his owner’s favorite soccer club), who annexed the Pennsylvania Derby and the Haskell Stakes before winning the prestigious Breeders’ Cup Classic.

If you want to get your bets down for the 2015 Derby while the odds are silly good, here is a list of the likely contenders along with the current odds (and the column remains crooked no matter what I do):

American Pharoah      13-1

Calculator                    19-1

Carpe Diem                  18-1

Daredevil                      30-1

Dortmund                      5-1

El Kabeir                       30-1

International Star        80-1

Mr. Z                             45-1

Ocho Ocho Ocho       30-1

Texas Red                   12-1

Something to remember: either by dint of injury, insufficient earnings or disappointing performance on the track in upcoming races, many of these characters will not actually run on the First Saturday in May.  And several others not mentioned will be there with bells on.  If you’re inclined to shoot for the really big bucks, the longest odds posted on any horse in the 2015 Derby is the impolite 400-1 number they hung on a poor fellow named Patterson Hill.  Maybe they’re trying to tell him something.  On the other hand, odds of 300-1 have been placed on a huge number of horses we consider promising and likely to improve.  It only takes one good performance to radically alter perceptions.  For instance, the well-named Sky Hero dropped from 250-1 all the way down to 85-1 after winning an allowance race at Churchill Downs in November.  There may even be a Derby contender or two who has not run yet.

We haven’t seen all these horses run, but we have seen Texas Red demolish a nice field in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.  12-1 looks like a sprightly proposition right now.  Look for Red to show up in the San Vincente in California on February 1.  If he wins that, he could wind up the Derby favorite in Louisville.  Either him or Patterson Hill.

 

Soccer Again

Every four years, soccer maniacs gear up for the hallowed World Cup, and last year was no different.  We didn’t have the usual plethora of street brawls and automobile inversion since the thing was held in Brazil, too far away for the European Soccer Hooligans to show up en masse and display their shoddy wares.  Brazil was close enough for Americans to visit, of course, and a truckload of young Yankees turned up to root on the U.S.A. team, getting a little too excited, if you ask us, when their heroes accumulated one win, one tie and two losses.  If that was your football record, the fans would be placing empty suitcases on the coach’s lawn and snubbing his wife at the Costco.  During this spectacular display of the world’s favorite game, the United States team once went 215 (count ‘em—TWO HUNDRED FIFTEEN) minutes without scoring, which almost matches the relative record of the Salutatorian of your high-school senior class.  What are they doing out there, reflecting on the Meaning of Life?  The Mayflower took less time to cross the Atlantic.

Then there’s the flopping.  If you think American basketball players exaggerate an insult, you should see these soccer sissies.  They couldn’t hit the ground harder if they were struck by lightning.  Remember those giant tunneling worms in the Tremors movies?  Somebody would be standing around having a smoke, not paying attention to their surroundings and ZAPPO!—the giant tunneling worm would suck them under before you could blink.  Well, these soccer players make those worms look pokey.  And then, some of them begin to actually weep!  I’m sorry, but I’m not subscribing to any sport festering with a bunch of crybabies, even if they are faking.  It’s downright undignified.

Me and my pal Allen Morgan, 85, went to a soccer game at UF once.  I talked him into it.  It was very cold and if there was one thing Allen liked less than soccer it was freezing weather.  He had a big coat on and a scarf over the lower half of his face, exposing only his eyes.  Just before halftime, he raised the scarf to cover his entire face, eyes included, his own little commentary on the proceedings.

“My whole body is numb,” complained Allen.  “And now my brain is getting numb.  I’m not sure whether it’s the cold or the soccer.”

We left at halftime.  Never to return.

 

 

Year Of The Pie

This column had a successful annum, to say the least, breaking all records for viewers and presenting a few of our better pieces.  The California Vacation blogs, a four-week extravaganza, were very popular, as are all the vacation columns, crammed as they are with happy photos of pretty places.  This year, however, that group was outdone in numbers (if barely) by the adolescence-in-Austin feature 1962, another quadrilogy, this one aided and abetted by the Facebook promotions of Harry Edwards, Bob Follett and Jay Lynch.  Facebook also came to the fore when Marty Jourard advertised Camelot, an extremely well-read tale of the early days of the Subterranean Circus and our old employee Mike (Jagger) Hatcherson.

No one column had more viewers, however, than The Land That Time Forgot, an article about the Horse Country surrounding Lexington, Kentucky, which included a day in the life of itinerant horseman Bill Mauk.  Everybody in Fayette and surrounding counties read that one and it remains the only column in the four-plus years of this enterprise which approached 800 readers, though most settle around 100 fewer.  Who knew?  While we’ve come to expect big numbers from the travelogues and the Kentucky Derby specials, every so often a column rises up and surprises us with its strength and longevity.  The writing in this one was kindly assisted by my own feelings for and appreciation of the beauty and bustle and professionalism of the Lexington area horse community.

Other pleasant surprises over time have included Boy Howdy, now the fifth most-read column, an effort discussing romance on the farm with the blossoming of Farmers.com, The Incredible Lightness Of Being, describing the late days of the Charlatan magazine and the coming of the Subterranean Circus, all of it involving the stunning death of old pal Newt Simmons, and Schmuck Dynasty: Television For Morons, about….well, you know.  We don’t plan these things, they just come to us in technicolor visions which appear when we’re bored on the treadmill or bored while we’re driving or bored watching the Gators’ offense, so we could be hampered by expected improvements on the gridiron.  Nonetheless, we’ll keep plugging away, even after all possible subjects have been exhausted.  Which, if I’m correct, could be as soon as next week.

 

New And Improved: No Huff, No Puff

The Death Of Pain

Well, maybe physical pain, anyway.  My old friend, Irana Zisser in Boca has come up with a wonderful new discovery, although you have to be careful with Irana.  You may recall that while a Subterranean Circus employee, she called me from the First Annual National Boutique Show in The Big Apple and told me about some exotic pipes we just had to purchase.  She said they were sure to sell and we’d be fools to neglect them.  When they arrived, I was somewhat taken aback. These pipes looked like they had been constructed by a ceramicist on acid, though one with a considerable sense of humor.  They were strange, misshapen creatures; sometimes, you needed a map to find the bowls.  But Irana was right about one thing—they did sell out, and it only took about 17 years.  We kept them around that long to see what kind of people would purchase such monstrosities.  Whenever we sold one, somebody would go to the rear of the store and loudly bong the ship’s bell we had installed for just such occasions.

Anyway, Irana is at it again.  Now, she has discovered some kind of CBD Oil, a product which relieves all pain.  And Irana should know from pain.  She remains the single inhabitant of Earth who has had ALL of her body parts replaced.  No, we’re not kidding.  Okay, there are a couple of things they couldn’t replace, like skwushed rotator cuffs and skrunched discs in her back.  Irana has automobile accidents, see, although none of them are her fault.  Up until recently, she was taking FOURTEEN Oxycodone tablets a day, which barely put a dent in her miseries.  “I thought I might as well off myself,” confessed the poor thing.  And then, just as she was looking for the tallest building in town, she discovered this magic Cannabidiol product, which has made her (almost) pain-free and restored her to the ranks of the living, although she’s not yet accepting tennis dates.  She says she’s going to start selling the stuff and I should tell people about it in The Flying Pie.  Well….

I don’t recommend anything in here that I haven’t used myself.  I told Irana to send up enough doses to try the stuff on three people.  She’s thinking about it.  I haven’t seen any CBD oil yet but I did begin to read about it.  Seems the oil Irana uses is not to be confused with other types of medical marijuana or hemp products; for one thing, users don’t get high from it.  We’re not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, we’re just reporting here.  Anyway, we have no doubt there has been a remarkable change in Irana, as well as a few others she has sold her product to.  If she ever gets around to sending us any, we’ll try it on Siobhan (frozen shoulders), Jennie Hollis (lower back issues) and Lila, the dog (painful snoring).  Since most of our audience has one compromised body part of another, this could be a boon to Piekind.  We’ll keep you posted.  In the meantime, don’t throw away your Tylenol.

 

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

 

    

 

.

Another One Bites The Dust

 

And no, for a change we’re not talking about another compadre lost to the inconsiderate ravages of Time; this time it’s Memorial Day for the year 2014.  There will be no funerals, of course.  In this century, whoever is in charge decided there will be no more funerals.  So now we have “Celebrations of Life,” and that’s what we’re having today—a Celebration of the Year Past because there was much that happened to celebrate.

Right off the bat, January of 2014 brought the annual announcement of the Perhaps Annual Internet Man Of The Year, which, in this case, was Kirkland, Washington’s own Marty Jourard, practicing musician, alleged author and website manager extraordinaire.  We’re not too sure about the author part because Marty’s supposed book, Gettin’ Down in Gatortown, has been in preparation for twenty-seven years now and as yet we haven’t seen hide nor hair of the critter.  We’re pretty patient people, though.  We still haven’t give up on the sequel to Easy Rider forty-six years later, although we’re expecting cast changes.

Listen Marty, unlike us, Chuck Lemasters is getting pretty antsy.  We’re trying to schedule our Great Gainesville Reunion around the publication of your tome and we have hotels to book, flights to arrange.  Whose asses do we have to kick at the University of Florida Printing Press to get this thing going?  Chuck has his car parked outside the place, waiting to hear. 

 

Pilgrim’s Progress

The Legalization of Marijuana is sneaking up on one state after another.  It almost snuck up on Florida, thwarted only due to a bit of overconfidence on the part of the Offense and a last gasp infusion of capital by Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.  The 79-year-old billionaire, a paragon of virtue who once admitted to violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by bribing Chinese officials, usually saves his contributions for right-wing Republican political candidates.  His son, Mitchell, however, used cocaine and heroin from an early age and eventually died of a drug overdose and Adelson considers marijuana the “gateway drug” which led his son astray.  He had no comment about milk, which Mitchell allegedly chugged by the carton as a gradeschooler.  Adelson was also noncommittal about the possibility of casinos being “gateway drugs” into a lifetime of addictive gambling.

Florida voters went 58% pro-medical marijuana but a 60% plurality was required.  Politicos, however, can see the handwriting on the wall and could draft a bill before the next election.  Even Republicans appreciate extra tax money.

Last year, we discussed the hopelessness of getting national legislation passed in practically any area and posited it would be necessary for individual states to Save The World.  This is beginning to happen.  Not only with marijuana and the cleverly managed same-sex marriage campaigns, but now with Gun Safety.  The New York Times reports that after a victory in November on a Washington State ballot measure which will require broader background checks on gun buyers, groups that advocate gun regulation have moved away from Washington and turned their attention to other states which allow ballot measures.  Progress has been made in Nevada, Arizona, Maine and Oregon as well as Colorado.  Some provisions have even gained steam in Republican-controlled state governments, like those in Louisiana and Wisconsin.  In the past two years, 11 states have passed such legislation.  The Duck Commander states, of course, will hold on for dear life, but there is Progress and, as GE told us long ago, Progress Is Our Most Important Product.

 

Alleleluia!  Alleluia!  Let The Golden Anthem Rise!

Last year, Bill and Siobhan looked forward to Great Things on the racing front.  “What fools these mortals be!” quoth Puck, which also happens to be the alter-ego name of our unsuccessful racehorse, Cosmic Flash, who won his first start and spent the rest of the year accumulating injuries before returning to racing with a resounding thud.  There is a term in racing for horses who rule the world in a.m. workouts and disappear in p.m. racing.  That term is Morning Glory, and it was never more apt than in this case.

We had another injury-prone youngster named Bull Ensign, who we bought as a yearling in a 2013 sale, a large fellow who took time to mature.  Just when it seemed he might never race, he was finally entered at Hallandale’s Gulfstream Park on January 2 in a 7 1/2 furlong outing on the turf (grass) track.  Horses who run this distance first time out usually have one thing in common—they are not very fast, and this certainly applies to Bull Ensign, who couldn’t beat a fat man at six furlongs.  But fat men get tired and so do most horses, while Bull Ensign apparently does not.  After breaking from the gate an unalert last, he loped comfortably down the backstretch, falling 16 lengths behind, went five wide into the turn and came blasting down the stretch to finish fourth, beaten a smidge over two lengths.  After the race, trainer Eddie Plesa called and laughingly asked if we’d trade him for anybody else in the race.  No Eddie, we would not, although we don’t have a long history of genius behavior when it comes to these matters.  Then, Plesa made a remark which could cause him to lose his trainer’s license—he said we’d have to move the horse UP in claiming value, a shocking statement from the trainer of any thoroughbred.  Usually, you can win the Triple Crown and your trainer will be looking next for a non-winners-of-four race at Delaware Park.  We’ll send him back out at a mile or more sometime this month.  If he decides to leave the gate with his friends, the sky’s the limit.

 

Just Another Goat Expense

 

Zombie Jamboree:  Cancelled

After years of stupendous progress, the Zombie Movement slowed to a crawl in 2014.  No big new movies or TV shows, no YouTube episodes featuring Zombie Flash Mobs instigating bothersome traffic snarls in downtown Dubuque.  What happened?  Used to be you couldn’t walk out the door without running into one of the little buggers. Inquiring minds want to know.

Same old culprit.  Overexposure.  It happened to Brittany Spears (remember her?)  It happened to Dick Cheney.  It even happened to the Baja Marimba Band, which is really shocking.  Nothing lasts forever, except maybe for Mick Jagger and even he’s showing a little tread lately.  Nope, first the Vampires trended down and now it’s the Zombies.  The real question is what will be the next Big Thing?  Siobhan thinks it will be Goats, and she’s ready.  Goatcams 1 and 2 have been spiffed up and caprine activity is now beamed into more American homes than ever, about six at last count.  This week, she is visiting the nursing home down the road with an offer to hook them up—the ultimate irony: old goats watching old goats.  If this works out on a local basis, we might see a vast network of old folks across the country whiling away the hours with goat-viewing.  Soon, commercial entities will become involved, wishing to advertise their products to this enormous audience.  Just think of it—outfits like Grandma’s Diaper Service promising  “You’ll never have to leave your chair during important goatwatching moments when you equip yourself with a large-intake Superabsorber from Granny’s.”  Or, from the Goat Benevolent & Protective Society, “Save these beautiful animals from the Gumbo Factory with your contribution to the Goat Retirement Farm; adopt a horny creature for only $24 a month.”  Stuff like that.

All I know is that this goat business is expensive.  First, you’ve got to purchase your goats, then it’s feed, bedding, warming chandeliers, television cameras, recreation platforms and old Jim Nabors records.  The goats really like old Jim Nabors music.  Go figure.  So, it’s good to know there’s a light at the end of the funnel and yes, that’s spelled correctly.  Oh well, everyone needs a hobby.  Goatkeeping is probably better than collecting Airsickness Bags, Yarnbombing or Tatooing Vehicles and at least on a par with Duct Tape Artistry and Eating Inanimate Objects.  And if this thing works out the way Siobhan hopes, we’ll be in on the bottom floor of a lucrative new industry and the money will just come rolling in.  I’ll probably spend my share on a lovely villa in Fudgepack upon Humber, where the deer and the antelope don’t play.

And how about you, Siobhan?  Will it be two weeks in Bolivia, a new Maserati, a small bag of emeralds?  Oh, really—that’s very exciting.  It’s certainly not every day you’ll find a two-for-one sale down at Goats ‘R’ Us. 

 

This One Makes 238

Last year also marked the appearance of the 200th edition of  The Flying Pie, an occasion celebrated with huge parades from Guam to Ecuador.  Thanks to a breakthrough column about Lexington, Kentucky and the four-part quadrilogy on Austin, Texas 1962, readership zoomed to 700 weekly, a new high.  Since TFP typically presents the type of material unavailable elsewhere, it is popular not only here in these United States, but also abroad, where it is studied in schoolrooms across the globe.  We’ll let you know which ones when we find out.  Anyway, here, in the appropriate order, are the countries which are tuning in most:

1. Ukraine

2. Germany

3. France

4. Russia

5. United Kingdom

6. China

7. Poland

8. Malaysia

9. Canada

Obviously, we need to soon begin presenting our Hispanic version to pep up readership in Spanish-language countries.  Also, what’s going on with India—are they blacking us out in Mumbai?  India is the second-largest country in the world by population, soon to overtake China, and they speak the language.  Let’s go, you Patels, there’s no excuse for this sort of behavior.

Why is Ukraine on top, well-ahead of everybody else?  You’ve got us there.  Maybe our photographer pal, Moishe Groger, turned the country on during his recent visit.  Ukraine was not even in the top ten until 2014 and the population is not enormous (45,426,249; India—1,264,650,000) so if anybody has any ideas, please let us know.  We’re tired of begging these foreigners to write us, they just laugh in our faces.

One thing which has had a profound influence on our stats is Facebook.  In the past year, four people whose web pages have large followings (and we don’t think even they realize their heft)—Harry Edwards in Austin, Marty Jourard and Bob Follett in Washington State, and Jay Lynch in New York—have been kind enough to publicize one column or another, and every time this happened it resulted in extremely large numbers for that column and even those subsequent.  We’re trying to get Taylor Swift to follow suit but she hasn’t called back yet.

 

Kim With His Minister Of Defense

 

Next Time, Let’s Try Ernest

Well, in further 2014 hijinks, our old pal, Kim Jong-un, was back in the kitchen, rattlin’ those pots and pans.  Seems a bunch of shrewd guys in Hollywood decided it would be a good idea to make a dumb movie in which Kim would be the fall guy.  They called it “The Interview,” and judging from the trailers it was more of the same lowbrow schlock humor we’ve come to expect from this crowd.  The story included a plot to assassinate Kim, which is not a barrel of laughs for everybody, Kim included.  Funny thing happened on the way to the matinee, though.  Kim Jong, merry man of mirth that he is, decided it was only fair for him to play a little trick on his friends at filmmaker Sony.  Therewith, he enlisted an elite crew of North Korean hackers to bust into Sony’s sacrosanct Secret Files….okay, they were mostly old emails….revealing snarky conversations between the studio’s honchos dissing some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.  This, of course, caused outrage from Vine Street to Malibu.  Hey, that’s what you get when you tickle the porcupine.  Some people just can’t take a joke and if that might be true of Kim it’s just as true of Sony.

The whole thing worked out so well Kim thought he’d push his luck a little.  Mysterious threats filtered out that cinemas showing the movie might be subject to unfortunate happenings, and theater owners, not known for exceptional valor, crumbled like the French Army.  Sony, beset on all sides, quickly decided to pull the movie, then was inundated with criticism—along with the theaters—for caving.  Eventually, Sony relented and a few independent theater owners, realizing the long arm of Kim Jong didn’t reach all the way to Monadnock or Chevy Chase, decided to run the film.  Nothing happened, of course.  Who’s going to blow up a theater in Peoria?

We here at The Flying Pie, are, of course, against censorship in any form but we are finding it difficult to be sympathetic with the moviemakers.  The film was not produced to confront tyranny, it was just another feeble effort to generate a few bucks by a studio which failed to consider the possibility that the subject of a proposed assassination might be a trifle offended.  After losing kazillions of dollars on this catastrophe, perhaps Sony will recall in the future Dirty Harry’s best advice: “A man has to know his limitations.”  And with that, we have a suggestion.  If you want to safely pick on someone, Sony, next time you might prefer to select a backwater hole in the road like Sierra Leone, puny, hackerless, devoid of the capacity for revenge.  The President there is Ernest Bai Koroma and, unlike Kim, he’d like any publicity he can get.

 

That.s all, folks,

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

Points Of Light

In the early seventies, taking a trip to Mexico seemed as natural as a drive to the grocery store.  Whether taken by myself, with wife Harolyn or fellow merchant, Rick Nihlen of Tallahassee, the visits always encompassed both business and pleasure, as we drove through the vast Mexican countryside visiting tiny hamlets on market days, surrounding ourselves with merry mariachis on warm Guadalajara nights or driving through the mountains to the Pacific, where friendly Puerto Vallarta awaited.

Market days in Mexican towns came once a week, and on those occasions craftsmen and mini-merchants from the surrounding area lugged their considerable goods to town, opened up a blanket and became retailers, joining the more or less permanent local businessmen who had actual storefronts or street stalls in which to stack their disparate paraphernalia.  Many of these towns featured specific products, like Taxco, built over hundreds of silver mines, Leon, footwear capital of the world, Puebla, the place to go for your onyx needs and Oaxaca, with its own unique pottery and a surfeit of blouse assemblers.

At the crack of dawn, the brooms come out in Mexico.  The brooms and the water buckets, hoses for the more affluent merchants, as they prepare for the day, sweeping the devil out of the area surrounding their little stalls or entryways, washing them down and sweeping some more.  These Mexicans could sweep the paint off a Packard.  I asked a little fellow in Tlaquepaque about the extraordinary efforts.  He smiled, and then a little introspective laugh.

“Yes, senor,” he told me in his best English.  “It is true we work hard with this.  You look around (sweeping his arm).  There is no beauty.”  To say the least.  The surrounding area was a virtual slum, noxious, unkempt, poverty-ridden.

“I have no power to change these things.  I have only power to make my own place beautiful.  My very small part of the world.  So I work hard.  I do everything I know to do.  I create my own beauty.”  And bravo! to that.  What the world could use a few more of is motivated Mexicans with brooms.

Young people (like us) used to grow up with brave but foolish notions of saving the world.  Unfortunately, we’re more sophisticated now, so we realize an individual save is impossible.  So what we need, and badly, is a whole mess of little saves, delivered by people we’ll call Points Of Light.  And no, George H. W. Bush does not OWN the phrase, he just borrowed it and I’m taking it back because a more apt one is hard to imagine.  Points Of Light.  It’s perfect.  You can be one if you try.

 

The Internet And Beyond

In the old days, we might brighten up the neighborhood with a tulip garden, holiday candles in the windows, a pat on the back for a needy recipient, these days we have The Internet….The Ultimate Weapon.  We can reach far beyond our immediate surroundings….reach out into the vast beyond, to Shanghai, to the Gobi Desert, to Equatorial Guinea, even, if it’s still there (and would anybody tell us if it’s not?).  And then there’s the mighty Son of Internet, the behemoth called Facebook.  Now, Facebook has its detractors, plenty of them, solid citizens concerned that the wife or daughter has given herself over to the pleasures of the durn thing and will never return.  We all know people who have gone beyond the pale.  But as our pal Marty Jourard contends, “The hell with people who dis Facebook; it’s by far the best tool ever for finding lost friends and keeping people together.”  And Marty has been known to be sometimes right.  But Facebook provides an even better raison d’etre, that being the palette it offers its users to create one’s own singular universe.  Everybody wants to be an artist, right?  So here’s your chance.  Whatever clutter surrounds you, however deep the dustpile, now you have a spanking-new Broom with which to begin excavation.  Use it wisely and construct your own private Idaho, or Shangri-La, if you prefer.  There are lonely people out there, hanging by a thread, numberless reclamation projects which can still be saved.  There are fights to be fought, battles that can be won against staggering odds.  There is hidden beauty which can be unearthed and displayed.  There are moving stories to reveal, epic feats to celebrate and there is laughter, don’t forget laughter.  You can promptly don your Point Of Light cape (no telephone booth required) and deliver the appropriate messages to the needy.  Oh, and remember the music.  Virtually all the music ever created is available somewhere on the Internet, we have but to find it.  The other day, we even re-found these guys:

  

The Incredible String Band

In the annals of music, there are a few artists whose sound is so distinct it is instantly recognizable from the first note.  Sinatra.  The Everly Brothers.  The Beach Boys.  Simon & Garfunkel.  The Beatles.  Add to the list a lesser-known but equally unique sound, the incomparable music of The Incredible String Band, a musical Point Of Light.  The ISB, basically the duo of Mike Heron and Robin Williamson, was not for everybody.  Its sound was comprised of haunting Celtic folk melodies augmented by a variety of Middle Eastern and Asian instruments.  But it is the stuff of great imagination, of wonder and beauty.  Heron was a member of several road bands in England in the early ‘60s, while Williamson and Clive Palmer played as a bluegrass and Scottish folk duo.  Heron was asked to join as rhythm guitarist and the trio took the name The Incredible String Band from Clive’s all-night establishment, cleverly called Clive’s Incredible Folk Club in Glasgow, where the group became the house band.  A talent scout named Joe Boyd had seen Williamson and Palmer perform at Edinburgh’s Crown Bar in 1965 and when he rose to head Elektra Records’ London office in 1966, he signed the new group for an album, the title of which was simply The Incredible String Band.

Following the album’s release, Williamson spent several months studying music in Morocco and Palmer left to travel to Afghanistan.  For the group’s second album, The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion, exotic touches such as the Middle Eastern oud, Indian sitars and tambouras began to permeate the group’s sound.  The band’s lyrics also became more whimsical and eventually included a priceless ditty called Painting Box,  which included such lines as these:

Somewhere in my mind there is a Paint Box;

I have every color there, it’s true.

But every time I look into my painting box

I seem to pick the colors….of you. 

Critics were thrilled with the group, even moreso after the release of their most commercially viable album, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, after which the group enjoyed a brief flirtation with stardom.  For the albums Wee Tam and the Big Huge, the band was augmented by Williamson’s and Heron’s girlfriends, Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson.  This expanded lineup performed at Woodstock in 1969, subjected to some bad luck when their Friday night slot following Joan Baez brought torrents of rain.  They cancelled and were replaced by Melanie, who was received extremely well and then wrote her big hit Candles In The Rain about the experience.  The ISB got a lukewarm reception next afternoon, performing between Creedence Clearwater Revival and Canned Head, not your ideal folkie spot.  They continued on but were never again as popular, gradually faded and finally disbanded in October, 1974.

The music of The Incredible String Band could never be described as catchy, you wouldn’t be whistling an ISB song as you walked down the street.  But it damn sure was original, lyrically gorgeous with beautiful imagery and always unpredictable.  Patience was required in listening, although all the patience in the world was not going to lasso a majority of people.  For those who loved the work, however, the music was unforgettable.  We played it all the time at the Subterranean Circus.  When we bought a few acres in the country, Circus employee Danny Levine took to calling it The Old Golden Land, after an Incredible lyric and when we sat around the water pipe at night we often analyzed and considered the songs, this being well before the inspiration hit us that nobody ever has any idea what musicians are really thinking.  We enjoyed one of the ISB verses so much we even recruited a sweet little acidhead artist named Ishmael to paint it on the front of the building….our wishes for those who passed through our portals:

May the long time Sun shine upon you,

All love surround you,

And the Pure Light within you

Guide you all the way on.

Points Of Light.  You can’t beat ‘em for home or office.

 

Where Deb Peterson Lives. And No Wonder.

 

Yachats To Be Kidding.  Not Really….

There were always a few people who hung around the Subterranean Circus longer than the normal, psychologically sound human beings.  People like the Jourard brothers, mysteriously drawn to the place by some unknown magnetism and unwilling to leave.  I’m not sure why we put up with them but it might be due to their cleverness in bringing pastries.  Another loiterer, although more charming, was a winsome lass named Deb Peterson, who loved the Circus and especially loved The Incredible String Band, so much so that  in later life she travelled to England, introduced herself to Robin Williamson and became one of the musician’s inner circle, invited across the pond annually for whatever hijinks the old guy still performs.  Deb took the group’s music—songs immersed in beauty, love and kindness—very seriously, deciding that adaptation to the ISB philosophy would be a meritorious way to conduct her life.  She continues to be a font of love, encouragement and friendship to all on her sunny Facebook page, dispatching images of beauty and positivity—without being cloying—on a daily basis.  A Point Of Light.  She is a source of  joy to all she reaches, which is a ton of people.  She is brightening up her little corner of the world.  Her signature line is “All you need is love,” which might seem a little corny if you didn’t know Deb Peterson.  

Therefore, without further ado, The Flying Pie herewith announces the knighting of Deb Peterson as the Third Perhaps Annual Internet Co-Person Of The Year, a first around these parts, all the other honorees being male.  As everyone knows by now, this entitles the recipient and the pal of her choice to a free feast at the best local restaurant we could find….and, let me tell you, that wasn’t easy in Deb’s neck of the woods.  Because we are on close terms with Google Analytics, we first had the notion that Deb Peterson lived in Waldport, Oregon.  Then, it looked like the correct address might be Yachats.  After which, she mailed us a couple sheets of Janis Joplin stamps (the lead illustration for last week’s column), postmarked Tidewater, for crying out loud.  A cursory inspection of the paucity of restaurants in the area convinced us it had better be Yachats, but where-oh-where in Yachats to go?  Silly old Tripadvisor tried to tell us the best restaurant in town was The Village Bean Coffee Shop but we weren’t going for that.  All due respect to The Village Bean, which might be the best little coffee shop in the civilized world, but come on, guys, we’re talking dinner here.  We settled on the Ona Restaurant (Is Ona the owner?  No, we think it’s Michelle) in lovely Yachats, so you march right on down there, Deb, and show them your Points Of Light card.  They promise to take good care of you.  And you were right, you don’t even need money, all you need is….well, you know.

 

A Harry Edwards Contribution

 

We’re Still Wild About Harry

What is left to say about Harry Edwards, bon vivant, man-about-Austin, chronicler of an era, music historian, bringer of The Truth to millions and now a certified Point Of Light?  We’re not certain Harry will accept his POL title despite his great affinity for all things Bush but we’re pretty sure he won’t turn down his Third Perhaps Annual Internet Co-Person Of The Year Award because his lovely wife, Diane, likes to dine in style.

We first met Harry on the Austin Ghetto Line (the correct name for which we can never actually remember) where he was a regular participant in the daily skirmishing among grouchy old socialists, kindly granny-ladies and pollyannas like me who think there is at least a ten percent chance mankind will be saved from itself.  Harry knew when to insert humor into the conversation, which is often in this case.  I should have met him earlier, since we were both tenants in Wally Stopher’s flophouse at about the same time in 1962….maybe he was the guy on mattress number five over by the window.

At any rate, when I finally fled for my life from the Ghetto Line, I had to keep track of Harry somehow, so I resorted to his Facebook page, a well-managed operation full of appropriate political outrage, musical reminders, Austin shenanigans, funny business and important historical happenings such as a recent conversation in England involving supercartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Robert Crumb, who is not as shy these days as he used to be.  Harry was also the lead bell-ringer in Austin for the recent Flying Pie Quadrilogy, 1962, advising the customers whenever Elvis entered the building and delivering scads of viewers to the column, and he did it without being asked.

There are countless people with Facebook pages out there, most of them sharing recipes, posting photos of their children or the dog, expressing naïve outrage at some social minutiae (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but there are only a small number in which each posting seems a carefully considered move….almost as if Harry Edwards is publishing his own newspaper, filtering and triaging the contents, seeking to advise his fellow man there are important things out there to consider, people worthy of remembrance, a crying need for social justice and nobody is permitted to simply look the other way.

Okay, then Harry—this time it’s the La V French restaurant, where the lovely and talented Jamie is waiting, gift card in hand, but not until tomorrow.  Bon appetit, which, I think, means “hearty eatin’” in American.

It’s the New Year, everybody, time for reassessment and retrenchment.  The forces which assail us are mighty but they are not intimidating Deb Peterson and Harry Edwards and they needn’t run us aground either.  In the Pursuit of Happiness, we can be passive or aggressive but the former works better.  And when New Year’s Resolution time arrives, take a look around and see what you can do for someone.  It needn’t be much, a small kindness, a gesture.  It will make you feel better, perhaps spur you to further efforts.  Before you know it, you’ll be on your way.  You could even become a Point Of Light.

 

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@blogspot.com