Waiting For The Man

Summer's comin' on like a pimple on my ass in May (go figure). And I know that in recent months my posts have been less than stellar, and not very interesting to say the least. But before I go any further, I must say that I warned you about that. I think it's in my blog heading. But these recent posts have even bored me. I'm phonin' it in, folks. I went back in the post archives, to last summer, for inspiration. All I had to do was read one of them & I could feel the difference between then & now.

Can I credit that to any of the crap that's happening to the world nowadays? I mean, gas is back up to 2.50 a gallon. No one has a job. Therefore, no one has any money. I have both, but not a lot of the latter. And I'm waitin' to be inspired.

I can get inspired by the writings of Michael Musto and Kinky Friedman, or the paintings of Miro and John Currin, and I used to think the diatribes of Lester Bangs. Recently I've been reading a collection of Bangs' articles, called Psychotic Reactions & Carburetor Dung, and now I consider him juvenile, stupid & just plain boring. Everyone in pop journalism pisses themselves over his stuff. Bangs this, Bangs that. He was just the first to write as if he didn't care about anything, as if Leave It To Beaver or bologna was more important than whatever he was supposed to write about. Just the first, like Presley in his field (I don't like him, either).

But he inspired people, I guess. Me included. And now there are smart-assed journalists the world over that make his writings wither on the vine.

I used to wonder if I didn't like certain writers or painters or artists because I was too simple minded to understand what they're doing. Now I'm comfortable with the realization that they don't move me, man. I mean, I may still be simple minded, but I'm cool with that.

No sacred cows.

Someone told me don't be a hater. I say don't be a lover. There's a lot of shit, and I do mean shit, out there. There's a lot of great stuff out there, too, except you gotta hunt it down. Most people can't be bothered. They settle, or they decide it's not important. Books, films, music (especially music), et al. If you dig it, go for quality. My main man Tom was great for that. You'd try to hip him to something, & he'd just say "oh yeah? so?" I loved it, and it infuriated me. But it kept me real.

So what this boils down to is this: while the summer of my 11th & 12th year are quite memorable to me, and I find myself replaying those memories in my head every solstice, the reality is once you've shared that with someone, it becomes irrelevant. Do you wanna hear someone else's old stories over & over? No. So I won't bore you with mine. Because the vibe won't be the same.