Fair Ball

This is kind of what this evening looked like:


My twenty third birthday was two nights ago. Long intoxicating night throwing rocks at the train from a gravel parking lot with wild friends. Insane and inane conversation over the O.J. Simpson trial and the meaning of the term habeas corpus, of all things. Leif insisting on O.J.'s innocence, and claiming there happended to be an O.J. look a like contest in Brentwood just a few days prior to the murders. Me being drunk and giving all my money away to the wonderful woman and gentleman who cooked us our food and hung with our bullshit in the waffle house at three in the morning...





An Arkansas Traveler's game at Ray Winder Field tonight. Kevin catching a foul ball. Kevin drinking tons of beer and forgetting a foul ball. The final seaon in this wonderful old stadium...I wonder how many times I've been here as a kid?


Kicking it with Mr. Deucey and getting ready to go to sleep...

Burning Trains

On Wednesday morning I woke up and started reading Bukowski in my bed before I even took a piss. And trust me, it isn't that I didn't have to go...I walked two miles to eat a plate of macaroni, mashed potatoes, okra, and a glass of sweet tea. And it was worth it. On the way I fed my soul with the Goody Mob and Todd Snider in the headphones. I passed over this huge drainage ditch rushing with rain water and saw a disgusting brown snake slither under a busted up rock. The image is burned into my memory, and I've got this sneaking fear that it will someday reappear in my mind's eye if ever under a psychedelic experience. I guess I'll be more careful now when listening to 60's rock in the dark. Fuck, I HATE snakes. I walked down the railroad tracks and passed by a lot of factory workers eating lunch under this small metal shack behind a barbed wire fence. My soul ached for them. I was thankful that it wasn't me behind those walls.

Tuesday night was a bit of drinking and reading on the staircase at the White Water Tavern. Hanging out with a few friends and shooting pool. Wandering around in the gravel parking lot and taking pictures of the stopped trains. Talking over some god awful band. A birthday party in Little Rock last night. And Out Come The Wolves on the stereo with friends dancing around and singing.

My own birthday is in four days. What will this next year bring?

931 Revisited

Last night I took a picture of the moon
standing underneath your old room
drunk on one thousand memories:
our small bed upstairs
that wild look in your eyes
200 people dancing
on the living room floor


no money for the rent
the yard washed in
shadows and moonlight
hank williams drifting
from an upstairs window
a hole in the kitchen wall
the landlord's voice
in the morningtime
and you naked in my bed
at age nineteen



now there's an old lady
living in the back apartment
where we used to scream
i don't give a fuck
and i love you
in the same breath
just like brandon said

Bored on a Saturday with hours to kill, if this town doesn't get you, then mabye I will.

Friday night was loud guitars, expensive beer, and me slowly coming alive. I stared at Kevin Kerby's beat up yellow telecaster and dreamed of ways to make it mine. A five year anniversary show for Max Recordings. The American Princes were inspiring as always. David has got to be one of my favorite writers, and Collins a favorite guitar player. Matt pounds the fuck out of his drums and Luke holds it all together. Great guys. Great band. Period.



Kent got warmed up for the show by listening to Triple Six Mafia and downing a beer. It was good to see Gilbert, my old best buddy, and at one time, my closest confidant. Yesterday I thought about us as teenagers with fucked up haircuts and a crazy punk rock band. His wild bass lines always played with style and instinct. All of the different rooms we used to practice in. Fun nights drinking in the Dodge 440 and hanging out on Josh's parent's porch. The insane brilliance and joy of owning a van with several of your best friends in high school. Trips to Chicago, St. Louis, Austin. The jokes. My god, the jokes..



Drove back to Conway with Nick and Thomas. A party on college avenue with Seth, Michael, and Mark being wasted and hilarious. A first hand account of Bruce Springsteen at the Jazz festival in New Orleans. Saturday was working all day on an exhausted hang over with no breakfast. Pretty bad. It stole my Saturday night. But that's alright, because there is a party tonight at the Faulkner House. I am going to see if I can conjure up any ghosts...See ya there, I hope.

So I just got back from spending a couple of days in the Ozark Mountains. It was incredible. We stayed in Leif's mother's cabin on Lake Lenee in Jasper, the county seat of Newton County, and arguably one of the most beautiful areas of the Natural State. An area so rural that it wasn't that uncommon for us to have to drive through rivers and creeks on dirt roads to get to where we were going. Crooked highways, massive canyons, and green for as far as the eye can see. On Sunday night we road around the back mountain roads drinking beer and listening to Leif tell stories about growing up there. He showed us this gnarly old metal shack where a bootlegger named Ewee lived. We laughed when he said that all of the bootleggers go to sleep around eight or nine o'clock, and do nothing but sale and drink beer all day long. Good thing we stopped at the liquor store in Morrilton on the way up. We visited Leif's mother's house and her tiny little wooden cabin in the woods overlooking the Little Buffalo river. It had no electricity, but was full of candles, a futon, and a wood burning stove. I remember thinking that it seemed like just the type of hideaway that Jack Kerouac was always dreaming about in all of his letters and journals. Finally made it back to where we were staying to grill some food and drink more beer. The night felt wonderful. Drove out to the river and sat in the darkness cracking jokes and telling stories. Heard one about a kid up there who once jumped off of a bluff and into too shallow water. He almost died. Said that he saw a white light and heard "Freebird" playing. Does God really listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd? Leif said there used to be a cult leader up there in the early 90's who went by the name "FOU." (Food, Oxygen, Understanding.) Apparently he was a real lunatic who convinced tons of folks to follow him. He was always threatening to blow up Jasper. The whole ordeal culminated in some of his followers hijacking a school bus and having this huge shoot out with the cops on the bridge downtown in 1992.. People were killed. The next night we heard from a cook in the Point of View restaraunt who said he saw the whole gunfight go down. When Leif was in high school he broke into FOU's old abandoned house and found his personalized license playe. " FOU " as you might of guessed. Said he would sell it to me for $10 bucks. I'm thinking it might be a good investment...
We woke up the next morning and loaded the canoes onto the trucks. Drove up to Ponca to start floating. Me, Seth, and Nick immediately had trouble with the old metal canoe and proceeded to crash into a fallen tree and flipped into the water, along with our cooler and lunch. Luckily, the beer and my sandwhiches were recovered. No one else was as fortunate. After a rough start, me and Baldy got into the groove of things and canoeing felt fucking awesome. It had been raining for several days, and the Buffalo River was flowing pretty quickly by it's standers. We only had one hardcore crash where me and Seth crashed into some other trees and flew into some pretty swift rapids. The canoe got stuck. Baldy got washed down river. I was able to slowly head back up stream along the bands to unhook the canoe. I was terrified of getting bit by a snake. Got the canoe loose and swam back down to the rest of the guys. Then we hiked up to Hemmed Hollow and saw the tallest waterfall in this area of the mid-south. It was astounding. I probably would have enjoyed it more if my left eye had not been completely on fire from the sun block that had dripped into it hours earlier. Goddamn, that shit hurt. Canoeing was a blast, and I can't wait to do it again...Later that night we hung out at the cabin playing music and laying around. Seth and I got restless and proceeded to put my new camera to use, in an attempt to take some of the most stereotypical homosexual photographs that we could. I think we did a pretty good job with the one below. What do you think?

"Depeche Mode is a sweet band!"


This is the spot where we went swimming before driving home like a bat out of hell on Wednesday morning in order for me to make it back in time for work...