My next door neighbor, Rory Flenderston, showed up at my door today. Immediately I noticed that he was without pants or underwear. Of course that was the clue that he wanted to discuss steptronic transmissions and their applications in Formula VIII racing. Our old friend, Noops Bogan, developed the steptronic gear box for Mr. Ferrari back when Noops was seven. Noops had gone on to become a CIA chef and made his mark in the culinary world by creating the now famous Pig Snout Scrapple recipe which made it to the pages of Food And Wine magazine. Unbelievably he later created Stormy Night Fish Soup which won him the James Beard award. And then, in another shocker and without much warning Noops became a well dressed, anemic (and alcoholic) bassist/musician for my absolute favorite band, Kinky Friedman And The Texas Jew Boys. Noops has been credited with writing, “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore” but it is more likely that it was written by Flork Kladwak. Flork had been the bassist for an R&B band called Acute Negro Fit, or ANF by their devoted fans. And that’s another story.
But back to Rory, who has recently entered a new, uh, sport. Beginning at the stroke of midnight he gets in his car and drives around making it a point to take all the curves just a little too fast. When he finally rolls his car over, and while he’s still upside down, he gets his cell phone out and starts calling the Nashville purveyors of albums by Zamfir, Slim Whitman, and Englebert Humperdinck, in order to purchase albums produced by each one of these artists. Which you might think is strange, but here is something really strange—-he never orders anything from Wayne Newton!—- Just when I was certain I could explain his behavior. Go figure.
This morning I was told that Rory has driven off toward Culver City on a mission to investigate whether or not Larry King is still dead. Apparently his morphodite partner talked him into wearing underwear—-and pants, which is a good start.

Searching through my safe yesterday I ran across a precious, somewhat faded photo of my good friend Ned Imbrie. Our friendship has spanned more than four decades and found us in many times far away and exotic places. The subject of the photograph was a Rickshaw outting around the City of Hangzhou located in the Zhejiang province of China. Battling an illness we were holed up in a crude hotel on the outskirts of town set in the back water of the Qiantang river. A quest for antibiotics took us on a tour of Hangzhou “pharmacies” via the Rickshaw powered by a rough looking, big legged Chinese wench with rotten teeth and a bandaged leg.
Ten days later and on the mend we would be detained by the Red Chinese Army on a remote stretch of road outside Ningbo. The Russian van we traveled in was miraculously equipped with a cassette player which blaired “Lets Come Together” by Canned Heat while our interpreter, Hongji Wong convinced the soldiers that we were scouting locations to film “Hunter” the TV series (which was the only western TV program allowed on state television), and that I was in fact Hunter himself. (We all look alike to them too). To this day I rememeber how unnerving that experience was and how Hongji gave the performance of a lifetime.
I remember the dim dingy God forsaken orphanages full of little girls, the school children that just wanted to touch our face and gaze endlessly at these two huge caucasians. The cook in the Hotel in Zhaoxing who invited us into the kitchen and stood over his gargantuan wok, cooking down a reduction of soy sauce and wine in which to simmer whole baby ducks as his long cigarette ashes fell below to garnish the preparation. As he spoke his cigarette never left his lips as it bounced up and down, squinting through its smoke he gave testimony to his delight to be in the presence of Americans and fawned over Hongji’s shapely behind. That evening’s meal turned out to be one of the finest of my lifetime. The soy steamed Chicken’s feet, the tender baby Bok Choy, canal fish fried in the straw fueled wok and the tender baby ducks complete with entrails were simply unforgettable.
Bok Choy has since become widely available to the states which reminds me that respecting the ingredient may no longer be an economic necessity in much of the emerging world; it is now a pleasure, to be experienced and enjoyed at one’s chosen time and place. What an awesome time to be alive.
Ours experiences in Communist China helped shape our lives, gave us new insights into the reality of the true spirit of the Chinese people and their fascinating culture set apart from the ugly politics of the world stage.
Ned, now relocated to Denver, remains one of my very closest friends. We have been loyal to, and lived, our dreams. There is much more to write. The trip from Bejing traversing the desert wilderness to the Mongolian capitol of Ulaanbaatar has been on the table for a number of years. It would be rough and perhaps involve such survival necessities as suckling the teat of a feral Yak. I have obsessively studied the maps and wondered if the herders would have fuel and supplies. Do two second hand lions still have possession of enough blood of adventure to make this long haul? Only time will tell.

I actually caught a rainbow trout on a fly fishing trip way back in about naught six I think. Did I actually land that fish? The memory isn’t real clear.

Yes, I talk big and travel long distances to the most beautiful and breathtaking white water rivers on God’s earth! I really do! But actually catching fish? Well, that’s a different story. Such is the dilemma of this fly caster. And it would be a sad story except that there is never anything sad about fly fishing. There just isn’t.

Wonders never cease though! Last week, after Katherine finally threw me out of the house, I loaded up with the absolute bare necessities for any fly caster ; fried chicken, Cheetos and, of course, Dr Pepper, and rolled on up to the Lower Mountain Fork River. Oh—-and I took my fly rod too!

Conditions on the river were as perfect as they ever get. The magnificent stream was picturesque with manageable and wadeable white water rapids and pooling along the banks that typically harbor trout. The temperature was a perfect 62 degrees. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Amazing! Hey! I deserved this! I donned my waders, ate a piece of fried chicken(the chicken grease attracts trout) munched a couple of Cheetos and polished off a Dr Pepper. I then began my hike down Heart Attack Hill to the trail that would lead to my secret spot. I have come to call my secret spot Palo Gaucho. The meaning of Palo Gaucho is a secret as well. There is, after all, some mystery in fly casting.

Either way, when I finally arrived at Palo Gaucho it was occupied by two fly casting freaks wearing enough fly fishing gear to fill the Bozeman Montana Fly Shop. Vests, backpacks, sidepacks, fanny packs, sling packs, tippet rollers, and some of the stupidest looking hats that looked like they were straight out of Orvis Magazine.

Let me tell you something—-there is nothing worse than having your fishing hole occupied by two fly casting snobs wearing stupid hats. Once I was down stream a ways I picked up their scent. It was the smell of confused corporate executives, most of whom think fly fishing is an art or a sport or something else besides what it is——a pole, a line and a hook which, hopefully, will catch fish. They smoke expensive cigars and sip designer whiskey from their “favorite distillery.” They refer to themselves as “tactical fishermen” and “purists” which feeds into their confusion. They utilize things like trout stomach pumps to see what the trout are eating and select flies that mimic the stomach contents, forgetting that they just caught a fish. Maybe, just maybe, they should continue to use that fly. (Useless trout stomach pump pictured below.) They didn’t catch a single fish. I watched them leave, ate another piece of fried chicken and took out a stringer of nice three pound rainbows!

These execs’ could use a few of my fly fishing tips. Here are a few: In my experience the best way to find fish and find success in fly fishing is to have a seat on a rock near the water, have a piece of fried chicken (Gasquatch, a convenience store near Broken Bow has the best fried chicken) and sip on a Dr. Pepper while looking for fish in the water. Polarized sunglasses will help you see them. If you don’t have any polarized sunglasses, get some. The cheap ones work just as well a the expensive ones. You will be able to see the fish. If they’re not there, go to a different location on the river. It’s just that simple. Then, when you find them, fish with a woolly bugger or a streamer. The Clouser Minnow is one of the best streamers on the market. There are really cheap imitators. Streamers have a high success rate anywhere in the world. Have on hand a variety of woolly buggers too. Black and olive are nearly always successful. Forget about “the hatch” and all of that scientific crap. You will catch fish on streamers and woolly buggers. And if you don’t, just remember, there are no bad fly fishing trips. Not ever.

And as to the intro to this story where I joke about rare success catching fish——-there are those trips when I don’t catch a dang thing. Trips like that are actually rare. By the way, I took home four, three pound rainbows on this particular trip.

Remember, the next time you go fishing, pick up some trash and be a part of the solution.

My fascination with modern grammar and spelling abuse took an ugly turn this morning as I scanned through the Huff Post and ran across the story of the unfortunate Mr. Lee Kroll, who several years ago legally changed his name to Dez Nuts. It seems that, by happen chance, Mr. Nuts encountered one of his white friends who convinced him that an extra E would more accurately accomplish the goal of highlighting his, uh, personal assets. Dez showed up at the local courthouse recently and departed as the newly minted “Deez” Nuts.

We only know about Deez’s name journey because of his domestic abuse charges. It seems he pointed a gun at his daughter and punched her. Mr. Nuts was reported to be “highly intoxicated” at the time of his arrest. We can only surmise that his angst over wasting six years as “Dez” may have failed to garner him the intended focus on his package, causing him to drown his sorrows with ethanol. Perhaps a flash course in phonics while serving his jail sentence would be time well spent.

I wonder about chickens. Do they have feelings, emotions, lust, lament, ambition? Do they have any idea that “crispy fried” or baked or rotisserie will someday be in the same sentence with their name? When I see them in the cages on the big trucks on interstate, looking around, bobbin their heads like teenagers at a concert I wonder, are they suspicious? When I was a kid I had chickens. My favorite was a black giant rooster we named Big Boy. I loved that old rooster. When I found him dead in the chicken house he was still warm. So we ate him crispy fried

I must admit that this story is little more than just hot air, butt:

I’ve been reading about this little trollop, Stephanie Matto, on the TLC channel who has been selling her own jarred farts for $1000/jar.  Subsisting on a diet of yogurt, eggs and well, beans, of course, she set about devising a system for capturing her own flatulence.  Just when I thought her escapades had reached a low point, it was reported that, for an extra fee, a video of her actual gas trapping process could be made available.  It seems this purveyor of her own methane has earned $200,000 over a two month period.  Is “fartepreneur” a word? Who in the civilized world could have dreamed up such  a farce or should I say, farts?  My understanding is that her project “blew up”, so to speak, after she made a visit to emergency room complaining of severe upper abdominal pain and fearing that a possible heart attack was the cause.  Could this mean that there is an untapped market for adolescent and colleges age boys?  

I had the Fleet—ing thought that Ms. Matto may well be a genius!  In fact, she said so herself! 

“I kind of feel sort of like I’m the Einstein of fart jars at this point.” 

I wonder if she should be paying a tax on her carbon footprint, since she has made it easy for the Fed to track her jarring activities.  If me and my dormitory full of lunatics at Oklahoma University had figured this out back in the seventies we might be billionaires today.  Hats off to Ms. Matto for converting ALL of her, uh, resources, into income.  

”The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it.” Charles Bukowski

Recently I had dinner at a local restaurant/music venue. I can’t remember the name of the band. The music was clean, tame and well, dare I say it, muskrat love-ish. Some of their offerings were a little bluesy and at the same time, very civil. The musicians were dressed as though they were headed to Sunday school. Their musicianship was exemplary. As a rock musician who pays attention I must say that they never missed a single note. Very impressive. I left feeling like I had been sterilized. Sort of a soul vacuum. What was missing in their musical act is the subject of this blog.

I was born an outlaw, a skeptic and at times an all out nihilist. I reside in the world of Blues/Rock musicians because, after all, that is where such characters in the music world reside. In order to penetrate a listening audience who are true fans of the Blues/Rock genre a band must be believable. They must have soul. Let’s call it the “it” factor. I’ll be the first to admit that there have been music artists out there that have enjoyed commercial success who aren’t the least bit believable. No soul connection whatsoever.

e.g. Kenny Wayne Shepherd , Joe Bonamassa, The Monkeys, Vanilla Ice, Billy Ray Cyrus

What’s missing from such performers is that soul, along with the “it” factor along with an aura of nonconformity. Stevie Ray Vaughan had “it”. His artistry penetrated the soul. When he stood there channeling his music you immediately believed it. Vaughn came from relative poverty, from the blight of Oak Cliff in Dallas, from the wrong side of the track. Though technically amazing, artists such as Kenny Wayne Shepherd seem unable to channel blues, heartache, joy, suffering, celebration, or gritty realism with any believability. These are the essential elements of an original, came out of nowhere, believable artist in the blues/rock genre. Kenny Wayne emerged as a coddled, upper middle class soccer league child, born of innocence with little, or no, believability. Along with it, a critical lack of non-conformity and soul. It’s not his fault that he isn’t Freddie King.

Back in the fifties the “beatniks” along with the rock musicians of that era defined a generation of non-conformists. Their views and style of dress, according to Webster, were, “pointedly unconventional.” Out of this movement came an expression, “real gone cats” used to describe these beatniks, musicians and the simultaneous emergence of rock and roll or more specifically, “rockabilly” music.” Collectively these characters dominated the pop culture of that time. The prevailing sentiment became that of kicking back, relaxing(in manner of dress and attitude) and enjoying the musical offerings of these non-conformist miscreants. It came to dominate the American zeitgeist. Dwelling within this movement was a special kind of magic that drew people in. If only for a moment these people wanted to be non-conformist and well, bad. Somehow it penetrated their soul. There was a proclivity for the “it” factor in the overwhelming majority of these acts. It was magnetic.

If the legendary blues icon, B B King, had ever entered a guitar playing contest, competing with the world’s greatest guitarists, he wouldn’t have even placed. But B B made you feel it without the technically fancy guitar licks. His distinguishing factor was this—-he was a free soul—-and it, “it”, came through.
🎶 The Thrill Is Gone, the thrill is gone away🎶. We all know what he was talking about don’t we? But it took B B to convey that to us in a way that penetrated.

I play in a band, The Bossier City Torpedos, that is rife with rawness and imperfection but at times a shimmering frisson of soul connection. We miss notes occasionally and start off in the wrong key. But we have a loyal and faithful following who call themselves Torpedo Heads. I feel the connection in the midst of our performances, but I can’t adequately explain it. Perhaps there is a free soul in there somewhere. You know it when you see it.

Do you fly fish?  If you do then you are likely a lunatic. If you will contact me privately I can give you the number of a good psychiatrist who specializes in treating fly fishing lunacy. I’m a little worried though because I haven’t been able to reach him lately. I heard he took up fly casting for tarpon down in Florida which means he himself may have fallen off the fly fishing lunatic wagon. 

I, myself, had a relapse last week and busted off up to the Little Missouri River.  I had become bored with posting anonymous snark on yik yak and had the sudden urge to drive. The fly fishing report was that the rainbows and browns were jumping into landing nets and that the barbless hooks that we are forced to use were actually catching trophy size trout. Ha! If you are a lunatic you will believe anything. I was all in.

I packed up all of my fly gear and drove away, dreaming, like most fly casting lunatics about landing old hootie, getting a pic of the new Arkansas record catch to send to the kids and then hamming it up for the Little Rock TV station that would theoretically be covering my rare and amazing catch. 

Feeling adventurous that day, I decided to take the un-recommended driving route. The self-mapped scenic route. Forget Waze and Apple maps.  Who needs that crap?

Giddy with excitement I drove along I-49, anticipating the glory that would be heaped upon me and the endless stories that would be told about my fly casting expertise and prowess. Are you feeling the lunacy yet?

First of all, and I can’t impress upon you how important this one piece of advice is; if you find yourself on that same un-recommended road less traveled, which happens to be old highway 67, don’t ever stop at a place called Boll Weevil’s. I can’t talk about it yet. Just don’t. 

I rolled into Murfreesboro at around 9:30 A.M. (trout don’t care about early) and I  figured that since Katherine wasn’t there to monitor my dietary selections I would slide into the EZ Mart and grab some flamin hot Cheetos and an extra large Dr Pepper, a form of pure ecstasy known to many aging white males. 

My brother, Don, tells me that when a trip goes off the rails it morphs into an “adventure.”  That’s pretty much what happened that day. 

Once inside the EZ Mart I was laser focused on the facilities. Long drive, lots of coffee, the whites of my eyes had turned yellow. Wow, what a relief.  I then scanned the store for the delightfully hot, orange, spicy and crunchy bag of diet poison and the dispenser of sugary caffeine laced soft drinks I was craving. As I approached the check out counter I was in for a surprise. Have rednecks started using makeup?

Yes, apparently they have.  There at the checkout was an oversized, burley and notably unattractive man, replete with classic redneck garb. 501’s with rodeo belt buckle, slightly soiled sweat shirt, bulging gut, work boots, John Deere ball cap, a dip of skoal under his lip, and yes, full makeup. Like a woman would wear on a night out. And the look on his face was as deadpan as it gets.  I mean blank. Serial killer quality. Can you see the Cadillac red lipstick? Following the transaction I backed away slowly, then goose stepped all the way to my truck. Whew.

Who said fly fishing trips can’t be interesting?  I caught myself wondering if this dude knows Pud Rutledge.

Do you know Pud? If you remember, Pud did ninety days for making off with the Posados tortilla making machine in the middle of the night. Yep, the Mexicans themselves chased him down. How dumb can you get. 

In addition to that, they nabbed Pud five years ago in the now famous pixie bobcat smuggling scheme. He said he was “relocating” them to his Australian Barking Deer Ranch over by Athens, Texas. Apparently the northern border of Honduras was wide open.  I’m keeping an eye on Pud. But that’s a different story. 

I found my way out to Muddy Fork Road, my favorite access point on the crystal clear and indescribably beautiful, Little Missouri River.  As I was rolling up to the parking area I imagined the rainbow trout hammering my home made woolly booger fly, breaking the water, arching its back in angry defiance that I had fooled it into taking the bait. I was borderline euphoric—-really. 

Reality check.  The river was wide open. Rolling like the Proud Mary. Zut alors! Yes, the Corp Of Engineers were busy lowering Lake Greeson and simultaneously destroying my day. It looked more like the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon than a picturesque stream in mountainous Arkansas. Totally un-fishable. Turns out that the “generating schedule” was wrong. They reserve the right to release water, massive amounts of water, without notice.  They were exercising that right!  And there I sat with my pre-rigged tandem midge larva and pupa tippet.(fly boy lingo meant to intimidate rednecks.)

The Cheeto on my lips fell into my lap. The surge of joy I was riding had suddenly vacated my soul.  My reality was rapidly melting into the gravel my vehicle was parked on. 

My soaring day dreams had crashed into the cheeto bag. 

Suddenly the acid began rising in my esophagus as I burped the now sour Dr. Pepper.  It would be a long drive home, my tandem midge larva and pupa tippet flying in the wind behind me.  

I remember dropping off at Shakey Ray’s Cook Shack for the last time.  

It was near the end of Ray’s life.  By that time he had stopped shooting eight balls and smoking crack. 

Ray had an interesting story that is worth telling. My complete biography of Shakey Ray will be published on Kindle in the spring of 2024. I’ll cover a few highlights. 

Ray started off as a chicken sexer in southern Arkansas, then had a sudden epiphany at age 17 and drove himself to the Culinary Institute of America up in Hyde Park, New York, where he graduated in 1971. 

Instead of telling me stories about his chef training, on my last visit, he preferred to talk about his drive to New York that year. He recalled taking the back roads on the way up and hitting all of the road side mailboxes he encountered with a baseball bat.  They were putting off a magnetic pulse, he said.  He was pretty sure he had gotten every one of them. 

After chef school he was seized with an undercurrent of depravity and for a few years hooked up with a guy named Bob.  Bad Bob, he called him. Not Dirty Bad Bob, the Mexican, but the original Bad Bob.  They commenced to stealing cars, after which they would run them out of gas and then set them on fire. Ray’s memory was that when the cars were engulfed in flames Bob would throw down a prayer rug and pray this prayer: “May the divine Vishnu whose momentum none can stop, bless us for all of our well-being.” Apparently Bob was bad but he wasn’t all bad. 

Ray had a habit of wearing sunglasses twenty-four seven. One time I asked him if he could see anything at night and he explained, “the big show is going on inside of my head.” No doubt his artistry was wrought from the lunacy.  

Later on in life there was a subsequent bout with bad chemicals which led him into his self described “constructive anguish” period. He emerged from this phase as a window licker and then moved on to a job as a fire watcher and fish squeezer. By that time Ray’s co-hort Bad Bob had turned good but had gotten a job committing suicide. 

Anyway, Ray went on the invent the steptronic transmission for Ferrari and the Bogan Diode before he invented Stormy Night Frog Leg Pate’ which launched him back into the food shack realm of cheffing and made him eternally famous.  

One night while  wrestling an alligator turtle in the river Ray got sucked into a whirlpool.  His son, Schmetterling, a vegan jogger who had invented byaldi vegetables and the Hilary Clinton Nut Cracker, jumped in after him.  They both perished.  

Noops Bogan, Ray’s second cousin, an anemic, well dressed musician and chef who is a former member of Kinky Friedman’s band, “The Texas Jew Boys,” took over the cook shack following Ray’s death. 

Most people are unaware that Noops wrote Kinky’s hit song, “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore” or at least he claims he did.  The Noopster rocked the culinary world recently when he originated a new pig snout scrapple that happens to be featured in this month’s issue of Food and Wine magazine.  Check it  out. 

My wife and I have been hosting a big tiger stripe tabby on our property for about three years now. He showed up out of nowhere one cold rainy day at a neighbor’s house. Scavenging dog food was his game. He looked pretty rough. We named him Sidney.

The neighbor had called us with the news of his having shown up, figuring we would take him in. The neighbor was correct. But I sensed he wasn’t a normal cat when, at my first sight of him, he was panting like a dog and licking his balls. He made unusual noises all the way home. I mean really strange. We were a little scared—-so much so that we weren’t really too excited about opening the pet carrier door——and especially after hearing some of his low register baritone utterings, if you know what I mean. Some of those sounds must have come all the way from his butthole.

From day one he was——odd. His most obnoxious habit is to strut around the house like royalty, invading my space as though I’m not here and turning to put his butt right in my face——-and he does this on a regular schedule. If it’s 6:05 a.m., the butt is in my face. And those vacant stares. He must be thinking; “Hmmm. That old man smells funny and he’s a grump—but he has tuna, friskies and the gullibility gene. I’ll let him rub me tomorrow if I’m in the mood.”

I’m telling you it’s working for him! I’m pretty sure he would start munching on me if he thought I was dead. Just yesterday I was awakened by a thoughtful and thorough cat scan. Checkin for a pulse he was!

The snake episode was perhaps the most rattling (pardon the pun) experience. Going barefoot in the house is so freeing and relaxing—-that is unless your catdog delivers a very much alive, injured, bloody and angry, snake, just inside the back door. Sydney was nowhere to be seen. Delivery complete! Thank you Sydney!

Then there was the chilly foggy winter morning, barely light enough to see. There was movement. Lots of fur moving around down by the water. I stood in the back door and sipped coffee, studying the shore line. Soon I was able to make out Sydney and the other large furry object he appeared to be dragging toward my wrought iron fence. After a solid ten minutes of watching his relentless attempts to pull the the adolescent nutria he had assassinated through the bars of my fence I cautiously approached him and wrestled the dead nutria carcass from his claws.

What house cat do you know that kills nutria and vipers just for grins? .

Here’s hoping that our next cat, if I decide to re-cat after this hair raising experience, is a fraidy cat. Fraidy cats are what we’re accustomed to, what with gators and snakes and spiders as big as hoodoo bears. Sydney would be in the un-fraidy zone, somewhere in the “gator-snake, hoodoo bear, strike fear in the heart of man” category. Not fraidy of anything, except maybe missing his five o’clock tuna.

I ran into the Bossier City Chicken Whisperer at Sam’s Club yesterday. Turns out chickens have had a rough two years, considering their 99.9 % death rate. Very bleak for the cluckers. After a long discussion about exactly what information she was sharing with chickens I asked if she would be willing to attempt to whisper to Sydney. Turns out she had worked in the vet clinic where Sydney had been banned two years ago. Not only had her whispering failed but she had become “weary of seeing his anus up close.”

I’m up early this morning and headed out to walk. But first I MUST locate my Kevlar coveralls. There were noises earlier. Some of that baritone growling and, new this morning, barking sounds. If he attacks me it will be within the first one hundred yards of the walk. Wish me luck.