Friday, October 21, 2016

Satan IS Real...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6QmRbvCSMY


Here is a version of the greatest music mix I ever found on the Internet. It was at a blog called The Big Rock Candy Mountain. He always had the very best songs.

I wanted to jus post a link but the file at the blog was dead.

here it is enjoy

Big Rock Candy Mountain Presents: Satan Is Real(A Devilish mix)
(Link to mix follows track listing)

1. Satanville (The Gibson Brothers)
2. Devil Is Watching You (Lightning Hopkins)
3. Sinner's Dream (Eugene Fox)
4. Satan Is Real (The Louvin Brothers)
5. Devil Do (Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs)
6. Idle Hands Are the Devil's Playtings (Palace Brothers)
7. Wrestling With Satan (Lightning Beat-Man)
8. Deacon Brown Vs. The Devil (The Holidays)
9. Chased Old Satan (The Woodie Brothers)
10. Race With The Devil (Gene Vincent)
11. Satan (The Dwarves)
12. Satan's River (Porter Wagoner)
13. Me and the Devil Blues (Robert Johnson)
14. Say No To the Devil (Rev. Gary Davis)
15. Go Away Devil (Little Axe)
16. I'll Never Let the Devil Win (Sleepy LaBeef)
17. She Belongs To the Devil (Wasboard Sam)
18. (censored)
19. Old Red Devil (Hollis Champion)
20. Devil's Gonna Get You (Bessie Smith)
21. Get Behind Me Satan and Push (Billie Jo Spears)
22. Devil Is Mad (Dorothea Fleming)
23. Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down (Uncle Tupelo)
24. We've Got the Devil On the Run (Elder Lightfoot)
25. Satan Sold Out (Them Ranch)
26. Workin' Like the Devil For the Lord (Del Reeves)
27. Send My Soul To the Devil (Frankie Lee Sims)
28. I've Got A Devil In Me (Big Foot Chester)
29. Satan Wears a Satin Gown (Frankie Laine)

30. Last Song About Satan (Slim Cessna's Auto Club)

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

"Still The World's Only Voice Throwing Kat"

Friday, October 3, 2014

59 is the new, "too damn close to 60"

October 3, 1955, a cold day on the high plains of South Dakota and an expatriate Texan, Sammy Couger, finds herself delivering a child earlier than expected. Much like the virgin mother, she knew this child was special, its paternal bloodline possibly in dispute. Yes, she had explained it to the man willing to stand as her husband, Jack. Although previously blessed with an adorable baby girl(who came out of the oven even less well done) both "parents" anticipated the upcoming lottery of progeny.

Boy girl, girl boy, both hoped for ten fingers, ten toes and a smile, even if some suggest Jack yearned non-silently for yet another appendage/digit to insure future bloodlines any healthy issue would be welcome. The years since a royal male child issued forth(3 decades and 3, the age of the great prophet Y'oshua at accession) had brought a drought upon the land. The signs  were aligned and with the tragic passing of the first and eternal teen the previous Friday, thrown from a silver spider at the setting of the sun, birth was emminent.

Blah, blah, blah, so I got born and luckily I was a male 'cause no way in heck would I willingly drag Alice around for a first name the rest of my life. Named for Alice's maiden name back in the day Riley was a unique first name shared with very few. Now, every time you turn around somebody uses it willy-nilly, male female, spelled correctly and is more often the case spelled creatively enough to confuse even the most open minded. Reighleigh is one of most otherly spelled I've seen in my years in public edumacation.

For most of my life I shared the joys of the day with my uncle Dan, whose 16th birthday I spoiled. My middle name is Dan and we had a bond that few uncles and nephews had. He was one of my best friends, a role model(not always a positive one, although the bootlegger's turn has served me well when driving near or above the posted speed limit)com padre, teacher, alchemist, master grocer, and reader extraordinaire. In the end I was there when he demonstrated the way of passing I hope to emulate when that time comes. This will be my second birthday w/o him although last night in my dreams he wanted me to tell all my relatives, they should just go ahead and give me the presents they would have given to him.

Other musings- today I am the age my grandfather was when I was born. I never thought of Pump as "old" he was just older than others but not as old "old" as my dad's father. Pump worked everyday, boiled coffee in the morning, listened to the farm report and his two story house with the rock fence and big pecan tree in the yard was the only place I ever felt safe. It was my hideout when things were rough and childhood  turned to crap. Growing up in Topeka I wished I had a basement that stretched all the way to Graford so I could ride my trike underground when life with a crazy mom got too crazy.

Thinking that I'm now 59 is such a hoot to me. On one hand I know the facts prove the reality of the situation, yet it seems so ludicrously irrational that I can't really wrap my head about it. Other than all the junk wrong with me health wise I don't feel 59. I remain the loud mouthed smart aleck I was at 12. The difference, I've done more of the cool stuff, been through the bad stuff, but still am just the kid that likes to read, thinks girls are pretty cool, loves movies and books and wishes I could listen to music all the day long.

My greatest motivation for making 60 is that being able to say I'm 60 just seems so damn funny.

Okay, presents are cool too.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Dr. Henson


Clip of Dr. Henson at Topeka West Hall of Fame
"Our business as rational human beings is to strive for what ought to be, rather than what is going to be, in ounsciousness that it will never be all we want it to be."
- Herbert Mueller, Uses of the Past

"Hes gone. 8:20 or so. Shirley, Chris, Scott and I with him. Jimmy had just left.
Heaven has a new Principal."



I got this text tonight letting me know that the father of a best friend had died. Owen Henson was my high school principal, a mentor, a role model, a friend and much more to not just me, but to a generation of Topeka West kids, teachers, peers, administrators, a wealth of friends. I think it can be said there were few more powerful advocates for students and the important function of a strong system of public education ever. It took me over 40 years to refer to him as Owen and not, Dr. Henson. Few adults other than relatives have had such an important impact on my life.

Owen stressed that the most important relationship at school, the only one that really mattered and that must be supported above all others was that of student & teacher. The jobs and functions  that directly supported the student & teacher had to be a top priority.

He was a good friend as well. Living in Topeka after HS with no family the Hensons treated me as just another kid hanging out. Along with the Strattons and Lafonds, Owen & Shirley made sure that no matter what,  I knew where I could find a basement in case the sirens blew. After the passing of my mom and dad my kids could always count on birthday cards and care packages at Winfield. 

There is much more I could say and after the reality settles in maybe I'll say more. For now I want to close with a poem by Ferlinghetti:

The World Is a Beautiful Place
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you

Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen

and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to

Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs
and having inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally'living it up'
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician

In closing, the world was made a better and more beautiful place with Dr. Henson in the front office down in A building.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

forty years on...

bundies-2014


This weekend is the 40th reunion of what should have been my high school graduating class. I went to school with the same kids from kindergarten until my junior year. That summer my family moved from Topeka to Austin, Texas. There I graduated early, in January, and left the next day to head out on my own. I moved back to Topeka and the rest as they say is.....

I planned to be at the reunion until last Friday when my doctor advised against 8 to 10 hours of traveling by car. As my tele-portation device, made for me by a 2nd grade GT student some ten years ago, has never really worked correctly, I won't get to make it. I still wanted to share several things with everybody.

TREAT NUMBER ONE:
Here's a link to Audio House Studio recordings of NE Kansas garage bands from 1960s


The Bundies Saga

In the spring of 1971 I was walking home from Landon Junior High when an idea for movie popped open in my mind. I was always getting ideas and it was that year when I started jotting them down. I still have lots of those notebooks.

On this day a fully formed story came to me. Maybe not all the names, but plot points, scenes, characters and music. The music selections dominated my thinking. I made super 8 movies with a group of friends. We used a primitive lip sync method called Bell & Howell Filmo-sound. There was always a carefully weighed tradeoff in our movies between sound/dialogue and cinematic vision. If only we’d had the HD recorders almost all kids have access to now there is no telling what we might have done.

That day walking through Hillsdale park at Huntoon & Fairlawn I thought of my idea as a modern opera using rock songs from my past(tunes from way back in 1967) to tell the story of young love and betrayal in 6th grade.

It seemed like heady stuff at the time. I carried the idea around for years. During high school and college when discussing great ideas for movie projects I always had it ready to pull out and pitch.

Fast forward to 1981, June, my brother, Crager and I find ourselves in Los Angeles so he can check out the graduate film program at USC. We’ve spent the day at Disneyland. Even at 25 it was all I’d ever dreamed it could be. For the drive back from Anaheim we stopped at a grocery store and dang if you couldn’t buy real booze in a grocery store. Back home in Texas, we couldn’t buy light bulbs on Sunday, but 18 year-olds could buy any manner of alcohol and drink and drive as long as you weren’t intoxicated. Scout’s honor! Talk about goofy, I worked for the state and got both Juneteenth and Confederate Veterans Day off. Like a whole other country.

35 bucks American(1981dollars) to borrow that costume to nab these snapshots...

Needless to say by the time we got back to Hollywood Blvd. where we were staying at a motel with perfect audio access to various business  transactions of prostitutes on the corner(this was before 1984 Summer Games) in Room 237. 



Once more I digress. As ardent fans of Kubrick’s take on The Shining we thought it was darn trippy. Your humble narrator was a tad less than a shade away from being able to drive in his newly adopted  home state of Texas. When we saw the bright lights of the Tower Records on Sunset I blabbered at Crager to stop, please can we stop.


I love record stores. Before I became an educator I worked in them for over a decade. Not that much different from a severe alcoholic tending bar where he gets free drinks. Remember, in ‘81 there were still “record” stores filled with actual records, cassettes, and 8-tracks. You could get lost in a store like Tower that had a 45 section that had, that had, that had….almost any 45 I was looking for. I stocked up with the songs I needed for my still oft discussed operatic tale of young prepubescent love. I walked out with almost 50 bucks worth of 45s.

Back in Austin I made a tape called, “Going Steady,” which had been my working title for years. I had a spiral notebook I’d been adding to for 5 or 6 years with ideas for this one project. I played the tape whenever I was in my truck. I especially liked putting the tape in after I got off work at the Children’s Unit of the State Hospital, cranking it up, sipping on a cool G&T, windows down, driving west from Austin into the dark & starry nights of the Hill Country, out around Enchanted Rock and back home maybe 3 hours later. Some nights I ended up pulling off the road and “resting” until the morning, falling asleep to Crystal Blue Persuasion.

the rock



In April of 1982, during a month period between jobs, I finally sat down with my index cards and notes and tape and typed out the first draft of what became, Bundies. The PDF posted here is very close to the original but was finished in 1986? as my submission in the Nichols Fellowship Screenwriting Competition.

Obviously, I didn’t win. Now, after a surprise career shift very late in my career, I’m a 2nd & 3rd grade math teacher. I’ve never sold a screenplay but it never stopped Crager and me from trying. The only one that ever really mattered to me was Bundies, well, and, Somewhere Cold in the Midwest, What Did You Expect a Bubble Bath?, 100 Pieces, Gone, The Story of the Christmas Potato,Thunderhead,...not to mention the ones I never completed, Adobe Walls, Battle Dance, House of Three  Brothers, This Version of You, The Orphan, My 3 El-vy, The Big Yard, Frito and Thud, The Music Supervisor, George Clooney IS "The Book Club Detective, Cart Monkeys, 8:38, Los Matavacas, and I've got demons that need a jesus.

If you read Bundies, which I hope you will, (that’s why I posted it) you won’t get very far before you go...wait a minute, this sure reminds me of, that show, you know the one from the 80’s, with Kevin and Winnie….

10 roger on that good buddy. There are many similarities, coincidences, all I can say is, just like inventions good ideas have a way of serendipitously emerging at the same time. Even though Bundies floated around over two years before "that TV show," there is nothing that would lead me to believe it is anything beyond coincidence. Do I wish I’d been in the right spot and the right time first? As cool as that would have been, no, not really. I’m where I am right now because of all that has happened before. Because of that, this, etc.

I’m happy and selfishly that’s all that matters to me.

I hope  you will take the time to read it. Obviously it isn’t perfect and I’m betting there’s typos and other flaws. I haven't even read since I digitized it 6 years ago. I wrote it over 30 years ago. Looking back it was a different life time. 

Bundies, a screenplay PDF 

I’ve also provided links to two playlists on YouTube. One has the songs I bought that night in LA and originally imagined telling the story.




The other is the soundtrack for what  I’d call Bundies II or When we were immortals. One of my best friends(actually my cousin) used that term to describe the point in time when an incredible joyride/horror show experience happened to him just south of the border which he related to me 25 years after the fact in his backyard on a summer’s eve. Dub has stories, true stories, that could fuel more than just a couple of movies about the folly of youth.

Spaceship Orion would be the alternate title to the movie which doesn’t actually have much to do with Bundies except the characters are the same age and mention is made peripherally about certain Bundies characters. The basic story revolves around friends remembering a botched trip to Texas to see the Grateful Dead, the misadventures, and the tragic consequences retold as they sit in a surgery waiting room while one of their circle is having open heart surgery. If I ever get it all typed up I’ll post it too.

Please stay in touch. Leave a message and an email. Because of my role as a teacher I no longer used Facebook or any other social media. It makes it much easier all around.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Derek


Just finished watching the pilot of , Derek, the latest show from the mind of Ricky Gervais. Brilliant...not sure how the next 6 will pan out, but if they come close to the pilot Gervais should be forgiven  for every single time he's offended someone or crossed an uncrossable line. He is a genius.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Shows all sold out, yet seats always miraculously available...

Heaven is sort of becoming the Branson or Las Vegas of, .. well, heaven. I even heard that BW Stevenson and Fromholz are gigging again.

Pete Seeger

1919-2014

here is great link to selection of Seeger Songs

http://theweek.com/article/index/255630/8-songs-to-remember-pete-seeger-by