I picked up two books
from the 2nd hand store.
Kinky Friedman;
Early Dashiell Hammett.
A zippered jacket for Milo
with embroidered dogs.
It is much too big for him,
Still.
Of the two exercises in
Running to Seed,
I prefer the Hammett.
Hard Spined.
Hard Boiled.
Not quited there yet,
Flawed,
better between Sacramento
and Tijuana. The Hop.
My older son's hair
has grown way past
Shoulder-length.
All but half way to
His ass.
I am itching to cut it,
to escort him to the barbers.
Such are those mundane
Things
which prompt me to
Log in. Out.
I creak, and I cough, and I pace.
Quite the
Old School motherf@cker.
4 comments:
The more Kinky you read, the better he gets. He just writes about his friends,life in New York & Texas, & formats it into the same book over & over.
There is no distance between Sacramento & Tijuana.
My favorite pulp novel is...well...Pulp by Charles Bukowski. Similar to Friedman in that Buk just writes about his life in L.A. in the guise of a cheap detective novel. He just does it way better than anyone else.
What happened to Godspeed You?
Fuck barbers & mandatory haircuts.
(forgot to say that last comment)
WV is SMERC
Oh, I agree with you about the barber shit. Definitely.
I am just bemused by my olf fart impulse.
The thing about the jump between Sacramento and Tijuana was more to do with the unfolding of those short Hammett pieces compiled. The earliest piece concludes with a short train ride from Sacramento to San Francisco, Oakland.
There is a huge leap in the quality of Hammett's writing between this his next outing; a hophead holed up in Tijuana.
Buk's 'Pulp' is great, of course. His last gasp, and the sense that he was having a blast sending up the genre shit.
I read some Friedman years back. Might even have been the same damn book. I enjoyed it at the time, but I don't remember it well. Once I have finished with the Hammett, I will start back in with the kinky shit.
The Godspeed You! post ?
I pulled it.
It troubled me a little - the way I ran with it - mainly because I am concerned that Eliot's ankle may have got infected. The damn school nurse (who is nice enough) was in a rush to catch a lift, and didn't bother to clean out the wound. This was a half hour before school finished for the afternoon. By the time he caught the subway home, an hour and a half had passed since he injured himself and the smell of that puddle water on his shoes and trouser cuffs was rank.
I cleaned it out pretty thoroughly, but I am seriously pissed.
This is not the first this kind of negligent crap has happened. The last time they sent him home with what was subsequently diagnosed as a broken wrist. That time they told him it was no big deal too.
He is still in Primary school.
Anyway, by the time this thread had wormed its way into the original post, its viral tone unsettled me.
Maybe I'll repost it. Once I'm certain he's been given a clean bill of health.
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