Well it’s been a whirlwind week, and we still have long way to go. But we’re finally getting around to editing and putting up the stuff I’m in. Enjoy!

Just got our first on the fly guest spot from Wizards World of Tattoos I just outside of Pottstown, PA, which makes “the fixer” feel much better about our budget before we roll on to Bogata, NJ and The Apple. Can’t have too much $ around there…

Thanx Joe!

Also check out Brian’s flash.

I’m not in it, wasn’t at the shoot, but this is the first where I helped with post production.

Also music by Don Chambers, and teenage girls!

OK: narrative isn’t going to work here, even in poetic form. I am against censorship, and oppose it at most costs, but unfortunately litigious realities in our modern America being what they are, and out of respect for a friend’s potential custody battle – this media is gonna have to tell your inquiring mind it doesn’t have a right to shit. If you know me, you might get the skinny some day. If you’re a good little monkey, I might even let you see the footage. Besides, entirely linear narrative is contrived. In other words, I’m skipping around and there may appear to be holes in the story as you know it.

This morning I was in a dirty ’73 Maverick riding down a state highway in southern Pennsylvania after an insanely long all-nighter and compounded sleep deprivation when I spied an amazing bookstore in a barn built in 1821. We pulled over and I went in with the camera to get some footage. It was about 10:30 in the morning. I walked in and there were two nicely dressed gentlemen, one seated in a rocking chair, the other standing, surrounded by stacks, in fact 5 stories, of antiquarian volumes. His first words were,
“Welcome! Are you camping?”
Perhaps it was paranoia induced by my lack of sleep, or his general quaffed appearance, but I misunderstood where he was coming from and launched into a neurotic cautious schpeal.
“Well…we are camping some on this trip…but you see, some friends and I used to own a bookstore…and I’m working on this crazy project with this other friend of mine now…and we’re driving around the country visiting tattoo shops…and like, bookstores because this place seems so amazing, that I was just wondering if it would be OK if I walked around a second with my camera…and the benefit to you might be…”
“Young man”, said Tom politely to silence me. “I’m trying to ask if you’d like to camp out in the six acre yard there.”
And then the top of my head came off and a huge wave of universal positivity flooded my weary, corrupted and cynical soul.

We’ll be staying here for a while.

“Now don’t be put off when you meet my friend gentlemen, he has some tattoos…”

Wow. Careful what you wish for, as Corbett used to say. I’m so overloaded with adventure and sleep deprivation right now, a roller coaster of bad luck and the continual pleasant strangers, sleep deprivation, there’s no way I can capture it all in a post.

So you get part of a narrative poem:

Four day late pick up, insomnia kicks in.
Finally the call,
and when a moped has been repo-ed from a crackhead who wouldn’t pay,
I momentarily consider taking that with the money I have rather than to get on board.
But I must get on board – Sancho Panza can’t let Don Quixote roam alone…
in fact he bankrolls the first leg, because the nest egg is in Myrtle Beach.
DQ lost the cell phone two weeks ago, so lots of contact #’s are gone, and the car does not have wifi (part of my tardy reports)

Up to the mountains, loose ends to tie up:
portraits on a Cherokee man and the cop Garcia clone from Reno 911
beers and industrial strength lortab ride on to Helen,
sell the van and now the egg is 900
but must get mamas ring out of hawk,
and fees to pay on the storage space – both monetary and emotional.
More drinking with Scuba and a final “fuck you” toast to the locals in Bavaria.
Dropped $40 on shots for strange and the princess bitch bartender, daughter of Frenchy.

I am the money man, the fixer, I carry the roll.

He’s so psyched just to hit the SC line, clearly not picturing the entire thing accurately,
but then, neither am I.
Visit and shoot a shop in Anderson
“Fuck it dude, let’s just plow on to Myrtle Bch tonight”
“Yeah. Let’s ride”
a semi bungled short cut through the state roads
but all is mirth and potential.
Steve awaits us, steve who has lined up the party
16 wanting ink
our next, very needed bankroll
I talk with Steve and we will call him a half hour from town.
But we linger and shoot footage
and eat
and the bad short cut
and It’s after midnight by the time we hit the beach.
Next time, Steve don’t answer
but we pull an all-nighter
And the strip is empty and ours at night
Dennys and Lobster van and a scratchy eye that might need tending to if the $ ever comes,
keeping the car safe, watching the sun rise over the ocean.

And then the sun is well high
as I cover my dosing patron with a beach umbrella and my mind unravels
and fucko Steve still has yet to call.
In search of an address he gave
which the GPS seems not to know.
All the hotels want three days commitments for too much, “weekend” bullshit.

Something might be wrong

(more soon)

Don’t be sad kids: lots of juicy posts and adventure coming very soon, as I leave with Mitchell Atkinson in a few days, to ride around on his crazy train for a bit.

Bo Diddley

You’ve heard about the controversy over Rachel Ray wearing what appears to be a keffiyeh in an online Dunkin Donuts ad, which has subsequently been dropped? Another example of ignorance and xenophobia against the muslim world.

Even if Ray had been intentionally making a symbolic show of support for the Palestinian cause, would this have been a support of terrorism? What would have happened had she appeared wearing a scarf depicting the Israeli flag?

In the above link, be sure to note under “controversial symbol” how Urban Outfitters last year quit carrying the garment after pressure from pro-Israeli lobbyists. I challenge you to think about the following: is it possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-semitic? I say the answer is yes, just as it is possible to be an American patriot while opposing American imperialism.

God doesn’t hand out countries or play racial favorites.