OK-9

Well your hair shone in the sun
I was so high I was the lucky one
Then I came crashing down like a drunk on a barroom floor
searching for my beautiful reward
searching for my beautiful reward. 

It’s 363 miles from Hippie Town to Riverwind Casino, out on OK-9 in the wasteland.  I haven’t been to Oklahoma in 6 years.  The last time I was in OK I was in charge of the transport of 4-metal dudes on drugs and 1 road manager who should have been. We were in a 15seat Ford Econoline van and hauling a halfton backline in a double-axel trailer.  The trailer rolled behind on both spares w/both fenders ripped off.  It was a nightmare.  The spectre of Dallas loomed and you didn’t have to smoke meth to feel how different the country was from just the year before.

I’m a big fan of the past, but not for nostalgic reasons.  It’s been dealt with and put down. It’s gone.  There are ghosts out there on the highway, though.  Other ones, dead&gone; ghosts other than the life I had, so too changed for the worse in one year’s time.

That was then.  It’s raining in Austin this morning.  I was listening in the dark before dawn with the glass doors open.  It’s the Fall Equinox, a time of equal Night.  My brain chemistry has not fully adjusted to the New Schedule.  Getting OUT of bed at 5:45am is not only completely opposite my regular hours, it’s odd&wrong.  My brain chemistry has not fully adjusted and I make mistakes.

I’ve been careless with my heart.  Now I’m getting out of town.

My summer with the night creatures&the Insane has fine tuned my hearing.  My instincts are keen&sharp.  That’s the funny thing about sadness.  Sadness and pain offer detachment and in that space comes this clairvoyance.  When yr not attached to outcome, when yr disengaged from even yrself&yr own ego, yr able to pick up on all the cues and clues and read them like a book.

It’s not extra-sensory, it’s equal night.

All that has ever happened to us is buried somewhere deep inside us.  Our own story gets retold w/Hollywood flare by the driven editor of the ego.  We make heroes of ourselves in the gaps where we can’t or don’t want to remember.

It’s great to be a hero in yr own story but the ones who have gone stay gone.

I’ll pray for the dead as I ride down their road.  Death is the only escape and they made it.  They’re free and they left us here to miss them&suffer.  We’ll be together again but first I’m off to that Sodom in the Heartland.

See you at the tables, cowboy.

Tonight I can feel the cold wind at my back
I’m flyin’ high over gray fields, my feathers long and black
Down along the river’s silent edge I soar
searching for my beautiful reward
searching for my beautiful reward
-My Beautiful Reward, The Boss

Bat Medicine

Bat People are learning to sense their way through the dark, only to come out of the darkness reborn into a “new” person. In the darkness is the “old” self, the “old” habits, and the “old” behaviors. You may have found that if a bat has come before you that you have been going through a dark time in your Life when you “must” let go of who you used to be in order to become who you desire to be.

(from Dr.Standley’s website; also more on animal Totems here)

ACL WRAPUP: Jimbo’s Big Weekend

well ACL’s been done but I drank a shit ton so I’m just catchin up now bros  sorry. but I wasn’t drunk at the festival I was drunk at home LOL!  I saw some awesome bands and buds tho.out on the greenbelt  how sweet is it if yr day started out like this right:

then .  after I went to the beer store it was sick I was pounding THIS:

then I saw my bro he was like:

by then I was completely wasted .but I stuck around for T.V. On Arcade Fire who fuckin ruled it bro .man they were killahhhhhh:

ok.just picture the singer bein like  “and I told YOU YOU DON’T GO OUT WIThOUT ME!  NO NO! YOU BITCH!!!!!!NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

and he throws this fucking TV right?  right off the porch.
killer. freals yo.

and that was only SATURDAY bitches.  word.

the Final Minutes 92011

Look its 9/11…the Cowboys are playing tonight…if you aren’t rooting for America’s team tonight I just want to know what is it about this country you hate so much?-some jackboot on the spy network, Facebook

The rebels are fleeing like rats from the mountains.  The donkeys of the Gulf have given them weapons to destroy our air conditioners.-The Mighty&Fallen Q

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.-Franz Kafka

Nothing is invincible.-The Police, Synchronicity I

We clobbered it.  We put that bitch down faster than a homeboy slapdown at the Georgia Dome.  ACL’s pulled stakes and left Hippie Town and Good Riddance. Thankfully I missed it in its entirety.  I had Penthouse Pool to myself all day and it was so quiet at Oak Run I felt like a wanderer in the wilderness.  What a sad army they were, crossing south Lamar at festival’s end, around 10pm Sunday night.  After work South Congress was just as beat.  Home Slice was closed and people were staring at me so I changed my mind about stopping by the CC Club.  I burned down south 1st.  The hipster parade was gone, the weekend was dead and the Terrible Summer was over.

blood in my Love in the Terrible Summer-The Doors, Peace Frog

There are people in town saying that this state burned b/c God is punishing us for Rick Perry.  Texas had the hottest summer in the recorded history of the United States Weather.  Things finally cooled down Labor Day Weekend when Mother Nature brought us a cool summer breeze.  The wind, combined with dry &arid conditions, acted as a flashpoint for wildfires that burned down Texas for 10 days.

Meanwhile Iowa residents were put on maggot watch as Governor Perry stalked the heartland.  Boy Wonder Obama hit the rustbelt assuring the rest of us that there really is no reason to be in Ohio unless you’re on Election Road.

A member of the super-rich came out in writing; imploring us to stop coddling the super rich.  Warren Buffet’s op-ed in the New York Times was one of the scant pieces of good news to come downwire to the Office this summer.  Everything else was mire&ruin, bad&worse news.  It’s bad, brother.  Current events have deconditioned my nerves.
I’ve been hit too hard, I’ve seen too much
nothing can heal me except your touch-Bob Dylan

In the Other Hemisphere Quadaffy has exited stage left from the Theatre of World Hegemony.  It won’t be by mistake if the US finds itself in another war or three in the Other Hemisphere in the New Century.
Also this summer General David Petraeus slid into his patent leather position as head of the CIA.  Hopefully Uncle Dave won’t have to clean up something as dirty as 100, 000 unaccounted for AK47s like he did in the weird days when he ruled it in Baghdad.

The New Dumb have galvanized and they’re on the move.  They don’t care about the scoreboard now that the game is over.  They just want theirs.  Maggot Rick Perry is leading the race to be in Clover on Pensy Ave in 2012 according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday in USA Today.  If somebody has to die to keep the New Dumb free from socialism then so be it, as long as that some body is YOU.

The hard news, the good stuff, the relevant-it’s buried in there somewhere, smothered between sentiment and idea.  A good rule of thumb to have in the New Century is if you hear our Country’s leaders say that they wish to stop terrorism and the oppression of people by totalitarian rulers the truth is that  they are the ones terrorizing and oppressing.  Pretty clever trick, eh?  Maybe, but there are no mistakes in World Hegemony.
you claim I’m selling crack but you be doin that-KRS-ONE

The UT  Longhorns of course ruled it on Saturday and the Dallas Cowboys beat the San Francisco 49ers 27-24. .  All the money is in Texas, brother.  The Eagles looked brilliant on Sunday but when Vick had to go see the doc they fell apart.  Andy Reid would do well to stress Defensive Strategy for their home opener against the Giants next week.  Perhaps the team will feel more at ease at home; knowing that if they blow it in Philly there will be fire&riots and 9-volt batteries chunked downfield.  Philly fans are most passionate when it comes to showing their displeasure but even in Victory they will try to burn Hostile City down.

We’ve done wise to give up any hope for Peace in our time.  We’ve accepted that we may be blown to shit at anytime, anywhere,  in the skies over this country or any other.  We take this risk everytime we fly and are forced to ruefully confront the  crooked mechanics of the TSA.
We’re locked in tight with desperation about the job situation.  Some of you scabs are taking pay cuts and making it worse for the rest of us b/c you can’t live w/o cable.
The relevant and the important slips on by us, in between a slanted byline of corporate interest&nonsense.  We’re inundated, inured and apathetic.  Don’t go in for Hollywood, Brother.  Don’t go in for government.  I don’t know anything about politics except that nothing will make a shit unless it’s at the state level.  That can be a scary thought if yr governor is an unapologetic maggot who would do better to crane his neck a little too far trying to see the bats off South Congress bridge than to try and lead this country.  HOFFA IN 2012 but Aho!  we’ll shut this rig down and get on with it.  The Miserable Winter is upon us.

FOR SALE
1999 Harley Davidson Road King
– Fuel Injected with Stage 1 air cleaner, remap, and new Rinehart exhaust (2 into 2)
– I just replaced the original system.
– 11,000 miles
– original Police air saddle in place plus the bike has a Corbin Hollywood Solo and a Harley rider/passenger seat. In addition, I have a Road King passenger pillion to use in conjunction with the police saddle that has been upholstered to match.
– 2 windshields
– “Chuuby” handlebar with internal wiring
– steel braided front brake cable
– “Frenched” style trim rings on headlamp, passing lamps, and signals
– Harley “flame” style grips, floorboards, shifter pegs, brake pedal, and passenger footpegs.
– lay-down license plate, saddlebag liners, nostalgic round air cleaner, and Road King Classic front fender skirt/fender lip trim
-upgraded cam bearing kit
$11,000 OBO
Please write me for pics if yr interested:
jimtrainerfans@gmail.com

I’m a big fan of correspondence in general so please do drop me a line.  🙂

The Terrible Summer is over and so is this column.  The Happy season has been nothing short of total War for this writer, but fall is here and it’s Killing Time motherfucker.

It’s always good to have yr homeboys wit ya in the trenches.  My homeboy Jim Houser was in Hippie Town showing his art at Domy Books this weekend and his art is as fresh as ever.  I’d be sullen and empty in my cell if I was all alone at the beginning of Lonely Winter.  Here at Bat Manor, we count our blessings one by one, and we celebrate the findings of these diamonds in the dark.

The Woodstown Vipers shut down Harrison Township 2-1 in New Jersey last week and my nephew Aiden is a Warrior.  Coach Varga really believes in the boy.  He’s behind him all 100.  He moved him to offense and my favorite blonde nephew is full on and high on fire.
“We trampled them,” my sister told me Thursday.  “We were singing We Are the Champions.”  Harrison Township, stupid&sullen, glowering across Marlton Rec Field learned an important lesson last week.  They’d do well not to forget.  We are Warriors.

No news may be good news, but good news is  invaluable in the New Century.  The double-downing and Circus of Catastrophe that is World Events has only shown me that a  broken heart is one thing  but a heart that refuses to dream is a lost cause.

nice and sleazy does it-The Stranglers

I got a new pair of snakeskin boots and a newfound appreciation for Black Jack.  I’m going up to Oklahoma this weekend to gamble&get Lost.  We all know the house takes a cut on the only game in town, but they pay for yr room and send a girl up at dawn.

See you in Tulsa motherfucker.

the Minutes 91311

Aho the Autumn is upon us.  It’s Football Season.     We’re at the first point and cusp of Libra, 11 days from Mabon and Feast of the Ingathering.  We had NO RAIN for the entire Terrible Summer in Hippie Town and most days hovered above 100 degrees.

The Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACL) opens here this weekend.  It can only mean a fuckton-of-traffic nightmare hipster-parade.   The bat is hung, I know black magick and I never leave the house w/o my haterblockers.   I can handle my trouble, Brother, can you?   It’s not too late to pull stakes and head out to the country.

Tahitian Village residents are slated to return home tomorrow, 10am Texas time.  When I talked with B.Rawb on Thursday he told me that the Village had suffered the worst of the wildfires that started burning up Texas 10 days ago.  The fires are still burning although 70% contained as of this writing.  Him&Amy are back home, safe&sound.  James too.  The fire stopped two miles from the Swamp but wouldn’t have stopped at all had the winds changed from East to West out in Bastrop County.  What is that old song about the ghost of the north wind?  Well the north wind only FANNED the flames, burning and destroying everything some of B.Rawb’s friends had.   1,554 homes burned to the ground, lost forever in the days since flashpoint in the Lone Star State.  Thankfully, Saints B.Rawb&Amy and Baby James are safe&sound out at the Swamp.  (Studio the cat and all their critters,too.)

I rode out to Giddings, TX on Saturday and it was all sun out on the plains, Pilgrim.  There was none of the smoke&haze that covers the sky down south.  The reasons for my crawl up the Presidential Corridor on the feedstore circuit were not immediately clear to me.
I got lost.  I was all the way out at Bastrop County Line, past Friendship Cemetery, killing time with a broken heart.  I felt like some desperado Tony Romo out there, with gasmoney&smokes and nothing but Pain on the horizon.

Tony Romo is the reason Dallas lost to New York on Sunday night.  Two turnovers turned the game and even a team like the NY Jets can be thrown a bone.
A broken collarbone however, is quite distinct from the many injuries you may suffer as a professional football player in the NFL.  This most nasty of breaks sends word to the brain that the body is broken, a bad memory to have for a shy quarterback like “Pretty Boy Roy.”
The Longhorns were able to bring out that bottom-game grit that was so missing Labor Day Weekend, against BYU on Saturday.  Their game wasn’t any more flawless than the Cowboys loss but at least they’re hungry and they came out on the green to play.   As if the Cowboys losing wasn’t reason enough to celebrate at Bat Manor, the Hundred-Million Dollar Man Michael Vick ruled it against the Rams on Sunday.  A G might take my hometown’s Philadelphia Eagles somewhere down Victory Road even if  he has to cut through his old stomping grounds of Atlanta next week.

The President dropped his “jobs plan” on us last Wednesday and if it’s good enough for Paul Krugman it’s good enough for me.  Krugman doesn’t think it will ever pass Congress though, and I wonder just how ugly&depraved things will have to get out here before the streets are taken.
The Right is scary.  You’re late to the party if you’re just realizing that the GOP doesn’t care about you&me Brother; but you weren’t invited anyway.  Maybe you liked Bush’s tax cuts early in the Century and you didn’t want to know that by preemptively striking Iraq he was setting the stage for unprovoked War Anywhere In The World and w/o just cause.  You should be ashamed of yourself.  I am nothing if not a compassionate human being however and my friends’ girlfriend does the hiring at Home Depot.  Why don’t you get a job?  You look terrible and all yr patriotic posting on Facebook changes nothing and only causes me pain me in my balls.
I know your kind.  You’re like my mom’s X husband:  dumb as a box of nails and harder to kill than a hillbilly from New Jersey.
Wit yr bitchslap rappin and yr retard strength, God&Rick Perry are on YOUR side, so go get back in the Game.  It’s Nutters Rule out there.  You’ll do fine in the New Century.

Aho!  it’s Autumn in the New Century, when radio, newsprint and Football games inundate us and manufacture our consent for more War.  For More War.  Let him die indeed.
Shame on you if you participated in this Schadenfreude.  The dead were listening as you called out their names irreverently, repeatedly on Sunday.  I was alone at Penthouse Pool all day, smoking in the shade and plugged in to the Mobile Area Media Unit(MAMU).
Death is the only escape.  At any point in the Game you can stop caring like I did, but its Lonely at the top, Brother.    There’s a white Sun in Virgo out there, cooler and a tad pale but harder on the eyes and the only rain is the chemical kind.

Me&the Ranger will be kickin out the Night Jams.  We’ll shut down Indian Summer and get on with it.  A little bit of Winter is what this town needs.  Half the house will have to come down but the Stubborn&the Strong will  have to lose it All before we again find the conviction of a Fool.
We’re twice burned, thrice bitter.

Meán Fómhair   Alban Elfed

Death to the Minutes.

Late for Radio

the Minutes 9611

When the phone rang I was already awake and cranked tight with last night’s blues, drinking yerba matte &coffee.  The twat was back from vacation and painfully back On the Air.  He was playing some Bon Iver and talking about his Holiday in London where he enjoyed single digit temperatures and the Good Life of a fucking idiot.  A phone call at 9am is never good.  Never.
The state was burning.  After 100 consecutive days of triple-digit temperatures what good is a cool summer breeze if all it brings downwind is smoke&flames?
There was Exodus happening, from Bastrop County, Spicewood, and out from Steiner Ranch, evacuations from Leander and nothing but black smoke on the horizon and cattle in the creek.
That maggot Rick Perry came home to roost, putting on a brave&solemn face and soundbyting that all he cares about is Texas now that his sojourn in New England is over.  But don’t get fooled again.  NPR might be inundated with farmers crying about burning pastures but the longest running US Governor will be on TV on Wednesday night in time for the Presidential debates.  Count on it.  We had a good run, brother, but Trouble has found us here, at last, at the end of the Terrible Summer in the New Century.
I wonder if this recent rash of catastrophe will delay the Boy Wonder President from announcing his solutions to the unemployment problem in his address on Thursday.  Rates of Unemployment hover around 9% and the month of August offered zero job growth in the Land of the Free.

There’s should be plenty of work in the Other Hemisphere.  The People of Libya have a whole country to themselves now and their ousted leader Q is probably ruminating over a pilsner in Berlin.

The problem with being a newly liberated, oil-rich country in the New Century is that you have to ask somewhat coquettishly for your money back from the Bank of World Hegemony.

Life as you know it can end at any time and in any country in the New Century and there are no mistakes in World Hegemony.  Keep in mind that while the last two administrations have left themselves no choice but to blast back and rebuild any country they wanted to, and for any reason, it was always the People doing the dirties.

It was the People who were mowed down on the streets of Bahrain and the People standing guard for officers having rape parties like the ones documented in The Deserter’s Tale in Iraq for 10 years.  It was never the Man unless the Man was YOU.

Jimmy on the radio?  Yes Sir and Good Godamn, HOFFA in 2012.

Aho.  We made it to Paradise but it took too long.  Now we’re Cold and Bitter.
My days are cranked tight with impatience and anger.  Too many nowhere roads, Pilgrim.  It made me Wise but it broke my heart.  This town needs a little bit of winter.  The bat is hung.  Nights are getting long and cool.  I’ve been writing about the news too long.  Either that or I’ve been too paranoid for my own good b/c my vision only darkly colors current events in some kind of infidel prophecy.

Death is the only escape.  A little nightflight forever,out of the blue and into the black.
When I hung up the phone, the bat was hung, the grackle quiet, just windchimes and an old dog barking out there on the greenbelt.  I went back to bed as Texas burned.  No trouble for me is the worst kind.

Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo

#17

The Office of Jim Trainer
Bat Manor
Hippie Town, USA

Geoffrey Daragh
The Grind, Whip In
1950 S I H 35
Austin, TX 78704

9/5/11 5:48pm

Yo Man-

I can’t escape the irony of hearing of your troubles while this state was on fire, blazing on the TV above the bar at the Whip In on Sunday.  As I said, I have had many, many nights of exasperation and dead-end hopelessness while working behind that very same bar.  We are born to trouble, Brother, but they are paper-thin.  They’ll either be assimilated or forgotten but love will live in this house forever.

My 20 year career as a shift worker careened between the building trades and the service industry.  I’ve proudly? done everything except plumbing and electric and I’ve risen up the ranks to waiter and bartender all the way from a lowly dishwashing position at Martinichio’s Italian Restaurant back in the good old days of 1987, when I was 12.
My graduation to bartender status was Too Much Fun.  When I was 28 and I was a B-team bartender at a place called The Inn at Historic Yellow Springs it was the fucking best of times.  I had a pocket full of money and drugs at all times, phone numbers on napkins, liquor, linen and grapefruit juice in the trunk of a 1989 Lexus and inroads to some of the wealthiest clients in Teddyfrin township.
Besides dumb&romantic notions, working in the trades was not so much fun.  At 22 I was homeless and stuffing fiberglass in my Doc Marten’s to get me through the winter as a laborer in my hometown.  When I was 25 I was the foreman of a demolition crew in what used to be called North Philly.
For a week in the summer during the Year of the Horse, the crew&I were charged with shoveling pitch off the roof of an old candy factory and down to the top floor.  From there we would load&shovel the stuff down an elevator shaft.  Once the pitch was at the bottom of the shaft and favorably settled, we would shovel&load&wheelbarrow the stuff out to a dumpster in the alley.  Pitch is the detritus&gravel of asphalt, so named for the color of the dust that gets kicked up when you’re shoveling the shit down an elevator shaft.  The crew consisted of 30 and 40-year-old black and Puerto Rican men from the Badlands of North Philly, Tau and myself.  Brother Tau is Samoan but black, brown or white we were all pitch black from head to toe at the end of the day; except for the strap marks from your respirator if you chose to wear one.  Allot of those men didn’t.
ALL of those men were making less than half of what I was being paid and it was b/c they were poor and black and I was white and friends with the sub.  As incredibly heinous and intense as this sounds, IT WAS STILL BETTER THAN WORKING IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY.
There’s no hope for anyone except the top 2% of “earners” in this Country.  The rich of America are like some Billionaires Club.  They dine behind wide walls while the working class and the rest of us spend our time chasing a cut dime-parking their cars, washing their windows and shining their stars.
I cribbed that from Brother Neil Young, a true&finer American than most of the ones born here.

I am certain that you think of your incredible and sensitive son and the love that you and your wife share to get you through another day at the Whip In.  We Irish will never suffer fools gladly but if you get the Call you must Answer.  If the state is spontaneously bursting into flames while you stand behind that quagmire of a chalkboard food menu waiting for some St.Ed’s choad to ask what ghee is and it feels right, you must Answer the Call.

If the house is burning down, walk away, she used to say, but she’s long gone and I’m working on a building.

Death is the only escape Geoffrey.  Until then I will offer you this Wisdom:
Do not wait for the rats.  They are first out during a shipwreck or plague. If winning was everything we would’ve said quit a long time ago.  They are paper-thin.  We are Champions.  They grapple over tethers& crumbs but we know.   Love will live in this house forever and we got the fire in our blood.

Happy Labor Day.

Salud.
Jim Trainer
Bat Manor
Hippie Town, USA
jimtrainer.net
facebook.com/SingerSongwriterJimTrainer

first sunrise

she dressed in black
like always
in her
cool dark room.
I lay on her bed
fully clothed
with sunglasses on
as the licked blue dawn
reared
on America.
she
shut the light
and we walked downstairs.
we snaked from the carport
and I drove into
my first sunrise
in 10 years.
the sun was sluggish
small
and angry.
the morning news on the radio
painful
and obvious.
I took her hand and we drove into it
lost
together
like this
in America.