My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Here is another snippet from Paul Brown’s recent interview. He’s got a lot of really good stuff to say.

“About two thirds the way through my chemo treatment, I really started to feel the effects of the treatment.. what makes cancer patients so ill and so fucked up is very rarely cancer itself. The way chemo works is, it is a poison. It is in fact a cocktail of poisons. That act by killing cells that grow quickly in your body. Of course that includes cancerous cells but that also includes a lot of cells that your body uses to function every day. Your hair falls out, that’s the most common. Your fingernails can fall out or become soft and brittle or flake. The mucus membrane in my esophagus… it deteriorated and collapsed. So I couldn’t eat or drink. Anything at all. Even cold water burned my insides terribly. That was probably the single most unbearable point for me. Being down on my knees on the floor… being in agony just trying to to acquire sustenance… at that point I had to ask myself a question. Is this worth it?”

Doug drew a flyer!
playing tomorrow night – if anyone’s in the neighborhood come on by.

“It’s hard to hunt because you’re always trespassing all the housing developments which are taking over the open fields. Since there are more people and more houses, the game is moving further out.”

This is a page from a cool photo book by Bill Owens called Suburbia. It documents the people who live in a suburb built in California in the early ’70′s. This was my favorite image. I’m gonna ship it to you, Landry, if you want it. Check out Linger’s blog.

I worked a lot today.

I have a really excellent interview with Paul, above, to share with you. It needs a little spell check but I’ll give you a little taste to hold you over till tomorrow.

Paul: “Having cancer is not a what most people think it is. One minute you believe yourself to be perfectly healthy, virile, dynamic and the next your life is completely consumed. With the battle to survive. Completely consumed. It’s not like having flu or breaking your arm. Or gettin’ smashed in the head with a crowbar or getting stabbed. Because I’ve done all those things. While some things will preoccupy you for a certain amount of time cancer affects every single aspect of your life completely. And cancer is not push over.”

Ken sent me a picture of the Fish Market’s new paint job. (Ken’s up in the top window.) I asked him to tell us about his career as a house painter. Here he goes:

“Not much to say about painting. Usually has a bad reputation. Painters that is. House painters that is. This career is home to many alcoholics, mostly because it is so easy to get into: a ladder, a bucket, a scraper, a brush and a phone # is all you need to start your own business. Hard to smell booze on a painter when he is 30 ft up high on a ladder – speaking of high, when I first got hired with a paint company I was immediately put in closets. (That’s where they put beginners. 1, to see if you can paint; 2, if you can’t paint and the customer can’t see you the owner won’t know he is getting charged 35.00 an hour for a painter who is worth about 4.50.) I was high off of BIN…shellac based stain sealer that can be cut and cleaned with denatured alcohol. Things went down from there.

Shortly after getting promoted out of closets the boss left me and my friend Dave on a job out in Stratham, NH.

He said, “You guys finish the job and I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

The owner of the house – and he couldn’t talk very well and he could hear just a little – he was a stroke victim. The sun was hot and the radio kept cutting out of reception depending on where you were on the ladder. Frustrated we went the the liquor store in North Hampton and got some vodka. We came back out and saw our boss at the gas station about a 40 yards away.

I said “Dave don’t look now but the boss is runnin’ up to the van…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dave said and I said, “No, really.”

The boss comes right up to the van and and said, “Hey, will you guys take the rest of the ladders off my truck and take ‘em back to your job? I have to go to the dealership.”

We said “Sure.”

He didn’t even say anything about the liquor store! As soon as we had his ladders tied to our van we were off, laughin’ like a mother fucka’ and tearin’ into the vodka. Next thing I remember I wake up at my house. Dave called and said he drove the red company van home after dropping me off. Apparently we’d gone to the Old Bridge for a few instead of back to work. He also said he might of hit something on the way home. With the red company van.

I told him to pick me up and we’ll handle it. He drove up with a head light smashed and drooping lower than my saggy eye*. We drove back the route Dave took and saw 3 mail boxes and a planter box obliterated. That explained it.

Laughing all the way with a pounding headache to a junkyard, not having any money because I spent it all the night before buyin’ drinks for a 59 year old jaguar with crooked teeth dancing to songs played by a Tesla cover band. So I was told. I was trying to drink ashes out of the ashtrays. So I’m told.

Anyhow we stuffed all the auto parts that we needed in our shirts and down our pants. We probably walked like we’d been in a car wreck. Back to the job, the ladders were still on the house, the radio was still blarin’, comin’ in like a champ, the guy with the stroke waved, our paint was still in the buckets. A little viscous though. Not bad.

I stopped drinking and rent some warehouse space where I refinish and restore doors, furniture, and cabinets. I have to pee now. See ya…”

*Ken was in an avalanche that crushed one cheek bone, so he has a bit of a droopy eye on that side of his face. If he doesn’t make jokes about it we will.

Mr. Landry sent this photo along. I don’t know what to say about it…

I wore these shoes every day for two years. I’m going to miss them. They went in the shoot can right after this photo.

Doug’s hair in the dying light that skimmed across cargo cranes on the docks of the port of Oakland before it hit that twisted fortress.

“I want two chicken tacos, pollo por favor. Dos baby. Dos.”

Diesels hit the fucked up dip at the railroad track that cuts across the port access road and all hell starts clanging and shaking while the drivers gear down with that sweet deep decrescendo and turn into an open gate in the chain link that rings the whole stretch around here, hobo control and a loading dock is a nice place to grab and go so there’s razor wire up there catching plastic bags in the act of trespass.

Just a taco truck pulled off the road alongside the rails and there’s nothing else to buy for miles around here. It makes me nervous. I suppose break rooms in those buildings have snack machines. But what if I really want a newspaper? A pack of cards? A plastic rose? I have the same uneasy feeling here as I do way out in the woods, a wallet full of cash but no where to spend it. Just locked up warehouses and bolted shut trailers.

Doug and I take our tacos out behind to get out of the Oakland sun. Life doesn’t seem easy even when it is. There’s always diesel particulate in the air. My truck might not start. I should be making money. But maybe for thirty seconds I feel good. I’m somewhere new. Then I’m heading home. Doug makes me laugh. He’s funny. We’re seeing the world. Maybe I’ll always be poor. I wish I could enjoy it more. It’s not bad.

I suppose this is an unknown artist. I didn’t see any signature anywhere on the piece. Let’s talk about how good it is…

1. a hand drawn wood grain border – adds tremendously to the backwoods charm
2. The speech bubble is dripping – perhaps the first time I’ve seen this
3. The wife – sorry I cut her full figure out of the frame. She is drawn in a totally different style than our protagonist.
4. The concept is grand. Just grand. A guy so desperate he thinks he can kill himself by flushing himself down the toilet…I almost burst into tears at the tragedy/pathos of this little scene.

This bus swivels in the middle. You’d never believe it, a giant diamond deck steel circle in the floor halfway down the aisle allows the ass end of this fifty foot bus to swing around tight corners. Accordian walls five feet long overcome the conundrum of inflexible metal at the joint. A metric shit-ton of us ride home in the dark down Geary Corridor lit up with Vietnamese neon and Discount Mattress. I’m in a city now, I can’t read everything. I’ll never know for sure what is happening in this place. I let another fart rip and the rumble of the bus keeps me anonymous. That has its ups and downs.