TWENTY BUCKS (flash fiction)

The first time my dad gave me a crisp twenty dollar bill, I thought it might has well have been a million. That's how great it felt.

I was six and he told me that I could use the money to get whatever I wanted for my birthday.

"Can we go to Two Guys?" I asked.

He nodded and 30 minutes later, I was wandering their nine toy isles -- only the ones for boys.

Two Guys was like catnip for a six year-old. A precursor to stores like Best Buy and K-Mart, the discount chain was founded in Harrison, New Jersey by a pair of brothers, Herbert and Sidney Hubschman.

After opening their first store in 1946, they established quite the reputation for selling radios, TVs and your basic household appliances at rock-bottom prices. It was Jersey after all. Some of them may have fallen off of a truck or two. Just saying...

Much to the chagrin of their competitors, their business grew throughout the eastern seaboard and they were dubbed "Those two bastards from Harrison..." The insult stuck and the Brothers Hubschman wore at as a badge as they expanded and slightly modified it into "Two Guys."

So there I was, clutching that twenty dollar bill deep in my sweaty little palm and perusing such boy toys as the Planet of the Apes Treehouse and Evel Knievel's Stunt Cycle and Scramble Van. Those were fuckin' toys...

I thanked Pop for my gift - which by the way leaned towards the Simian persuasion.

"You'll get that twenty dollar bill every year," he told me. "Our secret. We'll have our little field trip. You and me."

I nodded.

"In the mood for some Stewarts?" he stated more than asked.

"What about mom?"

"She'll be fine..." Even though I was six, I knew what he meant and probably learned about subtext way earlier than I should have.

# # #

The years went by and so did the toys and gifts those twenty dollar bills helped purchase. Batman and Superman action figure begat Fonzie colorforms and a slew of baseball mitts and footballs.

By high school, the Old Hickory tradition didn't have that same oomph and by college, it was more of a symbolic gesture than anything else.

After the divorce, Pop hurt his back and went on permanant disability. A year or so later, he moved about three hours south since the cost of living let him to stretch his dollar a bit more.

Looking back, I may have resented his relocation and didn't speak to him as much especially with juggling girls, work and the books.

Estrangement aside, though, I planned to surprise him with a six pack of his favorite beer on my 21st birthday so we could share our first toast as men.

# # #

One knock. Two. And then a pound on the steel apartment door.

When the super let me into his tiny cluttered studio, it was way too late. Anything could have given him that heart attack -- the smokes, the cheap food he ate or just the plain stress of wondering how he got there.

After the coroner took his body, I was prepping to lock up when I caught a glimpse of my birthday card on his kitchen counter and thought twice about opening it. But who was I kidding?

I cracked open one of my Heinekins and read the card probably 100 times, which of course had a twenty dollar bill and six scribbled words:

"It's time for another field trip"

I sunk my head, put his twenty dollar bill in my pocket and thought of us at Two Guys the whole drive home.

WHAT IF 'BRUCE' WROTE A DAMN GREAT FLASH?

I think it was around 1997... That's when I started thinking about 'voice' in relation to fiction and storytelling. I was barely developing mine at the the time but I do remember that I was reading Bernard Malamud and listening to a bunch of Bruce Springsteen. Something brewed in me. And mind you, it wasn't the rah-rah "Born in the USA" Bruce but the quieter tunes from his solo discs like "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad." I was on vacation in Florida and kept playing "Johnny 99" over and over on CD and in my head. Something struck me about that particular tune.

Now while I was always a fan of 'The Boss,' I was starting to discover his incredible penchant for storytelling through lyrics and words -- and sometimes the lack of them.

Flash-forward around 13 years.

Driving to work today I was listening to "Johnny 99" again after not hearing it for quite some time and damn if it didn't drum up those same feelings of awe. Fuckin' guy is great, I thought, and after visualizing the words I'd say "Johnny 99" makes for a stupendous piece of flash fiction.

So that said, check out Springsteen's tune reconfigured in narrative form and see if you agree... The video -- with that classic era Bruce -- is also embedded below if you wanna hear the tune.

* If you enjoy the tune, I recommend snagging a used copy of the Springsteen book "Songs" on Amazon if you want a collected copy of all his lyrics. They're sheer poetry. Gritty and gorgeous.

# # #

JOHNNY 99

Well they closed down the auto plant in Mahwah late that month. Ralph went out lookin' for a job but he couldn't find none. He came home too drunk from mixin' Tanqueray and wine. He got a gun, shot a night clerk, now they call him Johnny 99.

Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don't stop, Johnny's wavin' his gun around and threatenin' to blow his top. When an off-duty cop snuck up on him from behind -- out in front of the Club Tip Top -- they slapped the cuffs on Johnny 99.

# # #

Well the city supplied a public defender, but the judge was Mean John Brown. He came into the courtroom and stared young Johnny down.

"Well the evidence is clear gonna let the sentence son fit the crime. Prison for 98 and a year and we'll call it even Johnny 99"

A fist fight broke out in the courtroom and they had to drag Johnny's girl away. His mama stood up and shouted "Judge don't take my boy this way."

"Well son, you got a statement you'd like to make before the bailiff comes to forever take you away?"

"Now judge, I had debts no honest man could pay. The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they were gonna take my house away. Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man,
But it was more `n all this that put that gun in my hand.

...Now your honor, I do believe I'd be better off dead. So if you can take a man's life for the thoughts in his head. Then sit back in that chair and think it over, judge one more time. Let `em shave off my hair and put me on that killin' line..."

GET AN AWARD, GIVE AN AWARD...

Well, Mr. Jon Strother of Mad Utopia, aka the grandpappy of #fridayflash certainly has started an epidemic with his viral award Fabulous Flash Award...

By now, it's been passed around more than a Thai hooker workin' overtime during Uncle Sam's occupation circa 1944. Um, you get the drift...

Yesterday, the wonderful and talented Gracie Motley, who blogs from Crone’s Cauldron Publications was kind enough to bestow it upon me as was Alan W. Davidson, the stately innkeeper at Conversations from Land's Edge last week. They both had very nice things to say about Bukowski's Basement and I appreciate it very much.

That said, I don't think I can pass it along to four new scribes in our community without hitting someone over and over. Instead, I want to hand it over to Absolutely-Kate Pilarcik and her blog At the Bijou.

On any given day, Kate may host friends from her vast writer community who produce eclectic flash or solemn poetry. On another, she'll surprise us with her rat-tat-tat-tatt lingo in a dazzling piece of flash of her own. Point being, she can spin a yarn and make you think and smile at the same time. Pop on over because she's a champion of writers, creativity and pretty much anything that zings to the creative gods.

SHOULD AGENTS BE PUBLISHERS?

Well this is certainly a grey area...

The Wylie Agency, whose clients include such scribe estates of Saul Bellow and John Updike and living authors like Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth launched a publishing house last week called Odyssey Editions. So far, it boasts 20 e-books of acclaimed contemporary works, including Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" and Updike's four "Rabbit" novels and available only through Amazon, an arrangement that enraged publishers and rival sellers.

The new venture also received a mixed response from the Authors Guild, which represents thousands of published writers. In an e-mail sent to authors, the Guild defended the Wylie Agency's right to sell e-books of older works without the publisher's permission, but also criticized excluding Amazon's competitors and worried about "serious potential conflicts of interest" when an agent becomes a publisher.

"The most obvious of these (conflicts) is the possibility of self-dealing to the detriment of the agency's client, the author," the Guild's message said. "A major agency starting a publishing company is weird, no matter how you look at it."

What say you? To read more, click HERE.

IT'S #SPOKENSUNDAY TIME...

For my #SpokenSunday piece this week, I went to the archives again for the audio reading of my poem "What She Said." It can be found HERE.

Listen and enjoy... Also, feel free to join the #SpokenSunday fun on Twitter below...

HER FIRST NIGHT (flash fiction)

Focusing only on the squeaks of the rusted bedsprings, she felt his sweaty stubble deep in her neck and she almost cried.

Ivan – at least that’s what he said his name was - reeked a pungent mix of English Leather, Wild Turkey, Vitalis -- oh yeah, and wicked b.o. As he pounded away, Ivan kept making her say his name over and over as she moaned.

When it was done, she hid under the sheets and watched him wobble down the flophouse stairs. Eventually, she found enough strength to make sure he was actually gone and tiptoed into the hallway.

She weeped into a crouch and found comfort in a long, slow and tired drag.

That was her first and it was over.

# # #

A lifetime later, a bloodied older Ivan showed up in her ER and she quickly remembered her first night as the world’s most inexperienced hooker.

Using the expertise she learned at her very expensive med school, she decided that Ivan couldn’t be saved.

She left Ivan on the stretcher and ripped off her rubber gloves, throwing them into the trash. "Thanks for the textbooks, jerkoff..." she whispered to herself. "Too bad you won't find out what was in them."

'DRAGON TATTOO' SETS E-MILESTONE

And who said people wouldn't read on their electronic thing-a-ma-jigs?

Late Swedish author Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy has set an electronic milestone and has sold over 1 million copies in the e-book editions, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said yesterday.

He's the second scribe to join the e-million club -- "Along Came A Spider" scribe and mystery thriller writer James Patterson also sold more than 1 million e-books.

Amazon.com, the biggest player in the growing e-book market, told AP that Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," (the first book in the Millennium trilogy) is the all-time top seller on the e-book reading device the Kindle.

To read more via AP, click HERE.

NEW KAFKA TEXTS TO BE RELEASED, SAYS JUDGE

An Israeli judge overseeing a tussle over papers that once belonged to the author Franz Kafka has ruled that details of the documents should be made public.

The literary world now awaits previously unpublished works emerging from boxes containing manuscripts, letters and journals written by the mysterious Czech author and his adviser and friend Max Brod.

According to the newspaper Haaretz, the items include a handwritten short story by Kafka that has never been seen by the public. More boxes have yet to be opened, it reported.

It seems almost Kafkaesque...

To read more via AP, click HERE

THE LOVELY BLOG AWARD - PLUS 7 THINGS ABOUT ME

The very manly and prolific John Wiswell who blogs at The Bathroom Monologues have given us the (very unmanly-looking) One Lovely Blog Award.

I gotta say, it looks like Holly Hobbie designed this thing with all its frilly doilies and teacups on it. But I digress...

Anyway, here are the rules: I think I have to tell you guys seven things about myself that you may not have known and pass the award along to a few worthy bloggers.

That said, though, I'm sure this award has made the rounds so I'm not sure if I can hit a blog that hasn't had it. If I give it to you and you've received it already, my apologies.

In any case, here are the seven things you may not have known about me:

1. I had two kidney operations when I was 11 and 13 and needed to go to Cornell Medical Center in The Big Apple. Only two docs at the time could've performed the operations -- I had blockages in my kidneys and probably wouldn't have lived to see college had they not been found.

2. If I may put my Bukowski grittiness aside, allow me to say that I could happily live at Disney World resorts 24/7... If you put me at the Boardwalk Resort which replicates an East Coast boardwalk during the roaring 20s, I'd be fine. Especially with all the hot jazz they pipe in everywhere. Now this is blasphemous since Buk was notorious for hating Mickey Mouse.

3. September 11, 2001 was one of the most surreal days of my life. Driving to work, watching those towers smoke in the distance mere miles away was downright scary. It was also one of the only two days during my 20-plus years working at my newspaper that we printed an "EXTRA" edition -- you know, those things paperboys sell on street corners in B&W movies.

4. HGTV soothes me. No kidding...

5. I was pretty much dry until the age of 24ish. It's true... A woman did, in fact, drive me to drink. Thank God. ;)

6. I take roughly 50 vitamins a day. Maybe more. What else would explain my youthful effervescence?

7. I'm no thrill seeker. I don't jump outta planes, ski, hike, mountain climb, mountain bike, swim, ride a motorcycle, jet ski, surf or snowboard. I chill. Gimmie a cabana, newspaper, pair of shades and a cold drink at a five-star Vegas strip hotel. That's what I do best...

And now, here's who I want to bestow the "Lovely Blogger Award" upon:

scibo ergo sum: Jen Brubacher's nifty blog is a cool lil' hangout for any writer. She's a librarian who writes fiction (mostly Mystery/Suspense) and posts mainly about the writing craft, books and authors, libraries and information technology, and issues such as censorship and privacy. Good stuff all around.

Life on the Muskoka River: Cathy Olliffe's stupendous blog delivers her elegant musings, well-crafted flash fiction and a plethora of guest writers where one of the main highlights are Cathy's profile on her subjects. She's got such a way with words that you'll find yourself hanging out at her house more and more...

Mindspeak: Carrie Clevenger brings it on so many levels. Her yarns, ranging from disturbing horror to nuanced crime and noir, are delivered in a gut punch style that is certainly unique. If ever there's a scribe that leaves me in awe, it's Ms. Clevenger.

Winedrunk Sidewalk: John Grochalski's no-frills joint is one of my favorite blogs. When I grow up as a writer, I wanna be just like him. He delivers a poem a day from the gritty streets of Brooklyn (I believe) and my jaw drops at his prolific nature. He makes it look easy. Sadly, we were supposed to share a flipbook/chapbook together published by the now defunct Tainted Coffee Press / Zygote in my Coffee outfit. It woulda been a great title.

L.A. REVIEW OF BOOKS TO LAUNCH THIS FALL

Jerry Stahl

Would Buk have gotten behind The Los Angeles Review of Books, an online periodical that will include multiplatform book reviews, author profiles, Skype interviews, readings as well as critical essays on classic authors? We think yes...

The new journal launches in the fall under the direction of Tom Lutz, a professor and chair of the creative writing department at the University of California at Riverside.

He's snagged an impressive stable of over 200 contributing editors including several Pulitzer winners and West Coast–centric writers like Jonathan Kirsch, Marisa Silver, Aimee Bender, T.C. Boyle, Janet Fitch and Jerry Stahl.

To read more, click HERE.

A CLASSIC TURNS 50

The Southern Gothic classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" silently turned the big 5-0 this past weekend and continues to be a beloved work of American fiction.

To date, it has sold 40 million copies (Jumpin' Jeezus!) and still sells 750,000 a year, according to the book's publisher, HarperCollins.

The Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by writer Harper Lee was published in 1960 and centers on racial injustice and the destruction of innocence. It's plot and characters are loosely based on observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936—when she was 10 years old.

It' the scribe's only book and one that can easily fit the category of "Great American Novel."

In celebration, HarperCollins, bookstores, libraries and scores of writers and readers across the country are preparing to give Lee and Mockingbird a grand shout-out this summer with new editions, new books, readings, stagings and screenings of the 1962 film adaptation.

To read more, click HERE.

GODDESS OR GUTTERSNIPE? (flash fiction)

The goddamn hi-def TV in the dark bar was hurting my eyes.

In fact, can I just say that do we really need hi-def? At what point is good enough, good enough? Anyway, some player was making some play for some team. I didn't care. It was the kind of day I was having.

I scoffed at the TV and the barkeep Ralphie saw me. "What'sa matter? You have a bet down?"

"Nah," I answered shaking my head and pointing to the newscaster. "There's nothing more annoying than mildly attractive women talking about sports."

Ralphie smiled. "You fuckin' gay? She's hot."

"She has a snout," I said.

Ralphie studied her face and bit his lip nodding. "She does have a snout. I think I like her more. Got that hot soccer mom thing goin' on."

"I dunno, man. She looks like a fuckin' monkey."

"Lemme tell you something," Ralphie said. He eased in towards me and pointed to the TV. "If that girl came in here at closing, sat next to you and did so much as even smile -- there's no way you're not letting her get a little stink on your down-low."

Ralphie knew me too well and I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah, so?"

"You're 34, right? When are you gonna get real?" he said.

I played with the ice in my drink that needed a refill and humored him. "Meaning?"

He got mildly irritated. "Meaning ... You and every other idiot in here think there's only two kinds of women that exist -- goddess or guttersnipe."

"What the fuck is a guttersnipe?" It sounded disgusting, but I guess that's the point he was trying to make. Ralphie walked away. "Seriously, Ralph, what's a frikkin' guttersnipe?"

Wiping the bar, He shook his head, made a tsk-tsk sound and headed over to the softball team who needed another Miller Light pitcher.

# # # #

I had a car on the lift the next day. It was a big job so I took my time and thought about what Ralphie said. I guess he had a point but I still couldn't get past how I felt. I liked who I liked. It was black or white.

The Old Man in the office broke my concentration and called us grease monkeys in to see him. All four of us threw down our tools and wandered into the office. We were down one guy for about a month so there wasn't exactly time to listen to his usual hemming and hawwing.

"I want you all to meet your new technician for Bay Number 5," he said. "Charlie..."

We didn't say anything. We just stared at our new mechanic, unsure of his decision.

"I'm super excited to come on board. This is a really well-respected shop," Charlie said, extending hand.

Did the Old Man lose his marbles? Was he serious? Did he actually want us to get any work done?

I shook her hand. It was smoothe and she smelled like a vacation. Ralphie's words kept repeating in my head. Goddess or guttersnipe...

The heavens were fucking with me. Here I had my goddess but did I want her in my workplace where I needed to be on my game?

Walking back to my bay, I kept asking myself, "Why couldn't she be medicore like the sportscaster chick on TV? The one with the snout..."

GINSBERG 'HOWL' TRAILER ARRIVES

A trailer silently arrived recently for "Howl," a biopic that chronicles the creation of the Allen Ginsberg poem Howl and the obscenity trial that eventually followed its publication. James Franco stars as the poet and Beat legend.

The cool thing is there is a ton of "Mad Men" star Jon Hamm sprinkled in the trailer. God, how I wish he played Kerouac though.

Here’s the official synopsis for "Howl":

James Franco stars as the young Allen Ginsberg, who is still trying to find his voice. The story follows the creation of his groundbreaking poem HOWL, and the landmark obscenity trial that followed. The film also stars David Strathairn, Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, two filmmakers best known for their documentary features "The Times of Harvey Milk" and "Paragraph 175," make their narrative feature film debut.

The AV Club has the trailer (a crappy, non-embeddable for now) which can be seen HERE.

A PROBLEM FOR E-POETS?

This is interesting and I suspect will be a problem for many of us with the advent of e-readers and tablet/pad-like browsers...

Billy Collins, one of the country's most popular poets, had never seen his work in e-book form until he recently downloaded his latest collection on his Kindle.

He was unpleasantly surprised.

"I found that even in a very small font that if the original line is beyond a certain length, they will take the extra word and have it flush left on the screen, so that instead of a three-line stanza you actually have a four-line stanza. And that screws everything up," says Collins, a former U.S. poet laureate whose "Ballistics" came out in February.

Read more HERE

OLD SCHOOL COOL: CLOONEY CHANNELS McQUEEN

George Clooney puts his best Cary Grant in the back seat for a film that the late Steve McQueen might have played in his earlier days.

"The American," is a drama/thriller directed by Anton Corbijn and an adaptation of the 1990 novel "A Very Private Gentleman" by Martin Booth.

The premise is simple: Jack is a master assassin. When a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected, he vows to his contact, Larry, that his next assignment will be his last.

Jack reports to the Italian countryside, where he holes up in a small town and relishes being away from death for a spell. The assignment, as specified by a Belgian woman, Mathilde, is in the offing as a weapon is constructed.

Surprising himself, Jack seeks out the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto and pursues romance with local woman Clara. But by stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate.

It's scheduled for release on September 1, 2010.

HARVEY PEKAR DEAD AT 70

If there was another counter-culture, salt-of-the-Earth scribe out there like Charles Bukowski, it was "American Splendor" comic book writer Harvey Pekar, who was found dead in his Cleveland home at the age of 70.

You can read the mini obit that I wrote online for my newspaper, HERE.

HELLHOUND ON HIS TRAIL (flash fiction)

Click play for some mood music

Greenwood, Mississippi. Around 1934.

When I heard what that knucklehead musician was up to, there wasn't any way I was letting him go to those Crossroads alone. It was the night he supposedly sold his soul to play that thing he used as he hoboed across the country.

He didn't see me following but it didn't matter, he was as drunk as the day was long. But I didn't think he was serious and moreover, I couldn't believe what I was about to witness.

# # #

I was about 14 or so and couldn't get enough of what my father called 'The Devil's Music.' You see, part of our plantation was positioned along a wooded embankment that, after a few twists along a hidden dirt path, you'd find Smitty's, a backwoods juke joint that featured some of the best negro music throughout the Delta.

Since I was so young, Smitty allowed me to sit with him behind the bar, provided I sneak in a bushel or two of corn every now and again. Plus he said I needed to make myself useful and help him serve beer and whiskey when weekend crowds overflowed onto the front porch.

Smitty's was a scene. Itinerant field hands by day and masters of a new musical genre by night, I'd see the likes of Willie Brown, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf, Pops Staples and Honeyboy Edwards. It was history being made. Smithsonian stuff.

But then there was Robert Johnson. He was tall and lanky and for the life of me, I couldn't understand why he was such a Casanova. Sure, the ladies thought he was charming but dammit if he wasn't a cockeyed bastard. Plus he couldn't play the guitar worth a shit. And while he knew it, it didn't stop him from taking to the stage at Smitty's. The poor guy got booed off just about every time. He just didn't know the blues.

One night he was particularly ornery and threw his guitar clean into the corner.

"Damn, boy! Is you crazy?" Smitty screamed. "Better get your ass outta here before I crack that shitty guitar over that block head of yours and make your sorry ass play better."

Embarrassed, the young musician ran out. I told Smitty that i would see him soon and ran after Johnson who, by now, was up the road a piece.

I heard him weeping and moaning, praying for an answer. He stopped in the middle of the road and picked at his guitar once again. It was plum awful. He weeped some more.

When I saw him bite the cork off his whiskey pint and spit it into a nearby puddle, I knew what he was about to do. Word on the grapevine all night at Smitty's was that Johnson was headed for The Crossroads.

When I asked Smitty if he thought Johnson was serious, he replied, "Sheeeet, that boy don' know what he's gettin' into over there."

I had heard stories about The Crossroads. It was a place where your dreams came true for a price and if the waking world was more important to you, any deal could be made. But you better be sure.

I followed him and as we got closer, I prayed to my maker that the lore of the famed intersection was just all a Faustian myth instead of a gateway to his doom.

# # #

While the soot of hell was in the air, ashen and thick with humidity, the Earth was as cold as the dead slaves who years before had helped nurture the cotton fields surrounding us.

As I hid behind the only tree in sight, I watched Robert Johnson stand motionless in the middle of the intersection. Time had stopped. There were no cars in sight and the moon had gone black.

I heard the howling of a beast nearby and saw in front of me a hellhound whose eyes were blood red. He growled demonically over what I believed to be footsteps along the gravel road.

My eyes followed the footsteps to the intersection where a large black man stood in front of Johnson. He looked to be around nine feet and dressed to the nines.

A trepidatious Johnson handed the man his ratty guitar and the giant proceeded to play that thing unlike anyone I've heard in Smitty's.

After a minute or two, the shadowy man handed Johnson his guitar and kissed him on the cheek as his long fingernail traced the outline of Johnson's chin. And then, within seconds, the hellhound was gone and so was the man.

When I rushed towards the road to see if Johnson was alright, I saw that he, too, had vansihed.

There I stood, alone in the Crossroads, cold and hot at the same time as smoke and fog rose from the gravel.

# # #

No one at Smitty's saw Robert Johnson for two or three years until one night he returned, took to the stage, and played his axe like no one before him or after.

"Dayummm," Smitty just kept repeating. "Gotta book that boy soon. He'll sell all my liquor."

I agreed but knew this wasn't the innocent from a few years ago. This new Robert Johnson was hard-drinking all the time. He womanized practically as a religion and even though he'd recorded just about a dozen tunes, he still used many an alias to hide from jealous husbands whose wives fell victim to Johnson's wizardry.

# # #

One night after Robert Johnson performed to a packed house at Smitty's, I heard the same demonic Hellhound growling I heard at The Crossroads years before. It was coming from behind the stage and I was certain all of us in Smitty's were doomed.

And there I saw him. Johnson, on all fours, barking like a dog and foaming at the mouth.

"Hellhound's on my trail, son," he said. "Can't run no more."

To this day, no one knows how Robert Johnson died. One myth says he was poisoned, possibly by tainted moonshine. Another has him a stabbing victim from one of those jealous husbands.

But I know the truth. I saw it at The Crossroads. When people tell me that the Devil doesn't exist, I just laugh and play a Robert Johnson record.

Then I go to church.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS IS SMILING... GORGEOUSLY VINTAGE

Oodles of history here I just had to post. Check out the name of the little actor under Jessica Tandy in middle left of the poster -- a thesp who just so happened to go on and become a legend...

If you feel compelled, watch this enlightening documentary on Tennessee Williams via YouTube entitled "Wounded Genius." It streams over five parts. I saw it the other day and learned much about the Pulitzer Prize-winner that I didn't know. Pretty good...

PHOTO: Thanks to the stupendous blog If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger,There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

BORDERS STEPS UP E-WARS WITH THE SUPER CHEAP LIBRE PRO

With the dropping prices of the Amazon Kindle and the Nook at Barnes & Noble, the e-reader wars are getting more competitive.

Borders is stepping up their e-reader game by rolling out the red carpet for their e-bookstore and slashing prices on all of their readers. The good news, though, is that if you want to get into the e-reader game but are a tad cash-strapped, the Libro Pro just may be what you want. It's a great, inexpensive alternative and a stupendous entry-level device chock full of features.

It ships later this month and is offered at Borders for a frugal $119 and comes with a boatload of features, namely 100 pre-loaded classics, SD card expansion slot (where you can store up to 40,000 books) and the ability to play mp3s. What's more, you can use the Libre pro for a staggering 24 hours continuously.

The Libre package comes included with a USB Cable, AC Power Adapter, hand strap, earphones and a carrying case.

To find out more about the Libre e-reader Pro, visit Borders.



Read the official specs after the jump.

GOOGLE COMMENTS ARE F-U-B-A-R

...Or f#@cked up beyond all recognition.

Do you think that midieval scribes had to go through techie crap of their own? Like ... streaky ink? Or thin parchment? Anyway, this is just a short post to let everyone know that, as of yesterday or late Sunday, some (or pretty much all) comments left on entries on my blog are not showing up in the actual post.

After diving into the Google Blogger help forum (which is a great resource, btw), I saw that I'm not the only one. Scores of bloggers are going through the same thing. I suspect, it's a glitch in Blogger's new templates.

So until Google gets it's shit together and rolls out a real fix, I want everyone to know that I am still seeing comments that people leave via e-mail notification so, please, continue to leave your thoughts on posts if you feel compelled.

I would also appreciate knowing if anyone else is having this problem and if you can, please leave a small comment in this post... even if it's just a simple little "yo..."

** A last-minute search shows me that some of my post comments are retroactively showing up so who knows what the heck is going on.

As always, thanks for stopping by and reading...

~Ant

HAPPY JULY 4!

TWO AMERICAN ICONS SING AMERICAN CLASSICS. Enjoy...