TOM WAITS: BAD AS ME (AUDIO)

Listen to the title track from Tom Waits’ upcoming album "Bad As Me," due in stores on Oct. 25. on limited edition deluxe CD, CD, and LP. Via Tom Waits.com: The disc is Waits’ first studio album of all new music in seven years and refines the music that has come before and signals a new direction. Waits, in possibly the finest voice of his career, worked with a veteran team of gifted musicians and longtime co-writer/producer Kathleen Brennan. From...

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THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM (#fridayflash)

Press play for some mood music Havana, 1953. I told her there was nothing worse than waiting for the hurricane. And this phone call. She ignored me. Cracking her gum, she bopped around the room and looked for her beach towel. "You comin'?" I shook my head and blew her a kiss. She shrugged her shoulders, blew me a kiss and slammed the door. Suddenly the room was quiet. That glorious kind of quiet that almost hums. But man, the air was as heavy...

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THE BIGGER YOUR BUCKLE THE BETTER (#fridayflash)

Please press play for some mood music Root Riley hitched all the way from Socorro, New Mexico. Root was good at beatin' the devil around the stump -- which basically meant that he was lazier than a hound dog on a Sunday afternoon. His father Buck arrived in Socorro in the Forties to con some money out of Conrad Hilton. That part worked. But when ol' Connie found out, Buck wound up on the clink and Root grew up visiting his poppa every other...

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HANK...

Charles Bukowski -- The namesake of this blog -- would have turned 91 today... Enjoy these two audio readings of his poems and pour yourself a stiff one in his honor. Here's to you, Hank... BUKOWSKI READS 'THE SECRET OF MY ENDURANCE' TOM WAITS READS NIRVANA (stupendous, eerie and gorgeous) Tw...

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REX PICKETT, WRITING DOCUMENTARIES and more...

I'm a sucker for writer documentaries and I'll be the first to admit that I can't get enough of them. I'm compelled to watch them because as a wannabe scribe, I know first hand how hard this craft can be. Anyone who says it comes easy, is full of horseshit. Applying our craft, throwing ourselves into a project (both physically and metaphorically), is something that only other scribes can identify with. We don't just sit in front of a computer...

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'TOM WAITS ON TOM WAITS'

Next on my reading list and released about two weeks ago. Via AMAZON: Tom Waits, even with his barnyard growl and urban hipster yawp, may just be what the Daily Telegraph calls him: “the greatest entertainer on Planet Earth.” Over a span of almost four decades, he has transformed his music and persona not to suit the times but his whims. But along with Bob Dylan, he stands as one of the last elder statesmen still capable of putting out music that...

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MEET THE NEXT POET LAUREATE - PHILIP LEVINE (video)

Philip Levine, the Pulitzer-Prize winner known for his brooding and personal verse about the working class, will be the country's new poet laureate. The 83-year-old Levine will succeed fellow Pulitzer winner W.S. Merwin this fall. The laureate, who receives $35,000 and is known officially as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, serves from October through May. Richard Wilbur, Joseph Brodsky and Robert Pinsky are among the previous appointees. "I'm...

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WATCH LUCILLE BALL'S 1942 FILM 'THE BIG STREET' ...

... That I've posted in celebration of her 100th birthday.Here's the scoop: The Big Street is a 1942 American drama film, starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, based on the short story "Little Pinks" by Damon Runyon, who also produced the movie. The film was directed by Irving Reis. The screenplay was written by Leonard Spigelgass from Runyon's story.The film focuses on busboy Augustus Pinkerton II (Henry Fonda), known as "Little Pinks," and his relationship with heartless singer Gloria Lyons (Lucille Ball), who is crippled in a fall after her...

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