Blog2L2
- Baldessari May 18, 2012 Derek Bridges
- Rewind May 11, 2012 Derek Bridges
- Going in the Opposite Direction May 8, 2012 Derek Bridges
- Rope Man with Cigarette April 25, 2012 Derek Bridges
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
Is It Just Me, Or …
… Is harpsichord music first thing in the morning super-fucking annoying?
… When fundamentalist megachurch preachers start running their mouths about “freedom” and “confiscatory tax rates,” does it make you want to curb stomp their pointy heads to a pulp?
… Is anyone else pissed off that these snake-oil salesmen, these atavistic con artists, make tax-free millions and have the balls to blandly announce that Jesus was actually a laissez-faire capitalist?
… When you see yet another maniacally dumb beer commercial, does it make you want to throttle the life out of the people who push this lethal swill as if it were organic produce?
Continue readingLife’ll Kill Ya
It’s Friday the 13th and we’re all gonna die.
In the time-honored, slasher-movie tradition, those of us smoking pot or having sex will die first.
Okay, okay. These two things aren’t really connected, not in this piece, anyway. I just noticed my regular Friday post would be going up on the 13th and I thought I might sucker a few more people into reading it. (By the way, I’m a total wuss when it comes to filmic gore. I actually cover my eyes when the ominous music starts pumping and the knives, guns and chainsaws come out. Also, in terms of superstitious beliefs, the Friday the 13th thing is about as dumb as they come. Boatloads of bad things happen on Friday the 12th and Friday the 14th. You can look it up, Mookie.)
I hate to be the one to break the news that we’re all gonna die, because I’ve worked hard to establish my rep as B2L2’s Pollyanna-in-residence.
Human beings are born in much the same way all warm-blooded mammals are born. If you’re not clear on the concept, ask mom or dad for details.
Continue readingGrace Notes
For the last eight years, I’ve lived on a farm in rural Alabama.
In the movies, when city people arrive in the country, all kinds of funny, wacky things happen.
The other Hollywood default, of course, is best typified by John Boorman’s film of James Dickey’s tremendous 1970 novel, Deliverance. (Dickey’s cameo as a redneck lawman is superb. Watch for it near the end of the movie.)
Before I became a resident of Coburn Mountain, it was college towns and big cities. Culture and nightlife were always around the corner, or a short drive away. As a writer and musician, I never had to look far for work or inspiration.
More importantly, wherever I went I made new friends. I enjoyed the estimable pleasures of belonging to a community of people who also appreciated the thrill of walking the thin line between soul-crushing poverty and bohemian splendor.
It took me a while to figure out how to be happy here on the farm. I might as well have parachuted into the Amazon basin.
When you’re used to living life at a certain tempo and volume, peace and quiet can be disorienting, daunting. Complete solitude requires a kind of mental toughness I’d never had to cultivate.
After a year on the mountain, I was ready to leave. I’d always wanted to live in New Orleans, and my NOLA friends made sure I knew the welcome mat was out.
So one sunny weekend in August of 2005, I loaded up about half of my worldly possessions and delivered them to the Uptown apartment of an ex-girlfriend, who had graciously offered me a place to stay during the transition.
I returned to the farm to finish packing. I wasn’t in a hurry. I felt like I’d already pulled the trigger. I was doing something I’d done a dozen times before, picking up, moving on. C’est la vie. Despite New Orleans’ semi-deserved rep as a cruel banana republic, I knew I’d find a way to make it there.
Continue readingOnce Upon a Time in America
I was up early, filling water bottles and charging batteries. I checked out a few maps. It’s always a good thing to know where you’re going in my corner of Alabama, especially if you live in the middle of nowhere and your destination is even more remote.
Chance of rain, according to the forecast. I was ignoring the gray skies. Given the vicissitudes of 21st century weather, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had started raining locomotives and Gummi Bears.
Does anyone really know what the weather is going to do these days? I keep waiting for a TV weatherperson to tell it like it is:
“Right now it’s pretty nice out there. Last time I looked out the window, anyway. The forecast for tomorrow is … (shrugs). Hey, your guess is good as mine, Einstein! It might be a beautiful spring day, or we might experience a meteorological event straight out of the Old Testament. My advice, folks, is have a few drinks and don’t worry about it. I’ve been into the Absolut since lunch, and, frankly, I feel great. [Expletive] the [expletive] weather. Back to you, Todd.”
Continue readingAll The Marbles
The mowers had been idle in the shed for months, but they cranked right up.
There is a long list of maintenance rules for the mowers, which I ignore in much the same way I ignore everything that stands between me and noisy fun.
Oil? Check. Gas? Topped off. Let’s rock!
One must also believe the mower will start. It is very important to have faith in the machine. Do not assume there will be trouble. Do not let doubt cloud your mind. This angers the machine gods.
If you had to mow the Ponderosa every week, you would indulge in some magical realism, too.
Bob Johnson loves the riding mower. He stays about ten yards ahead of me in order to convince himself he is being chased, which is always more fun than not being chased.
This is not Thunderdome, Bob Johnson. I don’t ever catch you because I’m not chasing you. I am making the grass shorter, you dope. The only thing you are winning is best supporting goober.
Continue readingWelcome, Babies!
Lately I’ve fallen into the routine of putting my alarm clock on the radio setting.
Instead of the usual hellish bleat (a suitable warning for nuclear attack or biohazard breach), I am treated to the susurrations of those crazed liberals over at NPR.
You know the bunch I’m talking about. They can’t wait for the second Obama term so they can take to the streets singing “La Marseillaise” and start chopping the heads off Real Americans.
Liberalism leads to socialism, communism and, finally, soccer. Then Satan appears on the pitch and all kinds of gnarly CGI is unleashed. Yep. That’s how it all goes down.
Continue readingAre You Ted Nugent?
This is my first post from the newly improved Executive Cowboy Lounge, high atop Coburn Mountain, Alabama.
It is raining, with thunder and lightning. The PC should not even be plugged in. I’ve already lost one hard drive to lightning. (Did I learn my lesson the last time I lost all my data? Do I now take great pains to back everything up? Nope. I’m what mental-health professionals and ex-girlfriends refer to as an idiot. Shoe. Foot. Shoe on foot.)
But this week has been a real doozey, as we say in polite company, and the deadline looms. Yes, I take risks. Because I care, gentle readers. I’m afraid if I don’t show up on time every week, all six of you will forget about me. And, shoot, I’m sworn to fun.
Continue readingLeapin’ Lizards!
It’s Leap Day, so I better get crackin’ on this stuff. You don’t often get a chance to write a blog post on Leap Day.
Don’t let that train pass you by, friend, or one day you’ll find yourself all alone in a cheap room, toothless, with pee stains on your underwear. Wishing you had written that Leap Day post.
But it will be too late.
And no one can bear that kind of sadness.
See, February 29 only comes around once every four–
Ladies! Gentlemen! Put away your revolvers! Just kidding!
Okay, Leap Day? Leap Year? Bor-ing! Leaping is okay, though.
I’ve done a lot of leaping in my time. I leap whenever I feel like it. Hardly a day goes by when I am not required to leap over Bob Johnson.
(Shot of snoozing Bob Johnson with title: Canis americanus.)
Continue readingAphorisms and Avowals
It is good to be awake early in the morning, alone with the evaporating mist of dreams.
Are all dreams apocalyptic? Is all classical music bombastic? Yes and yes.
Yesterday, riding the bicycle at dusk, a brief scent of fire ants.
Among other things, “bombastic” means pompous. “Pompous” means self-important.
True or false: Everything is self-important.
Continue readingReading G.V.
It’s Week 2 of the No Television Experiment.
So far, I’ve missed The Beach Boys and Glen Campbell on the Grammy Awards and the midseason premiere of The Walking Dead on AMC.
Those are just the things my friends made sure I knew I’d missed. I was talking to the Ol’ Gunslinger last night on the Hillbilly Communications Network, legendary for the dropped call.
Back in the day, the Ol’ Gunslinger and I loaded our amplifiers in and out of many skeevy nightclubs. He is a wise and wily scoundrel, and, like most musicians, usually having serious fun. He was fired up about seeing Glen Campbell on the Grammy show.
“After his song, Glen Campbell didn’t know the mic was still on, and he said something like, ‘Am I supposed to say something, or just get out of the way?’ It was great.”
Continue readingBeautiful Impostor
One day I noticed I was watching Terminator 2: Judgment Day every time it was on.
When you have a couple hundred channels, T2 is on, well, a lot.
So is Spaceballs.
I’d watch two or three movies at the same time. I mixed genres and release dates, mashed up entire schools of cinema. All the stories and visions, mine to control!
This was not scholarly appreciation. This was not DIY film school.
This was a binge, a debauch, a scandal!
Continue readingOn The Move
I’ve been a mover lately. I used to be a shaker, which was some kind of fun. Shaker. That brings to mind shaking the earth. Or shaking the dice. Shaking with fear. Fear of shaking.
But now I’m just a mover, and funny how that works out. If you were moving and shaking at the same time, lord knows what would happen.
Mercy! Suddenly there’s lots of stuff to move!
All human possessions fall into three categories, which I am now going to invent: Stuff, Junk, and No Way I’m Tossing That.
Stuff comprises most of what we have. My Stuff is mostly books, papers and clothes. I need my Stuff, but there’s always the danger of having Too Much Stuff. (I’m writing this during a break from packing and moving Stuff, as a matter of fact. Because I have a deadline and I know some of you will be disappointed if I don’t post something today. It is, after all, Friday.)
Continue readingWe Drink Pabst Blue Ribbon
The other night I was watching Blue Velvet for the 26th time. I am helpless against the power of Blue Velvet, especially if it’s an uninterrupted (looking at you, IFC), uncensored showing, which this happened to be.
I’m a big fan of David Lynch. Generally speaking, I think Lynch makes movies about The Movies, and that alone would normally be enough to keep me interested. But he also has a terrific imagination and a painter’s eye for color and detail.
Just about everything Lynch has directed, including the oddly successful Twin Peaks television series, is by turns familiar and eerie. It’s hard to identify a tonal baseline in a Lynch film. Things get weird fast, and they just get weirder as the story unfolds.
The landscapes of films like Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart (1990) are relentlessly gorgeous and, well, Lynchian. You know you’ve accomplished something when your last name becomes an adjective. Hats off, sir!
Continue readingBOB STOP IT
BOB STOP IT from B2 L2 on Vimeo.
New Frontier
John Hicks takes a drive up the Natchez Trace to experience a little of the 19th century. And wreck his mountain bike.
NEW FRONTIER from John Hicks on Vimeo.
What a Wonderful World
The scene: A top-security research lab. Monday morning, 8 AM. The present.
Enter BOB, researcher extraordinaire. His lab partner, EDDIE, is already at his desk. They drink coffee out of space-age mugs.
BOB: Morning.
EDDIE: Hey.
BOB: Holy cow. I really tied one on last night.
EDDIE: That Night Train is a mean wine.
BOB: You’re tellin’ me. What’s on the to-do list?
EDDIE: Nothing.
BOB: Nothing?
EDDIE: Zip. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
BOB: Sounds good to me. I need a nap.
EDDIE: You know, Bob, I’ve been thinking …
BOB: Yeah?
EDDIE: What say (sly grin) we weaponize some bird flu?
BOB: Highly lethal and contagious? A super-spreader?
EDDIE: You’re reading my mind.
BOB: I always got a hankerin’ for a powerful new pathogenic organism. Especially one with a little Armageddon flavor.
EDDIE: Or we could just play World of Warcraft until somebody catches us goofing off.
BOB: No, let’s stick with the bird-flu thing.
EDDIE: A few mutations and, well, you are your father’s brother.
BOB: Easy as falling off a log.
EDDIE: Whoa!
BOB: What?
EDDIE: It just hit me. Man, this is sweet.
BOB: C’mon, give.
EDDIE: We write up all the details and publish them in a major scientific journal.
BOB: Effin’ genius. That’s what that is.
EDDIE: I’m thinking Hollywood all the way. Six-figure option. Dustin Hoffman.
BOB: Anything I can do, personally, to get Dustin Hoffman back into a hazmat suit …
EDDIE: It’s not a win-win proposition. It’s more like a win-win-win proposition.
Continue readingNew Christmas Traditions
Ah, Christmas.
What a wonderful time of the year! Let’s all join hands and sing “Silent Night.”
Is that mistletoe? You scamp! Yes, more delicious eggnog for me, please!
This is my second B2L2 Christmas. I can’t remember what I wrote about last year. I’d look it up, but I’m just too dang busy having Christmas fun.
Let’s start a new tradition. Christmas is a great time of year to start new traditions. I’ve been kicking around a few ideas:
The Annual Obscenity-Laden Christmas Post
I try to avoid using obscene language in my work. Sometimes, however, one must drop a strategic f-bomb or something equally pungent in order to convey the full, uh, earthiness of one’s position.
Generally speaking, I don’t work blue, as the comics say. Swearing well comically is a talent. You must be a Carlin or a Pryor to pull it off. (Is it too early to add Louis C.K. to the pantheon? I think not. I’ll be throwing down my five bucks for the interweb special, Louis. But not right now. I’m slap-happy with Christmas cheer!)
But what if once a year – in the last post before Dec. 25, say – I just let it rip? Four-letter words, multisyllabic oedipal blasts, and good grief, Bob Johnson! I am busy trying to think up different ways to describe cursing without actually cursing! You are interfering with my steady progress toward a Nobel Prize, you insane mutt! Go chase a rabbit! (He never catches the rabbit.)
Continue readingWhere Happiness Costs So Little
A programming note: Comedy Central is now running back-to-back episodes of 30 Rock just about every night.
30 Rock is the only network sitcom to give Seinfeld a run for its money, if you ask me.
Maybe I should be on Twitter. #TinaFeyIsAGoddess. #Duh.
Reading Walker Percy does not make me want to tweet. It makes me want to write.
It’s hard to say which one of Percy’s novels I like best, because there are several I return to again and again.
Currently, it’s The Moviegoer. I don’t understand how anyone could not want to read this book 20 times.
The Moviegoer was published in 1961, and won the National Book Award in 1962. Percy’s debut novel was the product of a long artistic journey. He was in his mid-40s when The Moviegoer made him a force in “Southern literature,” which is the kind of literature all writers born south of the Mason-Dixon produce, apparently. (Don’t get me started.)
Continue readingThe Nobel Prize
Bob Johnson has been getting treats all day. Varmints are inside due to a wintry blast of rain and snow.
They are bugging the crap out of me.
I’m throwing treats at the problem. That’s what’s going on. I have to write about what’s going on, you know.
It’s a tremendous responsibility, and rowdy critters do not help. (But let’s not forget there’s a big prize package at the end of the rainbow. We’ll all be driving new pickups before it’s over.)
Anyway, Bob Johnson is shocked he doesn’t get a treat every five minutes. I tried to explain to him even I don’t get a treat every five minutes.
Continue readingPaintball
I had an idea for a piece about rubber bullets, but the topic seemed problematic after I thought about it for a while, and who needs more problems?
Not me. I’m just going to Spotify the crap out of some tunes and pretend the 21st century hasn’t turned into a gigantic creepshow.
I’d like to thank the four people who read and commented on last week’s installment of Sworn to Fun: The John Hicks Story. Soon to be a major eBook or whatever they’re called.
Okay, fine, it’s not fair to bring up rubber bullets and leave you hanging. Here’s what I was thinking: If someone shoots rubber bullets at you, you should be able to shoot rubber bullets back at them. And since rubber bullets do injure people, let’s make it paintballs. But everybody on both sides gets a paintball gun and the same amount of ammo.
Join the Fair Play for America Committee. Demand a level playing field. Nobody likes a blowout. Write your Congressperson today.
Continue readingIt’s Just a Shot Away
I hate to begin with Facebook, but I must, I must.
I’m only a casual Facebook user, which, I imagine, is sort of like being a casual crack cocaine user. (In a hundred years, people won’t even know what crack is. They’ll be foraging for radioactive mushrooms or jacked into some kind of technological future-dope a la the novels of Philip K. Dick or William Gibson. Either way, good luck with that, people of the future. I hope you still have baseball and Buddy Holly songs, but you probably won’t. It’s possible there will be a huge shift in human consciousness and people will stop abusing their brains, bodies and fellow beings, but I doubt it. This concludes a gloomy parenthetical aside for a gloomy November day.)
My Facebook fever is low-grade, but a fever nonetheless. In my defense, I would like to point out I live on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, and social networking via the interwebs comprises about 95% of my social life.
Continue readingRisky Business
Will some of you stop pretending you’ve never seen pornography on the internet, which connects us all, amen? (I’m contractually obligated to add the phrase “which connects us all, amen” whenever I use the word “internet.” Whether or not the word “internet” should be capitalized is a matter for another day. Today, it is not capitalized. Deal with it.)
I hate neither porn nor the World Wide Waterslide.
I am not a ninny. I am not a mooncalf.
I’m a modern person, not some fuddy-duddy!
Someone hacked Facebook this week and yadda yadda yadda porn.
Here’s a tip: You don’t have to look at the bad, bad porn. You can close that window and go to the site with all the bible verses.
Continue readingThe Constant Lover
In terms of sheer volume, I peaked as a reader in my 20s.
In those days, I didn’t do much except read. Life was pretty simple. I extended my student years without much effort, drifting along. But always with a book!
As long as I stayed in school, no one seemed to bother me too much. I knew I’d discovered one of the great truths, hidden for so long in plain sight: As long as you appear to be doing something, no matter how pointless or quixotic it is, people will generally leave you alone.
That is what I wanted. I wanted to enjoy my books and my friends and write my not-very-good stories and poems.
I didn’t think too much about the future. By the time I was 25, I’d worked so many different kinds of jobs that I could tell how things were going to pan out – cheap rent, low wages, ridiculous adventures. Fine!
Continue readingBad Moon Rising
“And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.” – Revelation 5:4
It’s the day before the big game, Alabama vs. LSU. The weather is grim, a bad omen for somebody.
The Vegas boys have made the Tide five-point favorites. They’re good, the Vegas boys. They have the weird info, numbers you don’t know, can’t know. They control the passage of objects across the sky.
Life is ephemeral. The Vegas boys know. One way or another, there will be a riot at Bryant-Denny tomorrow night. It will be a powerful meeting of teams and fan bases, the game of the college season.
The grilled meat of the losers shall be flavorless and greasy.
The losers shall not savor merlot, nor Michelob Ultra, for the great day of wrath has come.
Continue readingQuasar
I seen you know who back there. Set fire to a TV and took pictures.
What?
Poured gasoline on it and burnt it up. Seen him do it.
Wheres them pictures?
Where what?
Them pictures.
It was him took pictures Harmon.
Continue reading