Joni Mitchell Smoking
Yesterday I posted a birthday tribute to Joni Mitchell. In the late stages of the vetting process, the thought occurred to me: What brand of cigarette did she smoke? The AI overview mentions American Spirit, and Camels. American Spirit came on the market in 1982. Joni started her habit in 1952, so she was a Camel girl for 30 years.
In 1991, Joni had a new album to promote. The Telegraph helped out with a “puff piece”, THE FLOWERING OF JONI MITCHELL. “Even the cigarettes she smokes are particular. They are called American Spirit, and come in a sky blue pack, and they say a lot about Joni Mitchell. For these are truly designer cigarettes, free of artificial additives, expensive. Mitchell volunteers the long and detailed explanation of the true smoking aficionado: ordinary cigarettes contain saltpetre which makes them burn down quicker; these cigarettes last longer, but you still have all that addiction-quenching nicotine.” (American Spirit might not be that healthy after all.)
“… Even as the last plume of blue smoke from one cigarette is melting in the air, she is relighting another. One sees in this a small, but telling gesture of defiance. In California, smoking is regarded with the puritanical disdain of a social disease; Joni Mitchell — for many, the very personification of a certain Californian way of life (although she is actually Canadian) — doesn’t care.”
The Telegraph published Joni Mitchell: still smoking on October 4, 2007. “’I’ll try not to kill you with secondary smoke,” says Joni Mitchell, as she lights up at the table. The great Canadian singer-songwriter likes her cigarettes, and, at 63, nothing is likely to persuade her to stop smoking now. … “It’s one of life’s great pleasures,” she says, mischievously revelling in political incorrectness as she exhales a small cloud through wide nostrils. …
Mitchell’s speaking voice is a little husky, and her singing voice has noticeably altered over the years, losing the high end and modulating into a sensuous alto, but she blames age rather than tobacco. “I have smoked since I was nine, so obviously it didn’t affect my early work that much.” … And then she diverts into a rambling reminiscence of childhood in the remote farming community of Saskatoon. “I would grab my tobacco and get on my bike, looking for a beautiful place, a grove of trees or a field, and go amongst the bushes and smoke and that always gave me a sense of well being.”
On June 21, 2012, My cigarettes, my self, by Joanne Laucius, appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. “Songstress Joni Mitchell has often been photographed with a cigarette in her hand. Women artists and writers have used cigarettes to define themselves. “It is not by chance that Joni Mitchell adopted cigarettes as integral to her artistic integrity,” says historian Sharon Anne Cook in Sex, Lies, and Cigarettes, a new book about women and smoking. …
Mitchell appeared on the cover of her 1976 album Hejira with a cigarette. She has often been photographed with a cigarette in hand and interviewers often mention Mitchell chain-smoking. In a 1995 Vogue article, the writer noted there were two packages of cigarettes on the table “that (Mitchell) makes her way through with Bette Davis speed.” A reporter at The Independent noted in 1994 that when Mitchell’s left hand stubbed out one cigarette, her right hand was lighting the next one.”
“Concern for Mitchell’s health unfortunately seems warranted. She’s a life-long smoker (although apparently she now smokes e-cigarettes instead) who contracted polio as a child, struggles with a weird skin condition called Morgellons Disease, and in 2015 survived a brain aneurysm from which she’s never fully recovered, making it difficult for her to walk.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in March 1941. “Men eating at Salvation Army. Newport News, Virginia.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Joni Mitchell
Tuesday is Joni Mitchell’s 82nd birthday. Roberta Joan Anderson was born November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta. For this birthday tribute we will revisit four previous posts. one two three four … A facebook friend went on a Joni Mitchell kick. First it was a link to an interview, which youtube has cancelled. Then it was a quote from The Last Time I Saw Richard. A lady said Blue was her favorite album all all time, and a man enthusiastically agreed.
Given the apples and oranges quality of her catalog, it would be tough to pick one album as a favorite. I soon realized that fbf was going to be thirty soon. I am sixty. These are two different perspectives on the craft of Joni Mitchell. One has driven through the storm, not knowing what was next. The other is presented with an almost complete body of recorded work.
I have known about Joni since high school, and been a devoted fan since 1976. Joni’s most popular album, Court And Spark, came out in 1974, eleven years before fbf was born. Who would be the equivalent female musical force from 1943, when I was minus eleven? The answer is nobody. (Coincidentally Roberta Joan Anderson was born on November 7, 1943.) 
After the comment about Blue, I listened to For The Roses. Joni’s craft is like a cluster bomb … there are lines that you never fully felt, bomblets waiting to explode in your gut. Let The Wind Carry Me has one of those hidden threats. “Mama thinks she spoilt me, Papa knows somehow he set me free, Mama thinks she spoilt me rotten, She blames herself, But papa he blesses me.”
The first thing I heard by Joni was Big Yellow Taxi. It was on The Big Ball, a 1970 mail order sampler from Warner Brothers. This was when Joni shacked up with Graham Nash. The next year saw Blue, followed by For The Roses, and Court And Spark. I always thought Joni was someone he should like, but somehow didn’t. It wasn’t until 1976 that I broke through the barrier, and became a Joni Mitchell fan. Seeing her in concert did not hurt.
On February 3, 1976, I took a study break. (I scored 100 on the test the next day). Joni Mitchell was playing at the UGA coliseum a few blocks away, and the door was not watched after the show started. I found a place to stand, on the first level of the stands. The LA express was her band that night, and created a tight, jazzy sound, even in the UGA coliseum. Tom Scott pointed at Joni, said she was crazy, and drew circles around his left ear. The one line I remember is “chicken scratching my way to immortality” from Hejira.
The Hissing of Summer Lawns might not be her best album, but it is certainly her bravest. Court And Spark was a commercial success. Instead of producing a bestselling followup, Joni took a ninety degree turn. Summer Lawns, for all its eccentric sparkle, confused the record buying public. The gravy train took off in another direction.
In those days, 96rock played a new album at midnight, which people would tape. On the night of the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash, the album was Hejira. This was followed by Mingus, another curve ball. Finally, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter appeared, and did not make a good impression.
The eighties, nineties, and aughts appeared. Joni and I lived our lives. 1996 saw a frightening interview in Details magazine. It was startling to see that for all her granola glory, Joni Mitchell might not be a very nice person. In a pot and kettle moment, David Crosby said “Joni’s about as humble as Mussolini.” Music is a tough way to make easy money.
More recently, there was a long interview on Canadian television. She is not mellowing with age. The cigarettes have not killed her, even if her voice is not what it once was. The recent albums that I have heard are strong. There seem to be more on the way. Maybe the facebook friend will have the “what is she going to do next” experience after all.
A few weeks ago, I was at the library. I had a story to take home, before going over to the biography section. There I found Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. At least with fiction, you know you are dealing with a made up story. With biography, you have to use judgment.
It is a familiar story. Joni was born in the frozen north, was a rebellious girl, and got pregnant. She gave up the daughter for adoption, only to be reunited many years later. Joan Anderson gets married to, and divorces, Chuck Mitchell. Joni sings, writes, tunes her guitar funny, becomes a star, gets too weird to be popular, makes and loses money, smokes millions of cigarettes, and becomes an angry old lady. There is a bit more to the story than that. Reckless Daughter fills in a few of the blank spots.
Millions of cigarettes might be an exaggeration. Joni started smoking when she was nine. When she was a star, she was almost as well known for her constant puffing as her pretty songs. When Joni was in a Reagan era slump, she was going through four packs a day. Just for the sake of statistics, lets call it two packs, or forty fags, a day. Multiply forty by 365 and you get 14,600. If she started at 9, and had her aneurysm at 72, that gives you 63 years of nicotine abuse. If you assume that there were forty fags a day for 63 years, that gives you 919,800 smokes. IOW, while seven figures is not out of reach, it is rather unlikely that Joni smoked more than 2,000,000 cancer sticks.
The author of Reckless Daughter, David Yaffe, is a problem. He talks about the mood of America in 1969, four years before he was born. Mr. Yaffe goes to great lengths to show us that he knows about making music. Some readers will be impressed. There are mini-essays on Joni songs from her golden years, the time between Ladies Of The Canyon and Hejira. And gossip, gossip, and more gossip. Joni is well known for her celebrity lovers.
We should make the point that I enjoyed Reckless Daughter. The inside stories are fun, and pages turn over without too much head scratching. Maybe this is a statement about the career of Joni Mitchell. You enjoy the music for many years, and then complain about the details. Reckless Daughter follows the trajectory of other celebrity biographies. The star is born, takes up a craft, gets a break, becomes successful, goes over the mountaintop into a long decline. With Joni, nothing after Mingus was well received. The chanteuse was broker, and angrier, by the minute.
On page 13, Joni hears Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Sergei Rachmaninoff. This is the piece that makes her want to be a musician. One page 129, we learn the story of A&M studios in Hollywood. At one time, The Carpenters were in studio A, while Carole King was recording “Tapestry” in studio B. Joni was recording “Blue” in studio C, which had a magic piano. One time, Carole King learned of a break in the studio C booking, and ran in. Three hours later, “I feel the earth move” was recorded.
A few years later, Joni was on the Rolling Thunder tour with Bob Dylan. One of the concepts was support for Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, whose story can be found elsewhere. Joni became disillusioned with Mr. Carter. When Joan Baez asked Joni to speak at a benefit concert, Joni said she would say that Mr. Carter was a jive ass N-person, who never would have been champion of the world. Joni later got in SJW trouble for posing in blackface, for the cover to “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter.”
On page 251, we learn that Bob Dylan does not dance. Other items include “Free man in Paris” being written about David Geffen, and Jackson Browne writing “Fountain of Sorrow” about Joni. Mr. Browne is a not-well-thought-of ex of Joni. As for Mr. Geffen…. Joni stayed at his house for a while, at a time when Mr. Geffen was in, and out, of the closet. Did they make sweet music together? … So this book report comes to an end. Joni is recovering from a brain aneurysm, and will probably not produce anything else. The book is going back to the library, and I will move on.
Joni Mitchell has product to promote. She gave an interview to New York magazine, where she smoked a few cigarettes and expressed a few opinions. There were enough attention getting comments to make the news.
“When I see black men sitting, I have a tendency to go — like I nod like I’m a brother. I really feel an affinity because I have experienced being a black guy on several occasions.” She proceeds to tell a story about dressing like a down and out black man as a way of dealing with an obnoxious photographer. “I just stood there till they noticed me. I walked really showily, going, Heh heh heh. It was a great revenge. That was all to get his ass. To freak him out. I had to keep him on the defensive.”
Gay-mafia-made-man David Geffen was a target. “I ask her about a painting, visible in a vestibule, on the way to her laundry room, of a curly-haired man with a banana lodged vertically in his mouth; turns out it’s Geffen, and she painted it. “Before he came out. He’s never seen it,” she says, before explaining: “He was using me as a beard. We were living together, and he’d go cruising at night. He was very ambitious to be big and powerful, and he didn’t think he would be [if he was openly gay].” By 1994, the two had fallen out over her insistence that he didn’t pay her enough in royalties.”
The product is a four cd boxed set, Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced. There was a single one star comment about the joniproduct. Al Norman Seems like a collection of Joni’s forgettable tunes February 3, 2015 ~ “My wife loves Joni Mitchell, and never listens to this set. Seems like a collection of Joni’s forgettable tunes.” This comment was sponsored by Head and Shoulders. “100% flake free hair & A GREAT SCENT”
You just can’t get away from capitalism. Ms. Mitchell heard “… on the radio, a record executive “saying quite confidently, ‘We’re no longer looking for talent. We’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate.” As interviewer Carl Swanson notes, “For now, she’s hoping that people buy her boxed set, with her self-portrait on the cover. To that end, she gives me a Joni Mitchell tote bag with one of her paintings on it to carry my things home in. Get the word out.”
Joni Mitchell gave an interview recently to a Canadian Broadcaster. She is famously Canadian. The chat was in her California living room, which is littered with her paintings. Many of the paintings are things like Saskatchewan at forty below. Mrs. Mitchell alternates between painting and music, which tend to balance her cigarette fueled mind.
The CBC interview is paired with a more formal chat in Toronto. She could not smoke during the Toronto interview. The Toronto interviewer is just a bit smarter than Jian Ghomeshi, who endured the second hand smoke in California. Mr. Ghomeshi said things like “The song “Woodstock” defined a generation.” Mrs. Mitchell was in a New York City hotel room that famous weekend.(Spell check suggestion for Jian Ghomeshi: Joan Shoeshine)
There are some juicy quotes. Art is short for artificial. When listening to Joni songs, you should look at yourself, and not at her. Free love was just a gimmick for the men to get laid. False modesty is pointless. Sylvia Plath was a liar, or maybe it was Anne Sexton. (James Dickey said that Sylvia Plath was the Judy Garland of American letters.)
A fearsome foursome gets in the game. Someone screamed, on a live album. “Joni, you have more flash than Mick Jagger, Richard Nixon, or Gomer Pyle combined!.” Years later, the fan introduced himself to Mrs. Mitchell.
The conversation mentioned Bob Dylan. He is from Northern Minnesota, and not quite Canadian. Apparently, Mrs. Mitchell kicked up a fuss with some comments in 2010. ” Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I. … Grace [Slick] and Janis Joplin were [sleeping with] their whole bands and falling down drunk, and nobody came after them!”
Did Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell ever tune up together? Joan Baez, a similarly named contemporary, is well known for dating Mr. Zimmerman. Ms. Baez did sing at Woodstock.
Mrs. Mitchell doesn’t exactly take back her comments about Bob Dylan. ““I like a lot of Bob’s songs, though musically he’s not very gifted. He’s borrowed his voice from old hillbillies. He’s got a lot of borrowed things. He’s not a great guitar player. He’s invented a character to deliver his songs. Sometimes I wish that I could have that character — because you can do things with that character. It’s a mask of sorts.”
In a kill the messenger moment, Mrs. Mitchell lashed out at the interviewer from the 2010 piece. It is odd, since he didn’t ask any trick questions. Black and white transcripts are tough to deny. “The interviewer was an asshole.” (The body part is bleeped.) “I hate doing interviews with stupid people, and this guy’s a moron” “His IQ is somewhere between his shoe size and (unintelligible)”.
The troublesome 2010 interview was conducted with John Kelly, a Joni Mitchell tribute artist. “JK: Drag does have a power, though — that netherworld of a thing you can’t quite know, which makes people nervous. JM: Drag wasn’t always counterculture. In his memoirs, Nixon talked about the Harvard and Yale men in power who would put on these plays where they dress like women, and Milton Berle did a kind of “hairy drag.” Becoming a gay thing made drag go underground.” Did Mick Jagger and Gomer Pyle ever do drag with Richard Nixon? … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in February 1939.
“White migrant family in trailer home near Edinburg, Texas” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Climategate
This content was published November 27, 2009. … By now, many of you have heard about “climategate”. It seems like someone hacked into a computer at an English research institute, and found some emails. A few of the emails have been released. With years of correspondence to go through, only a part of which has been released, there is lots of room for mischief. If the hackers are smart enough to steal those emails, they are also smart enough to fake a few.
I am not a scientist, and all this makes my head spin. There is the suspicion that a lot of the people making noise don’t understand the science, but are making noise to support already held views. There are big money interests who would like to see talk about global warming go away, so they can work without interference. These interests have lots of money to buy off journalists, who then produce prose like this: “AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is about raising taxes; … about a few canny hucksters who’ve leapt on the bandwagon fleecing us rotten with their taxpayer subsidised windfarms and their carbon-trading; about the sour, anti-capitalist impulses of sandal-wearing vegans and lapsed Communists who loathe the idea of freedom and a functioning market economy.”
The discussion has leaped out of the frying pan of science, and into the fire of politics. There is an international conference in Copenhagen soon, and the timing of “climategate” is curious. … Two words stand out in this discussion, believe and prove. I wonder if they are appropriate. AGW is not really a matter of believe or not believe. Since the industrial revolution, man has made an enormous change in the atmosphere. This ecosystem has evolved over billions of years, either by accident or intelligent design. Man has made profound changes in the last two hundred years.
Chamblee54 crunched the numbers last July: “The atmosphere on planet earth is a marvel, quite possibly unique in the universe. It supports a wide range of life forms, from amoebas to Bruno. This blanket of gas evolved over a period of billions of years. Man has possibly changed it more in the last two hundred years than nature did in four billion before that. … Those numbers don’t mean too much like that, so let’s put them into another form. Comparing 200 years to four billion years just takes a calculator. That is like comparing one minute to 38 years. What God created (or nature evolved, or however you explain it), in 38 years, industrial man has nearly ruined in one minute.
Here is the breakdown. Divide 4 billion by 200 and you get 20 million. Divide 20 million by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day) gives us 13888 days. Dividing 13888 days by 365 gives us 38 years. Even if the earth is less than four billion years old, the fact remains that industrial man has destroyed in almost no time what took a long time to create. … The second weasel word in the current blabberfest is prove. There is a difference between prove and indicate. If the emails are genuine, they would indicate that some scientists in England cooked the books on their research. As to the larger issue of what industrial man is doing to planet earth, they prove nothing.
This content was published November 18, 2008. … Yesterday, after exploring east Atlanta, PG and Uzi went to dinner. They alternate between Piccadilly and S&S , and this was a Piccadilly week. PG always thinks of the antique store called Pick a Dilly. That might explain some of the clientele. … Lenny was a friend of Uzi, who had checked out of the hotel a few years ago. Lenny was inclined towards a philosophical viewpoint. He tried to write these nuggets down. One of the problems was that Lenny never did understand the concept of the tab key.
He would type the quote, the source, and any other information into one cell of a database. PG had time on his hands, and offered to try and straighten out the mess. … Now, one problem is Microsoft Works. The database that Lenny used was in works. The only operating system to employ works was Millennium Edition … the Edsel of the Microsoft showroom. When you tried to take something in works, and move it to another system, you were liable to get a screen full of jibberish. (According to spell check, this is properly spelled gibberish)
So, the email arrived. PG tried to open the file using an open office database, and the thing closed immediately. PG thought he heard the computer laughing at him. Next was a bootleg copy of microsoft windows 97 office suite. Funny how suite is pronounced like sweet, but is anything but. The database was not amused, and word showed a screen full of gibberish. … Next, PG tried notepad. This did show some text in between the acres of code. PG copied this into a trusty wordpad file, and started to edit. After a while, there were a few quotes in legible form.
PG then sent this email to Uzi: excellent i haven’t had a family turkey day since i had parents. as for the files, they are not opening smoothly. i might could work around some of the issues, but it might be easier if i had a copy of works when i had my first computer, i used works, and then tried to take the files to my job to use the word based computers there. word computers do not like works (even if it is at work, as in job. this can get confusing)
If you could find a copy of the works database file and send it to me, that might make this project easier I opened one file with notepad, and was able to cull these from the mass of jibberish: The best things and best people rise out of their separateness ; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise. Robert Frost · How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms. Aristotle · The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon thty . Clarence Darrow … Is this the sort of thing i can expect to find? a quote, and then a source for the quote? PG … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in March 1941. “Schoolchildren getting ready to go home. Norfolk, Virginia ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Mick Fleetwood
This content was published . … I read the autobiography of Mick Fleetwood. If this had been a made up tale of fiction, no one would believe it. Mick is not the manufacturer of enemas, nor the namesake of a Cadillac Model. The possibility does exist that he has used those two products.
John Mayall gave his guitar player, Peter Green, some studio time as a birthday present. “The Green God” used a rhythm section from the Bluesbreakers, Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass). At the end of the day, Mr. Green wrote “Fleetwood Mac” on the can holding the tapes.
Before long, Mr. Green started his own band, and named it after the rhythm section. (Does anyone know the bass player and drummer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section?) Fleetwood Mac started as a blues band, and became popular in England. Mr. Fleetwood celebrated by getting together with Jenny Boyd, who became his wife. Miss Boyd is the sister of Patti Boyd, the wife of George Harrison, aka Layla.
The first Fleetwood Mac album in the USA was “Then Play On.” The first show in Atlanta was at the Oglethorpe University gym, and by all accounts was a wild night. I saw the sign advertising the event, but did not attend. Grand Funk Railroad was the opening act.
About the time of “Then Play On”, Peter Green started to get a bit weird. He dropped out of the band, but Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan were still playing guitars. For a little while. Jeremy Spencer took a walk outside a Los Angeles hotel, and got recruited by the Children of God. Danny Kirwan had some issues, and decided to leave the band. Bob Welch stopped by for a few years, joined by Christine Perfect McVie, the wife of John.
The band was managed at this time by Clifford Davies, who by all accounts was a nasty piece of work. A man named Bob Weston had joined the band, and lasted until he had an affair with Jenny Fleetwood. Mr. Weston was fired, and a tour canceled. Clifford Davies decided that he owned the name Fleetwood Mac, and hired a group of players to go out and do shows. Fleetwood and the Mcvies were not amused, and Mick Fleetwood took over as the manager of the band.
By 1974, the band was pushing along, and selling about 300,000 copies of each album. On Halloween night 1974, Fleetwood Mac played at the Omni with Jefferson Starship. I was at the Municipal Auditorium that night, seeing Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
In late 1974, Mick was looking for a studio. He came to a place, and an album came on the speakers. Mick was impressed by the guitar player. Soon after, Bob Welch left the band, and Mick thought the guitar player he heard at the studio was a good fit. (The band never did auditions, just asked people they liked to join). The guitar player was Lindsay Buckingham, and his girlfriend/musical partner was Stevie Nicks. This was the band that set sales records.
The first album with Buckingham/Nicks, simply titled “Fleetwood Mac”, became a phenomenon. The band was soon headlining in stadiums, and was on every FM radio station in the land. The band went into the studio to record a follow up. The second album took over a year to produce, and saw the McVies and the Fleetwoods get divorced. Buckingham and Nicks split their common law arrangement. Out of the turmoil came “Rumours”, which has sold roughly thirty million copies.
On August 29, 1978, I got to see Fleetwood Mac at the Omni. Mick Fleetwood was on top of his game, pounding the skins with a glee that could be seen from the cheap seats. Fleetwood was a highlight, standing two meters tall and creating havoc on the drum stand.
The book tells the rest of the story. Fleetwood’s father had died earlier that summer, and Mick was devastated. The band was straining under the pressures of super-duper-stardom. Mick attempted a reconciliation with his wife, which was a painful failure. There was an affair between Mick and Stevie Nicks at this time. The idea that Mick Fleetwood could perform like he did that night tells you what a trooper he was. … Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken March 5, 1948. “Fox Theater, “Voice of the Turtle” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The MAGA Civil War!
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After reading this entire post, do you think Phil has the humility to acknowledge his error and to admit he was wrong? I am willing to bet not. With his ego, pride, and hubris, because he is unable to argue the main point and can never provide a reasonable refutation or intelligent counter-argument, Phil will simply turn around and attack me by utilization of denial, deflection, IMAX-level projection, censorship, “cancelling,” manipulation, smearing, gaslighting, jamming, framing, ad hominem, name calling, character assassination, attempted intimidation, and the use of fallacious arguments that have no basis in reality, the way he has always done with any of his opponents. He is a narcissistic bully. · This is your monday morning reader for today. It is raining and yucky outside. And thats just the weather. The rest of the news is no better, especially if you are a Falcons fan. · You are 23 now. Do you still feel the same way? The more I learn about that war, the more disgusted I get. That war could have ended in 2022, but Great Britain and the USA persuaded Ukraine not to negotiate · There is a website called Quote Investigator, which does just that. I dabble in quote trolling, and like to google quotes, just to see what I see. Today, it was the line … everyone who bought The Velvet Underground’s first album later formed a band. The first result was Quote Investigator. As it turns out, Brian Eno gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times in May 1982. ““I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!” · This content was originally published in 2009. President Obama increased the number of drone strikes, despite being awarded the Nobel peace prize. Al-Queda survived these attacks, and is now running Syria. · It was fun after Elon bought twitter. @ncri_io “Evidence suggests that bad actors are trying to test the limits on @Twitter. Several posts on 4chan encourage users to amplify derogatory slurs. … use of the n-word has increased nearly 500%.” · That’s an expletive. It’s often used to express strong emotion like anger, surprise, or frustration, or sometimes simply as an intensifier. Is there something else I can help you with? · The Ramones made their 15 minutes last 20 years. They started at CBGB’s. The owner kept his dog inside, and dog s**t was everywhere. The Ramones became sort of famous, but never had a hit record. This lack of commercial success was highly annoying. · Tucker Carlson just hit a new low with this heinous betrayal of my friend Charlie Kirk… who is surely now rolling in his grave: JOSH HAMMER · A church put a sign on Briarcliff Road. “When was the last time you prayed?” I decided to send them an email with my answer. “God please help these people to have respect for their neighbor, and take that awful sign down“. · Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process. · If nobody had commented on the appearance of Nick Fuentes on whathisname’s show, it would be forgotten by now · Fuentes: I feel like women are very simple in terms of Carlson: Have you ever lived with one? Fuentes: No, I haven’t lived with them. · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress John Collier took the social media picture in November 1942. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (vicinity). Montour no. 4 mine of the Pittsburgh Coal Company ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Tommy Rotten
In 1977, Rolling Stone did a piece about a “counterculture writer” named Thomas Eugene Robbins. This should not be confused for Harold Robbins, a mainstream wordchunker who died in 1997. “Tommy Rotten is known for colorful phrasing. It is as if Vladimir Nabokov caught butterflies with psychedelic juice in their wings, and made a lepidopterist stew that allowed him behind the looking glass.” As it is, we have, a stylistic seraphim from the time of the Carter administration. “You can tell people that my goal is to write novels that are like a basket of cherry tomatoes—when you bite into a paragraph, you don’t know which way the juice is going to squirt.”
Part one of the chamblee54 regurgitation of Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life hit the ether nine days ago. Since then, I have taken to writing down the page number of phrases that catch my eye, tickle my ears, pull my leg, and punch me in the gut. Since a Tom Robbins book is an anarchic army of swinging sentences, only nominally regulated by the discipline of plot, this may be the best way to approach this subject.
On page 25, TER was on an asian honeymoon. A Sing snake crossed their path, and was invited to dinner. The reptile was prepared with enough red chili paste to give heartburn to the human blowtorch. TER felt as though he had gargled napalm. On page 145, TER would describe “many a hot, sticky summer night, when a restless Richmond felt like the interior of a napalmed watermelon.”
Page 63 sees TER at thirteen years old. He has not joined the church, given his soul to Jesus, and been assured of salvation. These are important items on the Southern Baptist bucket list. I went through sunday after painful sunday, every time the congregation sang “Just as I am” as an invitation to eternal life with Jesus. I never did take that walk down the aisle, and have come to see the Baptist ritual of pressuring pre pubescent youth as being just a little bit weird. Yes, this is better than what the Roman Pedophile Church likes to do with little boys, but that’s a technicality.
The man assigned to win the soul of TER was Dr. Peters. “tall, gaunt, and pale, with a weak damp smile and cold damp palms: shaking hands with him was like being forced to grasp the flaccid penis of a hypothermic zombie….more creepy than refrigerated possum slobber.”
By page 125, TER is out of school, married, and has a son. This is the early fifties, and I will not appear on planet earth for a little while. In those days, there was a war going on in Korea. TER decided that the Air Force would be more pleasant than the army. If he had waited much longer Uncle Sam would have made the choice for him.
TER at some point is on a ship, and editing a newspaper. “… the paper’s adviser, a Roman Catholic chaplain who possessed the purplish physiognomy and perpetually petulant pucker of the overly zealous censor.” Soon TER is in Nebraska, and buys his first automobile, a “1947 Kaiser … looked like the illegitimate child of a sperm whale and a pizza oven.” The gender is not specified.
Six pages later, TER is out of the service, about the divorce wife number one, and living in a hood called the Fan. This was the hippie district of Richmond VA, although the 1954 version was considerably tamer than the summer of love variety. (This is roughly the time when I burst onto the landscape of Atlanta GA) TER was reading books about zen. Learning zen, by reading a book, was similar to learning how to swim by reading a magazine. Or telling time by reading a newspaper. As Ben Hecht put it, “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
The convergence of zen, swimming, and reading material made TER think of a poem by William Blake. Mr. Blake was a hallucinatory inspiration on Allen Ginsberg, who would later be the only man to ever kiss TER on the lips. (I have doubts about that one, but will have to take the his word.) Anyway, the poem has the Southern Baptist approved title of “Eternity.” “He who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
Maybe this is a good time to edit this, and go forth into the world. Or go second, or third, but not in a Southern Baptist lifetime should I go fifth. As TER said in High Times, “I’d better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.” … Tom’s lifetime subscription to High Times ran out February 9, 2025. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken in the 1940s. “Buses full of soldiers outside Fox Theater (“colored entrance” sign visible)” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Eighty Percent
It is a T shirt treasure, and a coffee cup classic. “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” This gem is blamed on Allan Steward Konigsberg, better known as Woody Allen. The percentage goes up and down, and life is sometimes substituted for success.
The quote was recently featured at WIST, or Wish I’d Said That. This quote site is known for giving a source, unlike the sites featuring purring platitudes in front of a cultural kitten. The current top offering is “Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.” Virginia Woolf attributes the baroque comment to Roger Fry, who was not afraid of the author.
Lets get back to Mr. Allen, and success statistics. He accepts full responsibility for the remark. In 1989, notorious conservative columnist William Safire asked Mr. Allen about whether he said life or success. The answer was rather surprising.
“The quote you refer to is a quote of mine which occurred during an interview while we were discussing advice to young writers, and more specifically young playwrights. My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book.”
In other words, you don’t just show up empty handed. If you have an idea, you have to employ the writing formula, ass + chair. You have to turn the tv off, leave the beer in the refrigerator, sit down, and push buttons on the keyboard.
I was listening to an interview with a fiction writer. Someone said “Inspiration is for amateurs.” I have always been more impressed by action than beliefs, and this phrase made sense.
IIFA is from a painter named Chuck Close. His output is expensive, and widely enjoyed. A spinal injury left him paralyzed, but did not stop him from producing. Here is the full quote:
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
A man once made pottery. It was said that the man only worked with passion. If he didn’t feel this passion, he did not work. If I worked that way, I would never finish anything. Most of the sticker pictures take a while to finish. I always gets tired of the picture before it is through. The idea is to go to the studio, start to do stuff, and before long the enthusiasm will return. Any image requires a certain amount of time with the belly pressed against the work table, or the digital equivalent.
The formula for writing is ass plus chair. A teacher once said to not stare at the blank page, waiting for a bolt of lightning. Start to write something, and the ideas will start to sputter out of the pipeline.
It is not enough to have a bright idea. You have to work the problems out. Sometimes, you spend more time finding out what does not work, than what does. You have to do it wrong before you can do it right. Genius is ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. If any cliches have been overlooked, please add them to the comments.
Focus is helpful. The internet can be a problem. When you should be working on your product, it is very tempting to see the latest on Facebook or Twitter. … Chuck Close passed away August 19, 2021. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture was taken June 13, 1922. Viola LaLonde & Eliz. Van Tuyl. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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