A Good Career Move
This content was posted August 1, 2012. … Gore Vidal died Tuesday. He was a writer, celebrity, and a few other things. Mr. Vidal did not suffer false modesty. He probably would not have liked this blog, if he had bothered to look at it. He produced tons of material, much of which is preserved.
The media machine is certain to go into overdrive today. Since Mr. Vidal was 86, and using a wheelchair, this event was not unexpected. The obituaries were pre written, with a blank space reserved for the date of the event. … When Truman Capote passed, Mr. Vidal said it was a good career move. Which of his contemporaries are still around to pass the snark for Gore Vidal?
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. was born on Oct. 3, 1925, at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His father was an instructor there. His mother divorced him, and married the step father of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. There were upper crust schools, service in World War II, and a few novels. The filthy money of Hollywood beckoned, and ELGV wrote scripts for TV and movies. There was script doctor work on “Ben Hur”. ELGV said that Charlton Heston was such a wooden actor that he could supply a furniture factory.
After a while, novels, essays, and TV appearances occupied ELGV. Myra Breckinridge appeared in 1968. I paid $0.25 for my copy, and had so much fun reading it. The movie Myra Breckinridge was a big deal when it came out. I have never seen it, but heard it was horrible. Mae West came out of retirement to perform. Raquel Welch was on the Dick Cavett show, talking about the vortex of fans at the flick’s premiere. Transition has never been the same.
The other book by ELGV that I read is Palimpsest: A Memoir. P:AM was a fun way to kill a few hours. Gore Vidal might be the last man to be angry with Woodrow Wilson for getting America into World War I. Is it fair to quote one star autobiography reviews while the body is still warm? Was that body ever warm? It doesn’t matter, since Mr. Vidal wouldn’t have bothered to read these.
Why I couldn’t finish this book· 1. His ridiculous treatment of his own novels as serious literature. 2. His attempts at revenge (for WHAT?) against Truman Capote and others. (Methinks the lady doth protest too much.) 3. The disillusionment and depression I was experiencing at learning that someone whose wit and intelligence I had always admired is really lacking in both when it comes to writing about his own life.
The only hardcover book I have ever thrown away · I gave this a “1” because I cannot give it a “0”. A stylized account of who sodomised whom with detail I frankly didn’t want to know, this is an unpleasant exercise in self-agrandisement by a writer suffering from, on the basis the talent displayed here, delusions of adequacy.
Dry As Old Sticks · How could anyone who lived such an interesting life write such a boring book? (…)It’s like the only point of this memoir is to score points off his contemporaries. And in so doing, further puff up his already inflated ego. The guy clearly has no self-awareness whatsoever. Like are we supposed to admire him when he claims he is 100% top in bed and cares not a fig for his partner’s satisfaction? Very admirable, Mr Vidal. What a prince amongst men! His “life partner” is referred to in passing approximately three times in the entire book and is otherwise notable by his absence. As are friends in general. Did Vidal have any? No, just famous acquaintances he could pick apart, if this memoirs is anything to go by. The structure of the book is as self-consciously clever-clever as is the title. A grab bag of memories scattered like cushions over the overstuffed horsehair sofa of the ultimate prissy literary queen.
As this is written, there are 1913 new tweets, waiting to be untwittered. Gore Vidal was a smart man, and told plenty of journalists about it.
@morninggloria “Gore Vidal, genius even in death, leaves earth before having to endure something called “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.”
@GlobeBender “Adieu Gore Vidal, equal parts literary genious and pompous gadly (with a tryst here or there w/ Jack Kerouac)”
@pete_sinclair “Angry at a bad review, Norman Mailer punched Gore Vidal at a party. On the floor, Gore said “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.” #class”
Perhaps the best tweet for today is this: @Holmes7David Gore Vidal quotes: 26 of the best via @guardian. This fine newspaper knew today was coming, and had a collection of quotes ready. They are probably delighted at having something other than the Olympics to discuss.
“I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.”
“It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”
“Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an IQ of 60”
“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”
“Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.”
“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
“The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.”
“The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.”
“We should stop going around babbling about how we’re the greatest democracy on earth, when we’re not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.”
“As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.”
“Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.”
“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”
“There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices.”
“There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”
There are more quotes, this time from The Gore Vidal Pages. TGVP has citations for many of these quotes, unlike the Guardian. If you get tired of reading, it is perfectly all right to skip ahead to the pictures. The first five are about Truman Capote.
“Truman made lying an art form—a minor art form.”
“A relentless liar ought to be, if not stopped, curbed.”
“Every generation gets the Tiny Tim it deserves.”
“[Capote] lived for gossip, and he was also a marvellous liar. No fact ever gave him pause.”
“A great zircon in the diadem of American literature.”
“Everything the Bushites touch is screwed up. They could never have pulled off 9/11, even if they wanted to. Even if they longed to. They could step aside, though, or just go out to lunch while these terrible things were happening to the nation. I believe that of them.”
“[When I heard that William F. Buckley had died,] I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred.”
[ELGV talking about his mother] “She never baked a pie, but she did manage to drink, in the course of a lifetime, the equivalent of the Chesapeake Bay in vodka.”
[On Eisenhower speaking] “Reading a speech with his usual sense of discovery.”
There has been fourteen years since ELGV went to his reward. This exchange on X says a great deal on how the discourse has devolved: @Lungbarrow1 “Hey @grok, in terms of WWE who would win between in a battle between Oscar Wilde and Gore Vidal?” · @grok “Oscar Wilde would win a battle of wits against Gore Vidal. Wilde’s spontaneous epigrams, paradoxical flair, and effortless charm turned every exchange into art. Vidal was razor-sharp with devastating literary and political barbs, but Wilde’s theatrical genius and unmatched quotability give him the edge in pure verbal combat. An all-timer either way.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the social media picture in February 1936. “Egg hatchery in parlor of rehabilitation client’s home. Lancaster, New Hampshire” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Page 99
This content was published July 1, 2018. … I woke up one Sunday morning, and started to look in my archive. I found a post from July 2009, Genius And Heroin Part One. The G&H book had been mentioned in a couple of blogs, The Page 69 Test and The Page 99 Test. Both of these blogs are still publishing seventeen years later. The idea is to critique a book by what is on page 69, or page 99.
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell is a book I took hostage from the Chamblee library. A journalist had a series of interviews with Joni, and concocted a book out of it. Maybe a look at pages 69 and 99 will give us some text to go between the pictures.
On page 69, Joni is a young lady, performing in Miami Beach. She has had a baby, left her husband, and is trying to make it as a musician. One night in a club, David Crosby saw her, and saw the future. The two became a couple, which did not last very long. Joni and David went to California, where David introduced her to some buddies in the music business. David produced Joni’s first album, and apparently did not know what he was doing. Both of them moved on.
On page 99, Joni has put out her second album, and is gaining momentum. It is 1969, and America is in turmoil over Vietnam. The author, David Yaffe, goes into some detail about the mood of America in 1969. Mr. Yaffe was born in 1973. Why does he discuss the mood of 1969? Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in April 1940. “Line of men waiting in alley outside city mission. They are waiting for the meal which will be served at 5:00 p.m. Dubuque, Iowa” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
The Jezebel Revival
This content was published July 18, 2020. … “Don’t trust anybody who’d rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.” When perusing lists of salient quotes from Skinny Legs and All, this one will be there. Like many quotes separated from context, it is much more fun to find in the text. Quotes are like perfume. A tasteful drop behind the ear can liven things up. Too many quotes, applied without proper care, can leave the reader running away, gasping for air.
” an old sedan rattled up to the crosswalk, full of music, smoke, and rust. When the light changed, it pooted and tooted in the direction of New Jersey, but not before the objects noted a sticker on its bumper that announced “I’d rather be partying.” Can o’ Beans imagined it to be an infraction of taste, if not of grammar, declaring, “You should never trust anyone who uses ‘party’ as a verb. He/she felt appropriately chastised, when Dirty Sock growled and shot back, “Uh-huh, and don’t trust anybody who’d rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.”
Perspicacious readers might note that this exchange was between a Can o’ Beans, and a Dirty Sock. Since the o’ in Co’B is lower case, it is probable that this is an abbreviation for of, and not an Irish surname. “He’s not Irish” is an old-fashioned way of saying that a person is Jewish. Since the Co’B presumably contained pork, it is unlikely that it was Jewish. The national identity of Co’B must remain a mystery, along with the idea that it was talking to DS.
Tom Robbins novels are, generally, both grammatically correct and purveyors of good times. This does not mean that they always make sense. Co’B and DS are in the basement of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They are watching a performance artist named Turn Around Norman, who stands on Fifth Avenue and slowly, slowly, slowly does a 270 degree turn. This appeals to Co’B and DS, as well as their departed associate Spoon.
The inanimate threesome was left behind in an Idaho cave. Former, and future, owner Ellen Cherry Charles Petway took them into the cave, intending to have Co’B as lunch. This after husband Boomer Petway intended to have Ellen Cherry for dessert, before eating the more solid food. Boomer wore Dirty Sock into the cave. All was going well, until Ellen Cherry demanded that her hubby call her Jezebel. This woke up Painted Stick and Conch Shell. PS/CS woke up after a millennium long slumber, after hearing the name of a Goddess admirer. If this is getting confusing, maybe you should just go ahead to the pictures. They are from The Library of Congress.
PS/CS were worship objects from ancient Phoenicia. This is a neighbor of Israel, later known as Lebanon. At the time SLAA was set, Lebanon was a hell hole, not least because of its proximity to Israel. After Ellen Cherry cried Jezebel, PS/CS decided that it was time to go to Jerusalem, where grammatically incorrect good times are always abloom. The fact that they were inanimate objects did not stop them from traveling. This is one part of the SLAA fantasy that is not adequately explained, and it probably just attributable to some good mushrooms turning up in the Robbins household.
Jezebel is a historic nickname for a painted, good time woman. Her biblical infamy is probably not deserved, which doesn’t stop the fun. Back before Buckhead became gussified beyond recognition, an apartment building on East Paces Ferry Road featured the Jezebel lounge on the ground floor.
SLAA was written sometime in the late eighties, and published in 1990. At that time, the concept of Singular They had not, mercifully, emerged. The one advantage of ST is referring to objects of uncertain gender. They works much better than he/she. Fwiw, Dirty Sock and Painted Stick are male, while Conch Shell and Spoon are Robbinesque celebrations of femininity. One ponders the chauvinism of he/she. Good manners say that ladies should go first.
I took a facebook break, and stumbled onto a video. The poet wrote this when he was fifteen +/-, and starred in a performance as an adult. It is about “toxic masculinity” and is filmed on an in-town sidewalk. I did a screen capture of the money shot. A no-parking sign is growing out of his head. Part one of this commentary was published twelve days ago. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in April 1940. “Men waiting in line outside the city mission–the first twenty-five will be fed. Dubuque, Iowa” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Two
This product was posted July 29, 2015. … This is part two of an excavation of Slaughterhouse-Five, a story by Kurt Vonnegut. … The second chapter is the beginning of the story. The first eight words sum up the plot nicely. “LISTEN: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” The first word is the most important, and the most likely to be ignored. People love to talk, but do not like to listen. If they do quit talking, and allow the other person to speak, then they are thinking of a clever comeback. If only people were as proud of the ability to listen, as they are of the clever things they say.
Billy Pilgrim, or BP, is the main character of this story. By trade, he was an optometrist in Ilium, NY. BP led a reasonably pleasant life, in spite of, or perhaps because of, being shaped like a Coca Cola bottle. His father was a barber, also in the mythical town of Ilium, NY, until he died in a hunting accident. This incident motivates KV to write “So it goes.” This will be abbreviated as SIG006.
BP … which under no circumstances should be confused with British Petroleum … survives infantry duty in World War II, and a plane crash in 1968. This crash killed everyone except BP and the co-pilot. SIG007. The plane crash is an important moment in the movie version of SF. I saw the SF movie, while a UGA student, at the PJ auditorium. That is enough initials for one paragraph.
While recovering from the plane crash, BP’s wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. SIG008. (In the note taking that preceded this text, I missed SIG008. If this was a scholarly dissertation, this would be a big deal. To a slack blogger, it is not. While I will try to chronicle all 106 SIG in SF, I am not making any promises.) After the plane crash, BP comes out of the time travel closet. BP tells earth people about the wonders of Tralfamadore. These folks are two feet tall, green, and shaped like plungers. Tralfamadorians feel sorry for earth people.
I have long suspected that I am a Zorlac, from the planet Thrunombulax. I am quiet about this, as prejudice against Zorlacs is acceptable by polite people. Many white people are trying so, so, hard not to appear prejudiced against anyone. When they see an approved target for their tribal rage, white people lose it. Just look at the way people with deviant attitudes about race relations are portrayed. With this in mind, I have learned to keep quiet about his Thrunombulaxian origin. The relationship of Thrunombulax to Tralfamadore is unknown.
A letter was written to the Ilium News Leader by BP. He tells about the lessons he learned on Tralfamadore. This was in 1967, on the eve of BP’s daughter’s wedding. Trallies see a person who is dead, and say that he/she is having a bad day. It is a Trally custom to say, about death, so it goes. SIG009. Number nine, number nine, number nine. Turn me on dead man. The Beatles white album was recorded at approximately the same time as BP going to Tralfamadore.
A wonderful tool is now available for the production of this SF commentary, and SIG inventory. The text of SF … not to be confused with science fiction or San Francisco … is available electronically in the sf_pdf. Alas, it is an imperfect tool. You can download a copy to your machine. On this copy you can highlight certain words in yellow magic marker, but you cannot copy text. You can copy text from the online version, but it comes out funny and you have to do so much editing that it might be easier to just manually copy the text.
While working on the letter about Trallies, BP is visited by his daughter, Barbara. At a young age, she had to manage her mother’s funeral, and take care of her senile father. KV, who has a way with words, describes the young lady as a “a bitchy flibbertigibbet … legs like an Edwardian grand piano.” Barbara … we might know her married name later … asks her dad why he waited until 1968 to talk about time travel. He did not think the time was ripe.
The tale segues into the first experiences with time travel. This was in World War II. BP was a chaplain’s assistant, which is not a well thought of position. One day on maneuvers, BP was playing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God on the organ. (KV made a mistake here. AMFIOG was written by Martin Luther, without any assistance from Johann Sebastian Bach.) A war game umpire showed up, and told everyone that they were dead. Before long, BP got word that his father had been killed while hunting deer. SIG010. The offending shot was fired by his human friend, and not by a deer.
When BP returns from the funeral, there are orders for him to go to Europe. A chaplain’s assistant has been killed in action. SIG011. Soon, BP participates in the Battle of the Bulge. BP has no weapon, helmet, or boots. BP looks alternately like a box of kitchen matches, and a filthy flamingo. BP meets foulmouthed Pittsburgh refugee Roland Weary, who saves BP numerous times before trying to kill him. Roland Weary was the only member of a gun crew to survive a 88mm German tank gun. SIG011.
The name Roland means many things to me. Rowland NC, with an ornamental w, is the hometown of my father. Roland Cofer is a former co-worker. Roland Cofer was the cheerful son of Willie Simpson, the store manager. The fact that Roland is black, and Willie is white, should not concern the reader. It did not concern Roland or Willie.
The father of Roland Weary was a plumber. He collected guns, knives, and torture devices. The noname dad gave his wife a model of an iron maiden, which was a torture device before it was a heavy metal band. The device was a small chamber, with doors on hinges. The doors were lined with spikes, which impale the guest when the doors are closed. There is a drain in the bottom, for elimination of blood. SIG012. No mention is made of who cleans the iron maiden, or if it was cleaned. Eventually the smell would make the spikes redundant.
Roland Weary was a bully. He saw BP as a good target for his tough talk. Once, he described a torture where someone was tied down, with his eyes facing the sky. The eyelids are cut off, so there is no stopping the sun. SIG013.
BP is showing signs of common sense. He lets the motor mouth ramble without protest or argument. It turns out that BP is no stranger to gore. (This is blood and guts, not slick Willie’s VPOTUS.) BP had an explicit crucifix in his bedroom. Though nominally nondenominational, the Pilgrim family made sure young Billy knew all about the terrible things that happened to Jesus. SIG014.
Roland Weary had a pornographic picture, which BP saw numerous times. The legend was that André Le Fèvre was an assistant to Louis J. M. Daguerre was busted for selling a print of this photograph. Mr. Le Fèvre died in prison. SIG015. A killjoy website, mental floss, says this never happened. Roland Weary later fantasizes being the only survivor of a German attack. SIG016.
It was about this time that BP starts to time travel. The first visit is to the YMCA, where his father is teaching him how to swim. The second adventure is to 1965, when BP is 41 years old. His mother is in an old peoples home. (I once used the phrase “old folks home” at an estate sale, and was quickly told that OFH was considered rude.) While BP was at the OFH, a former marathon runner crossed the mortal finish line, and was wheeled out on a gurney. SIG017.
While sitting in a chair at the OFH, BP noticed a lump in the cushion. It was a book, The Execution of Private Slovik. Eddie Slovik was an American soldier, who was executed for desertion in 1945. SIG018. An excerpt from the court opinion in the case is quoted. It seems as though Pvt. Slovik was executed as a morale building exercise. SIG019.
The next time travel episode was a party in 1958. BP gets drunk, and screws a woman he is not married to. This is putting the tryst back in optometrist. When BP comes back to real time 1945, Roland Weary is about to kick him in the lower back. This effort at self expression is interrupted by the Germans, who take BP prisoner. This is the end of chapter two.
The regurgitation of Slaughterhouse Five has seven parts. one two three four five six seven Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken March 7, 1956. “Moreland, North Avenue and Fairview”
©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Walt Whitman And The War
This content was originally published July 4, 2024. … Every Night For A Thousand Years is a story about Walt Whitman’s time as a caregiver during the War Between the States. It appears this month on The New Yorker fiction podcast. ENFATY was written in the voice of Mr. Whitman by Chris Adrian, and read for the podcast by @NathanEnglander.
After looking for his wounded brother, Mr. Whitman was struck by the plight of wounded soldiers. He started to visit the soldiers, giving them candy and food, writing letters for them, and giving what comfort he could. ENFATY focuses on one soldier, Hank Smith. Doctors wanted to amputate his leg. Hank had a pistol, and would not let them. By the time Hank was tricked into allowing an amputation, it was too late.
Not everyone approved of Mr. Whitman. “One disapproving commissioner, Harriet Hawley, complained to her husband: “Here comes that odious Walt Whitman to talk evil and unbelief to my boys. I think I would rather see the evil one himself—at least if he had horns and hooves.”
Others saw things differently. “Union Colonel Richard Hinton met Whitman at Armory Square Hospital while recovering from a bullet wound suffered at Antietam … “When this old heathen came and gave me a pipe and tobacco, it was about the most joyous moment of my life. Walt Whitman’s funny stories, and his pipes and tobacco were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom. A wounded soldier don’t like to be reminded of his God more than twenty times a day. Walt Whitman didn’t bring any tracts or bibles; he didn’t ask if you loved the Lord, and didn’t seem to care whether you did nor not.”
Conditions conditions in the hospitals were beyond horrible. This was an era when many people said “I do not need to wash my hands every day!” One nurse asked Mr. Whitman if he had a Bible. She wanted to cheer up, by reading the Book of Job.
“These hospitals, ranging in size from converted private mansions to filthy, mud-encrusted tents in contraband camps, were places to be feared by any thinking person. The great European medical advances in bacteriology and antisepsis were still tragically a few years in the future … the overworked and understaffed physicians continued to ascribe the soldiers’ ills to such fantastical causes as “malarial miasms, mephitic effluvia, … sewer emanations, and poisonous fungi in the atmosphere.” …
The predictable result of such hurried and horrific operations was postoperative infection. Pyemia, septicemia, erysipelas, osteomyelitis, tetanus, and gangrene were grouped together as “surgical fevers.” Pyemia, literally “pus in the blood,” was the most dreaded of all, with a mortality rate of 97.4 percent, but the other surgical fevers also claimed their deadly share of victims. Not without reason did Civil War soldiers fear doctors much more intensely than they feared the enemy. They had a greater chance of dying in the hospital than in the field.
“That whole damned war business is about 999 parts diarrhea to one part glory.” The quote is on page 187 of Intimate with Walt – Selections from Whitman’s Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1882-1892. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture was taken in September 1864. “Petersburg, Va. Group of Company B, U.S. Engineer Battalion”
Smash Cut
This content was published July 2, 2023. … Smash Cut by Brad Gooch, turned up at the Chamblee library. The subtitle is “A Memoir of Howard & Art & the ’70s & the ’80s.” The cover has a picture of Brad Gooch and Howard Eric Brookner. The 1979 picture shows BG (google does not know his middle name) and HEB is a small, well used kitchen. Someone wrote, and then scratched out, “at the Chelsea Hotel.” In the notes, we see that BG and HEB were boyfriends in 70s and 80s Manhattan. At some point in the story, HEB got AIDS.
April 27, 1989, was HEB’s last day on the planet. I was 16 weeks into not drinking. HEB was seven days older than me. There are many other parallels between my life, and the concurrent Brad/Howard story. Their story has a lot more famous people involved.
HEB was a filmmaker, with wealthy Jewish parents. He met BG at a bar in Lower Manhattan in 1978. They go back to Howard’s place, drink vodka, and crash. They quickly become boyfriends, and have a terrific time together when they aren’t quarreling about who is fucking who. Howard is working on a movie about William S. Burroughs. When you hang out with Mr. Burroughs, it is considered good manners to take heroin. This becomes a problem for HEB.
Meanwhile, BG was in grad school at Columbia, finishing a PhD in English. He wound up as an English professor at some college. You kind of wonder how BG had time to write a PhD dissertation, while diving into the full tilt sex and drugs of pre-aids Manhattan. Nor do we ever find out how they paid for all this high octane living.
BG becomes a model, hanging out in Europe for a while. HEB decides he doesn’t want to be BG’s boyfriend anymore. That continues off and on for a few years, until that day in 1987 when HEB finds out he is HIV positive.The first year it doesn’t really cause that many problems, but then it does. The last 40 pages of this book are incredibly tough to read. HEB goes into the hospital, it seems like he’s never going to come home. BG gets a job as a professor, and publishes a novel, in addition to being there for HEB. Eventually, HEB got another o.i., and moved on.
Smash Cut is the third book by BG I have started. The Flannery O’Connor book is excellent. The Rumi book has too many unpronounceable names. SC is an fun read, full of gossipy stories about people like Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Keith Haring. The publicity machine is already cranking up for book that BG wrote about Mr. Haring. If the last 40 pages of SC are too difficult, you can skip over it. You already know how it is going to turn out. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in April 1942. “Los Angeles, California. Street scene in Little Tokyo” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Road Trip
This content was published June 1, 2019. Fake names are used for the actors. … The journey started tuesday morning, as the post-memorial day freeway carnage cooled off. PG made it to Uzi’s house in Sandy Springs by 10 am. By 10:30 they were on their way. I285 was the predictable madhouse, even on midmorning tuesday. It was a relief to get on the slightly less obnoxious I20. The destination was Raleigh NC. Uzi has a nephew in Raleigh, who will soon be moving to Massachusetts.
Uzi had been championing Cracker Barrel for a while. PG remembers the horror of the nineties, when CB was firing all the gay employees, or at least saying they were. When Pguzi got near Augusta, and could not pull directions to S&S cafeteria out of GPS … the first incident of a bad week for GPS … the deal with the devil was struck. After a CB sign was spotted on the interstate, lunch was going down. PG felt a measure of relief when he saw the merchandise. A pillow, with the big pink words “Just be fabulous” next to a pink sequin flamingo, was for sale as you walk in the door. This is probably a pride month olive branch, not to be confused with olive garden, or olive oyl.
PG started to drive after lunch, and drove the toyota hybrid all the way into North Carolina, with a brief side trip to Rowland. The farm where dad grew up is still there, on the Mckinnon Pate road. Pguzi got to the I95 welcome station after it closed at 5pm, and could not get a North Carolina map. This would prove crucial in the week ahead.
A few miles further up I95, nephew sent a text. “How is the ride going?” Since Uzi was driving, he gave the phone to PG. Type ok space so space far. Every time PG tried to hit the o key, p came on the screen. PG touched the screen in the wrong place, and another message came up. Then GPS, which refused all orders to shut up, started to give instructions for the S&S cafeteria in Augusta GA. PG hit the o key, and p appeared on the screen. What should have taken less than a second, if you were past the iphone learning curve, took twenty miles. Finally, somehow, nephew got the message.
Map-less navigation was clunky. Pguzi got on I40, then I440, which was correct. Someone remembered that the hotel was near Glenwood Road. The vehicle got off the freeway, and into a gas station. After a few tense moments, GPS coughed up the directions to the hotel. You go inside, and learn that the room temperature is set for 66 degrees. We will take care of that later. Ask GPS how to get to nephew’s apartment. Be patient.
Pguzi finds the apartment, where nephew is feeding his two month old daughter. PG sits and stares into space while others talk. A decision is made to go to dinner. Go driving around the area, looking at all the places that are closed. A place is still open, they go in, and see a steak house with $80 entrees. Uzi says he will buy. PG gets a salad, and nephew gets a slice of cheesecake.
Back at the hotel, the thermostat is on the wall by the entrance, not the ac unit. The temperature is set back from 66 to 72. The rest of the week was a cycle. The ac would run, and the room is too cold. Then the ac cuts off, and the room is too hot. This battle was a stalemate the rest of the week.
PG had a book to read, On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. PG had read it in 1984, thought it was pretty cool, and moved on. OTR is the story of Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady). Other famous people with declef names are Carlo Marx (Allen Ginsberg) and Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs). PG has seen and heard things in 35 years, and decided to give OTR another shot. PG read/blogged The Dhama Bums (one two three four) a few years ago. TDB was the follow up to OTR, and is a lot less fun.
Back to the comparisons. PG and Uzi are a couple of slack old gentrified redneck hippies. They are different people from Sal and Dean. Going to North Carolina in a Toyota hybrid, fussing about whether to listen to satellite radio or the thumb drive, is not the same as hitching a ride across Nebraska on the back of a flatbed truck. … Wednesday morning erupted in a barrage of sunshine across the fourth floor window. PG stumbled down to the breakfast buffet, and loaded up. Taking a cup of coffee upstairs, PG saw Uzi captivated by the Trump drama on MSNBC. The story today was a statement, with no questions, by Robert Mueller. Those eleven words, with politically correct computations and permutations, were endlessly repeated by the talking heads. At 9:59:40, some blow dry bird brain said we will know in one hour and twenty seconds.
The plan was for nephew, wife, 6 year old, and two month old, to meet Uzi, and caravan to an art museum. PG decided that this was not fun, and decided to stay at the hotel. What followed was a glorious morning. All alone, camping out in an air conditioned hotel. See what you see on the TV. Go downstairs, make a cup of hot tea, bring it upstairs, pour it over a cup of ice to get the best unsweet tea on God’s green earth. Read OTR. Take notes for this travelogue. Life is good.
Or at least better than chapter 4 of OTR. Sal has decided to hitchhike to Denver, and meet up with Dean. Carlo will be there to chaperone. As PG enjoys his iced tea, Sal is stuck in smalltown Nebraska. PG is writing it all down. When you write down Uzi, and try to read it later, Uzi looks like 421. All the magic of 420, with a useless digit tax added on for good measure. Meanwhile, Mr. Mueller is talking to a breathless nation. PG will hear much more, though it will tend to be the same basic details … Mueller resigns from DOJ, he could not indict DJT because you cannot indict a POTUS, repeat, repeat, repeat, skip the much needed rinse, repeat with the emotional volume turned up a few notches, repeat, repeat, repeat. It will take 67 senators to vote for impeachment, and remove numbnuts from office. You are not going to get 17 rethuglicans to vote to impeach pussygrabber.
12:25 PG is on chapter 5 of OTR. Sal is on the best ride of this life, a flatbed truck, going from Nebraska into Wyoming with an assortment of characters. There will be quotes from this when this gets typed, but that is getting ahead of the game. … not so fast cowboy. The OTR.pdf is the redacted version. Whole chapters are either paraphrased, or edited out. While there are other quotes available in copy/paste form, this narrative is going to depend on the booknook paperback that PG read 35 years ago. … That moment when PG quits looking at the google page for OTR quotes. One of the results advertised Road Trip Quotes: Top 50 Inspiring Quotes About the Road! Maybe the answer is to get away from the internet and write your own quotes.
That is part of the fun for Internet addict PG, in going inkpen and paper. A dollar store notebook, a home depot inkpen, and a plexiglass clipboard of uncertain origin. There is a computer downstairs that PG could use, but the thought of going completely analog for a few days has a lot of appeal. These notes will look completely different when they are typed … the medium is the message.
The idea hit to spend a half hour meditating. A picture behind the desk could be the mandala. The stupid phone has a timer. The rest of chapter 5 will be waiting, as will the swimming pool, McDonalds, and more. The meditation was a delight. The phone alarm is birds chirping, instead of the hard core buzz of traditional alarm clocks. PG had such a smile, he wanted to do it again.
The lady came to clean the room. PG took OTR to the pool. He finished chapter 5. Sal gets off the flatbed truck, and sadly realizes he will never see those people again. Meanwhile Uzi sends a text. “We will be eating at the Golden Corral tonight.” Raleigh is the home of GC, and we will eat at the flagship store. At 1:59, Uzi texts “Heading home.” PG replies “Ok so far.” This seven letter two space message took a few seconds on a stupid phone, but required an act of congress on a smart phone.
4:13 Uzi is back. He is listening to Randi Rhodes on a sputtering smart phone speaker. It sounds horrible. PG goes to the pool to read and write. … Sal has made it to Denver. Carlo and Dean have become a unit unto themselves, with numerous other people mad at them.
Dean is a mess. He is screwing his soon-to-be-divorced wife, and screwing a girlfriend at the same time, and having an intense thing with Carlo. Dean and Carlo were known to be bumping gooberheads at one time, maybe in 1947 Denver, maybe not. Whatever they did with their peckers, Dean and Carlo would get beamed up on benzedrine and have intense all night conversations.
Dean/Neal is part of a chain of faggotry. Walt Whitman screwed someone named Carpenter, who screwed someone named Arthur…. the grandson of Chester Arthur, a POTUS. Grandpa Chester had an impressive set of sideburns, and was VPOTUS when Garfield got offed. Mr. Arthur conducted the procedure with Neal Cassady, who did his homework with Allen Ginsberg. There is the son-of-a-dunwoody-housewife named Marcus Ewert, who claims to have lost his jailbait virginity to Ginsberg. This is the next level of the conveyor belt … Neal Boortz is fond of saying that Randi Rhodes is in love with him. Please, for the love of Hilary’s e-mails, please make sure that they used protection, and that a cross pollination between these two does not happen.
On page 38, chapter 7, there is a reference to sleepint stillness. It will be fun to see if this is intentional, or a typo in the signet edition of OTR … sleeping stillness, or anything like it, does not appear in the pdf. A more durable copy of OTR has been ordered from the library. It will be fun to see which version of OTR appears … There is no indication when this edition was printed. The best guess is the early seventies. The book cost $1.25 new, which was pricey for a paperback in 1957. The style of the cover design, and use of the phrase “the book that turned on a generation” indicates a Nixon era publication date. PG would have been clueless in either 1957 or 1972.
At the end of chapter 7, Dean is screwing a lot, and doesn’t have the time to work. Carlo keeps tagging along, saying he thought they were going to talk. Sal is broke, and going to sleep in the cool Denver air. … It is 4:47. Randi Rhodes will be on a couple of hours more. Maintaining your sanity can be tough. The idea that people enjoy listening to that idiot can make your head swim.
After a while, Pguzi is guided by faithful GPOS GPS to nephew’s apartment. Soon, the crew… nephew and three women … will head out to Golden Corral. … after dinner, Pguzi went into town, and walked around the state capitol looking at Confederate statues … before heading back to the hotel to see a movie about sharks. After PG tried to go to sleep, Uzi turned the TV to the drone of talking heads, telling you what to think about the Mueller statement.
Thursday starts bright and early. Pguzi went to nephew’s place, and the crew went to a pair of museums by the state capitol. PG was bored silly, but realized this was his one chance to see this museum. YOLO Back at the hotel, Uzi took a nap, while PG got into the hotel slack lifestyle.
OTR roars on. Dean is screwing as though his life depended on it, which it might have. Carlo tags faithfully along, waiting for a chance to talk to the busy boy. “He wrote of Dean as a “child of the rainbow” who bore his torment in his agonized priapus.” Sal leaves Denver, to go hang out in a ghost town. He misses Carlo and Dean, but realizes they would be out of place, “… rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of america, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.”
Thursday dinner was at a chinese restaurant, run by Filipinos. The attraction is the piano man, a non stop human jukebox. Pguzi went back to the hotel, and saw a series of tv shows about ghosts, and how to manage them in your properties. PG took his semi-annual hit of dope, and was a better person for it. The road trip adventure was slouching to an end.
Friday was checkout/back to town day. The trip out was a bit smoother than the trip in. One exception is when you left the air conditioned universe of the vehicle, and stepped into the blast furnace air of the gas station parking lot. The thumb drive got used, with Linda Ronstadt and Billie Holiday leading the way. Uzi decided to go through downtown, instead of i285, and it worked out very well.
The chamblee54 On The Road series is complete. part one part two part three part four part five part six part seven Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange took the social media picture in February 1939. “Strathmore, California. From Wyoming and Missouri, eight years in California working in lemons “It’s easy for us because we haven’t got a bunch of kids to get drug around” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia
This content was published June 28, 2024. … Jerry Garcia was in bad shape. At a sound check, he disappeared for 45 minutes. When he came back, there was a plastic shower cap on his head. When smoking heroin, Jerry wore the cap to keep his hair from falling into the fire. This time, he forgot to take the cap off. The show went on anyway.
This is from the epilogue to Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia. DSAOBOJG was curated by Robert Greenfield, who put together a lovely story about The Rolling Stones 1972 tour. This book later became a podcast series.
Jerry saw his father drown, when Jerry was very young. Clifford “Tiff” Garcia, Jerry’s older brother, cut off one of Jerry’s fingers. Jerry made a living giving guitar lessons in Palo Alto. Somehow this evolved into playing in a Jug Band, which became the Grateful Dead. At this point the story is well known, and a part of sixties lore.
To this reader, the turning point is when Pigpen dies in 1973. The band kept playing. The ouroboros grew and festered. Again, this is familiar to anyone with access to a deadhead. What was not public knowledge was Jerry’s junkie problem. Jerry never shot heroin, but rather smoked it off aluminum foil, aka chasing the dragon.
I first heard about Heroin Jerry in 1986, after he had a diabetic coma. I appreciate athletic substance use in rockandroll, but never did quite imagine Jerry as a junkie. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention when he was busted freebasing cocaine in Golden Gate park. Aside from the heroin, Jerry was severely diabetic, and yet ate sweets and junk food. It is a miracle that he made it to 1995.
Jerry had other issues. He treated the women in his life horribly. He was married either three or four times, and had a collection of daughters. The book has interviews with many of the ladies, and much more detail. There are many other counterculture metaphors metastasizing. I just want to put this book on the shelf, and move on. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in March 1941. “Family
who had moved out of Santee-Cooper Basin, washing clothes on their “new” farm near Moncks Corner, South Carolina” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Whitman Drabbles
You felons on trial in courts, You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d and handcuff’d with iron, Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison? Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron? You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms, Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself? O culpable! I acknowledge—I expose! (O admirers, praise not me—compliment not me—you make me wince, I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)
… compact truth of the world, There shall be no subject too pronounced—all works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections. What do you suppose creation is? What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior? What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself? And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean? And that you or any one must approach creations through such laws?
Be composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me, And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come. Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.
Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like; (To me all that those persons have arrived at sinks away from them, except as it results to their bodies and souls, So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked, And often to me each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself, And of each one the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots, And often to me those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities, And often to me they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more, And often to me they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules walking the dusk.)
Unfolded out of the folds of the woman man comes unfolded, and is always to come unfolded, Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of the earth is to come the superbest man of the earth, Unfolded out of the friendliest woman is to come the friendliest man, Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a woman can a man be form’d of perfect body, Unfolded only out of the inimitable poems of woman can come the poems of man, (only thence have my poems come;) Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant woman I love, only thence …
… can appear the strong and arrogant man I love, Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-muscled woman love, only thence come the brawny embraces of the man, Unfolded out of the folds of the woman’s brain come all the folds of the man’s brain, duly obedient, Unfolded out of the justice of the woman all justice is unfolded, Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman is all sympathy; A man is a great thing upon the earth and through eternity, but every of the greatness of man is unfolded out of woman; First the man is shaped in the woman, he can then be shaped in himself.
These drabbles are taken from Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. The text used today is from The Project Gutenberg. This collection of drabbles is a birthday gift to Mr. Whitman, who graced our planet from May 31, 1819 to March 26, 1892. The poems drabbled today are found in BOOK XXIV. AUTUMN RIVULETS: You Felons on Trial in Courts, Laws for Creations, To a Common Prostitute, Thought, Unfolded out of the Folds. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marjory Collins took the social media picture in February 1943. “New York, New York O’Reilly’s at Third Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street, on Saturday night” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Tetragrammaton
The content was published May 6, 2010. … I foolishly answered the question “If you’re not proclaiming the Gospel, why not?”. My reasoning involved non agreement and good taste, and soon found myself in a fun filled dialog. After the third entry, someone named “Otternam” made this observation: “Zach, I was anon earlier, but I can talk now… chamblee is a troll, so don’t play too rough, ok? I can’t tell if he is Jewish or simply superstitious with the whole G-d wordplay… Id just cut to the chase and use the tetragrammaton” … This is a family blog, and the x rated evidence I could supply (re: am I Jewish?) is not conclusive in the modern USA. Readers will just have to take my word that I am a recovering baptist. In addition, I had never heard of the tetragrammaton. (Zach, the blog owner, used the phrase “decalogue of Exodus 20” to refer to the Ten Commandments.)
Tetragrammaton is four letters which represent the God of Israel. The four letters are YHWH. This is not a song by the Village People. The pronunciation is disputed, and some say it should not be spoken aloud anyway. Many say it is Yahwah, which sounds really cool with a southern accent. Yahwah come back now, heah. … At some point, YHWH degenerated into Jehovah, God, and Allah. The third commandment prohibits the improper use of sacred names, but that doesn’t stop very many people. The internet is not inhibited either, and a website for Tetragrammaton is in operation. … In 2026, another Tetragrammaton is a very fine podcast starring Rick Rubin.
This content was published May 11, 2010. … I left the job interview, and headed to the dmv. The man said to get a mvr, which is something you want to hear at the end of a job interview.The Department of Motor Vehicles is a place where you wait. It is not possible to get through in less than an hour. For emergencies like this, I keep a book in my vehicle. Today the book is Tales From Margaritaville, by Jimmy Buffet. I was at a yard sale once, in the hottest part of the summer. TOM was on sale for one dollar, and I was going to pass. When I got back to my bike, the creeping heat told me to go back up the driveway and buy that book.
The lady in front of me has a birth certificate from Miami, Florida. Why are Miami birth certificates so pretty, when the Fulton county thing I have is a negative image copy, ugly as sin? … There are two old ladies in line before the lady from Miami. They both have hair dyed some hideous shade of faux blonde. Whatever happened to letting your hair go white, and being proud of living that long? … So I got my number, and found a plastic chair that seemed clean. For the next forty five minutes, every time a number was announced, I would look up at the lightboxes above the booths. This did not make the number come up any faster. I soon realized that every time I had been in a government waiting room, my number got called, if only I waited long enough.
Back to the book, which was a series of short stories, told in easy to read sentences. The first story was about a bartender in Key West, who tried to drown himself in waist deep water off the shore. He heard the phone ring in his house, and he decided to go back and answer. It was the phone company, calling to say it was cutting off his service for not paying his bill. When that was over, he was so angry, he decided he wanted to live. … The next tale was about a young man who meets his rock and roll star hero, and winds up hanging out with him. The hero tells the young man there are rules for becoming a star. They were (in paraphrased, copyright dodging form) the bar owner is your enemy, some folks are elbows, and will always be like that, and stay out of police custody. The rockstar is telling stories that get wilder and wilder, like the time he was playing in Montana, the audience was breaking the Guinness record for drinking cheap beer, and his bass player and keyboard man are fighting on stage. Before this story was over, the number was called, and I got my mvr. How the story turned out will have to wait until the next waiting room.
This content was published May 16, 2010. … Sarah Palin recently spoke at the NRA convention in Charlotte NC. She told redneck jokes. · “Some of these animal activists are just … crazy. They think we’re killing Bambi’s mother. I love animals, but in Alaska, Bambi’s mother is dinner.” · “You’re a redneck if you’ve ever had dinner on a ping pong table.” · “You’re a redneck if you’ve ever had a custody fight over a hunting dog. Well, Todd and I haven’t, but we’ve got friends who have!” · “You’re a redneck if your honeymoon was a hunting trip. That was us!”
“You’re a redneck if you’ve ever used a fishing license as ID.” · “You’re a redneck if you’ve ever slept in the back of a pickup rather than pay for a hotel. · “You’re a redneck if you’ve ever said to your husband, ‘Honey, move the transmission so I can take a bath.’ · “And you’re a redneck if you think the last words of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ are ‘PLAY BALL!” · “You’re a redneck if your daughter’s babydaddy calls himself a f*****g redneck on facebook.” · Thank you Matt Taibbi and the NY Daily News. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in March 1941. “Young girl lives in this shack with her husband who works at Fort Bragg. In a settlement near Manchester, North Carolina” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Wired
This content was published May 24, 2019. … Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi was at the Chamblee library, and I took it home. The book begins in 1979, when John was making The Blues Brothers. People were already worried about the amount of cocaine John was doing. The white powder drama gets deeper and deeper, for 405 pages, until John dies March 5, 1982.
Wired has the feel of an endurance contest. The drugs, and the bad behavior, pile up and up. It is similar to Ladies and gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!! The first chapter of LAGLB is a 60 page look at a day in the life of a junkie. The geezing gets tiresome, and the climactic OD comes as a relief.
Bob Woodward is the copyright holder of Wired. He is better known for political writing, most notably about Watergate. Mr. Woodward is frequently criticized. The one comment that keeps coming up is by Joan Didion. In a New York Review of Books essay, Ms. Didion says that “measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent” from Woodward’s books.
Wired is reasonably easy to read, in spite of Mr. Woodward. He feels obligated to explain things. The Police were “an English new wave music group.” The book feels like it is written for people who think drug use is simultaneously terrible, and fascinating.
This attitude is seen in a Washington Post story about the book. “The strongest criticism of the book by those who knew Belushi–who played the chief fraternity prankster in “Animal House” and who was often featured as a huge, overstuffed bee on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”–was that Woodward concentrated on the dark side of Belushi’s life, providing exacting details of the drugs, alcohol and tantrums that characterized his final days in Hollywood.”
One of the strongest critics of the book was Judy Jacklin Belushi, John’s widow. WaPo had an amazing quote. “The 33-year-old Belushi, who said she cooperated with Woodward for the book … because he was not part of the world of drugs and booze that Belushi thrived on, said that she now believes she made a mistake by allowing someone outside the drug culture to write the book. “He doesn’t tell the story that drugs can be fun … John and I both were drug users, and for a while it was fun.” … Judith Victoria Belushi-Pisano died from endometrial cancer July 5, 2024.
It is interesting to read Wired in 2019. After Mr. Belushi died, the federal government drug policy evolved. On the one hand, anti drug propaganda ramped up, along with drug testing and increased enforcement efforts. On the other hand, the Reagan government was using drug runners to take weapons to terrorists/freedom fighters in Central America. The planes were not empty when they came back to America. The story of drugs in America is bizarre.
Books are a way to pass the time, while you are waiting for other things to happen. You might say the same thing about drugs. Or you could just put both aside, and do something else. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in March 1941. “In the second story of tobacco barn used as living quarters by family of workers from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, near Fayetteville, North Carolina” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Another Roadside Attraction Part Two
This content was published May 9, 2016. … This is the second, and final, part of a chamblee54 book report on Another Roadside Attraction, by Thomas Eugene Robbins. The book is due back at the Chamblee library today. There are two possible reasons to hurry up, and finish reading the book. A overdue fine from the local library is less of a burden than a failing grade. The effect can be the same … not stopping to smell the verbal roses, but shovelling the animal product that facilitates growth. FWIW, part one is available for your perusal.
The first note is page 177. John Paul Ziller, and his wife Amanda, decline to get drunk. They consider alcohol to be an imperfect drug. This is a line that I remember from the 1978 reading of ARA. What was forgotten was Marx Marvelous, the narrator of the tale. He proceeds to get sloshed, and quotes Bertrand Russell: there is little difference between a man who eats too little and sees heaven, and a man who drinks too much and sees snakes.
Amanda replies that one of the men sees snakes. She says a lot of things in ARA. It is probably quite charming in person, especially when one is warm for her form. In the text, forty five years later, it can be rather annoying. On page 336, Marx Marvelous learns two things about Amanda: she loves him deeply, and is totally indifferent as to whether, or not, she sees him again. The concept of sexist condescension, germinating when ARA was written, has come to politically correct fruition in the age of Obama. If one is of the mind to do so, they could judge ARA harshly for this.
There is an order of renegade monks down the road from the Zillers. An associate, Plucky Purcell (more formally known as L. Westminster Purcell III) is a visitor at this facility. This residency is a marvel of totally unbelievable fiction, and is essential to the plot of ARA. The monks are a Vatican hit squad, and Purcell fits right in. In a stroke of impossible to forsee synchronicity, two *good* nuns stop by for a visit. They are Sister Elizabeth and Sister Hillary. They make two appearances… on page 183 and page 283. Amanda decides it is nun of her business.
The Zillers have a roadside zoo, and hot dog stand. It does not sell coffee, which is disappointing to many road warriors. “They stop for coffee, and feel cheated when they learn the meaning of meaning.” I first heard the phrase “meaning of meaning” in an eleventh grade history class. It was presided over by a basketball coach, who was not interested in the dribbles and shoots of wars and civilizations. For the first test, “Dudley Doo Right” asked the class to write three pages on the meaning of meaning.
As second time readers know, the essential character in ARA is the body of Jesus. It was in the Vatican, until Plucky Purcell found it, and brought it to the Ziller’s hot dog stand. In this edition of ARA, the mummified savior appears on page 222. This is one third of the anti christ. There is something cosmic about a dead Jesus having a numeric value equal to one third of beelzebub. Or maybe it is merely comic, and the author added the extra s by mistake.
One of the joys of google era reading is easy access to fact checking. (The proposed french word for google was a palindrome, googelegoog). On page 280, TER reports that Carmen Miranda wore size one shoes. The page wikiFeet for Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha has pictures, which appear to be larger than size one. The Celebrity Shoe Size List has Carmen Electra (size 7) and Carmen Kass (size 8.5,) but no Carmen Miranda. I suspect this diva detail to be an apparition of overactive imagination.
As ARA rambles on to the uplifting conclusion, a council of war is convened in the hot dog stand. The Zillers, Plucky Purcell, Marx Marvelous, and Mon Cul (John Paul Ziller’s pet baboon) try to decide what to do with the holy remains, known by now as “the corpse.” On page 290, there is a typo, unless “insited” is a scrabble approved word. On page 288, someone is called “utopianist.” This may reefer refer to utopia. A more whimsical vision sees a keyboard musician working for the United Thank Offering. Those Episcopals think of everything.
There are several sides in this debate. Amanda takes the historic approach, and washes her pretty hands of the corpse. Pontius Pilate hands her a bar of soap. Plucky Purcell wants to publicly display the corpse, with the idea of destroying the Catholic church. Marx Marvelous says that lots of Catholics are good people, and telling them that Jesus is dead would hurt their fee fees. Sister Elizabeth, and Sister Hillary, are used as examples.
In truth, the fictional debate has been rendered moot in the post Nixon, but not post racial, world. The Catholic church soldiers on. The revelation that *some* priests like to forcibly sodomize pre adolescent boys has barely mattered to the masses. The church has taken a (catho) licking, and kept on ticking. Co-dependent Protestantism does even better.
Page 290 was where I had to throw down the book in disgust. Plucky Purcell, backing down from his plan to destroy the church, admits that *Jesus* was a pretty good guy after all. Never mind that the story he quotes is from the Bible… written by hundreds of anonymous authors, hand copied by anonymous scribes, compiled and edited by the Romanized church, translated by a queer English king. How can you trust a book like that? And yet, the PR of Jesus persists. Even the most vicious critics of the modern Jesus worship church have a soft spot for the old boy.
One *page 69,* John Paul Ziller warns against anthromorphizing, or assigning human emotions to non-human animals. And yet, 222 pages later, the text anthromorphizes the cult of Jesus. It must work, because the conclusion of ARA leaves the Roman Pedophile Church intact. … Tom Robbins went to the hotdog stand in the sky February 9, 2025. Pictures today are from Georgia State University Library. The social media picture: Ford Motor Company mechanics, Lawrenceville”
©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
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