Blood Brothers by John McManus

When you have a minute read this gnarly story from my friend John McManus:


Blood Brothers at Fried Chicken & Coffee

Riding Home From Work

Today I was riding home from work and listening to outlaw country on Sirius. They were playing Steve Earle and when the song finished Mojo Nixon came on and was yelling about how they created that station so he could play Steve Earle's Copperhead Road any time he wanted. Then he said "if I want to I can play a black banjo player from North Carolina." The group was called The Carolina Chocolate Drops and the song was really good so after playing with the dog and taking a seven minute nap I searched for them on the net. Needless to say I was pretty damn stoked with what I found. The first is a promo video of them talking about their new record, the second is just a live performance.

When Worlds Collide And Morning Comes Twice A Day Or Not At All

I intended to take my camera with me to clean windows to better document the events of the day but I forgot. I guess I'll have to paint the picture with words.

Last night when the window king called and said we were working at the Whitwell's house I became suspicious. While he was giving me directions to the house he said I had been there before. And though the directions weren't very good I found the house this morning. The window king was already on the job, taking apart storm windows and assessing the day, so I parked, put on my work belt and geared up. He came outside and told me where to start and whatnot and as he was walking back inside I asked him if this was the Whitwell's whose son wrote a book. "Yes," the window king said.
Flash back to October: I had been working at the bookstore for a couple of months and a self published book by a former Ole Miss student hit the shelves. I don't want to judge a book by the cover but we all do it so here it is.




For those of you that don't know, that's the former Ole Miss mascott, a bottle of ?Jack Daniels, and a scantaly clad women with a sword. So be it-he's a lawyer/lobbiest and if he writes a book and pays to publish it then go for it. But then his 'publicist' called the store. She told me that Quentin was doing a reading down the street from the store and wanted to see if someone could help carry books up a flight of stairs. I told her that there was only two of us in the store and that we couldn't get away. She got saucy.

Twenty minutes later the 'publicist' called again and tried to find out if someone from the store was going to go to the event and sell the books. She said that she had talked to someone a few days before and that someone was supposed to be there. I said I would ask my boss about it as soon as she was out of a meeting. The event wasn't at our store and when another employee got back from dinner break he said he had been told to go sell some books. So if the cover of the book or the synopsis on the back didn't make me hate the guy, then his 'publicist' surely did.

Fast forward to this morning: I was working the outside, listening to the jams on my ipod and made it all the way until the third window before I spotted a copy of the book inside the house. It wasn't hard to spot, it's purple if you don't remember.





But the rest of the day went alright-other than the neighbor blasting techno from 300 yards away and making it hard to hear the White Stripes and the grumpy ass maids running the vaccum and making it where I couldn't hear my Willie Nelson. If By Whiskey-It's about Obama baby.

spring break

So it's spring break in Oxford and the university campus is all quiet except for the machinery of the workers and unfortunately I'm one of those workers. Cleaning windows on campus is way better when the kids are gone but I'm not all that excited about window cleaning season starting. We've spent the last two days working on the two business school buildings, which were incredibly nice/expensive inside. Many of the windows required us to rent a giant man lift but that work was left to my boss. I haven't been on a ladder in months but yesterday I found myself 25 feet up in the air. It was more than a bit sketchy.

While finishing up today I was on a ten foot ladder when I spotted three Ole Miss custodial staff watching me from the inside. They had some windex and paper towels but they also had Wal-Mart versions of my equipment. I didn't enjoy being watched and I couldn't help but feel like I was the same as these GED-holding employees. (but they have health insurance) Just because we were seperated by a pane of class didn't give them the right to stare at me while I worked. Seriously people, don't watch people working it's fucking annoying. The male had a stupid grin on his face maybe because he had a pole in his hand and he was high on meth, but he 'cleaned' the high windows and then the two women cleaned the lower ones. I could have found some comfort in knowing that it took 3 people to do my job, but I didn't-they kept staring at me.

Later my friend Robin came out of her building and we chatted. She suggested I figure out some mind game to play to get back at the custodians. The best I could come up with was to convince them I had fallen and it was all their fault. But thinking about falling isn't the best thing to think about when you're 18 feet above concrete and while on the ground I couldn't figure out a way to look like I had fallen without actually falling. So I just cleaned, but damn it would have been great to freak them the fuck out.

Newish Fiction

Check out the new issue of Noo Journal for a little bit of fiction.

Hate Mail

good morning and I'm here to report that yesterday I received my first blog related hate mail. Actually it was a phone call and a call I made, but I knew what was coming. Jughead answered the phone and said 'dude' and then I said 'dude what's up' and then he said 'you have a blog? that is so lame!" Of course this is my former roommate who refered to my fantasy football as dungeons and dragons. And his name is Jughead so how much stock do you want to put into anything he says. He's living with his parents after five years as van tour guide-spending the glory years of his 30s figuring it out among the trees of Northern California. So he has friends but they all live in far away places and thus, as he tells me yesterday, he's been taking some dance classes with his mother. I had to laugh, then point out that he hasn't mentioned this before and then laugh some more.

So this is what we do when our friends don't live near us. I've got friends leaving town and friends who have already left. I've got friends from coast to coast and I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. I think this is getting old.

Paul Octavious does some crazy shit with books-more here.

Hoarders 'R' Us

I bought a box of granola bars at the store yesterday. Nature Valley Oats & Honey is the only kind for me.



This really isn't significant unless you know that I collect the granola boxes and I haven't bought one in six months or so. Several years ago I worked at the hotdog cart at night while I cleaned windows during the day. I would take a granola bar in my lunch most days and since I'm not the tidiest of persons I had a couple of empty boxes on the counter when I came home with my first giant stack of dollar bills. When I was looking for a place to store my new found riches the granola bar boxes were the perfect size. So I kept collecting and filling them with money.

The money's all gone, long ago, but the collection grows.

So what are you hiding in your closet???

You Can Shove Your $135

This little bit of news from my second hometown of Ft. Collins CO.

Crazy Bike Law Fines


And then there's this great video about this wicked cool plan in Portland OR

Bike Box!


Enjoy, yo

Barry Hannah passed away yesterday at his home here in Oxford.

Here is an interview with The Oxford American shortly after his final novel Yonder Stands Your Orphan was released.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2010/mar/02/barry-hannah-19422010/

Here is a write up by Wells Tower in Garden & Gun.

http://gardenandgun.com/article/barry-hannahs-long-shadow