Tuesday, November 30

Brew also looked for a job in the Panama City News-Herald. He had found a job in the News-Herald, once. Two technical writing jobs, in fact.

President Bush's recession was on. The one he blames on Clinton. There weren't any jobs in the Panama City News-Herald.

But Brew did learn that Creaturefest was being held that weekend at Wakulla Springs, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the filming of The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a movie that figured in his writing.

He decided to drive over for that. It started on Friday. Today.

He ended up writing poems on his trip, and publishing them when he got back, as a pamphlet.

Blue Ball Blues.

Brew was a poet.

Here are the poems of Blue Ball Blues, in the order he wrote them.

I don't know if I'm Art Brew,
Hospitality Industry Report Writer and Folk Art Critic,
or Buck Sergeant, The Low-Rent Cinéaste, but I'm off
to Creaturefest 2003, at Wakulla Springs State Park,
for the reunion of the people who made The Creature From
the Black Lagoon. Will I see Ricou Browning, Ginger Stanley,
or Julia Adams, also known as Julie, signing autographs?
I don't think Hank done it thisaway. But Lash LaRue did,
popping the Cow Whip of Doom at nerd-conventions
and trading-card memorabilia shows. Sunset Carson
shot aspirins out of people's hands at airmen's clubs,
overseas. "Don't call me Sunset. My name is Kit."
OUTGROWN KOOKIE TAG, HOPES FOR MORE MATURE ROLES,
Edd Byrnes says. The Fiend Who Walked the West.
Lotsa luck, GI. Pretty soon payday.
No, wait. That was Robert Evans.

One time Walter Anderson's wife, Cissy,
went down to the Little Studio, at Shearwater Pottery,
where Anderson worked, and lived, apart from his family,
and there was a note on the door, saying, "Gone to China."
I'm not that bad. But when Brenda got up, around noon--
she's working nights--she found a note that said, "Gone to
Creaturefest 2003 at Wakulla Springs." Signed, "The Low-Rent Cinéaste."
Enema vérité is what you see on the end of the fork
when you really look. Sometimes, to see what's on the fork
you have to eat with chopsticks.

Today I found out I have some money in a 401k account
with my former employer their fund manager intends to send me.
The WorkForce Center called about a job, as Trainer. I went by there
and left a resume for them to fax. And reading the weekend "Entertainer" section
of the Panama City News Herald (read mullet-wrapper),
I learn that Creaturefest 2003 is celebrating the 50th anniversary
of the making of The Creature From the Black Lagoon
at Wakulla Springs, a place that has many resonances for me,
since Black McGoon is one of the pseudonyms of my doppelgänger,
or uncredited stunt double, Art Brew, and the Manichaean dichotomy,
The Forces of Darkness versus The Forces of Light, is a recurring leitmotif,
or theme. The money was $100, before taxes.
The job was with Goodwill Industries, teaching feebs
to brush their teeth. With whom I have applied
for three pervious positions I was qualified for
(overqualified?) and not heard back.
Two down, one left. I hit Highway 231 North
at 11:00 a.m., en route to Ed Ball State Park.

One time Roger Jackson commissioned me
to attend a titty-picture magazine memorabilia show
(Glamourcon 1999, or 2000) at a Ramada Inn convention center
and get my picture taken with a naked woman, model, dancer, actress,
and bikini-lawnmower-service operator Glori-Anne Gilbert.
I took Brenda along as my cameraperson, or breastplate of righteousness.
The chapbook I wrote, and Jackson published, was called
I Only Read It for the Ads. From the asseveration of Philip Wylie
that all American advertising is designed to ask the question,
"Madame, are you a good lay?" I asserted that all American literature
is now so corrupted by the media books are promoted in
that it's Chick Lit. The great American shopping, fucking,
dieting, and exercising home-video tie-in.
Jane Fonda lives! Buy them clothes, sports fans.

Is guy lit meant ironically?
Should one compare it to Chick Lit?
Gastronomy has sunk into a desuetude,
one of the de Goncourts said.
Try publishing something like they wrote--
belles-lettres--now. Guy lit is a subset of
the genre crank-lettres. Also known as enema vérité,
or daily typewriting. A book that asks the question,
"Is you is or is you ain't
an existentialist?"

There's a boat ramp on the Chipola River
at Clarksville with a latrine and concrete picnic tables.
One time I stopped at Strickland's IGA in Bristol,
to buy a loaf of bread, a can of Vienna sausages,
and a jar of yellow mustard for my alfresco frugal repast,
and tried to pay with food stamps. I had on my short-sleeve shirt
and job-applying necktie, my GI low-quarter shoes, my short haircut--
I looked like Michael Douglas in Falling Down--returning to
Fort Walton Beach from Tallahassee. The clerk asked to see
my food stamp ID card and driver's license, to embarrass me.
Don't get in a pissing contest with a skunk.
I started raving about the goddamned Republicans
who had caused the Gerald Ford stagflation
which led to my dismissal from gainful employment
and current ignominious status. Later, I ate my sandwich
and fell out laughing, thinking of the expression on
her self-righteous face. There, but for the grace of God,
go I. The Madcap Titan of the Dustbin.

Whenever I drive over the bridge across
the Apalachicola River, at Blountstown,
the concrete guard rail calls out to my U-Haul truck
like the Sirens calling out to Ulysses in The Odyssey.
I just have to tie myself to the mast and sail on through,
look up from the poem I am writing in my Big Chief tablet.
I got the, who got the, goddamned putty knife blues.

If you want to walk the ground at Sumatra,
Florida, and report on the progress of
President Bush's War on Totemism,
hang a right at Hosford, heading east,
and take state road 65, down towards
Tate's Hell Swamp. Another resource center--
read poor-person library--boarded up.
Like the sacking of Mesopotamia by barbarians, only local.
Our national chickens coming home to roost. A nation
that does not read great books has no advantage over
a nation that cannot read them.