Q: “Art `Home’ Brew, compare art brut, went out to the charcuterie for forcemeats. On his bicycle.”
That’s a good opening sentence.
Why didn’t you use it for POTLICKER JOURNAL?
A: I forgot.
“To go postal is to wreak havoc. Pronounced wreck. This isn’t rock & roll it’s wrack & ruin.”
That’s pretty good.
Q: Iggy Pop and Tom Waits.
You and Larry.
A: Sid and Nancy.
Sid Vicious singing “My Way” is funny.
Q: Frank Sinatra and his hats.
A: Paul Fericano gave himself the Howitzer Prize for his poem “Sinatra, Sinatra.”
In 1982, as a commentary on the absurd nature of all competitive awards,
Fericano perpetrated a successful hoax on the literary community, specifically Poets
& Writers, Inc. of New York, when he awarded his own poem,
"Sinatra, Sinatra", the fictitious "Howitzer Prize." Nearly 500 writers and publishers requested
applications from the bogus Howitzer Prize Committee for the 1983 prize before
the author exposed the hoax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fericano).
Q: Didn’t you write for Fericano’s YU Press.
A: I was the Miami Bureau Chief. In 1984. When I worked for IBM.
Q: The parody news and disinformation syndicate.
A: Yes.
YU stood for Yossarian Universal.
Q: I can’t imagine you working for IBM.
A: There was no dress code.
Q: What does that mean?
A: There was a dress code.
Q: There’s always a dress code.
A: When I was a salvage archeologist we wore white “bossman” hardhats, like the architects and engineers.
Q: You called yourself the salvage archeologist of the Mall Builder culture.
A: Yes. Also a bentho, or bottom-feeder.
That’s a dustpan dredge.
I called Dread Clampitt The Dredge.
A dredge scoops up everything in its path. It sucks it in and spits a pulp out. A grape pit.
Like B. O. Plenty spitting tobacco juice.
I dipped
Q: Smokeless tobacco?
A: Back then everyone smoked.
I wanted to quit so I could smoke.
Q: Like Tom Waits and Iggy Pop in Coffee and Cigarettes.
A: Yes. They had quit, so they could smoke.
Q: You quit drinking. Does that mean you can still drink?
A: Yes.
