A Wine Tour of Point and Shoot
Q: Didn't you write a column called "A Wine Tour of Point and Shoot," after you first moved into the old home place?
A: No, I wrote a guidebook called A WINE TOUR OF POINT AND SHOOT.
I visited
all the beer joints I could get to on my bicycle and rated them for passive cigarette
smoke, barmaid cleavage, shitty music on the jukebox, motorcycles in the parking
lot, cost of drinks at happy hour, availability of food other than Slim Jim beef
jerky and Red Smith Pickled Sausages, 15¢, Pay No More.
Q: Did you make notes?
A: In my field book, yes.
I timed how long it took them to ask
me what in the hell I was writing.
They thought I was a health department
spy. I look like C. Everett Koop.
As your Surgeon General, I advise you to
masturbate daily for prostate health.
Q: What did you tell them?
A: I said I was writing a field guide to juke joints in Point and Shoot.
Q: What did they say?
A: They said, "Why the hell do that? Everybody who needs to know that already knows it, and anybody who doesn't know, doesn't care."
Q: Ah. The problem of audience.
A: I flew out to Seattle, to see my mother, and visited the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery and the Red Hook Brewery. "I Brake for Craftsmanship."
Q: That's more expensive than driving to Panacea.
A: My mother sent me a plane ticket.
Inside the Sniper Landscape
Q: Ben Pleasants wrote a memoir called Visceral Bukowski: Inside the Sniper Landscape of L. A. Writers.
A: I read that.
I'm an L. A. writer.
Lower Alabama.
Q: Did you learn anything you didn't know?
A: Bukowski worked a dozen years on the night shift at the post office. He was
the only white guy on an all-black crew.
I know what that's like.
I was the only white guy on an all-black crew at the industrial air-conditioner factory.
For a year.
The black guys bust your chops.
Night in, night out.
It will color how you feel about civil rights.
Your liberalism will canker
and leak.
Q: How does that end?
A: You leave. They stay.
Q: When Bukowski went back to the post office, his former co-workers said, "Hey, Hank. You made it out, baby."
A: He learned something about class warfare he would not have known if he hadn't undergone that experience.
Q: It's not in the book, Post Office.
A: No. Bukowski used self-restraint.
Bukowski was prudent. About
race.
He was bolder about women and academics. Franker.
Q: Would you compare Bukowski Never Did This to Factotum?
A: I'd say Bukowski Never Did This shows that paraprofessional, white-collar jobs, salaried positions, are just as demeaning and soul-damaging as blue-collar, manual-labor jobs.
The Red Bar
Brenda and I went to The Red Bar on Sunday.
Dread Clampitt were good,
as always.
Brenda made a carrot cake for Balder's birthday, and after their
show, their friends all had a slice.
When we got home, we watched half of
the movie Ray. We'll watch the other half another night.
Bryan sent
the cover art he did for Bukowski Never Did This.
Brenda and I liked it.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them - ding-dong, bell.