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By Brad Lawrence
 Washington DC, where hope goes to die. As the President tries to make speeches asking us to refrain from cynicism, Congress does its part by imploding entirely. But as you get pitchforks and torches together, I offer this tale (which I told at the Liars Show on Saturday, unfortunately I was not the liar) which simply illustrates that Congress has always been incompetent and they have yet to destroy America. That is all the hope I can offer.
I don’t realize that I am on C-SPAN until the pushing match begins.
I had followed a girl to DC. Yael had graduated from college in St. Louis and gotten a job in DC at The Lao-Gai Research Foundation in Washington. The Lao-Gai is the Chinese version of the Gulag, where they send their political pioneers. I being directionless and in love, had tagged along. And I was excited about going to DC, I had always had a passing interest in politics and was intrigued to see how it all worked. So, when she says to me that she has to go and sit in at a hearing of the House Subcomittee on Human Rights and asks if I want to come, I think Great!
Things look bad almost from the start. This is a hearing on prison conditions in China and the people testifying are all Chinese political dissidents. There are some thirty seats in the chamber and only seven Representatives actually bother to show up. Everyone settles in and the hearing starts and the dissidents start to give their testimony. At this point the seven Representatives start to do everything except pay attention. They write notes, they doodle, they talk to their aides, one guy, Rohrbacher according to the name plate, just stares into the upper left hand corner with his mouth slightly open. He is so intent on that spot, that I find myself looking over my shoulder trying to figure out what has his attention. There’s nothing there. The people at the tables are giving graphic accounts of the worst years of their lives and this guy seems to be asleep with his eyes open.
He suddenly snaps to when he is recognized to speak. He is from California and when he hears his name he suddenly wakes up and starts talking. He appears to be a kind of pudgy, red-faced, dim-witted version of Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.” After seeming to hear nothing anyone has said, he suddenly starts slamming his fist on the desk and going, “B’dah! B’Dah! Those Red Chinese! I tell ya, they’re just plain evil, I tell ya, Evil!”
 That hollow whistling sound is not something you should worry about. But Fatty Stewart has it on the rest of them because he is actually on topic. Yael explains to me that each of the Congress People have certain talking points they want on the record, and it doesn’t matter what the witnesses say, they want it known that they said this other thing when campaign time comes. To this end, the Representative from American Samoa, when he is recognized to speak, literally just says the word “China” and then launches into a screed on the importance of indigenous rights in some unspecified parts of the Pacific Islands.
Eventually, someone I know gets up to testify. Wei Jing Shung, who speaks no English. Another acquaintance, David is translating. Nancy Pelosi asks Wei a question and Wei begins his answer. He gives half his answer and David translates, then he begins the second half of his answer. The whole time Wei is talking, Pelosi is leaned forward on her seat, with her lip kind of riding up on her teeth and her eyes kind of lit up like an angry Chihuahua. Before David can translate the second half of Wei’s answer, she’s off. She just starts this litany of talking points, and clichés, and pat statements about Human Rights. I ask Yael if Wei’s answer will be translated for the record and she says, “No.”
This goes on for hours. And if there is anything more disillusioning than seeing how the sausage is made, it is seeing how a lot of sausage is made. I am just staring at my lap, wondering how far off the fall of western civilization could possibly be, when I hear the door of the chamber open. I turn and look and this guy, who looks like a Chinese Steve Martin has come in with some friends. He has Salt and Pepper hair kind of swept to the side, like during Martin’s King Tut era.
At this point, a guy from the Tiananmen revolt is testifying to the only Represenative who seems to give a shit, Chris Smith, from one of the Carolinas, who is the chair. Everyone else has gone back to doodling or staring or drooling. Chris Smith and the Tiananmen guy are actually having a lively exchange. Then, out of nowhere, Steve Martin starts shouting in Chinese. Tiananmen guy turns around and starts shouting back, Martin shouts louder. Yael speaks Chinese, so I look to her. Steve Martin is another dissident from an ethnic minority in China and he has called the Tiananmen guy a Communist spy. I look at her and she kind of waves this off, “They all call each other spies.”
Chris Smith starts banging his gavel and calling for order, but all this does is start other people shouting in Chinese. Then Steve Martin says something real short and blunt and I am pretty sure that I just learned Mandarin for “Bitch.” This is when the place goes nuts, everyone jumps up and starts shouting back and forth in Chinese. People are strating to come at one another, they are climbing over chairs and getting in each other’s faces. The whole room goes nuts. Smith is just pounding away with his little hammer.
The other Representatives just stand up and exit through the back. Like “Oh, its lunch time.” Smith actually makes his way down to the floor of the chamber, but by this time everyone is ignoring him entirely.
Then Yael grabs me and points to a table set up in the aisle with all of these stacks of paper. This is also where people are gathering for the fist fights. She says “I need to get those papers for our files. I need you to stand over me while I get them.” I am so screw balled from this scene that I am thrilled to be given a direct order. I start shoving people out of the way. These people are so intent on whoever they have decided to accuse of being a communist patsy that they don’t even notice. They just pop back up like one of those punching dolls and go back at it.
I get Yael over to her table and I stand there with my arms crossed and she gets her papers. And this is where Steve Martin and Tiananmen finally converge. They have fought their way through the melee and now they are each on one of my shoulders, using me as a barrier while they shout and push one another. Each of them is in an ear, screaming Chinese insults. Finally, I can’t take anymore. I raise both hands and shout as loud as I can, “JUST STOP!” and they do. They each stare at me for a long second, like they are seeing me for the first time. Then they start screaming and pushing each other again. I am just totally defeated. I cross my arms and just stare straight ahead and when I do I find that I am staring into the lens of a TV camera. This is when I realize, that I am on C-SPAN. If there is anyone watching C-SPAN then, in this moment, I personally have become, for that poor lone soul sitting in the dark watching channel 406, a living symbol for all the failures of Democracy.
 Oh, to weep stoney tears. I have shows! Tonight and tomorrow night! Then I get to drink the weekend away!
Wednesday March 10th 7:00 - True Tales Of College, Ochis Lounge @ Comix, 353 W. 14th Street.
Thursday March 11th 7:00 - Moth Grandslam, the Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street.
By Brad Lawrence
Another couple of paragraphs from my forth coming memoir – Monsters In The Wood.
On my Twenty-first Birthday I stand in front of an open casket. Inside is Randy.
Randy is wearing Harley Davidson brand biker boots, a pair of Levi’s jeans with a Harley Davidson patch on the left thigh, and a Harley Davidson belt buckle. He has Harley Davidson tattoos on both arms, and one of them perfectly matches the T-shirt he will be wearing into eternity. It’s a picture of a Harley Davidson motorcycle bursting out of a flaming Harley Davidson emblem, the flames rising to form a great orange phoenix in a night sky full of lightening and, one would assume, thunder. He is being buried wearing a Harley Davidson cap. And also, with two spare Harley Davidson caps of slightly different design. These are arranged at the hinge of the casket, displayed as though Randy were a sort of pharaoh of the trailer park, to be entombed with all his regalia.
I look down at Randy in the casket, his pale, mat finished face framed by stringy long hair and the mustache that is easily ten years out of date, surrounded by his biker shwag and, honestly, I kind of admire it all. I mean… Ok, to take the pharaoh thing one step further, apparently, when Randy arrives before Anubis, the jackal headed God of the dead, gate keeper to the underworld and paradise beyond, weigher of souls, judge of the damned, the message he wants to send is: “Fuck you, Dog-face, I’m Captain Fuckin’ America! King of the Fuckin’ Road!”
That has a certain kind of balls. Class? No. Balls, a little. As a matter of fact, I think I would take this even further, I’m thinking they should have buried him with his arms crossed, like Tut, but with a tire iron in one hand and a pistol in the other. Rock n’ Roll, heavy metal thunder, Born to Be Wild, the whole nine yards. That would look great on a fucking Harley shirt.
This is Southern Missouri and this is trash, but I can guarantee you that Randy had next to nothing. How do I know this? Because I am from here and I know that all there is to be had here is next to nothing. But there is something to be said for embracing what you do have and reveling in it. Others have school and opportunity and somewhere to go and what Randy had was Harley Davidson. Founded in 1903 by Will Harley and the Davidson brothers, Walt and Arthur, in Milwaukee Wisconsin, and conquering the great expanse of America ever since. What more has ever said US of A with greater style? Marlon Brando in the Wild Ones, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and the tragic wobble right after the shotgun blast and right before the last crash and the end credits. The hordes of Hell’s Angels barreling up the pacific highway in the sixties and camping out across the bay in Oakland like Visigoths across the Rubicon. America is nothing but highway once you get out of the fleshy condensation of the East Coast. After that it is just long ribbons of beautiful grey interstate stretching through forests, mountains, and finally desert all the way to the ocean and every mile the inspiration for endless pop songs from the Brill Building to the Beach Boys and all of that before Les Paul lead the guitar toting legions of young, leather clad, sex Gods to their eventual supremacy. Every time they went platinum, the first thing one of those virtuoso high school drop outs did with that first ridiculously large check from the record company was go out and buy themselves a Harley Fucking Davidson. So, Randy might have had almost nothing but he did have that, all of it and, by God, he’s gonna be buried with it.
Then Chuck, my brother-in-law, whispers in my ear, “Your Mom told me he never owned a bike.”
Again this is a section from my memoir in the works - Monsters In The Wood. Hope you enjoyed it.
In other news, I have quite a few shows coming up in the next couple of weeks and I hope some of you True Believers can make it out and have a beer with me before, during, or after. -
Saturday March 6th 6:00 - The Liars Show – Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street.
Monday March 8th 9:00 - The BTK Band – Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place.
Wednesday March 10th 7:00 - True Tales Of College, Ochis Lounge @ Comix, 353 W. 14th Street.
Thursday March 11th 7:00 - Moth Grandslam, the Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street.
Excelsior!
By Brad Lawrence
Almost every pic on the site, especially the ones that are labeled days of the week, are links to somewhere.
By Brad Lawrence
Again, this week I am posting very short clips from the memoir. This section comes from a chapter called The Angel Of Death Thinks This Is Not A Laughing Matter.
 Inappropriate decor for a funeral home. Wilson’s Funeral Home has been serving my family, and the whole of Fredericktown, since before I was born. And it has always been the color of Smoker’s Lung. And, yes, you can smoke in Wilson’s Funeral home. It is a dark place done up in browns, reds, and burnt yellows. It is warm, but kind of in the wrong way, like in the way bodily fluids are warm. It was founded in 1963, but the décor makes me think that the last renovation must have been in the late seventies. I have always wondered what that primary colors – after they have been buried, dug up, and microwaved – design style is all about. It coats these towns that were left high and dry by the Carter era recession. Two decades on and no one has had the money for a paint job. Trapped in amber shag carpet since the last cobalt mine closed in 1979.
Fredericktown itself came about as a place for miners working the Mine La Motte for lead in 1717. The French needed ammunition and they found Southern Missouri was full of lead, as well as galena and the aforementioned cobalt. So, they plopped a rudimentary munitions plant and a mine in the middle of Osage Indian country and the shooting hasn’t stopped yet. In the 246 years between the town’s founding and the ribbon cutting on the only funeral home I have ever known the place to have, I couldn’t tell you what they did with their dead. One would assume that services were held in the Church of the corpse’s choice, but I always like to amuse myself with the idea that it was all a sort of Donner Party town picnic. A blood soaked gnashing of teeth with little half remembered touches of French cuisine and a good will invitation to the local native bands. But that’s just me.
 These guys almost had me going for a minute. At any rate, by the time I started keeping tabs of the bodies, Wilson’s had already established itself as the in place to be interred. This day it is populated by a collection of Hell’s Angels, methamphetamine dealers, pregnant teenagers, and a smattering of evangelical Christians. Otherwise known as my family. All but the Evangelical Christians are smoking. And someone has brought beer. What’s amazing is the raw amount of hair in the room. Whenever I am around my family, I just stare at the facial hair and flowing unwashed manes. Seeing my kin together is like being an extra in the big speech scene in “Braveheart.” I keep waiting for Mel Gibson to ride in on a horse and announce that we are all free men. “Now let’s get wasted and fuck some shit up!” Something gets lost in translation there, it’s true.
Also, I come from a large people. Steve and I are exceptions here. Most of these bastards are enormous. The women tend towards just plain old fat, but the men are a mixture of fat and the kind of muscle that only comes from dragging the dead weight of innocent victims off to your lair. It’s “Where the Wild Things Are” with speed and firearms. Imagine Max coming home in the morning and holding his parents at gun point, screaming, “Are you fucking Cops?! Goddammit, answer me, pigs!” Until he can smoke a joint and come down.
 Eat your childhood. Again this is a section from my memoir in the works - Monsters In The Wood. Hope you enjoyed it.
In other news, I have quite a few shows coming up in the next couple of weeks and I hope some of you True Believers can make it out and have a beer with me before, during, or after. -
Saturday March 6th 6:00 - The Liars Show – Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street.
Monday March 8th 9:00 - The BTK Band – Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place.
Wednesday March 10th 7:00 - True Tales Of College, Ochis Lounge @ Comix, 353 W. 14th Street.
Thursday March 11th 7:00 - Moth Grandslam, the Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street.
Excelsior!
By Brad Lawrence
 Trailer
By Brad Lawrence
This week I am putting up very small portions of the memoir I am working on, basically parts that have very little to do with me directly. It is a memoir after all, don’t want to give away any spoilers. (I will tell you that I do live through the book.) Anyway, this is from a chapter called Good Ol’ Boy Zilla and Son Of Good Ol’Boy Zilla. My father, who died when I was three months old, was the greatest good ol’ boy Fredericktown, Missouri had ever known. In this scene I have run into a middle aged member of “The Cult Of Billy Joe” while on a camping trip with some friends. Like all cult members he is eager to tell me his conversion story. (and I really should change the name of this blog.)
 Um... Dad? And with the words “Your Daddy! He was crazy!” I was regaled. The guy said his name but I was too off balance to catch it. I started thinking of him as Salt n Pepper. My friends had never been around for this and I felt conspicuous and paranoid. But then, I was high.
His story was actually set right here on the Black River. You do have to love a touch of local flavor. Apparently, he and my father and several others had been on a canoe trip. Down on the straight section of the river. About mid day, ol’ Salt n Pepper realized that he had lost his watch in the water, which was particularly muddy in that stretch.
“My Daddy done went n gimme that watch an I’s just about aside maself.”
Well, yeah, I’d suppose so.
This was where my father came in. Billy Joe said he could find that watch and, because there is one in every crowd, some joker said that my father would never find that watch. This was the point where my father said that if that was the way the guy felt then it must be time to lay some money down. How about five dollars? They shook on it and my father dove in after the watch.
I picture this in my head. When I picture my father’s body it is always criss-crossed in exotic scars. There is a story that, while on furlough in Korea, where my father had been a fighter pilot during the war, he and some of the other pilots took a boat out to go swimming in the ocean. At some point, my father looked into the water and saw that one of the other guys was having trouble. Thinking it was a cramp, Billy Joe jumped in to help the guy. That was how he found out that the guy was actually tangled up in a Portuguese Man-o-War. From what I was told, he had tentacle scars striping some portion of his body for the rest of his life. But he did save his buddy.
I didn’t catch how old Salt n Pepper said they were at the time of the watch story, so I didn’t know if the picture in my head was correct.
My father dove down, was gone for a long time, then popped up empty handed. But instead of giving up, ol’ Billy Joe doubled the bet. From that moment on, every time he came up for air he would raise. This went on for hours and as it did, more folks gathered around and they wanted some of the action. By the time the sun started to go down there were a dozen people who had fifty bucks at the minimum on this thing, some had as much as a hundred, and he didn’t know how much the first guy had on it. It was then, that my father popped out of the water, one hand raised high above his head.
“An I’ll be darned if’n he didn’t have my Daddy’s watch!”
According to this guy, money rained down on my father like air was made of green paper. And to top it all off, almost no one went away mad, they had so much fun watching the suspense build that it was worth every penny. The first guy, the joker who lost the most, he went away mad, but, there’s one in every crowd.
After everyone left, Salt n Pepper looked at Billy Joe and declared that it sure was a good thing Billy Joe had found that watch or he would’ve owed a lot of people a lot of money. Salt n Pepper was pretty sure that was money my Father didn’t have. Billy Joe looked him straight in the eye, grinned, and said, “Boy, I found that watch three hours ago.”
That night my father bought several rounds at the Main Street Tavern.
There on the trail, the middle aged Salt n Pepper laughed and laughed. So did my friends. I tried to, but my chest was really tight.
Again this is a section from my memoir in the works – Monsters In The Wood. Hope you enjoyed it.
In other news, I have quite a few shows coming up in the next couple of weeks and I hope some of you True Believers can make it out and have a beer with me before, during, or after. -
 Saturday March 6th 6:00 – The Liars Show – Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street.
Monday March 8th 9:00 – The BTK Band – Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place.
Wednesday March 10th 7:00 – True Tales Of College, Ochis Lounge @ Comix, 353 W. 14th Street.
Thursday March 11th 7:00 - Moth Grandslam, the Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th Street.
Excelsior!
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