Keeper of the Clown Bell

In the spring of 2021 I had a near death experience when my Chevy Silverado loaded with 30 cases of wine was rear-ended at 50mph  by a young lady who was texting-while-driving at 9:30 AM. Her Mercedes sedan flashed in my driver side mirror a moment before impact and that microsecond of awareness gave me just enough time to pull my foot off the break and jam the gas so when she plowed into my trailer hitch the impact met no resistance and launched my truck across the road and into the woods. I had stopped in the road, left blinker signaling, waiting for an oncoming pickup truck to pass and, by the grace of God, it did pass me just as the distracted driver in the mirror slammed into my flashing taillight. Everyone walked away from the crash with no serious injury but if the impact had transpired 2 seconds earlier it would have been a “Road Warrior” bloodbath of terror and death. When I stepped out of my vehicle and looked through the roadside trees I had miraculously missed hitting i...

Driving down Commonwealth Ave. in my '79 Caprice Classic while listening to late night alt-rock on WERS 88.9 FM broadcasting from Emerson College and spinning tunes from Mission of Burma, O Positive and Christmas into the aether via electromagnetic radiation. The brown 4 door sedan was affectionately named "the mud shark" at that time (1986) - later, after a Trompe L'oeil Marbling by my sister it would be called "the slab" - and it drifted atop the bumpy Back Bay streets as a reckless predator searching for a parking spot. The DJ was jabbering between songs about new music, upcoming shows and whatnot before wrapping with the admonition, "If these guys ever come to town be sure and find yourself ticket because their drummer Roland is amazing" and then he put the needle down on  Big Black's "Bazooka Joe." Steve Albini starts barking about some guy named Joe, Roland (the drum machine) jumps in with an uptempo beat and after a good long w...

  When I was a young man I had the opportunity to travel around the world on a 9 month odyssey with a crew of cinephiles under the direction of an organization called  The International Honors Program .  The tale of this extravagant boondoggle will be told another day but for the purposes of this commentary I will say that the expedition took place in a mid-80's cold war world when movies, radio and television (even newspapers) actually had cultural and political impact - that is to say, before the digital age. I started scribbling these musings weeks ago and (in my mind) went down many paths; some lead to the past, others to the future and still others to places that don't exist. How did I get to the paragraph I'm presently composing? Well, it started with Noah Hawley and the TV series Fargo which he writes and directs because, as it happens, this talented auteur graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1989 and that means he might have known one of the Steve's on the ...

The backend fortnight of November is a nostalgic time when celebrations of Thanksgiving, remembrance of the JFK assassination and addressing the annual Xmas card revive memories of what has been lost. This year was the 60th recurrence of the magic-bullet psyop inflicted on America so there was an avalanche of Oliver Stone, Roger Stone and every stone cold IC disinformation operator in the media-sphere telling stories about the shooting in Dallas and who was behind it. Whoever the killer(s) was picked the most sentimental national tradition to bloody forever by blowing the president's head off a few days before  the harvest feast and blessing . Thanks a lot dude(s) - I've had to live with the psychic effluvium of Jack's smiling wraith for my entire life and I do resent it. My uncle John loved to tell stories about his childhood and most of them revolved around experiences he had with his dad, my grandfather, which are unconventional or, in some cases, incomprehensible to a 2...

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The persona of Kanye West is no stranger to the ringing of the Clown Bell and has been cited by this blog on 3 previous occasions: A meditation on human consciousness and creation titled  West World considered the beneficent influence (if not design and manufacture) of Mr. West by forces much greater and more mysterious than himself. A review of Rap Music in general, through the KOTCB lens, titled  where the fuck is Kanye when you need him? highlights the simpatico mindset that forms the Trump/West bonds of friendship and loyalty. In October of 2018 America's First Woman President (FWPOTUS) entertained Kanye in the Oval Office and this meeting afforded Mr. White Chocolate Chas T. the opportunity to ruminate on the recurring theme of (S)He Broke Me - The Überfrau vs. The NPC's which explains Trump's otherworldly power in defeating the White Suburban Women (WiSubWo) and their selected "Representatives." What more is there to say? A talented guy is elevated to bil...