Costello, Helm, Thompson, Toussaint and Nick Lowe on on stage

Producer,"Do you want to see Elvis Costello, Levon Helm, Richard Thompson, Alan Toussaint and Nick Lowe playing TOGETHER?" Asked the aptly connected folk rock producer and co-worker.

Me,"Where,when and how much?

Producer,"Apollo Theater (10 subway stops way), tonight, free!"

Me, "Are you freakin' kidding me", I respond.

Producer, "just take this piece a paper to the will call window, be in line before 7:45 and don't dress like a schmuck."

Me, "fine, Are you going?

Producer, "umm well yeah but I've got to go into a special entrance."

Me, "I see"

Kicking the gong around

It was down in Chinatown,
All the cokies laid around,
Some were high and some were mighty low;
There were millions on the floor
When a knock came on the door,
And there stood old Smoky Joe.

He was sweatin', cold and pale,
He was lookin' for his frail,
He was broke and all his junk ran out;
Nobody made a sound,
As he stood and looked around,
And then you hear old Smoky shout:

Saying, "Tell me where is Minnie?
My poor Minnie!
Has she been here,
Kicking the gong around?"

"If you don't know Minnie,
She's tall and skinny,
She gets her pleasure
Kicking the gong around!"

[Scat chorus]

"Just tell her Smoky Joe
Was here and had to go."
And as he departed,
The curtains parted,
And there stood Minnie
Kicking the gong around!

SAAB totaled

Firefighter, allegedly DUI, totals the SAAB sedan at 2am Sunday morning.

Joni has to pee

I am waiting to change from the F to C train at Jay street. Despite my tardiness for  work, I am quite content sipping my large Mudd coffee and listening to a Joni Mitchell song on my Blackberry. Twenty minutes go by and I notice a hippie cougar with a flannel shirt and gray down vest, the first I've seen this season.  I am amused at the coincidence of the song and the cougar.

It's all quite pleasant until I notice a very expensive looking hard  black suitcase with wheels by her side. She then abandons the luggage and a voice inside my head says, if you see something say something. Could this hippie cougar really be some off the grid terrorist? With alacrity, I step ten paces away from the beauty product bomb in Joni's suitcase.

Now Joni is making her way to the trash can in the middle of the platform. Is she reaching for the remote which will trigger the explosion? No, it's a 32 oz. paper cup with a Pepsi logo. I am overcome with relief. She isn't a terrorist at all -she's a crazy homeless person. Phewww.

But wait, now Joni is unbuttoning her jeans. With great concentration, she  furtively jams the cup between her legs. Joni has to pee. I am empathetic having had a spastic colon condition when I first came to NYC. It would always kick in on the subway where bathrooms did not exist. I wonder. Is this physically possible. Can a woman, in the best circumstances, pee in a cup standing? I do not have Our Bodies, Ourselves handy.

Luckily, the train arrives and I hop on. As the A train pulls away from the station, I watch the dark blue cloud as is expands on Joni's jeans.

A Fan's Notes

"She was matchlessly vapid.


"Other Drunken Novels

Red Book

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=red%20book&st=cseA must......................

Grey Gardens

Lange and Barrymore get real close.

Beginning of the End

In July of 2004, Mason had just completed a physical therapy appointment at St. Clair County Hospital. He had worked real hard that day and was able to stand with the support of the therapist for around :50 seconds.

He returned to his wheel chair and was assisted to the ground floor by one of the PT office girls. Mason always had an endearing charm with support staff. He had spent his career selling "on the road". He could sell dirt to an someone afflicted with OCD. The way to sale began in the front office. If you could charm the girls up front, they would let you through to the man who could sign the sales contract.

In the early days, dad's products were more tangible. Anyone can understand the allure of a sports car, a chemical that could effortlessly clean your house or a cemetary plot. Try selling the abstract... ESP's extended service policies or credit life insurance. The definition of which I am still only 85% clear on. Mason would traverse every two road highway in Alabama and find merchants to sign the sales contract. Every town no matter how small has not only a post office and gas station, but also a credit furniture store and buy here/ pay here used car lot. Mason kept them stocked with the ancillary. They ranged from the advanced like the silent radio a led device with attached keyboard to the gyp special. My favorite was the Sales Memory Kit. It was a Poloroid and 3x5 filing box with cards which had blanks to fill in. Name, address, number and hobbys.

Nancy pushed Dad out to overhang and helped him transfer from the wheel chair to the driver seat. They nervously worked together But this time Dad could not shift his weight. It was hot and the humidity was high. Dad worked real hard that day but never had he had this much trouble getting into the car. They managed though and Mason drove himself home. The transfer from the car and then to the wheel chair and then to his bed took every ounce of energy he could muster.

He slept for a day and a half.

When he awoke his mobility had diminished. Previously, Mason could easily tranfer from the bed to the wheel chair to the toliet to the wheel chair to the navy blue recliner. Now, the slope of the transfer board between the bed and the wheel chair
presented him with a ten minute battle.

Clay's Capers Childbirth Pt 1.

The white plastic stick displays +.

We are excited and like a few other things in life it's a brick wall. If you are a parent you are this side, if you are not a parent your on that side. Helen Keller's teacher Anne Sullivan could nevermake you understand.

Agatha and I begin the journey with joyful tears. The next day the whole process begins.

1) Choose a OBGYN...wait a minute Agatha wants a mid-wife to deliver the baby.

Clay firmly declares, "umm. I am not to sure umm that I am comfortable with that umm idea...dear"
Agatha, "well there is a terrefic program at LICH hospital. Urban Baby highly recommends it. I have talked to 12 mothers since we learned about this last night whao all had incredible experiences. I am making an appointment.

The following week...we nervously meet outside the hospital to meet the mid-wives. Our appointment is with Debbie Pasties. A sixty year old ex-hippie with brassy curly hair well past her shoulders reminds me of "mother" ,night bird dj from FM, Eileen Brennan. Her most notable role was the crass sargent in Private Benjamin.

We sit down across from her. She is artificially warm. She is kind and thorough when answeing Agatha's questions. With me quick and annoyed.

Later that evening as Agatha foreshadows the events of the birth with Madame Pasties. I express my concern. What if there is a medical emergency. I was hung up with the question of what malady would cause her to turn over the delivery to a doctor.

I know that every birth is unique, but there must a list of maladies whether personal or as a professional standard that demand the attention of s doctor, no?
I decided the next day that I would set up an appointment with Sargent Pasties and ask her.



clay

Germ Warfare

How in the hell did this happen to Mason! In this fight, odds on favorite should have been a heart attack. His dad and uncle both dropped dead at 50 from a heart attack. Mason had quadruple bypass surgery at 42. Although he quit smoking, he hardly watched his diet, never exercised. How in the hell did Lou Gerig's disease find him.

Back in 1999, Mason was diagnosed with a popateal aneurism reached capacity. He did not act on the diagnosis. The cardiologist did not automatically admit him to surgery. Mason was told to take care of it soon. When the vessel's capacity was compomised, he was rushed to the hospital. He was offered two options by the attending cardiologist. Bypass surgery or new technique which involved laproscopically inserting a stint in the blocked artery. Dad made that decision on his own. Mason said, "Shoot the stint."
Here comes the irony...the attending cardiologist was not Dad's childhood friend Arnold Wildenstern, but Oscar Bizet. Bizet wasn't just another doctor in the practice. No, he was the son of Laverne Bizet. The woman Dad sought refuge from his fraudulent marraige to my Mom, Tallulah...their affair wiped out not only his own marriage, but also Lavern's.

Let's take a moment to look at this. Here in Oscar Bizet care is the man who wrecked his parents three decade marriage. Mason's down for the count and it's up to Oscar. Will the round end? Will Oscar call the fight? Will he employ the deadly winning combination, a serum that causes slow, painful, humiliating death?. Oscar is both the opponet and the referee.

Oscar had always been an oddity. He grew up in the neighboring trailer at Camelot Trailer Park and as Ralph Stanley used to say the walls were so thin that the two of us dreamnt the same dreams. He was a fiercly competitive teenager. When he lost anything, he would completely loose his shit and expel his rage to anyone who crossed his path. I had the unfortunate opportunity to be his doubles partner once, my athletic abilities were an embarassment to me and the good folks of Hill River. in fact, i was awarded "most spirited"(100% strike out average) in baseball, "most christ-like"( 0 points average per game) in church league basketball. And let's not forget loosing a early race car video arcade game to a blind friend of mine. At some point during the match he forced me to stand behind the base line and hold my racquet behind my back. Somehow even this minimal amount of presense caused us to loose. The tongue lashing that I recieved from him resides in the crowded pejorative memory chamber of my mind to this day.

kaintock

The Dixie Voice:Wending Its Way To The Top

Lawrence Creek. He's the editor. He and his family
were self proclaimed machas at my temple and in the community. His grandfather Frank Creek managed Camelot Trailer Park from a early model caramel colored Lincoln Continental. Residents literally sat in the back seat amongst discarded Krystal boxes and rags to sign their leases.

Frank tried to stop my dad from being bar mitzvahed at the
last minute...that was before my grandmother took Frank
Creek down a few notches. Suffice it to say,
Dad was on the bima on the designated time.

Larry, grandson of Frank, was picked on by everyone I knew. He was the classic smart alek-y kid with thick glasses that made you angry whenever he entered the room.
His reincarnation from book smart nebbish to
media mogul would occur years later in the promised
land.

At that time, he was probably in his late 20's and he
had started a jewish paper in Hill River that was
mostly political "zion this zion that" with the
prerequisite listing of social events like births, bar
mitzvahs and confirmations. There was a well established
society trade called The Shank Bone which was the
Dixie Voice's competition. The Voice had minimal
advertising while the The Shank Bone was chock full of ads
from every Hill River jewish owned business from metal scrap
yards to the prominet jewish attorneys and dentists.
It was all society. I was actually in it several times for various dances and party. There would be a blury black and white of me and my date...with the caption, Clay Kaintock escorts Bunny Ravitz to the "Showboat Formal etc. Dismal days
The Shank Bone was run by a family named Blitzen.

In the 90's, Larry went to Jerusalem trying to
promote his paper and he came across a noted Jews for
Jesus rabbi.The rabbi asked Larry if he
knew the Blitzens of Hill River. For the Creek family, this
was a biblical moment on par with parting of the red
sea.

It turns out that for two decades the Blitzens were
secretly practicing Jews for Jesus followers. I cannot
express how much scorn was generated in the
Hill River jewish community, especially from all the
merchants who had been paying for ads for years. I
mean drug dealing, interracial marriage, homosexuality
all paled to this offense.

Larry did not even have to write an article about it
in his paper. In a community like Hill River the tongue and
the telephone are a stronger media than papers, radio
and TV combined. The Shank Bone was kaddish that same
month.

In fact the Blitzens were literally forced out of
town. They had a daughter a year younger than me who
was divorced by her husband because of this deceit.

Clay

Moment In Time

When I think about the day now, it seems more like a dream.

I am riding shotgun with my Dad, Mason Kaintock. There is an assorted pile of 3 ring binders, keys, paper contracts and a hair brush at my feet. The AC is on high and I have coopted the car stereo's cassette deck with a homemade mix tape. We are on our way somewhere and Dad asks me if it's OK to make a quick stop.

The road is wooded,steep and snakes back and forth. We travel miles and miles without seeing a building or another car. Around a curve appears a 50 car lot. We pull in to the gravel drive way. The sound of the tires against the gravel reminds me of the cycle of one hundred Jiffy Pop Popcorn from maximum popp to just before the burning stage.

Out of the gray dust appears two guys with matching knit collar shirts and guts. The owners of the lot greet my Dad with the familiarity of running in to one of your best childhood friends. Of course this reception was not uncommon. Every used car dealer in the state of Alabama knew Mason Kaintock.

Dad shot some shit with the salesman while I walked around the lot. He came after me holding a set of keys. He said let's take the car for a ride. He pointed at a late model 700 series BMW. Now, this is no 325i. This is a seriously powerful car. He tossed me the keys and we hopped in.

As I turned the engine over, I could feel it's strength. The road, with its pins and turns, was treacherous. It was a straight shift, so it took me a couple of minutes to get used to the clutch.I was not completely in control of the car and I had trouble keeping the speed comfortable. I was nervous as hell, but didn't want to show it to my Dad.

I slowed down and pulled into a.....


Still too painful to finish this.

Tattoo Jews Pt.3 Elvis

1) Forbidden Practices?


I started going through the list: don't eat the fruit for three days, don't eat blood, don't cut your prayer curls or your beard?
I began to think...man how relevant is this?

When I reached
19:28
Do not make gashes in your skin for the dead.

Do not make any tattoo marks on your skin. I am God.

I got chills. I had never heard this part before. I know there are different interpretation of the bible, but there is no ambiguity here.


2)Would the tattoo's text could possibly get me in trouble with the big guy?

The image that I currently want is a Basquiat Crown ( more on this in Pt.4) with the word king underneath. King was my dad's nickname. The name appeared throughout his life in several contexts. The "rabbi for hire's" eulogy at my Dad's funeral brillantly tied the King title from his birth to his death. But, KING?...too obvious. Subtlety is more my style. So, I looked to other languages. El rey, Le roi...not quite. The chinese and japanese word for king looked more elegant. I continued to search and then arrived at hebrew.

מלך

I loved it. Shortly thereafter, I began to think that this might be the word for the king of kings. You know G-d. I wanted to use the general term. I better start working on an explanation now so that I am ready on redenption day.So, I asked a friend of mine about it. Would an israeli call King Auto Parts...Melech Auto Parts. He responded with this true story.

A friend of mine walks into this falafel joint in Jerusalem. There are Elvis pictures everywhere. Early Elvis. Late Elvis. Elvis in concert. Elvis on the silver screen. There's hardly an open piece of wall space. So he asks the owner, "Mah im 'Elvis'?" What's with Elvis? Needless to say, the proprietor responds: "Elvis -- hu ha melech." Elvis -- he's the king.

Yes, melech can be all kinds of kings.

I have to think about all this for a while.

clay

Tattoo Jews Pt.2 Leviticus

Forbidden Practices

19:23
When you come to the [promised] land and plant any tree bearing edible [fruit], you must avoid its fruit as a forbidden growth. For three years [the fruit] shall be a forbidden growth, and it may not be eaten.

19:24
Then, in the fourth year, all [the tree's] fruit shall be holy, and it shall be something for which God is praised.

19:25
In the fifth year, you may eat its fruit and thus increase your crops. I am God your Lord.

19:26
Do not eat on blood.

Do not act on the basis of omens.

Do not act on the basis of auspicious times.

19:27
Do not cut off the hair on the sides of your head.

Do not shave off the edges of your beard.

19:28
Do not make gashes in your skin for the dead.

Do not make any tattoo marks on your skin. I am God.

19:29
Do not defile your daughter with premarital sex. You will then not make the land sexually immoral, and the land [will not] be filled with perversion.

19:30
Keep My Sabbaths and revere My sanctuary. I am God.

19:31
Do not turn to mediums, nor seek out oracles, so as to defile yourselves through them. I am God your Lord.

19:32
Stand up before a white head, and give respect to the old. You shall thus fear your God. I am God.

19:33
When a proselyte comes to live in your land, do not hurt his feelings.

Tattoo Jews Pt.1 Gangsta Soprano

When my dad, Mason Kaintock, went to the bone yard, he left me, his only son, a wooden box of memories. I really have not looked at it much, in fact it's in Hill River now. I am pretty sure there is a pistol in there. There is one piece which is with me and I wear it most of the time.
""
It's a thick gold rope chain with a chunky contemporary Chai medallion. Chai which means "life" comes in the form of the
hebrew letter "chet". Not only is it popular with jewish men, but black baptist brothers too. I am not so sure that it isn't mistaken for a horse most of the time. This necklace's girth wouldn't shame a regionally famous gansta rapper.

My grandmother gave it to Dad after his six bypass heart surgery back when in 1982. As my Dad's girlfriend will say, he liked to wear it. I actually have more memories of it sitting on a table after Dad would go to sleep. Every night,there was always a big pile of his stuff...necklace, his father's high school ring, change, a well worn brown leather wallet and an apple core that resembled a holocaust victim.

Whether I am wearing it or not, I am comforted by its presence. On the other hand sometimes the combination of the necklace, the 25 grief pounds sitting at my waist, the Austin Power like chest hair style and my not so concidental fondness for nylon adidas warm-up pants sometimes make me feel like a two bit extra on HBO's Soprano.

I am now looking at a more permanet and personal tribute to my Dad. A tattoo. Most jews put tattoos and suicide at the same level. Jews love to elevate the mundane to the hysterical. In fact, it is commonly believed that one cannot be buried in a jewish cemetary with a tattoo, while concentration survivors get a by for their nazi numeric imprint.

I have a grand plan to get the tattoo on my Dad's first yartzheit. I figure that I will research the topic, get some opinions, sit with the idea for a few months and then make my own decision.

After, I learned that a tattooed one could be buried in a jewish cemetary...I looked for the bible portion which details this sin against G-d's gift. You will find it in Leviticus. There are a bunch of shoulds and should nots listed.

To Be Continued...

kaintock

Vulcan's Spear Pt.4

The young boy who was seated below was seated with his parents and his older brother Dickie. He was maybe seven years old and had a flair about him which did not jibe with the rest of his family's down home style. Born Jeffrey, he had changed the spelling to Geoffrey to accent his adopted persona which was akin to an english arisocracy. Geoffrey sewed his own clothes which he scounged for out of the dipsy dumpsters of Hancock Fabrics in Roebuck Shopping Center. He really stood outin his charcoal gray knockers and ox blood and blue lively ascotts.

As the racket ceased from up above, Geoffrey felt sorry for the young bus boy. He pushed around his dry noodles with his chopstick.

kaintock

Vulcan's Spear Part 3

Joe King was a slight young man with a deferred vacant mug. He was adequately fumbling through his first work day at Joy Youngs' as a bus boy. The truth is his real name wasn't Joe King and he was actually from Viet Nam. But, for 1963 era Birmingham, he was chinese enough.

As he approached the Bear's table the fousome were breaking up with laughter over a joke that Pat James told about an Alabama linebacker from Arab and an Auburn tight end from Pascagula, Miss. Joe King reached for an appetizer plate littered with a half eaten egg roll and six Kent "king sized" cigarrette butts. The Bear did not relish the interruption and in an unintelligable rant proceeded to hurl a verbal whippin' at Joe which ended with "commie gook". The entire restaurant was silenced by this outburst. A young boy seated in the commissary below was particulaly shaken by the experience. He never fogot it.

clay

Vulcan's Spear Pt.2

As the chopper gets louder,the screen dissolves into the revolving spokes of a 1962 Eldorado.It is 1963. The caddy is occupied by two couples who are loaded. The car pulls in front of Joy Young's restaurant.And out stumbles the great Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant. He is accompanied by his assistant coach whose name would later join the likes of Nicky's, John's and Joy Young's as Birmingham restaurant royalty, Pat James.

The boys are celebrating ummm. Well, noone really remembers the occasion, but the bourbon is flowing and two ladies of the evening, Candy and Roberta from Centerpoint are in tow. Out tumble the foursome and The Bear chucks a silver dollar at at an excited group of colored teenage boys and warbles, "park it on the 4th Avenue...Buckwheat...and come and see me in August in T-town."

Joy Young's was as exotic and high tone as the Magic City had seen since the Tutwiller Hotel opened. The decor was a not unlike the great movie palaces of the era. It was as dark, plush and cool as a Hopper painting. You know the one with the girl waiting under the dimly lit lodge sign. The main dining room was three stories high. The ground floor had maybe 40 four-tops. On the second floor was a perimeter balcony which held the coveted, curtained booths. Up there, diners enjoyed the swinging Shanghai treatment. Private "geisha girl" waitresses,sugary sweet cocktails with colorful umbrellas and chop suey loaded up with thick brown gravy.

The Bear eats The Box Lunch

Joy Young Restaurant:
High on flavor low on price.

The Magic city's first "Oriental" style restaurant reviewed by our favorite connoisseur and glutton Bear Bryant.

The sweet smell of opium and egg rolls whiffed through the air as me and my lovely dinner companion entered the new "far eastern" style restaurant at 412 20th St. North. Candy, a buxom prostitute I picked up in Centerpoint, and I, have never eaten together, at least not food.

I ordered fried chicken and Candy asked for a cheeseburger with an order of fries. We were dumbfounded when we found out that these Orientals don't eat regular food, but rather snails, noodles and crap like that. The waiter told me that his kind doesn't eat cheese, they find it repulsive. His kind? I know what his kind is, a bunch of commies. That's what they are.

So I ordered a number 1 and Candy shot for the moon and had a number 2. When the food finally arrived we were drunk to the gills. Not that the service was necessarily slow, but rather that we started early and drank fast. I was surprised that I wasn't served man's best friend. "I thought you people ate dogs," I politely remarked. The waiter must have been hard of hearing. He didn't respond.

I guess if you like weird foreign food it was all right. But we're going to stick to barbecue from now own.

Bear Bryant

Kaintock stole this from The Birmingham Free Press /www.birminghamfreepress.com/

Vulcan's Spear

Vulcan"s Spear 


When the film is shot. This story will begin with an aerial shot of Vulcan's rear and the cityscape of Birmingham. Think Wim Wenders aerial shot of the statue of Christ the Redeemer which overlooks Rio De Janero in Wings of Desire.
As the chopper circles Vulcan, we see two men talking on the observation deck. The camers zooms in. We see an older asian man holding a green 10 oz. bottle of Coke. The other gentleman, good looking late thirties in a charcoal suit, is pouring salted peanuts into the elder man's Coke.
Due to the roar of the chopper, we cannot hear what is being discussed, but it seems serious. The camera slowly zooms out and we cut to the helicopter pilot's perspective. The chopper spins and heads north to downtown Birmingham where it hovers with local news helicopters over the Jefferson County court house.

ck