From the recordings E rattum P hontographic and Writer's Block
My protege and former Ass Haulers drummer found hisself in a bit of a barroom donnybrook over a turtle for sale and ended up taking a broken beer bottle to the throat. With his newly improved speaking voice and knowing full well that he was in a perennial state of financial desperation I lured him in by electronically transmitting $25 American and a bit of my prose for him to read. What follows is pure, borderline-magical genius-ness of him reading the text below from the inside of a filthy hell-bound car in a Dollar Tree parking lot at 11:30 PM.
Lyrics
(Written and produced by Steven Clark)
Steven Clark - Music
Cam Flim Flam - Voice
"My protege and former Ass Haulers drummer found hisself in a bit of a barroom donnybrook over a turtle for sale and ended up taking a broken beer bottle to the throat. With his newly improved speaking voice and knowing full well that he was in a perennial state of financial desperation I lured him in by electronically transmitting $25 American and a bit of my prose for him to read. What follows is pure, borderline-magical genius-ness from the inside of a filthy hell-bound car in a Dollar Tree parking lot." - Steven Clark
Motionless I sit it front of the typewriter humped over like a vulture, watching,
waiting, a stand off. The craggy old Royal knows I’m bluffing, “Why make me
work if all you’re going to do is bang out bullshit?” it seems to say. I lose this
round of the staring contest and mope into the kitchen looking for something -
anything cool to eat. Too hot to cook, too hot to think. I look up at the ceiling as if
god is hanging there in the stale heat, “Air-conditioning, air-conditioning!” my
plea goes unheeded, an air-conditioner does not magically appear. I scour Mother
Hubbard’s cupboard. The menu is scant; I slice a homegrown tomato, slather it
with hot sauce, and uncork a bottle of Beaujolais-Villages - PRODUIT DE FRANCE,
with my pocketknife corkscrew. As I eat I talk to the lethargic gang of flies that
are too hot to make the short trip across the table for some tomato, “You lazy
bastards give insects a bad name. Let me talk to your leader. Huh? What’s that?
You want some of me punk?” I hold the purple wine bottle against the back of my
neck, cold compress right on the main artery, poor man’s air-conditioning (a
trick I picked up from too many lean years sitting on ruthless sun-baked bus
stops, a 40 ounce of malt liquor may be substituted). “This shit is shit,” I say to
the fly in charge, “halfway through the label and still I’m blank.” The boss fly
couldn’t care less; he has his own grief with tabletop politics and an eight-day life
span. Food can play a pivotal role in the creative process but not like coffee and a
mammoth bowel movement, or the much superior pills and alcohol. I keep a hot
pepper at rest on my desk near the typewriter so that in times of trouble when all
else fails I have the real deal mojo whammy. I’ll seize that twisted half dried
cayenne as if it is some fabled mystical-voodoo-chicken-foot and cram it right up
my asshole pinching it tight with my sphincter, holding it there. I want/need to
feel a physical burn, fire down below, inspirational madness that will hammer
those stubborn typewriter keys down. In a deep voice stern with authority I say
to the Royal, “I will drive you before me.” It never fails, the pills, the gin, the
searing sphincter, they unleash the being within and possess my fingers with
violent uncontainable energy. Suddenly I’m howling like a scalded circus monkey
and wildly pounding those fucking keys like Libarace mainlining testosterone,
the neighbors play my walls like giant bongos, and the typewriter purrs like a
Gatling gun. “Burn, burn, buuuuurrrnnn!” I scream at the wall I share with the
neighbors, “Everybody gets what they deserve! It’s burn now or burn then! We
all gotta burn sometime! Aaaggghhhh!” All of a sudden the neighbors and me are
performing an impromptu musical number, my feet tap the floor as if running in
place, the typewriter plods along ticking in time, and they provide an anchor
rhythm accenting the low end with bass drum thuds against the cracking plaster
wall.
“Hey asshole, keep it down over there!”
“Buuuuurrrnnnnn! Buurrnnn! Buurrnn!” I sing toward the wall.