The Mojo Wire Is Not Your Friend

Part of the exciting life of a reporter is getting all kinds of material from kooks. And in these lax, post-modern times, kooks have a wide variety of methods to choose from to spread their kookery.

There is regular mail. Many kooks prefer this, as their remote dwellings are not wired for modern telecommunications.

There is telephone. Many kooks are unaware of caller ID, which takes the sting out of the anonymous "Deep Throat" sort of call.

Example:
Me: (guardedly) Hello?
Kook: I wanna give ya an anoner — an annonymuh — I wanna tell ya something without my name in it.
Me: Oh, hiya there, Al.
Kook: (spluttering) Click.

There is email. Anti-spam programs generally take care of this, but sometimes something slips through. Kooks like attachments; an email from a whacko will be festooned with them.

And there is the fax, a machine for which I prefer the Hunter S. Thompson name for the old Telex machine — the Mojo Wire.

Kooks like fax machines. I think it's because they know the product comes out on the receiver's end as a semi-legible, greasy affair, similar to the mimeographed copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (b/w "Party Down with Henry Ford") that started their kookery in the first place.

Now, by "kooks" I include the following: crackpots, cranks, conspiracy theorists; people who think I am a shill for the right; people who firmly believe I am part of the left-wing conspiracy.

Not to forget these chatty souls: New Age believers of every description; zealots (from Anglicans to Zoroastrians); Twelve Steppers, No-Steppers, and my personal favorite, Missed Steppers.

All of them are convinced my soul is in peril. (Last I checked, it was a little battered, but basically intact and functioning.)

This is but a sampling of the kook world.

And I admit it: I am a connoisseur of kooks. Many's the time I have wriggled out of an unpleasant political discussion by invoking the Reptilian Conspiracy.

So I can't complain when the fax machine starts making that peculiar humming sound that says "Incoming from Uncaged Looney!"

Here is a recent example. These are the first two pages, of seven, plus a closeup of some of the marginalia.

(If you would like a copy of the entire thing, send $3.50 and a SASE to "Save the Kooks," PO Box 1755, Lakeville, CT 06039.)

Working for a newspaper really is a splendid way to make a living.

Page one

Page two

Page two detail

Coiled Stew

Coiled Stew

Two pounds hot Italian sausage

One medium yellow onion

One red pepper

Garlic

One can kidney beans

One can diced tomatoes

Brown rice/quinoa blend

Optional: One bag spinach

In a big pot cook up some garlic in olive oil, add chopped onions and red pepper, stir around.

While this is happening cut up poopy-looking sausage coils into one-inch chunks.

Heave them into the pot and stir it all up, let it go for a while. Keep stirring so nothing burns. Add beans and tomatoes, with all liquids, lower the heat, stir some more, cover. 

After 30 minutes or so transfer the whole mess into a crock pot, which is where it's going to wind up anyway.

When you're ready to eat cook up some brown rice/qunioa blend, unless you want to spend $12 for a little box of pure keen-wah, which strikes me as a pretty major rip-off.

If you cant to add the spinach just rip the shit up or chop it or whatever and shove it in the crock pot before you cook the rice and keen-wah. By the time the rice is done the spinach will be done too.

Serve with grated cheese. You could also mix in some sour cream.

It looks pretty nasty but it tastes good, and it'c cheap and easy to make.

Peter Brittingham

Peter meets Russell Gee at the Falls Village car show, Sept. 2012, in the Battle of the Smart Alecks. Erika can sense the peril.

I first met Peter Brittingham in August of 1998, shortly after arriving at Mountainside for alcoholism treatment.

I was still pretty wobbly. Bruce Drever pointed me in Pete's direction and gave me a gentle shove, and we chatted in the front room before the big Friday night meeting.

"So, what brings you here?" asked this cheerful-looking guy with wild hair and a beard.

I mumbled something about having some trouble with drinking and needing to get my career back on track and blah blah blah and…

"No, that's not it," said Pete, looking me in the eye and grinning. I had trouble meeting his gaze. I thought he was insane, frankly, and that I had stumbled into some sort of cult situation. Soon I'd be wearing an orange robe and banging a tambourine on a street corner.

"You know what it is?" continued this maniac.

"No, what?" I said.

"You're an asshole!"

I must have looked startled, because he hastened to reassure me.

"Don't worry about it. I'm an asshole too!"

I used to time my fishing trips on the Blackberry River to finish up in the deep pool behind the house on Lower Road in Canaan. Trevor would come out to greet me, by which I mean bark at me. His nose is good but his eyesight is a little faulty, so I'd be casting by the boulder in that pool while Trevor was diligently barking in the wrong direction.

One warm afternoon last fall I took a couple of decent browns from the run immediately below Pete's pool, and kept them, figuring fresh trout wouldn't go amiss at the Crofut-Brittingham table.

Then I took a really good brown from Pete's pool, on a tiny (size 20) Prince nymph. For you non-anglers, this is a very small hook with a couple of turns of green fuzz on it and a little red tail. 

I thought about keeping him too — he was about 18 or 20 inches, a real lunker for a little stream — but decided against it.

Then I clambered up to the yard. Peter was taking the afternoon sun. He looked tired. 

I gave him the fish and he cracked a joke about Blackberry trout all tasting like cow shit.

"So you don't want them?"

"Aw, hell yes I want them, gimme."

Peter had a quality that my late father had, and that I admire: when he asked how I was doing, he was truly interested in my response.

He was blunt, vulgar and occasionally offensive; he possessed a true intuition about his fellow alcoholics and addicts; he gave of himself freely, and had a damn good time doing it.

Even in the last few weeks, during the meetings at his house, his spirit was undaunted.

That spirit will live within the countless people he helped — especially those of us who were lucky enough to get cussed out by Peter at particularly jittery moments in our lives.

Patrick L. Sullivan

Lakeville, Conn.

April 17, 2013

Why We Fish (part one)

Try a steady diet of this and see how fast your brain unravels.

My Brain Today

If you stare at it long enough a room full of monkeys at typewriters will write "Hamlet." I swear.

Memory Lane Strikes Again

I don't know why but I was thinking about this trip a few years back. The guy on the left, Mike Z., needed company as he met with his soon-to-be ex-wife and I got the nod.

The idea was to provide some kind of support as he negotiated this difficult moment, and to help keep him from getting sozzled if it didn't go well.

It didn't go very well, but it wasn't a complete disaster, either.

Afterwards we got out of our suits (Jos. A. Bank for Mike, which he had bought when he was much heavier, and vintage Brooks Bros. for me) and farted around Kittery, Me., where I learned that a "lobster roll" is nothing more exotic than lobster meat and mayonnaise on a hot dog bun. Big whoop, frankly.

Unfortunately the next time I visited Kittery was for Mike's funeral. He never did get it, but he was a decent guy.

Happy New Year — Let's Hope It Doesn't Suck

2012 sucked, and there is nowhere to go but up. Unless we go down some more.

Announcing the official 1980s revival. My theory — if enough people dress like they did during the Reagan years, someone of similar stature and ability will come along in 2016.

What else am I looking for in 2013?

• Congress grows a collective set and smacks this imperial president around. (Not holding my breath on this one.)
• The economy continues to disimprove; my newspaper goes under; I go on unemployment and wind up with more take-home pay than when I worked full-time.
• The green Subaru, creaking a bit at 210K and which smells like the cigar bar  in Hell, becomes the Fish Car. I read "Trout Madness" 25 years ago and ever since I have wanted a Fish Car.
• I master the art of the three-fly presentation a la Davy Wotton.
• I get down to 170 pounds and stay there. This is not unrealistic.
• Except for professional reasons, I ignore politics in 2013. I also ignore political posts by Facebook friends.
• I am going to start ironing some of my chinos and see how I like it.
• I am going to give Match.com three more months, and if I can't get something going then I am going into romantic retirement — which won't be much different than the status quo.
• Definitely taking a road trip to West Virginia to fish with Phil this spring — although probably not in the Fish Car.
• Explore out of the way Catskill streams this year. Ditto Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Lakeville, Conn.

Lakeville on a cold December evening. Waiting for snow.

Good God! Truffles!

Or make up your own caption.

We're Broke — Can You Dig It?

Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America by Nick Gillespie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Usually when people talk about "moderates" or a "third way" they are taking a political stance similar to the Democratic party ca. 1976 — which was not all that different from that of the Republican Party ca. 1976.

And when libertarians get going, they often start out strong — the government that governs best governs least — and then flounder on the reefs of legalizing all illegal drugs, or adopting a McGovernish foreign policy. (See Ron Paul.)

These guys, from Reason magazine, are charting a third way that is based not as much on doctrine as on youth and technology.

The gist is that younger voters today approach politics like consumers. And they are jamming the servers with complaints about the slothful, wasteful and dopey government.

What, they ask several times, is so difficult about the concept that we are broke?

What indeed.

With bonus insight into the importance of the Velvet Underground, which should be a clue that this is not the ordinary political book.

View all my reviews

Adventures in Horticulture

Through absolutely no fault of my own I have these flowers right outside my door. A couple years ago the landlord hired a lady to come mess around with the place, and nothing happened. But this year all these orange things popped up, and the purple things, which started out as boring green pods, changed color and in the last week or so started to open up.

I sit out here in the mornings with coffee, cigar and current book, Imus on the radio, and the flowers - whatever they are. Very restful.

When Legends Bite the Big One

I picked up some used CDs at a tag sale yesterday — the Who's Quadrophenia, and a Jimi Hendrix collection, Voodoo Child.

A friend of mine in college was always a little out there, but by our senior year he had holed up in a single room, taking blotter acid and listening to Quadrophenia (and Sgt. Pepper) over and over. Somehow he graduated. How is one of life's enduring mysteries.

I haven't heard Quadrophenia in 25 years, except for bits and pieces on the radio. I popped it in on the way to a "Battle of the Bands" thing at the local high school.

Right away it was stupid — surf noises, and an alternately bombastic and syrupy Statement of Themes on the synthesizer.

The synth was set on "strings," I suppose. And Sweet Tap-Dancin' Jeezus does it sound childish, and amateurish. For anybody without the massive ego of Pete Townshend these interludes would be more accurately described as "ditties."

But "Can You See the Real Me" is a Who song. Not their greatest by a long shot, but it's the real thing.

And it's the last listenable moment on the two-disc set. I remembered "5:15" as pretty good. It isn't.

A "rock opera" was always a dopey notion. Real opera is bad enough — you think a back beat's gonna make it work? Just write your kick-ass three-minute song and shut up already.

(Quadrophenia is also a really long, really bad film. If you've run out of red-hot needles to shove in your eyeballs check it out.)



One of the flaws in the enthusiastic performances at the Battle of the Bands was the belief of the electric guitarists that they will, at some point in their careers, get paid by the note. And it's hard to argue the point after listening to the live disc of Voodoo Child, which presents Jimi Hendrix as the recipient of the Annoying Guitarist Guild's highest award, the Diddley-Diddley-Diddley Whoo-Ooo-Ooo medal (with wah-wah clusters) for "Most Egregious Waste of Everybody's Time."

Disc one is a recap of a different Hendrix: the innovative and — dare I say? (dare, dare) — economical player on three monstrously good studio albums.

Buried in the insipid liner notes, with a sanitized bio and lots of self-congratulatory splooge about how the great man's recorded legacy is finally in the hands of people who care, is an observation of bass player Noel Redding looking bored out of his mind while Hendrix went off on one of his endless, tedious workouts.

Charlie Parker and John Coltrane were geniuses, but after Parker all horn players started trying to play really fast, with few spaces. Post-Coltrane, horn players began playing really fast with no spaces.

And no point. Jazz morphed into chamber music after that. Has anybody danced at a jazz show in the last 50 years?

Listen to Hendrix's solos on these live shots without getting a headache and I'll send you five bucks. (You can't be drunk or stoned, and you'll have to prove it before I send the dough.)

No dynamics, no restraint, no thought. Just flailing away, as if getting paid by the note.

Brian Eno was once asked why Robert Fripp was his favorite guitarist. The answer: "He plays with his ears, not with his hands."

Ugh

"I hate this effing snow" — Mike V.

Temperature reading in Lakeville, Conn., 7:05 a.m.

Now This is a Snow Storm

I often make snippy remarks about what I consider the myth of the hardy, can-do New Englander — at least in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut, where schools are closed at the merest hint of snow and people act as if they'd never seen the stuff before.

I blame proximity to New York City for this degenerate attitude.

But this here's a storm! I went outside at about 3 a.m. for a look. It was coming down heavier than horseshit out of Paul Krugman but I figured we were looking at a foot, tops.

Should have taken the over. I cleaned off the car in the photo, which at 7:30 a.m. is well and truly covered.

Yessir, this here's a storm. I got my case of condensed milk (Desert Storm surplus), my water purification tablets, extra batteries, a miniature Bible, and plenty of extra .22 cartridges in case I am forced to go on the possum diet.

(Later)

Last winter those big storms that pummeled the mid-Atlantic seaboard pretty much conked out at the Hudson River. We'd get five inches in NW Connecticut, and Kingston, N.Y., only 40-odd miles away, would be digging out from a couple of feet.

Not this year. My ballpark guess is 20 inches (ruler on top of car).

Today the well-dressed man is wearing LL Bean snow boots, insulated, with a sort of mini-gaiter up top. Fabulous boots, now discontinued. Plus a Bean sweater, flannel shirt and long johns, Orvis moleskins, and my dorky red hunting cap.

Merry Christmas, Here's Your Gorilla

A few days before setting off for Christmas I found a smallish toy gorilla — some kind of insurance company giveaway — on the 25-cent table at The Bargain Barn, Sharon, Conn.

Then I found another.

The ladies got into it, and unearthed three more from the great pile of assorted junk.

This allowed me to walk into the room Christmas Day and say to my parents, cousin Dan, and his girlfriend Kanako, "Merry Christmas, here's your gorilla, Merry Christmas, here's your gorilla..."

The results were most gratifying. Best $1.36 I ever spent.

Ugh. New Year's Trip.

I think I have perfected the Northwest Corner-to-NoVa run now. This time I went from the Washington Beltway to Interstate 95 to the Baltimore Beltway. Once there I headed towards Towson and followed the signs for Interstate 83 to York, Pa.

From there I-83 runs the traveler into I-81 in Harrisburg, minus the scramble and construction delays and other assorted crap of the Leesburg-Gettysburg-Harrisburg route. (Lotta burgs there.)
I-81 north to Scranton, pick up I-84 east to Port Jervis, N.Y., take the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge (with great view to the south of brooding mountains over the Hudson) to the Taconic Parkway north to US 44 at Millbrook and onwards easterly into Lakeville, Conn.

In contrast to the ride down, seven and a half hours (four pit stops), 410 miles. $1 in tolls. Heard Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life" for the first time in years and marveled at what an absolutely awful production it is, in every possible way.

Ugh. Christmas trip.

Lakeville to NoVa. Eight hours, 407 miles. Harrisburg, Pa. (known world-wide as the Epicenter of Evil) is always bad, but the last 15 miles - from Leesburg, Va. to McLean - is the worst.

On the plus side, little to no traffic most of the way, and a grand total of 75 cents in tolls. Try that on the Jersey Turnpike-Delaware Bridge-Baltimore Tunnel route.

Smarm

I'm tired of this guy. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has never done a blessed thing in his life except feed at the public trough. I mean, dedicate his life to public service. Sorry.

What kind of weenie gets a 1600 on his SATs, goes to Harvard and Harvard again (undergrad and law school) and then immediately runs for the state legislature?

The kind of weenie for whom publicity is more important than money, that's what kind of weenie.

And along the way he's become so convinced of his own personal marvelousness and the infallibility of his beliefs that anyone who dares disagree with Mr. Harvard wants to drag us back a couple of centuries.

Here is His Excellency, mouthing off to the president via "Good Morning America":

“My advice to the president is compromise when you can, but when people are being unreasonable, and we have hard right people who seem to be wanting to move us back to the 19th century, draw some lines in the sand and fight,” Schumer said. “Try to compromise first. Do everything you can, but don’t give up your core fundamental principles. I think the American people will respect that.”

Obama makes his first semi-sensible move in two years and to Mr. Harvard he's a sellout. Anyone who disagrees is unreasonable. Schumer's idea of compromise? He wins.

I'm still a registered Democrat, for obscure, atavistic reasons. I keep hoping that regular Dems will come to their senses and give the lefties that have hijacked the party the bum's Rush Limbaugh. (Ahahaha.)

Alas, I am not sanguine about this prospect.

I Like My Red Hunting Cap — and other thoughts from November 2010

It's warm, it stays put and it just might keep some drunken oaf from shooting me.

Terry Cowgill likes to take photos of cars with lots of bumper stickers, which always are of the hippie-dippy persuasion.

Well, across the Hudson in the hardscrabble atmosphere of Ulster County, N.Y., it's a different story:


This guy received style points for the wicker creel, but lost them for a) whipping the water and b) zero patience.

Late season fishing, in high, turbid flows, means working flies around likely lies and doing so blind. Just banging a few casts into a run and then moving on isn't going to cut it.

Instabuddhist

So now that holiday depression is in full swing I am reminded of the first two of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths: Life = suffering, and the cause of suffering is attachment.

To anything, or anybody. It's all transient, temporal, unreal.

So you gotta cut that stuff out, boy. Especially with insane women.

Seems like a pretty crabbed way to go through life, frankly. But I'll try it, although not to the extent of giving up my thrift shop clothing collection or my arsenal of fly rods.

No wonder addicts like being instabuddhists. It doesn't actually involve any work. All you have to do is keep your head down and don't engage unless absolutely necessary.

Yay.

**********

So here's today's Instabuddhist itinerary — Deli, talk with old codgers in outwardly meaningful but completely disconnected manner (because I am an Instabuddhist and therefore don't really care for deep spiritual reasons); gym, to improve physical self (although it doesn't really matter because it's an illusion); take a ride somewhere I haven't been to in a long time, like Rhinebeck or Millbrook, N.Y., to see if things are as boring there (an illusion, of course, born of desire). I would normally go to an AA meeting tonight but I'm an Instabuddhist now and have no need for such temporal things. Plus they'll be talking about being thankful and grateful and we know those are just part of the big cosmic joke. Right?