OLYMPIC BLABBING

“Did yuu see that Jamaican?” shouts the hefty, red-faced, middle-aged man who has swung open the post office door and stands twenty yards away from the postal workers he’s addressing. His deeply accented voice thunders through the large silent room like a sudden tanker explosion, startling the few customers in line who are unfamiliar with him and his penchant for nonstop conversation.

Walking up to counter, he delivers cold juice and soda beverages as gifts to the postal workers, whom he considers close friends and who smile and thank him, and then takes his place in the short line bellowing the whole time like a cannon.

“That Jamaican was soooo fast. He just blewww away them other guys. It wasn’t even close. Did you seeee that?” he exclaims.

“He was fast,” says the postal manager smiling knowingly at the man

“Do yuu know he’s only 21 years old?”

“21 years old,” he repeats for emphasis. “I can’t wait to see the relay. He just burned them other guys. There was nobody in sight. That Jamaican just flew! Have yuu ever seen anything like it?”

“Carl Lewis,” says the postal manager.

“Well, now Carl Lewis was fast in his day,” continues the burly man, “but not like this Jamaican. Was that an Olympic record or a world record that he broke?”

“A world record,” confirms the manager.

“He was so far ahead of them other guys. He just blew past them. Them people in Jamaica must be real proud of him. He’s the fastest man in the world, the fastest man who ever lived,” he says also proud.

“Ya know,” he continues after a three second pause, evidently ill at ease with even a moment’s silence, “I always fall asleep on the couch and wake up during the rowin’. I hate the rowin’. It’s so borin’. I’m always asleep and then I wake up and it’s always the rowin’.”

“Always the rowin’,” he repeats in a resigned tone.

“Yes sir, the rowing is not very exciting,” the manager concurs. “I like the track & field, the gymnastics, the swimming.”

A regular at the downtown post office, the man always bursts through the door, conversational topics at the ready. It could be the work they’re doing on the freeway downtown causing an awful traffic jam, the thunderstorms that have been predicted for the weekend or his upset stomach after a delicious seafood lunch. He is a hit with the post office’s bored employees who enjoy the free cold drinks and don’t mind the one-way blabbing.

“Now, I’m ashamed to say it,” says the man with a hint of embarrassment, “but the women’s basketball, they shouldn’t even show that on TV.”

The lady working the other counter laughs at this assertion. She has been smiling, along with everybody else in the post office, since the man entered.

“That’s not sport. They was playin’ this Swedish team and the girl was like 5’5. That ain’t no competition. That ain’t no basketball. Who wants to watch that? Now, the American men’s team, they’re good. Nobody can beat them.”

“But that Jamaican, Oooee!” he yelps making a full circle back to the subject closest to his heart, “he was spectacular.”

“Yes sir,” the manager agrees. “He was fast.”

SATAN EATS AT THE HUDDLE HOUSE

With Christianity in all its most cockamamie forms as fervently popular in the South as liposuction and frozen yogurt are in Los Angeles, outsider art, which frequently features peculiar Christian subject matter, is an idiosyncratic, local tradition. A rural, religious upbringing often inspires the outsider artist to start painting his or her vision of the apocalypse involving wild turkeys descending from the heavens on pieces of scrap wood. He or she might be mentally challenged, hear voices or see visions. A non-religious outsider artist could be an outcast in a small town who collects hubcaps and kitchen utensils and twists them into robot-like creatures. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta has an exceptional assemblage of outsider art in their permanent collection, including a portion of the late Reverend Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden, which can be viewed in Summerville, GA.

This weekend we went and checked out Folk Fest, an annual convention of galleries that specialize in folk art, about sixty percent of which could qualify as outsider art. This was as large a collection of outsider art as you’ll find in any museum. Though, it was all for sale and for the most part amazingly cheap, with regular folks buying it up in great quantities. As you’ll see in these photos, the most popular themes are: Elvis, Jesus, angels, chickens and other farm animals. You’ll also occasionally bump into a fucked-up clown holding a monkey in its lap while smoking a cigarette.

These face jugs are very common in the South. These little devil, goblin guys are a bit nicer than the usual ones you see in every antique store.

The Parade by J. Whipple

Three other works by J. Whipple

Daniel Johnston performed and had a booth at Folk Fest

Elvis with Teddy Bear

A customer

Some outsider art in the bathroom stall

BAT-SIZED MOTH

In August, the South is one sprawling, nasty swamp slithering with every type of critter. Some I can identify effortlessly such as the giant cockroach or the sweaty man with no shirt who really should be wearing one. But the majority of the creatures socializing on my front porch I am not familiar with. Late last night, when I attempted to put a letter out by the door, a huge hovering beast flew just above me spinning around the porch light. At first, I thought it was a bat or perhaps a bird. I ducked, scampered back inside recalling Hitchcock and slammed the door behind me. The creature then settled down, resting on the rim of the porch, where I could gape at it through the window. I soon realized that this furry, flying, 6-inch-long-or-so creature was the bat-sized moth (Australopithecus Mothusus), a prehistoric omnivore that has lived on the Earth for 20,000 years dive bombing porch lights. (I was unable to obtain a shot with the beast in midair, so all I have is this one crummy photo, which belies the creature’s true immensity and wingspan.)



After this discovery, the entomologist within was awakened and I decided to explore the backyard, where I came upon other native arthropods such as the big, fat, crazy-looking, probably poisonous spider (Arachnoid Schmidous), the little green fella (Glubious Verdeious), the funky-looking beetle (Hipsterous Obnoxiousious), the pesky squirrel (Squirrlous Peskious) and the loud, screeching thing in the tree (Shutupus Insanus).

SOUTHERN COLESLAW FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A WESTSIDE JEW

I don’t really have anything to say about Southern coleslaw. I just like the title: Southern Coleslaw from the Perspective of a Westside Jew. I’d like to contrast it with Jewish deli coleslaw, but there really is no difference, other than Jewish deli coleslaw is a bit more reliably yummy. However, while eating coleslaw in the South, I often recall my Jewish homeland of West L.A.: pickles in a small barrel on the table at Juniors, an obnoxious woman who is unable to choose her salad dressing, Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda, the man with the hearing aid and the chopped liver sandwich, the other man in the baseball cap coughing, the plastic surgery rendering an old lady into a very strange Narnia-looking creature, that universe of neurotic blabbing and delicious halvah that seems so distant from my Southern coleslaw.

THE CRIMSON TIDE

In the South, no one talks about the Lakers, which may be the most common conversational topic in Los Angeles. Instead, folks are obsessed with college football and basketball, which I know nothing about (the same can be said of most of the subjects I will discuss on this site). That was the case when my wife and I arrived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama while driving out to Georgia when we first moved here. Flying cockroaches greeted us at the initial motel we stopped at. We didn’t stay there, but I had noticed several photos of a man in a suit wearing an odd hat on the wall of the reception area. In the next motel, I saw the same photo and a plaque of the man overlooking the reception. I had to ask “Who is he?” The motel receptionist looked somewhat stunned as if I had asked who that rotund fellow with the red suit and the white beard holding the presents was. “That’s Paul Bear Bryant,” she said, “the legendary football coach.” “Wow, legendary,” I thought, “I’ve never heard of him.” Well, I still don’t know fuck-all about Paul Bear Bryant or the Crimson Tide, other than that they are a real big ass deal in Alabama, with stores dedicated to their glory in woebegone Alabama malls and bumper stickers on the back of jalopies with Alabama plates.

But I believe my fascination with tough-as-nails college coaches who inspire troubled youngsters to win national championships began with Bear Bryant and continued when I read something about Bobby Knight, the emotional basketball coach who once got so peeved that he threw a chair onto the basketball court in the middle of a game. From there, I happened to catch both Coach Carter and Glory Road on television. Remarkably similar, both films focus on basketball coaches who won’t let their players have lives outside of practicing and winning. In Glory Road, the coach (played by the unfailingly awful Josh Lucas) forbids the players to hang around girls. Coach Carter (starring Samuel Jackson in a one-note performance) is such a dick he breaks into a party and drags his players out of the hot tub. After 5,000 push-ups and one million suicides, the players journey down that glorious road to triumph and national championships of some sort. The coaches, based on real life stubborn assholes, are celebrated for their totalitarian vision, tearing these troubled youths away from distractions like girls and having fun and teaching them the fundamentals of the game and how to win it to soaring violins at the end.

I think the idea of righteous asshole coach could be taken to even further extremes. Rather than not letting them touch the ball for the first few weeks, while they are learning defense (as is the case in one or both of these movies), I think the coach should not let them touch the ball in the first ten games, so they learn the fundamentals of how to defend and aren’t distracted by needless frivolities like scoring. I like the idea of a college coach who throttles his players when they dare smile at a girl after the game. (Though, isn’t getting laid supposed to be one of the key benefits of being a jock? Otherwise, why not join the Chess Club?)

The college coach who becomes “a legend” should be intense and unwavering, but also Hitleresque. The kids have it too easy nowadays with their iPods and their bling bling and their being allowed to associate with girls.

HIPSTERS

For a long while, I thought maybe there weren’t any proper hipsters in Atlanta. I speak of the blasé, vintage-ruffled-shirt-wearing, retarded-rock & roll-haircut-sporting, kitsch-fixated, low-brow art and music connoisseurs one finds commonly at Echo Park house parties or Eagle Rock garage sales. Along with perhaps London, Tokyo, New York and San Francisco, L.A. is one of the capitals of hipsterdom.

But one evening, my wife and I went to a Planet of the Apes themed art opening at The Gallery in East Atlanta, which is attached to a tattoo parlor. As we looked for a parking space, I commented that this seemed like an event where we might encounter our first hipsters in Atlanta. To our infinite surprise, the place, which was packed with rockabilly tattooed lamesters and the usual Pabst beer six-pack drinking chubby blonde girls, was also awash with bonafide hipsters, gals with fashionably nerdy glasses and fellas sporting know-it-all grins. It reminded us of openings at La Luz de Jesus in Los Feliz. Mind you, people were not as old, wrinkled, and fuckin’ scary looking at this opening as they are under La Luz’s harsh lighting, but the art (humorous Planet of the Apes themed hipster art), the free cheap beer and wine and almost everything else was dead-on. There was even a burlesque act with gals dressed in banana outfits, which seemed La Luz, even if it wasn’t. So, there are hipsters in Atlanta we discovered, even if we were too shy to talk to anyone, and find out for sure about what sort of record collections they had. There must be anarchists, atheists, Cacophonists, Satanists, alterna-Jews, dachshund fanciers and other weirdos in Atlanta too. I will report so here when I next stumble upon them.

SIGNS OF THE SOUTH

Clumpies Ice Cream is'n Gud (Chattanooga, TN)

Far Wood Fer Sale (Abilene, TX)


Not so many choices

No longer the Hot Dog King

Now, that was a real twister (Tennessee)

Ice Cream for Pets? Whole Pork Boston Butt? (Greenville, S.C.)

Breakfast Special $3.00

Food is Cheap in the South

Smoky Mountain Indian Exploitation

Jesus commands you to kick him in duh gut (Murphy, N.C.)