oprah?

tony, mariah and i are concerned about you.

save your concern.

seriously, you seem very angry lately. would you like to talk about it?

i wouldnt know what to say. im not angry right now, if that makes you feel better.

that makes me pleased. yes, but tony, please start thinking about your future. you want to be successful right?

i’d rather be good.

you can be both. dont you know that?

which one of you two are both?

see, theres that anger again. why the rap lyrics?

cuz theyre good.

dont you know that you are shooting yourself in the foot with those? there are people out there who really like your writing who just will not link to your page if they know that theyre going to send their readers to a hateful, foul-mouthed, ghetto site with poor spelling and bad grammar and topics that do not befit a family audience.

oh well.

dont you want your friend the instapundit to link to you?

instapundit linked to an article defining sodomy yesterday, are you saying the geto boys is worse than sodomy?

the geto boys is worse than everything. im guessing that thats exactly why you put them on your page.

i put them on there because that song is fabulous. ive listened to it nearly every day since it first came out. pat whalen, jeff’s brother, got it at the nexus way back when and one night we stayed up all night listening to it laughing and being blown away. and yes its worse than everything, but its also better too. do your homework. and it is successful. i just saw scarface on mtv cribs last weekend.

ok, well, tony, youre not going to get on cribs putting the geto boys on your page.

life is full of tiny little suprises, hundred millionaire fat black woman. i bet that you never thought that just from being the host of a talk show you could earn so much money either.

thats true, so you should learn from my example.

but i am. you did it by keeping true to who you are. you throw in some ebonics when you want to, i bust with the gangsta rap. it keeps us real.

no, it keeps you down.

i talk to myself on a blog on the web. there is no further depth that i could sink, oprah.

yes there is, you could have no hits a day.

van gogh didnt worry about his hits, i wont either.

dont you want this, tony?

want what? a fake talk show devoid of any soul. fake spirituality? Dr. Phil, a rip off Advanced Course trainer gone wild? soft lighting, a penthouse on lsd – lake shore drive, a lover who wont marry me, hangups about my body, zillions of dollars and very little to show from it? i’d rather pump gas and have women let me look up their skirt when im cleaning their windows, thanks.

dont you want to meet people like mariah?

yes.

shes not going to want to meet you if youre just a dumb blogger.

i guess im stuck with the teens and the college girls then. oh well.

fine, tony. live in your little fantasy world, make no money, keep yourself confined in the second-teir of amateur authorship. you have a talent that youre just pissing away, day after day. the lord will look at you and judge you on the final day and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.

wrong, oprah, the lord is going to look at me and say, theres a guy who wrote what was true for him and didnt get distracted by flesh, money, power, fame. his treasure was in the kingdom of heaven, not in a bank on michigan avenue. we get judged by our hearts, thankfully. and mine might not be completely pure, but it hasnt sold out fifty times over.

youre so dilluded.

hip hop is american music from our people, oprah. it’s as popular as “the sopranos” and makes more money than all “the godfathers” put together. not only would i be a gigantic sell out not to bring light to this music, but i would be a big fat liar because i love it and it kicks my ass. instapundit will link me when he sees something that fits with what he’s talking about. hes not afraid of what his readers will think, he’s got so many readers and sends people in so many directions and they keep coming back. they come back not because they love where they go, but because they trust him.

so?

so my readers trust me because they know that i might bs with this fact or that fact but when it comes to music, they know theres no fucking around with what i put up there. im going to eat a ding dong now, oprah. give mariah a kiss for me.

oish has a new layout that is unbelievably good

(Springsteen)

The rangers had a homecoming in Harlem late last night

And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine over the Jersey state line

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge

Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain

The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants

Together they take a stab at romance

and disappear down Flamingo Lane

Well the Maximum Lawman run down Flamingo chasing the Rat

and the barefoot girl

And the kids round here look just like shadows

always quiet, holding hands

From the churches to the jails tonight all is silence in the world

As we take our stand

down in Jungleland

The midnight gang’s assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night

They’ll meet `neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light

Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike

There’s a ballet being fought out in the alley

Until the local cops, Cherry Tops, rips this holy night

The street’s alive as secret debts are paid

Contacts made, they vanished unseen

Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine

The hungry and the hunted explode into rock’n’roll bands

That face off against each other out in the street

down in Jungleland

In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage

Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the dj plays

Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners

Desperate as the night moves on,

just a look

and a whisper,

and they’re gone

Beneath the city two hearts beat

Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroom locked

In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender in the tunnels uptown

The Rat’s own dream guns him down as shots echo

down them hallways in the night

No one watches when the ambulance pulls away

Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light

Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz

Between flesh and what’s fantasy

and the poets down here don’t write nothing at all,

they just stand back and let it all be

And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment

And try to make an honest stand

but they wind up wounded,

not even dead

Tonight

in

Jungleland

ken layne

school? it was one a.m.

sure enough it was school. isla vista university.

tony we want to publish your book.

God bless you.

how soon can you be here?

twenty minutes.

how are you going to do that?

i have a flying car. i’ll land on one of the copter pads on the cliffs by the lagoon.

please dont bring any of those xbi things up here. come alone. show a little class.

knocked on my neighbor’s door. the old lady. she said i could borrow her 1980 dodge van.

so it was three on the tree in the middle of the night.

made it to IV in an hour and a half. knelt at the alter of the college of creative studies and didnt dare look up.

go to campus point, build a fire, bring your manuscript, and a cup.

skateboarded through campus turned left at the thunder dome, then took the hill down to the lagoon past the faculty club. found a red wheelbarrow beside some white chickens, gathered wood on my way to the beach, started a fire, a shadowy figure was approaching me with something on his shoulder.

as it got closer i saw that it wasnt a man, it was a woman, and she had what appeared to be a full keg of beer on her shoulder.

mind over matter, tp. good to see you.

it was my creative studies advisor. the reason for everything.

dont use my name on your blog if you write about this, she said. and tapped the keg and filled up my cup.

she sat crosslegged at the fire and accepted my manuscript and read it as the waves crashed and the lighthouse kept very slow time and every once in a while she would laugh and look up at me, proudly, and that meant everything in the world to me.

before we drank very much she was done.

it starts off slow, but i like that. it shows progress. it shows growth. people might read this and see that with practice you get better as you write and you end up with some very good stories along the way.

thank you.

and it has an ending. a real one. and a real begining.

im so glad you think that.

you need to take the poems out though.

but…

this is a book of short stories. some very short stories. you dont need to apologize for it with your poems.

bukowski put poems and stories together.

who?

i promised people there would be poems.

give them their money back if they dont like it.

did you like the photo essay?

yes, but it needs to be cut out too.

you dont understand, people Love the photo essays.

too bad. this is a book of short stories. dont fuck it up.

i learned early on that she was right about everything, so we clinked plastic cups that said mgd on it and drank.

your grammar is bad and there are lots of spelling mistakes.

sorry.

no, it’s cute. for some reason when you do it it’s ok. but whats up with the ee cummings all lowercase who-ha?

its a web thing.

dont change it. i love it. nobody has been able to tribute ee without completely making everyone think of him. youre on the right path.

what about the cover?

the cover needs to be in color. thats gonna cost you.

cost me?

you think this is going to be free? youre going to pay for everything. and it wont be cheap.

will it look like a book at least?

no, it will look like a college reader. university of isla vista press. get it?

will it have a spine with the title on it?

no.

please?

no.

people wont think that it’s a book.

dont judge a book by its spine.

when will it be ready?

friday. come back up here then with a thousand dollars and i’ll give you one hundred books.

give me ninety nine, i’d like you to have one.

this is a good thing, tony.

thank you so much, woman who should be praised.

thank me by helping me kill this keg.

17. the comedian

faster harder deeper