Monday, July 27, 2009

Fork You Bobby Frost!!!

My book is online! I just think its so cool that anyone in the whole world could look at a book i wrote at any moment. I realize that maybe 0 people will actually look at it, but its still neat that the possibility is there. If you wanna look at it, just click on the smiling austins up in the corner. It took three google documents to fit it, the links are at the bottom of each part. If you do have time to read it and like it, pass the word around. If you do check it out and cant get into it or dont like it, please let me know why so i can do better on the next one. I think of this book as the book i wanted to read when i was 18, so my new goal is to write the book i want to read when im 30. Hopefully add some maturity but somehow keep a youthful exuberance, skim back on the aggression and aggressive language but somehow stay fresh and funny and thought provoking.
Anyways, i hope you check it out!!

Saturday, July 4, 2009








This Fourth of July, my mind wanders back to the Fourth of July of '96.
I was fresh out of high school.
I'd been working for my brothers fence company.
My farmers tan was looking niiiice.
I had almost saved enough for the 5.0.
I was invincible, unstoppable, I had the world by the balls.
My cousin Brandon came up from Austin to celebrate the 4th.
He too, was fresh out of high school.
He'd been reading lots of Nietzsche .
His beret was looking niiice.
He was invincible, unstoppable and had the world by the balls.
He brought his girlfriend, Heather.
She was broadcasting school fancy, rocking the rachel, and looking niiiice for the summer.
He thought he'd show her some genuine Hickville, Oklahoma.
"Tuttle freaking USA!!!" he kept saying.
Kind of to himself at first, then increasingly loud.
Increasingly brazen.
Increasingly obnoxious.
As we were walking around the ice cream festival,
we'd pass a family with kids and he'd shout,
"Cows, Christians, and pickups!!!!" or
"Tuttle, America, Yeeehaaaa!!!!"
Several people asked me, "What's up with your friend, Jimmy, he's gonna catch a whoopass."
and I'd say, "Ahhh he's ok, just been drinking, that's all."
Which wasn't completely or remotely true, but it worked.
After hanging out and grilling and eating watermelon with the family,
when the sun had said goodbye,
we took the 4wheeler down to the Canadian River to camp out.
Brandon never really stopped talking about "rednecks and their football"
how they are "bumpkins."
It started to get really old.
Even for Heather. She started to roll her eyes every time he'd say,
"Hey Jimmy, do you know who Daniel Johnston is??"
"Jimmy are you familiar with the work of Keith Haring?"
"Have you heard of Belle and Sebastian yet??"
I figured the only way to make the evening remotely tolerable
would be to get everyone nice and liquored up.
So i took the 4 wheeler down to where the townies camped
and bargained for a fifth of whiskey.
We did shots for red fireworks that crawled across the sky and it became evident quickly
that Brandon was lightweight.
Wasn't going to make it.
He was mumbling incoherently
about corporate greed and the lack of true artistry in the music industry.
He was mumbling profusely
about social injustices in third world countries.
He was mumbling ravagely
about how he was missing Austin.
All the poetry he could be hearing right now.
All the after parties. and after after parties.
The culture. The people. The sophistication.
Somewhere in this slobbering drooling monologue, he went out for the count.
Me and Heather were still feeling good so we took the 4wheeler for a spin.
We blared through mudbogs
We jumped little hills
We took a turn a little too fast and fell off sideways into the quicksand.
We crawled out completely muddy and stripped down to our skivvies.
On the ride to the tent, I could feel her body pressed against my back
as she wrapped her arms around me and whispered in my ear,
"You're so much more fun than Brandon."
We got back to the tent and I popped a mixtape in the boombox.
We listened to watermelon crawl and chattahoochee
and went to makeout feelsie city.
We talked the night away and she told me all about how she could transfer to OU
and i told her all about how that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do because of one night of drunken fun.
She took my advice and ended up finishing broadcasting school
to go on to NPR, and as blog rumors have it, has had similar nights of fun
at company mixers with Ira Glass.
Brandon has chilled out a little bit, but not too much. He's a lawyer who handles contract issues for Austin bands and artists. In his spare time he does do good work "helping the helpless."
Every now and again, he'll shoot me an email letting me know that in the same day he managed
to score some obscure band royalties from a song that wilco ripped off, and saved a single mom an eviction from the tenement section of town.
I've gone on to seemingly fence half of Oklahoma City in blue collar bliss
and some days when its about 104 and there's not a cloud in sight,
I ponder interconnectedness, coincidence, happenstance
and chortle at the fact
that I'm two degrees from Ira Glass.