SONG OF THE DAY: Country Rap Tune (screwed and chopped)

Tow Down is a wild anomaly in the world of white rappers. “Country Rap Tune” is a certified all-time banger, featuring Big Hawk and Big Pokey, and getting the screwed and chopped treatment with a voiceover from DJ Screw himself that probably done got more plays than the original album version, by a lot. The video is hilariously of the era, with Tow Down driving a little ass car painted up like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard, and set in all the normal “I’m mixing country and rap together” locales you’d expect from that time – a farm and barn and farmer’s daughter getting tow down in the hay loft, and an overall poor dental hygience redneck chasing him with a shotgun. The whole video is basically an episode of Dukes of Hazzard, with Hawk rapping in the barn and Pokey sitting on a Boss Hogg Cadillac outside a drinking hole. Tow Down’s verse is hot, and up to snuff with the two Screwed Up Click heavyweights on this one. I still think that “I’m not Garth Brooks, but I got friends in low places,” line weekly in my head.
The wild shit is you never really heard nothing else come from Tow Down. But that first CD he had featured a slew of Houston legends. Looks like he did a little stint with his brother for a marijuana bust a decade back, but he’s still chasing those hip hop dreams, with his own record label, promoting shows, and flipping houses maybe (according to a linkedin account). But the phrase “country rap tune” ended up describing a whole genre, which after that initial wave of guys like Bubba Sparxxx and Haystak, has steadily declined into some weird ass reverse psychology rural minstrel show. And a lot of those old southern white rappers are making money off paid features, to stay semi-relevant in this country rap genre.
I find it weird, because a lot of Prolo’s releases over the years would fit this genre, before it was a genre, but I’d be embarrassed if a lot of these newer dudes ever asked me to spit on a track. I’d take that shit is a sign of my own inherent wackness. But to Tow Down’s credit, he’s not in that realm, and he’s putting out music by new Houston rappers, and keeping it multicultural (as it should be) instead of disappearing into the weird “whites only” hip hop lane some of these guys shifted into.
But the most amazing thing, to me, is back then, when this song dropped, Tow Down had his own signature hairstyle. And I’m not really even sure how to describe it. When he’s wearing a ballcap, it looks kinda like he’s got Willie Nelson braids, but in four instead of just two. But what he actually was rocking was these four super curls styled to come off his head in quadrants. It’s a wild style, even for back then. But get this… HE’S STILL GOT THAT SHIT. Except now he’s 25 years older, got a grey fox beard going on, and those four super curls are super long. It’s like a whiteboy was all of a sudden hanging out with DJ Quik and Suga Free in that imitating Michael McDonald clip.
Anyways, this song is still an all-time banger. Don’t get it twisted (like Tow Down’s hair).

SONG OF THE DAY: Killing Time

I will still listen to shit like this, and drive down back roads with the windows down, and it’s still a reckless life, but in different ways than it would’ve been thirty years ago. You gotta change, and challenge the universe is different ways, because if you were lucky enough to roll the dice certain ways and never crap out (die), you’d be pushing your luck too far to keep it up. So I’m still getting stupid (because I know how), but I try to keep it fresh. Just killing time until eventually I’m freed from this spiritual prison of a body.

SONG OF THE DAY: Dirty White Boy (kudzu'd)

Thinking about growing my hair long again, and getting a perm, and just being the greasiest version of myself possible.

B4R3LY TR34D1NG W4T3R WH1L3...

barely treading water while 
also feeling like retread 
myself… at least not balding 

SONG OF THE DAY: Longa

I don’t know how many of you watched Ramy, but man does Ramy piss me off. What a dumb fuck. I am thankful they took more time to make Ramy’s dad’s bald spot look more realistic the second season though. The first season it was just a straight around his head cut, unreal as fuck looking. Also, I’m hoping Ramy’s uncle gets a spinoff show where he becomes an independent wrestler in New Jersey.

L0NGH41R3D R3DN3CKS TH4T L0V3 TRVMP...

longhaired rednecks that love Trump

and believe blue lives matter

are delusional as fuck

B0N J0V1'S W4NT3D D34D 0R...

Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or

Alive" lyrics tattooed on

my torso in Arabic

JJ Krupert Jan 2018 number nine "nothing"

Back in the day, I didn’t get into Townes Van Zandt a whole lot, because of the too hip know-it-all shineface types that was hyping him to me through the smoke and blurs. Contrarianism will deny you some good shit sometimes. Luckily for myself, I came around, and though shitty Townes Van Zandt is really shitty (which is to be expected of artists steeped in addiction tbh), the good TVZ is some of the most solid psychic shit. “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold” for example has manifested in my life into an entire outlaw jack of diamonds philosophy.

Wino I never didn’t get into but I did overlook for a while, because his dirtweed metalhead stage of public greatness (albeit along the margins… always choose marginalization as my man T-2 Billion said) came later than my retirement from teen dirtweed metalhead and I had moved onto whatever I was onto next in my stumbling path of personal growth from white trash to dirtgod. But Wino has never not been great to some extent (despite being steeped in addiction).

Many metalheads and punks when aging go the acoustic route as an artistic contrarian act, and much of it is super-pretentious and unnecessary. It’s basically “hahaha this guy used to scream about crazy shit and now he’s singing softly about crazy shit, isn’t this great?” No, much of the time it is not. In fact, this song is off an album of that type of shit by three dudes. The other two guys (don't even know who they are, some sort of punks or metalheads or some shit) are mostly throwaway tracks.

Such is not the case with Wino though. His acoustic catalog now rivals his old shit in pure hugeness of amazement. So of course if you throw a TVZ song into the Wino garble acoustic flim-flam process, it’s likely to be great. Guess what? It is. Last I heard about Wino he got busted in Scandinavia for possession of crystal meth while on tour, which means he's still balancing the addict/artist process. That's a fine line to walk, and I don't condemn anyone for doing it because the world needs arts born from addictions to escape the horrible pain that is existence. That shit will eat you up (either the art side or addiction side) so metapsychic daps to Wino for having successfully navigated that madness for so long.

45s on 33 – #76: “I Promise To Remember”

Rey-Rey and Railroad Time stormed in at some point, well that’s what I assume happened at least, but honestly most of my attention and intention and all my mental and heart might was being applied to speed growing lifesaving rat tail from my skull. The grounding nature of my own hairs making tendril connection to dirty earth, warmed by inner lave core, allowed me to fend off incantation of snake blood, but at some point I heard Rey-Rey ask if I was alright and Railroad Time was spin kicking the top boy from these other fuckers with serious force. As the racialists ran off, the top boy dude was yelling, “FUCK YOU RAILROAD TIME! I AM THE MASTER OF ALL TIMES, AND HE WAS GONNA BE MY BOY. I PROMISE TO REMEMBER THIS, AND RECLAIM ALL MY PROPERTY!”

The cold got out my blood, and I started to feel somewhat normal again, all time tunnel supernatural racially tinged fucked-upness considered. Rey-Rey laughed and said, “Oh man, nice rat tail, bro.”

One of the pack of runaways from earlier was there too. “What’s a ‘rat tail’?” he asked.

“His hair, the one long strip down the back. They call that a ‘rat tail’.” He looked at us funny.

Railroad Time turned and said, “Don’t worry ‘bout it, Woodie. That’s some future boy shit. C’mere though. This one of them stones?” He was talking about the large table they had been holding me down on while doing their strange chanting.

Woodie (I guess that’s his name now) went over and felt the stone. “Yass. That’s one of them slate tables they had us bring down here. That’s what him does his white magic on, crazy ass devil magic.”

Look, let me just fill you in on the flesh of these details, as Railroad Time explained to my groggy question-asking self over the course of the next twenty minutes or so (regular time, not sure if it even was time down there). That crazy crew that was chanting over me were led by the slave owner of these runaway slaves, who apparently worked the slate quarries back in the day, which were located at some of the entrances to these tunnels, near Arvonia. He had them carry large smooth stones down into these tunnels for his ceremonies, as he explained it to Woodie. But being a pack of slaves had been shown the tunnels, and knew about them, they knew they could hide out there instead of being chased by dogs through the pines. (And nobody trusted the river back then, according to Woodie, because many slaves couldn’t swim, and also there were stories of crazy elf people on the river. I had to laugh at that, thinking about Chief Blackberry Blossoms.)

“So that’s how the runaways got down here, running away from slavery?”

“Yeah,” said Railroad Time, “except they got lost down here, and come out one time in one of y’all’s future worlds, which got them so worked up they just lived down here.”

Woodie spoke up, “It was either go back to that damn devil master and workin’ the stones, or go into whatever the hell confounded mess it was out the other end. We stayed, lived in the dark, eyes got used to it, like bat owls.”

Railroad Time looked to be an old-timey dude too, of African-American origin. “How’d you get down here?” I asked him.

“Well, just before we had to come find your almost possessed ass, I was gonna tell Rey-Rey that very history. Let’s us go back to the safe spaces of the tunnels, and I’ll tell you both all about how ol’ Mo Slater became Railroad Time, confounder of bull-headed masters from here to Bama.” And we started walking deeper into the expansive darkness of lost time.

Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts zines

I have finally decided to just embrace my chaos brain fully and go back to doing chaos zines because it helps with my illness of the brain. Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts is 8.5x7 40 page digest zine that can sit around somewhere be chill and be read for a while. Here is the shop for this thing: 

Rojonekku WFA shop

Subscriptions are available at that link as well in limited quantities - $30 for four issues in America, $40 for four issues the rest of the world, and honestly it's slightly cheaper perhaps to buy each issue individually, except I don't think I'm always going to make them available online, and I'm contemplating actually making an issue I just burn all the copies other than subscribers because we care too much about keeping and curating everything as if everything matters too much. Once Hand-to-Hand Haiku events start up again, whatever issues I have some left of, they'll only be $5 per copy there. But by subscribing, you guarantee getting yourself a copy, somewhat timely, and you support whatever the fuck it is I do. That might mean something to you, and you're okay with that (which I appreciate); or it might not mean anything at all to you, and I'm fine with that too. I feel good about what I do, and enjoy it being supported, but I also don't really care too much about being hassled about it. I'm not a businessman, not even close. When I feel hassled, I usually burn a bridge or two.

Because of that, I've decided that each issue is limited to an edition of 150. I'll number them in red, because you can't photocopy red, and it reminds me of old Chinese wall hangings. Also, as you can see from the picture below, in the numbering box, I've left room to scribble a haiku. Each copy will have it's own haiku, perhaps tailored to you, I don't know. We'll see. No promises other than there'll be a haiku there. And not one I save to collect later. I just scribble it on there and let it go - that's my signature, a stupid haiku just for you.
Also, in the numbering, there is method to that as well, sort of:

• copies 1 through 3 - saved for the future, not sure what that even means yet because it's not the future yet
• copies 4 through 18 - saved to give to individuals who build creative nonsense beautiful gibberish in the world, who may or may not even know me; I consider this a 10% tithe to the creative nature of the universe I'd like to live in
• copies 19 through ? - starting with #19, they go to the longest subscriber, which means those who were getting One Thousand Feathers roll over to this (at roughly 4 of those to 1 of these, because these are huge); as subscribers fall off, re-subscribers move up in order; eventually I hope all issues are subscribed out and there's a waiting list, but that also is in the future and we're not there yet; but for now, let's just say you can subscribe at the link above but subscriptions are limited to a certain number so that subscription part of the shop may disappear without notice at any point

If you have any questions, hit me up through whatever means you know how to hit me up through. If you want to send scrilla direct without the link usage, perhaps using the gift option in paypal in the way many of us know to do with each other when we are cool about shit like that, my paypal is raven mack at gmail dotcommie.

TOP TEN MAMA CALLED THE DOCTOR & THE DOCTOR SAIDS

#1: haiku expertise/exists in four directions/white red yellow brown
#2: reality smells/like wood smoke - culture's earthbone/skeleton burning
#3: thousand civilized/degrees don't mean shit next to/one simple frog splash
#4: art barr or bash 0/bash 1 too, bash 'em all &/let god sort 'em out
#5: I scribble drivel/to drive data demons/away with low stakes
#6: opposable thumb/drive conceals monkey-headed/madness, encrypted
#7: ways of the river/taught me "monkey-head" pride, like/golden rays of sun
#8: monkey-head lacks fear/lacks respect for sitting still/lacks man's mental chains
#9: monkey-head haiku/is the wintertime goal line/cross it start over
#10: monkey-head spirit/forced to idle in desk chair/internal splashes

an interview with RVA Mag

Hey, I did done an Interview with RVA Magazine and perhaps you will find amusing things or insight into my personal nonsense or maybe you'll just find things to mock, who knows? That is the nature of the cybernet. I know this though - you won't make any hilarious animated gifs from it.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #13: "Don't Do It" by The Band

We don't recognize the flexible beauty of age in this superficially encouraged world we rock out upon. I passed a simple scene where I work the other week - an office with a hefty but attractive woman sitting at her desk and a thick-glassed man talking to her. Neither was textbook beautiful according to glossy magazine pictures - her a little chunky but round in all the best places, and with a sweet southern smile; him a little nerded out looking but with gentle eyes and a non-threatening demeanor, yet sturdy and not submissive in stature. They were talking and sharing googly smiles at each other, and I only caught a flash of it as the door was cracked open in passing, but it was beautiful.
There's a natural beauty in age, more flesh and less tautness of the forms we lusted after in our youth, but that's a natural flexibility that has come with use, that has been earned not condemned upon the body. Vaginas that have gave birth and penises that take a little longer for round two than they used to, softness between two people who want to savor those soft moments, not stab at each other with sharp figures and jolting epileptic frenzies. Makes me think of tomatoes on the vine, because green tomatoes are hard bodies but taste terrible. And them older tomatoes, all soft and red ripe, dripping juice, might have a bad edge you have to slice off for the compost bucket, but it's good and perfect and messy and doesn't look like the ones in the supermarket that they take pictures of for circulars, but damn if it don't taste thirty times better.
Don't hate age. I'm getting on close to wrapping up my fourth decade in a couple years, and I ain't the same as I was, but I'm a goddamned beautiful motherfucker. Not sharp-edged pretty like a 20-year-old girl sucking at the tit of pop culture would gawk at, but hey, I can't help that. I don't want to help that. I feel sad when I see older women running themselves to death to try and keep their sharp-edged magazine mirror "beauty", all gaunt and Ms. Skeletor-looking and needing a sandwich. And I feel sad when I see old dudes brow beaten into hiding their scuffs and scars and ink-stained skin, hair chopped into an business appropriate coif, fighting to hold their imagined spot as the younger, firmer, less savvy dudes roll into the overall picture.
I say all this knowing my hair has gotten shaggy and I work a job where responsibilities hover over everything like storm clouds, and there has been no thunder from up the ladder, but I know I need to cut it shorter again. And whenever I get to that point, and look in the mirror and know my shaggy hair looks stupid when I comb it (because that's not it's nature) but looks perfect when I've driven 49 miles with my window down on the truck because the AC's broken, and it's all over the place on my head, looking like a European basketball player but with an Al-Qaeda beard, and I realize I should probably just run in the opposite direction instead of trying to keep making the storm clouds happy, because the storm clouds come from the same place those hard-edged threatening stabbity images of beauty come from - a sad and worried place never quite comfortable with what it is and always wanting to look a little bit more like something it ain't.
That being said, I'll cut it. Light bill don't pay itself. I know. I've been waiting three months, and it ain't done it yet.
STEAL "Don't Do It"
NEXT: A summer ass jam that I swear was on a J.J. Krupert countdown before but doesn't show up as so in my secret J.J. Krupert master database of dork sciences!

b r s h a

seventies sportscaster hair
because I never could learn
to pay money for haircuts

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - March '11 #3: "Living On The Run" by David Allan Coe

Running from my self most of the time, as I am my own worst enemy. Needing to feel the outside, needing to feel the mothball smell of North Carolina flea markets, needing to hear shitty Mexicans talk shitty Spanish in paint-speckled blue jeans. Need to smell the grass cut for the first time, with the violets and wild onions up in the mix. Need to fix the riding mower. Need to fix the truck. Need to drive the truck to Indiana. Need to run, not so much away from anything but just because running causes circulation. There is stagnant energy and when you run, even if all you do is run away for four hours, then run back for five, taking longer on the way back because you are confident enough in the path to stop and get a bite to eat at some fucked up looking restaurant, just to see what it looks like inside, that running causes circulation - of energy of blood of spinal fluid of brain waves of everything. I have not done any running for a couple months, not of the physical variety or real variety or any. As I walked back into work after the meditative health-related break, I realized what a false world it was I was in the middle of. Brick facades and false auras propped up on paper, not backed by physical power nor spiritual energy. Vast swaths or our lives now are frantic strolls through engineered environments, where you never once step on a blade of grass, and many times even if you do it is a pesticided out Aryan lawn, complete with the militaristic crewcut. Sadly, we can run through that world all day every day, and never get anywhere, not in a spiritual sense, financial sense, or even stir up any of the stagnant energy. Sedimentary lifestyle, even at full-speed twelve-hours a day, about to get a ticket to help drum up revenue for local governments.
As soon as I'm better, I'm going to that abandoned roadside pull-off right near Shannon Hill off I-64, where the underground access to the tunnels that stretch underneath the Blue Ridge up into West Virginia and back over to the District of Columbia. I know about it. I heard a trucker tell of entering there, going for five hours, dropping off, and then being escorted back out for another few hours, and coming out somewhere near Staunton. It's under there. Seed banks and subterranean worlds. You think they give a fuck about poisoning the Pacific with radiation or dropping depleted uranium munitions all throughout the Holy Lands of the major good/evil dichotomy three religions of our current days? Hell no. Those who can already have the access birthrighted to them to go underground till it all blows over, grows over, and starts over. Regenesis. Old ass people been talking about Armageddon and Rapture and thinking of flying off into the sky, looking up at the sunshine, and when it really happens, the real rapture is going to be disappearing into the ground while we all standing up here burning to death.
STEAL "Living On The Run"
NEXT: Music that makes me think of having sex, even though I never had sex to it!

Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 4 of 36

So there was another race yesterday, at one of the good tracks in Bristol, except you know, even if they took it down to one station on free TV, March Madness is far more interesting than Nascar. Why the fuck does Nascar think it smart to be on during college basketball all the way until NFL football? Seriously, the only thing more long and boring than a Nascar race is a Nascar season. Still though, I am going to persevere and write nonsense after each race even if I don't know a damn thing about it, to force my hair-brained Ponytail Challenge onto the world, in the hopes that Nascar can be saved from the PR people and marketing specialists and 439 page demographic analysis manuals.
Kyle Busch won the race, edging out Carl Edwards, and there's some sort of bullshit rivalry between those two. I guess young Kyle Busch is considered by the common corporate marketing scams as Nascar's main asshole. I don't know, he's one of the only ones I don't mind, because he ain't afraid to bump and rub. Carl Edwards looks too much like a baboon crossbred with an insurance salesman for my tastes, and his little Winner's Circle moonsault celebration is played the fuck out.
Bristol is small track racing, which by many is considered the best version of Nascar, but really if you go to actual small tracks, they're even better. I'd love to see Nascar speed cars at a track that tight, and if I could go to one race, it would probably be the second Bristol race of the year. Beyond that, I can't speak much on this week's race because I don't care. Sorry. It was called the Jeff Byrd 500, which is either where they name the race after some regular ass person who won a contest, to make everybody think that they can be famous, or where they name it after some dude who lost a leg in Iraq by getting exploded, to make everybody think that America is awesome.
One thing that has crossed my mind Nascar-related, since the first time I seen one of these things was during a Nascar race, and they always feature Michael Waltrip's goofy closeted self, is those NAPA commercials where big goofy allegedly macho dudes are singing songs in corny twang, but lip-syncing, and it's real over the top and supposed to be great. It is not. They make me want to join Al Qaeda.
Of everybody still in the running in my Ponytail Challenge, everybody but four people raced. One dude, who I forget now, tried to race but did not qualify. There were three guys who did not even try to qualify - old school bastard Terry Labonte, the aforementioned fruitcake Michael Waltrip, and some dude named Brian Keselowski. There is another dude named Brad Keselowski, so I am forced by ignorance to assume that Brian is the evil twin version of Brad, or vice versa. Anyways, being from previous races, Labonte and Waltrip have more points thus are higher in the year-long points standings thus far, Brian Keselowski is eliminated, and finishes 40th in this year's Nascar Ponytail Challenge. I do not have a problem with this because he is part of some new-fangled family full of clean-cut drivers. If his name was Brian Bodine or Brian Allison or he had a nickname that was some sort of insect, I would not mind him so much. As it is though, fuck him.
PREVIOUS ELIMINATIONS: 41st: Steve Wallace (did not race in Kobalt Tools 400), 42nd: Robert Richardson Jr. (did not race in Subway Fit 500), 43rd: J.J. Yeley (finished last in Daytona 500).

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - February '11 #10: "Out In The Woods" by Leon Russell

Look, I could go off into one of my goddamned long-winded things that's kind of metaphysical, kind of full of shit, very real, and impresses in introspective moments but is pestersome when you're just looking for lulz inside the interwebz, but the fact of the matter is this song is fucking awesome. The beginning will eventually be looped by some shitty rapper who does some stupid fucking allegedly intelligently lyrical song, and I will hate the guy for it. This shit is on point as it is. The live version off of Leon Live, Russell explains how he asked a Zulu friend what's the Zulu word for being lost. His friend said there was no Zulu word for lost. That's why there's all that "shoo buhla hamma, shaba lah hema" Zulu singing in the song. I guess it means something important. Honestly, the only thing on my mind is sex today, so to me it's just naked women singing on a song, and the words are something about "Come in, sure, let's play cards, and no, we never wear shirts."
STEAL "Out In The Woods"
NEXT: funky jesus!

Ponytail Challenge - Pt. 1 of 36

Yes, I am going to cover the Nascar season this year at Rojonekku, for no real reason than I've had these wonderful ideas of how to make Nascar awesome again for a few years now, and just sitting on them and sitting on them, with no outlet for these wonderful fixes other than my own brain. So I'm just gonna get it out there now for you all in the world to see. If there is any sense to this world, I will be declared President of Nascar by my 50th birthday, they'll have dirt track races again as part of their stupid championship, and it will be a semi-sport of real men once again, instead of these whimper-voiced landscaping company presidents that seem to drive every other car.
Now understand, the day Junior Johnson stopped being relevant to Nascar is the day it probably lost its way. A circled race between shit-talking bootleggers is something real, while a parade of subliminal advertisements with a lulling white noise background and halfwit commentators is about as painfully post-modern as we get in America, on our last 9 decades towards demise. But I grew up with Nascar as background noise, even had a dog named Buddy after Buddy Baker at one point in my young life (he got run over by my mom), and I still try to go to my local dirt track a couple times a year, especially when they are running the Virginia Sprint series. Them bitches git.
Here is the basic problem with Nascar, and my basic fix. There are all sorts of minor tweaks and turns I'll add to the mix throughout the year, but this is the basic 101 of it all: Nascar's points system, even with the so-called Chase for the Cup, is stupid and not entertaining and boring. My fix is simple, and manly as well. You have 43 drivers qualify for the championship by qualifying for the Daytona 500. If you finish last in the Daytona 500, you are eliminated from contention. And that's how it works every race - the dude still on the list of potential champions who finishes the farthest back (or qualifies the worst, or whatever... there are a series of tiebreakers that happen at the beginning since there's a slew of drivers who do the Daytona gig but don't bother with the next five races) gets marked off the list. If you win a race, you get a pass to escape elimination one time for each win. And if you are in contention for the title, you do not shave nor cut your hair. Thus, as the season wears on, you have championship/playoff beards and long hair growing, much like hockey tradition, but has been picked up in other sports. This works multiple ways, in that first of all it's very easy to see who is still in contention to be Nascar champion for the year. It also gives the image of wild longhaired bearded real men, who don't fuck around. No more of this Jeff Gordon hybrid crap. Real men, who look like they would stab people with pool cues. And you call it the Ponytail Challenge.
This is important, even though Nascar fat cats would probably cringe at it, thinking they are some sort of awesome corporate affair nowadays. But let's face it, the Nascar demographic is a working class type who will sit there watching some very slow-paced action, contrary to the speeds. Nascar racing is very much like golf in that it just kinda keeps on going and going and then all of a sudden something might happen but then it just goes back to going and going until it's finally over at some point.
So with my system, in a nutshell, everybody who was not J.J. Yeley in today's race (Yeley finished 43rd... dead last) is still possibly the 2011 Nascar Champion. For the next 29 races, one more name gets crossed off the list. After 30 races, you are left with 13 people, so for those last six races, you double up, eliminating two drivers per week. That leaves you, on the last race, with three dudes in contention to be champion. Shit, you've got five in the next-to-last race. And all of them with longhair and beards. (This of course means you can incorporate the proper sponsors with post-race haircuts, or charity, or whatever. Really, this system markets itself.)
Today's race I zoned in and out of. I am a holiday Nascar fan - Daytona, whatever race is on Memorial Day, whatever one is on Labor Day Sunday, maybe Talladega if I remember - the basic bigger races. Plus, if I can catch them, the smaller tracks like Bristol and Martinsville. Those are far more enjoyable than the super speedways for me, especially Bristol. The fact they keep shaving off those small southern track races for big speedways in weird ass places like Seattle or Chicago or whatever, I don't know, it seems self-defeating. You are throwing termites into your own foundation.
I also sat outside and listened to part of it on the radio while sitting beside my pigpen, which was highly enjoyable. Nascar is one of those things that is better on radio than TV I think. Especially when you have someone like that Jeffrey Hammonds dude commentating. What is wrong with that guy? It's like his head got squeezed and his face is too big or something. I would say he looks half-retarded but that wouldn't be fair to the handicapped. And why do those dudes all wear suits? Who the fuck goes to a Nascar race in a suit? And what type of image are you fronting by having your TV people wearing suits? Really, 2011 Nascar is so ridiculously misguided, it's pathetic. They think they have been accepted.
The race was whatever, as I'm not too into the boring two-car race that super speedways are. I kinda wanted Dale Jr. to win, just because I feel bad for the dude sometimes, being a rich young millionaire who somehow is still a complete fucking failure in life, like the ultimate boss's son sleeping in the warehouse because he can get away with it. But then he was wrecked out like half of everybody else. And at the end, that Trevor Bayne kid was in the front. Who? Exactly. Trevor Bayne sounds like a guy who often had friends say he was with when actually they were cheating on their ol' ladies. "Where the fuck were you last night until 4 in the morning?" "Damn girl, why you so mad? Me and Chuck went over to Trevor Bayne's and was shooting pool in his basement. You can call Chuck and see." Or coming home from a cookout, fighting in the car while the kids pretend to be asleep in the back seat, "This always happens when you and fuckin' Trevor Bayne start hangin' around each other. You know that fool ain't had no sense ever since Kaitlyn kicked him out!" And the dude just kinda focuses on the road so as to not drunk drive too obviously, eventually cutting up the radio since it's a CCR song. That's Trevor Bayne to me.
Except he's a 20-year-old Nascar wonderkid. And the thing with racing wonderkids is they don't naturally just develop into wonderkids at that age. While local tracks around the country have old fuckers who've been racing for years, scratching at dollars and quarters to chase local points titles, there's always some teenager who started racing cars about seven years before he had a driver's license, who had an uncle or father or somebody just straight pouring money into it. That was Denny Hamlin at Southside Speedway in Richmond, Virginia. That's the Jeff Gordon hybrid model for success. And that seems like it could be Trevor Bayne, being he's 20 years old and already won a Daytona 500.
Except I looked the kid up on the interwebz, and he dropped out of high school to get a G.E.D. after his sophomore year. He's from east Tennessee (notorious pit of despair). And he drives for the Woods Brothers.
The Woods Brothers are an old school ownership team for Nascar, who barely survive in today's corporate environment. They are from my beloved Southside Virginia, and have scraped and struggled to maintain a competitive car, sometimes even without a sponsor, driving a blank slate of a car on TV. Hell, Bayne's car today lacked all the intricate little sub-sponsor stickers that all the other cars had. So them even being there at the end was a success, and probably bankrolled another half the season for them. At the end when it was paired up draft driving and stupid Carl Edwards was creeping on a come up, I thought to myself, "Fuck, why did I waste my time watching this crap?" thinking the monkey-faced back-flipper in the #99 would win, being he's one of Nascar's darlings (I think... I'm out of the loop, thankfully). But then my man Trevor Bayne slung down in his way and caught the push to the finish line. That shit was awesome. Like I could watch every fucking minute of every race for the rest of the year, and that's gonna be the only good thing that happens all year long.
So in my system, the young Bayne gets a free pass to be the last one in a future race, and every one else in the race except for J.J. Yeley is still in contention going into next week's race, which I think they said was in Phoenix. Most likely, I won't pay attention again that much, but I'm gonna try to remember to do a Monday update after races, and we'll track this ponytail challenge Nascar system on Rojonekku. But being I don't care about Nascar enough to watch it again for three months, most likely I'll just give you the simple update and then ramble about something barely related. But hey, that's better than boring you with a bunch of actual Nascar nonsense like it's important or something. And frankly, nobody pays me to do anything, so it's all of my own volition.
But congratulations to Trevor Bayne, you degenerate redneck fuck, and to southside Virginia's Woods brothers. You made Nascar interesting to me for about 37 minutes longer than it usually is most years.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – September '10 #3: “Ball And Chain” by David Allan Coe

I got a pair of jeans that I wear every day at night now, because they feel good. I refuse to wash them, though eventually I’ll probably leave them laying somewhere where the kids or the ol’ lady throws them in the wash because of how they look. There is a pride in that one pair of jeans you wear every day, doing anything and everything, including tending to farm animals, cleaning out chicken coops, kneeling in mud, moving a bunch of dirty shit out the shed to the dump, standing around a bonfire soaking in the smoke, spilling beer, wiping pork chop greasy hands on, all of it, stained into a single pair of jeans. They become a badge of honor. This is also a rebellion on my part because I have to wear clean clothes every day to work, including underwear, and it’s all very stifling to my inner-self. I would rather wear the same old nasty shit I’ve been wearing since four states ago, and of course no drawers. (I would not call it “going commando” because I imagine the type of dude who says shit like that is afraid to not wear underwear.)
Often times I realize there is a ton of that old 1970s outlaw biker longhaired country boy bullshit built deep into my DNA, just from how I grew up. It don’t bother me, because as I navigate this 2010 world, I realize that’s something to be proud of. The rednecks where I live are weaselly and weak, sterilized by the Wal-Mart soul autoclave. Plus hip hop has made them even weirder. Like I was behind some skinny young redneck dude the other week at the hardware store, with his camo baseball hat turned sort of sideways, and jeans on his skinny ass, and the way he kind of wobble swaggered, I wasn’t sure if he was mildly retarded or not. Seriously.
But shit man, I didn’t mean to talk shit. I have a big ass beard now and look forward to this bridge of a job I have now moving back to where I can grow the hair back out, rock my dirty jeans, whatever they may be by then, because nothing lasts. I’ve got this jacket covered in patches that I would never rock when I was working for myself, slum dogging it through life, but now that I’ve got the steady paycheck sucking at the government’s sour teat, that jacket feels good as fuck. Grass always seems greener.
Anyways, I am trying to encourage my inner-outlaw more, junkyard schoolbuses and homemade tattoos and David Allan Coe lyrics come to life. In fact, I gave myself my first homemade tattoo in a few years the other night, putting WORK in scrawly sketchy letters, because I decided to put it underneath my right arm up top near my armpit, so I had to use my left hand, which ain’t my alpha hand at all. Still, it adds feng shui to the warped temple that is my body. I should have a good thick coat of grime to my jeans by springtime when the scrawly black ink becomes exposed to this goddamned straight ass world again.
STEAL “Ball And Chain”
NEXT UP: Outlaw scumfuckery!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – September '10 #9: “You Make Me Die” by Thee Mighty Caesars

I almost grew my hair out, happened just the other day. You see, I do not cut hair well, and still have never paid money to cut my hair, but it gets this weird short-hair length that’s too long for regular shorthairs but seems sell-out length to me still. But it gets Kenny Powers curls at the back edges and shags out on the sides and if I touched one of those frizzle balls from the Science Museum, it’d all stick out like crazy.
But this is the world I navigate currently, taking a break from the life of a guy who does not give a fuck, to pretend to give a fuck just enough to hold down a regular job and keep the mortgage people from making us homeless again (although if I find a good schoolbus on the government auction site somebody hipped me to for under $1200, we outta here anyways! Fuck y’all bitches! Enjoy your own slow death!). I am immersed in bureaucracy, where you have to fill out four pieces of paper to move one things three feet, or you can build relationships with actual other people and circumnavigate all that bullshit as much as possible. That’s how I try to roll, both in employment and in my every day life. Rules are for assholes. Seriously. Assholes have no idea how to behave amongst other people, and screw it up for all the rest of us, so much so that you have things like the past week’s election where people actually think all that nonsense makes a difference, and actual friends of mine (so I think) who otherwise seem like normal outside the box individuals get all hung up on whichever flavor of white guy in a suit they’ve come to identify as government jesus for theyselves. I don’t get it. I mean, I vote every year, more for the experience than because I care about the outcome (I try to throw my vote away as often as possible).
But I digress. These are fucked times where people are fucked but we have somehow mastered this ability to put a nice façade on everything and act like it’s all good. I had some line to an old Solaris Earth Pipeline song (R.I.P. S.E.P.) called “Minimum Payments” where it went “I’m staggering through life making minimum payments, drinking beer popping pills hoping my mind stays bent, because that’s the only time this crooked ass world even makes sense” and really, that shit is probably more true now than it was when I wrote it, because it’s minimum payments until I die. Get rich or try dying, from womb to tomb.
That’s what gives me hope – the words that come out my goddamned brain. I don’t plan it, and haven’t really learned at this point how to organize it that well, but it comes, constantly, like a curse from beyond. If I don’t poke it into a machine or paper or dremel it into the backside of guardrails at night, it clogs up inside my brain and makes me crazy and self-destructive. And even at my advancing age, I have faith in my destiny that these clusterfucks of words are one day going to bring me enough security to make my minimum payments without having to chop my hair off like Samson under Delilah’s vagina spell.
I watched Honeysuckle Rose the other night, and the whole reason I chopped off my dreads a few years back was because I missed having regular longhair that I could put in Willie Nelson braids. (Also, the dreadlocks were literally locking my dread next to my head, clogging up my personal aura, turning my natural purples and lime greens into greys and mustard yellows.) Watching Willie rock Willie style in that flick, and everybody standing around drinking all the damned time, it made me stoked to get back outside the gridlock and get my hair stupid looking, now with Karl Marx whiteness to my hillbilly beard, and rock them damn braids again.
It also made me want to drink beer watching that movie, but I held off. I’ve got to finish this one book, final draft, before I drink another goddamned time-wasting beer. That might be a couple years away, but fuck it, carrots make muleheads move faster through the ruts of their daily life. I hope.
STEAL “You Make Me Die”
NEXT UP: Shit white people like!