Category Archives: politics

by jessesublett | April 27, 2013

Another day, more idiotic right wing fantasy

right wing demagogues exposed, jesse sublett, liberal blogger, GOP, TCOT, gun control

Louie Gohmert, who never met a dumb, racist, crackpot idea he didn’t like

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, is still doing his damnedest to darken Texas’ reputation as the home of ignorant, paranoid racist nutcakes who never met a conspiracy theory they didn’t like.

When this latest moronic comment from Gohmert came to my attention, I felt compelled to provide an illustration, slightly altering Gohmert’s own official photo and an X-ray I found on Wikimedia Commons (which I should credit to “Local Xray”, and his credit should not imply that he condones my views.)

Here’s the story from Salon.com below, but first, a commercial announcement:

Grave Digger Blues, the print version, is in stock at South Congress Books and BookPeople. And people are buying it, oddly enough. I’ll be reading and exhibiting new art at the Tertulia event, Continental Club Gallery, May 2, 7-9PM, and playing my Murder Ballad Night at The Buzz Mill, Monday May 7, 7:30-9 PM. At the Buzz Mill, we’ll be doing a live reading of Chapter 2 (The Blues Cat), with special guests Mona Pitts, Ricardo Acevedo, and Walter Daniels, who’ll also be guesting on harmonica.

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, added to the list of conspiracy theories he’s had about Muslims by claiming that the President seeks advice from people who have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. “He has advisers around him that do not have the same goal as he does. He has people around him giving advice who support the Muslim Brotherhood and who steer him in wrong directions,” Gohmert said.

Gohmert was speaking with the Daily Caller, and laid out his full theory:

No, I will say based on the findings of the Dallas Federal Court and the Fifth Circuit of Appeals, the two largest front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood are ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America, and CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations. And people from ISNA, like the President Imam [Mohamed] Magid, has access to him. He had access in the State Department and Justice Department. And it appears that he is pretty much welcome most places. Helped the FBI supposedly with their redirection. So you have people like that who are actual members of organizations that federal courts have said are the largest Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America. So it’s not me saying it, it’s the federal courts.

“I think it’s born out that this administration believes that the best advice they can get on how to deal with radical Islam is to listen to people who happen to be in or have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. And it’s just not right,” Gohmert said.

Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com.

Playing Footsy While Rome Burns

right wing, Tea party, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, GOP idiocy

If John McCain had a colostomy, Lindsey Graham would carry the bag.

(Credit: AP Photo/CBS News, Chris Usher)(defaced by Jesse Sublett)

So, today, a little political update. I like Salon a lot, but sometimes I think their graphics are a little weak, thus, this morning’s slightly altered graphic. You can read the salon.com post here.
FROM SALON: SENATE COMMITTEE SET TO VOTE ON OBAMA’S CIA CHOICE
The Senate Intelligence Committee will vote Tuesday on John Brennan’s nomination
BY BY RICHARD LARDNER

You can read the salon.com post here.

TUESDAY, MAR 5, 2013 07:27 AM CST
WASHINGTON (AP) — John Brennan’s nomination to be director of the CIA is set for a key test before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The committee is scheduled to vote Tuesday on Brennan, who is currently serving as President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser in the White House.

Brennan’s nomination to lead the spy agency has been held up by demands from Democrats and Republicans for more details about the classified Justice Department legal opinions that justify the use of unmanned spy planes to terrorist suspects overseas, including American citizens, and about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya.

Obama nominated Brennan to be CIA director in early January. If the intelligence committee, which is controlled by the Democrats, approves the nomination, it would then move to the full Senate for consideration.

By the way, back to the usual pop and pulp culture topics, I want to thank everyone for coming out Monday night to my Murder Ballad Show at The Buzz Mill. We had a great gig!

And about that print edition, softcover, illustrated, 200 pages of hardboiled detective story in a surrealistic stew, GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, I just want to say that our micro publishing experiment is progressing nicely, and I should have a small stock of printed copies soon, and will convey info on orders, preorders, book signing gigs, etc., very soon. All this has been possible through the urging of some fine people at Blurb.com, who encouraged me to give their alternative publishing model a try. I’ll talk more about that, and introduce my new friends at our SXSW Meetup Tuesday Mar. 12 (the fabulous Nettie Reynolds will be there too). Details here. Proof is in the pulp fiction pudding, below.

pulp fiction, surrealistic, noir détective, Jesse Sublett

Right, proof copy of Grave Digger Blues; Left, the author

Grave Digger Blues, apocalyptic pulp fiction, detective fiction, hardboiled, noir, Jesse Sublett

Cheers,
Jesse

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Tagged as blurb, blurb.com, nettie reynolds, sxsw, sxsw interactive, sxsw meetup

by jessesublett | February 13, 2013

GOP Flop Sweat

Marco Rubio is not ready for prime time, Jesse Sublett, liberal blogger, crime fiction author, murder balladeer

Marco Rubio, saviour of what??????

Where did this kid come from? I mean, who thought it was a bright idea to have junior Marco deliver the response to President Obama’s State of the Union address? The speech was a by-the-numbers right wing attack speech that could have been written back during the days of Milli Vanilli. Nothing about voter suppression. Why did he vote against the Violence Against Women Act on this very day? It’s not even controversial. No wonder he’s got dry mouth.

The GOP ran a robot for President. He lost. They sent a thirsty boy next.

A Texas Congressman named Steve Stockman intived Ted Nugent to the speech. The less said about Nuget here the better. But if Steve Stockman was hoping to be remembered as the stupidest man in the US. he’s got our vote.

Big day for Mario, however. He shaved for first time AND gave his first State of the Union response.

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Filed under Books & other writing by Jesse Sublett, gun control, NOIR & TRUE CRIME, politics, secession, SXSW interactive, Uncategorized

Tagged as assault rifle bano, barack obama, gun massacre, marco rudio, marcorubio, newtown, NRA, sandy hook, steve stockman, ted nugent, wayne lapierre

by jessesublett | February 12, 2013

TEN REASONS TED NUGENT WAS INVITED TO THE STATE OF THE UNION

Steve Stockman, a US Representative from, guess where, Texas, has invited Ted Nugent to be his guest at the State of the Union address by President Obama. You may be wondering why. For more info about this Stockman character, click here.
Nugent has made no secret of his hatred for Barack Obama. He’s a rabid right winger. He is beloved by the NRA, and not just because he loves to shoot animals, including at least one rhinoceros. He’s made lewd, violent suggestions about what he thinks President Obama and also Hillary Clinton should do with his assault rifle. Given the serious problems our nation is facing–including climate change, the economy, voter suppression, and a very serious debate about ways to keep innocent citizens from being murdered by the truckload by people who buy military weapons as easily as you can go buy a quart of milk–you might be wondering, Why the heck would anyone invited a foul-mouthed, hateful idiot like Ted Nugent to a serious, important event like the State of the Union address?

Also, if you are a kind of a music fan under the age of 60, you might be asking, “Who the heck is Ted Nugent, anyway?”

Here are Ten Reasons Ted Nugent was invited to attend the State of the Union address by the president.

1. Krusty the Clown was already booked.

2. A bucket of pond scum carefully considered the invitation and then declined.

3. Ted is curious to see what a bona fide rock star looks like.

4. They are cleaning Ted’s cage at the zoo that day anyway.

6. Stockman is a huge Nugent fan. But we wonder what his wife thinks of lyrics like these, from “Stranglehold”:

Here I come again now baby
like a dog in heat…

You ran that night you left now baby

You put me in my place

I got you in a stranglehold baby

then I crushed your face

7. Ed Gein wasn’t available.

8. Because musicians like Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen, for example, sell millions of records and have won multiple Grammys. Ted Nugent sells dozens of records and no one has heard of him except your old Gramma.

9. Because large crowds have an adverse affect on Stockman’s pet chicken, Bushmaster, who suffers from irritable bowel syndrome.

10. In Congressman Stockman’s words, “I am sick and tired of Rick Perry getting credit for being the stupidest Texan in the world.”

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Filed under gun control, guns, politics, secession, Texas secession

Tagged as cat scratch fever, congressman steve stockman, ed gein, gun control, gun massacre, krusty the clown, NRA, president barack obama, rick perry, rick perry dumb, state of the union, steve stockman dumb, stranglehold, ted nugent, wayne lapierre

by jessesublett | February 3, 2013

Hello Again

UPDATE: The link to the podcast of my hour on Rag Radio was broken, but now it’s fixed. Click here to hear it.

Dear Friends,

Sorry to be a pest, but one of the main aims of this morning’s previous post was to provide a link to the podcast of my interview with Rag Radio yesterday, Feb. 1, 2013, and I see that on the emailed version of the blog, the embedded code does not appear. Here is the direct link to it: Jesse Sublett on Rag Radio 2.1.13.

Also, if you are in the habit of only reading the email version of my blog, you are missing out on other features, too. You don’t get the music player, for one thing, or other links which always available on my blog page. So you might want to check that out….

Have a great Super Bowl Sunday.

Cheers,
Jesse

How many Son House fans out there, like me, are also Katy Perry fans?

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Filed under Books & other writing by Jesse Sublett, Grave Digger Blues, gun control, guns, HOW TO WRITE, ibooks, NOIR & TRUE CRIME, politics, secession

Tagged as austin authors, hardboiled crime, noir, rag radio, secession, surrealistic crime, texas secession

by jessesublett | February 3, 2013

DARKNESS IN THE AFTERNOON

I dig things that are cool.

UPDATE on 2.4.13: The link to the Rag Radio podcast has been fixed:

Click <strong><a href=”http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/rag-radio-thorne-dreyer-austin-noir_7.html” title=”Jesse Sublett on Rag Radio”>here</a></strong> to hear it.

RAG RADIO GOES NOIR: At 2 PM Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, a strange vermillion-tinged dark shadow enveloped Austin just east of I-35, a roiling cloak of noir and blues which I unpacked out of my guitar case and a couple of olive green army field bags inherited from my father-in-law, each of which was packed with wire cutters, brass and glass tubes, strings, notes, pens, etc. — no, not the tools of an assassin or saboteur, but a blues singer and crime fiction writer. I was there at the odd corner strip center studio of KOOP-FM radio to meet Thorne Dreyer, long-time Austin radical dude, for an hour of interview, music and live reading (with music) of samples from my latest work. Thorne read three parts (including a bad cop and two girls) in the story STARS IN HER HAIR, and I played three songs, including Death Letter, Levee Camp Moan and Stones in the Coffin. A persistent ear infection has reduced my hearing by about 50 %, so, even with headphones cranked, my singing ain’t what it ought to be, but if you’d like to hear the whole interview, click this link.

SXSW 2013 UPDATE: Our E-Book MeetUp, hosted by NETTIE REYNOLDS and myself, will be Tuesday, March 12, 1:30-2:30 at Proof Annex. The event is open to SXSW Interactive and Platinum badge holders only. If you’ll be attending SXSW make your plans to attend now. We’d love to see you, and stay tuned for more updates on our SXSW 2013 presence.

More blurbs about Grave Digger Blues:

You are onto something with this, Jesse, I do believe. Probably you are several years ahead of the curve, but that day is coming and what you’ve put together shows how it’s gonna work. I like the video intro (“Johnny Heartbreak Blues”), by the way, have watched it several times and like the laid back groove on it. Listened to the soundcloud music, too, and the spoken word stuff. I can sorta experience how you want it to happen as I flip through the pdf of the text while listening to the cuts (though I’ve never been very good at reading while listening to music/lyrics). Hope you get the opportunity to try a live show presentation at some point, see how that flies. Thanks for sending this along so I could taste what you are up to. A labor of love, I suppose, until the world catches up. Which it will. But you were there first, amigo. All best luck and wishes! — Christopher Cook, author of ROBBERS and SCREEN DOOR JESUS

Christopher Cook is a Texas author who lives in Prague most of the time, also a friend of mine. You should check out his blog.

We also rec’d our first negative review of the book, from Candy Beauchamp, on Amazon, here. This may sound strange but I was kinda looking forward to a review of this sort. And I appreciate her reviewing the book; she even said she really wanted to like it, but…. didn’t. From the beginning, I knew that many readers out there would not get the style, would not fall into the druggy surrealistic stew of narrative, where some events may or may not be hallucinations, where a headless supermodel, a super celebrity, is spoken of like Paris Hilton or Bob Dylan, her rumored appearances dotting the story like sightings of Big Foot or Elvis. I intentionally wrote Grave Digger Blues to separate the men from the boys, the women from the sorority girls, etc. So if you don’t like it, that’s fine, because although I have a heart as big as Antarctica, my skin is made of Teflon. Feel free to make your own comments on Amazon, but please be kind to Candy. You may want her to review your book someday.

The Headless Supermodel has recently been spotted in Austin. Which makes sense, she’s always jetting around to the hip, happening places around the world.

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Filed under Austin, Books & other writing by Jesse Sublett, eBooks, Grave Digger Blues, HOW TO WRITE, NOIR & TRUE CRIME, politics, secession, SXSW, SXSW interactive, Texas secession

Tagged as austin blues, blues, dashiell hammett, denis johnson, enhanced ibook for iPad, ipad, ipad novel, jesse sublett on kindle, kindle, kindle crime novel, rag radio, raymond chandler, son house, the headless supermodel, thorne dreyer

by jessesublett | February 1, 2013

RAG RADIO GOES NOIR

UPDATE 2.7.13: This broadcast was cool. Click here to hear it.

Rag Radio goes dark on Friday. No, I don’t mean they’re going off the air, I mean dark as in Noir. Friday 2-3 PM, Feb. 1, I will be on the air with my guitar and some stories and a bad dude they call The Big Thorn (my informants tell me that one of his aliases is one “Thorne Dreyer” or something like that).

So The Big Thorn and My Terrible Self will be bringing you some dark sounds and mean streets, including The Last Detective at the End of the World, an excerpt from GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, on KOOP radio, 91.7 FM, the progressive voice of Austin.

PS I hope you saw my last blog, MY FATHER TAUGHT ME ABOUT GUNS.

ON KOOP 91.7 FM IN AUSTIN AND STREAMED TO THE WORLD

Rag Radio is rebroadcast every Sunday at 10 a.m. (EST)

on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

RAG RADIO features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. Our guests include newsmakers, artists, leading thinkers, and public figures – from Austin, Texas, and around the world.Host Thorne Dreyer was a founding editor of Austin’s historic Sixties underground newspaper The Rag, a founding editor of Space City! in Houston, an editor at LNS in New York, and a former station manager of KPFT-FM (Pacifica) in Houston. He now edits The Rag Blog, a nonprofit progressive internet newsmagazine based in Austin, and is on the board of the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. With roots in the Sixties, RAG RADIO often features content about the history of Austin’s unique counterculture and its political and literary traditions.

Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. KOOP is a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station. ragradio@koop.org.

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Filed under Books & other writing by Jesse Sublett, Grave Digger Blues, gun control, guns, ibooks, NOIR & TRUE CRIME, politics, secession, Texas secession

Tagged as austin author, crime fiction ipad, crime fiction kindle, grave digger blues, ibook, jesse sublett interview, jesse sublett on the radio, multi-touch book for ipad, rag radio, thorne dreyer

by jessesublett | January 30, 2013

What My Father Taught Me About Guns

[Note: This is an expanded version of a piece written for OpEdNews.com. For other stories by me at OpEdNews.com, click here.]

The man who taught me about guns died eight years ago this month. My father was 82 years old and, up until the last six weeks of his life, he seemed unstoppable, strong as a mule, steady as a rock, always there if needed. Typically, whenever I called home, my mother would say he was outside repairing a fence, tilling the garden–or, like his very last chore, rigging up a pulley system in order to load an old clothes dryer onto the pickup bed without any assistance. This was, I should add, contrary to my mother’s admonitions.
His name was Jesse Sublett Jr., but almost everyone knew him as Jake. In official documents and to my mother, he was J.E., which saved him the trouble of being confused with his father, Jesse Sublett Sr., and the embarrassment of being known as Junior. It’s a common nickname in the South, but does anybody ever start out in life wanting to be called Junior?
Mom had quite a few health problems, and Dad doted on her. For him to precede her in death was kind of unthinkable. I always thought that he would go on caring for her as long as she was alive, not so much because of his physical condition, but out of sheer willpower.
Jake was country. Raised on a farm, sixth grade education, modest, soft-spoken. He couldn’t play a lick, but he loved music and was a fan of my own creative endeavors, no matter how weird they must have seemed to him. After my wife and I moved to Los Angeles, he was always the first one to cry when our visits came to an end.
Thus the man of few words is often recalled in verbatim. His advice to me on avoiding narcotics: “Keep your nose clean, bub.”
On his first trip to California, confronted by great the proliferation manicurist signs which said, simply “Nails,” this native of the Texas Hill Country said, “I thought they were all hardware stores.”
I also remember vividly his gentle presence, his large, scarred hands and quiet voice as he instructed my brother and me (and later, my sister, although I was on my own by then) in the arts of hunting and shooting, and everything about guns we needed to know in exchange for the privilege of using them. “Always be careful not to point your rifle in the direction of any person.” “Never shoot unless you have a clear line of sight.” “Squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk.” “Always know where the other hunters are sitting.”
All guns in our house were unloaded. The ammunition clips were even stored separately. On hunting trips, we’d gather our rifles and supplies and set out on foot from the camping site, never chambering a round until we had cleared the last gate or other obstacle. Even after that, a gun was kept on safety until the moment it was to be fired.
Jake was strict about all the protocols of handling guns, not only gun safety but cleaning and storing after use. No guns in the world could have been better maintained than the ones in our household. And there’s something about the seriousness and care he embodied as a parent that still rings in my ears, even sends chills down my spine, as I remember his instructions. These days, in particular, I keep hearing him say “Always be careful not to point your rifle in the direction of any person.”
When my wife and I first moved to Los Angeles, I remember encountering people who were offended at my gun history. Yes, I killed my first deer at age five (with my father steadying the rifle) and continued hunting into my 20s. I enjoy going to the shooting range now and then, and also take my teenage son along.
My father preached strict adherence to all game laws, although when he was young, the family observed a more relaxed approach, one best expressed by the old saying, “There are two hunting seasons: salt and pepper.” A few times we went out “headlighting” (known as jacklighting in other parts of the country), which means going out with dogs and lights to kill raccoons and other “varmints” for their hides, which fetched, as I recall, between fifty cents and a little over a dollar.
My brother and I shot doves and squirrels and when we failed to harvest enough of either to make a meal, we’d shoot some of each and Mom would make stew. Sometimes I’d hike alone in the woods, shooting birds and armadillos, rocks, trees, whatever. I regret this last part, but there it is.
My son has lived in an urban environment his entire life and the notion that a young boy needed to learn to shoot because there were no grocery stores around and even if there were, buying meat every week for our family was financially impossible. It could still be a valid thing to teach a young person, but whenever it’s something promoted by the NRA, it reeks like some rotten, bottom-dwelling creature born of desperation, greed and fear.
It was many years ago, but at one time the NRA wasn’t just a gun lobby, a PR machine that relentless promotes guns and pushes them, beyond any logic except for that of fear and greed, and pushes far too many guns that have no reasonable civilian use. There was a time when you could say the NRA was about gun safety and outdoor recreation, but now it’s more accurate to compare them to the corn syrup people hustle to inject fat in every morsel of our foods, particularly the young. Of course, it would take fewer words to compare them to crack dealers, but I’m sure that’s been done before.
The NRA constituency claims to revere family values, and the degree of truth in that idea is probably best seen their advocacy for unregulated sale of noise suppressors, which would bring a lot more kids into the hobby. And dig those happy families in the pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-backed publication geared to that sweet younger demographic.

Junior Shooters touts itself as “a place for our next generation of shooting enthusiasts! We provide information on clubs, events, safety, and information for all shooting disciplines. We provide information on clubs, events, safety, and information for all shooting disciplines.” An article in Sunday’s New York Times had a few insightful comments to add about why the gun industry is working overtime to push its products these days:

Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children.
The industry’s strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for “junior shooters” and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers.

I don’t want to dwell on the subject of this publication right now, but I would like to offer this screen shot from the site.

Does this shoot or blow bubbles? Is there a “Shooter Barbie” to go with it?

For those of you who know nothing about firearms, .22 is a small caliber. It’s not something that the military would use. I do think the color of this one is hideous, however, and it does look like something made by an industry desperate to shill its products to very young children. One frequent argument from the NRA crowd is that they take firearms very seriously. But does it really help teach a child to take guns seriously when they’re the color of bubblegum?
A lot of people in this country are sick of the fear-mongering propaganda being spouted by gun manufacturers, their trade groups, their lobbyists and the ill-informed public they have inflamed in the name of greed. Hunting is one thing, but if you need a clip that holds more than five rounds you should stay home, get another hobby, maybe see an eye doctor. The time for reasonable regulations on guns in this country is long past.
And if you’re arming yourself to protect yourself from the “jack-booted thugs” of the federal government, as I believe Wayne LaPierre once called them, why the heck do you still live here? You can’t bemoan the death of democracy, then pout, whine and grab your guns every time an election doesn’t go the way you wanted it. There’s a real logical disconnect there, pal.
The arguments have been made. The facts are out there. It would be nice if the gun extremists would listen for a change instead of shrilly shouting “You’re taking away my guns!” every time a proposal aimed at reducing the needless slaughter is merely suggested. I have mentioned my own history with firearms here in part because my past blogs on guns have been greeted by sadly hilarious lines like “Stop getting all your ideas about firearms from Hollywood.” Huh?
Wouldn’t it be interesting if a similar hue and cry were raised at every new incident of genocide, with every hundred acres of rain forest destroyed, whenever there appears to be another type of egregious infringement to the Bill of Rights–one of the other nine, that is?
How many of these huge fans of the 2nd Amendment are keeping busy “maintaining well-regulated militia”? I mean, not just to overthrow the democratically-elected government of the United States, but to assist the public in various other capacities, besides waving their guns in our faces? I guess, way back there on Tax Day 2009, those were supposed to be militia men, those gunsels proudly sporting firearms very near a speech by President Obama.

In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is always being bugged by Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.), who brandishes his pair of big .45s, but Spade disarms him without batting an eye and calls him a “gunsel,” as if it’s a term for a neutered hamster. And poor Elisha was always very effectual at playing the sap.

“Gunsel” is an interesting word. Read about its origins here, or below.

A couple more bits on this digression: Hammett was obviously swept up in the times here, and his writing did not exactly bristle with 21st century egalitarianism, i.e., there are lots of jokes that could be construed as homophobic. The “gunsel” insult is only one, but he does exude a deep contempt (which no doubt was informed by his experiences as a private eye during rough times) for punks with guns, as in this retort to The Fat Man, Kasper Gutman (Sidney Greenstreet).

SPADE: I hope you’re not letting yourself be influenced by the guns these pocket-edition desperadoes are waving around, because I’ve practiced taking guns from these boys before; so we’ll have no trouble there.

Here’s another:

SPADE: Here. (Hands him Wilmer’s guns.) You shouldn’t let him go around with these on him. He might get himself hurt.

GUTMAN: Well, well, what’s this?

SPADE: A crippled newsie took ‘em away from him. I made him give ‘em back.

End of digression. You might have already intuited this next part. My father, Jake Sublett, a dedicated Democrat, big fan of the Clintons and Barack Obama, was also a longtime NRA member who would have been dismayed and disgusted with that organization today.

Punk with guns. (Photo Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons)

No matter what you think the 2nd Amendment says, it does not say it’s OK to wave your gun around near the President. We lived in Johnson City when Lyndon B. Johnson was President. That was after Kennedy was assassinated.

Random guns + Presidents = not a good thing.

Who missed that memo?

The so-great-it-oughta -be-number-one 2nd Amendment also does not say it’s a great idea to have everybody come heeled to school, church, funerals or your mother’s colonoscopy.
Another thing to consider about the holy, the awesome, almighty, gold-encrusted 2nd: Do you really see the Founding Fathers guaranteeing every citizen, no matter their criminal background or mental competency, the right to buy a cannon? A whole bunch of cannons? Selling them at village gun shows and the like? Only a nincompoop would think so.
The GOP is an endangered creature. That’s largely due to its stupid ideas and the fact that its main demographic could be described as white men who fear black presidents and said group happens to be aging out of the planet? Small wonder that the Guns Over People party receives boatloads more gun-supporting cash than Democrats. Which seems like a waste, since it’s been decades since so-called liberal Democrats have posed hardly a whisper of a threat to the gun-lovingest people of our nation. Chris Solizza of the Washington Post brings in the numbers with a series of charts in his January 16, , 2013 blog piece, “How the NRA Influences Congress in Six Charts.”

In the past month the Post has published a number of other articles with detailed, useful information on this topic which should be of interest to anyone who would like to see a little less gun carnage in this country, and does not believe that the blame lies with “gun-free zones,” Hollywood or an “elitist hypocrite” –NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s term for President Obama.

Of particular interest to me was Joel Achenbach’s series which began with “How NRA’s True Believers Converted a Marksmanship Group Into a Mighty Gun Lobby,”

Even the very basic idea of universal background checks before gun purchases makes Wayne LaPierre see red. He says it’s because “criminals will never submit to them.” Ever notice that the NRA gets a lot of their ideas by studying things criminals won’t do? With these guys it’s always more guns, bigger guns, guns everywhere, all the time.”

I welcomed Achenbach’s well-researched series, as I have wanted to write an essay like this one for some time. I particularly appreciated his explanation on how the NRA became so radical and intractable, because in years past, it wasn’t an evil caricature, a sad, bizarre cartoon. Have we mentioned the fact that Ronald Reagan favored gun control, or that George H.W. Bush was so disgusted with the NRA he tore up his membership? Charlton Heston stuck with “em, but God bless the old toupee-topped Moses, at that point in his career, he wasn’t exactly being inundated with other offers.
Good investigative journalism has already been done by others, so I wanted to say something about my father the simple common sense and sense of class he embodies for me. In a way I hate to repeat his admonition about being careful where your gun is pointed, but seriously, I’m sick of the NRA and gun-weirdos pointing their guns and their hysterical fears at the rest of us.

I don’t normally like to pose with a gun, but it’s part of this story.

A couple of years before he died, my father gave me an early heirloom, a Colt .32 revolver. Although not as striking as some old revolvers, it’s a neat looking gun, and it gives off a nice frontier vibe.
The gun came to my father, and his father before that, from the collection of my great uncle William Winthrop Sublett. He was born in Texas and later migrated to the mining communities of New Mexico and from there to Redding, California, where he was a miner and rancher. He also served as sheriff of Shasta County from 1922-1943. I like finding stories in archives that mention him, like the one about a car chase and shoot-out with armed bandits in 1925, and apprehending escaped convicts from San Quentin in 1939.
I also like the story of how Sheriff Bill got the gun. He confiscated it from a bad man and never gave it back. They didn’t call it “fascism” or “communism” back then. They didn’t even call it gun control.
They called it common sense.

Not a toy.

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Tagged as "daily beast", 2nd Amendment, assault weapon ban, bushmaster, bushmaster AR-15, Chris Solizza, colt .32 revolver, father-and-son-story, growing up in the country, gun control, gun massacre, gun safety, Jesse Sublett, Joel Achenback, junior shooters, newtown, newtown school massacre, NRA, rural attitudes about guns, salon.com, sandy hook, second amendment, small town roots, texas hill country, wayne lapierre

by jessesublett | January 8, 2013

ADD GUN NUTS, REMOVE LOGIC, SERVE

UPDATE 1.9.13: SXSW 2013 is just a few weeks away. Scroll to bottom of this post for news tip about my eBook events at SXSW 2013 Interactive. Also it’s time for you to get shot. Shot by one of Austin’s best, Ricardo Acevedo, who has a great package of SXSW 2013 rates for you. Blood loss is negotiable, of course. As you may know, Ricardo is one of the great photographers whose work is showcased in Grave Digger Blues, plus he did the cover art. Check the photo, bro, below:

Photo: Ricardo Acevedo

UPDATE 1.8.13: GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, Bare Bones Edition now available at Smashwords for $0.99. ”Bare Bones” means text only, but with the same insane narrative on hyperdrive packed with hardboiled action, surrealism, homicide blondes, jazz, blues and lyrical brutality, but bargain priced for those of you who don’t care to see 100+ photos of sexy women, doomed private eyes, urban wastelands and pix of Dick Cheney in drag, Reagan-faced monkeys and giant walking catfish.

For all the info you can handle about my favorite creation, check the GRAVE DIGGER BLUES home page.

And a little note to my friends and fans: I wish you’d check out this book and maybe even buy it. I think you’d like it. If you have something new for me to check out, let me know, and I will return the favor.

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES may in fact be too weird for you. Maybe you’d rather listen to Celine Dion and wear elephant plaid to your high school reunion.

UPDATE 1.7.13: MORE POSTS ON OPEDNEWS.COM FROM MY SECESSION CHRONICLE: These new pieces ran in the last week or so and concentrate mainly on the discussion (if you want to call it that) about bringing some sanity to the topic of guns in the USA. I’ll continue to write OpEds for this fabulous progressive news site and post notices of those articles here and on the SECESSION CHRONICLE page. See “THE TOWER MASSACRE, GUN CONTROL & AN VISIT FROM PLANET n-RA” here, and “IT’S OK, HONEY, HIS GUN HAS A NOISE SUPPRESSOR” here.

On August 1, 1966, Charlie Whitman introduced the world to a new concept: the public gun massacre. The NRA has an answer: more guns for EVERYBODY, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME. OH, JOY!

UPDATE 1.4.13: SXSW 2013 is inevitable, isn’t it? I will be hosting an E-BOOK MEET UP during SXSW Interactive with my digital guru, NETTIE REYNOLDS. That’s all I have right now, as I’m in the process of wading through the SXSW production thingie to get things set, but basically it will be a one hour session for anybody and everybody involved in digital publishing –authors, publishers, cover artists, publicists, etc.–to meet, exchange business cards or whatever, talk, moan, gush, groove.

UPDATE 1.6.13: I GOT A NEW GUITAR. I’M SO HAPPY NOW.

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Filed under Books & other writing by Jesse Sublett, eBooks, Grave Digger Blues, gun control, guns, ibooks, mass murder, NOIR & TRUE CRIME, politics, secession, serial killers, SXSW, SXSW interactive, Texas secession

Tagged as ebook meet up, enhanced iBook, epub, hot rod steel, national guitar, resonator guitar, slide guitar, south by southwest, sxsw, sxsw interactive

by jessesublett | January 4, 2013

TOP TEN AWESOMENESS OF 2012

THE ABSOLUTE BEST & BADDEST OF 2012, in the highly concentrated, subjective, supercool, chocolate-coated, no-steroids-or-MSG-allowed world-view of My Terrible Self, Jesse Sublett, author, blues singer, blogger, etc.

TOP TEN BOOKS of 2012

1. The Bruiser, Jim Tully (1936)
The Bruiser is probably the best novel about boxing, outside of Bud Schulberg, I’ve ever read. Even if you give the number one slot to Schulberg, The Bruiser is still one of the best novels I’ve ever read, period. You expect a novel set in the boxing world to have a regular pattern of action that drives the plot forward page after page, and on that, this book delivers and then some. But there’s also more heart, more cool-as-shit hardboiled lingo on every page than you’d expect from any of the best tough-guy authors of any period. There’s not an ounce of fat here. The book feels like a movie because, after all, Tully wrote for movies and was pals with a who’s-who of top slot actors from the 1920s-30s. I mean, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace Beery, to name a couple, were close chums. I love this book! Hell, I’ll probably read it again in a couple of weeks.
Did I mention that Tully was a boxer before he was a writer?
If you need an introduction to Tully, a great place to start is Woody Haut, whose excellent piece on Tully, posted on November 28 of last year, prodded me to finally get around to reading Tully, after hearing about him at least ten years ago from my good pal, the publisher and professional mad man Dennis P. McMillan. As I recall, Dennis really wanted to bring some of Tully’s work back into print, but at the time he was trying, he was also moving toward a decision to disengage from the highly addictive yet difficult-to-make-a-dime-in racket of publishing books. Woody Haut, by the way, is a wise, wise man and has written a number of very, very cool books on noir lit. If Woody says something like, “Jim Tully may have been the true father of hardboiled fiction,” whether you agree or not, you better listen, because he knows what he’s talking about.
2. Circus Parade, Jim Tully (1927)
OK, so I’ve written about Tully already. I mentioned that he was a boxer and a Hollywood writer, but I neglected to mention that he was also a hobo who rode the rails and who also became a circus bum, and this book is auto-biographical. I’ve already raved and raved about The Bruiser. Pretend that I have raved again about Circus Parade. Thank goodness I only read these two in 2012, or this list might be exclusively devoted to one author.

3. Floyd Patterson: The Fighting Life of Boxing’s Invisible Champ, W.K. Stratton

OK, forget that last line. Even if W.K. “Kip” Stratton wasn’t one of my best friends, and even if I didn’t love books about boxing, I would have to list this great, great bio of Floyd Patterson. I mean, Kip had his work cut out for him, too, because everybody is such a huge Muhammed Ali fan (for good reason) and then there are guys like me who just love Sonny Liston, the heavyweight who beat Patterson for the title. But seriously, Floyd wasn’t the most flamboyant of guys, and the turmoil and difficulties of his early life as a juvenile delinquent weren’t there on the surface for all to see. But how many heavyweight boxers are known for their compassion, not just out of the ring, but in it? Here’s a guy who actually picked up his opponent’s mouth piece and handed it back to him before resuming the punishment? Stratton does a fine, fine job here of not only bringing this long neglected sports hero to life, but he also does a tremendous job of evoking the sounds, sights and smells of the boxing world, and the tumult of the various worlds and characters (as in, “Don’t mess with that dude with the bent nose, he’s a character…”) that swirled about it.

4. The Black Box, Michael Conelly
Again, Michael Connelly is a friend of mine and I expect nothing but the best from him, but in this outing, he proves again why people say he’s by far the best crime writer going today. Harry Bosch is getting older, and several generations of younger cops and new technology have appeared since we first met him back in 1992 with The Black Echo. But Harry is here to stay, I reckon, and I’m glad.

5. The Score, Richard Stark, Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novel adaptation

Here goes: The best crime caper novels by a long shot were written by Donald Westlake under the pen name Richard Stark. The protagonist was a professional thief named Parker. One of the best films noir of all time was Point Blank (1967), adapted from the first Stark novel, The Hunter. The Score is the third adaptation of Stark’s novels by graphic artist Darwyn Cooke. Each one is stunning, explosive, cinematic, super-cool, but if anything, they keep getting better and better. I can’t tell you how much I love these books. Read more about this at the great website devoted to Richard Stark and Parker: The Violent World of Parker, then go see the blog about this new Cooke book, suitably titled “Like Having a Scorpion in the Room.”

6. You Can’t Win, Jack Black (1926)

When it comes to criminal memoirs, this is one of the earliest in modern literature and still one of the best. This is available in many editions, including eBooks, but one of the coolest editions is the one with an intro by legendary Beat junkie and convicted murderer William Burroughs. Burroughs penned his intro and made various allusions and quotes without the benefit of a copy at hand to double-check his accuracy. That’s how much he dug this book, or how desperately the publishers wanted his seal of approval-take your pick.

7. Mars Attacks: 50th Anniversary Collection, by the Topps Company, Inc., with introduction and commentary by Len Brown, afterward by Zina Saunders

Yes, a book commemorating the 50th anniversary of a bubble gum card series, which was adapted into a terrible film, despite having Jack Nicholson in it. The book was published by Abrams Comic Arts, which also published the super cool Heroes of the Blues, by R. Crumb, which also began as a card collection. They may be crazy about bubble gum cards, but they sure have great taste.

8. Ulrich Haarbürste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Cling-Film, Ulrich Haarbürste

You won’t find this one at the local mall. Yes, it’s a book (published in 2007) written from the point-of-view of a guy who has a thing about imagining scenarios in which he encounters Roy Orbison, the great rock n’ roll singer, and a situation of some dire emergency arises, including car wrecks, about-to-be-cancelled concerts, and even showing up at a swank costume party without a costume. Invariably, Ulrich saves the day by volunteering to wrap “the famous man in black” from head to toe in cling-film, which most of you may know as cellophane, Saran Wrap, etc. By any other name, it would be a strange read. I discovered this fetish author at least ten or so years ago by accident on the internet, back in the old dial-up days, when it was poky and prone to breaking down constantly if you had any access at all. So, imagine my surprise when I found Ulrich and his strange hobby. This summer, when I was writing Grave Digger Blues, I created a character modeled after him and decided to see what the real Ulrich has been up to. He published this book in 2007, for one thing. I suppose since then he may have “wrapped” another project or two.

9. Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, Robert Caro

Wow. This is a great book, period. You can read elsewhere about what a monumental contribution to political biography and American history this book, the fourth in Caro’s biographical treatment of the life of the great president, Lyndon B. Johnson. You can read in my memoir, Never the Same Again, what it was like to be a young teenybopper in Johnson City, frequently encountering the great man at church and elsewhere when he was home from the White House. And I will probably comment on that again in this space someday soon. But only RIGHT HERE will you see someone like me say: This is one hell of a riproaring page-turning, noirish, thrill-ride of a book. It could easily be a dark film noir, a real thriller. Wow. I LOVED THIS BOOK. I told Caro all this at a party during the Texas Book Festival. I started by congratulating him by accurately describing how mean people in Johnson City can be, and were, when LJB was growing up and his family fell on hard times. I said: “They’re still that way.” He said, “Yes! I’m glad you told me. I found them that way, too.”
10. The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers

A really good first novel by a former Marine who fought in Iraq. Powers attended the Michener Center for Writers at UT, and his writing is evocative and hallucinatory in ways that bring to mind the great author and poet Denis Johnson. Some parts of the novel work better than others, but it’s a very impressive debut and we should all be watching out for his next effort.

TOP FIVE FILMS
1. Killing Them Softly

I really liked the other movies on this list, but few of them came close to this one. Beginning to end, inside and out, one of the greatest films noir of all time. It is small, dark, contained, sweaty, ominous, real, surreal. Brad Pitt is phenomenal. Richard Jenkins is superb. Based on the novel by the late, great George V. Higgins, and if you aren’t a huge, huge fan of the film adaptation of Higgins’ great novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle, I have to tell you that we can’t be friends anymore.

2. Killer Joe

Stunning, startling, hilarious, sick, tight, unhinged. I also read the playscript by Traci Letts. Traci Letts writes white trash like nobody’s business. A related note that may be of interest: I was a little disturbed to encounter a couple of friends who had “left the wives at home” and after the movie, had gone to Lucy’s Fried Chicken to “pick up some dinner for the girls.” They were quite amused with themselves. No reports on how this went over, but I watched for police reports in the paper next morning, didn’t see any.

3. Django Unchained

Wow. Hell of a movie. I used to be fed up with Tarantino, but after Inglourious Basterds and this one, he’s OK in my book. And what’s with that actor, Christoph Walz, anyway? He’s one weird dude.

4. Seven Psychopaths

Almost every movie with Tom Waits in it is OK with me. Plus this one had other attributes.

5. Skyfall

Loved it a lot, although parts were a little too comic-booky. Did I really say that? Loved the low-tech Q, which was a good touch, plus the return of the Aston Martin.

6. Bernie

This film captures small town folks quite well. The way they talk and think, the way they dress and live. Yikes. It was a fine film but don’t want to go there again. I lived it already, growing up in the Hill Country.

TOP FIVE TV

1. Election Night coverage of Barack Obama’s victory over some random dude named Mitt Romney, or Mr. Corporation, or MC One Percent, or something, I forgot already.

As if this isn’t self-explanatory. Plus there was the super bonus of watching everyone melt down on Fox. Now THERE’S AN IDEA FOR A MODERN OPERA.

2. Mad Men

Rarely a slack moment.
3. Breaking Bad

Strange, comic, brilliant, creepy, twitchy, funny. Is Bryan Cranston awesome or what?
4. MSNBC

This may sound creepy, but from spending so many evenings with them, we’ve come to feel like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnel, Reverend Al, and Big Ed are part of our family. And although I don’t watch a lot of daytime TV, being a fan of beauty, I’m quite fond of Tamron Hall.

BEST MUSIC of 2012

1. Smokestack Lightning: Complete Chess Masters, Howlin’ Wolf

The Wolf was awesome, a force of nature who lives on. Great box set collecting the work of a truly incredible talent. Not just a bluesman, but an artist and a fascinating human being. Here’s one of many listings for the box set that do not happen to be Amazon.
2. Bad as Me, Tom Waits

Weird and funny as ever, he came through again with a dynamite record. “Hell Broke Luce” is one scary goddamn war song. This video does it justice.
3. Garage Sale, Jon Dee Graham

Even if Jon Dee wasn’t one of my best friends, my oldest friend, one of my most talented friends, I like to think that this record would still be on here. But it’s got some damn good music on it.
4. Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Vols 1-3, Charley Patton

I belatedly got around to some heavy listening to Charley Patton, and now that I have seen the light, I don’t think I will ever stop. Fascinating as a historical figure, he did things to his guitar that still mystify and cause terrible arguments between guitar geeks to day. Listen to “High Water Everywhere Part 1.” Then tell me if you can show me anything better in any category. Very cool graphic novel bio of Charley here.

GRAVE DIGGER BLUES, mind blowing pulp fiction

TOP TEN RANDOM

1. Creating ibooks for iPad

On January 19, 2012, Apple released iBooks Author as a free ap, which allows the user to create enhanced multi-touch multi-media books for the iPad. On February 6, I released an edition of my first novel, Rock Critic Murders, as an enhanced iBook for the iPad, with dozens of photos, drawings, videos, plus music and other media. A great experience, though I have not yet figured out how to make much money doing it. My new iBook for the iPad, Grave Digger Blues, is a streamlined and super hip iBook, created especially to take advantage of the ap’s technology, and I’m really proud of this one. It’s a wicked, outrageous apocalyptic pulp fiction narrative with 100s of photos from Austin art photographers–sexy stuff–plus drawings and collages by My Terrible Self, plus audio chapters and my own blues soundtrack and collaborations with Fort Worth blues musician Johnny Reno. I also released a stripped down version for Kindle (text and photos only) and a bare bones edition for Smashwords.
2. Almost meeting Rachel Maddow in Rockefeller Plaza

This is a no-brainer. We were trying to catch her before she went into her office to prepare for the show but we missed her and then saw her just as the elevator doors closed so we ran up two flights of stairs and when we got there she was just closing the door behind her and our friend who produces for Rachel said “you DO NOT bug Rachel during that time period.” So we went downstairs and ran into Tamron Hall, who is super beautiful, friendly, and originally from Lufkin and Grapevine and said her accent is not a problem except sometimes instead of saying “naked” she says “nekkid” and who came blame a gal for that?
3. Nick Lowe at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass AND…

Also seeing Preservation Hall Jazz Band at least twice that weekend (at Great American Music Hall, at Hardly Strictly, and again at their new West Coast home, The Chapel), and also Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale, rocking the festival like crazy, with Robert Plant and John Paul Jones standing in front of me backstage, but I didn’t mind as I had never seen Nick Lowe play “Tennessee Stud” before and he had never played it before but he did one hell of a job and everybody under the Golden Gate loved it. And with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Robert Plant, Patty Griffin and Joel Guzman onstage for the Buddy/Jim encore, I thought, Wow, this is weird, it’s kinda like being at the Continental Club in South Austin but there’s like 100,000 people out there. Weird but fun. Especially since I was so ill I could barely walk 50 feet without resting, but fortunately, we had the golf carts giving us rides everywhere, so it was cool.

4. Random eating adventures in Austin

Enoteca and Vespaio, Justine’s, Hoover’s, Threadgill’s, Whip Inn… over and over again. There are many other restaurants in Austin, but these places are the places we really, really love.

5. Musso & Frank

Musso & Frank’s Grill on Hollywood Boulevard has always been one of our favorite places in LA. We had a great weekend trip there with our friends, doing lots of cool stuff, but when we went there for dinner Saturday night with our great friend Rocky Schenck, it all came together. Another great highlight was driving around LA in a Crown Vic, which was the only full-size car in the Dollar-Rent-a-Car lot that spoke to us. And boy howdy, I gotta say, driving around LA in a cop car is a hell of a lot of fun. And you know how people sometimes don’t get out of your way when you do something aggressive like make a U-turn in the middle of Sunset Boulevard? When you’re driving a big black Crown Vic, not so much!
6. Howlin’ Wolf Birthday Show

I organize and lead and produce and play and sing in this tribute to the great Howlin’ Wolf at the Continental Club around the time of the Wolf’s birthday on June 10. This year we did a Saturday night and having Denny Freeman, Mike Buck, Eve Monsees, Big Foot Chester and so many other pals of mine playing with me, it was maybe the best Wolf party I’ve had. Wow. It was cool. If you weren’t there, I gotta say, I feel badly for you.

There were other stellar events in 2012 in my life, including my family — my wife Lois Richwine, and my son, Dashiell, and I know I couldn’t do better than be involved with either one of them, but to have them both, hey, it’s a trifecta, a perfect storm! And my Mother and brothers and sister, and the extended family, I really appreciated them this year.

You may have noticed that I’ve been doing more political blogs lately and these are often published on OpEdNews.Com before they are posted here. OpEdNews.com is a great progressive news source. Lately I’ve been writing about the post-Obama-reelection secession craze and gun control. Go here for the direct link to my stories.

See you around.

Cheers,

Jesse

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Filed under BLUES, MURDER BALLADS & OTHER COOL RACKET, Books & other writing by Jesse Sublett, eBooks, Grave Digger Blues, gun control, guns, NOIR & TRUE CRIME, politics, secession, Texas secession, top ten list 2012

Tagged as "w.k. stratton", blogs, book blogs, books for ipad, chris matthews, crime caper novel, crime ficiton, darwyn cooke, enhanced ibook for iPad, fetish literature, floyd patterson, grave digger blues, ipad, jim tully, kevin powers, lawrence o'donnell, mars attacks, michael connelly, msnbc, political blogs, r. crumb, rachel maddow, reverend al sharpton, richard stark, robert caro, robert crumb, tamron hall, top ten books 2012, top ten movies 2012, top ten music 2012, you can't win by jack black

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