Looking for a good summer and/or bathroom book? Try SLASH, the autobiography from Guns N Roses lead guitarist, all-around facemelter, coolest Jew in music this side of Bob Dylan.
His book is nothing short of an encyclopedia of awesome.
If I was on a CNN show and I was in one of those 4 box
talking head screens on Larry King and they gave me that 30seconds before commercial to say why this book should replace the
Bible in hotels, I would break it down for the people like this:
Slash wrote guitar parts for Appetite For Destruction and has gold records hanging in the Kibbitz Room next to Canter's in LA. Are you hearing me? At one point in his life, his day consisted of getting up, having coffee and a Reuben at Canter's, (maybe reading the paper) going down to Cherokee Studios to rip insane Appetite riffs and ended his day banging down Jack
Daniels at the Kibbitz Room happy hour. F me and my terrible life.
Which leads me to the obvious question:
Is Obama still seriously looking for a running mate? If Obama wants to lock shit up, he should be VP and ask Slash to take his spot on the Presidential ticket.
With this warm weather and stretches of sun to lay in for 5 hours at a clip, I find it quite difficult to get and more
importantly, stay inspired. In these unimaginative moments, I always drift back to a project that has sustained me for
nearly a decade; my writing of An Indictment Against Our Century. It starts as expected, covering the turn of the century
progress in urban infrastructure and its role in the Roosevelt era and then spends time inspecting the cowardice of Taft and
the economic strife created by Coolidge and absorbed by the Hoover era. I also touch on the advent of Dry Cleaning,
Woodstock (the concert and Peanuts character separately) and Willie Mays but you can read all of this in later posts, leading
up to publication in March, 2011.
But for the here and now, I knew the way to kick start my writing and reopen
the indictment was to go back to what started it all: sniff the trail of heated politics. I walk these streets, not
unlike Jon Bon Jovi in Dead or Alive, with a loaded six string on my back. I digress. I walk these streets and
see the unrest of my fellow Shorewooders (or Shorewoodians?) with the abundance of orange cones, terribly placed stop signs
and stacks of cement and jagged sidewalks blocking their way. People stay home, shades down, waiting for the tractors
and weird brick sanding machines to leave their stead. This reached a head last week when at bar time, I walked home
a paranoid mess from the damn construction, having visions of that dream sequence in the beginning of the movie TERMINATOR.
Yesterday I had enough. I strode into Village Hall with a strongly worded letter outlining my plan for
a peaceful Coup (like a few years ago in Thailand) and as expected, I was immediately asked to leave. I later determined
that it wasn't so much my threat of organizing an overthrow but more the sign posted out front. (NO PETS, NO SKATEBOARDING).
But that's neither here nor there. Determined to get answers, I walked around back, sniffing for a place to pee
and think. That is when it happened. In the back of Shorewood Village Hall having a cigarette with varied members
of the Chamber of Commerce were the Street Workers. Enemies face to face! It was the modern day equivalent of
FDR boarding the Bismark before ordering its demise. Shocking! I was expecting to overhear rules for a duel or
some civil violence but they were saying goodbyes. They exchanged cards and laughed. It was insane. They talked
and ribbed and reconfirmed the following.
THE CONSTRUCTION ON OAKLAND AVE WILL BE DONE BY FRIDAY June
20th.
If this happens, I'll take full credit for revealing the news, if not, blame everyone in the
CONTACT US section of www.shorewoodwi.com. By the way, I've begun writing on the post modern struggle shared between
dog and skateboarders.
As ever,
Otis
