hurricane peanut butter/ ch. 2/ raw snip xo

(1)
The gale force winds howled from the northeast and blew the limbs of my Live Oak hard and repeatedly against the front of the house. A stack of Disney DVDs fell off of the entertainment center as a gust of maybe seventy smacked into our little salt box.
“Would you stop!?” Aspen yelled from the back room. “Why are you banging stuff?” she asked.
“I didn’t do it! Jeez! Would you just chill out. It was the wind.” I moaned and grunted as I picked up the videos. “It must be close to hurricane force out there.” I said.
“Yeah. More like hurricane force in here.” She joked smugly. “Hurricane daddy.” She said.
“Whatever, I have been good. You just need someone to bitch at.” I said back, maintaining the line.
“Should I get the girls up? Is this storm going to have tornadoes?” my wife asked me.
“Nah…they have a warning out, but I don’t see anything on the radar. Most of this is blowing out to sea anyway. Just another late afternoon pop-up thunderstorm, stronger than most of the hurricanes we get.” I said. I changed the channel to Phineas and Ferb as the kids ran into the living room.
“Da-a-a-a-a-a-ddy?” A little voice called out.
“Yes Emeline.” I called back. “What are you doing?”
“Are we going to have a tornado?” she asked. Mary Emeline ran into the room and jumped up onto the couch and into my lap.
“No honey. We’re not going to have a tornado.” I reassured her, kissed her on the head. “Your mama is just nervous, that’s all. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. You have us here.” I said.
“Daddy?” she asked.
“Yes baby?” I answered again. “What’s up.” I asked her. “Don’t you wanna watch Phineas?”
“Yeeaaaah.” She said. “But first I have to tell you something.”
“Okay. I’m listening.” I looked at her with my entire focus. It melted me, like always. “What do you wanna tell me?”
“Daddy?” she said. “What’s a tornado?” she spun around in my lap and found the cartoon on the set.
“Well, it’s just a really bad wind storm. It’s small though. But it is really fast and it destroys everything in it’s path.” I said. “But we don’t have them here all that often…so you don’t have anything to”
“Daddy?” she asked again. “Where do tornadoes live?”
“Well…they don’t really live anywhere.” I explained. “They come down from the sky when bad weather is happening.” I said, like a dunce.
On the screen a couple of young geniuses are building a beach with real sand, an ocean, waves, umbrellas and ‘Beach Blanket Bongout’ style fun seekers. Their sister Candace really wants to bust them for it, until she sees her dream boy on shining in the sun and sand.
Emeline is losing attention as she asks me another. “Daddy, are we going to have a hurricane?”
“Well sweetie, there’s nothing out there now…but ya never know.” I said. “The summer has a ways to go, and we could have a little blow…but no matter; if a bad storm bears down on us, we’ll go to Mama D’s house in Richmond.” Emeline’s head sunk into my chest as my fingers pulled her hair from the front of her face and put it behind her ears. Aspen walked through the room again, dressed for the masses.
“More like; you never know when hurricane daddy is going to hit.” She said under her breath so that only I would pick it up. “You can be nice when you want to but most of the time you’re just mean to me. Like last night.” She said.
“Please Aspen, not right now, not with her here. I mean damn.” I said, moped.
“I’m not about to get into it, but you need to see Judy.” She insisted. “I have to be at work in like twenty minutes…I’m so late, AGAIN!” she said as she headed for the door. “I love youuuuu! Be good girls for daddy.” She said and exited the home.
I leaned down to whisper towards my daughter’s head, “Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you some peanut butter crackers?” I said.
“Yes daddy.” She said. “Oh, and daddy?”
“Yes baby” I said getting up to fix her a snack.
“I have to tell you something.” She said.
“Yes baby.” I said again smiling. “What would you like to tell me?”
“Daddy, where do hurricanes live?” she asked innocently. “Are they bad?”
“No baby, they’re not like people, and they don’t live anywhere either. They are just big storms that come from the ocean.” I told her.
“Well then why did mommy say that daddy was a hurricane?” her little eyes looked over her shoulder in my direction, and she waited.
“I don’t know hon’. Mommy’s silly sometimes. Maybe she just means I talk too much. I’m full of wind, like a hurricane.” I said “Let me get up so I can make you a snack.”
“Daddy?” again.
“Yes hon’?” I answered her. I stood and started walking towards the kitchen.
“Do you like peanut butter?” Emeline asked me.
“Yep. I do. I used to eat it all the time.” I said. “When I was your age it’s about all I ate.”
“Daddy?” she asked again as I kept trying to inch away. “Maybe mommy called you a hurricane because when you get mad sometimes you break stuff.”
I tucked my head and walked into the kitchen. “I don’t know.” I said. “Sometimes mommy and daddy just say things. We don’t mean anything by it. I gotta make your snack. Watch Phineas.” I said.
My mind flashed back to 1978 as I stirred the peanut butter with a butter knife. I thought about sweating in the attic when I was eight, holding the blow-hose for the insulation we were scattering all over the ceiling joists. Mom and dad were at it about something, probably Jimmy Carter, or Iran. To me it sounded like a crack in the foundation of reality. It made me think of how my kids must feel when I go on like a raving asshole. They don’t deserve it, and I wondered: do I deserve them?

First Draft/ Ebola Camp Christmas e.p., part two

“Stop the Football!”
Peter Graves Roberts
ebola camp christmas e.p.,
three

“Nobody thought the Dallas Cowboys would be boasting a 12 and 3 record heading into the last regular season game against the Redskins, in our Nation’s capital…but here they are. It’s Sunday December 28th, 2014 at FedEx Field, and the Cowboys are hoping to clinch at least home field advantage for the upcoming playoff season.
Troy Aikman, tell me what to expect today. Is this going to be like the last meeting in Dallas? The Redskins didn’t really seem to show up in that sixty four point gashing. What should we expect tonight, from both teams?”
“Well Joe Buck, first let me say Merry Christmas to you and to all of our fans here in Arlington, and around the country. And we want to wish a big FOX Happy New Year to everyone, especially our service men and women helping here at home, and to those fighting for our freedom…overseas. It’s been an eventful holiday season Troy, and these Cowboys are looking to turn a great 2014 into an even better 2015 with a win in for Super bowl forty nine.”
“Man that’s a bunch a bullshit…” Jimmy said, turning down the television as he exhaled his bong hit. The burgundy lounge chair cracked as it helped his slumped frame forward. “The fuckin’ Cow-girls ain’t gonna win SHIT! Bitches…” he continued. “They’ll be goin’ to the Ebola-bowl…uunnnght !” mist shot from his nose as he started to hack, involuntarily. He brushed the ash from his #12 ‘skins jersey and passed me the bong.
I reached out to the table beside me and pushed play on the cd. I packed one for Charlie and stared for a moment at the reflection of the water outside in the clear plastic tube, then passed it to his end of the couch. The drums splat and rat, the heartbeat ensues, a simple triplet of canned 1981 Jamaican rhythm keys the air and I sing again to Jimmy:
“WHOOA YEAH…you damn craven...
why you so craven? You jussa fly down like Raven…
that’s not the way to behave, you have enough and
still you crave…you always taking away mine…”
With a wheeze and a clearing of his throat he reclines. “Fuck you bitch.” He says.
Jimmy stretched his legs out, flipping his Nike sandals a bit, cracking his toes and then settled back into his asthmatic peanut gallery of one. “RGIII is gonna run all OVER them niggas!” he went on.
“Shut the fuck up, you white bitch.” Charlie laughed, himself, also a whitey. “You’re like 45 now, and you live in Nags Head, you ain’t no gangsta and you ain’t no PRODUCER…stop actin’ all “
“Shiiit bitch!” Jimmy answered, poking his eyes out just a little from the shade of his PING visor, salt and pepper white/B-boy hair cut surrounding the middle of his balding head. “I still got connects in Yard…Andrew Bees and punk ass Beanie Man still chat me up for beats…I got this hot joint I was workin’ on the other night ago…hang on, let me see…” he lunged forward a couple of times until he was upright in the lounger.
“Nobody wants to hear that shit now man.” I said, “the game is about to start. And those dudes just chat you up so you’ll bring ‘em weed when they play in Portsmouth! They got kids in Jamaica that make beats all day long for nothin’! They ain’t gonna’ make you no star bitch…”
I looked down at the brass bowl of green medicine. I put the lighter to the flowers and drew breath in, slowly, as the fire shot down the smaller red tube and bubbled out into the dirty water. I inhaled and sat back on the couch, then blew it out in Jimmy’s direction. “Bitch…” I started to cough a little myself, just turn the game back up!” as I packed him a special hit. “Have you had two?” I asked him.
“Fuck naw NIGGIE! Put it in the WIND Bee-yotch!” he snickered and sniffled.
I placed a rare FAT hemp seed in the bottom of the brass bowl and then covered it with the driest of the shake on the “sesh-tray”. I passed it with a lighter to his outstretched and spindly arms.
Jimmy leaned back, near parallel with the floor and put the fire to the thing. In about a second and a half, just after the tube started filling with smoke, the seed ignites and pops! Rapidly escaping steam jettisons the flaming orb from its nest and it lands right smack in the middle of his forehead, just over his eyes! Shocked, he rocks back and the dirty bong water sloshes all down the front of his neck, chest and jersey.
“Aww shit man.” I start my half assed apology as the laughter erupted in the room. “I didn’t even see that seed in there…” I laughed some more.
“FUCK YOU bitch!” he starts. “Now I gotta go and soak this muther fucka….you motherfuckers suck! God damn it!” He gets up and walks towards a nearby closet. He fills up a bucket with water from a large washing sink and sprays some stain blocker something or other on the jersey and puts it in the bucket of water.
“I full on didn’t know that was in there man, I wouldn’t do you like that…” I go on. “Thank Jah for your mama’s washing machine huh?” I poked as he passed by me, pressing his dragging knuckles against my wooly capped head. He started drying the chair with tissues from the table next to it.
Charlie, in full hysterics is holding his side like he caught a cramp running; “Man, that was funny as shit!” he laughed. “That shit shot STRAIGHT out of there and STUCK on your forehead…it was PERFECT! You couldn’t do that again if you tried…Aahhhhh haaaaaaaa…” he just kept on. I laughed to, and added:
“Yeah…you did look like a punk ass bitch when you nearly drank that whole tube a’ bong water…aaaaa-HA! And FUCK the Foreskins…I thought RGIII was hurt again anyway. They’re playing for three and thirteen anyway; they’ll keep him iced on the bench and play Cousins anyway…watch. And it don’t matter anyway girl…because…the deadskins…are going….to …LOOOOOOOOSE!” I sang to him in a small, annoying chipmunk voice.
“Man? Y’all are a TRIP!” Charlie chimed in, bouncing his busy VANS on Jimmy’s mama’s Oriental rug. “We need to just go SKATE! Turn the teevee off for a minute. It’s all a bunch of overpaid, homophobic gladiators anyway. The Empire is watching us watch this shit every week, just like in Rome. This place is the beast; this place is going to fall. FUCK football. Let’s go skate! C’mon! He said. He stood up and shook his little soapy dread-lings and kicked the tail of his deck and popped up onto the couch with a quick Ollie. “That’s what y’all NEEED to worry about…that styyyyle”
“Shiiit bitch…” Jimmy interrupted, grabbing the board and placing a hand on the corner of the coffee table, just in front of me.
“Look. The…FUCK…out!” I said as he jumped into the air, a little, barely missing the weed tray on my knees. “You’re gonna spill the fucking bong dumbass!” I said. “Ease up ‘Sketchy Hawk’…damn.” Charlie and I both laughed. “I don’t give two shits for the Emperor, the Romans or the bullshit commentary, I just wanna see the game.” I said.
“Shiiit! Y’all NEED to skate VERT! –couple a’ street pussies here. I know y’all are soft…little ‘Mini McGillicuttys…I see how ya are…shiiit.” He trailed off, wheezing.
“Yeah man. In a minute man…” I looked at Charlie as he rolled his eyes. I grabbed the remote and unmuted the game, well, pregame…and turned off the Roots. “Craven ass bitch.” I teased Jimmy again.
“Aaalll-right ! We are going to be taking you all back to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington Texas for the kickoff very soon…” Terry Bradshaw broadcasts…”And don’t forget to tune in at the game break, where Jimmy, Howie and Me will be talking with all of our players’ family members, working around the country in the many facilities…that have been, ahh, beco…ming needed, uh. Troy Aikman, Joe Buck! Back to you fellas! See ya at halftime!”
“This has been your FOX! NFL Sunday Pre-game show…be sure to join us right here at halftime…” mutters the television voice.
Jimmy sat up in the chair and motioned at Charlie. “Sing me a song bitch, damn! Pass that shit!”
“Fuck you” mumbled Charlie, clearing his hit and laying back, his right hand covering the plastic tube.
“Man that shit’s fucked up. E-Bo-la. They shoulda stopped lettin’ motherfuckers in here after that first dude back in the fall.” Jimmy chimes in. “Fuckin’ Obama, I voted for that nigga TWICE too! I still lost my house, and now this shits all up in everything. I think them Ghana mother fuckers are on ta something. I bet that shit IS some kind of vaccine testing gone wrong. These crooked Babylonian bitches.” He turns red eyes to me. “Put it in the wiiind bitch!”
“It’s not Obama’s fault, dumb ass.” I said. Charlie kicked his skateboard against the bottom of the table with a loud, wooden SMACK!
“Oh…shit! Sorry ‘bout that. Haha…It isn’t Obama’s fault if people are just doing stuff behind his back and letting this stuff get out of control. It’s like Selassie…” He said, gazing at the teevee now.
“Selassie!?!” Jimmy shouted, smirking. “This has nothing! Man, just take another bonghit…mmhhhm, hhmmm…” his asthma laughed with him.
“The issue is” I said, handing Jimmy a regular hit, “and NONE of you listened when I said so back before Halloween, that nobody was doing anything when it was just 10,000 cases world-wide. Now it’s 10,000 a week and everybody just wants to freak the fuck out. It’s all bullshit fear. That’s all. These health care and CDC mother fuckers should have fixed this shit MONTHS ago.” I stood up and walked over to the counter between the living room and the kitchen to pour a shot of Maker’s. I grabbed his little shot measurer that came with the Christmas bottle of Maker’s Mark and filed the big side, looking in the cabinet for a glass. Looking past the friends in the room, the waters of the Sound looked like dancing, gleaming diamonds outside, below Jimmy’s deck. The clink of a few cubes of ice in a glass made it stand out especially now, I guess.
Jimmy pulled the hit and exhaled with a wheeze again. “Charlie, your problem is you still believe all this hoodoo shit about the Bible and the fuckin’ Illuminadi. That shit is fairy tales man. It’s dead.” He said, keeping the side of his mouth slightly opened when he paused between phrases. Taking off his visor and scratching his head. “The REAL mother fuckers that aren’t to be trusted in this whole shit are those pharmaceutical mother fuckers. They’re the ones behind all this fuck’ry. It ain’t about Babylon fallin’. It’s about the global unification of assets in the hands of the few that don’t give a fuck about you or me. Those mother fuckers are going to get us all killed one way or another. Fuck it!” He pulled his feet back, out of the sandals again and rolled his foot over his toes, cracking them again and putting them back under the strap. He stood up and looked at me. “Yo, bitch! Pour me a shot!”
“Yo bitch!” I said. “Buy some Coke.” And pulling the flat half a’ two liter Pepsi from the fridge I poured it, fizz-less on the ice and drank my shot. I poured him a short one and passed it across the counter. “You want one Charlie?” I asked.
“Got damn nig-gie, give me the dirty glass! I see how you are. Bitch.” Jimmy slurped his whiskey. “In my own criiiib too, daaaang.”
“Fuck yo house BITCH!” I laughed.
“Nahhh.” Said Charlie. “I’m good on that. I’ll take another bong hit though.” He rolled his neck against the back of the cushy couch to turn his cheesing grin my way. “Put it in the wiiind…” he laughed.
“Daaamn! Smoke up all my corn and drink up all my juice! I see how y’all are. Gaht Dayum!” Jimmy said. “Y’all nigggas is CHEAP!” he laughed.
“He’s right man.” I said to Charlie, he’s the one with the money. “Big dollas…heh heh.”
“Shit.” He started again, “as long as PETA keeps paying me to build them doghouses I’ll be set. If I didn’t have that though, I’d be fucked.”
“Well build ‘em bitch!” I said, passing the tube to Charlie. Sitting back down in front of the coffee table and inspecting the remainder of the smoke-ready weed, I grab the remote and turn up the television. “What the fuck?” I said. “It’s been commercials for like the last fifteen minutes, and now some special message bullshit!” I shout at the television now “WHAT THE FUCK? THIS IS WHAT C.N.N. IS FOR! Put it back on football.” I say.
“What is it?” asks Jimmy, coming back over from the bar. He sits down in the big burgundy recliner, but doesn’t recline. “What’s this shit, another case?” He wonders aloud to me and Charlie.
“I don’t give a fuck who or what! Dallas. Mother fuckin’ Cowboys! –end of story!” Every week it’s a case, and all them bitches quarantined, THERE’S TEN THOUSAND this week in West Africa! Nobody gives a fuck. Some white nurse from Tennessee gets it though, or a tiddie surgeon who’s trying to score karma points and we flip the fuck out. It’s fucking stupid. Aaaah!” I get up, looking outside again and heading for the sliding glass exit. “Y’all done fucked up my buzz! Fuck it!”
“What the fuck?” says Charlie, looking confused?
“Yeah…what the fuck Pedro? What the fuck did WE do…?” He stood and stared at the person at the mic. “Hold up y’all. This’s some Presidential shit!”
“Nothing man, I just…” I said.
“HOLD ON!” Jimmy said again. We all got quiet and looked at the screen.

432 miles to Manitoba/Hank's best girl

Hank's best girl

stronger than most of you
or me

across oceans and universe as
pixie borne through
hells and lifetimes more
than most alive

stronger than most of you or me
seen it, like i seen it
motorcycle slides head
knocked of in the
red veiled helmet
or alone when i ran
at seventeen in D.C.

flex your head
XXX

stronger than most of you
or me

the unyielding tide-
-the acrid piles of
nutmeg
sweet nightmare
that forces backs to
bleed on bricks

stronger than most of you or
me

the cigarette deaths
and steam soaked streets
the billion broke up
stars that scream;

wrap it in her hand's palm
now...
feed for the birds on
Avenue B

stronger than either you
or me

-if i could sit and
cook a story drown in
silence of the drunk's


but watching and dadding
and waiting for sinking
just hopeful wishes and
wishful hopes and some
blueberry muffins and
432 miles to Manitoba

media schrapnel

humans believe.

we/they believe
what is comfortable,
chicken soup, hot cocoa
and diaper ads

if a mouth on television,
on the interwebs
on speed
tells them
"the president is from Africa"
they believe it
-the congresswoman
was a witch
hey laugh and smoke pot and
sell it

a russian team shot down a friendly plane
over a war it
sounds favorable to friendly
defensive fire.
when a rocket blows up near a park
and hospital
they tell us the bad guys fell short
it wasn't from the same crew that has lost
43 humans to
the devil incarnate while
mowing down one thousand and
forty hellions, devils and kids
of that scum.

why do American Humans believe so little
about our figureheads and their intention
while believing
nothing from the black man
handcuffed, kicked and beaten
on his own couch
by white cops in a black neighborhood
???????

it's all on the news

who would your Jesus bomb?

“last night, for the first time I baked confections sprinkled with salt and grains” (three books)

we never know.

and worse for us that
thinking that we do.
-that is when the
iron falls…

i watch old friends grow
comfortable as cities
shrink to rough oil scene
-the quest recedes to
beach routine.

and my friends are sharp,
they cut to remind my
calm the place to find me,

beside Miss Morphine
lying now where the blade
no longer signifies
-where the air we
breathe is cancer.

speak to me in seven days
and I am told to go
or stay, seven steps
to heaven’s nay as
all this life I danced with
8…
and 8 will bring the answer
then, open the un-earthen gate
where news supplanted
by dancers.

“Pete, impale me now.”
it says…
the God inside the fox
and hound.

purple flower

it’s what I see
the concrete on fire
the streets of addiction
the holes in the colon
an ocean of glass
and volcanic, and manic
the power
depression
impression of mine;

held back by
broken bones
and wrenched neck
as I stop
and stoop
to pick and hand
her one small
purple flower
-my first baby
daughter.

while leaning against
it to
keep it behind me

hypodermic boulevard

juggling ice with
buttered hands
it’s how we
it’s what we do
because

in traffic, I
rode behind one slow
lamming through the
gnats like silent dull bangs
his tail to my
nose as he drives too slow

i lay back smoking it
and I forget for a second, the
rats and race and cracked dead
slate turtle shells and drift
away into the wisps of mallows seed
and
the one behind me makes me push.
rear view and double yellow left
and isn't that how we
do isn't that what we are
are?
Just hate and push the one
in front of us and hate and block
the one in back of us who would
but for some peering tasteless gas
lay waste and cancel
the one in front

and isn't that just what we do?
juggling butter in
frozen marshland
hands in wasteland
mind in chains
the continuing host for
the evolution of the viruses

juggling ice-brain waste caves
in spent sharp rigs, and birthday cake cans
and cigarettes.
hypodermic boulevard and the
late
late
shock./ the
setting sequined supper of
the sixth great extinction.

standing behind me; some thing
pushes me to push the
thing in front of me
and that is what a
human does to life.
what we do, we are.

us are

stood
beside the mailbox by
the big little road


horns blown
my salute extended
going about our business.

when i'm out there
on it barreling
in the Cadillac
issuing the fuck yous
and flashing lights


it's not right.


none of it is
us
are.

just in the nature of this.


-everyone with somewhere
to beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,
and nothing.

(c) 2014 peter graves roberts

"The Hog Island Sheep"

saturday outer banks minute:
(5/17/14)
"Pirates were DICKS, and the Hog Island Sheep"

so yeah, lot's of you like to see the pirate movies with the swashbuckling hottie-mens like JD and Keith...but have you ever really learned the history behind these murderous, slave-trading daft cuntz?
*only redeeming quality up front...they were a fair bunch among themselves, they had 'shipboard articles' entitling all aboard an even split of the 'booty', as it were, and a prototypical democratic model for doing business, including what you might equate to worker's compensation.


-but they were dicks. imagine a bunch of asshole gang members (the 16th-17th century Brits) that rule an area so vast that they can't control it...or, POLICE IT. so they give authority to a bunch of lawless, greedy bastards to board and/or blow up vessels from the other gang (mainly 16th-17th century Spanish) and then take all the 'treasure' aboard for themselves. sounds cool huh? -from that 1950's 'murican male perspective'.
then, after the QUEEN told them to stop once the war ended and SHE signed a treaty with the other gang, the Privateers, or Pirates kept on robbing, looting, burning, raping and murdering. When caught, they would say ." oh...but i am sorry" and be given a governorship somewhere in the caribbean on some sugar plantation or the like. they don't celebrate Chris Columbine or Spicy Rum Capt. Morgan in Jamaica, all my marley and weed loving friends...they call them come-bust-us and pirate morgan...remember the dying slave that first discovered rum in a fermented sugar cane juice puddle, delirious and without the fear of a bludgeoned reprisal from his well paid task master the next time you step up to the bar at the brewin' station and order a captain and coke...dancing to some mid-western reggae cover band. yeah mon...yer jammin'.


so to recap. pirates were dicks. don't dress your kids as pirates. unless you wanna remain, or if vacationing, be like the naturals and the transplants here...and just self medicate, and look the other way. remind yourself that you are in the best place on earth, perfect weather, colorful, fruity cocktails, and sugar-poison slurping slaves. forget the dying souls all around, calling out in the night...the fell trees and smashed reptiles; the road-rot of small bandits and marsupials.


just stare out at that blue lie...keep a firm grip on that sweating mexican glass and your toes snuggled in the warmth of a ground mountain that during the Archean Eon, believed that it too would stand forever. it didn't and you won't. there is a good and bad news type of living here...we use yoga and shaman and western hippies doped on chinese meds and needles and billboards and jazzy commercials to remind ourselves that we love it, but we know that we live under two possible mothers. one, the finest would be the death by tempest, a cat five hurricane to slam into the southern tail of us and chew up the sound, north by northeast, ripping everything on either side like a saw-blade while the heavier wind and spin-off cyclones pummels the glorious beachhead into something unrecognizable to anyone thereafter. the second death is the slow sinking. nobody alive today will have to deal with it really...our grand-kids will, but nobody cares that the slow and steady rise of the ocean will eventually turn this extended spit into another buried treasure. The evidence of our folly and the genius of our paleo-ancestry will once again become the stuff of legend; meanwhile, we remain...grazing on the seasonal leavings like the Hog Island Sheep.

(c)2014 pgr

the service of the grave

an old
and dear friend
stands outside today
during the service
of the grave.

i have stood
on line
as well-
twenty-four hours
removed from my
jamaican mountain peak,
watching as my moon sank
into the dark and
stars behind me
and another sun raised
red and fuchsia
over that still
blue Carib sea.

a drunken flight or two
and there I was;
next to my departed
in the spitting rains
of February,
just like him today.

a cold fucking mother
this is.
-pale blue wisps of sky
and I hate you
blown against clean
and shaven cheeks.

no saving grace
for days like these
-save the thought
that one amongst
will never see this
pane again.

i stand beneath my
live oak

leaves, branches
heavy with rain
i move in and out
through them
smashing my cigarette;
we've survived another
winter

now together
we bear the
burden
of
satisfying
the unfulfilled

“Classy in First Class”

“Classy in First Class”

It was in June of 1995. Sandra and I had been dating since the twenty-fifth anniversary of Woodstock. She had gone, and returned with pictures of herself and lots of other young ones butt-ball naked and covered in mud. She drove a neat little white VW Golf that smelled of concert urine. Some acid tripping man-child had mistakenly micturated on her Birkenstocks during the “two more days of peace, love and music reunion” I was rocking a cherry, ’73 Gold Duster; no pee smell. We were a fun fit; even if only for a half-year or so. Most of that scene was during cold weather, and she had a big, warm bed. After my grandma died the following spring we decided to take a trip down south. The words once uttered by my old friend and Jamaican home owner Todd rang clear in my head; “you really wanna take her to Jamaica? You know, it is a make or break thing. Once you get there one of two things happen. She will both adapt and love it as we do, or you will be broken up after the trip.” I thought he was a fool. We set the timeline for two weeks down there.
We were flying out of Raleigh so we drove the four hours to get there the night before, staying with a friend of a friend whose name I can’t remember, but she was cool. She took us to the airport for our extremely early flight, eight in the a.m. I think it was. This is when things got a little hairy, but still fun. We stayed up drinking until the wee hours of the morning and then hit an all night Taco Bell. That was the fuel for the eventual fire, now all we needed was a spark. That spark came at the ticket counter when we arrived and tried to sign in. The clerk told us that the flight was over-booked, and that she wasn’t sure she would get us on the flight, but if we decided to take a later flight, we could each have a round trip ticket for anywhere in the continental U.S. This wasn’t sufficient to me. I was hung over, and I had a guy that I couldn’t call waiting for me in Montego Bay. I needed to be on that flight. To make matters worse, my stomach was CHURNING with the un-digested meal from just hours before. It has always been my worst enemy- late night eating. Unless I get a full eight to ten hours to sleep through the process, I awake to some fairly decent cramping.
Sandra dragged me to the bar for a Bloody Mary, and to get me away from the nice girl at the desk. I was beginning to act ‘entitled’. A few moments later we were back at the gate, seated in those hard plastic chairs. My name was called and I approached the counter once again. “Well Mr. Butler, we have got you guys on this flight, and you will be in FIRST CLASS!” she said with a smile. She was very proud, or at least it seemed so. She probably just wanted us out of her way. Nevertheless, in fifteen minutes we would be boarding and accepting the free champagne. I guess the tomato cocktail and the bubbles kind of combined and the slow burning fuse was lit, within weeks a conflagration would ensue. The next three hours however would prove to be the most gut-wrenchingly funny I may have ever lived. The napalm was now sinking from my hollowing gut, down towards my rectum. It felt warm in first class all of a sudden. I felt trapped.
I did that thing where you try and suck your stomach in, and hold back the anal air, trying to reverse pucker a sphincter muscle or two, but it wasn’t working. Each passing moment brought the contractions closer together and I knew I wouldn’t make it the next three hours without some relief. I made the toughest decision a twenty-five year old half hippie could make in that situation; I had to let it out. I had to let them out, the ghosts two tacos bell Grande, minus tomatoes, pinto’s and cheese with sour cream and a regular order of nachos. That and Heineken mustard were creeping down the lower part of the inside of my back. I glanced feverishly around the cabin. It was shiny and new looking. The flight attendant was working us with the cart and the rest of the passengers weren’t even done boarding. There were three couples besides us, and they all looked like happy and conservative newly-weds. This would not end well, I thought. Turning towards the window to stare at the men packing our bags beneath our airship, I made the terrible decision to let one slip. I really had no choice. I thought I was about to pass out. My shoulders were tingling, my mouth was getting dry, and my stomach was turning into a quite unfamiliar knot. If I didn’t let it go then I may have not seen my beloved Jamaica again, so out it came; the heavy-warm and silent flatulence. I felt like I had just given birth, although it was really just the beginning, the would-be mucous plug to my boiled egg-impregnated belly. Sandra was the first to get caught in the web. It took a minute, as these types often do. They hang near and then expand slowly. She leaned over to me and whispering softly in my ear she asked “was that you?” The only correct response in this case, gentlemen, is always “HELL NO!” She spoke further…softly now, but with more volume than a whisper, “well, somebody needs to go to the bathroom.” She intended for whomever had “dealt it” to hear. Three or four minutes must have passed, it couldn’t have been more than five when I felt the second sortie leaving the hanger; into the hatch went the munitions. I struggled again, but not with such vigor, and then I let go of a good one; a proper, phantom “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three Mississippi count.” Seconds later she nearly erupted, but she still kept the majority of her anger close, her chin to her chest as she said quietly, but audibly now “Damn, somebody is sick or something, ‘bout to make me sick!” I started to laugh a little inside. It was like the old joke about a guy in a chair with a dog underneath. I was getting away with it. By this time, we were in the air. The pilots were making the announcements and behind the curtain over my shoulder a woman pushed a slightly different cart to the well mannered passengers back there. I thought about it, but not really. I was twenty five and slightly high. I finished the second free champagne baby and moved onto another cocktail. Bloody Mary number three had me feeling slightly normal again. I was waking up.
I thought I was done with the trench fighting, but that was only because my buzz increased at a slightly more aggressive rate than did the awareness of my situational flatus. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves; Sandra was looking around, out all of the windows and smiling. I was smiling. We soared through the clouds, almost above the sun it seemed. I had never seen the clouds from there before. They were golden about the edges and it was almost like flying through some manmade tunnel of shape-shifting cotton candy clowns. I could almost taste the fresh squeezed juice at the bar around the corner of my boss’s house; the view from the cliffs, and the goats tied up as nature’s lawnmowers. In that instant I was in heaven, flying high in the friendly skies. I was proud, I bitched us into first class and here we were, and then it happened. The pick of the litter came up from the pig’s teat and I had to struggle to keep from squirting myself. As I clenched, one last fireball rolled slowly through the tube and out from under my lap, into the magic air of a first class honeymoon. Sandra was pushed too far. She jumped to her feet and began to rant. “Somebody in here needs to control themselves! I didn’t say anything the first couple of times!” she yelled “but one a y’all is NASTY! GAAWWWD!” and I was now fighting another urge. I wanted to laugh out loud. I had her, and she was now screaming at six perfect strangers. I chewed on my tongue to avoid laughing. There was absolutely NO WAY that I could let her know it was me after her explosion. Sandra was great, I really liked her, but she had a reputation for these types of outbursts, but so what? I had a reputation of leaving a job before I started. We were young and sexy…well, she was sexy. I smelled like a sulfur mine.

My dumbass boss Todd turned out to be right in the end. We were fighting an hour into the two weeks, and it only got worse. I remember the end coming at the airport in Atlanta, waiting for the final connection to get us home. We had a fight over who would get the last Bloody Mary. We only had enough between the two of us for one airport drink, not even a double for a dollar more. We broke up a couple of days after we got back to Babylon beach. We stayed friends though. Years later I revealed to her that it was me that blew up first class that time, and she nearly neat my ass. I couldn’t help it; I had so many opportunities over the years to tell that story. Every time, before I even got halfway through my listeners would be doubled over holding their guts, and I would be laugh-crying as I hyperventilated to get the sentences out. On one or two occasions I am pretty sure I made girls pee themselves a little, and when you’re growing up in a cold world that doesn’t give a fuck, the food we have is poison and our elected officials are trying to rape us at every turn; isn’t that what it’s really all about? I choose to think so.

home in sight

i railed around the rooms
like on feathers of metal and wheels
of static

adrenaline

a-
dren-
a-
len.

i spoke much
and feverishly;
and i stood,
finally
before my washer and dryer,
in the room where we keep
recyclables and
the cat eats...and i wept.

and the tears were like
a homecoming,
and the feeling that a twenty-five year
self-imposed sentence
had been finally lifted.

my shoulders dropped,
and i wept...
for the long walk, the dead friends
and the wild flowers.
i wept for the fact that
even this;
that most
magnificent
of miracles is
yet,
just a chance.

and then i sat down, and i began to write, again.

the ghosts are real after all, light is

how lovely to see
a street lamp draped
in shadow:
proof that all
we know
merits
reconsideration.


-the ghosts
are real
after all,

light is dark
and dark is
light.

both are ever-present;
effervescent.

the Mourning dove

a freshly fallen
sky and
no-one's gaze turns
up to
watch goodbye

wish upon that star
that's dead and
never understood
the life you are

the Mourning dove

a freshly fallen
sky and
no-one's gaze turns
up to
watch goodbye

wish upon that star
that's dead and
never understood
the life you are

the Mourning dove

a freshly fallen
sky and
no-one's gaze turns
up to
watch goodbye

wish upon that star
that's dead and
never understood
the life you are

helpful hints and info from Jim Rose !

JIM ROSE OF THE JIM ROSE CIRCUS PRESS KIT
This is a unique press kit in that Jim's assistant came up with over 30 questions and had
Jim answer them. Of course he is available for interviews as well but almost every
question imaginable has been answered in this format. Change the wording of the
questions to fit your publication's style if you wish or use it as it is. Let's just have fun with
it.
To contact Jim please send email to: jimrosecircus@jimrosecircus.com
For 300 dpi glossy magazine quality photos please click this link ----
http://s1295.photobucket.com/user/jimrosefan1/library/JIM%20ROSE?sort=2&page=1
For background about Jim Rose, his tours, books he has written, appearances on television shows, the X-Files and the Simpsons, along with his weekly TV
show on the Travel Channel “The Jim Rose Twisted Tour”, click this link for Wikipedia, bio and Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jim-Rose-Circus/73911349699
And now the questions and answers for your article:
SO YOUR BOOK SNAKE OIL HAS JUST BEEN RE-RELEASED ON KINDLE
BY BARTLEBY PRESS. FOR THOSE THAT ARE NOT AWARE, WHAT IS
THE BOOK ABOUT?
Snake Oil is an eclectic encyclopedia of all things scam, fraud, rip off, con and con artists,
the tricks behind the tricks including bar bets, brain washing, hypnotism, illusions and
crazy stunts. The book's purpose is to explain the psychology of having a streeet
education so that the core motivators of action (why people do what they do) can be used
in legal ways for DIY marketing.
It is a collection of all things street wise.
WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?
JR: one day I had an epiphany.." give punk a new tentacle...do it with sideshow..the old
ways weren't working for that genre anyways so force this stuff in to rock clubs..most of
these stunts haven't been seen in 20 years..there is a lost generation..fuck it i'm going to try
this..sure beats a cubicle"...best decision I've ever made. Now there are 100s of troupes all
over the world doing it..every time I see new performers or shows I get a tingle..half of
them don't even know about my show..that's cool too...together we brought a slice of lost
art back on our own youthful terms.
YOUR DESCRIPTION OF THE JIM ROSE CIRCUS
If I was a complete virgin to the Jim Rose Circus and had never heard of you, what
would be your description of it to me?
JR: You'll see the unexpected. Thrills, chills and doctor bills. A ticket's good for a seat but
you'll only use the edge. It's over-the top high-flying bone-jarring excitement. Not since
Christians were fed to the lions has there been a show this hysterical.
But I bet if I told you that there was an episode of the SIMPSONS where Homer ran
away to the join my circus as the human cannonball, you would in fact realize that you are
familiar with me. Or if I told you that I was in one of the most popular episodes of the XFILES
or had my own weekly tv show on the TRAVEL CHANNEL, you may go "oh,
okay, I do know him." But if you don't have any of that reference to help you along, just
expect the unexpected.
YOUR EARLY YEARS
The best place to start would be your beginnings, what was the family life
like with your parents?
JR: Christian.
So there was a heavy dose of moral dogma?
JR: Yeah, and it was always fluid, the doctrine was never set in concrete. It changed as the
selfish needs of my parents needed them to. So what applied to the good book one day,
didn't necessarily the next; they were hypocrites but aren't we all?
Tell us about your early years. Where did you grow up, and how did you end
up honing your skills in Europe before coming to national prominence in
1992?
JR: I was born premature and cross eyed. My father was an amateur magician and
mentalist. After birth I was so small I had to stay at the hospital in an incubator for 2
weeks. Standard cribs were too big so when I was brought home my parents fitted me in a
shoe box to serve as my first bed. My mother used to joke that she didn't remember how
much I weighed but she did know I was a women's size 7. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona
as something of a freak myself, not getting corrective surgery for my crossed-eyes until the
age of eight.
I lived across the street from the fairgrounds and went to all the traditional circuses,
monster truck shows, motorcycle daredevils, freak shows and legitimate theater that came
to town. My first job was at the fairgrounds, doing odd jobs like going around selling soft
drinks. I fetched soft drinks and cigarettes for the Lobster Boy, the Penguin Boy, the Frog
Boy. I was doing that for awhile and then learned to do the human blockhead and learned
how to be a motorcycle daredevil. That was my first real job, but I had a little motorcycle
accident. I attempted to jump 27 cows and must have landed on some spent cud. I went a
bit wobbly, I cleared the cows but still managed to crash. I hurt my back so that's why
when I speak to you today I have the posture of a jumbo shrimp.
I kind of gave up on entertaining for a while: I attended the University of Arizona and
studied political science, moved to Washington DC and dabbled in spoken word
performances, played in punk bands and the like while working on fundraising events for
social causes (as well as a stint in car sales). I used to perform at a place called D.C. Space
that was back in the day of Henry Rollins and Fugazi, this was right about 1984-85. I was
there when that happened, I didn't break because I was not very good at that time, I only
got started. At one of my shows I ran into a little French girl named Bebe who comes
from a circus family in France. She has been my beloved wife for over 25 spectacular
years. She took me to France and I began working with her family circus. She introduced
me to the European tradition of circus spectacle, which inspired me to research it
thoroughly. Her brother is the director of the Royal De Luxe, the largest circus in Europe;
one sister and her German husband have the Randalini circus, and I used to travel with
them, going around the Lake of Constance. So I learned a great deal about circus stuff
and freak shows at that time, I didn't know too much about how to run a freak show. It
was hard to find anything about it in the US because it had disappeared for about fifteen
years. So I brought some of the American stunts over there and I picked up some Euro
stunts, brought them back to the US.
I then went to Venice beach where I worked as Jimmy the Geek Rubber Man, I got my
presentation skills up doing seven shows a day, seven days a week as a street performer.
That is how I made my money - fucking with tourists...
Then I started the Jim Rose Circus and reintroduced American audiences to freak-show
attractions in Seattle and it seemed like likeminded monsters sat up in their crypts and
started auditioning.
Things went so well in Seattle that we went down to Portland,OR and that sold out, and
soon we were asked to tour Canada. We became so well known in Canada that we started
getting calls to do TV shows and then things exploded. It all happened in about a 6
month period.
Considering the circus was put together before the age of Facebook and
Craigslist, how did you manage to pull together all the people involved?
JR: Yeah, like I said, like minded people sat up in their crypts and started to audition.
There was a little click of people that were interested in it and there was no place really to
perform this stuff. I would go around the clubs in Seattle and talk to the owners about it
and they would look at me like I killed the Lindberg kid. I found this little Middle Eastern
restaurant that was across the street from my house called Ali Baba's, which on Thursday
nights they had belly dancers. So I talked to the owners Ali and Baba, whatever I don't
remember their names, and I ended up doing a gig. I put up some posters and I thought
that I would get about twenty of my friends; instead I got there two hours early and the
place was packed with a line outside. Since everyone had gotten in early so they didn't
have to pay, I had to start the show going around getting money from everyone. There
was this group of people outside who refused to pay and pressed their faces against the
window of the restaurant. I was just winging it at the time, didn't even know what my
show was going to be since I thought no one was would show up; so I started the show off
talking to those people staring through the window. In that melee of people were
individuals like Kurt Cobain and a few other names that escape my mind, so I went
outside with a plastic bat and told the people they had to pay a dollar or I would hit them
over the head with the bat. The people on the inside who had already paid the 6 dollars to
be inside got to watch.
I turned the people outside INTO the show. Everyone inside was looking outside at me
going around collecting those dollars, if they didn't have a dollar I would bop them on the
head with the plastic bat. That is pretty much how the show got started, I got back in and
did my shit, it was pretty punk. I guess that is why I get some kind of weird credibility,
because before that show punk pretty much meant rock and roll, and I pretty much
expanded it to include performance type art that wasn't musical.
LOLLAPALOOZA
In '92 your show saw its breakthrough point with Lollapalooza, how did you
end up getting recruited for the festival?
JR: I'd done a sold out tour of Canada and I'd done some national television in the US.
Perry Farrell saw the Sally Jessie Raphael show and he asked me to join up. We did and
we've not looked back since. At the time I had no idea who his band was. Hell the first day
of Lollapalooza someone pointed out this band to me and said “look it is Jane's
Addiction!” I said “well I hope she gets treatment.”
The festival itself was so beyond anything given to the public at that time,
what did you think of the whole event? Any crazy stories that come to mind?
JR: That is true because most of them were stationary at the time. As for the crazy stories,
that time was really a spunk incrusted blur..Yeah it is pretty blurry.
A lot of alcohol fueled nights?
JR: No a lot of complete stress. I was on MTV everyday, so it was very hard to go out in
public and the first time I ever had to deal with anything like that. Of course as soon as it
stopped airing on TV everyone stopped recognizing me.
TOURING WITH NINE INCH NAILS
From what I understand the festival was when you first began to be friends
with Trent Reznor, what brought you guys together and how did that lead up
to you touring with him for the Downward Spiral Tour?
JR: Actually that is not true. I had gotten a phone call, I had heard that he had come to a
few of my shows and watched it.
I was a bit clueless...I was about ten years older than everyone on that tour. I get on Lollapalooza and go oh boy! So I picked up a copy of Spin
Magazine and watched about twenty minutes of MTV and I said oh I see they have this
new edit thing going on, where you see everything quick quick quick, these days you see it
on every network but it was a new edit style back then. These audience wanted it fast with
the F word. I was the first to do an MTV type of a live show, I made it feel like you
needed a swivel on your neck with how fast we were doing the performance, it felt like
Biblical times, there were miracles happening everywhere. That was the type of feeling I
was going for but with a little more of a growl as a character.
X-FILES AND THE SIMPSONS
You've appeared in a few culturally significant television shows, such as
acting in the X-Files and being immortalized in The Simpsons. How did the
X-Files gig come about?
JR: Chris Carter, the producer, read my book (FREAK LIKE ME), he was a fan and so
was David Duchovny. They originally got in touch with me to see if I could do something
on the show. I'd never heard of the X-Files I was touring Europe at the time and I said no,
and they came back again and again, they were very adamant and I said no. Then my
agent called me up one day and said, you know this is a pretty big show, and said they will
let me help write the script if I decide to be in it. Which I replied “now I definitely don't
want to be in it because that sounds like too much work”. They called back with a good
offer, so I said okay, I won't help write it; Darin Morgan wrote it and he did a really good
job.
The episode was Humbug from the second season of the X-Files and I was featured as Dr
Blockhead. Trivia fans may be curious to know that Gillian Anderson ate a live cricket
after a dare from me during the filming. It was the first real curve ball episode, I was the
lead murder suspect in it, they do fan favorite voting and that episode comes in at number
one or number two all the time.
And then The Simpsons, well they got a hold of me, they wanted to do a Homer-palooza.
They knew that my show was pretty much the vibe of that festival for many years. My
wife Bebe is the Human Cannonball in the Jim Rose Circus, so Homer basically took her
place in that episode.
That's quite some swap.
JR:Yeah, I swapped my wife for a cartoon.
After The X-Files and The Simpsons, things changed for us. People perceived us
differently. We got the rock-and-roll tour buses and nice hotels. It was like some kind of
pop-culture thing going on.
Did the X-Files give you a taste for acting? Can we expect to see you in the
movies?
JR: There's this movie out with Ben Affleck who I just beat in poker for a bit of money.
His production company, Project Greenlight, did this thing in the US, called Outing Riley,
and I'm a priest in it, and I actually play it straight.
On the topic of film productions, there was a series on HBO called
Carnivale which centered on a traveling freak show circus. Have you seen it
and do you think it would have been better done with you and your crew?
JR: Actually I was asked to be in it, but I was too busy. I had a really big career in Europe
and Australia so I was not in the US as often as I would like to be.
THE BOOK SNAKE OIL
Are you a debunker, like Penn and Teller or James Randi? Or do you just
leave them to get on with their own thing?
JR: Well, in my book Snake Oil, there's a lot of debunking!
Do you think other performer and magicians are going to get upset because
you're revealing the trade secrets?
JR: No, you know, I don't care! Some of that stuff, like how to train a bear to ride a
bicycle, or how to hypnotize different animals, is going to get lost forever, and one of the
reasons to put out Snake Oil was to make sure that the information was preserved.
Although there's a caveat at the beginning, warning that many of the tricks
are dangerous, do you think that there's a danger people will use this book
as a manual and try some of the more dangerous tricks like being run over
by a car?
JR: Yeah, that's a concern of mine, and I hope they don't, and I hope they have somebody
that's right there on the spot that can help with it. A lot of the stuff in the book could land
you in jail; it's not exactly illegal, it's a sort of psychological manipulation, calculations,
misdirections that take place in every day life. So I hope people don't use it to, uh, become
a pimp and turn girls into prostitutes, and I'm hoping people will use this book in a
positive way. Its goal really is to show what's out there so that you don't get taken.
Snake Oil had some hysterical bar tricks, including the old pick up the $10
bill trick where did you gather these pranks from?
JR: You know what? I had so much stuff in my head that I just didn't want it to get lost.
This is stuff you would only know if you had hung around hustlers in the 70s and 80s, and
that is what I did. I just didn't want it to be lost, since I was one of the few old guys left
who could get it published. My motivation was what does a street education mean? You
hear about it all the time, now to get that degree you have to go through a ton of hard
knocks. So I figured I would give people their street education without the hard knocks.
The second tier of the reason why I decided to write the book was, for example: brain
washing! You can read a 200 page book on brainwashing and at the end of the book you
know about as much about it as when you started. Then it dawns on you, wow I could
have distilled that into about two paragraphs and I would have understood it! So why did
the author need to write 200 pages? Because that is what a fucking book is. And that really
frustrated me. I just came from the position that everything in the book could be summed
up in a few paragraphs, this is what it is so here it is.
The third motivation behind the book was to allow people after reading it to be dumped
off into a country that they didn't know the language and still be able to make a living and
survive. I wanted to chock that book full of different kinds of information: how to scam
people, how to change your identity, how to disguise yourself, how to win a fight if
cornered, how to do easy jail time if you have to go to jail, how to win free pints at a pub,
different magic tricks, circus stunts, how to get even with people... it's an eclectic
encyclopedia on all things“shysterish”. I thought that'd be fun to put that out.But the most
important point for the book came one day when I had an epiphany."What if all the street
psychology I've learned was used in a legal way as part of a DIY marketing strategy?" I
tried it with a show I was barely able to perform, it was all a bunch of made up on the
spot BS. I called it the Jim Rose Circus. Due to my marketing angles that very first show
sold out and I never looked back.I ended up on the covers of THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL,FAST COMPANY MAGAZINE and was the featured example of
advertising acumen in the best selling business book THE DEVIANTS ADVANTAGE.
The problem with getting a real street education is that you have to go through a lot of
hard knocks and pain for the degree. In 2005 I remedied that dilemma for the masses. I
wrote the most complete book ever offered on all things scam fraud and con artist. What
did I name the book? "SNAKE OIL".
That was pretty much what I wanted to accomplish with the book, and a few other topics
that fit into those categories that I could pull off. It is about a 200 page book but you get
about 700-800 scams from it.
The response has been huge by the way; on Amazon.com they've really been selling a ton
of 'em!
Out of curiosity, have you seen the 1932 cult classic movie Freaks? What are
your thoughts on it?
JR: Of course, but I hadn't seen it until I already had a career...well I wouldn't say had a
career, but I was already doing it. I was still punkin it in Seattle...without a Mohawk,
I had really long hair. I had hair in places that monkeys don't.
VIDEO GAMES
Any video games?
JR: EA sports SSX Tricky. I am Psymon. And they liked that game so much I am also
Psymon on the new one - Sled Storm II.
THE NAME
You've relocated for a while from Portland, OR to Las Vegas. So what was
once the "Jim Rose Circus Sideshow" is now an act in Vegas?
JR: Yeah, we knocked off the "Sideshow" part in 1994 after we sold out three straight
nights in Madison Square Garden. We're the Jim Rose Circus now, not really much of a
sideshow after that point.
YOUR AUDIENCE
Is there a typical audience member you guys tend to attract?
JR: There is no such thing anymore. I have been around too long. You will see a biker
next to a cowboy, next to a punk rocker, next to a University artist, next to a lesbian. And
they are all pointing at the stage, laughing, and slapping each other on the back.
I pretty much bring communities together. God's work.
BEING A PRECURSOR
You were a precursor for much of the grunge performance art and circus
sideshows, and things like Jackass, and Dirty Sanchez in the UK. Do you feel
like you're the grandaddy of this stuff?
JR: Well, a lot of the Jackass guys have said publicly that I am. I knew 'em back when they
were little mules. They are good guys.
Dirty Sanchez, not very familiar, but I've been around since they were clean!
I know in the United States and I don't necessarily agree with this but publications like
Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal give me credit for starting a fashion trend
for piercing and tattooing: the circus brought it to national consciousness, prior to other
entities.
There are other reasons why that took off, but they do call me “the God of Bod Mod”!
which is as close to hip as Newsweek can get!
You have seen so many people jump on the band wagon how have you stayed
ahead of your own curve to keep up?
JR: Yeah, twenty years ago I started with a guy with a few tattoos and one piercing. Now,
that guy's your next door neighbor.
But with Jim Rose Circus, I have a brand. I was on the covers of the Wall Street Journal,
Fast Company... I'm not this trained business guy but I have an idea about what it takes to
convince people that their life is incomplete if they don't buy a ticket, plan an evening, get
in their car and see something that their better nature tells them not to.
YOUR SHOW ELEMENTS
Tell the bile beer story.
JR:We do an act that has a performer thread 7 feet of tubing into his stomach via the
nose and we use a huge cylinder and pump all kinds of stuff into the stomach (mostly beer
and Pepto Bismol) then we do a reversal and pump the stomach contents back into the
cylinder and pour the concoction into a cup and the performer drinks it.The joke with
that stunt went "It's the after after taste he worries about". One night Chris Cornell of
SOUNDGARDEN walked on stage and drank it. Eddie Vedder of PEARL JAM saw this
and came up the next night, then Al Jourgansen, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Gibby from the Butthole Surfers, all came up the next night to partake. It made MTV.
After that we needed extra security because at shows the audience would rush the stage to
drink the vomit.
Do you still do that stunt?
JR: We still do the act, but it's done in a more scientific and explanatory way. And
audience participation is not encouraged.
We're not really doing a gross and disgusting show anymore; it's more of a thrill show. It's
like P.T. Barnum meets John Waters.
It's a much, much bigger show now.
In your circus, there seems to be an element of returning to an almost
Victorian sense of the macabre. Are you a fan of those old-style touring
freak shows and carnivals?
JR: You know I used to be, but I gotta tell ya, there were so many people that were I guess
we could say inspired, other people would say imitating, my 1992 and 1993 act, word for
word. It was my original inspiration but then I got into power tools and lawnmowers and
chainsaws, the different things you can do with stuff like that, twenty-first century phobias
like Super-Glue, etcetera. And then I morphed into kind of a big wrestling show for a few
years like women Sumo wrestling, Mexican Transvestite Wrestling, etc..
It is an amazing thing though, I took out women Sumo wrestling and Mexican
transvestite wrestling back in '97. That was my biggest selling show, I did 17,000 $35
tickets in just about every city doing theatre runs.
Tell me about Mexican transvestites wrestling.
JR: Yeah! The transvestite wrestling, with the face masks! I was just smoking pot one day
and I thought to myself “Mexican transvestite wrestling? Now that would be cool.”
First of all they wear dildos, and the rules of the contest are simple: the first sissy who can
force into the other one's mouth for a one-two-three count wins. Slapping is allowed, but
fisting, kicking and biting is illegal. No holes barred. There will be no chickens at this
cock-fight, all the action takes place below the belt, and it's a fudge-packin' grudge match.
It is the Mexican Transvestite Wrestling Panty Weight Division Championship Bout. The
belt is on the line, and the bras are gonna fly when these mix it up. We have Low Blow
Ventura, Trailer Trash Guerrero, Pickles Valdez and Billy Martinez "The Barrio Bottom."
He is every man's woman and every woman's man, you will always find him at the bottom
of the pile. I am not sure that he even wants to win. He will be going up against, probably
the sexiest man alive, Tickles Valdez - now these two are former Fag Team partners, and
they hate each other with a pansy passion because Tickles stole Martinez's lover. Billy
Martinez is probably the favorite, because he/she studied Filipino slap-fighting. Tickles
Valdez, on the other hand, can take a good bitch-slap, and is known for breaking the rules.
They've got a bone to pick, and they settle it all across the country! That is some of the
patter.
I know I didn't want it to be like regular wrestling.
The wrestlers were all contortionists and the audience didn't know it, so when they started
ripping each other's arms and legs back, it looked very violent.
And what about women Sumo wrestling?
JR: I've got one young lady whose measurements are 36-24-36 and that's just one leg.
You'll feel the earth shake when over 800 pounds of female flesh collide.
We've got Tundra, Large Marge, Judy "The Bull Moose" Jenkins and Katie "The Pile
Driver" Wilson tipping the scale at a dainty six hundred pounds.. We're also looking for
full-figured ladies to challenge our world champions. I pay them by the pound. Their diet
is pretty impressive, with lots and lots of hamburgers and rice. Mmmm... That's some
patter as well.
Do you look for something particular in your performers, as in their history
or presentation? How do you find the people you feature in your circus?
JR: Actually, I come up with weird ideas and then I find people. It can be tough, like with
women's Sumo wrestlers.
How do you recruit women Sumo wrestlers?
JR: That was tough. You don't just go up to a large woman and ask what she weights or if
she wants to be a sumo wrestler because she will knock you into next week.
The ad I wrote up in the Seattle Times saying "seeking full-bodied women willing to travel
around the world" led to mixed results. Aside from the people calling back saying "'full
bodied' is a wine, you mean full figured” or girls calling up at 120 pounds thinking of
themselves as big, or when a qualified applicant would call up, the phrase "women's sumo
wrestling" would get them to immediately hang up. If I approached a large woman on the
streets, I'd get slapped.
What did it was putting an ad out that said "seeking women, 250 pounds plus to tour the
world with performance show." Then they started calling in, all the right ones, and I
would just start small-talking them about the Jim Rose Circus, and every year it is a
different theme. This year the theme is wrestling and we will have all kinds of different
wrestling; sumo, midget, Mexican, etc. and I'd ask “By the way how tall are you? How
much do you weight? How long have you lived in Seattle? Do you like it?etc” Then I
would close the conversation with "hey, I have a meeting, let me think about it and call
you back tomorrow." Then I would call back the next day and say "we had a great talk
last night, I think we'd work well together, but there's only one position open and it's
women sumo wrestling... I don't think you'd really qualify but I'd be willing to give you a
shot. Could you gain a few pounds?" As soon as I said gain a few pounds, they were all
fine with it! "Sure! I'll eat ten hamburgers a day!" That approach seemed to work.
Chainsaw football? You refer to that as if it's something that has made its
way into common vernacular.
JR: Oh yeah, that's a whole new meaning for "halfback." It's just like football, but instead
of a ball we use a chainsaw. The blades are on, we touch stuff with them to demonstrate
before we play the game.
You've always been a performer as well as a ringleader, are you having as
much of a hands-on experience with the show as you once did?
JR: Yes, I come up with the concepts, write the stuff. I try to stay funny.
Lately I've had a girl who comes out nude. I tell her to put her clothes on and she pulls her
top out of her butt, her bottoms out of her vagina and then puts them on.
And a girl that blows blue paint out of her butt. She's a real, uhh... artist. Her rearenderings
are a mixed media. Seeing someone squirting blue paint out of their ass isn't
exactly something you see every week at the Saturday market...
... She's a Pablo Picasshole. They sell her paintings on eBay. You'd be surprised how many
people want that painting when she finishes it. She basically takes an enema before she
steps onstage, so it comes out all Grateful Dead tie-die-shirt-ish.
THE PERFORMERS
You've had some extremely interesting performers get their starts and learn
their stunts from you, including pierced weight lifters (a man who is capable
of lifting more than the average bodybuilder... with his dick), Enigma and
the Lizard Man (tattooed head to toe) and The Human Pincushion.
What has changed or evolved since 1994?
JR: The show looks nothing like that anymore. It was a very imitated type of show, one
that you could probably see on any corner anywhere today, but back then it was pretty
hot.
Tell me about the pierced weight lifter.
JR: He's actually changed his act now. He's lifting a 17-pound car battery while receiving
an electrical shock with his tongue. He also lifts the concrete block with the nipples and
the irons with the ears, and he lifts 'em all at the same time, all three. Of course, he still
does his famous lift with the part of him that's most a mister.
That thing has gotten huge! It's got an elbow! It gets its own lunch money! He's looking
for a significant other who can house his manhood. He may have to go to a Realtor.
I heard rumors about his penis falling off.
JR: Oh yes..we were in a shopping cart - the whole circus for a photo shoot, and he had
the cart attached to his man hammer through a chain to pull us. He leans back, takes the
cart to the precipice. The shopping cart didn't move like it was supposed to, and I look
down at the end of the chain, and his best friend is hanging on the floor.
Thank god cooler heads prevailed, and we managed to get that head in the cooler. In his
surgery, they did not add any length girth. They took skin off of his butt and grafted it to
his shaft. He says that now when he scratches his ass he gets an erection. It is what it is - it
looks like a dogs chew toy.
Now that he has fully recovered from the John Wayne Bobbit-style operation it is now
bigger, harder and meaner than the Alaskan Pipeline, and it carries more spew. It will
freeze your seed before it hits the restroom tile. It has a heart, a lung, and a mind all its
own. It is like a baby's arm holding an apple.
Any new favorites?
JR: This year I've been really proud of The World's Fattest Contortionist, we've been
taking him out, along with this new kid who's been featured on my TV show.
ACCIDENTS
Any more accidents to report?
JR: Oh sure. I mean if you could see me right now, you would say "Jim - next to you, the
Elephant Man just looks a little puffy." We do this thing in each show where we come up
with challenges for the others to do. And we know each other pretty well, so we know
what each other hates. So I pulled out "Spray yourself in the face with bear repellent."
I have been sprayed with pepper spray. Lots of times. Pepper spray is a no-brainer, double
entendre intended. Now pepper spray is the premature little sister of bear repellent. I
mean - I know it sounds cool to spray yourself in the fact with bear repellent, but I want
the readers to know that it is not a good idea.
We also had a performer lose a little toe in a chainsaw football game.
That's a very underrated toe. You'd be surprised how much a little toe helps with balance.
You don't realize it until you lose it.
BLOOD
For all your fame for presenting human oddities is there anything that you
wouldn't do in your show, or let one of your performers do?
JR: Well, anytime there are stunts done successfully and it still creates blood, or if it has to
do with mutilation, I won't do it. If I put my face in broken glass and let people stomp on
the back of my head and I come out looking like a hamburger, that's not success.
I mean, there is no blood or any of that in the show. I can't seem to get away from the
myths of '91 and '92. And at this point the legend around those shows is so skewed, it's
nowhere near reality. There has never been live mutilation or blood in The Jim Rose
Circus. But I'll be damned if you ask some kids out there who think they knew what
happened back in the old days, they are going to tell you all kinds of stuff...
I had a guy one time who said 'Look Jim, here's what I can do: Audience members can
hold my eyes open while other audience members dump buckets of dirt in them." And I
knew he was wearing the thick contacts, and I knew he was microwaving the dirt to keep a
lot of the potential for infection away. Still, I was noticing that the weight of dumping that
dirt all at the same time was letting dirt get through the contacts and scratch the retina.
And I just thought that it wasn't foolproof enough to be in a professional circus.
The Jim Rose Circus has always relied heavily on a bizarre kind of comedy and that's
what the audience expects, and the stunts are not secondary but they are vehicles to spin
comedy around.
FAINTING
Has anyone fainted in your shows?
JR: The Human Dartboard is the first human marvel act that made my jaw drop. The
Dartboard's response is something I haven't forgotten. Hundreds of people have fainted
during that act over the years.
You only get a lot of people to faint if you tell them they might ahead of time. It's all the
power of suggestion. It's an instruction I have used well in my own exploits as freak-show
provocateur.
We used to have a fainters' corner during the Human Dartboard act where significant
others with a rag would be patting down the foreheads and wiping the bubbles from their
lovers' noses.
MAINSTREAM
Do you think such gruesome fair still isn't acceptable to the masses?
JR: Just turn on your TV set and take a gander at Guinness World Records or most of the
FOX schedule.
Today you see acts on prime time television that I was being thrown in jail for in '91 and
'92.
TOURING
Is it better going out with just the circus instead of opening for a band and
not being the center of attention?
JR: Well, I had some of the most fun I've ever had touring with Trent [Reznor, Nine Inch
Nails]. We've been good friends for a long time. But I've got more freedom and time when
we headline.
Is the ability to do what you do easier or harder when touring the United
States compared to other areas?
JR: We do a lot of touring outside of the U.S. We do Europe, South Africa, all over. One
of the biggest draws is in Australia. Our following is really strange, and I can't explain
why. I just did Houston, a comedy club for a week, and sold it out. Two-thousand people
that came that week, they were all mainstream and my older crowd. Then, in the same
city at a rock club, I did eleven hundred younger people who would never have gone to
the comedy club, and vice versa. It's an odd demographic. I do best in the theaters, but
because I'm "rock and roll" or "comedy" according to the United States, mostly because I
did one tour with Nine Inch Nails and a younger Marilyn Manson in addition to a few
other shows. I have a hard time booking a theatre in the United States, but it's where we
do best. When you're in a theatre, it's art. They let you do everything, it's accepted. It's
what the artist intended, it's what's ascertained and then accepted based on its merits.
Which country loves your circus the most?
JR: It's pretty similar, but I have to give a nod to Australia.
What do you do when you're not touring?
JR: I play poker professionally.
CHARACTERS YOU MET ON THE ROAD
Have you met some shady characters on your travels around the globe?
JR: Luckily yeah. Luckily because that really fascinates me.
Can you give me any examples? Do you come across people who go “Jim
Rose? I'll try and outsmart him!”
JR: I had a guy one time in the live show who absolutely would not participate in any way
shape or form during my hypnotist act. He wouldn't look me in the eyes, he wouldn't
follow any of my instructions when I tried to put him under hypnosis, and I was under a
lot of pressure because there were a couple of thousand people in the audience. Off the
microphone so the crowd couldn't hear, I whispered into his ear, “just play along and I'll
give you a hundred dollars”. As soon as I said it, he rolled around the floor like a pig in
mud and completely humiliated himself. At the end I said, "stand up, before I count to
three to bring you out of hypnosis I want to leave you with a powerful thought: for the rest
of your life you will believe and you'll tell your friends that Jim Rose owes you money, one,
two, three, you are out of hypnosis, ladies and gentlemen give him a big hand!" He
walked back into the crowd saying, "he said he'd give me a hundred dollars!" and nobody
believed him! Hahaha!
Gimme your greatest freak show groupie story.
JR: We were in Holland once, and we had this girl come up to us before the show and she
says "I am the Candle Lady. I stick a candle in my vagina, flip my legs back over my head,
light the candle, take a sip of gasoline, and blow a huge fire ball between my legs." And
we thought "Ok - cool." We didn't have anything else to do at the time. So she takes off
her clothes, lays on her back, sticks the cuntle in her cant, flips her legs back, takes the sip
of gas, and blows a huge fire ball - creating much more heat than a candle is used to. So it
melts the candle, and the wax ran down and created a pool in her anus.
Now, she pulls the candle out, and we all applauded. When she stood up she bowed, and I
heard this ping on the floor it was the clump of wax that had been in her butt - it was an
exact replica of her sphincter. I could have made a key.
You've met William S. Burroughs right?
JR: I have met a lot of famous people in my time, but the coolest moment was when
William Burroughs came to my show.
Al Jourgensen was the one who brought him to my show in Lawrence, KS.
He had a cane but he didn't need it, he basically used it to bat people away as he walked
by. I knew that he loved Ferdinand Celine (French writer), I believe his favorite of his
books was Journey to the Edge of Night but I could be wrong. Anyways I meet Burroughs
for the first time, and I had no idea what to say to him. So I said “hey Mr. Burroughs what
do you think about Ferdinand Celine?” And he replied “he's dead”. So now when people
ask me about Burroughs I say “he's dead”. Figured I would carry it on.
BOOKS
In the realm of books, you have written three yourself ( Freak Like Me,
Snake Oil & Your Lucky Book) how different was it to make this leap from
performer to writer?
JR: About as easy as it was to make a leap into an actor. If you want a green suit I have a
green suit, if you want a blue suit I have a blue suit.
I was a writer before I was anything and then it was spoken word which was basically
telling stories.
My book Freak Like Me was sold as a movie. They've got the script now, and they're going
to start trying to cast it. That ought to be an interesting project. But I'm not going to act in
it. There's also a documentary being done on us. Both of them will go to theaters.
What would people be surprised to learn about you that they won't glean
from the books and documentaries?
JR: In Freak Like Me, I guess I pretty much give it up. I don't think there are many
surprises, really, because I was pretty open. But I guess people who haven't read it would
be surprised how much I love my wife, and how I spend my down time with her, taking
long walks with her and playing pinball.
JAKE THE SNAKE ROBERTS
Recently you just went on tour with Jake The Snake Roberts how did this
crazy idea come about? Are you actually stepping in the ring with him?
JR: Yes . You know the movie The Wrestler was based on the documentary called Beyond
the Mat which featured Jake The Snake Roberts who has had some ups and downs as we
all have and I was always a big fan. I would like one of my last stories to be touring with
Jake The Snake Roberts.
I wrote the show. It is basically pretty girls, amazing circus stunts, pro wrestling, and a fist
fight. Who could ask for more?
The story line is that I bring Jake out and talk about how great he is, and ask him some
questions like what was it like to slam Andre the Giant. He will answer it, which you never
know what Jake will say on any given night. So at some point in the evening he has to get
the people to turn, which he is really good at, so to upset the audience and create the need
for a fight he tells me that he appreciates my comments but he takes real offense by circus
people. So we try to impress him, and Jake makes fun of every thing that we do and
finally the circus attacks him and he beats the hell out of everybody; except me. So him
and I finish off the show with a fight.
When I booked the Jake The Snake show all these wrestlers started calling up from across
the country getting in touch saying “I'll bring a table, I'll bring a trash can, I'll bring
anything as long as Jake The Snake throws me through it!”
TV SHOW JIM ROSE TWISTED TOUR
Do you have final say on how the episodes of TV show The Jim Rose Twisted
Tour turn out?
JR: Oh, God no, that wouldn't have been fair. There are a lot of really creative people
involved. I've got as much input as an idiot deserves. There's really good, savvy, smart TV
people. I'm just a circus goof.
But in the stage show, you have final say on what goes up there. Was it tough
to give up control for the TV show?
JR: Not really. During my live shows, there is a microphone on the left-hand side of the
stage where any one of the performers can go say whatever they want whenever they
want. Control freaks don't let that happen.
You guys are all performers. Do things change when the reality show
cameras are on you?
JR: Well, I think everybody is aware there are cameras the first couple of days. But then
you just get used to them. We're all crammed into a bus, which is a giant test tube on
wheels. I know none of the footage where we were aware made it to the final shows, so
you're getting a pretty true depiction of elements of what it's like.
LEGAL LIMITS
What legal limits most frustrate you? Would we get a better performance if
there were no rules?
JR: Well, in all other parts of the world, complete nudity is not offensive. I mean, I go all
through Europe, Australia, Japan and Brazil, and nobody really cares. My women Sumo
wrestlers wrestle all over the world topless. In some cities, they have to wear little pasties.
And they're not topless for sexploitation purposes; it's because they're athletes, and they
don't want to be hindered by extra clothing.
ARRESTS
Have you ever been arrested?
JR: Yes I got arrested for Mexican Transvestite Wrestling in Lubbock, Texas. Of course,
that's the buckle on the Bible Belt. The cops said we were simulating a sex act. If so, then
they are fucking weirder than we are. The best compliment I could give my arresting
officer was: "nice tooth."
HISTORICAL FIGURES
If you could be any one person from history, who would it be and why?
JR: Winston Churchill. I hear Ron Jeremy picked Churchill, too...Great minds think alike.
One time Winston was taking some journalists around his pig farm, and one of the
journalists asked him why he liked pigs so much. And he said "Dogs look up to you, cats
look down on you, and pigs treat you as an equal." I always liked that.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Do you ever find yourself assimilating into popular society, or do you just
say "fuck you, I'm Jim Rose, I do what I do."
JR: I have a lot of assimilation issues. Lots of anxiety problems. I know I'm this guy that
looks larger than life onstage, but I'm just this geeky individual. I'm not certain how to
handle stuff in social situations real well, I'm not too good at it. I don't go out much.
Could you imagine a parallel universe where you ended up working in an
office?
JR: I gave it a really good try in my youth, but it just wasn't working out for me. So I can't
imagine a parallel universe at this stage of my career and life. I don't need to work really,
I'd rather go fishing, it'd be impossible to get me into an office at this point. When I was
younger I tried politics, but the attrition rate, the way they use people, was just something
I couldn't stomach.
Aside from all of this madness and debauchery, what dreams are left to
achieve?
JR: You know what, it's like an AA meeting, I take it one day at a time. I honestly just
don't know and to tell you the truth never have known. I never put any stress into it.
I did Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and Jerry Falwell, I smoked pot right in front of
John Kennedy Jr., back before he got his pilot license. Trent Reznor used to be my
roommate, I know David Bowie, I did Ozzy Osbourne's retirement party, and Sharon
made the kids leave the room, William S. Burroughs used to come to my shows before he
died, I was on the X-files, Homer ran away and joined The Jim Rose Circus on The
Simpsons as a human cannonball.
My only dream was a pop-out couch and a toaster, so I have to pinch myself daily to
believe that all this is possible.
Is there anything too freaky for the Jim Rose Circus?
JR: Yeah - lunch with a lawyer.
Do you have any advice for any young, aspiring freaks out there?
JR: Try to stay away from bear repellent.

"freedom is illegal" (7/4/2013)

fireworks are illegal
but so was(were) the(ir) Revolution(s)
and now they are still both for sale.

outside now beyond my beach and tattered blanket soar
the rockets above houses glimmering to glare and
tiny bombs; lost focus, in air.
and independence on the television screen scape rebel
news as white noises in between while:

birthing nations burden
and anticipation spray the human air
white/red
as freedom in a prep school text
remind me that freedom is illegal,
until you change the rules, make
ill eagle legal
and break free.
you tell me
the
sky is blue and
i believe you.

“the eve of free"

“free…..h (soft h into…) huh,soft (?) question mark”
“free! …-yeah…asked reassuringly and unsure, (?) same punctuation, but
curious
and I just stood
among the swelling
browning grey and
bumps of ice,
shell and rock sand
against my thighs, my
thinks and my windows
throwing a line

free
with my wife and mama Dale and two daughters behind as I
flung the line
and pulled it slow
talkin
and
talking alone
to nobody that
any one of you could see then
the one we all talk about or don’t
and
I know that we all know about
Freedom
But I tell you
in that wash and azure
sunset affect
in that turbulence I was
free
nsa bug in my tackle box
or not; “synermy” spy
with satellite relays
message rays to some
drone that aims
a missile at my chest
but I was free right there;
free within
all of this that I know
and that knows me
and you and their doctors and
their favorite drinks, smokes
fishes, rivers, mountains
and ,moons.
it all knows it all, and my mind
for that brief time was free
and my arse…
walked as I pulled the wagon home.
(7/3/13) pgr