Rex L. Camino's Blog of Doom

from rex's unpublished memoirs: october 30, 1982

2007-10-30T07:57:00.000-06:00

My feeld trip to shilow

One day Miss Harvey came in and sed gess what class and we said what and she sed were goin on a feeld trip. We all said hooray! and then we sed wher. She sed were goin to shilow where they fot a battul in the sivul war and I sed that’s weerd because my uncle sed thats wher they fot a battul in linkons illegul war of northurn agreshun and sally huchinson sed that must be a scary place then if they fot 2 wars ther and I dont want to go but Miss harvey sed it was only the one war and that my uncle just had a different name for it and I sed my uncle has different names for everything like his x wife and the joos and his hous was called a compownd and it had rebel flags all over it so maybe he fot in one of thos wars. I asked miss Harvey if she wanted him to com with us and tell us how it reely was and she said no reel fast. So then the next week we went to shilow on the bus and wen we got ther ther was peeple wering sivul war costumes and walkin arownd with guns and horses and beerds. Miss Harvey told us to talk to the peeple and we said hello who are you. This man in a raggity uniform and no shues sed im a confederet soldyer and this is the tipicul uniform of my rejimint. Ther was another man in a blue uniform and he sed im a yankey and I fot for the unyon and we sed wats that and he sed america and we sed were from america too and jimmy white kicked the man in the raggity uniform and we sed USA USA! until miss Harvey made us stop. Then we saw this man with a cart and he sed im a sutler and I sold stuf to soldyers and we sed that man needs shues but hes fiting america so don’t give him any. Then we saw a black famuly and mikey burton sed are yall spose to be slaves and they sed no were on vacashun you rednek basturds and then they walkd away. Then we saw another soldyer in a ragity uniform but he lookt funny becaws he it lookt like he had 2 softbals or oranjes in his pants and we laffed and sed whats that. He sed he had a funnyreel dizees and we sed like the chiken poks and he sed no. he sed funnyreel dizeesus wer rampunt in the sivul war and many of the soldyers cot funnyreel dizeesus like sillyfuss from a horse and sally huchinson sed oh no I have a horse and the soldyer with the funny pants sed no I sed hors like they cot it from a hor and I sed oh no thats what my uncle calls his x wife and then Miss Harvey sed yall get away from him hes not part of the ture.

perhaps the marketing equivalent of "hoof and mouth" isn't far behind

2007-08-06T17:12:00.001-05:00

I was leaving the confines of Casa Camino this afternoon at the crack of three-thirty when I, after gasping a string of curse words directed at the general state of sauna-ness in front of impressionable though slow-witted neighbor children, noticed a local restaurant advertisement on the ground that had just seconds ago been nestling peacefully between the knob and door frame. You may have also noticed the door-to-door salesman population on the rise once again. A general crackdown on telemarketing has brought a replenishing to their near-extinct herds and driven them out from behind their telephones, though we sadly see so few of their carcasses littered along the roadsides.

Then again, I suppose the poor bastard who has to slip these things around neighborhood doors is merely a newly hired peon at the establishment and therefore a different and more forgivable beast than the one who wishes to have me answer a series of questions or demonstrate a brand of detergent. Those kids probably have plans in life and will go on to someday either meet or fall short of those goals. Either way, they will likely go on to something higher than being a full grown man trying to sell things door to door.

I say that with some confidence because I safely assume that they will maintain a shred of dignity.

There were always telemarketing and door to door type gigs available when I was working through various temp agencies, and temp agents used these sort of jobs to gauge the desperation of potential employees.

"Are you willing to do any kind of work?", they would ask as the interview drew to a close.

"Anything", answered the obviously desperate bastard on the other side of the table with the useless English degree and apartment full of hungry and increasingly more desperate housepets and wife gathered teary-eyed on a tattered photograph in the forefront of his feeble and easily distracted mind. They were accompanied by sad depression-era violin music, and their eyes upon closer inspection were cartoonishly larger than normal. They blinked them quite a bit and always in unison as they directed them through the front window of the local butcher shop while huddling in the cold and driving snow, which was rather odd because 1) the young wife in question was vegetarian at the time, and 2) it was the middle of Summer. It made very little sense and served to only add to the overwhelming evidence that this poor bastard had indeed spent too much time in front of the television as a young lad back in...

"How about telemarketing?"

It would have been a startling question even if he had been paying attention and knew immediately the context and why exactly he was wearing dress shirt and tie in the middle of Summer across the desk from a guy whose name plate he couldn't read for the stack of papers piled haphazardly in front of it.

"What are you doing with those?"

This was an easier question. "Just straightening your desk a bit, Larry. You must be a busy man."

"So, have you ever done any telemarketing?"

Our poor bastard sweating through the dress shirt suddenly thought he knew how people who wind up doing pornographic films feel. He did a quick dignity check and found it to be small and disoriented, though fully capable of gnawing at his gut.

"No", he answered. He then followed it up with the tasteful and marketable way of saying, essentially, "Let's place that somewhere beneath Crack Whore or Assistant Meth Lab Technician on my list of acceptable positions."

Anyway, I folded and rewedged the advertisement and then went about my bid'ness with every intention of bringing it in to the recycling bin upon my return this afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I returned a couple of hours later to find it gone and replaced by a completely different advertisement and one that was in no sort of competition to the one that had nestled there previously. It was for water filtration or something along those lines, an the evidence showed that the clean water bastard had taken the advertisement left by the local restaurant bastard before replacing it with his own.

I gather from this that the herd has grown so large as to turn to cannibalism.

a most unfortunate interview

2007-07-26T09:06:00.001-05:00

The worst job interview I've had--and I'm a bit reluctant to place this crown on any interview for a job that I didn't get, as so many of the successful job interviews led to months of soul crushingly mundane employment and could therefore be argued to be worse by the nature of their success, though such a precedent would move this post from the merely anecdotal and into something a bit too philosophical for this hour of the morning--occured shortly after my graduating college and wasn't even for a "career" sort of job. English majors rarely have those interviews anyway. No, this was just a simple bookstore job involving little more that stocking shelves and the typical customer service activities. It was something to pay the bills while I tried to talk myself into a grad school program that never materialized. It was not unlike any of the other jobs I had worked while in college and I entered the interview seemingly calm and relaxed. I was trying to give that impression anyway, but an unusually warm January day had rendered my thick turtleneck sweater a poor wardrobe choice that left me baking and sizzling under the cafe atrium skylight like so many of the ants I tortured with magnifying glass as a young child and then again as an older child and young adult.

Ants are bastards.

One of the women across the table, perhaps after seeing me mop my brow with a napkin, offered me water that I declined under the rationale that a candidate refusing water might appear more employable than one swilling free water like there's no tomorrow, as if these two nice older women, one looking oddly like a taller version of my high school guidance counselor the other a dead ringer for a shorter version of the same woman, watching me sweat from three short feet away were in the market for a camel. It didn't make any sense, I know, but I would be that camel just in case.

Irregular sleep patterns, a bit too much drinking, and any number of similar shenanigans associated with the final days of one's college career had perhaps taxed the physique a bit too much to pull of a good impression beneath sheets of sweat, but I did a damn fine job of it for the first half of the interrogation. I leaned back casually in the chair with my legs crossed and a lazy half smile pleasantly stretched across my reddening face. I glided through a seemingly informal discussion of college and previous employment. I threw out anecdotes and asides like a regular Regis Philbin, doing so with such ease that not even I could remember which ones, if any, were true.

Then came the stumbling block that derailed my bookstore career and ended the interview in fearful looks from my tall and short counselors that I would see again and again from across the room every time I visited the store afterward.

My future was a bit harder to make up than my past. I threw out the possibility of going after a MFA in creative writing, which was partially true, and then took it a bit too far by mentioning that I was writing a novel.

"Oh really," the short one said, "What's it about?"

It was a reasonable question and one that I should have anticipated, but didn't. One should always have at least a vague outline in mind before lying about writing a novel. That's just common sense.

Emergency sirens went off in my head. The ~~lying~~ creative section had nothing at the ready, and all the other bits rushed to cover for this inadequacy.

Would I go with an Evelyn Waugh-esque comedy in which a number of tragedies befall some poor bastard, a dark and brooding war novel, historical fiction, some outlandish bit of sci-fi?

Each of these were dispatched from various parts of my cranium, and I unfortunately went with each simultaneously as the interview spiralled to a dark and unfortunate place. In my defense, the interviewing ladies could have ended the line of questioning early on when things less than promising and not insisted on dragging it out. When enough lies to constitute a sizable avalanche have been piled upon one another the decent thing to do is let it go, especially when it is in no way germane to the position being filled.

That's another bit of common sense.

So, as you can see, mistakes were made on both sides, though I certainly bore the worst of it there on my end of the table having just described a novel about hapless used car salesman who, after stumbling across a time travelling AMC Pacer, winds up, on the other side of a series of even more outlandish plot twists that my mind has kindly blocked in time, meeting his rather vivid, ghastly, and altogether senseless end alongside a lovable robot sidekick on the battlefield of Chickamauga.

I wish I was making this up.

After a moment of awkward silence the shorter and obviously more vocal of the two plunged the knife a bit further by asking, still with a look of fear across her face, "What does it all mean?"

Another reasonable question, I suppose. I've never liked those.

"Oh...you know," I stammered, "It's just meant to be light Summer reading. Nothing too heavy."

And that was that.

a cat question

2007-07-21T07:50:00.000-05:00

For some reason I awoke thinking about that odd and seemingly cruel tendency in cats to render their prey nearly dead--deliver all but the final "death blow", as it were--and then step back a couple of feet to leisurely crouch in cold observation of the slow and agonizing final moments in the insignificant life of some mouse, rabbit, or Shetland pony. My own cat is far too obese and skittish to have ever engaged in such activity, but I'm sure its one of the things lies dreaming about just before I sneak up behind him with the vacuum cleaner or a crudely fashioned can of rocks. Anyway, the whole thing seems against the streamlined nature of wild kingdom and served to implant a number of questions into my feeble and still-awakening brainmeat.

For instance, what would be the evolutionary benefit of such a thing? Was there a point on the evolutionary of timeline mice where they briefly had the ability to explode upon death? Could it be a savory revenge for any number of agonizing Tom and Jerry-like antics that elude human observation? Is the cat kindly giving the mouse time to make peace with its Jesus?

Just wondering.

lost episodes

2007-07-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

One thing I like to do to exercise the ol' brainmeat while driving around or engaging in otherwise mind-numbing activities during a rare sojourn from Casa Camino is pretend, just for shits and giggles of course, that I fell off the face of the Earth. Perhaps I was kidnapped and sold into white slavery or abducted by aliens or drove off an embankment and and wedged myself into a ditch to lie injured and subsist on rainwater and insects and wait on the worst. These and other cheerful contemplations aren't important really--the thing I focus on is this: Were I to go missing, the cops would understandably be interested in the last few Internet pages I visited. And, as I seldom Google search things like "How to get kidnapped and sold into white slavery" or "How to drive yourself off an embankment in such a manner as to live but be injured just enough to have to eat insects and drink rainwater and all that business", the police would have a bit more deducing to do.

For instance, just the other day I was driving around after having done some Wikipedia research on Vladimir Lenin that lead to the typical Wikipedia branching into other Communist leaders and whatnot.

"Ah", a reasonable detective assigned to my case would surmise, "This man has obviously chosen to become a Communist Revolutionary and is now living underground and planning to overthrow the government." He might then say something about the case being closed and proceed to light a cigar only to be told by Mrs. Camino that he can't smoke inside, but in his mind the frame is frozen and the credits have begun to roll. I might show up in a later episode to rob a bank in a bright red shirt with an Uzi and maybe a scarf and band of hippie ne'er-do-wells, but substantial advancements have been made in this particular plot line. Whether or not I turned into a recurring character would be based solely on ratings and is really out of my control at this point. If not, I would of course place the blame squarely on the script writer, as I can only do so much with the material I'm given.

What was I talking about?

Ah, yes. What the detective would be missing--and it's certainly no blight on his sub-Miss Marple reasoning--would be this: I was merely researching infamous bald men in history.

By the way, I noticed very few bald Communist dictators. They are, for the most part, rather soft and pudgy but with healthy heads of hair. Look no further than Stalin, Hugo Chavez, or any number of college professors to see that they greatly outnumber the Lenins and Maos. Perhaps the bald get things started, revolutionarily speaking, and the thick haired sidekicks then take over. Then again, Karl Marx was more a walking fern than a man, though I suppose he never overthrew any governing bodies. No, Marx was all talk. So, yes, I suppose we can safely assume that your finely quaffed Commie would be content to sit back and let the more follically lacking of their revolutionary brethren do the hard part.

You bald commie revolutionary types should really have more pride about you.

Anyway, the detective might not catch a pattern with Benito Mousilini and Dr. Phil preceeding my Wiki-branching into Communism.

Which I suppose would matter very little other than to serve as a bit of brain exercises for the ol' imagination as I dine on the slower crickets who come to investigate my wrecked and obscured vehicle.

though i plan to pass it off as an old "football injury" acting up again...

2007-07-13T15:27:00.000-05:00

I think I dislocated my shoulder while trying valiantly to shave my back.

if you see my little rex l. camino please drive him home

2007-03-13T17:18:00.000-06:00

Folks, I don't know where he is. I'd like to think that he's sauntering down a sidewalk somewhere in a cheap suit, muttering to himself, taking shots from a nearly empty bottle of NyQuil, dragging a bull fiddle behind him, and perhaps only stopping to wave the shaft of a broken martini glass at any fellow pedestrians who have the misfortune of passing while on cell phones, but all I know for certain is that he just left abruptly and without notice. I have rummaged through his desk and found it to be a tossed salad of Cd's, guitar picks, private detective paperbacks from the thirties through the fifties, unpaid bills, airplane bottles of gin, signed photographs of Emmanuel Lewis in which "Emmanuel" is frequently misspelled or even signed as Gary Coleman, and scraps of paper with things like "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we get really drunk and try to crochet ourselves a sweater" written on them, but it is in no way a clue to where he might be or why he is there. However, there is still some investigating to be done. It took quite some time of running through the most obscene words one could conjure before I found the password to the humble blog o' doom.

Your concern for him is ~~misguided~~ kind, and you can rest assured that I will pass along any info I encounter.

Yours,

Captain Howdy (or the "italicized bastard", if you prefer)

i hate to see that mornin' sun coming 'round

2007-02-07T06:23:00.000-06:00

There is, dear reader, but few sights more disheartening than that of dawn cracking through the window and blinds to cast pale blue stripes across an unfortunate insomniac in the place where he has lain wishing for the first time in his life that he was a Muslim woman of the strictest sects so that he may seek out a homeless person of comparable height and weight, place his burka firmly upon him, direct him to his place of business and very desk with strict orders to appear in a state of working or at least shuffle papers about without a too great a zeal or enthusiasm upon the promise of the finest bottle of hooch money can buy, and then return to the sweet slumber that had just begun to take hold of the ol' eyelids at the very moment the tiny blaring thing with the dancing red numbers began its shrill laughter and that aforementioned sun poked its head over the horizon with all the tact, consideration, and tastefulness of a Tony Danza.

That, sweet peruser of this humble blog o' doom, is the very flavor of morning I find myself savoring just now.

as this confessed manning hater sits stewing in the tragic absence of shadenfreuden, one superbowl question still lingers...

2007-02-04T21:42:00.000-06:00

Was Phil Simms born without eyebrows or did he merely lose them at some point?

rock me, dr. zaius

2007-02-04T01:24:00.000-06:00

It's half past one in the morning and the original Planet of the Apes is on the History Channel.

Am I to take from this that they have exhausted the realm of historical programming and are now focusing on the future?

a brief note to any unemployed bloggers or people who simply stumble onto the humble blog o' doom and just so happen to be in a state of unworkingness

2007-01-22T17:16:00.000-06:00

The place where I ~~work~~ feign the appearance of working is currently hiring for a couple of big projects that begin in mid February. The only thing one needs to qualify is:

1. A four year college degree. It can be in basket weaving, and I'm living proof that one needn't have accomplished it within four years.

2. That's pretty much it. I would say that you also need a pulse but that has been disproved.

3. No, that doesn't mean that I created a workforce of zombies. I wish. Zombies follow orders.

You also have to go through an interview and write an essay, but this consists of little more than making sure you can read, write, and appear semi-sane when clients are in the building. Also, there is a slight chance that you may have the misfortune of working directly under my supervision. Pray that this does not come to fruition. However, if so, it is probably best that you know of some special additions to the company rules that I demand of my workers:

1. I am only to be awakened in an emergency. An "emergency" consists of A) my boss has entering the room, B) the room happening to be on fire or in some other state that endangers my mortal, yet soundly slumbering flesh, or C) me sleeping through my lunchbreak again. You, however, will not be allowed to sleep. This rare, yet all too believable narcolepsy-like affliction of mine is my story, and it took me quite some time to craft it and forge the doctor's note.

2. You don't actually smell alcohol on my breath. That's just a side effect of the medicine I have to take for whatever it is that I said I had.

Anyway, it won't be the best job you've ever had, but you've undoubtedly had worse.

I should also mention that I am in lower middle management and therefore have no say in the hiring process and that my employers either have no knowledge of "Rex L. Camino" or there exists an unspoken agreement to pretend that they have no knowledge of him. I can't remember which it is, but it works best for all involved.

Feel free to email me at rlcamino at copper dot net if interested.

Also, I don't know if I'm going to capitulate to this new blogger business or find somewhere else to go. Late January to March is my busy time of the year and I've far less time to be around the computer anyway, so I haven't given the matter much thought. We'll see. Perhaps I'll capitulate for a while.

in which the blog o' doom takes another step toward become nothing more than my online dream journal

2007-01-19T06:52:00.000-06:00

Last night I dreamt that I was driving down a relatively empty stretch of Murfreesboro Road just south of Smyrna on a sweltering mid-August afternoon when I happened upon the fruit and vegetable stand of one Mr. Billy D. Williams. I had no choice but to pull over, as buying fresh tomatoes from Billy D. Williams is a chance a person only gets once, maybe twice in a lifetime.

He was leaning back in his folding chair and wearing sunglasses, a Mexican straw hat and his full Lando Calrissian outfit. I paid for the tomatoes and had been standing there shooting the shit with him for a few minutes when he suddenly looked over my shoulder and said, "Damn".

I didn't use an exclamation point because he was Billy D. Williams and he said it in a smooth kind of way, though I could still tell that a sense of urgency was implied.

So it was that I turned to see a small armadillo in a copper-colored robot costume bounding over the hill on his little armadillo legs.

"You better run, man", Billy D. told me.

"What do you do when he shows up, Billy D. Williams?" I asked.

"He doesn't just show up. I think he's after you."

That's when I began my leisurely jog in the opposite direction of the slowly charging armadillo in the copper-colored robot outfit. I don't know if armadillos are that slow in real life or if I was benefiting from super fast, yet leisurely jogging powers in my dream, but there was plenty of time to stop and have a bite of raw tomato and think things out while the armadillo pursued at his slow, yet determined pace. I asked myself:

1. What the hell did I do to this armadillo?
2. Does he think he's really fooling anyone with the robot outfit?
3. Why didn't I just get in my car and drive away?
4. Is Billy D. Williams stealing my car right now?
5. Is this some elaborate car jacking ploy put on by Billy D. Williams and a highly trained armadillo in a robot costume?

I remembered Lando's betrayal of Han and assumed the last of these to be sadly true.

However, in all fairness to Mr. Billy D. Williams, I awoke before it could be proven.

i dream of a breakfast supreme

2007-01-17T07:40:00.000-06:00

Last night I dreamt that I found John Coltrane sitting on my front porch, which was rather odd because:

1. John Coltrane has been dead for nearly forty years.

2. I don't have a front porch.

Still, he was sitting there chainsmoking and looking out across my yard at nothing in particular and saying very little. In fact, the only thing he said was that he wanted to go get some breakfast but didn't have any shoes. So it was that I gave him my nicest pair of black leather shoes and we embarked on a five mile trek to the I.H.O.P., even though I had a perfectly good vehicle sitting in the driveway. Trane didn't say so, but I could tell he wanted to walk.

He didn't say much over breakfast either. He just sat there smoking between plates of bacon, sausage, and eggs. In fact, I had to do his ordering for him and somehow just took him as the sort of chap to show little regard for cholesterol and such.

I ordered myself waffles and a slice of key lime pie and then spread the pie over the waffles. I offered some to Trane, but he shook his head after taking a moment to stare at them and give the matter some serious thought.

I picked up the check when we were done. Trane rummaged through his overcoat and found some wadded dollar bills to leave as a tip. He then patted me on the back and said, "Thanks. Now wake up."

So I did.

little rabbits have big ears

2007-01-16T09:03:00.000-06:00

One of the things that always troubled me about being around babies was the question of whether or not swearing was permissible. I mean, I always try to watch my language around people’s offspring when they are large enough to speak and follow me around or just sit there and look at me, but babies, as they are less conversational, seemed a gray area.

Then all my friends began having babies and expected me to come and look at their babies. I didn’t want to ask about using foul language since they were always so quick to turn down my request to smoke around the runt, but the tension that came from trying not to scar the fragile offspring quickly made these “baby introductions” the most nerve-racking of social endeavors. Then one of my friends used the word “shit” around their baby, and it was as if a burden fell from soul. I believe in my enthusiasm I uttered something along the lines of, “That’s the most fucking goddamn beautiful bastard of a baby I’ve ever seen.”

I didn’t mean the word “bastard” in its traditional sense. I had actually forgotten that the word was intended to identify a certain type of offspring, and the gist of my compliment sadly did not come through.

Also, I think that the baby in question may have actually been a bastard.

I think my apprehension stems from one of my best friends back in middle and high schools. He had a little brother who was prone to follow us about, and any time a questionable subject was broached his mother would quickly jump in with “Little rabbits have big ears.” We would then wait for her to leave before teaching him all the foul language that our young minds had accumulated up until that point.

Anyway, I was thinking of this yesterday when I let Carl Weathers out to do his business in the back yard. It was cold and raining, and Carl took his sweet time before getting to the business at hand. He then decided to meander through every muddy patch on the way back. I stepped onto the porch and angrily prompted his return by yelling, “Get back here this instant, you fuckingly damnable bastard of a fucking dog!”

He knows this as the command to return at once, but it struck me that this particular command cannot be used if children are present when Carl has one of his days where sauntering about in the mud seems on his personal agenda. This is especially true if I happen to be wearing my clown suit. I suppose I could, but it has been my experience that children who grow up around constant streams of foul language from their adult figures turn out to be either white trash or angry hippies.

It has also been my experience that the world has a sufficient amount white trash and angry hippies as it is.

man shot in argument over james brown's height

2007-01-09T15:42:00.000-06:00

You can read this breaking news from my beloved home state via Mobile's Press-Register .

By the way, the "Hardest Working Godfather of Al Sharpton", if the deranged-looking stalker on this site is to be believed, stood a mere five foot six.

now is the winter of my content

2007-01-08T09:02:00.000-06:00

Folks, you won't hear me complaining about our unseasonably warm winter. I don't know if we indeed have global warming to thank for it, but our recent spring-like temperatures have done little to dissuade me from my SUV, my styrofoam pants, leaving the Christmas lights up year round, ignoring anything Leonardo DiCaprio says when he's not playing someone infinitely more interesting than Leonardo DiCaprio, or simply coating myself in motor oil when I want to feel special. In fact, I've been weighing the pros and cons of global warming and I've come up with the following. The benefits would be:

1. No more winter.

2. No more Florida.

3. Eskimos can grow corn.

I haven't really found any cons other than:

1. The extended summer might require one to shave his or her back more often.

2. There might be killer bees or something along the lines of a B-movie plague. I'd personally like to see flying armadillos.

Then there are the scenarios in which global warming actual cases a global cooling and a decrease in temperatures. I'm always unable to follow the science in these discussions, as I failed the majority of science classes taken in college and talk of science often leaves my thoughts too heavy and my brain confused, but I imagine some of the cons of a global cooling to be:

1. I can safely assume from the description that it will be cold, and that is exactly the opposite of the goal we had with global warming.

2. Eskimos, perhaps emboldened by the extended range of their beloved cold, will begin sneaking over the Canadian border to take the jobs that Americans won't do.

Anyway, it's just something to think about.

five true tales of rex

2007-01-05T08:47:00.000-06:00

There is no other option than to oblige when one is kindly tagged by Miss Brittney. These are supposed to be five things you don't know about me, but I can't be expected to recall everything I've said here before, so some of these may very well be repeats. Anyway, I suppose it doesn't matter that much so long as I tell the lie the same way twice.

1. I was briefly related to Jerry Lee Lewis during the marriage of my cousin to his sister, Linda Gail Lewis. I was too young to remember it, but Jerry Lee actually attended a family function back in the late seventies and promptly proceeded to liven up the gathering with the assistance of his trusty flask. He was, by all accounts, the biggest asshole anyone had ever met. However, that's how you knew it was really Jerry Lee.

2. I made it all the way through college without once ever using a computer. It was the mid nineties and your average technophobe was still able to write papers using only a typewriter, scribbled notes, a pot of coffee, and a pack of smokes. It wasn't until I married Mrs. Camino a year after graduating in 1998 that I got into this whole computer and Internet bid'ness. You can therefore blame her.

3. I was a sort of child prodigy when it came to doodling. I probably started drawing before I could talk and would often spend hours scribbling away. I never really transferred this into anything occupationally beneficial, aside from the occasional freelance graphic design gig, but I'm still known for doodling away in meetings and such. This often irritates others, as it gives the appearance of an utter lack of attention. However, it's actually the best way for me to stay focused and remember anything that was said.

4. I've seen UFOs on two separate occasions. The first was in high school with a couple of other people. We spent a couple of hours watching these two lights that at first resembled airplanes moving around in odd patterns across the sky. However, I doubt they were airplanes, as airplanes rarely make sharp ninety-degree angle turns in mid flight. I was unfortunately alone for the second and more impressive UFO viewing. I was perfectly sober and brushing my teeth before bed one night back in college when I noticed some blue and red lights fly over my apartment and across an adjacent field. It was completely silent and looked just like one of the UFOs in Close Encounters. I watched it for a full thirty seconds through the bathroom window before it disappeared over the horizon. Super-secret military technology seems the more plausible explanation in both cases, but I may just be telling myself that to keep the alien probes away.

5. I was a vegetarian for a while. I worked in a butcher shop back in high school and was given the responsibility of making sure all the equipment was absolutely spotless for the frequent health inspector visitations, and cleaning meat scraps from machinery all afternoon is probably one of the easiest motivations for vegetarianism. I eventually got another job and began eating fish and chicken again but laid off the red meat and pork for a good three or four years. Then I passed by a Wendy's one day and remembered how much I loved their hamburgers. It was easily the best hamburger I ever ate.

a beast unleashed, indeed

2007-01-04T07:57:00.000-06:00

I don't know where El DeBarge is now but I hope it is a dark place. I hope that his life has become tragic and unpleasant and that people say My God, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy or That poor bastard; I know he deserves to be in a horrible place, but this place he is in now is so unspeakably horrible that I might pity him if he didn't deserve it so. In short, I hope there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth and the like.

You see, I've spent the better part of aught-seven with his horribly unlistenable song "Who's Johnny?" stuck in my head, and it is all the fault of Meat Loaf.

It all began over the holidays when I found myself lazily collapsed on the couch before a flickering television late one night. I had probably eaten too much and then washed it down with half a pot of fully caffeinated coffee, thus rendering myself into a state of being hummingbird alert while still trapped in my slothful mortal casing. It was the perfect sort of thing for a "Twilight Zone" marathon, zombie movies, watching the same Sports Center over and over again, or whatever the hell it was that I subjected myself to on that particular evening. The television program itself isn't important, mind you, for offensive Meat Loaf visitation and the demon seed that implanted the foul fruits of DeBarge deep within me came in the form of a commercial.

Did any of you know that there is now a Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose? I dare say that you didn't, as Mr. Loaf has taken to promoting the thing through television commercials.

Look, I've made my love of the Loaf's original Bat Out of Hell no secret. However, though I have yet hear it and lack even the slightest desire to subject myself to any portion of it, I know that this offering, much like the ill-advised sequel, is nothing more than a defiling of the original.

Still, the Loaf had a number of accomplices to help him on this one, and a list of them rolled by as if I needed even less incentive to purchase Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose.

Look, Loaf, if the burning questions about how "the monster" indeed escaped, who was to blame for the failure of securing said monster, and the resulting compromised safety of me and my family didn't sell it to me, then knowing that there is a guest spot by Steve Vai--the very same Steve Vai who got his ass handed to him in a guitar duel with Ralph Macchio in Crossroads--can do very little to sweeten the pot, as it were.

At this point those of you who are still with me here might be asking yourself, My God, does El DeBarge have a guest spot on the new Meat Loaf album? I can assure you that he does not. However, it was another name on the list that began to torturous journey to DeBarge, for there with Vai, Todd Rundgren, Nikki Sixx, Diane Warren, and Brian May was a chap by the name of John 5. I couldn't place him at first and therefore did some old-fashioned googling within the dark corners of my primarily unused brain space. By brain returned with this entry:

John 5 was that robot in Short Circuit, a film so bad that they couldn't even get Steve Guttenberg to do the sequel.

Indeed. This settled the matter for a while. However, it was the strains of DeBarge's "Who's Johnny?", the theme song to Short Circuit, playing in the back of my mind some time later as if accidentally placed on the mental phonograph while rummaging through dust covered boxes for the John 5 reference that alerted me to the fact that the robot in question was actually christened "Johnny 5" and that John 5 was, in fact, some hack guitarist from one of those talentless NuMetal-Hop abominations.

Well, the matter had then been cleared, I suppose, but I had been left with a steady loop of unwanted DeBarge as a consequence, a price certainly too great to pay for having such a petty matter put straight.

Damn you, Meat Loaf.

seven deadlies

2007-01-02T10:31:00.000-06:00

The 'coma hit me with a meme asking for seven personal accomplishments in 2006. I suppose I will oblige, as it seems pretty safe at this point to say that I will accomplish nothing else in aught-six, but let it be noted that "accomplishments" are not always good things.

1. I killed James Brown. I didn't mean to, of course, but I did, and there you have it. This may be of little solace to the Brown clan, but there was really no way of knowing it would happen until Mr. Brown passed away and the pattern then availed itself. You see, I happened to notice that I've only devoted two posts to soul singers, yet each of those singers died within a month or two of the post. There was this sophomoric bit of word play and photoshopping devoted to Lou Rawls and then this bit about the Hardest Working Godfather of Al Sharpton. Each seemed harmless enough at the time, yet they robbed the world of two irreplaceable voices. Sorry about that.

2. Lou Rawls actually died in January of aught-six, so I suppose I should list his demise among my accoplishments for this year.

3. I found some poor bastard to impersonate me at blogger functions in aught-six. He hasn't embarrassed himself too badly, I suppose, but he certainly hasn't been earning his five bucks and seventy-five cents an hour.

4. I half-heartedly ran for senate and was surprisingly unsuccessful. I guess people really do get the government they deserve. Bastards.

5. I think I was also running for governor. It's really hard to keep up with such things. At any rate, I changed my middle name to "Ladies" in an attempt to shore up the female vote, yet it was to no avail. Either that or only a handful of ladies voted. Anyway, I've changed it yet again for political purposes, just in case there are any more feeble political attempts in my future. The "L" now stands for "Low tax".

6. I finally purchased and began learning my way around a bull fiddle. Really, I don't understand why more musicians don't switch to instruments that can double as small apartments in those lean months.

7. I generally don't stick with things. This blog was started as a way to cheaply kill a month or two of unemployment, yet the humble blog 'o doom be closing in on two years in a few short months. I suppose that's an accomplishment.

a bit of caminopedia for an unrelated camino

2006-12-29T09:14:00.000-06:00

Carter was kind enough to inform me of the existence of an El Camino college in Compton, California the other day, and I must admit to an early sense of accomplishment and pure giddiness at the thought of having a scholarly institution erected in my honor. Sadly, this was not the case.

Compton’s El Camino College was in fact named for Lord John Jacob Bodelwyddan Lucien “El” Camino, no relation, Earl of Bangwynbury and inventor of the car-truck hybrid that bears his name. This feat was especially impressive when one considers that Lord Camino’s work predates the inventions of both the car and the truck.

Other, lesser known facts and inventions from Camino’s body of work include a vehicle comprised of the front of a bass boat and hind quarters of a zamboni, the sousaphone, the phrase Don’t go there, girlfriend, penicillin, the Franklin stove, B-movies dealing mainly with women in prison, the prosthetic moustache, Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch cereal, apathy, Tesla coils, and a friendly toy known to impressionable nineteenth century children as “Jiggles, the Pantsless Marmot”. His “Jiggle me Jiggles” variation on the toy was the must-have Christmas toy of eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. However, the American Civil War was soon to put a damper on the pantsless Marmot rage of the mid-nineteenth century.

Broken and penniless, Camino then retired to California where he was a founding member CRIPS gang, which originally stood for “Camino’s Ragtime Internet Pep Squad”. Camino was once again showing considerable foresight, as this collective predated the actual Internet by well over a century.

Sadly, the group had turned to general mischief and shenanigans by the time technology caught up.

rex's health news

2006-12-28T08:28:00.000-06:00

Just before Christmas I was diagnosed with strep throat. However, I didn't show any of the symptoms of strep like a sore throat, fever, or difficulty swallowing. My symptoms--the stomach and back aches, the occasional bit of nausea of dizziness, finding entertainment in a large purple asexual dinosaur of questionable motives--are generally found in children with strep. This is odd for two reasons:

1. I am nearly a full grown man.

2. That's pretty much it. I just always like to have multiple reasons. I said two thinking that I could come up with another one by the time I reached this point, but the disease has obviously encumbered my thinking process.

Anyway, the throat culture told them strep, so strep it is. It may just be the power of suggestion that makes me feel a sore throat and fever now, but my symptoms still, for the most part, show me to have the children's variety of strep. I have understandably been researching this particular branch of the infection and have learned three interesting bits:

1. Strep coupled with a rash is sometimes referred to as "scarlet fever", and scarlet fever sounds considerably cooler than "strep throat". Saying that one has "scarlet fever" conjures images of lying on a cot in a thatched hut somewhere in deepest, darkest Africa while small native children fan you and mop your brow. I'm not getting any of that now.

2. More research on the theory needs to be done, but some believe that strep in children leads to obsessive-compulsive disorder. You can read all the scientific mumbo-jumbo, yip-yap, and jibber-jabber here. Some have said that I occasionally show OCD tendencies, yet just yesterday my left sock was a full two inches higher than my right and it did not bother me. I did not upon learning of the discrepancy immediately rummage through my sock drawer to find the proper mate for each. I let it go and gave it no more though throughout the day. Ergo, perhaps it kills OCD in adults. I still don't think I have any amount of OCD but would be a willing lab rat for the right price.

3. Damn. I couldn't come up with a third.

rex's holiday memories: christmas 2006, a heartwarming holiday episode from a medical center waiting room

2006-12-23T10:03:00.000-06:00

I like the modern variety of animated children’s movies about as much as I like pina coladas or getting caught in the rain, which is to say that I do not like them in the least. However, I suppose the large flat screen showing the Will-Smith-is-a-fish-and-Robert-DeNiro’s-career-dies-a-little-more movie was a bit more distracting than thumbing through copies of Redbook, In Shape, Better Homes and Gardens or any number of the automotive or non-sports related man-designated magazines provided in the waiting room at the medical clinic. There was only me, an older guy in another corner, and a young Mexican family in the back with children beating the tiled floor with Lincoln Logs.

Anyway, I don’t have to tell you that I was quite starved for entertainment by the time the tall gaunt man wearing a large swishy parka on what was really a quite mild day walked in with a still-smoldering quarter of a cigarette wedged between two stained fingers. He was pale, blonde, unwashed, unshaven, and of a roughly youngish, though indeterminable age. He said:

“Ma’am, I was hoping y’all could help me switch over to a new pain clinic.”

“Sir, you’ll need to put the cigarette out,” the understandably nervous receptionist told him from behind the relatively safety of her window.

“I am SO sorry, ma’am. I coulda swore I put that out,” he said as he pinched the smoldering end of the butt. “Anyway, ma’am, I just moved away from that other pain clinic you sent me to, and there’s another one down the road from my new place, ma’am.”

A ma’am sandwich, I thought, though I kept it to myself. The nearly visible cloud of alcohol fumes radiating from the man told me that he probably wasn’t in much pain at that particular moment.

One of the nurses had taken over from the receptionist at the window. She was explaining to the man everything he needed to do to switch pain clinics. She was doing so very slowly and in simple, well-enunciated words. He was thankful and scribbled down what he could while dispensing “yes, ma’ams” left and right. The smell of alcohol only seemed to get stronger. When they were done he thanked them profusely and left.

Within thirty seconds I heard the unmistakable stumbling swish of him re-entering the room behind me. I was glad, as that Will Smith movie, like most Will Smith movies, really is godawful.

This time he walked past the receptionist window to the phone hanging on the wall beside it. He picked up the receiver, dialed a number, and then leaned the top of his head against the wall in a defeated slouch. What follows is his end of the conversation as near verbatim as I can recall.

“Pick up …come one …Hey, baby, I am SO sorry …I know, I know …I am SO sorry. I just love you so much …Baby, I am sorry about that. It’s all my fault. I just love you so much. I love you and your little black baby …I know. That was all my fault, baby. I just love you so much …I’m coming home now …Huh? …What did they do? ...Did you shoot the other one too? …Okay, baby, I’m coming home …cause I love you so much, baby …All right …I love you too, baby …Need anything from the store? …Okay, I love you, baby, and I’m coming home because I just love you SO much …You want the menthols? …Okay, don’t go nowhere till I get there. I just love you, baby …All right.”

And her little black baby, I thought, though I also kept this to myself as he stumbled from the room for the second and final time during my visit, dropping a couple more “Thank you, ma’ams” at the receptionist window as he passed.

It was a heartwarming Christmas tale, really, and not even the obnoxious hip-hop dancing of animated sharks and guppies could knock the strains of Alabama’s “Christmas in Dixie” from the sound loop in the back of my mind after that.

mo fats

2006-12-22T08:34:00.000-06:00

It took me the better part of three days with a team of pack mules and some remarkably diligent Sherpas to be able to watch this over my primitive dial-up connection, but it was well worth it. Here is Fats doing "It Ain't Right" with Ada Brown from the 1943 film Stormy Weather. It would prove to be one of his final performances.

You may sing along in French if you wish.

vinyl findings, episode 2: fats waller piano solos, 1929-1941

2006-12-20T15:54:00.000-06:00

Jazz Academics and people who engineer the carving of mountains into statues may disagree with me here, but any Mt. Rushmore chiseled to honor the four greatest jazz pianists should bear the likenesses of Scott Joplin, Art Tatum, Monk, and this mug:

If you’re like me you can’t look at ol’ Fats without wishing that history could’ve put him and Michael Dukakis on this planet at the same time in order to have had one hell of an eyebrow fight to the death.

Anyway, if y’all don’t happen to know Fats, then you still probably know “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “Honeysuckle Rose”, “Your Feet’s Too Big”, “All That Meat And No Potatoes”, “I Got Rhythm”, or any of the countless jazz standards he composed. Louis Armstrong was always at his best when singing Waller, whether it was the hypnotic swing of “Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Loves Nobody But Me)” or the racism blues of “What Did I Do (To Be So Black and Blue)”.

By the way, you can learn more about Thomas Wright Waller by consulting your local library or just lazily clicking this link to his Wikipedia page, complete with the tale of how Fats was once kidnapped to play Al Capone’s birthday party.

I mention all this to lead into my vinyl finding of the reprinted two record set of “Fats Waller Piano Solos, 1929-1941”.

This is, as the title indicates, a collection of Fats alone at the piano. Absent is the trademark voice and witty lyrics, and one is left to appreciate the genius of the man as a musician. The keys stride in machine gun rhythm through a subtle hiss and crackle to reverberate off the walls of the Rexroom even now, and I must say that there is no better case to be made for blindness in the whole “would you prefer blindness or deafness” debate than music such as this.

Uh…where’s your thumb?

Excuse me?

Your thumb is conspicuously absent from the photo.

Yes. Well, I felt that the odd appearance of my thumb detracted from the last installment of “vinyl findings”.

So you don’t find your other digits to be in any way odd looking?

Is this better, Captain Howdy?
You do realize that I’m just a figment of your imagination, don’t you?

That’s what they said about the mischievous elf who lived in the back of my closet and randomly tailored my trousers as I slept.

That turned out to be a cat.

A cat?

Didn’t you read “The Captain Howdy Mysteries, Book Four: The Case of the Mischievous Elf Who Lived in the Back of Rex’s Closet and Randomly Tailored His Trousers as He Slept.”

Obviously not. However, cats cannot tailor one’s trousers. How do you account for that?

You were accidentally attempting to put on Mrs. Camino’s pants.

Ah. Indeed. It all makes sense now.

Anyway, where the hell was I before this digression?

You were telling the story of the time you met Michael Dukakis in the men’s room of an IHOP just off I-75 in Toledo.

I was? I did?

Trust me.

Okay. Um…Yes. Uh…Michael Dukakis was a swarthy little bastard of a man, quick with a condescending tone and raised eyebrows the size of legless gibbons, who…

I’m just screwing with you. You were actually telling the nice people about Fats Waller.

That couldn’t have been Fats Waller in the men’s room at the IHOP.

No, that was Jamie Farr.

What? I’m confused, and my thoughts are hurting my brain.

Shhhhhh. There, there. Now, you go have some eggnog and take a nap while I finish up here.

Anyway, folks, all you need to know about ol’ Fats is that he ate too much, drank too much, played the ever-loving hell out of the piano and then died on a train just outside of Kansas City at the age of thirty-nine.

We should all be so lucky.

a bit of rambling half assedly

2006-12-19T08:56:00.000-06:00

There was a troubling moment early yesterday when I noticed that half my ass had fallen asleep. If the few times I’ve impersonated a doctor have taught me anything it’s that I know very little about medicine and health and whatnot, but finding myself in a literally half-assed condition didn’t seem to be normal. So it was that I stood and felt about my backside. The ass—what there is of it—was indeed still there, yet the coupling of my ever-fattening wallet and an unforgivingly unpadded desk chair had worked to slowly choke the life out of said buttcheek. It was not money that fattened the wallet, unfortunately. People seem to want to give me their business cards as if I were the sort of person who transacted business or called people or didn’t dive into the closet with a blunt object at the ready every time somebody rings the doorbell. I politely take the business cards and file them away until they become painful, and yesterday seems to have been that point.

However, a recollection of my early years then popped into my head as unburdened the wallet and switched it to a front pocket.

Some friends and I began driving to Nashville from our little Alabamian around the age of seventeen. We’d come up for a night here and there to catch shows at 328 or the Exit/In or just to walk around west end or downtown. Nashville was the “big city”, as it were, and we treated these weekends like shore leave. We smoked out in the open without fear of being caught by our parents or their friends and would sneak bottles of vodka or PGA in to augment our drinks as we walked around at Summer Lights or just up and down Broadway.

“Big cities” can be scary places, but that’s part of the allure. We—or I, at least—always half expected to be mugged or stabbed or kidnapped and then sold into white slavery when walking around downtown or from Elliston Place down to Lucy’s Record Shop. Sadly, this never happened.

But the tidbit that had escaped me until the wallet constricted my hind quarters half to death yesterday was the fact that the very first thing we always did when arriving in Nashville was to switch our wallets to our front pockets. This was obviously done to avoid pickpocketing and probably would have bit a useless defense against the kidnapped for slavery thing, but the defensive measure was so engrained on a Pavlovian level that for the longest time I would immediately check my front pocket when I thought of Nashville.

Anyway, I hadn’t thought about that for a while.

Also, this has for some reason reminded me of the short-lived rap duo of Kris Kross (comprised, if you will recall, of the Mac Daddy and Daddy Mac) and their gimmick of wearing their clothes backward. Trends often elude and even trouble me, but there was something about their particular attempt at trend setting that I found especially disturbing. I don’t know why.

I didn’t much care for Christopher Cross either, but at least the man knew how to put on a pair of pants.