So Gorman Moloko has gotten himself involved with this band who’s producing some interesting late night sci-fi tinted, post-new wave oddness/goodness.
They’re called Abandoned City. Their first official release will be an e.p. called Untethered on Dark Heart Records.
Give them a try if you’re a stuck-out-of-time renegade from the early Eighties like I am.
I’ve returned to the Bunker.
By that, my miniscule, psychotically devoted audience, I mean my Northeast Compound in Hooksett, New Hampshire. After 117 days living a Life on the Run, I have finally returned to the place I hold dearest. It is here that I will now speak to you from, likely forevermore, until the end of days.
Which might not be that far off, folks. Who knows?
Regardless, I come now here before you my single-digitally defined comrades, to speak to you in truth, of truth.
You know I love you all. But these are dark days. ‘Nuff said.
So a note or two about where I’ve been since I departed the Compound back in early June. You all recall I was under a bit of stress at times. And at other times. Maybe all the time.
So I needed to cut loose and get out of this fucking country just one last time before coming back here to stay. I ransacked my Compound, threw a few bits of clothing in a bag, grabbed some handy cash and hit the road. First stop, of course, Amsterdam.
Three days in various seedy bars drinking with cyber-neural surgeon (guys who can hardwire micro-data technology right into your cerebral cortex) and former black market arms dealer Pepe “Nightmare Fuck” Livingstone. We hit all the local dives hard, banged up on sour Russian vodka and cannabis by the mega-bud. His girlfriend, Louisa Blowthong, a left-leaning guerrila ninja ass-kicker from Paraguay, was along for the ride, making both of us look good. Picture a nubile, golden-brown Olympic Champion body and genuinely terrifying arsenal or prime ordinance and you’ve got Louie. She was wasting her time with Pepe and we all knew it but it didn’t stop us from having a great time. The night she threw down with hose Yakuza bozos in Chiba’s, you’d swear she was the Black-Racer himself. She turned those fuckers off like they were retractable pens. Click.
That’s the thing about having a great time like that. You don’t sweat the little bullshit that can drag you down in life. The worrying little bullshit. You know what I mean. You just roll with it all and have fun.
I scooted out of the Netherlands in late June, though, as much fun as it had been. Next stop, Prague where I followed any number of false leads in an attempt to track down Kevin Shields for an interview and more of his bullshit about an MBV reunion. Of course it never happend but I did manage to fall briefly in love with a political science major from Plzen. We both sobered up somewhere around the July 4th holiday when, I do believe, she got sick as fuck of my American-ness. Whatever. Not like I was going to propose.
July was a hot month, man. Especially on the French Riviera. There’s only on way to cool off, as far as I’m concerned, folks. Shed some clothing and let it all air out. I think I spent at least three weeks straight on one nude beach or another, soaking in the sun and the skin. There lyeth heaven, mes amis. Paradise.
Even further I wandered, beyond even those blissful heights of bodily ecstacy and relaxation. Good times, bad times, times that distort your soul. Strange times. Much of August was spent in spiritual pursuits that I won’t go into here in any detail. Such personal experiences are often left just as that, personal. If I ever deicde to speak of such things, well, you’ll know that dire times have finally come upon us all.
Anyway, now I’m back up here in beautiful NH in the fall. It’s nice but there’s a cold snap to the air and you can smell winter waiting around the corner somewhere. This Sunday features the fist N’oreaster of the season. Time to bunker down once again.
So, yeah. I’m here.
Won’t you join me?
Tonight’s Late Show with David Letterman is Must Watch TV in the Ken Socrates Household.
An Aging Dave Letterman at the 2009 Emmy’s
I know, I know, you still don’t know who’s house it is I’m hiding out at. Sorry again for the subterfuge. You know what it’s like to be Living A Life on the Run. Most of you do, anyway.
Thing is, Dave’s in trouble. You know it. I know it.
He’s done some shameful shit and he’s hurt his wife. This is not good, my friends. I know what it’s like to be married, you know. I know what it’s like to fuck it up, too.
We need to be there for Dave tonight, my friends. We need to support our old pal.
Remember. Dave got us through the fucking eighties, man. He kept us sane/insane. He entertained our twisted little minds every single lonely, alienated night back then. I believe he is a good and decent man, really, I do.
The least we can do is hang in there with the guy.
Or, rather, I’m not. I’m in an undisclosed location, nowhere near my home, still living on the run but now able to get internet access.
I’ll try to stay in contact as time goes on but I wanted to reassure you, my adoring audience that I am in fact alive and well.
Sort of.
More soon.
I just love Saturn.
Really, I do.
Sometimes when I want a quick, easy summary of what I’ve been doing here lately, sort of where my thoughts have been wandering, etc., I look at what search engine terms have been bringing people to this website.
Recent phrases used to find me here:
Farewell Spanish Lady
(what else is new)Rosebuds “Fun Book”
Dr Who WGBH Tom Baker
Socrates Songs for Kids
Barvarian Hockey
Dirty Cocksucker
Plus one term I’m not entirely comfortable reprinting here.
So it seems I’m right where I need to be, thematically. Right on target.
Gotta go now.
Gotta finish recording that kid’s singalong album I’ve been working on.
The 14th Annual Ken Socrates “Show Us Your Empty Vodka Bottle” Contest is under way and the first few entries have arrived, forwarded to me by Stig Marmoset who’s job it is too screen out the really sick stuff. Those ones he keeps for himself and, he tells me, will someday be featured on a future pay-site of his called Abusinginanimateobjects.com.
Here are the folks first out of the gate which, considering the contest actually started in March, shows us that your basic Ken Socrates/Vodka enthusiast isn’t usually all that familiar with the term “motivation”.
Mishii & Takeshi
From Japan, where they still call me Kenny Sock-San!, we see the founders of the recently disbanded Kenny Sock-San Fan Club, Mishii Jojima and Takeshi Ota posing at a Kyoto bus station where they were obviously too drunk to notice that the man they had asked to snap this novelty photo of them was actually Japan’s notorious Bus Molester, something they would both later regret. Also, we can once again see first hand just how utterly goddamn funny those Japanese really are.
T.J. Crenshaw
A lot of you will recognize Vermont’s own T.J. Crenshaw, winner of last year’s awkwardly titled How Far Will You Go To Prove Your Ken Crush? sweepstakes. In fact, T.J. has entered every single contest we’ve held at the KSWNO since 1997, many of them multiple times under various alias’. So just for the record T.J., not only is that entry showing you in an, ahem, a compromised position with that Stoli bottle been ruled morally inappropriate for the contest but wearing an afro wig and calling yourself Jon Remery isn’t really fooling anyone. Thanks for the interest, though.
Carla & Heather
Carla Mitropoulos and Heather Shale, both bartenders at a local sports pub called Beaters, are some of my favorite admirers and not just because of their positive outlook on life and fondness for nude beaches. No, when a man spends his days deeply submerged in profound intellectual pursuits, wrestling with savage spritual demons, burning with the fevers or pure, unrestrained creativity, he sometimes needs a soft, understanding bosom to cradle his world weary head. When the burden becomes too much for me, Carla and Heather are the ones I call because they understand me. Plus, they’re always up for shots.
Brenda & Trisha
Now these two look like fun. Baltimore natives Brenda Cleggland and Trisha DeGauss claim they don’t drink to get drunk but “it seems to happen everytime, anyway”. An inseperable pair of gal pals who’ve come to be known as The Sirens of Last Call, their unusual entry in the contest contained a marriage proposal for Stig and an inquiry as to whether he had any “burly cousins”. Word on the street is they were both charter members of Maryland’s first female fight club.
So those are the first entries but hopefully not the last. There’s lots of time to enter as the contest runs until whatever time it is I finally get sick of seeing this shit. So get drinkin’.
Send all enties to: stig@kensocrates.com
Cheers!
It came to me in a Fever Dream.
I’ve been somewhat ill lately (thanks for all the concern you bastards) and one night, while laying in bed sweating, tossing and turning, strange hallucinations and thoughts swirling through the dementia, it came to me. Like a vision. Pure, shining and bright.
A place to express the passions that I and others feel about the Sport of Hockey and they way it should be played. A place to lay bare the beating heart of all that makes it the ultimate Man’s Game. Honor, Toughness, Pride. A Code that must be acknowledged and obeyed or Justice will be dealt out through the fists of those whose job is is to do so.
It’s Old Time Hockey. It’s the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers and the Chicago Blackhawks.
It’s Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard. It’s Terry O’Reilly and Cam Neely.
It’s Hockey Gone Wild.
Share and enjoy.
I went to a Birthday Party today. Okay, maybe not “went to” so much as “crashed”. Fucking semantics if you ask me.
I realized the stir craziness here at The Compound was finally starting to get to me when I found myself sitting atop the Tiki Bar in the south wing in nothing but a soiled pair of Green Lantern boxer shorts eating cold Beefaroni out of a can. Also, I noticed that I had apparently, at some point in the last 48 hours, carved the word “revenant” into my chest with an exacto knife.
So I figured I needed to get out.
I decided that something creative would help so I threw on a my hat and glasses and a nice windbreaker and headed directly over to the local Plaster Fun Time.
I fucking love plaster painting, man.
So I guess there was a birthday celebration being hosted over there or something. Some seven year old and a dozen or so of his pals had the place pretty well taken over and they were all whoopin’ and hollerin’ and stuff. Whatever. I’m there to work, man.
So I got myself a smock, some paints and a penguin and took a seat. I think some folks thought I might be one of the parents at first so no one really bothered me early on. I was sitting next to Jimmy “The Cunt” Bradenson, a feisty little cock knocker from, I think, Elmer Bernstein Elementary School in Dover. I gave him the nickname. I figured it fit. That kid can party, let me tell you. He was telling me he likes to sneak up and watch his parents when they “wrestle naked” and sometimes likes to crap in his backyard and not tell anyone. Cool fucker, no doubt.
I was in the middle of telling my boy about how paint huffing can be a cheap high when some doughy, near-sighted lesbian decided so sidle up and ask me why I was making my penguin “anatomically correct” and whether or not I though it was “appropriate” to be puffing on a big fattie at a children’s birthday party, no matter if I kept it under the table.
The nerve of some hermaphrodites, I’ll tell you
So, I stood up like a shot and went off. “Because I’m a fucking artist, that’s why!!!” Then I screamed to the college kid at the counter, “Yo, Weekend at Bernies! Get Rosie here off my ass, motherfucker, or I’m gonna bleed the bitch!!!”
It sort of went downhill from there. Some WWF wannabe describing himself as a “chaperone” blindsided me from the left where everyone knows my peripheral vision is shot thanks to that speedboat collision back in ‘90. So he got me down but made the mistake of knocking me into the shelves full of all the plaster casts, most of which came cascading down on us like a goddamned avalanche. I can take a hit, though, so when the dust cleared I shook off the rubble and was on my feet before the other dude knew what happened. Before he could even roll over I fucking brained him a lawn fairy.
Most of the kids and moms were scrambling for the exits at this point, which was too bad because a) the real fun was just beginning and b) they were going to miss out on some real educational shit involving human anatomy, creative use of curse words and hand to hand combat in confined spaces.
I targeted the Plaster Fun Time staff next for their inabilty to control what they should have known would be a volatile situation. If a wobbly, unshaven drunk guy in a fur hat and sunglasses with no pants on comes in and want to paint little plaster animals at 11 a.m. on a Friday, you know what? You might want to expect the worst in terms of how that situation might develop. Might want to call the manager. I’m not telling you guys how to do your jobs or anything, but when a guys sits down at the little picnic table and you can see his hairy balls hanging down beneath his smock, chances are it’s not a gonna be a good thing for anybody.
So I pelted the motherfuckers with everything I could get my hands on, unicorns, a bust of Betty Boop, a Yoda head, some little ducks, a fucking shitload of sleeping kitty cats, one or two garden gnomes. They hid behind the counter mostly but I rained down jagged plaster chunks of screaming hell on their heads for a good 45 minutes until I heard the sirens and slipped out through the storage area out back.
Wriggled through a vent shaft into the kitchen of the pizza place next door and hid out under a counter for a few hours ’til I heard all the sobbing stop and then took off for home.
Forgot my goddamned penguin, too.
Anyway. All in a day’s work.
Check it out.
