Back in the Saddle

[Robin Landseadel]

On Dec 17, 2008, at 5:36 AM, Henry wrote:

> Firesign Theater seems to just keep coming up like a bad
> turnip lately

Phil Austin [He's the one who gets to play "Nick Danger"] has a blog.
Phil's most recent entry reminds me of the thanatoids:
      When silences fell upon the little conversations, he would stay  
still as one does with Native Persons when there is no need to talk  
and so no one does. We ride in silence, we and the hitchhikers, in  
this case Navajo kids from Many Farms or thereabouts. In Navajo  
Country, the hitch-hiker will not look at you, walks quietly backwards  
so that when you stop and pull off to the side of the long red road  
and step out to motion him into your car, he is now looking at you for  
the first time. You must nearly beg him to ride with you and there is  
no conversation once inside and travelling. It was that way with him  
and the visits of the Dead.

      When the Dead came visiting, they often wished to dance and  
drink beer. When the Dead came visiting, they seemed to want to  
forget, to get a little high, to talk a little loud, to sing a bit.

  Dead in automobiles would slowly drive by outside his house, the  
booming thumps of their magnificent sound systems rumbling through the  
foundations of his house. Their blown V-8 engines purred like  
panthers, black in the Southern forests. The Dead preferred the big  
band sounds of El Salvador and the strange Norteno sounds of Los  
Tigres and would park their rigs and join the party. The strange  
skulls of the partiers were not good at showing emotion, but  
sometimes, as he sat in silence watching the dancers, he thought he  
could see a smile here and there.

     “I’m hungry for sugar,” said the child and her mother said  
“Quiet, little one. The nice man will feed us soon. He asks for  
nothing and fears us little and is quiet and unassuming and genteel.”

      “Still, I am hungry,”  complained the child.  She had travelled  
a long way from old high altitude caves where she had been bound in  
odd positions for some centuries, and her skin had shrunk down on her  
bones and the tragic story of her former wet and fleshy parts had been  
at least partially discerned by the producers of at least two semi- 
scholarly film documentaries commissioned by the Public Broadcasting  
System.

      “We are proud people,” whispered her mother. “We will wait for  
him to offer us sugar.”

      When he finished showing the big skull with the iron eyes how to  
plug in the CD player and the other skull thing with the necklace of  
thighbones had boosted the EQ to emphasize the rock-solid bass players  
of the South and the beer was flowing, he would motion to the skeletal  
child and offer her sugar in the form of little heads made of the  
stuff and other little things, butterflies and crosses and saquaros  
and woodpeckers, all of delicious sugar. All the Dead would eventually  
have a bite of sugar somethings, even the ladies with luscious hips  
and skeleton faces rouged and painted would have a tiny bite, so tiny  
that it posed no threat to their wonderful figures. The girls in the  
little skirts and halter tops and high, high heels who danced with  
each other out by the sulking lowered cars passed sugar from his  
kitchen each to the other.  All the dead would eat and dance and have  
a beer or two and slide away into the night until finally he was alone.

http://austin.weblogger.com/