shawn avery

"i believe that children are our future. teach them well and let them lead the way..." - whitney houston (pop singer, crackhead) "rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?" — george w. bush (president of the united states)

spring schedule : fri - march 11th - brother's | jacksonville, al w/ long story short fri - march 25th - the nick | bham, al w/ the californias & cordova wed - april 20th - performance on fox tv 6 (good day alabama) | bham, al wed - april 20th - workplay | birmingham, al looking back on my entries thus far this month, all but one mention death, dying, in either a lyric, album title, jest or reality. hunter s. was of course the icing on the cake. there's people who die here and there that barely affect me. in private life i never blink. people just go away. as for public figures, johnny cash was a big loss, but he was pretty old. buckley was a tragedy, and i couldn't listen to some of his music for a while. with hunter s. thompson finishing a conversation about having a great funeral and then - pow!... that's just too much. i can hear the last gasps of the progressive movement of the 60's and 70's. it seems like every man is an island now. spooky. there's...

the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs." i completely blame our current administration for his death. i'll be playing some jefferson airplane this week for sure. here's an interesting column thompson wrote last year for espn as their page 2 columnist. he discusses his beloved wildcats getting burned by the university of alabama | birmingham basketball team. he also discusses fantasies of suicide. hmmm. a eulogy : By Cintra Wilson | salon.com Feb. 21, 2005 | "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Last night, the night that Hunter S. Thompson was apparently shooting himself (an exit somehow befitting the self-styled anarchy and insouciantly godless iconoclasm of the man) my friend "Dirty Bobby," a magazine photographer, and I were in the kitchen of my house discussing a road trip he'd taken on a journalism assignm...

"...energy's down, think i've died and blown away. said so long to the fools who came and took all the things to say. i've played the joker sometimes, but then those moments fly back my way. 'cause for real, i gave my soul away, gave it all away so take my hand and lead me where you wanna..." i like that lyric . the wilco concert on sunday was brilliant. they won 2 grammies. "it's all down hill from here..." i can't believe how great that band is. spring shows schedule for myself w/ mr. payne... 3/11 - brothers | oxford 3/25 - the nick | bham 4/20 - workplay | bham my life has been altered this month.

...in disbelief of arrogance. ...closing a short book that was easy to read. ...re-opening an old book that has always been difficult to understand. ...realizing that the artificial is welcome and needed. ...defending my life on trial as a 73 year old man. everything is illuminated.

rapid city, s.d. - a buffalo that escaped from an auction ended up in a dressing room at the rushmore plaza civic center where it spent a couple of hours staring into a mirror.