Sticky new one by Dave Reeves’ Alabaman glue-wave faves WIZZARD SLEEVE, off their debut LP Make the World Go Away (pictured above) out October 2 from the mighty HoZac Records of Chicago, Illinois. The Sleeve will be playing a record release party in Chicago at something called “Mortville warehouse” on October 2. You know what to do.
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“Territory BBQ and Records is the new restaurant-slash-record-store from Tony Presedo and Curtis Brown—formerly of Tee Pee Records and the band Bad Wizard, respectively. They will stock heavy music and serve heavy food prepared in part by heavy chef [and longtime Arthur “Do the Math” columnist] Dave Reeves.”
I’ve just toured one of the asphalt strips which girdle our great country and would like to say that nobody is illegal, unless nobody is Mexican or has a couple of pounds vacuum wrapped in the back of the truck under a bunch of hammers.
Along the way I was reminded that Indian reservations are awesome places to get the essential weapons and fireworks one needs for Mardi Gras by providentially breaking down at Bush Brothers Truck stop in Jamestown, New Mexico (exit 39 off I-40) that has all your personal items like tear gas, switchblades and this EYEGOUGE KITTY.
A weapon whose sheer cuteness means you might get it through the metal detectors.
MAKE EM SAY “ME OOWW!”
Remember, ladies, the eyes are the other balls.
We broke down again in Weatherford, Arklahoma, where we were punished with 3.2 beer. Impossible to get drunk on. I will not describe this horrid church town or the stinking vindaloo of the hotel room.
Nor will I mention the tow truck driver who upon seeing our California plates kept trying to get us to “break out the joint” even there were obvious Christians mulling about.
new orleans
The first night in New Orleans, I apparently went to go see a band called “Tirefire” in Metarie.
TIREFIRE GETS DOWN
Tirefire were opening for one of the “eyehategod” guys’ side projects (I’ll find out what it as called later. Evil army? I dunno, my notes are too bloody) where I stabbed myself in the hand with my newest of a dozen milano switchblades I have owned over the years to assuage my condition.
These knives have a malfunctioning safety mechanism which encourages a “pocket pop” when the owner is doing something like getting jostled in a room full of sweaty freaks. In the short useful lifetime of the spring this design flaw allows these evil little spikes to poke more holes in people than a jail full of three-peckered soccer hooligans. (It’s in Wales, I think).
What can I tell you about going to work on a weed farm that the Grower, The Trimmers and The Landowner won’t kill me for? Soft criminals are especially tense about getting put in cages by men with guns….
In 1996 Californians passed a Proposition called 215 that allowed a citizen to go to a doctor to get certified as demented enough that a federally banned vegetable substance known as a “Joint” is the only remedy. The Doctor gets a hundred dollars. The Citizen gets a number, a little patch, and if things go a certain way during the Bush Obama changeover, a free ride to a Special Federal Camp.
American victory in Vietnam! That’s right! Iraq too! We always win! by Dave Reeves originally published in Arthur No. 31 (Oct 2008)
Hanoi, Vietnam: I’m in Vietnam picking out a baby for my Prius. Problem is, the damn babies all look the same. Needing to calm down, I pay fifty bucks for what looks like weed and smells like weed; but when rolled into Bob Marley blunts only gets me high enough to watch television. I’m mad, until I realize that getting ripped off for illegal drugs in a supposed Buddho/communist country indicates a total victory of the Judeo-Christian/capitalist cause.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t declare victory over nothing. It’s not about fifty bucks. I consider occasional rip-offs to be like union dues in the underworld. I’ve paid money for a baggie of gravel in Amsterdam, purchased placebos purporting to be mescaline in Texas and ingested sheets of Georgia rat poison acid. Besides, I get ripped off for real back in California all the time, what with the rolling blackouts, profit prisons and wars without end.
It’s the constant miracle of Hanoi traffic that got me open to the hustle. Vietnamese people tend to ride their mopeds at full speed, in a scrum, about as far from one another as you are from this page. The stoplights are but suggestions, hidden behind the foliage, way up on the periphery behind the “go” sign. The side of the road a driver chooses is dictated by whimsy. Nonetheless, at each intersection the masses of mopeds weave through each other unscathed,with no cursing, nor shots fired.
I thought this symbiosis indicated that Buddhism was The Answer, because it’s about respect for the value of human life and yadda yah. It only takes one terrible joint to realize that the reason the Vietnamese people can ride like that is because their weed sucks. Don’t try that shit back in California. Those motherfuckers are high.
“A joke is an epitaph on the death of a feeling.”—Nietzsche
If we are in Iraq looking for the guys that did the Nineleven caper we’re stupid because, according to the FAA, the pilots are usually among the first people to arrive at a crash site.
The only other 9/11 joke I’ve heard is:
Knock, knock Who’s there? Nine eleven Nine eleven who? You said you would never forget me.
Yeah, it’s not funny. Not just because the feeling isn’t dead. It plays on the fact that 9/11 is an old heartbreak whore of ours, the one who unfettered our basest desires, which we’ll be paying for for the rest of our children’s lives. Har de har.
Your kids are going to be pissed when they see the pictures which Colin Powell pointed at when he talked us into World War Three.
“Daddy is it true that you guys started World War Three over a picture of a meth lab out in the desert?”
“Well honey see we didn’t have no education back then and so we didn’t know that nuclear fission takes whole buildings full of advanced ceramics, Germans and yellow cake uranium to manufacture…”
It’s good that we can’t tell a meth lab from a nuclear bomb-making facility because it means that our elders saw fit to give us the gift of bliss, which more judgemental people would call ignorance. With this bliss we are free to see the world without any preconceived notions based on science or pre-known facts.
Back when people got educations they were indoctrinated so thoroughly that they believed crazy shit like the Civil War was fought to free black slaves. Anybody stupid enough to think that white people went to war and killed other white people for the rights of black people will be stupid enough to believe that we are looking for Osama Bin Laden in Iraqian Permian basin.
Do the Math: CITIZEN HEAR ME OUT! THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU! by Dave Reeves
There were Laws, but they were not feared. There were rules but they were not worshiped like laws and rules and cops and informants are feared and worshiped today. –Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Elko”
If you are reading this magazine then there is a pretty good chance that you break some stupid ass law every other day. Be it dabbling in tax evasion, watering your lawn on Thursdays, smoking weed, walking your dog without a leash, or drinking two and half beers before driving home, you are overdue to beg for the non-existent mercy of some unlaid grinch posing as a judge (you know who you are, Kirkland Nyby). I’m here to tell you that being a white non-violent person with all your teeth will not be enough to save you from doing hard time for minor infractions anymore.
America has slid far past the point where a well-regulated militia would be able to relieve us of our vicious tyrants. The myriad weapons and tactics perfected over the course of our many stupid foreign wars are easily turned against the American civilian population. We are cowed behind the magic of infrared radar helicopters, electronic ball breakers, automatic weapons and a skein of surveillance cameras: the American population rendered naked to the aggression of a police state gone corporate.
I have seen the future and it is California. That which is not illegal is mandatory. If you find yourself in California, here’s what you should do:
DAVID REEVES: Great American and longtime Arthur columnist. Photo by Beth Hoeckel.
DAVE REEVES was released from jail late Monday afternoon and is doing fine, considering the circumstances. He got to play cards with King Tee while he was inside, so it wasn’t all bad.
Now he has to report to prison to do day labor every morning from tomorrow (Thursday), through Jan 16.
Dave got about $300 in orders at his defendbrooklyn website while he was in jail. He is very grateful. Obviously he is unable to do paying work again until after this ordeal is finished, so, if you’re able, please buy stuff from him at defendbrooklyn. And remember: when you defend Dave Reeves, you defend yourself.
Thank you,
Jay Babcock, Arthur editor
WHAT HAPPENED: After a series of bizarro events and idiocies that were farcical at first but now seem almost tragic, Dave Reeves has been sentenced to 23 days in County by Judge Kirkland Nyby (ofc 818.557.3454) for the City of Burbank. He turned himself in last Friday, January 4 at 830am. He is currently in MEN’S CENTRAL JAIL which, according to the LACSD website, “houses the majority of Los Angeles County’s high risk, high security inmates, and ranks as the largest jail in the free world.”
Here’s what happened: Dave Reeves was convicted of not reporting a traffic accident. The other driver was an SUV on his cel phone who inadvertently hit Reeves (who was driving a weak motorcycle) and knocked him over; the driver then swore and gestured aggressively at Dave. Dave got up and drove away with crazy SUV guy charging/yelling after him, trying to run him over. Finally Dave loses him. Dave doesn’t call it in because there’s no damage to his bike, he was the one who was hit, there were no witnesses, and he didn’t have license plate, year or make of the other driver. And also you don’t call in stuff like this from where he comes from (Echo Park–it’s a gang area where LAPD response time is slow to never, and bothering cops with trifling matters like this is a bad-to-stupid thing to do). Anyways other dude calls Burbank PD and says HE has been victim of hit and run. Etc etc. Actually goes to trial, prosecuted by the City of Burbank (Dennis A. Barlow, Burbank City Attorney -Telephone: (818) 238-5700 -Fax: (818) 238-5724), even though there are no witnesses. Damage to guy’s SUV is a pencil mark-sized scratch on front of SUV guy’s mirror, obviously caused by the SUV’s forward motion against Dave’s motorcycle. $200 in “repair.” Jury can’t believe this is a trial. Reeves admits he didn’t call Burbank PD. Jury has to convict, given judge’s instructions. Judge Kirkland Nyby gives max sentence. Reeves gets 30 days of community service which is 240 hours of picking up trash and abating graf. Reeves did 7 days by the deadline to complete the service. Nyby has now sentenced Dave Reeves to jail for the remainder of his sentence.
Dave Reeves should not be in high-security jail with high-risk inmates for this trifling offense–and nor should anyone else.
He was jailed in MEN’S CENTRAL JAIL at 441 BAUCHET STREET, which, according to the LACSD website, “currently houses the majority of Los Angeles County’s high risk, high security inmates, and ranks as the largest jail in the free world. The average housing cost per inmate is $53.45 per day.”
ARTHUR MAGAZINE ARTICLES & COLUMNS BY DAVE REEVES AVAILABLE ONLINE:
Arthur Magazine 