superduty

Hootenanny correspondent, Doug P. Teever stumbled upon this modified 2005 Ford Superduty in southeast Chandler, AZ not far from where Hootenanny will have it's new offices.

superduty
by Doug P. Teever

My best friend in Phoenix, Frank "Killer or KC" Culhane, told me to be careful and I took him at his word. He seemed uncomfortable in the hotel lobby at the Sheraton on Dunlap so I bought him a four pack of Red Bull and a bottle of Kamchatka Vodka. He chased a couple of Bulls and opened right up. At first, it sounded like he was speaking Spanish. Then I realized he was just speaking Arizona English very rapidly. Mostly English with a made-up word here or there. Eventually, KC laid it all out. I didn't realize the Wild West still existed on this scale.

KC introduced me to his girlfriend. She sat on the jukebox. I wish you could have seen her dance. I asked, are you an actress. She said no. She had long blonde hair and a satellite phone she'd stolen from the korean BBQ in Glendale. After a few Mad Max-like encrypted phone calls for directions, I was taken to the truck in Chandler on Monday, May 22 after the mid-day mini-haboob. I asked the Seller about price. He stated, "Depends on how much ammo you'll need. You're headin' for the border, right?" Or Mogadishu, Somalia maybe. I thought the pirate insignia was a definite bonus. I imagine that even the bravest militant-immigrant-farmer-insurgent would flee at the site of it.
The Seller popped a couple of iced Coors Keystone and I mentioned I was a big fan of the Minutemen - having noticed his prominent knuckle tattoo. I don't think he understood I meant the 80's SoCal punk band. It was just as well. He simply stood there and grinned while his wife braided his beaded, rattail mullet. His teeth were in crisis condition so I'm thinking he might be a meth head and that this wasn't about immigration so much as it was about a turf war. We've all heard that the Mexican labs are pumping out the brown poison on an industrial scale and I suspect these poor old boys just can't keep up in price or quality.
As he became more violently animated, I backed up slowly. I remembered my Boy Scout Wood Badge Training and felt in my pocket for the Swiss Army knife that wasn't there and edged off to his left like one would from an accidentally cornered skunk that seems to be borderline-rabid. The Seller was cross-eyed though, and he kept one or the other trained on me and always from an unsettling angle, like I owed him a confession. Fear was suggesting immediate flight but my Scout training took over and I began to assess potential escape routes. Just then, as he fired up AC/DC's "Gone Shootin" and not willing to take any more chances, I tossed my bright yellow disposable Kodak Camera into the air and fled with as much speed as I could muster. Luckily, the Kodak drew his attention long enough that he didn't give even try to give chase.
As my new Red Ball Jets (purchased at the Vegas Hard Rock for $179) ate the pavement putting real distance between my feet and the danger posed by the heavily armed AZ redneck-meth-head, he called me a "f***ing Mesa Mormom". I don't know what he meant by that or what that means even, but it didn't sound particulary threatening from a hundred yards away so I slowed to a walk. Once I passed the lighted parking lot of a Sonic, I pulled my iPod from my snapbutton-flap-western-shirt pocket and resumed listening to T Bone Burnett's new LP "The True False Identity".
Now, if they just had cabs in this town, I think I could maybe like living here.

T Bone Burnett has emerged from a 14-year hiatus as a recording artist to release The True False Identity -- a collection of 12 new songs written and produced by T Bone.
Click Here to purchase The True False Identity.

Legacy Recordings has also released the 40-song, 2-disk Twenty Twenty -- The Essential T Bone Burnett, T Bone's first-ever retrospective spanning his 30-plus years as a recording artist. In his revelatory liner notes, T Bone has written, "This is the way I wanted to close the book on these songs from a dead man, and open the book on the new life I am beginning after forty years of wandering in the desert."
Click Here to purchase Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett.