Konk Songs Sing Konks

The Miata Factor

2010-09-04T10:07:00.002-05:00

All summer I've been noticing two things, and these two things converged this week. They are these:

1) Grown men - GROWN MEN - driving Mazda Miatas. Most sightings occur on my morning commute to the utopian dream land that is Overland Park, KS. I've seen many on the way home. Then one Saturday in a quaint urban neighborhood, I saw 7 Mazda Miatas parked together, some with their hoods up, and all 7 of their owners and drivers were GROWN MEN. These grown men were standing around talking about and pointing at their Miatas. They were smiling. They were happy. They were an underground cult of Miata-loving grown men.

I drove by very slowly and questioned everything I knew to be true in the world. Just when you think you're getting some answers, The Miata Factor jumps in and slaps your brain around.

2) Men, of course they were men, smoking cigars on their morning commutes. I smoke cigars from time to time and have learned they are very sneaky things. You think you consume the cigar, but really, the cigar consumes you. Heavy, almost liquid, smoke engulfs you, filling your pores and shirt with tiny ex-cigar molecules. A thick cigar + saliva concoction blends together and lines your mouth, slowly evaporating over the next 24 hours. Giving in to the experience somehow makes you feel more like a man than you were before.

Never, ever, have I considered firing up a cigar before 8pm (unless on a river float trip, where the threshold is lowered to 2pm). So I see these three guys with plumes of blue cigar smoke rolling through their cars at 7:30 AM and I KNOW, without a doubt, these are different kind of men. And I wonder about them.

Convergence: The third guy I saw just yesterday. He was demolishing a fat robusto, maybe a Montecristo or a Cohiba, at 7:47 AM. He was a grown man. He wore a brimmed hat. He was driving a Mazda Miata.

I have only questions: Who does these things? Are they heroes? Are they villains? Should there be laws protecting us, or protecting them? Hide our children? Hide our wives?

Almost Drooling Humanlike Skyjumping People

2010-07-29T22:07:00.001-05:00

We’re a year into this blog and everyone is impressed by the dedicated approach its author and readers take to its almost quarterly concerns. For instance, how sweet was that last quarter where I didn’t even almost post an update, and my two or three readers didn’t almost read my casual take on the world from The Johnnyship? New or out-of-touch readers will see a rather large gap – roughly six months to be almost exact – where I almost posted something, but instead proved one of life’s great truths yet again: Almost doing something is still not doing that something.

It’s obvious by now that I’m making art with this blog. And lots of it. There are no rules and obscurity counts to people who like to wander through fields of open-ended tunnels engulfed in an enigmatic air of reason where the ultimate truth resides. Meaning, obscurity matters to people who like bullshit in their lives – the kind of people who would like the previous sentence. But this last blog entry I almost posted – the one you observed as NOT being posted roughly three months ago – was in retrospect a legitimate piece of art. It’s almost posting was an artistic statement, don’t you see? It was an artful dedication to best intentions and to almost doing something.

Really, that post I almost posted truly existed in my mind and in some bullets I’d jotted down over coffees and whiskies. It was an expansive piece titled, “People Are Weird Humans”. It included many almost noteworthy ideas worth disseminating to our fellow “Stop the Killingers” (new, sexy / catchy name for this blog's avid readers). There was a bit about duct tape being the perfect bandage for foot wounds, given its ultimate blend of flexibility and durability. Yes, I included small advice to drop a cotton protective layer between wound and duct tape, as if NOT applying duct tape directly to a wound wasn’t obvious (sorry for almost insulting your intelligence).

There was a bit about my being on a plane and watching a teenage kid across the aisle fall asleep, slumped chin to chest, and how the pool of saliva slowly grew and grew until it crept over his lip and drooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooled down into the middle of his chest in a steady stream. It would have been gross to even mention it a few months ago.

Most importantly, I offered some humble considerations about humans and people, in particular about how strange it is that humans are so weird, and then – through pure logic and reason – readers quickly discover that people are weird too! Humans, for instance, may only be where we are today as a species because of our thumbs. I was taught the difference between humans and apes were our opposable thumbs, but no one mention the real implications of these things. Seriously, we can fly into outer space and drill holes in the Earth a mile underwater using things concocted and designed by our smartest braniacs…but we couldn’t hold the screwdrivers that build the robots that build the machines we use to help us do these wild things without the advanced thumb-design we have bolted onto our hands**. How weird is that? Humans think rockets are the key to space travel, but really, thumbs are where the money is!

Then there are people. You know them. They’re all around. You may even be one. These people walking around everywhere do and say the weirdest things. Recently, I heard of a bunch of people – like, lots and lots of people – playing this game on Facebook called Farmville. This game – invented by people, mind you – allows players to buy fake things like cartooned pink tractors for real money. What’s weirder is people actually, consciously, decide to take advantage of this opportunity, which is utterly fascinating. How is it possible to build a business based on people paying real money for fake things? Hmmm…I may have just uncovered the central question as to why the greatest financial institutions led by our greatest business minds came crashing down a couple years ago…were these people using real money to buy fake things like derivatives and credit default swaps? Yes! And they made billions of real dollars along the way, just like the company that created Farmville is currently valued at over $4 billion dollars. These facts lead to one more question: How the poop is any of that possible? The answer? People are weird humans!

Then there’s the guy I’d like to name Felix Skyjumper if his name wasn’t already Felix Baumgartner who will be jumping out of a helium balloon from a height of 120,000 feet – the highest human free-fall ever – in the next few months. He’s going to strap on a pressurized suit, risk falling into a tail spin and having his limbs ripped from his torso, or vibrating so much is brain detaches from its stem just to land and say, “Hell yes I just did that.”

On a smaller scale, there are the obvious daily examples of people doing what people do – strapping dangling metal testicles to their trailer hitches, feeling inadequate because their TV is only 720p and not 1080p, believing it’s decidedly manly to not wear sunscreen, watching Jersey Shore – that proves time and time again just how weird people are. As the body of evidence grows exponentially in support of our theory that people are weird humans, we are left with a basic question: How much f…

And that’s when my bullet list ran dry. There was a bunch of other really awesome stuff in my head, obviously, had I moved beyond almost writing what I didn’t write. But I guess that’s just art for you, zigging when you expect a zag.

-Johnny

**Listen to NPR’s segment “A Handy Bunch”

Futureking

2010-01-28T21:36:00.005-06:00

If I had a billion dollars I would pay smart people to create a new technological breakthrough of my own devising. It would do everything you think couldn't be done and I would sell it in a real swanky store where that's all we sold. People would arrive full of expectations, and walk out with smiles and a bellies full of happiness. We'd serve you free cappuccinos and lattes and tasty cups of locally roasted coffee, or craft beers or homemade lemonade - whatever you want, Mr. or Mrs. Customer. There would be comfortable chairs and couches to sit on, the lighting would be perfect and warm. The music piped through the air would be liked universally by people of all races, ages, cultures, sexual preferences, and political ideologies. Everyone would show up ready to buy, because everyone would be able to afford it. We'd all sit around and talk and listen, making jokes or small talk. From time to time we may even engage in meaningful conversation. Strangers would become friends as they bonded over their new toys. Newspapers would write about me. They'd say, Johnny "Stop the Killing" Flasco has really done it this time, and they'd puke words all over the place about how I'm changing the world for real. And eventually the cycle would repeat itself as I turned my billions of dollars into zillions of dollars and hired smarter people to create newer technological breakthroughs...

I think you get my point. Or maybe you don't. No? You don't?

I'm just saying what I would do with a billion dollars at my disposal. Which, to be clear, is to say I would do whatever I want, and I would control my doing whatever I want with an iron fist - and everyone would love the poop out of the result, right, clearly that's evident from above. Now, after reading what I'd do with a billion dollars, just imagine if you gave me a few TRILLION dollars? How sweet would that be?

Give me a trillion United States Dollars and I will create a utopia for you to live and play in that will blow your balls off. I will solve all your problems. I'll assemble a crack team. We'll figure it all out. You just need to sit back and relax.

I know what you're thinking - where can we get a trillion fresh greenbacks to put in my hands?

I've thought this through, believe me, and the only way to do this is to make me King of the United States of America.

We must push pause on our current democracy and move to a monarchy where I'm in charge. It's the only viable way. Our government is too complex, too delegated and segregated and inundated and masturbated to ever give one person that much control of that much money unless they're Chairman of the Federal Reserve. And even then the money comes with strings attached. Congress gets red and angry, gangs on Main Street demand blood from the gangs of Wall Street. The President can only ask Congress very pretty please politely to do this or that with the vast trillions at its disposal. It's very silly when you consider my plan for universal happiness.

So today, I ask you to put aside individualistic thoughts of self-improvement, throw your struggles with "doing right" and your sense of work ethic aside. Embrace happiness. Do not wake up and ask yourself: what can I do today to improve, to reform my own life in order to find happiness? Let me figure it all out for you.

Simply wake up and write your congressmen or congresswomen. Tell them: I want Johnny "Stop the Killing" Flasco to be our King.

And then see what happens because it will be awesome.

A quick toast to the guy who makes me feel better about myself

2009-10-28T21:31:00.002-05:00

Dear Guy in the cheap olive-colored suit with a fake tan who hits on the cute coffee-shop-worker-girls every morning,

Thanks.

-Johnny

What people think about while they're stopped at traffic lights

2009-10-19T20:20:00.004-05:00

Just this morning I was stopped at a traffic light. It was darker outside than it was supposed to be, but that's what happens when you wake up one day and realize Summer is gone. As in really gone, not just yesterday gone. So I was sitting in the darkness slurping a big hot dark coffee too quickly, so quickly I burned my tongue and got really irritated for this silly and impatient action that I never seem to get past. All I have to do is wait another 3 minutes - 180 seconds - and I'd probably avoid the quasi-severe tongue burn I get on too many mornings. I thought about how human an act it is to forget something so slightly important. Then I thought about forgetting so many good things from my life that I got really mad at myself for not writing more stuff down because I know how my brain acts like a leaky bucket.

Then I thought about how I tried to hold a grudge one time to see how long I could convince myself I really cared about what that bastard did to disrupt the flow of my life and I realized I couldn't even remember the bastard's name. And that made me super pissed-off until some switch flipped and I acknowledged that it was Monday morning and being super pissed-off at yourself on a Monday morning is the absolute wrong strategy to invoke against the real enemy.

And then suddenly there was a smell. It came from either the car or me, as smells do from time to time, and it had a certain heat, a certain velocity to its deployment. It conjured an elegant, underused word: "fragrant".

Fragrant. Which, of course, made me think of a sequence in a book by an author so good a bunch of Swedes gave him this prize called the Nobel Prize for Literature. The book was "Love in the Time of Cholera" and the author was Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Somewhere in its beginning he referred to the fragrant and aromatic smell of urine after eating asparagus. I debated with myself if he actually used the word "fragrant" before I realized it didn't matter. We all got the point. And how great is his writing anyway? Man, I admire that kind of talent.

Then the light changed. I shit you not - I really thought about all that in on solid red light waiting session. In fact, at the next light I thought about how amazing it was I'd thought about all that shit in the span of one tiny red light. That's how sweet our super-computer brains are. They make super computers look stupid because they can't think of stuff we don't tell them to think about, or tangentially almost-connected thoughts like fragrant farts and Nobel Prizes. We humans are amazing.

Then I thought about how there are like five or six billion people thinking all these crazy-stupid thoughts at stoplights and how stoplight waits are about one-trillionth of all the time people have to THINK! No wonder people go insane and crave reality TV and hot babes and cold beers and People magazine and all the things that just make you forget about thinking.

And then, right as the light changed, I realized all this thinking is dangerous.

I say YES! to your signs!

2009-06-21T10:21:00.003-05:00

Dear sign-holders on the corner on this Sunday morning:

I see your signs, and agree - Yes! Let's stop killing people. Let's stop shooting their faces and bombing their heads.

I assume you're talking about the innocents, the civilians, around the world who've accidentally crossed paths with various forms of firepower from our military machine. Or are you talking about all people? Is your campaign meant to influence the government powerdogs who bark orders to the people who pull the triggers and levers that make bullets and bombs fly? Or are you casting a wider net in hopes to reach the people who may be toying with the idea of shooting up a school or local fast food chain? Murderers of all flavors - gang bangers, drug goons, sociopath killers-for-fun?

Doesn't matter - I support any and all campaigns to reduce the killing. What should I do next? I'm not going to stand on the corner with you guys on Sunday. Sorry, it's just not an option. I would look silly.

I've been considering this for about 30 minutes, over two cups of coffee, a bagel, and an extended trip to the bathroom. The best idea so far is for me to change my middle name to 'Stop the Killing'. Then, every time I sign my full name - which I could just start doing every time I sign my name - people would see it and think, "man, we really should stop the killing," just like I did when I saw your sign this morning. Then we can start an online campaign - a full-force Facebook and Twitter deal - to get EVERYONE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA to change their middle names to 'Stop the Killing'. Or maybe we should open it up to the rest of the world, seeing how they're more at-risk of our government's bullets and bombs than we are? Yes, we'll get EVERYONE ON THE ENTIRE EARTH to change their middle names to 'Stop the Killing'. And after a few years the message will really be out there, in our faces on a daily hourly minutely basis.

You think this idea is stupid? Ok, I ask you this: Would three name killers like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Mark David Chapman have shot Lincoln, Kennedy, and Lennon if their middle names were 'Stop the Killing'? No way, man.

What if all the future candidates of political office have 'Stop the Killing' as their middle names? How hypocritical would it be for them to vote to bomb some sucker in a foreign land with a middle name like that?

So let's do this.

Sincerely,

Johnny Stop the Killing Flasco

In the Beginning

2009-06-20T09:20:00.002-05:00

Blogging was for losers, and probably still is. No one cares except those who do. But it doesn't matter. What does matter? I don't know. Some people know. Who are these people? Monks, taxi drivers, immigrants of all nations, and I suspect some drunks know but then they either forget or are too drunk to tell us. Anyway, I'm sure you get the point - there is no point because there doesn't have to be.