The Wall of Faces

Drawings by Jack Brummet, Photography by Philip Palermo

Here are some photos, by Philip Palermo, of my office walls.  I drew the faces over the last 12 years, on surplus 2'x2' muslin cloths, stamped with Mississippi Lighthouse for the Blind (who manufactured them for hospitals).  The faces are almost all drawn with pen and ink, or Sharpies, with some random additions of colors.   Because the squares sat folded in a warehouse so many years, they are permanently creased. . .so I started drawing one face per square (and later, sometimes, six faces per square.  I've given away and sold quite a few over the years, but still have around 150+ of them, which were on my office walls until the end of this week.  I don't know what their next home will be. . .

—click the photos to enlarge—

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Occupy No. 9 - "Unscrew the locks from the doors!"

by Jack Brummet

Thanks to Walt Whitman for the quote. See the footnote [1] (a/k/a what Ed Sanders coined a "satellite data cluster") for details on the images on the poster.

[1]  Notes on the images:  a sign on Wall St. itself; a stealth banner on Ballard's Market Street (Ballard is Jack's neighborhood in Seattle) that was removed after one day; Giotto's painting of Jesus rousting the moneychangers outside the temple; the New York Stock Exchange Building, photographer unknown; a scene from from the film "Frankenstein" (the source of the ever-popular torches and pitchforks meme...before memes had that name); an engraving of the "Storming of the Bastille"; "take out the trash is a reference to one of the best episodes of "The West Wing."

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Outfoxed! #OccupyWallStreet talks to Fox News and they picked the wrong guy out of the crowd

Thanks to Ray Estrada for sharing this great clip, which we assume never saw the light of day on Fox news.

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Saint Misbehavin' - The Wavy Gravy (a/k/a Hugh Romney) documentary

By Jack Brummet, Counterculture Editor

The trailer for this film is intriguing.  My son, Del, his cousin Melanie, and a friend, Sam, went down to Wavy's "clown camp" in Mendocino County, California, for three years running.  One year we were also down there and got to see their show, and even meet Mr. Gravy.  For all his bluster, hot air, and possibility confabulated stories, he has done a lot of good in the world, and I think that half the kids who go to Camp Winnarainbow are poor kids, on full scholarships.  Wavy Gravy is something right in the world. 

"Beginning with Woodstock ‘99, director Michelle Esrick has spent ten years documenting the life of Wavy Gravy.

 "Saint Misbehavin’ journeys from the hills of California to the Himalayan Mountains to reveal the life of this one of a kind servant to humanity. The film blends Wavy’s own words with magical stories from an extraordinary array of fellow travelers both cultural and counter-cultural, revealing the man behind the clown’s grin and the fool’s clothing.

"In Saint Misbehavin’ Wavy is revealed more than the tie-dyed entertainer and ice-cream flavor namesake that often defines him in the popular imagination. Audiences will come to know the activist, the optimist, and the healer who reaches beyond political, economic, and cultural divisions in his commitment to social change and the alleviation of human suffering.
Wavy’s life is his message, serving as deeply needed inspiration that we can change the world and have fun doing it.

"Satirist Paul Krasner describes Wavy as “The illegitimate son of Harpo Marx and Mother Theresa, conceived one starry night on a spiritual whoopie cushion,” to which Wavy has replied, “Some people tell me I’m a saint, I tell them I’m Saint Misbehavin’.”

"Featuring: Wavy Gravy, Jahanara Romney, Jordon Romney, Dr. Larry Brilliant, The Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Odetta, Patch Adams, Lisa Law, Buffy Sainte Marie, Denise Kaufman, Tom Law, Steven Ben Israel, The Hog Farm, and more!"

Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie - Theatrical Trailer from Ripple Effect Films

From the film:



JACKSON BROWNE
“I have known Wavy for over 20 years, but it wasn’t until last year that one of my kids went to his camp. I was really amazed at how powerful this camp was in the lives of these kids…Wavy was connecting with these kids in such a meaningful way and I really looked at him with new eyes because I am used to his joking and his philanthropy but it was brilliant, it was revolutionary stuff, it was about really turning the tides in the lives of people who will be the next to inhabit the corridors of government, and business, and become the artists and the influential people of this century…only a really serious revolutionary would have the vision and the depth and the breadth of character to actually continue to do this all these years and on into the future and so add to the description of clown and Saint….Revolutionary.”

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Painting: Mr. Blue

By Jack Brummet

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Buy Local/Occupy Black Friday

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Jack In The Loo

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The Founding Fathers Get Pepper-sprayed

A friend of ATIT—Teresa Thiessen—found this images on Google+.  It seems to have been created by misanthropologist Sean Bonner.

click to enlarge

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Roadside Attractions No. 8 - Minnesota's Iron Man Statue



By Jack Brummet, travel editor

The Iron Man, a gigantic rendition of a nineteenth century miner standing on a sphere of rusted steel, lives in Chisholm, in the heart Minnesota's mining country.  "The Emergence of Man Through Steel"—the official title of the sculpture—was designed by the artist Jack Anderson and completed in 1987. The whole structure is 85 feet high, and is one of the five tallest statues in America. 

The brass and copper statue is a tribute to miners of the past, when mining boomed in Minnesota and King Steel ruled the roost. People claim that the giant pile of steel beneath him makes the miner appear a little small.  And, yet, the statue alone is a respectable 36 feet tall, which in itself makes it one of the tallest U.S. statues.

A plaque on Iron Man's base says the statue is "a tribute to the Mesabi, Vermilion, Cuyuna and Gogebic Ranges' men of steel, who carved out of a sylvan wilderness the iron ore that made America the industrial giant of the world. They shall live forever!"

The cross-eyed miner stares down at a McDonald's across the street

How to get there:  It's on Iron Drive in Chisholm, Minnesota, on the north side of US Highway169, just east of its intersection with Highway 73.

Read about other roadside attractions we've written on here:

The Golden Driller

The Jolly Green Giant

Christ of the Ozarks

Touchdown Jesus!

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Painting: Hobo sign 3 - tell a sad story

By Jack Brummet
[Digitized and 'shopped analog acrylic painting]

click to enlarge

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A riot response vehicle that can shoot water, bullets, or poison gas

By Jack Brummet, OWS Editor

This is a scan from Mechanics And Crafts magazine published in 1938.   A friend of mine commented, "We'll take 10! -Oakland Police Department."

click to enlarge

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Painting: Not Sure

 digital art by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Up Yours - a growing body of literature about things people "lose" in their lower alimentary canal (with a footnote on removing these objects)

By Mona Goldwater, Medical Science Editor

There are at least two books, "Up Yours," and "Stuck Up" and numerous websites and blogs about objects that people have "lost" in their rectums [1]. 

A forensic psychiatrist Marty Sindhian, another psychiatrist, Rich E. Dreben, and an E.R. doctor, Murdoc Knight wrote "Stuck Up."  Dr. Dreben said "Sometimes patients tell us that they were doing some type of household chore in the nude when they 'fell' or 'tripped' or 'jumped into bed' and 'landed on the object.'

X-Ray specs from "Stuck Up"

Yes, that's Barbie

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[1] Removal of 100-Watt Electric Bulb from Rectum

from Annals of Emergency Medicine
November 1982

To the Editor:

In all societies, individuals have introduced foreign bodies into the rectum, penis, and vagina, sometimes for sexual gratification and sometimes for unusual psychological reasons. The literature contains many reports of such instances, particularly with respect to foreign bodies in the rectum. Objects reported include stones, coke bottles, plastic vibrators, pencils, sticks, a baseball, knives, screwdrivers, the U-bend of a sink, a sponge rubber ball, glass tumblers, a pickle bottle, and a beer glass.

This case report adds to the list a 100-watt electric bulb, an object not previously reported, and describes the technique used for the successful removal of this fragile object.

A 54-year-old man presented with the complaint that two days earlier he had drunk whiskey and "did something" to his rectum. He was obviously embarrassed and reluctant to explain his problem. Rectal examination revealed a hard, smooth, globular mass. The results of the rest of the physical examination were within normal limits.

When asked specifically, the patient admitted that an electric bulb had been in his rectum for two days. He said he had gotten drunk, accepted a wager of $100 and, using shaving cream as a lubricant, had inserted a 100-watt electric bulb into his rectum. The next day, sober, he realized that he had done a "stupid" thing but believed that the bulb would come out unassisted. After two days he became aware of difficulty defecating, and when he began to experience difficulty urinating, he became frightened and sought medical help.

AP and lateral films of the pelvis verified the location of the electric bulb in the rectum, and the patient was taken to the operating room. He was placed in a face-down position with his hips elevated. The buttocks were separated and held apart by a circular metal ring. With the aid of malleable retractors in the rectum, the electric bulb was visualized, but it was not possible to get a gloved finger over the maximum diameter of the bulb.

Toy darts with suction cup ends were used to draw the electric bulb to the sphincter. After drying the glass surface of the bulb with ethyl ether swabs, we attempted to attach the suction cup end of the dart to the electric bulb with cyanoacrylate cement. Four attempts of this maneuver were unsuccessful: the cement would not stick.

The patient was then turned to the lithotomy position and another dart was successfully attached to the bulb without any glue, and the bulb was pulled to the sphincter.

Three #24 Foley catheters with 30-cc terminal balloons were lubricated with mineral oil and passed over the maximum diameter of the bulb. The catheters were placed at the six, ten and two o'clock positions. Throughout this procedure, a steady pull was maintained on the attached dart.

After it was verified by digital examination that the tips and balloons of the catheters were beyond the maximum diameter of the bulb, the balloons were inflated with 30 cc of water, and about 30 cc of mineral oil was injected into the rectum through a Foley catheter. A steady pull of about five pounds was applied to each catheter, and after about ten minutes the sphincter began to dilate and the bulb began to emerge.

The electric bulb finally came out through the external sphincter with no further complications. Sigmoidoscopic examination showed no bleeding or other injury to the rectal mucosa. After 24 hours of observation, the patient returned home.

The literature describes various methods that have been employed to retrieve foreign bodies from the rectum. Because this electric bulb was a large object (maximum diameter, 61 mm; length from metal end to top, 114 mm) made of fragile glass, special consideration had to be taken to avoid breakage that would have resulted in lacerations to the rectum and adjacent structures, with consequent complications.

Ideally, the bulb should be removed intact from the rectum through the anus. If this is not possible, the abdomen must be opened and the bulb gently squeezed through the rectum and the anus, with great care taken to avoid injuring the rectum. Should this method be unsuccessful, the sigmoid colon must be opened and the bulb removed through the abdominal incision; however, opening the sigmoid colon is a very lengthy procedure with severe morbidity and a prolonged recovery period,, and this maneuver should be reserved as an extraordinary measure.

Vaman S. Diwan, MD, MS
Huntington, West Virginia

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All This Is That Celebrates Its 7th Birthday today

By Jack Brummet, Pablo Fanque, and Mona Goldwater

It has been a wonderful seven years. We've published 4,940 posts since we started in 2004, and have published every single day for the last seven years, mostly from Seattle, but also from India, England, Turkey, Greece, Canada, Mexico, Korea, Idaho, Montana, New York City, Texas, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Oregon, Arizona, and Wyoming.

All This Is That is often syndicated and referenced by other blogs and websites, and our articles and art have been reprinted in books and magazines about The Web, alien lore, folk lore and folk ways, poetry, and politics.  We've even published a few recipes by Jack.

All This Is That began seven years ago with a poem by Jack Brummet posted the morning of November 16, 2004:

Poem: Driving Home To Seattle, We Watch Deer
Drink from the Skookumchuck River
by Jack Brummet

A rainbow loops over
the alder cathedral.
Dark clouds are sinking.

The Lamplighter
loans them a patch of land
and a heartbeat.
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Our favorite All This Is That moment occurred the day that Jack FM radio put Jack on their list of Most Famous Jacks (which--we assume--happened because he was linked to so many articles on ATIT).  His second favorite moment was when All This Is That became the number one Google, Yahoo, and Bing search--besting the Beach Boys song from which we nicked the title of the blog.  

		A list of famous Jacks! A Jackass Andrew Jackson Captain Jack Sparrow Cracker Jacks Jack (the Movie) Jack (the Song) Jack and the Beanstalk Jack (and Jill) Jack Albertson Jack Astors Jack Bauer Jack Benny Jack Black Jack Brummet Jack Connector Jack Daniels Jack Dawson Jack Dempsey Jack Frost Jack Haley Jack Hammer Jack Johnson Jack Jones Jack Kennedy Jack Kerouac Jack Kevorkian (a/k/a Dr. Death) Jack Klugman Jack Knife Jack LaLane Jack Lemmon Jack London Jack Lord Jack McFarland Jack Nicholson Jack Nicklaus Jack of Clubs Jack-O-Latern Jack Osborne Jack Paar Jack Palance Jack Plane Jackrabbit Jack Ruby Dr. Jack Sheppard Jack Skellington Jack Sparrow Jack Straw Jack The Ripper Jack Tree Jack Warner Jack Webb Jack White Jackalope Jacks (the classic game) Jack in the Box Jack's Manequin Jacqueline Kennedy Kangeroo Jack Little Jack Horner Samurai Jack SpringHeeled Jack Tekken's Jack The Union Jack You Don't Know Jack (the Game) ---o0o---

ATIT Re-heated: Varnishing coffins and 86'ing the rubes - interview with a Manhattan bartender

By Jack Brummet, NYC Metro Editor

[We originally published this interview in February, 2006.  Around that time, I found a book I wrote in 1981 (The Spirit Below), in which this interview appears.  This is not an interview with a glitzy "Cocktail" style bartender. It focuses on the darker side of being the person on the other side of the bar...not that the bartender is necessarily dark, but the nature of the job brings you into contact with some unsavory folks and situations.]

JACK: You should try to answer these questions as a bartender, not as a drinker. Or at least, as a drinker second.

SCOOTER: Okay.

JACK: Do people come to your bar for a specific reason? Is it loneliness, habit, to forget, celebrate, looking for “love,” or do they just want a drink or two, maybe even because they are happy?

SCOOTER: A lot of people. . .this bar I work at is different. . .there’s a nice Italian man, inherited his father’s milk company. Some days he comes in to forget a problem. Obviously. Other days he comes in because he’s in a good mood. But I have heard stories. At work he’s a sonofabitch. But at the bar he is very friendly or at least polite. Sometimes he’s a little funny too. But this guy who works with him says he is always an s.o.b. Only in social situations is he a nice man. Never at work.

JACK: Only at the bar? He becomes human then?

SCOOTER: Yes. Another man comes in. . .the guy’s always upbeat. Says the world has been great to him. But. . .last night he came in, started telling a lot of jokes and was very funny when he got there. And he started drinking. He was drinking V.O. straight up, with a shot of Gran Marnier floated on top.

JACK: A stiff drink, in short.

SCOOTER: It sure was. Well, he has three in about twenty minutes. There are two women in the bar. He became very rude and started in with “I’ve got nine pounds between my legs…” You know. “Do you want to f***?”

Yeah, he was not rude. He was sick. He said it over and over again, like a very desperate man.

JACK: The real self emerged.

SCOOTER: Yeah.

JACK: Can you tell is a drinker will be like that when they walk in? Even before they hoist the first glass? Before they talk. . .

SCOOTER: I can’t. Other bartenders say they can. I guess I haven’t been at it long enough.

JACK: Another question—how much do you let people get away with before you 86 them?

SCOOTER: I’d have to say I’m pretty lenient.

Sidebar: The term "86" comes, quite possibly, from Chumley's bar and restaurant at 86 Bedford Street in the West Village in NYC. We used to go to this bar because it was one of Dylan Thomas's old haunts, like The White Horse.

JACK: Extremely?

SCOOTER: Yeah. But I’ve never really had a situation like that in New York.

JACK: But I’ve seen you, years ago, drop four glasses in a row and come back for another.

SCOOTER: I know. . .

JACK: . . .drop four because you forgot you were holding them and you were staring off into space. Would you let someone do that four times?

SCOOTER: No. But. . .well. . .a tavern is much different. This place [Dorian’s Red Hand. . .an establishment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at about 80th Street I think. Jb] is a restaurant with a bar. People drink martinis, cognac and wine, not beer.

So. . .a Scottish guy came in here. I wasn’t working at the time. He was crazy. Bull goose loonie. The first time he came in he was a f***ing maniac. He was staggering around the place, leaning into the bar, stepping up into stools and swaying back and forth. Not really out of drunkenness but from that sort of drunken bravado, of feeling like a powerful human being when you are really just drunk. Those drunken sorts of motions, hyperbolic and exaggerated motions of the drunk. Did I just say hyperbolic AND exaggerated?

JACK: Well [laughs] I can’t remember. Let’s run back the tape. [Plays back tape] Yes. You did.

SCOOTER: Uh. . .I saw him get really crazy. Sort of like when we used to drink with Bob Huff [a professor of ours, a gifted poet, and a professional drunk]. He had that sort of approach: ‘I’m man’s man. . .we understand each other. . .I’m a Scotsman, and you’re an Irishman. And I love the Irish. . .even though. . .You’re a good man. . .descended from Kings. . .” and all that stuff.

Well, he came in once when I was working and he was really gassed. And he ordered drink after drink after drink. I kept pouring them, beer after beer. He was s***-faced when he walked in the place and he must have had eight beers in half an hour. He just poured them down his throat.

There was a funny thing about the guy, ‘though. He would only drink them down so far and leave the last bit in the glass. I tell you they weren’t getting warm. He would order another as soon as the glass reached some mysterious level. And finally he got rude and the manager came over and asked if I kept serving him and I said “Yes, I did.”

JACK: Isn’t it like technically illegal to do that?

SCOOTER: Yeah. But I think it’s more to protect the bar you would kick someone out for being drunk.

JACK: Save the mirrors and such.

SCOOTER: Yeah.

JACK: And no one ever really seems to get kicked out for being a happy drunk!

SCOOTER: True.

JACK: How about a trick you told me about once? Pouring vodka in a guy’s beer to speed the process, so to speak, and get him out the door?

SCOOTER: The guy’s crazy. Fifty-five, sixty. Tells me the same story time after time. And yeah, the vodka works. It gets them out of there. He has a couple of beers and he’s so crazy he can’t even taste the vodka. Another bartender here—Sean—said he would fill his glass nearly halfway up with vodka. Even if he were not drunk, a couple of those would send him down the road. One usually.

JACK: Do you ever feel like you are helping people varnish their coffins?

SCOOTER: No.

JACK: A guy comes in with D.T.s, or terminal alcohol bloat. Does it bother you to pour them drinks? A corpse on the other side of the bar. . .

SCOOTER: No.

JACK: You don’t care? If you see a guy almost literally dying?

SCOOTER: It’s his job to stay alive. Mine is to sell drinks. For instance, this one guy quit drinking because he had liver trouble, or epilepsy or something. A while ago, he started coming in and drinking light beer. The first couple of weeks he was drinking coffee or club soda. And then he quit drinking a few and would have twelve, fifteen beers. Sean said he drank 24 one time. Sean cracked a case as it happens on his first beer. And he emptied the case in an afternoon, five or six hours.

So the guy says to me once “Kevin, this beer is just not settling right. Give me a grapefruit and vodka.”

Now, he’s sliding fast. He’ll be back to Scotch soon. He acts like vodka, beer, anything but Scotch is all right. He came in here today and looked like hell. He’d been drinking two, two and a half days. I kept pouring them. And yesterday, he was in here on day two maybe and had twelve drinks in three hours.

So I saw what was happening and started pouring them with just a floater of vodka on top after his first two. Just a little vodka he could smell and taste at first. After that first blast, when you are that twisted, you forget about worrying whether or not you have sufficient alcohol in your drink.

He wanted to be somewhere. And I wasn’t really cheating the guy. He was lonely and a compulsive drinker. He’s almost dead.

JACK: So, in some sense, you’re actually extending his stay on the planet.

SCOOTER: Although he apparently doesn’t actually want to stay here. . .

[A long digression in the interview occurs here, where we discuss the relative merits of various potables, and go into cash register theft in bars, all of which is deleted because of possibly incriminating statements made about other individuals in the business, notably our friend The Dogfish. As it turns out, this interview will only first be published here, twenty-five years later, long after the statute of limitations has expired. However, All This Is That will be delving into this area in the near future.]

JACK: What is the best philosophy for a bartender to have?

SCOOTER: Pour.

JACK: Poor? Pour?.

SCOOTER: Yeah. That’s what Sean told me on Saint Patrick’s Day. ‘Yeah, keep pouring them and when they get drunk, rob them. Anything on the counter is yours Kevin. That’s business.’

JACK: Do you think the atmosphere of a bar is conducive to business? Does a bar provide the right setting for clear thinking? Because business guys we all know at least have to think clearly enough to fleece their marks. . .to separate the rubes from their money? I mean what is it about bars? The martial regularity? The neat order of the glasses and the bottles?

SCOOTER: No. It’s not the order or anything. It’s the liquor itself. There is a certain. . .as you know. . .lucidity that can be achieved drinking [1]. It’s great stuff. I’m not saying there isn’t a fragile point. There is a point where you have another and it’s gone.

Sidebar: Cf. Horace’s epistles I, v, 19: Brimming bowls—whom
have they not made eloquent?

JACK: One more question. Would you resort to violence to quell a brouhaha or disturbance? A guy comes in, say, extremely high, and gets wild. . .

SCOOTER: Even if he didn’t get wild, I’d kick his ass.

JACK: Right. Anyone who came off loco? What if he was a big, scary, dumb looking guy?

SCOOTER: If he was really drunk? If he was a big guy? I’d say leave! And if he didn’t. . .I’d whap him. Big or small. I’d grab a club and whip his ass.

JACK: But you can’t whip everyone. Do you guys keep heat behind the bar?

SCOOTER: No heat. But there is a baseball bat.

JACK: Wow. What about the bouncer? He almost didn’t let me in here today, you know, the clothes, the hair. He was a big sumbitch!

SCOOTER: Only today. . .on Saint Paddy’s Day is there a bouncer here.

Once in a bar in Washington [state]. I had to sort of kick this guy’s ass. You were already in New York by then.

A weirdo comes in. He was real nice, quiet, normal. But somewhere in there, he turns crazy. Jerry Melin was there when it happened. I was a crappy bartender. Always will be. Even back then . I didn’t like it.

JACK: You seem like a good one, just too reticent.

SCOOTER: So this guy comes in and wants to arm-wrestle me! There were two girls there. Now I can’t arm-wrestle. Any pain and I quit.

JACK: That’s funny because I’ve seen you in several retarded fights. . .get pummeled, and come back for more. . .

SCOOTER: Well, I suck at arm wrestling. This guy says ‘Let’s do it to see who’s stronger.’ I said ‘F*** that. Bet twenty bucks.’ He said ‘Let’s do it to see who the man is.” I came back and said I wasn’t going to do it for free. He said ‘You’re chicken,” and threw something at me. A drink. . .I don’t know. I got mad and walked around the bar and grabbed him by the seat of the pants. . .in front of the girls he—and I suppose I—were trying to impress. I walked him toward the front door, cussing him out, and punctuating each phrase with a knee in his ass. I threw him against a wall outside and tossed him his wallet, which had fallen out. He tried to come back in and get his umbrella and I said ‘You sonofabitch, get out! Get the umbrella tomorrow.’

JACK: What does that story mean? Would you fight for your job, to defend the honor of your bar’s sacred turf?

SCOOTER: No! Only an insult to me. F*** the bar.

May, 1981, New York City.

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