Every day after school, the Bossman pulled up to the house in a beige Econoline and blew the horn. You knew it was time to go when you heard that unmistakable pattern, two shorts and a long. Morse code for, “Get the fuck out here! Right now!” The Bossman did not like to wait. You learned fast, if you were gonna make it on his crew you had to show some serious hustle. He had ten rules and “Don’t waste my time” was number one. As soon as that horn blew you hightailed it into the back of the van and joined the other kids crammed against a wall of boxes like chickens in an overcrowded pen. If you were lucky you’d be able to sit down on the floor too, otherwise you’d be standing, hunched over the boxes of candy, hoping nobody pulled a lame-brained stunt like that one time Felipe yelled, “Oh, my god! Stop!” and the Bossman slammed on the brakes. We all tumbled forward into a massive dogpile with the boxes on top, everybody totally freaking out. The Bossman was frantic, shouting, “What is it? What is it?” thinking somebody’s fingers were caught in the door again. But then Felipe goes, “A roach was crossing the street… you almost ran over him.”

We cracked up bigtime. Except the Bossman. He was pissed beyond belief. But that was no surprise. He was always pissed off. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. His patience was razor thin. And no wonder. It’s not like we ever made things easy for him. We dragged ass and talked shit nonstop, as if we got paid more for our snotty attitudes than the candy in our boxes. I mean, none of us really wanted to pound the pavement for hours on end when we could be home watching the tube. We did it for the ten percent of each sale, our cut of the profits. Slave wages, sure, but there weren’t many employment opportunities available to the under-sixteen set. So you dealt with it. Until you couldn’t deal with it anymore. And then you bailed. That was the beauty of the job. You could always say fuck it.

Everybody quit eventually.

It happened all the time. The van pulled up to a house and a kid would come out with a string of excuses. “I got too much homework.” Or, “I gotta do such and such for so and so.” The only thing the Bossman hated more than excuses was being a man short. “If you’re on the schedule and I show up at your house you better be ready to work.” That was rule number two. But it didn’t stop some kids from trying their luck. Except the Bossman had a keen eye for bullshit. No matter what you said you knew it wasn’t gonna be easy.

Piltdownlad #2 – Women Got Me Drinking

Set in New Orleans during the early 90s, this is the story of a hapless young souvenir hawker in the French Quarter who has a crush on the pen cart girl and his feeble attempt to ask her out on a date. Along the way, he wanders the French Quarter streets and has various misadventures with bums, fast-talking cashiers, gutterpunks, poolhall sharks, a prostitute and his rabble-rousing neighbor.

güero chingón

A collection of 5 mini-zines, the first Güero Chingón stories, short tales about growing up a whiteboy in the barrios of the San Gabriel Valley, just east of downtown LA

The zines were written on my Olympia De Luxe, but transcribed into Adobe InDesign.
All the covers are by Irina Dessaint.
“The Pillsbury Cholo,” “Chump Change” and “Breaker Beatdown” are illustrated by Art Mark.

The stories:

The Pillsbury Cholo
Chump Change
Breaker Beatdown
Pyros
Mister Fancy Pants

the specs for each zine:
size: 2.75″ x 4.25″
pps: 16

for more info, and to read the stories online, check out the blogspot page: http://guerochingon.blogspot.com/

Contact me (piltdownlad at gmail.com) to set up a trade… or just leave comment.

One Saturday, around 2pm, I was heading back to Silver Lake from the westside, somewhere in the east part of Santa Monica, when I saw a yard sale sign. Even though it was late in the day (after 1pm, all the good stuff is gone), I thought, What the hell. One last stop before I get on the freeway. So I followed the arrows and pulled up in front of a lawn covered in boxes overflowing with junk. As I perused their wares, I noticed a stack of CMJ magazines from the eighties and about 100 Warrant Cherry Pie tapes. Since this is LA, I assumed somebody from the music industry was getting rid of their crap. In a box on a table were a bunch of 45s. I started flipping through, saw some Kinks, cool. A Wang Chung, meh. Men At Work, okay. Then a Judas Priest picture disc. Sweet. Then an Iron Maiden picture disc. Awesome. Then, I almost broke out in a sweat when I saw the holy grail of Motley Crue records: The first 45, “Stick To Your Guns,” released by their management company. I looked around. “How much are the 45s?” I asked aloud, unsure who was running the sale. A lady asked another lady who asked another lady who told me, “25 cents.” My heart was racing now. “Okay,” I said casually and kept flipping through the 45s. More eighties pop. And… What! Could it be? Another copy of “Stick To Your Guns?” Holy crap! I tried to stay calm. Two copies of a 45 that was limited to 1000 copies back in 1981? What are the odds?! Deep breathes… I kept flipping. And then… towards the end of the box, I came across this little puppy:

Yes, that is all their signatures, with dates from 1981 and Nikki Sixx’s, “Heavy Metal Kicks Ass.” I paid the two dollars or whatever my total came to and got the hell out of there fast, hit the freeway, going, “holycrap…holycrap…holycrap…” all the way back home.

Like most records and books I scored during that time, these wound up on eBay. My rationale for selling the first was that I couldn’t be stingy. I had three, while rabid Motley Crue fans had none. And besides, I wasn’t much of a fan anymore. It only had sentimental value to me. So I listed it and got $700.

The second I listed because of finances and got about 6 something. The signed one I held on to for a long time… I always figured I would sell it to finance a 45 for my own band or something, which would have been the ultimate justification. But then, in 2008, I was getting married, and I really wanted a bespoke suit like Nick Cave. And even though everybody was freaking out about the economy, and eBay sales were in the crapper, I threw it on the auction block. For ten days it hovered around $400, but during the final nerve-wracking 45 seconds, it closed at $1500.

This is the suit:

(Incidentally, after getting married, I put on some weight and now it no longer fits.)

I originally wrote this post for a now defunct “current affairs/oddities” blog I started in 2009 called ACKPFFT!

There have been reports of giant mutant fish in the river near Chernobyl. 

But is it all just sensationalism?

No doubt the water is still radioactive from accumulation in the riverbed. But mutant fish? Wouldn’t mutant fish have like two heads? Or extra fins or tails?

In the picture above, the fish are large, for sure. Giant even. But there can be a reasonable explanation for this: the river is not really fished, so the fish in the river keep growing.

One of the most amazing aspects of Pripiat, the town where the Chernobyl plant was located in Ukraine, and the area surrounding it (called the Exclusion Zone) is that it became a ghost town after the meltdown. And nature took over. Trees grow where they want, grasses, plants, bushes, all flourished after the evacuation.

Because most of the humans went away (there are still squatters in the area, scavengers and old people who didn’t want to leave), the animals took over the land.

All sorts of wildlife have returned. Wolves, deer, lynxes and eagle owls have all taken over the land. Birds even nest inside the cracked concrete sarcophagus shielding the shattered remains of the reactor. The area is so flush with wildlife and greenery that the Ukrainian government designated it a wildlife sanctuary in 2000.

Even though there have never been any reports of these animals showing signs of mutation because they are on the land, many children of Ukraine and Belarus have suffered serious and unfortunate ailments (mostly thyroid cancer) due to the exposure from the radiation caused by the meltdown. You can read more about that and see photographic evidence on many websites.

According to the UN, 7 million people were affected by the Chernobyl meltdown, half of which were children.

Now back to the water and the fish:

According to WikiPedia: “The Chernobyl nuclear power plant lies next to the Pripyat River which feeds into the Dnieper River reservoir system, one of the largest surface water systems in Europe. The radioactive contamination of aquatic systems therefore became a major issue in the immediate aftermath of the accident. In the most affected areas of Ukraine, levels of radioactivity (particularly radioiodine: I-131, radiocaesium: Cs-137 and radiostrontium: Sr-90) in drinking water caused concern during the weeks and months after the accident. After this initial period however, radioactivity in rivers and reservoirs was generally below guideline limits for safe drinking water.

“Bio-accumulation of radioactivity in fish resulted in concentrations (both in western Europe and in the former Soviet Union) that in many cases were significantly above guideline maximum levels for consumption. Guideline maximum levels for radiocaesium in fish vary from country to country but are approximately 1,000 Bq/kg in the European Union. In the Kiev Reservoir in Ukraine, activity concentrations in fish were several thousand Bq/kg during the years after the accident. In small “closed” lakes in Belarus and the Bryansk region of Russia, activity concentrations in a number of fish species varied from 0.1 to 60 kBq/kg during the period 1990–92. The contamination of fish caused concern in the short term (months) for parts of the UK and Germany and in the long term (years-decades) in the Chernobyl affected areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia as well as in parts of Scandinavia.”

So basically, they are saying, you probably don’t want to eat the fish.

And if you don’t eat the fish, and the fish exist unharvested, they can grow quite large. Giant even. But mutants? Only if a mutant is something that is left alone to become what it was naturally supposed to become. And that is rare in the world today, except where man is afraid to go.

Until it drove me half-insane and left me in squalor and homeless, I had a publishing company called Phony Lid Publications. I lasted about five years, from 1998 to 2003. Before I moved on to paperbacks, I published zines, chapbooks and broadsides, which I distributed throughout the city. This is a cartoon of me and my exploits by G. Tod Slone, editor of The American Dissident. G. Tod provided photographs for many of the covers in the Pick Pocket Book series.

I posted a collection of stories about growing up in the San Gabriel Valley on this blog: http://guerochingon.blogspot.com/.