Jeff Johnson's Blog: Will Fight Evil 4 Food, page 15

Vince Pissington

A couple days ago my friend Nick, a very cool novelist and screenwriter, told me about an idea he had for a short film. It involved, well, it involved all kinds of things. But they all centered around the exploits of a hero of the people, a prankster who never got caught. It got me thinking about my old pal Vince Kelsey and an episode in his life, so I toyed with the idea of making another short film of my own. I doubt I will. Making a short film is hard work and it isn’t especially fun, but the nucleus idea for Vince Pissington is, I think, a good one.

Vince was a real dude. When I met him he was the 16 year old bass player in a punk band called Phenobarbiedoll. He later became the bassist in Dirty Bird, my punk/blues LSD fusion rock splaterosa band in the late 80’s, early 90’s. I guess I was a year older than Vince. Someone sent me some acid in the mail and we took it and Vince joined the Navy.

Years later we started palling around again. When he moved back to Portland I was tattooing. He got a job he liked working as one of those bellhop guys at the airport for TSA, TWA, whatever, but it didn’t last long. Vince got fired and came over afterward to tell me about it. Sounded like a stone cold bummer until he got to the end of the story.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he began. “My boss there is this crazy yuppie bitch named Brenda. Half the people there kiss her ass and the other half are too terrified to pucker up. And then last weekend she has this ‘team building’ thing at her place in Lake Oswego (right white people land) and it isn’t even a paid gig. You show or you get your hours cut because you aren’t a ‘team player’. So I got fired.”

“You didn’t go?” I asked.

“I sure fuckin’ did,” he replied. “They had free beer and I got hammered. I tried to stay clear of the stuff but after an hour I just couldn’t stand it anymore. One beer led to ten more and they kicked me out.” He shook his head in disgust and then he looked up at me, indignant. “That crazy woman said I tore her shower curtain and peed in her shampoo bottle. Can you believe that?” He shook his head. “I’m sure I didn’t tear that shower curtain. Positive.”

Vince Pissington- A rogue punk washout vents his spleen on power-mad dipshits and battles authority as a rule using the concealed weapons he was born with; his imagination and his own pee.

The Lucky Supreme audiobook by Blackstone and FREE GREEN CHILI CORNBREAD

“The bastard lovechild of Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler, Lucky Supreme is a novel so good you’ll want to ink it into your skin.”—Craig Johnson,author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries

“Lucky Supreme is one hell of a book. I didn’t know anyone could do noir like this. Now I know Jeff Johnson can.” —Joe R. Lansdale,ten time Bram Stoker Award winner and Edgar Award winning author of The Bottoms

“As hip and cool as the neon rain-slicked streets of Portland. Darby Holland is a modern hero in the mold of Sam Spade and Marlowe only with more tattoos and in steel-toed boots. A funny and very gritty book with cool folks, cool music, and wonderful sense of place.” –Ace Atkins, New York Times Bestselling author of The Innocents and Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn

“What wonderful Northwest noir. LUCKY SUPREME cruises through Portland’s underworld with a raunchy grace and an unfailing sense of black humor. I loved it.” —New York Timesbestselling & 3-time Edgar Award-winning author T. Jefferson Parker

 “Jeff Johnson is the real deal. His work is fast and funny, down and dirty—one moment as smooth as 18-year-old bourbon and the next as rough as a country road. A great talent, a pleasure to read.”–Brad Smith, Dashiell Hammett Prize-nominee

Johnson, a veteran tattoo artist, captures the conflict between the two cultures perfectly without any false sentiment . . . The inventive, unorthodox Darby effectively marshals his forces against thugs, officials, and even federal agents in this amusing crime tale.” —PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY Starred Review

“Lucky Supreme by Jeff Johnson. Don’t be surprised if you pull an all-nighter to finish Lucky Supreme which starts off with a theft in a tattoo parlor in Portland, Oregon and launches the protagonist on a dark, thrilling adventure full of deception, freaks, and surreal situations.” Top 25 novels of 2017 —MEDIUM

“Johnson wields the lurid pen of twentieth century crime novelists like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane and stands with contemporaries like Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley to grace the grit of dark streets.”—THE EUGENE WEEKLY 

“Quick, thrilling, this is a novel filled with many crimes and is just the beginning of what looks to be a very interesting trilogy.”—SUSPENSE MAGAZINE

“More please.” – MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE

THE FREE GREEN CHILI CORNBREAD RECIPE IS IN THE AUDIOBOOK! So, dear listener, is the key to rellenos, lots of crime and art, migas, tacos, tattoo history and even some blood.

Book Deal! Shopping Cart- A Road Noir SOLD. Coming in Summer 2020

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New shopping carts are expensive, so the small town grocery stores along America’s loneliest highways keep them maintained and in working order by outsourcing. A fleet of bent and dirty carts wait down dark, forgettable roads for new wheels, new coats of the latest gloss, and the strange men who bring them back to life for one more year.

Coming to a bookstore near you in Summer 2020

Three different publishers wanted this I’m glad to say, but I sold it to the one with the best editor. Best, because she soooooo cool! More on that later. Today, we celebrate.

Hot Winter Mule and the Acorn of Festus, Missouri- Free Short Story of the Month for July

Free Short Story of the Month for July



HOT WINTER MULE AND THE ACORN OF FESTUS, MISSOURI

by Jeff Johnson

Hot Winter Mule had done some bad shit in Rosie’s bar, and the tangled wad of sorrow under his sternum was about to blossom into the National Flower of Hell as soon as he poured booze on it. He stood panting in the doorway he’d just torn apart, the halo of sweat on his great bald head swirling with lurid pink and neon night wine urine from the glare of the teacup ride on the midway behind him.

A new door, warm as new bread and as frail as an insect wing, unfolded and closed as he stepped over the threshold. In the sudden, smothering silence a lone ice cube popped in a glass like toy gunfire. Hot Winter Mule’s heavy head pivoted as he scanned the frozen space with the eyes of a junkyard dog.

Old Miller looked up from a tumbler of sweet well bourbon and nodded once. The refurbished floorboards groaned under Hot Winter Mule’s soot-blackened boots and he settled on the stool next to the frail old man and held up two wide fingers at Rosy.

“Seen ‘em?” Hot Winter Mule’s bass rumble was almost too low to hear.

“Yup.” Old Miller studied his glass without much interest. “I tried, boy. The edge of construction rolled over us two nights ago.” Old Miller shuddered. His hollow, bloodshot eyes focused on something as distant as the moon. “It was like a migration of caterpillars or chubby little fingers with no nails and too many knuckles. You could feel the heat off it. Tore your farm down and built it back in… I dunno… not too long. Even the froze up mud melted. Tore the hog sheds apart. I could hear the tin roofs warpin’. That’s about when I blacked out. I wound up in here with your farm all tarted up into a petting zoo.” He ran a spotty hand over the lapel of his new khaki shirt. It was too large and made Old Miller look like a frail baby vulture. The old man barked a stale miner’s laugh. “I’m a janitor now, you believe that? Three month contract. Good money too.” He looked at Hot Winter Mule, his expression that of someone who had discovered his tractor was broken because black snakes had wormed up into the exhaust. Astonished disbelief with horror riding on the half-smile of the newly hopeless.

Hot Winter Mule stared up at the ceiling fan. The sky above the Factory Carnival filled with copper-skinned dirigibles that morning, so high up they looked like butterscotch jellybeans. Unseen engines had blown them fuller on Hot Winter Mule’s march to Rosie’s bar, and now the vast condoms of buoyant gasses strained for release into the darkness of space, their distant wrinkles vanishing as they grew ample and taut. Soon the last corridors to the sky above the City of Festus would close entirely. Old Miller’s three-month contract was a death sentence and he knew it.

READ THE REST AT http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com

Train To Busan- A Movie Review

South Korea’s first blockbuster is a zombie flick! It opens- New Entertainment World, and their roll in logo looks like candy. That is immediately followed by a RED slash of gore and the title, Train To Busan. More credits we cannot read roll, and then- a mannequin crossing guard wearing a gas mask. Some dudes are hosing down cars at a check point. They say it’s not foot and mouth disease. Our scruffy looking driver dude rocks on in what looks like a spare tire or junk metal recycling truck until… he hits a smallish deer. He gets out, stifles a puke and off he goes. Pan back. The super mangled fucked out deer rises. Its eyes are white.

We cut to a peppy office investment banker eating junk food at his cube job. I personally hope this wad dies first, but in my heart I know he won’t. Big Money Pep Wad derides a subordinate and goes to the parking garage and uses his manicured thumbnail to scrape a fleck of bird shit off his new Audi while bitching out a woman on his phone. She sounds sexy, but we can’t be sure just yet. G Money Pep goes home. Lectures his daughter about the merits of hard work. Pep’s empty, soulless eyes are glazed over with inner rich guy gout and I realize he’s probably also a producer. The lecture goes on. Pep sighs a great deal, like he smokes more than I do, possibly unfiltered, and… Ew. Ew X 2. His mom is there. Grandma gives Pep a video camera and he watches his tone deaf kid give a recital at school. Decides to take the unsmiling kid somewhere, even though its night, late, and they obviously can’t stand each other.

Rolling in the Audi. Pep wishing the kid was a dog, and Sirens! They stop and a caravan of emergency vehicles rip past. Fire in the distance. It begins to snow ashes…

Cut to the high speed train station (here as an American I hang my head in shame for just a moment) and then they’re off! Some sports dorks get on the train! Oh they’re gonna die hard! And a suuuuuuuper hot Korean babe. Someone save some of that for me. Cut to some old ladies (cute, sadly will soon die) and Pep and the pouty kid. Shit! THIS IS THE TRAIN TO BUSAN!

The train is pulling out, the kid glances out the window, and a high speed motherfuckin’ zombie takes a platform pedestrian out. Clotheslined. And someone, a limping babe in a miniskirt, is holed up in the john. 

This is how a zombie masterpiece rolls out of the station and into your living room, courtesy of Netflix, right now. The zombies are fast. Many of them are yoga contortionists in the way we all wish yoga worked but sadly seems not to. A high speed train, saucy Korean turbo zombies, cell phone technology that works in civic emergencies so people can share garbled versions of the bad news, and a soulless bank executive at the helm, a guy we wantto die a horrible death the entire time. This is the zombie burrito with all the right ingredients. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho.

A Long Crazy Burn – the audiobook. Listen instantly.

https://audiobookstore.com/audiobooks/a-long-crazy-burn.aspx

A Long Crazy Burn audiobook, by JeffJohnson. The second in the series of noir crime novels set in Portland, Oregon’s seedy side, featuring Darby Holland, owner of The Lucky Supreme tattoo parlor, and his slightly mad side kick—the twiggy, vinyl clad tattoo artist, Delia. Time is up in Old Town. Everything has to go, and that includes the Lucky Supreme. Big real estate is buying, and no one is allowed to hold out.

Darby didn’t get the memo.

Johnson’s frenetic follow-up to Lucky Supreme opens with a bang when, early one morning, a bomb destroys Lucky Supreme, the tattoo parlor owned by Portland, Ore., tattoo artist Darby Holland in the city’s Old Town. Thanks to a last-minute phone warning, Darby leaves the store shortly before the explosion. Darby sets out to find those responsible, but the two federal agents who interview him right after the bombing harass him constantly. A prostitute provides him with his first clue, which leads him to a pimp who gives him a vicious beating. Despite this setback, Darby persists in following a convoluted trail that brings him up against seemingly untouchable villains such as Russian real estate mogul Oleg Turganov. Less than half way in, Darby has killed a man, stolen a ton of cash, and robbed a junkie. “It was a start,” he muses. Darby eventually concocts a devious plan to even the score with the bombers, get the feds off his case, and restore Lucky Supreme. Johnson takes readers on a wickedly rough, terribly strange, oddly amusing trip. (Oct.) PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Scientists capture first-ever video of giant squid in U.S. waters and it is freakishly scary.

I’ve watched the video five times now. The story posted today. I was sitting on the back patio, innocently surfing Phys.org and minding my own business, when I found on it and clicked. Almost choked. The second time I thought it couldn’t possibly be so weird, that it must be the small screen. I went in and looked at it on my brand new Mac for a third time. I realized I’d probably have bad dreams tonight if I didn’t watch it again and try to see the science side of it instead of a white whip curling out of the crushing black abyss followed by an explosion of tentacles, groping and feeling with the nimble curiosity of an alien mind. Didn’t work, so I watched it one more time. Still no dice. Then I watched it one more time while I tried to figure out how to take a screenshot. Gave up because it seems mean. You shouldn’t have to see that unless you really want to.

And you do. We both know it. The link is just below.

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-scientists-capture-first-ever-video-giant.html

Happy Father’s Day! Tacos For All!

Happy Father’s Day to all you sloppy bastards. They sell condoms at 7-11, FYI. Way to choke bro. Blew one right past the goalie, some of you more than once! Dudes, pulling out is not just something you do in a pickup truck.

Seriously though, as I prepare to go visit my gal’s family on this hallowed day, I reflect on my own dear old man with a smile. I never knew him all that well, but toward the end there we had a couple of years as adults to chat and even get along. I have many good memories of the guy. He liked science. I do too. He liked playing pool, and one of the last times I ever saw him I whupped his ass at it three games in a row at a crappy bar called the Hungry Tiger. He hit me in the head with his pool cue. Damn, that was good. He came to see my blues band The Telephones one time at a club called Berbatis, flew up and snuck into the audience and I was able to dedicate a particularly disgusting song to him (to his great delight). There’s more. I was too hard on him in life, inspired by the worst people around him to judge a guy a didn’t even understand, and I’m glad I reversed course on that in the end. The main things I have to thank the ghost of Jack Phillip Gayferd Johnson Jr. for? My love of tacos, cooking, Phys.org and old country music.

To all you sperm slobs out there, do your best! And all you rotten kids, look past the strange flaws of the dipstick who couldn’t find a 7-11. And if your old man is gone, take a minute and think back on the best shit they did for you. If you don’t, you’re a wee bummer. I’d also like to take up a little more of your time to salute the late James Crumley, father to all modern day crime writers. Cheers dude. Drink one in writer heaven for us. I don’t have a picture of JP, but there is a good one above of Grandpa Crumley.

The Sweet Sonifications of Fencepost Beckenshire- A new free short story of the month

The Sweet Sonifications of Fencepost Beckenshire

By Jeff Johnson

            “Welcome to the Hemlock Tavern. I’m Fencepost-” FB cleared his throat and adjusted the mic, “and that’s no shit my real name.” D jangle, wandering riffage with a bluesy brand of lost to grab them. “Straddling the line between here and there baby, here and there…” trill in D minor, fingers cold on the cold keys, “I’ll be your piano rambler every minute of this magnificent motherfuckin’ jumbo Happy Hour.” Dramatic, world weary sigh. “Says something about the world, right?” Philosophical blue going deep, with a left hand strobe of slow Rag. “Three hours long, one Happy Hour.” Repeat, sustain pedal all the way. “One hundred and eighty minutes of bar room bliss.” Riff through a bullshit jazz peek-a-boo, in search of nothing in particular, settling into the bench. Pants feel wet. Feet hurt for no clear reason. “An extended happy hour is good for the soul baby, a drop of sweet champagne grape in the ocean of commotion, call me crazy but all the way down where it gets all busy you know it’s true. Confusion abounds, maybe it’s the human condition, but a long Happy Hour takes the sting out of the heel of shoes new and used, my beautiful bar room mammals. End of a triple Happy Hour, the headlines are bright no matter what the news is, and yo, we need good news more than we need it rainin’ money. So raise that glass to… happiness extended baby. Fuckin’ nick of time you ask me.”

            Fencepost tiptoed around in D again while he considered. “When you understand the noble Roman origins of Happy Hour, why, it gives you powerful feelings of possibility and… destiny. Does for me, anyway.” Pause, roll and dive in E. “Like we’ve come a long way and we’re still goin’ somewhere halfway okay. As a people. Together.” Flourish, ala Wish Upon A Star. “Remember to tip your bartender.”

            There were fifteen drinkers in the Hemlock, maybe a couple more upstairs, not one of them listening. Most were staring at their phones, their faces framed in miniature inverted spotlights, and the rest of them were engaged in courtship, San Francisco style, which involved resumes and real estate. Behind the long bar, Mikey was grooming his beard, up to speed for the moment and spacing out. Fencepost wandered boldly into the wide zodiac of early seventies hits, jazzed out into a long, interconnected song story, fruity without being muzac, keeping it cool as instructed.

            Cool.

Read the rest at http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com

The Kinjiku – principal photography concluded with the awesome Ron Canada

[image error]Ron Canada

There it was! Principal photography is concluded and after the final scene in The Kinjiku was filmed this evening in Manhattan. It was all about the magnificent Ron Canada. Great actor, great guy too. I’m immensely flattered that Ron likes my books, and he’s been an instrumental guide in some of my screenwriting as well. Wise and benevolent, Ron also admirers Evonomics as much as I do, so The Kinjiku was perhaps more fun for him than it might have been. Thanks to Tom Hildreth, Javier Lavato and Tabbert Fiiller. New York smells like pee and the people are rude (Eric Northman) and its even cold and rainy. Next week in LA I’ll do the final edit with Dan Harris at Mobile Motion Mocap. I am going to celebrate with lamb chops marinated in pomegranate juice. Grilled fennel in olive oil with Portuguese anchovies. Weirdo micro greens from my garden. Like a boss muthafucka, if you will.

My garden? Alas, I wasn’t there and communicated with my DP Tabbert through FaceTime, instant messaging, email, and psychic powers. Ron was in great shape to deliver his part and my master plan for being present fell through. My one good pal in New York, cool guy named Dave, is out of town. Hotels are a bummer. I found that I could fly into Philadelphia for nothing and take the train up, be there for the magic and then take the train back. Then I’d hang out in the train station I wrote most of Everything Under The Moon in, walk around for a few hours after it closed and then go back to the airport. My gal rejected this plan, so I dialed it in from scenic Portland Oregon. I set aside a fixed amount for a given project and no matter how well I’m doing, hypothetically even if I won the lottery and found a briefcase full of money on the same day, once that particular account is drained, its gone. Important showbiz tip- a budget is a budget, especially when you’re on the creative end. That machine will absorb everything it ever paid you if you give it half a chance. So don’t!

This has been a great time, and I’ve met so many interesting people. I think this made me a better writer, maybe even a better artist. Time will tell.

Cheers,

Jeff