Cole Coonce's Blog, page 9

The Devil's Own Day: Meta-Fiction Mash Up of Rommel, Delta Blues and Nathan Bedford Forrest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

K-Bomb CentCom, Los Angeles, CA—While ignoring the mores and delicate dictates of the modern world, K-Bomb Publishing is elated to announce the release of The Devil's Own Day, Cole Coonce's literary mash-up that blends the lives and careers of Nazi Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, delta-blues harpist George Dobson and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Set in Berlin, Memphis and Tupelo in both the 1860s and 1930s, this is a time-shifting story of three anti-heroes and how their respective crises of conscience influence not only each other but the course of history. Indeed, The Devil's Own Day serves as a character study that asks the question: Are some actions beyond redemption?

Moreover, are attempts at redemption not only futile, but self-defeating? These are some of the moral and intellectual challenges presented to Rommel by Dobson, a senescent Negro Confederate volunteer cum blues musician, who is hired by the Nazi as a guide for touring Civil War battlefields. Rommel, who is gathering information to formulating future battle plans for an imminent war under the employ of the Third Reich, finds himself exhausted by his travel companion's incessant and seemingly insipid blues warblings during their road trip through the sticky boondocks of Mississippi, in a journey that can only compared to Driving Miss Daisy meets Triumph of the Will.

Indeed, while stuck in the Lincoln touring car with the blues musician, the German is constantly confronted with seemingly primitive songs whose verses pose pointed philosophical interrogatives such as: Are we all in bondage and serving an innately-evil master? Merely good soldiers following orders? When does when one sacrifice everything in order to take a stand against the untenable? And are a man's flawed decisions really the fault of women?

Whatever the answers posited by The Devil's Own Day, K-Bomb Publishing doubts the timeless philosophical conundrum will get explored on Oprah's book club any time soon.

Copies can be found on Amazon, in both paperback and Kindle versions, as well as at Stories in Los Angeles. -Emil Bustello, c/o Emil Bustello MetaFlack Public Relations-

Filed under: Cole Coonce, the devil's own day Tagged: Cole Coonce, delta blues, driving miss daisy, erwin rommel, mississippi, nathan bedford forrest, the devil's own day

HONOLULU: SNEAKY BASTARDS

by Cole Coonce

(excerpted from SEX & TRAVEL & VESTIGES OF METALLIC FRAGMENTS)

There are shuttles that ping-pong from our resort hotel on Waikiki to the memorial at Pearl Harbor. Even though the federal government is paying for Pamela Palmer's rented Mustang convertible, we take a bus to Pearl Harbor.

There is a short film about the attack, replete with cinema verite 16-millimeter footage taken from the deck of the Japanese aircraft carrier on the morning of the aerial attack. It is very spooky and moving. Half of the audience in the darkened theater are Japanese tourists, the rest Americans.

We take a boat out to the deck of USS Arizona, which is a tomb for one thousand or so sailors who died in the attack, by bullets, drowning, or by fire.

Over a half a century later, motor oil still seeps out of the engine room and sticks to the surface of the sea, creating an eerie viscous film that defiantly drifts out of the bay and into the mother ocean.

A Hawaiian girl throws a flower from the deck, and hits the seeping motor oil dead on.

"They shouldn't have snuck up on us like that," she says. The Japanese tourists click shutters, smoke cigarettes and pretend not to understand.-30-

Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments, The Cole Coonce Reader Vol. 1

Filed under: Cole Coonce, Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments Tagged: pearl harbor, USS Arizona

ON THIS DAY IN 1997: A Jet Car Breaks the Sound Barrier

Thrust SSC goes supersonic, as told in Top Fuel Wormhole

Point your browser at this  look back to 1997 and "The Universe Is Expanding: Mach One As The Big Bang," K-Bomb writer Cole Coonce's explosive-yet-contemplative eyewitness account of how Thrust SSC broke the sound barrier. In a car. Excerpted from his collection, Top Fuel Wormhole.

This essay was later expanded into a feature-length book on the Land Speed Record, Infinity Over Zero: Meditations on Maximum Velocity.

Filed under: Cole Coonce, Top Fuel Wormhole Tagged: Cole Coonce, mach one, thrust ssc, top fuel wormhole

INFINITY OVER ZERO, TOP FUEL WORMHOLE GO ELECTRIC, SAVE THE PLANET

 

 

I/0, Top Fuel Wormhole now available on Kindle

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 5, 2010, K-Bomb Centcom, Los Angeles, CA—In what is arguably a drag-strip journalism first, both Cole Coonce's Top Fuel Wormhole (his collection of drag racing essays), and its predecessor, Infinity Over Zero (an impressionistic history of the Land Speed Record), have both gone electric. Which is to say these may or may not be the first books on the topics to have a presence on Amazon.com's Kindle store, but, arguably, these are the first essential ones.

With new, paper-less versions of both of Coonce's rocket-fueled books now specially formatted for e-readers, modern motor-sports esthetes can download these delicious digital documents and enjoy them with the knowledge that the trees spared by the lack of pulp-processing  can now serve as emissions credits for burning rubber and fouling spark plugs.

To that end, K-Bomb Publishing, the imprint that produced both the electric and paper versions of these thick tomes, encourages all consumers to brandish their Kindles at the drag races and, as the next pair of monopropellant-powered Funny Cars blasts by, exclaim to anybody who can hear over the noise that with enough pulp-free purchases of Top Fuel Wormhole, drag racing could ultimately be considered carbon neutral.

Indeed, with an electronic acquisition of Top Fuel Wormhole, the drag-racing reader can enjoy Coonce's exhaustive essays on San Fernando Raceway, Arley Langlo, Lions Drag Strip, "Wild Willie" Borsch, "Big Daddy" Don Garlits, Shirley Muldowney, "Jocko" Johnson, Blaine Johnson, the "Surfers," Tony Pedregon, Mendy Fry, John Force and others, guilt-free! A similar, relaxed experience is available with the consumption of Infinity Over Zero, which recounts Andy Green's smashing of both the Land Speed Record and the actual Sound Barrier in a jet-powered car, and explores the intrepid exploits of other fearless land-speed racers such as John Cobb, Mickey Thompson, Glen Leasher, Craig Breedlove, Art Arfons, Gary Gabelich and more.

These thorough, stout books are available for wireless auto-delivery to one's e-reader for the nice prices of $6.95 (Infinity) and $7.95 (Top Fuel Wormhole).

And for old-school consumers, hard copies of both Wormhole and Infinity Over Zero can still be purchased, of course, at Amazon and elsewhere. But that's hardly cool these day, is it?

Filed under: Cole Coonce, Top Fuel Wormhole Tagged: "Jocko" Johnson, "Wild Willie" Borsch, Andy Green, Arley Langlo, Art Arfons, automotive, Blaine Johnson, Cole Coonce, Craig Breedlove, Don Garlits, drag racing, dragster, Gary Gabelich, Glen Leasher, infinity over zero, john cobb, John Force, land speed record, Lions Drag Strip, Mendy Fry, Mickey Thompson, NHRA, San Fernando Raceway, Shirley Muldowney, Tony Pedregon, top fuel, top fuel wormhole

DEATH ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON AND THE WHINE OF BLOWERS OVER THE PACOIMA ARROYO

by Cole Coonce (excerpted from Top Fuel Wormhole)

photo by Dave Wallace, Sr.

I remember the whine and the zing of the Top Fuel cars. It was the sound of metallic machinery wound-up to the point of breaking into magnesium quarks and positrons. I'll never forget my Grandmother cursing the sound of the fuel cars on Sunday afternoons in the 1960s, hearing the blowers spin up into a glorious glissando and then the reverberation vaporizing instantaneously.

I remember playing in the street in San Fernando, catching footballs tossed by my grandfather, spryly huffing and puffing past parked cars and conifer trees, while abruptly pivoting on a buttonhook pattern and catching a spiral in the solar plexus or futilely extending my hands at the denouement of a post pattern in hopes of sticking the pigskin on my fingertips, and hearing the sounds of the nearby drag races— WWWHHHHHHAAAAAHHHHH – UUNNNNDDTTT —every few minutes while I ran back to huddle with my quarterback and we pretended he was Roman Gabriel and I was Jack Snow.

Yes, I knew what all of the high-pitched racket was, the din my grandfather tried to ignore and my grandmother cursed. It took me years to marvel at the irony of my grandfather passing mute judgment on the noise pollution from San Fernando Raceway.  He was one of Kelly Johnson's metallurgists at the Skunk Works adjunct at Lockheed in Burbank, and his role in the development and manufacture of various black-budget supersonic spy planes led to all the sliding glass door windows in the city of San Fernando rattling whenever one of Lockheed's Cold War babies did one of its faster-than-sound hole punches in the sky…

(These sonic booms would rock the neighborhood fairly frequently… from the kitchen Grandma would curse at them as well as the sounds of the nearby drag races, not really grokking that this noise from above was symbolic of the family's meal ticket and Grandpa's employment on classified aircraft. It took her years to realize that some guys parked in the blue Ford sedan who appeared deeply engrossed in the front page section of the L.A. Times were actually G-men spooks whose surveillance was to ensure that Grandma wasn't one of them military industrial Rosenberg-types…)

But I digress: even though I was younger than my underwear size, I had been to the drag strip enough to decipher the sound of a Top Fuel car under a load, making traction and attaining maximum velocity of 200 mph or so… We were a couple of tacquerias from San Fernando Raceway—say two or three miles from its entrance on Glenoaks and its "spin out area" beyond the Foothill Boulevard bridge over the Pacoima Arroyo.

When my uncle was running his Jr. Gas dragster at "the Pond" (as Fernando was quaintly and derisively referred to, its moniker a diminution of Lions Drag Strip a/k/a "the Beach"), I would hear both fundamental tones of a nitro-burning motor as well as the overtones; the thundering grunt of the combustion chambers as well as the harmonic counterpoint of the blower spinning like a dervish eating serpents and hot coals and hell-bent upon breaking into ecstasy.

But away from the track you could only hear the whine of the blowers…

All of these years, I can't say I remember the day of the sound of the blower that just wouldn't quit. On June 16, 1968, Father's Day, Gary Allen Peterson was driving the Beast From The East Top Fuel dragster out at Fernando. While hauling ass down the drag strip, the throttle linkage hung and the fuel shut-off didn't seem to work and the damn thing just kept pulling and pulling and pulling and the parachute did not fully deploy.

As the car was still pulling, Peterson attempted to drive through the hole in the bridge; he struck a concrete barrier that catapulted and flipped his fueler into the bridge. The blown Chrysler engine somersaulted the distance of a football field into the so-called "Spin Out" area, wiping out its warning sign.

Seven or eight years ago I rode my bike to the arroyo and just kind of hung out among the remnants of the old San Fernando, the 1/4 mile drag strip that paralleled the wash.

There was a Jiffy Lube adjacent to where the drag strip's shutdown area used to be. And a coat of blue paint had been slathered on the bottom half of the bridge. But at the time, the tire tracks from Gary Allen Peterson's impact were still visible.

A couple of Sundays ago, I rode my bike back out there again. I thought of tossed footballs and the whine of blowers. City workers finally slapped another coat of fresh paint on the bridge over the Arroyo again. This time they managed to cover up most of the tire tracks.

While I took pictures, the homeless guys who sleep under the bridge packed up their tarps and their laundry and walked their beater bicycles up into the Sylmar Hills, seeking shade and shelter amidst the scrub brush.

(Originally published in Drag Racing Online, 2005)

Filed under: Cole Coonce, Top Fuel Wormhole Tagged: Jack Snow, Lockheed, Pacoima, Roman Gabriel, San Fernando Raceway

TOTTENHAM LAUNCHES NEW INERTIAS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 17th, 2010, Los Angeles, CA—Kerosene Bomb Publishing is proud to announce the release of the 2010 edition of The Inertia Variations, John Tottenham's epic and ever-expanding poetic cycle on the subject of work-avoidance, indolence, failure and related topics.  Despite existing in a medium that should automatically doom the book to obscurity, and despite (or perhaps because of) the morbid subject matter, the Inertias are a work of entertainment with universal appeal.

Everybody relates to the Inertias, even those who lead active and healthy lives.  They amuse people: as evidenced by the author's numerous rapturously-received appearances at book stores, art galleries, punk-rock bars, classical-music venues and comedy clubs.  They speak to the underachiever in all of us and appeal to people who don't like poetry.

After graduating from London's worst art school in the mid-'80s, John Tottenham moved to the United States, where he has resided ever since, mostly toiling upon the lower slopes of journalism.  After many years of resistance, he finally sold out to the lucrative, fast-paced world of poetry.  The Inertias are the fruit of many fruitless years.  Tottenham, to his eternal discredit, has lived the life of which he writes with such wit and insight.

A multi-media interpretation of The Inertia Variations by English musician Matt Johnson (otherwise known as The The) is currently in production and a series of short 16mm films based on the work, directed by actor Adam Goldberg, will soon be making the rounds at film festivals.

The first edition of the Inertias was published in 2005. It was hailed as "a terrific collection" in the Guardian, "quiescent genius" by Mojo Magazine, and "comedy gold" in 3AM Magazine, and turned Tottenham into a minor celebrity within a two-block radius of Echo Park. The new edition, packed with fresh material and including a robust addenda, is twice as long and satisfying as the original.

Like all K-Bomb works, the new, expanded Inertia Variations can be ordered from kerosenebomb.com –30-

(Sample verse from The Inertia Variations follows)

ANOMIC OTIOSITY

Dulling my senses with baths, naps,

Assorted languishings.  For many years

I have sat down to do the work

That the world will be no worse off

Without, and I have not done the work.

And the world is no worse off.  Just because

I haven't done anything with my life,

Does that make me a lesser man?

Filed under: John Tottenham, The Inertia Variations Tagged: Adam Goldberg, John Tottenham, Matt Johnson, MOJO, The Inertia Variations, The The

CLOUDS OF STAR FIRE (Bonneville, 1962)

by Cole Coonce

(excerpted from Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments)

 

Moment before his catastrophic crash, Glen Leasher ponders Infinity.

 

September 10, 1962. It is a hot, gloomy Monday morning with a mercury sky. Everything is the color of a bleached and buried coin. Or a bullet left in the sun. During the past few days the Infinity team had been chipping away at various stress and leak tests, ensuring that the sleek machine that resembled nothing if not an avant-garde Russian MIG fighter plane was in superlative condition to claim the Land Speed Record. Many teams had espoused the notion that surpassing the 396 mph mark set in 1949 by Englishman John Cobb was a matter of patriotic pride, as for once the Americans would showcase their Yankee Ingenuity as well as its hearty guts and determination in a manner arguably not showcased since Henry Ford.

It had been such a bizarre trajectory to this moment, from "Dago" Palamides' shop on the outskirts of the Oakland Airport to the boneyards of Tucson (Vic Elischer remembers the liberation of a J47-33 out of an F86D Fighter/Interceptor while Che Guevara scavenged for spare parts for a "Globemaster" cargo plane for use in the overthrow of the Batista government in Cuba—this is a year before the Bay of Pigs!) to Boeing Field in Seattle to the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The Untouchable had barnstormed up and down the West Coast with a coterie of drivers, first with Archie Liederbrand, next with Glen Leasher, who was fresh out of the cockpit of "Terrible Ted's" Gotelli Speed Shop Special, Chrysler-powered Top-Fuel Dragster.

With Liederbrand driving, the Untouchable debuted in April, 1962 at Fontana and goes 209 mph, a track record. But this vehicle was really just a rolling test stand for the team. The real glory, prestige and payoff was at Bonneville, all they needed was another race car designed specifically for that task, as well as fresh bullet.

While fabricating the race car at Boeing Field in Seattle, Palamides and Leasher continued to match race the jet car and generate cash. Concurrently, airplane mechanics Loyd Osterberg and Jeri Sorm shaped and riveted the aluminum bodywork around the clock in attempt to have the car ready for Speed Week at Bonneville at the end of August.

One of the locals who grew up around Boeing Field tells me that Sorm is "a master tin man and aeronautics wizard. He grew up in Czechoslovakia before WW II and lived there during the war and when the Nazis held the country. When the Communists were in power, he escaped in the mid 50s — he flew out in a stolen plane.

"Jeri told me once, that anybody who had any complaints about this country should try living in a dictatorship, then under the Nazis—and then the Communists… he told me that ever since he came to this country he went out side every morning when he woke up and kissed the ground. He said we don't appreciate what we've got."

Sorm had no interest in race cars per se, but took on the project as an employee of Osterberg. Many nights one or the other would fall asleep in the fuselage of the unfinished vehicle only to be awakened by the other guy's hammering or riveting.

Finally, Infinity is out on the Salt Flats. Breedlove is also there with his high-dollar operation, but cannot make anything work properly. Breedlove goes home.

Meanwhile Infinity, the intersection of hot rodding and aerospace, continues to ramp up its speeds during test runs. There is a disagreement about how much more r&d is needed, and unbeknownst to the other partners, Palamides and Leasher apparently conspire to make a record run on this morning.

As the car enters the measured mile, the left front wheel bearing seizes and locks, pulling the car off course. Then there is an explosion from an inlet/compressor stall in the jet engine, most likely the result of excessive yaw, at which point the car high sides. Then it rips into shrapnel, a torn metallic curtain… it is as if a piece of the sky folds into itself and then implodes like a dark star.

Glen Leasher was looking for Infinity. He found it — in an instant.

The biggest piece of his remains was his boot.-30-

(first published in INFINITY OVER ZERO: Meditations On Maximum Velocity)

 

Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments: The Cole Coonce Reader

 

Filed under: Cole Coonce, Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments Tagged: Bonneville, Che Guevara, Glen Leasher, Henry Ford, infinity over zero, john cobb, land speed record