MIGHTY RED

ONE SUMMER IN THE 70’s…we found out about the Longview, Texas “VooDoo-psychic -boggie-man-love-doctor-Jesus breather”…the most terrifyingly accurate clairvoyant who ever told you the appalling truth, "no holds barred"...the great Longview soothsayer...”Mighty Red”.

IF YOU had the courage to come calling on him for help...buckle up buttercup...he never failed to shock and shake.

HE HAD a tiny shed shack out back of his trailer house. The old colored fella was harsh, yet abrasive. He had a bad back and little patience for the rubes when they’d show up drunk…couldn't hardly stand the sight of these white pecker-woods and their drunken prom girls...However, he made money hand over fist telling fortunes to these white kids from the city, and didn't mind the perks of celebrity...therefore, my friends…in a lovely southern twist of irony…the old man suffered these fuckwits…as the cash and celebrity status…and the groupies, never ever gets old…when you do.

ONE NIGHT he took my money…sat me down in that shed…named off 3 of my dead relatives real fast, and named off the secret name my "girlfiend" called me, as well as a recent pregnancy scare… So, now having my FULL attention, he folded his hands on the table and asked me…”wadduwanna know man? I’m tired this evenin’ and my fuckin’ back is killin’ me” he looked up then and forced a smile through the sciatic haze and said “Aw, man you know I love ya…tell me yo’ question little brother…I already know the answer….and so do you…buts you gots to AXE me the question!”

THEN, he began to talk about our heavenly father...how people made it so silly and complicated...and then he'd say a little prayer, and, holding my hand, you could feel his power, and you could feel Jesus sit down right beside us...about the time the candles would start to flicker and sputter…straight up "Holy Ghost-buster" stuff...my hackles stood up to attention, and I had chillbumps that could have grated cheese.

HE MADE ME CRY that night…he knew my trouble…and he helped out my heart…and took a lot of my burden off my troubled little teenaged shoulders…it was as if he was reading my mail. He hugged my neck when he pulled the string and turned out the light bulb over the card table…and we both felt better.

MY BUDDY went in there too...and came out of that little shed white as a ghost, just trembling and speechless. He & I had just been baptized and electrified by the “Mighty Red”. On our way home, we pulled in the gravel and stopped under the yellow parking lot lights of the Liquor store/Bar-B-Q joint…in front of the minnow tank.

bought a six pack,

and drove Hwy 80 East back to Shreveport...

all the way home . . . 

                           without saying a word.


from the award winning new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS on Amazon  http://a.co/ctBGQiF

That's Ole Vern (from my award winning new book...FAKE NEWS)

I  REMEMBER distinctly 

looking up at 6 firemen.

Me, flat on my back, them in full fireman-costumes with the helmets & all, looking down...

like firemen do . . .

when you make an honest pharmaceutical error, (regarding my first experience with methadone, alcohol AND the benzos, it could have happened to anybody)
resulting in a black out
smack dab
in middle of the Sunset grill.

(good thing it was lunchtime for Music Row, and wasn't very crowded)

IT ONLY TOOK SECONDS for me to quickly get my bearings, snap back to life, remembering that I had outstanding warrants,
and knowing the authorities would be there in minutes
proclaiming to my astonished caregivers . . .

"I'M FINE!...sorry. 

GOTTA GO!" . . .

right before bounding out the patio doors and scampering over the fence, and away down the alley.

"DON'T YOU WANT US TO AT LEAST CHECK your blood pressure? ",
                  one hollered as I hurriedly exited, knocking over a tray of drinks.

THE EXPENSE account lunch people just sat there for a minute...

thought their tiny thoughts in their tiny little minds 

eating their tiny overpriced salads 

before it must have occurred to someone...

"Shit, that's ole Vern . . . 

                                      I thought he was in Australia!"

from the award winning new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS on Amazon  http://a.co/ctBGQiF

NEWS FLASH!

NEWS

FLASH! 

The Earth is billions of years old, and humans have ridden this little blue rock for millions of years. 

Everything under the sun has been before. 

Oh, and by the way,  Jesus’s name was “ISSA".

The great prophet Mohammed and ISSA are the biggest of buddies in the ‘Koran” and ‘Issa” is regarded as the true Messiah, to return and reign during the ‘end times’. (surprise!)

THERE IS NO DEATH or “Hell”...(that's church bullshit)...we keep coming into other meat suits, over and over, and over again...until we develop empathy. 

If you are having a hard time, suffering through something?...you must dive into the manure...if you want to find the pony...your greatest difficulty is your greatest opportunity...take it from an old manure diver from way back.

THE ONLY TRAGEDY in life...is suffering unpleasant circumstances............ without learning from it. 

Welcome to the “Karma Café"
there are no menus
we get
what
we
deserve.  (this is true, whether one chooses to believe it or not.)

Now, lighten the fuck up, cut yourself some slack and try to focus on the big picture.

YOU are ONE with the creator this very second. 

Relax, take a big deep breath and know this . . .

     

                                                 everything REALLY IS going to be all right.

from my best selling new book on Amazon "FAKE NEWS"  http://a.co/ctBGQiF )

"Beware the 'Inter-Web' from the groundbreaking new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS

I've seen the internet go . . . 
      
      from the hope of knowledge for everyone

          the nerve center of the people of planet earth

                connecting every woman, child and man 

                          on this tumbling spacerock
                               
                                to

                                     
                                        instant porn and trash for all ages

touring a sewer 

                    . . . in a glass bottom boat

seven second soundbites

for sharemonkey tricksites & misquoted memes

CLICKBAIT CLICKBAIT  do you no my name?

          newspapers closing cause nobody reads

                    fast breaking news....car-bombs & bleeding

                              murderers killing militants...revenging invasions

of camouflage Christians 

                        . . . and infidel nations

READ FAKE NEWS! 

(& go call your Momma)

FAKE NEWS by Vernon Rust available now on amazon.com http://a.co/ctBGQiF

MY GENERATION early rock memories from the Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS

I watched Pete Townsend and Keith moon destroy the stage of the smothers brothers tv show after “my generation” completed it’s “BIG FINISH”

I watched the BEATLES singing ‘HEY JUDE” on ed sullivan . . . all on live Black and white TV.

Now, great songs make money for corporations outright. Songwriting income is an old wives tale.

Consider this: When one of my songs gets streamed 10 million times, that nets me 300 dollars.

If, by some divine miracle of nature, You Tube played my song 1 BILLION times?

That generates $3000 dollars.

If I had a “co-writer”? Cut that figure in half.

In the “old days” a hit country radio single, top 10 and above, made the writer 200K. An album cut on a platinum record made 60. Banks would loan against it. Hell, drug dealers and bartenders would too. (You too can make “dozens” of dollars in the exciting music business!)

How do you get a songwriter off your front porch?

                          (Pay him for the pizza.)

from the ground breaking new book FAKE NEWS (on Amazon) http://a.co/ctBGQiF

SKID RODE HARD (& put up wet) -from the worst selling book of ALL time "FAKE NEWS"

WHEN YOU LOSE IT ALL...there is a certain freedom in knowing you are as low as you can go...rock bottom is no longer a mystical place, "under the bridge" no longer an hypothesis...you are there, and you're OK, and guess what...it only CAN get better!

WHEN A MAN HITS THE SKIDS...one of two things will occur 1) he slithers away into the night, and hurries the suicidal events and the shitty thinking involved, dumber & drunker...faster & faster, making themselves less & less worth of mercy OR . . .
                                                    2) he receives his suffering like a man, asks God to help him, and endeavors to help those around him...while embracing his "Jailhouse Salvation" and the "blessed lessons".......to follow....simple as that...either they get their karmic shit together....or they die on the streets...

MY STRUGGLE WAS only beginning, and for a poet of the spiritual metaphysical supernatural variety, I felt cut a little deeper than most, when only a few months ago...1997, I was the toast of Bondi Beach, the man who elevated Keith Urban to "the next Big Thing" teaching him everything he knows and all....my, my, my....things were not even REMOTELY going the way I'd planned...I mean, where was all the money, friends, and recognition for all my cosmic vibrational phenomenal achievements? Why was I here? How did this happen? What was taking so long with the girl at the meds counter? ....why am I drooling so much, and where the FUCK is my other flip flop??...

SOON THE JUDGE would give me the "A-OK" to return to society via the vultures in the "half-way house" game...where the rubber mattresses and adorable freshly paroled smoke bumming muttonheads soon drove me to escape...during a fake dental appointment, tasting ONCE MORE the shitty, stupid Nashville rainy mindset, I'd fought so hard to avoid....

SOON I WOULD LEARN ABOUT REHAB, half way horror houses & the low lifes that run them...Alcoholics Unanimous, and the role Methadone clinics play in our society..the entire lifestyle of the joyfully addicted....the old saying is...when you shake heroin, you shed a monkey from your back...when you go methadone you get a gorilla up there......

My love affair with the drug would span off & on for 15 years....throw in the mental wards, Jails, crack-houses, half-way houses, whorehouses, safe-houses and....hey!..wait a minute...

                             you're thinking this would make a good movie are'nt you?

from the bestselling new book by Vernon Rust FAKE NEWS (on Amazon) 

http://a.co/ctBGQiF

EARLY NASHVILLE..."Twang Town" from the book FAKE NEWS by Vernon Rust

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE in the late 1980's was a lot like Paris in the 1920's....except we had the syphilis, and body odor thing under control by then, not to mention cannabis horticulture and recording technology was really getting into high gear.....

MUSIC was burning & blazoning across the universe like never before, or ever again. An intellectual and spiritual renaissance the likes of, the world will never witness again was happening and in a very loud way for sure.

TO walk down 16th avenue in 1987, was to stroll among the streets of Gods, both real and imagined.

PUBLISHING companies, Record labels, recording studios, & restaurants....kitschy, corny, gift shops with cheesy promo-photos of even cheesier hillbilly wannabes...stores, bars, souvenir shops with Hank Jr ashtrays, or Barbara Mandrell bolo-ties, little Jimmy Dickens “cowboy hats” by the bowls of Nashville keychains, right next to goo-goo bars, with that picture of Heidi, the goo-goo heiress....

YES THE "Cars of the Stars" museum...the "Wax figurines of the Stars"..."So & So's personal museums" of personal nick-nackery, shrines of stupidity & the beautiful innocence and honesty of it all...

YOU COULD DINE in Shoney's, where a man could no shit, have breakfast with an ole gal whose ole man lived next door to an ole boy whose cousin knew the guy who used to drive Merle's bus!...

Everything a country fan on long weekend vacation could want to see. Sweaty camera straps cutting  pasty, lily white stripes across the crimson sunburned flesh of the ogling tourists as they punctuate the crosswalks in gaggles in their "gold nugget" jewelry and stupid cowboy hats fresh off the racks of Stuckey's or other fine Nashville Tennessee clothing establishments.  God Bless their souls & the records they bought back then…

I WAS quite sure, had my investor not backed out, my business model "TURDS OF THE STARS" would have really done well. I was going to mount toilets sideways on the walls, displaying the leavings of the holy among mortals.

FOR INSTANCE...Elvis...and "the King"..... Hank Junior's "Junior".... Johnny's "Cashews"...Charlie's "Pride" or...Minnie's "Pearls"...

However I wasn't quite what to do with the Oak Ridge Boys display....

But just like most of my other great ideas, like my mashed potatoes on a stick franchise, they soon took a big back seat to my new REAL job....

                                            and the metaphysical task at hand....songwriting. 

 from the bestselling new book FAKE NEWS on Amazon http://a.co/ctBGQiF