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

 

"Jesus gets jealous of Santa Claus" by Me & Keith Urban recorded by Toby Keith

Jesus Gets Jealous of Santa Claus
   

Layin' back in my easy chair
Late last Christmas eve
Silent night, twinkling lights
Presents 'round the tree
I heard my little girl's two bare feet
Comin' down the stairs
She was sad as I looked over
Draggin' her teddy bear

     She said, now daddy, I had a dream
     A little angel came down to me
     She wasn't happy like angels ought to be
     She was cryin' when she gave me the message
     For all the world to hear
     You know that Jesus gets jealous of Santa Claus
     Sometimes this time of year

So, with her head on my shoulder
And her tears mixed with mine
I thought how little baby Jesus
Gets left out at Christmas time
It ain't about the money
Oh, money can't buy love
And I saw the light that Christmas night
With help from up above

        written by Vernon Rust & Keith Urban
        recorded by Toby Keith

From the Blockbuster new Vernon Rust book FAKE NEWS 
available on  AMAZON http://a.co/ctBGQiF