Category: Cassander

Brave Captain Harvey and the Barbers of Berlin

I sat in the first chair inside Cristo’s simple barbershop with my head pitched forward, staring at a pinup poster from World War II.  The girl was labeled ‘Ensign Edie,’ a smiling redhead wearing an adapted sailor’s outfit and cap, a sweet little composition of curves and right angles.  She had an arm swung around […]


The Gustav Evactuation, Part 3: The Wait

We know what we smell like, okay?  Hours and hours under the sun or smothered by night heat have us sweating coffee, sweating Red Bull.  The clench of old cigarette smoke.  Fast food and soda breath.  We are covered in pet hair or the sticky evidence of children’s fingerprints.  We ceased to smell like travelers […]


The Gustav Evacuation, Part 2: The Drive

Cue the music.  We’re going for a ride. It’s hot as Labor Day weekend should be, summer’s last holiday, last chance to boil.  We have our windows down and the music is passing between cars and mixing in the space between, pidgin notes and lyrics.  The few radio stations not on a constant bulletin loop, […]


The Gustav Evacuation, Part 1: Preparations

We all remember what happened last time.  This has all, somehow, made us experts.  When the season begins, the government and the media remind us to make our plans.  Buy some maps.  Update your phone numbers.  Gather all the right containers.  We all know better.  They’re not the experts.  It’s us, the ones on the […]


High Rotation Special: Apocalypse!

Just having finished The Pesthouse, a love story disguised as a post-apocalyptic novel, and having my interested piqued by Nacho’s new project, I decided to join in the fun and present a list of the best cataclysmic or apocalyptic songs.  Also, there is a giant high pressure system just squatting over the entire Gulf region […]


Brave Captain Harvey Drinks to Justice

It was long into the afternoon when my girlfriend left me behind at the Black Wave Bar.  She’d walk the hot path home, calves scratched by overanxious grasses, and start on dinner.  I was to follow soon behind, whenever my songs on the jukebox ran out.  In these hard times, you have to see a […]


Summertime

The first version I heard of Summertime that made a real impression on me, that made my ears hone and drill in on it as an impossibly moving melody was Janis Joplin’s.  Though, to be fair, the men of Big Brother and the Holding Company, that rag-tag band playing behind Janis, had as much to […]