Literati…Seen here is Silicon Valley.  I fail to understand its significance in Billy Holder’s second entry into our Wing Nuts contest. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

As for Samuel Clemens, I love his quote: “Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lay down until the feeling goes away.”

Here is Clemens lying down thinking the feeling will go away.

And here is Billy Holder’s attempt to get that very same feeling back!

Author: Samuel Clemens…Uh I mean Mark Twain

Bar: Bobby McGee’s in Mission Viejo….closed down a long time ago…a good thing LOL

Armed Bar Patrons want Bombshell

by Billy Held her

“Sometimes I just can’t decide what that aroma pouring out of the glass is Sammy.  Good or bad?”  I say this as I look into the mirror above the kaleidoscope of potable poisons. Staring back at me is a mixture of memoir; convulsing bile filled hatreds, responsibilities bereft of actions never to be repeated, revelries and copulate filled victories lost in the dungeons of today’s melodrama.

My stomach spasms, readying itself for what my mind enthusiastically convinces it will be a joy ride into a sublime destiny. I then push back the memories of those who claim to love me to drink with those who surely hate me. As
I lift and toast to today’s version of plastic endowments peddling flashy implements of my cellular destruction, Sammy chuckles,”No thanks.” Even though his eyes eagerly peruse the lofty silicon landscape of her retailing enticements.

Vonderika Patricia TifaKyle is her name.

No one knows where she’s from or what her nationality is. The sailors know her as Bunny, marines call her Brandy and the flyboys call her only when she’s finished blowing them off back into their hot air balloons.

“I’ll just have to wing it,” she says when they claim she will miss them while they’re deployed.

I decide then and there, “This is enough! I quit this downward spiral into the abyss!”

Sammy responds by telling me, “Good resolutions Billy;  next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

I laugh and ask if he’s got enough for another round?  Sammy barks back, “Lack of money is the
root of all evil.  And stop calling me Sammy, its Mark, God damnit!”

Billy Holder at age 20.

Literati!  And you thought Will Smith was just another pretty face!   He is actually Peggy Dobbs’ favorite author! Will is seen here with Nelson Mandela, a scant 15 years older than he, born in 1918. Do you need further proof that writing keeps you youthful?  If only Nelson were a writer! Here is what wikipedia has to say about him:

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. After the successful publication of WHEN THE LION FEEDS in 1964 he became a full-time writer, and has since written 30 novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His books have been translated into twenty-six different languages.

So here is Peggy Dobbs’ second entry into our contest Wing Nuts:

SAFARI

by Peggy Dobbs

            If you win a contest to meet your favorite author, he does not come to you.  Rather, you are flown to where he is. Time to successful people, regardless of their occupation, is considered worth more than that of the average “Joe”, as we would say in the United States.

As the private plane landed near the huge hunting grounds in Zimbabwe, I recognized  the small figure of Wilbur Smith who was on Safari researching his latest novel.  Leaving his Toyota, he limped to the plane to welcome me to his homeland. The afternoon was spent getting acquainted.

As twilight fell, engulfing the landscape in every color on an artist’s pallet, we sat under a tarp, open on four sides, laughingly referred to as, “Wilbur’s Watering Well”. Every possible drink one could want was served by a tall, handsome Zulu dressed in starched white. Wilbur called him Shadrach. A large crew of black faces went about their allotted chores quietly as we dined sumptuously.

(A dejected Peggy Dobbs learns that she can’t get internet connection to A Word with You Press because there are just not enough bars! Gary Clark would like to help but apparently his hands are tied.) “What do you think of my Africa?”

“It’s exactly as you described in your books.”

“We will drive out in the morning to a spring. You can see the variety of animals here about. A herd of elephants was spotted near a wadi close to the spring today. I will be your Wingman”. He touched  the .416 banduki , I’d seen earlier.

Suddenly, knocking over my chair, I screamed, “Snake!”

Running, he shouted, “You’lll just have to wing it.”

Literati!

Mike Stang, who is not dead despite what KYLE Katz posted in her contest entry, has declined to be alienated from our contest.  He slips this one in bellow the radar.  Not gone to your favorite sleeze bar yet to get material for your own entry?  There is still time to win Horace, our trophy for all you wingnuts.

http://www.awordwithyoupress.com/2013/05/04/wing-nuts-our-new-contest/

 Southi

Mike Stang

Schaller’s Pump earned its name because the tap pumped in from the next-door brewery; a throwback from prohibition.  I sat at a far corner table as an off duty Chicago University literary professor reading between the lines of everyone I examined, when I felt his weight at my elbow.

“Side car, doctor,” he ordered from the keep and pulled up his nose at my draft.  “What on earth is that?  What, the old team Cougar cannot afford to pay you a decent wage?”

“I imagine that even you could ill afford Camus cognac.”

“I’ll just have to wing it, damn the French anyways.”  His liver spotted backhand showed muscle as the martini glass met his lips.

“Why did you come back to Hyde Park?”

“Obama lives here!”  Laughter escaped through yellow teeth permanent as tobacco.  “Besides, any writer worth it sticks to their roots.”

“But, you are dead.”  My beer faltered on the table through lack of attention.

“Believe you’re lying eyes.”

“They said you wrote as a Jew for Jews.”

“If you hold the same view as everybody else, you are probably wrong.”

“Hell I am lucky to get anything in the student’s weekly.  I don’t fit in here.”  I winced at the evening’s start up band, and when I opened my eyes, he was gone.  A folded napkin under his empty glass waited.

You can decline to be alienated, if you feel like it.  That is my theory—Saul Bellow

Schaller’s Pump

(apparently God’s favorite drink is the screwdriver)

Literati!

KYLE Katz takes us on a tour of the Infernal Writ–oops!–ETERNAL Writer’s Club with her favorite wingman, Mike Stang. Somebody care to buy the lady a drink?

Dead and living in New York

By KYLE Katz

What a way to die. “Woman falls from platform shoes into an oncoming bus…in New York traffic!”

It’s like a freaking maze in this city. I guess I just have to wing it!

My instructions from Deepak Chopra…find meaning with-in yourself. Only the right door can get you in the ‘Eternal Writers Club.’

I’m dead. And now discover the tunnel of light I’m suppose to ride my utopian Trojan horse of words through… is in a bar?

Bars covered with notable writers of literature– mostly old white men– with problems. Drinking, drug and sex addictions, tormented souls. Where’s the diversity? Where’s Toni Morrison, Victor Villesenor, or Amy Tan?

New York’s nightclub, ‘Spoonerism and Puns sign,’ flashed on and off.

This is it!

I burst through the door. On center stage, Leonard Cohen’s rusty plea sang Halleluiahs.

My literary wingman Stang, said I wouldn’t recognize him in the afterlife, so he’d be wearing short pants and a long red jacket, sitting at the bar waiting for me.

Unknown authors, lost poets, misfits and… Stang. There he is!

“Hey babe, been expecting you.”

A shot glass of New York’s finest brandy, clung to my lips. I scanned the room– a writer’s almanac of divine insanity.

Maya Angelou approached me. Yes, Me!

“Welcome to ‘Eternal Writers Club.’

Stang’s defeated eyes sank. “Eternal- as in never ending. You can start a book…but you can’t finish. Have another shot, my dear. Sip slowly.”

“So this is Hell!” Crap!

Our friend in the UK, Jack Horne, found a few more with which to diminish the wench what done him wrong. Please join him as he extracts revenge in this entry into Wing Nuts.  A good rant is good for whatever ales you!

No title.  Guess I will have to give it one.

The Tankard Tome

by Jack Horne

Saturday night. The Boar’s Head Tavern was crowded. Rowdy laughter, brawls, smelly tallow candles and sweat were part of its character.

Shakespeare passed me another ale. We clanked tankards. Smiling, I glanced around. An open fire, wood panels, my wife…

Her low-cut dress revealed numerous love bites.

‘See the blonde over there,’ I said, nodding towards the door. ‘That’s Susan. She left me for that woman with the short grey hair.’

Shakespeare studied them. ‘O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites!’ he said. ‘What’s done cannot be undone.’

I blinked back tears. ‘They swore it was platonic, but they were…’

‘Groping for trouts in a peculiar river?’ he suggested.

Cover of “Trout fishing in America” by Richard Brautigan

“Mr. Brautigan, we gather from the reports that your book has nothing to do with trout fishing” (Viking Press upon rejecting his novel)

‘That cuckold lives in bliss who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger, but, oh, what damnèd minutes tells he o’er who dotes, yet doubts- suspects, yet soundly loves!’

‘I’m lost now, Will. I’ll just have to wing it.’

He downed his ale in one, nodded for me to follow and approached the pair. ‘How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do? A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers.’

They gasped.

He informed Susan, ‘Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all! There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.’ And he told her lover, ‘Thou unfit for any place but hell. Out, dunghill!’

‘Get thee to a nunnery,’ I added.

Laughing, Shakespeare and I watched them leave.

Literati

As of this moment, I have no idea what is to follow as my own entry into our contest Wing Nuts.  But as I saw my image rolling by the towers that are A Word with You Press, I felt obligated to enter the contest myself.

As you know I am multi-wingual; it is not enough to be misunderstood in only one language.  The translation is the title of my story.  As for the story itself, I guess I’ll just have to wing it.

100% Pure..Purer than your intentions

by

Moi

I ended up at the Jolly Roger in Oceanside the other night. My pal Jake Jacobs (http://jrichardjacobs.net/) with the beard had recently hijacked the Hemingway persona.

“So whaddya think of the beard?”

“You look like an anemic Santa Claus.  Why don’t you go ask Megan what she wants for Christmas?”

Megan is displaying two reasons why I occasionally come here. She declines to sit on Santa’s knee. He feels dejected, as well he should.  He retreats to our table over looking the harbor and hides behind his Dos Equs. “I think I am just too old for her,” he laments.
“Well.” I respond with the truism, “if that’s what you think, you must be right.”  But I am his wingman, his favorite author, and I have the duty to get him the girl.

I pat him on the shoulder and approach the bar to salvage his reputation.

She starts the conversation. “You look like you’re Thorny”

“I was hoping in the dark it didn’t show.”

“Your friend in the corner creeped me out.”

“That was intentional. He is the world’s second most interesting man. You must be, what, 25? 26?”

“Close… Intentional?”

“Yeah.  He did not want you to think you were unattractive, so he said what ever he could improvise so you would dis him rather than the other way around.   He would have showed you just how interesting he can be, but has a problem with your age.”

She looked over my shoulder to the far corner where Jake mustered a feeble smile and lifted his bottle to toast her.

“He has a problem with my age?”

“Yeah.  So he sent me over to ask if you have a younger sister.”

Before she could answer there was a rumbling in the back of the bar. I thought he was coming back from the dead to retrieve his persona, but instead he just said to Jake, the imposter: “Man was not made for repeat.  A man can be annoyed but not repeated.”

While they squabbled, Megan leaned across the bar and whispered, “Thornito, is it true that you are really smooth going down?”

I guess I’ll just have to wing it.

***********************************************

Our special thanks to all the folks at The Jolly Roger(http://www.jollyrogerrestaurants.com/) for being such good sports. Megan was played by Megan Goemaun, Ernest Hemingway was played by manager Randy Boswell.  The world’s second most interesting man was played by Sci-fi author J. Richard Jacobs.

Disclaimer: No one was actually humiliated during this event or subject to either crude or sexist remarks.

Visit the Jolly Roger at the end of Oceanside Harbor  1900 harbor Drive North.  The last stop before Hawaii!

Ladies and gentlemen of the Literati!

With diligence and medication–oops!–dedication–New Yorker Stephen Roberts makes it his mission to research (yes, he calls it research) the best bars in New York, and to detail his findings in his blog “Best Bar Wednesdays” (http://robertswriter.robertswriter.net/?p=199)

So that is why we are so honored to have him brush through the saloon doors of our contest Wingnuts.

Please remember that this is a work of fiction.  There must be a million guys named Sully.

“Toast”…

-what the hell is that supposed to mean, Sully? You’re far too philosophical for a drunk man. Lay off the hooch.”

“No, I thought if it was prepared in America, it’d be done on one side-

-done on both in it’s entirety, kind of like you.”

Sully felt a light bump. He lifted the swishing whisky from his side and studied debris in his glass. He let out a slur, “Did you use my drink as an ashtray, Hem?”

The man looked at the ember on his Cuban and lightly tapped ash to the ground.  He stuck the cigar between his teeth, pulled a handkerchief from his top pocket, stepped forward and wiped a piece of charred tobacco from the man’s moustache.

“My dear man, I’ve taken down a wild lion with a pen knife. Do you think I’d be so foolish to waste useful hot cinders on perfectly good drink?” He nodded towards the door. “I’ve waited for the right moment and it looks like she just walked in.”

She stood poised at the entrance of  “The Obituary” with a long cigarette holder. Three men approached rapidly with lit matches.

“Aside gents, this one’s mine,” said Sully.

A sear on his right hand released the grip on his glass. It fell to the ground and shattered. The bar went silent and she looked directly at them.

“I’ll just have to wing it,” said Ernest, “it pays to think ahead.”

Oh, ASHley!

Oh ASHley!

***************************************************************

Stephen also made it into our anthology The Coffeeshop Chronicles

Just 3 bucks on Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Shop-Chronicles-Vol-Places/dp/0984306420/ref=sr_1_sc_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1368715828&sr=8-6-spell&keywords=the+coffeeshop+chronicles

Please include a link to your own site when you enter our sleazee contest. Being on AWwYP is better then The Cobert Bump.

Horace, the gold and bejeweled trophy donated to this contest by artist/satirist Ed Coonce (www.edcoonce.com) appears visibly upset to discover chicken wings on the menu of The Dew Drop Inne

Literati!

Kenneth Weene has come home to roost after being absent for a while from our site. He has spent the time in a Buddhist monestary aka the Dew Drop Inne.  In his entry for our Wingnuts contest he shares his enlightenment.

Don’t drop in at The Dew Drop Inne

by Kenneth Weene

It’s not just my watering hole; it’s my Goddamned second home. My wife would agree. “You spend more time at the Dew Drop than you spend with me.” She’s said that over and over.

Hell, if she were half so easy to get along with as the guys, I might stay home. Nag, nag, nag: that’s all she does. Can’t a guy sit around in his drawers and enjoy a cold bottle of brew? Is that asking too much?

“Where ya goin’?” she demands.

“Nowheres,” I answer, thinking about my wingman Sal and the cool one he’ll draw the minute I walk in.

Same as every night, but this time she follows me. I can’t remember the last time she was at the Dew Drop. She probably can’t either. But now she’s walking in the door, and all the guys are looking at her. Couple probably want to jump her bones, but they see that look of hers; she’s ready to kill—to kill yours truly.

I got no plan; I’ll just have to wing it. “Hey, Gorgeous,” I try, “you come here often?”

She don’t laugh, just walks over and brings her knee up. I’m bent over gasping for pain and breath when she says it: “I’m leaving you.”

I stare.

“You hear me? I’m leaving!”

Yeah, I heard. “Hey, Sal,” I call loud as my hurting balls allow, “drinks are on me.”

Like I said, I’ll just have to wing it.

Bio info

Sometimes Ken Weene writes to exorcise demons. Sometimes he writes because the characters in his head demand to be heard. Sometimes he writes because he thinks what he have to say might amuse or even on occasion inform. Mostly, however, he writes because it is a cheaper addiction than drugs, an easier exercise than going to the gym, and a more sociable outlet than sitting at McDonald’s drinking coffee with other old farts: in brief because it keeps him just a bit younger.

Ken’s latest book, Tales From the Dew Drop Inne inspired this yolk. You can learn about it and Ken’s other work at http://www.kennethweene.com

Literati!

Billy Holder, the pablum-personality that tones down wild excesses on this site, has offered a tame story for our Wing Nuts. Indulge him, s.v.p.

Here is a picture of Billy celebrating his 21rst birthday:

Bar: Big Helyns Saloon San Clemente….back in the day

by Billy Holder

I climbed out of bed this morning and thought, I’m not going to make
it, then laughed remembering all the times I felt that way.

I’ll just have to wing it. That’s what Chuck said as he swung at me.

I remember laughing at myself as I saw my tooth sticking out of his forehead, a
headbutt gone wrong.

That’s when Wanda walked in, shook her head and turned around and walked out.

For a moment I felt bad because Chuck was in love with her. A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which one never entirely recovers.

I loved her too, but like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps
little photographs of. I think this was our way of getting through our
dilemmas without having to give up our manhood or friendship.

“I don’t hate you but I’ll feel so much better when you’re not around…”
The blood flicked into my eyes from Chucks fainted jab when his foot
landed between my knees as he ended the sentence,”…Billy!”

I folded instantly but managed to grab his shirt and pull him down with me.
There was a blood trail going from my mouth, down my shirt, from my
fist to Chucks jaw, from the bar to the stools and all over Chucks
half chewed ear that I spit out to make room for my balls.

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus!” Chuck stood up stumbled,
raised his fist and screamed, “That alone should make us love each
other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities,
we are eaten up by nothing!”

That’s when I returned the below-the-belt favor. We were a whiskied mess swirling in blood, broken beer mugs and highballs.  The last thing I remember was a blood-covered Chuck
telling the officer that we were friends just sharing the prejudice of a woman, and that we shouldn’t have go to jail because they had the wrong kind of bars in there.

***************************

Billy is fondling of saying “AA is for quitters!”

Literati!  I once pulled into Nazareth.  I was feeling about half past dead. Then I discovered that Nazareth, Pennsylvania, was to home of Martin Guitars so this was no place to get unstrung.

Though perhaps I would have though differently if I knew it was also the home of Diane Cresswell’s favorite tavern.  Let her tell you about it, as an entry into our Wing Nuts contest

INSPIRIATION –

by

diane cresswell

Take A Load Off was the name above the bar.  Sleazy didn’t even come close to describing the building, or the so-called patrons inside.  Anything that slunk into that bar could not be called human.

I’ll just have to wing it I thought.  My wingman is inside waiting for me to get him out. First rule to get in was you can’t be human.  And here I am, human, female, hot body with all the right accessories, an angel face that melts even the hardest of criminals into namby-pamby gutless babies, and red hair that glows in the dark. No shadow hiding for me.  I have many other attributes but details can wait.

I silently stride into the bar with my badge ready… it says I can go anywhere.  Smart fools let me in.  Where is that sissy?

The bar flies are beyond disgusting – your worst nightmares come to life. I see my man down at the end of the bar drinking some slimy juice and jawing with… f**king hell a demon!

I ignore the fiends making rude sounds and gestures.  One grabs me and down he goes. I tap the drunken human on his shoulder.  He turns slowly around recognizing me through the smoky haze.

“Do I have to?”