Hello out there. This is Halo Sims coming at you over the airwaves like a broken beer bottle smashed on your head. This is Halo Sims and I’m careening through the time space continuum with the tenacity and delirious backbreaking fury of a Chihuahua attacking a burglar. Hello out there you pedestrian dabblers in high-frequency modulation, you hunks of mutton, you red-eyed and weary-souled night owls and spelunkers of the Walpurgisnacht. I, Halo Sims, the most can-openeristic, belt-it-out-of-the-park, Sodapopinski, flag-chewing son of a bitch that any of you Twinkie-munchers will ever come across, do hereby declare that I now, until further notice, am assuming complete and absolute control of your feeble, herd-concerned minds. So, take that volume control knob and turn it all the way up past eleven, pour out an extra cup of coffee, grab the person next to you and do-si-do to the sound of the cockroaches rooting around in your kitchen, and hold on to your hats and glasses because this here is the wildest ride in the urban-ness.
Well, so, hello out there. Halo Sims would like to welcome you critters and poetasters, all of you 24-hour diner patrons and moon watchers and Owl-line bus riders and throwers of rocks at lampposts to a most Grand Guignol feast of aural bacchanalian revelry. Your intrepid host and master of transubstantiation, Halo Sims, is here to reassure you that he will be up, up, up late and all through the windy squeals of night with you. I know times are rough out there. I know it’s getting harder and harder to make it. Heard a marsupial croaking in the gutter right on the corner of Post and Jones. Saw the shredded guts of an accountant on the sidewalk over on 5th Street. Cars with their batteries stolen. Potholes all over the place like divots on a golf course. Manhole covers gone and sold for scrap. The lines for the homeless shelters and the soup kitchens snaking around the block. Panhandlers outnumbering the tourists downtown. Cable Cars going off the tracks and careening into pedestrians and dogs. Murderers roaming the streets. Thieves. Sad-eyed mules of men wearing rags soaked in Crisco carrying empty bottles of champagne. Not a sign of rain. Nope. No precipitation in sight, and the stock market crashes and sinks and bottoms out lower and lower each day, and people are losing their homes, and people are losing their jobs, and people are losing their minds. I know it’s bad all over. And you’ve got haircuts to get and bills to pay. It’s not easy. No, no. It is not easy. And you hear things like economic downturn, knee-deep recession, not-so-great depression, a bad patch, and you hang your head a little lower and think that, no, things can’t get any worse. But they do. I know. I know it’s rough out there. But perk up your ears for a Qoheletic minute, take some time out of your busy-ness and running around, whether it’s inside your own skull or not, and listen up, okay? Because Halo Sims is going to take all of your pain and suffering and shove it down, down, down, and away for a while. You won’t have to think about making it through another day just yet. Not tonight. No. Not here. Not now. Not on my watch. Halo Sims is going to put your minds at ease. Yes siree bob. No more worrying about how you’re going to afford that Hungry Man Salisbury Steak dinner, or even that Top Ramen lunch, if that’s what floats your proverbial boat these days. No more wondering about how those bills are going to just get up and pay themselves, or flipping through the Classifieds every morning trying to find a job of work. Just let it all go and settle in, get down with it, crack your knuckles and hunker down, because Halo Sims is going to take you places that’ll make all your troubles seem like nothing more than a few cracked eggs, and we’ve all got to break a few eggs sometimes to get things done, ain’t that the way it is? Yeah. Halo Sims is here for you, as sacerdotal witness, as professor and madman, as garbage collector and boogey man and CEO and violinist and lawyer and groom, as the fly on your window or in your soup. It’d be small of me to commit bigamy, and there is always another dish to wash. So sit tight and turn it up. Halo Sims is in control, and I’m taking all your cares away with me, and putting them back where they belong.
I’ve got worries, oh lord, I’ve got more worries than you’d ever know. My worries weary me something awful. I wish my baby was here, wish she was calling my name. But I’m too busy worrying all my time away, to even care about what she has to say. Because I’ve got worries, my lord, I’ve got such a worried soul. I’m even worried about saving what’s left of that. No savings account can hold what I've got No it can’t. I’ve got more worries than a worms got holes to go crawling in. I’ve been down and out so long I’ve forgotten how to look up. Oh lord. I’ve got worries. Oh lord. And those worries won’t just worry themselves away.
the taste of blood in the mouth
So, sure, it isn’t always sunny weather, and the even when it is, the sunny side of the street might not always seem like such a bright idea. When Dave Loggins is imploring you to come to Boston or Denver or home, and that’s the last place you’d want to ramble on off to, well, yeah, things don’t always work out for the best. But, you know, that’s okay. Halo Sims will be with you tonight, singing and ranting and howling at the moon along with you. So hush…hush, sweet Charlotte. Things are bound to turn back around someday. But for now the world is upside down. So put your halo on, and come along with Halo Sims. It’s about surviving, about crawling around in the muck and the filth and the shit, and coming up with your hands clasped, with a little trash and truth shining through in your smile. It’s a lonely world out there when you go about it all alone. So take out that harmonica, swing that guitar around to your belly, look out for that orange blossom special that’ll be bringing your baby back. Come on along for the ride. Here we go. This is Halo Sims…
This is a breezy but predictable yarn about a wayward young fellow, a gleeman and warbling bard of a sort, named Chester Mayflower, whose wild woodnotes soared throughout the highlands, gathering the dust from berries and piping loud as a lute. Chester was a gas station attendant. Yeah. He sat around nights watching the pumps glow red and white in the lights of semis rolling in off the interstate. When it rained he shoved a nickel in his hat brim to make it shine. Nobody knew Chester. Nobody cared. He rolled his own cigarettes, Old Gold. There were holes in his shoes to match the holes in his head, and it just so seemed that he’d leak out his story to anybody who happened to be passing by. Chester filled up gas tanks and washed windshields and spit on the concrete and watched the night sky for any signs of a change. He wasn’t the fastest train on the track...
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