Halo Sims' Late Night King Kong Radio Hour (PART 3)

Hello. Hello again. Hello. Halo Sims back again to keep sharing part of the night with you. Hugo Junker’s Sheetmetal Donkey is flying low in the sky, humming just above the rooftops. And the rooftops are all smoking in the buildings downtown, and the mayor just gave himself a raise. Verily the day will come to an end, so we can start all of this all over again. Well it looks like swell weather up ahead. Remember what good old Leo Tolstoy said, “All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.” Keep the vultures at bay. I know I’d rather not die today. No. It’s not such a grand night to die out there on the moon-drenched concrete. You’ve got to keep moving. You’ve got to keep that blood circulating. Dance. Throw a fit. Hail down a taxi in your underwear. What the hell’s a taxi doing in your underwear? I surely do not know. No way, no how. And my raspy cluttering gasps for breath, like an angry sea lion choking on a cough drop, come out in a cranium-splitting roar over your speakers. While the flies enjoy a sumptuous feast dining on the remains of your last couple of meals and the trash scattered all over your living room. You maybe start to think about the best times you almost never had, and you also, just maybe, start wondering if they’re ever coming back. It’s okay. There’ll be world enough and time to do all those things you’re always telling yourself you’re dreaming of doing. Lie back. Take a load off. Everyday it’s a getting closer, going faster than a rollercoaster. Yep. It’s not like you can do anything about the deracination of culture, the vapid, mood-swinging histrionics of television shows, the less than stalwart condition of your soul, or people who for the life of them cannot parallel park waking you up with the conniption fit of their automobiles at three in the morning. These are things that you’re just going to have to try to overlook and ignore and get beyond, because the only life you have is the life of your mind. It’s yours. It’s all you’ve got. So go ahead and lose it. It’ll be good for you. Anything worth having is worth giving away. Speaking of that, let’s put on some more music to get that mind of yours concatenating, to stir around all the goo and muck that’s stuck up there like melted gummy bears. This here is the oldest of the old, Robert Johnson, doing Come On In My Kitchen.


Ah. All right. That was The Orange Juice Blues from Bd and The Band's Basement Tapes, and I’m looking forward to some OJ myself sometime soon when I finally get around to eating some breakfast. Before that I played you some John Hammond singing about how free a little bird can be. And right after Mr. Johnson who started it all off was Mattie May Thomas bellowing out Workhouse Blues. There’s a gal who could really belt out a tune. What a pair of lungs she must’ve had. Wouldn’t want to be around when she sneezed. No boy. Well, now, I got something here stuck in my craw. Now don’t go beg, borrowing, or stealing away my thoughts before I think them. Let ‘em germinate, let those weaselly suckers come to a ripe fruition before putting any kind of crimped preconceptions about what you think those selfsame thoughts just might be. All in due time my brethren. Let us take a rather circuitous route in our trot across the landscape of my mentation. Maybe we’ll start out with a few police sirens wailing away down in Chinatown, and then mosey our way down some soot-stained brick alleys, climb the rusted rungs of a few fire escapes, while car alarms blare like castratos and chimneys blow gray smoke and old men in fusty suits stumble around lost in a daze. Let’s get our bearings straight here. Let me get down off of this soapbox for a bit and spell it right out for you. It doesn’t get any lonelier than this. Being up late at night, so late it’s early. Watching the street lights blink out and the sun starting to inch its way up over the other side of the world. Bluer than any of you’ll ever know. As the sky twists from purple into a bruised kind of blue, a muddled and murky way to shape the way you’re going to end up feeling today. It all ends up the same my friends. From the duskiest roseate hues of sunrise to the plunging bowling-ball black of midnight. Day in and day out. Scooping up your cereal with a spoonful of dreams. Sticking a fork in the over-cooked steak of your pride. Slicing the discontent of your soul into bit-sized pieces with a dull butter knife. And you’re screaming like Moses Mason preaching a whirlwind sermon, out of breath, wheezing, ecstatic, alive. You’re a bell pepper roasting on a stovetop, smoking with the windows closed. Everything is foreign. We are all one. Get up and down, up and down off of that cross, because there’s a city built of mansions, and nobody is ever going to clip your damn wings. Listen. Fall down. You don’t have to pray, but it might give you something to do while you’re down there…Hey there, let’s let the plucking guitar strings of Bayless Rose take it away…

Louis Armstrong suckerpunching you there and knocking your block off I’m sure with Weary Blues. Got to love that tuba thumping in the background. Had a bit of a thump on this old head of mine here too while you were gone. Halo’s got a few odd ideas splashing around in his lopsided head. Summer’s an ocean away, and the cold is already receding faster than your hairline, like a lost soldier trying to find his way back home too soon. Keep counting up the change in your pocket at the end of the day so you can make it last, so you can give a little to every beggar you pass by. Take that old ragged, dog-eared copy of the King James bible down off the shelf. Pour a little whiskey in your coffee. Shove your fists a little farther down into your coat pockets. Yawn and make believe you’re a prince. I’m going to spin you a dusty tune called Last Kind Word Blues sung by a little lady named Geeshie Wiley. Listen closely. She knew a few things about living, and dying too…