A damn fine writeup on booze
Posted by TFG on May 7th, 2008
THE
BRAZOSPORT NEWS: Death in Houston: revisiting the sad life of Eagle Pennell, local film legend
My best answer to that is fear. Despite his swagger, his true Texan credentials, his apparent talent at what he set out to do, he was just too damn afraid — afraid of what life would or could be like without alcohol since alcoholics, at base, I think, are ‘fraidy cats.
Or maybe he just didn’t give a shit.
I worry that I’m turning into a boozehound, like my old man and his old man before him, and mostly, when I make the space to look at it, it’s really because I just don’t give a shit. I can remember the last time I was scared — after my first marriage, I was living on the second floor of an old warehouse in south Dallas, and I was doing some work stuff, concentrating hard, and then it sounded to me like an army was coming through the door leading up the stairs. All I had was an old 30-30 and half-box of shells, and I didn’t know with any precision where the shells were. That scared me, thinking I was gonna go down without putting up a fight outside of whatever I could bludgeon the crackhead militia with. I finally found the shells in a suitcase, loaded up, and threw down on the other guy who lived in that old warehouse, who was banging around downstairs moving in some different furniture. Needless to say, we got kinda drinky that night.
That damn 30-30, my grandfather’s Winchester, got ripped off, too, when some assholes broke into my third or fourth place down the line when I wasn’t home (it was fully loaded — I never made that mistake again.) They got the deer rifle my dad gave me as a young lad, as well, and a nice Browning duck gun.
I never made any movies, though, so no one will ever even write a nice article in a respected publication about me. I wish I had a point to this, but I don’t. C’est la guerre. Fight your battles the best you know how to, I guess, because no one else is gonna fight ‘em for you, and they ain’t got a say in it, anyway. They’ll just step over your cold, dead body on the way to their next fight, and that’s the way it should be.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Good Lord I wish you’d come back to Dallas
May 8th, 2008 at 8:39 am
I can’t afford to bootstrap a business up there, so I wish yall would move down here.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
food’s way better down here, too.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
think that ole addiction gene does filter down,makes you want to do a self appraisel now & then.but you are thinking about it, writing bout it, so you probaly got a handle on it. dont know bout that dont give a shit gene though.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
That’s the gene you gotta worry about, because the bastards will grind you down to nothing. That’s the way I feel.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:55 am
right on the money on the grind down,see it every day here in bluecollarville.think i may posses a close relative to that DGAS gene,its GTBA,or got the black ass.takes on a whole new meaning with this Obamba fiasco raging thru the country.I,ll hush about the gene thing,dont want nobody thinking a wore out old cracker cowhand is trying to be an anthropoligist.