"Olvido" by John M. Bennett for Blaster Al, plus Blaster Bibliography

(above - Sleazy, Kantor, Ackerman, dec 20, 1985 San Antonio, Texas, photo Bretty Nova)

Dear Lord, or Shiva, or John Smith, or Vicious Cosmic Vacuum Cleaner Salesman,

Baltimore and the world of the arts have been losing some grand masters this winter! This blog is starting to feel like an obituary column! First Chris Toll, who on top of everything else, was my first publisher, so he was a god to me right off the first crack of the bat! Then sweet night prowling flesh covered music encyclopedia Pope Croke. Now dear old Blaster.

Blaster first blew my mind in the '80s when I came across him in Crowbar's "Popular Reality". Tentatively a Convenience and I were both working at Second Story Books on ye olde Greenmount Ave. and he turned me on to said rag. When a group of us decided to start Shattered Wig Review to push those we loved to create more of what we love, Blaster of course became my dream contributor.

I sent him a copy of Wig #1 with three sodden burritos and a case of Schlitz and begged him for some words of his Secret Master Essence. In a matter of weeks I was holding "2,976 Vienna Sausages" by Blaster, what proved to be one of my very favorite stories by him, and it found its first printing in humble side-stapled Shattered Wig Review #2.



(Blaster with my Chimp Tantalus)

When Blaster and his wife Patty broke up in the early '90s John Berndt and I told him he should come drink up the seedy climes of Baltimore and we even sent him bus fare to add to the temptation. The cheap bars, the populace packed with creative humans barely clinging to sanity and a huge appreciative fan base and like-minded weirdos was able to glue Blaster here. Every Shattered Wig Night he would hold forth and stomachs and minds would hurt from the expansion of laughter and beer and Phil Dickian time/world slips, not to mention drip with Lovecraftian ordure! He changed my life, he changed Baltimore, he made us all wonder if we were living in inside one of his stories.

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olvido

shoulder water an my wave re
petition the soggy blade my
leg remeats my repe
tition where my your po
cket cheese finds the rep
etition scrawls the nu
mber same the numb r
epetition ur swallow off
the elbow juice repetit
ion nods all closet
treasure repetition dust an
gritty sock repetitio
n ease yr fading b
ones yr repetiti
on itching like a g
nat repeats repeated
in yr r ear no wonder
they call you King of the World

John M. Bennett
for Blaster “All Different All the Same”
Al Ackerman (with tiny addition by Blaster Al Ackerman)

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Here is a link to a bibliography of Blaster's writings that Sir Bennett worked on:

http://www.library.osu.edu/"

Click on "Books and More", and do an author search for "Ackerman, Al". There are 29 entries there, all stuff in the Avant Writing Collection.

onword
john