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Jack Kerouac gave William Burroughs the pseudonym "Old Bull" in his novel On The Road. Fifty-five years ago yesterday, Old Bull blew his wife Joan's brains out with a pistol during a drinking party. And now we get some information that Old Bull is going to be performing at some carnival/hoedown thing downtown on Saturday. A very dangerous-sounding carnival, featuring "dirty darts, inflatable farm animals, insulting caricatures, drunk duck pond, cactus ring toss, sleazy face painting" and various other amusements of which we're slightly wary. Something about this scares the bejabbers out of us. Additionally, it's located under a bridge downtown (1001 E. First St., #24, near S. Santa Fe Ave.) and it doesn't start until 9 pm ($6 to get in before midnight, and $10 after). Yipe. Does anybody have any spare bejabbers? We seem to have lost ours.
Now, we know Burroughs is dead, so we're going to assume that Old Bull is just the name of a band playing at this hoedown and not some apparition of our favorite artistic pioneer/junkie/cat lover/filmmaker/adding machine empire scion/cultural icon. Still, we're out of there the minute somebody asks us to play a game of William Tell.
Photo by My Hobo Soul via Flickr
