BALLS! or Mykel Board's September 2026 Blog Post

 

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

SEPTEMBER 2026 Blog/Column
by Mykel Board

                                                                BALLS!

 

The more left wing your political ideals are, the more naive a person you are likely to be. The more right wing your political ideals are, the more evil a person you are likely to be. Choosing a political standpoint is largely a matter of deciding which failure as a human you are more comfortable with. – Derek R. Audette

America still sees itself as essential and as destiny's instrument. And each splinter group within our culture - left, right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular - sees itself as morally, even "theologically," superior to its rivals. It is not just about politics. It is about being better than one's evil opponent. We don't just disagree, we demonize the "other." And we don't compromise.

— Frank Schaeffer

It's sad that several political parties still count the dead, the starving, the unemployed, by their religion, caste, creed and sect. The young generation needs to engage in politics of right vs wrong and not right vs left.

— Sharad Vivek Sagar

An attractive blonde MILFy woman sits on the couch. She’s reading a magazine… hard to see what it is except for that there is mostly text and few pictures. She wears a tight black top and black form-hugging shorts. On her feet are pointy high heels.

The doorbell rings. The woman sets the magazine on the couch next to her and gets up to open the door. She walks around the couch to a small hallway, and then down the hallway to the door. She opens it.

Outside the door stands an attractive young man...wearing a red and white t-shirt... holding a box… obviously pizza. He hands the box to the woman but rather than take it, she waves him to follow her… back down the short hallway to the room where the couch is. She talks to the young man as they walk. They speak some Slavic language… maybe it’s Russian. I can’t tell.

“Sorry to bring you out of your way,” the closed-captioning says she says. “It’s just that I left my wallet on the table in the living room and it’ll be easier if I get it once you put the pizza down.”

The man smiles and follows her. When they enter the living room, the woman points to the table and gestures for him to set the box down. As he’s focused on the table, he does not see a young brunette woman creeping up behind him, wringing a belt around his neck, and then stuffing a chem-soaked rag into his mouth. The young brunette wears jeans and a t-shirt, but she also wears high heels on pointy shoes.

In a few seconds, the young man’s eyes roll back into his head and he slumps to the floor. The two women roll the pizza man onto his stomach, pull his arms behind his back, and fasten a rope around his wrists… tying his arms behind him. Then more rope... as the two women tie his knees and ankles together.

The blonde has disappeared and returned with a large kitchen knife. Is she going to kill the young man? The brunette rolls him on his back and the blonde slips the knife blade under his t-shirt and slowly slices the shirt off his body. She hands the sliced shirt to the blonde who rips off a long thin piece and wraps it around the deliveryman’s head… feeding it into his mouth… pulling tight… creating an instant gag.

Then the man’s pants are pulled off. The blonde sucks the man’s limpy into her mouth… gradually making it blossom straight and erect. We watch in close-up. Then she bites… hard. The man screams in pain. The camera catches the combination of horror and agony on his face.

The blonde kicks him in the right side… in the kidney. The brunette puts her foot between his legs and presses down hard. There’s a closeup of the sharp toe of her shoe pressing his new hardness, while the heel pushes down between his balls.

What I have just described is one of many, similar-themed videos on the website: extremelady dot net. Most videos feature the same blonde and brunette … sometimes a large group of women… abusing/torturing a young man.

I’m conflicted about the site. Are these videos real? Some of the punches and kicks seem to be held… but most appear to go deep… at full force The reaction shots are completely convincing with pained expressions turning to tears above whatever’s being used as a gag.

But some situations seem fake. There’s a setting in the army, in a medical center, amid ancient ruins. Most of the videos feature the same two women, although some are obviously Asian… Japanese or Korean… similar plots though.

And the camera changes angles… coming in for a close-up... pulling back for the whole picture. If it were a secret/hidden camera it could not do that. If they kill the guy after every encounter, they’d have a body-dump certainly traceable by now.

 It’s my guess that they recruit some guy, warn him it’s tough and pay him a lot ... for the pain. There is sometimes some blood, but it looks fake to me. I don’t know.

The plots vary in detail and location. Here’s a “click-on-me” picture from the Extremelady library. That’s the blonde.

There is much complaint about about the role of women in porn… and everything else. And “exploitation” … of women in this and that… all over American Society. That is usual and expected. But these videos are like finding some severed heads under the floorboards in your bedroom. You’d never imagine they’d exist. The women are all-powerful… dominant. Hey girls, is that what you want in life?

FLASH TO FACEBOOK: I post a picture of me in a t-shirt sent to me by my longtern pal Julien Nitzberg. (See his Breaking Bad parody animation... free on TUBI… it’s called Breaking Bear.) On the shirt is an AI photo of Donald Trump riding a lion…. carrying an American Flag blowing in the wind. Fireworks explode around it.

I post about a reaction I got wearing the shirt on the street in Manhattan:

Him: You have balls wearing a t-shirt like that in New York.

Me: I have two.

Him: Two t-shirts?

Me: Balls

Over-the-top and funny as a fart in church… right?

NO!

Folks who know me get the joke, but for some reason fb decided to feed it into the algorithm machine and it randomly showed up in other’s feeds. The reactions were surprising.

One guy wrote: You have 4 balls. You forgot about the tiny pair of orange balls bouncing off your chin.

Another wrote: The only 2 balls you have are bouncing off your chin... Just how you like them

Yet another commented: You're fucking retarded like ALL Pedolf tRump supporters. How many times a day do YOU jack off fantasizing about your pedo-fuhrer tRump raping kids, three? Five? SEVEN?

So much about pedophilia. At an average age of 18, the US has among the highest age of consent in the world. Albania, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Serbia, Germany and Portugal have an age of consent of 14. Every bar mitzvah boy knows, when he turns 13 “Today, I am a man.” My friend and proof-reader, Marlene, wants me to remind you that, in the US, ages of consent vary by state in the US, 16 – 18. But I think most people, when spewing negatives, don’t care about the details.

And, I have a friend here in New York who says a 17-year-old is “still a child.” Can you please hide the Barbie?

Hey, I’ll follow the law… but nature too sets laws. Nature gave us puberty. The body’s pubic hair and breast development say when a girl becomes a woman. Laws saying older than that are simply vestiges of Puritanism. Eeeew sex… Sex is bad… And you have to be old enough to choose to do bad things.

Back to the t-shirt with more comments on balls: And Trump's shriveled ones are in your mouth.

I was surprised at the reactions, but learned so much from them. I even posted my education points as a PS with the picture:

1. Most folks don't get the humor... even though the shirt is so over the top.

2. The reactions have also been (mostly) humorless. It seems both the left and right are humor-drained. And wouldn't know a joke if it bit them in the testicles.

3. Accusations against me are frequently tainted with an aura of homophobia. I'm assuming the reactors are mostly left-liberal... but they don't fail to fall back on the homojokes so loved by MAGAites.

4. Seems NO ONE who didn't know me clicked on my profile to see that I'm a pro-Mamdani socialist.

5. Complaints about the president seem to be about his personal sexual conduct rather than his being a war-lover, welfare-hater, friend to the rich, enemy of the poor, egomaniac. Nothing political... only "pedophilic." I guess I guess my critics okay with everything else.

6. You can learn a lot from facebook responses to "edgy" public posts. Thanks guys.

And so, I want to blog about sex and its influence in EVERYTHING. And humor, and its importance and disappearance in the modern political world. Being a (sort of) lefty exposes me to lefty “humor” like that of late night TV… So much of it is just Donald Trump (cue the laugh) I mean Donald Trump (cue louder laugh… repeat). You know it’s supposed to be funny because you know the person saying it doesn’t like Donald Trump. If the person DOES like Donald Trump, s/he could probably say the same thing and people would laugh because the jokes take on a different meaning.

Political humor, in the form of 1-frame cartoons, has been around since newspapers have been around. During the Nixon era, it was actually funny. But now, it turns to sex… with both the left and the right accusing the other of violating some sexual taboo and ooooh, isn’t it horrible.

Most interesting for me, was that the anti-Trump crew… presumably liberals on sexual matters… uses homophobic insults against me... including all kinds of jockish anti-gay slurs. Somebody should write a song about how the left and right are just different versions of each other. Same prejudices. Same biases. Oh wait:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI2xnQkDlHE&list=OLAK5uy_lT1Qw9g_VUAun5E74vIU0VTBmOHaScjc4&index=20&pp=8AUB

Conclusion #1: If the ExtremeLady videos are real, that is non-consensual rapes, with only pain left when they are over… then the makers should be prosecuted. If the videos are consensual… and paid… then the painful sex is no worse than pain suffered by those working in the mines or those picking up garbage. Because sex is involved does not make this painful work any more evil than chopping wood.

Conclusion #2: Rather than left is the same as right – despite the Artless song– I don’t really think they’re the same. The left is like Japanese culture… a WE-culture. The right is like American culture… a ME-culture. But those who identify with the right or the left don’t seem to realize that the tactics they use… and the way they criticize… are reflective of each other. Though the ends are different, the means are the same.

The right will not like someone because he’s a homo. The left will not like someone because he sucks Trump’s cock. Neither of those are the REAL reasons for the dislike… but rather the automatic name-calling that is not much different one from the other. The actions are the same… the objects are the only difference.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er...  DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

–> COMEDY DEPT: Just because political comedy is so bad… doesn’t mean that ALL Comedy is bad. My favorite comedian at the moment is ISMO, a Finnish-born guy who talks a lot about language and the difficulties of being a foreigner dealing with English. Doesn’t sound funny, huh? Well check it out here, and you’ll see.

→ COMEDY DEPT Pt. 2: Of course, because political comedy is usually bad, doesn’t mean that ALL comedy is bad. Sex, that staple of funny stuff from Mae West’s Is that a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me to George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words you can’t say in America, can be funny. I’m sort of out of the loop, though. So send me some links to some good post-Carlin sex comics of the 21^st Century. mykelboard@gmail.com

LINKS

I just heard from Luciano Pires who explains he’s: a musician, illustrator and writer and I run a YouTube channel called Electric Acid, dedicated to strange, obscure and forgotten music. The channel explores everything from underground noise, industrial and experimental music to bizarre one-off records, marginal scenes, forgotten artists and musicians who somehow slipped through the cracks of music history.

I’m especially interested in the stories behind the music — the records that sound like they shouldn’t exist, the artists who operated completely outside the mainstream, and the strange connections between different underground scenes.

You can find Electric Acid at: https://www.youtube.com/@Electricacid

I’m happy to present the art of Sarah Thobe… who paints personalities as part of her portraits. Check her out at https://sarathobe.com/.

And it was great to hear from my very long-time friend, Fred Lonberg-Holm. Celloman extraordinaire. You can hear him at https://fredlonberg-holm.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of

Anthony Allen Begnal asked me to mention his Hardcore Conversation You Tube channel, and I’m happy to do so here.

Longtime scene/zinester Robb Roemershauser has restarted the Above Ground Zine Library. The Zine library doesn’t yet have an address at the location but, feel free to donate zines that you no longer want to the Aboveground Zine Library 2100 Sawmill Road Apt. 22-202, New Orleans, LA 70123. The Zine library will be located in the upper 9th ward on a busy street.

My pal Matt Sheahan says: “You can link to my website - www.matthewsheahan.com or my Substack - https://politenewyorker.substack.com/ .” Matt is a great musician and very funny guy.

My Kenyan pal, Albert Melody shares a facebook adventure in one of those great Kenyan national parks. Guess who he shared the adventure with!!! You can read about it here. Albert also has a blog at: Albertomelody.blogspot.com

Teddy Labato has a “lo-fi noise” link to his band Check it out.

It’s About Time dept: Finally, a book about Hungarian Punk  put out by Puke and Vomit records.   Great scene there and I was glad to have contact with bands like Der Trottel and Tizedesz. Glad to have been a (very small) part of that scene. 

Zine fans can find my list of old zines that I want to get rid of (aka sell) here. Which reminds me, it’s time to donate some stuff to the Above ground Library

Can you say TUSKER DU? or Mykels May 2025 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's

May 2025 Blog/Column

A TUSKER GREETING

I’m leaving London because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.

– Groucho Marks

An antitourist is a tourist whose vanity and tourist angst compels him to distance himself from other tourists by shunning organized tours, consuming local food no matter how nasty, eschewing the use of taxis in favor of public transportation, and ostentatiously not carrying a camera.

– Paul Fussel

It is not the fully conscious mind which chooses Africa in preference to Switzerland.

– Graham Greene

When I first arrived at London Heathrow, coming from New York, I asked a random person sitting behind a random desk dressed in a random uniform, about my up-coming trip to Kenya. “When should I check in for an international flight?”

“You should be at the airport three hours before departure,” she says.

The plane is scheduled to leave at 9AM.. That means I should be here at 6 in the fuckin’ morning.

“Shit,” I answer her.

She shrugs.

Heathrow Airport in London is one of the busiest in the world. And they skin you every step of the way. You even have to pay to drop someone off at the curb and let them walk to the terminal!

It’s 5:30AM. Anant is picking me up from Claire and Alistair’s in a couple minutes. He’ll drive me to Heathrow… and pay to drop me off. Watta guy! Claire and Alistair are up to see me leave and to greet Anant. 5:30 AM!!!! For me, that’s bedtime! The world doesn’t turn itself on at 5:30AM. There is no dawn’s early light. No rockets red glare. NOTHING HAPPENS at 5:30 in the morning. Except that I leave for Heathrow Airport to catch a 9:00AM flight to Nairobi, Kenya.

 [ Note: I’ve visited Anant when he lived in Bermuda, New York, Oxford and London. In India, his family adopted me for a tour of the North of that country. And yes, I saw the Taj Mahal. Here we are in an Oxford pub]

The airport too is just waking up. I look for my flight on the electric signboard. It’s not there. I walk past closed concessions… closed duty free shops… restrooms with yellow triangle CLOSED, BEING CLEANED signs in front of them. I check another TV screen. I see what seems like my flight… looks like it’s telling me to go to another terminal for the gate. I want to check in first… no I don’t. I can’t. There is no place to check in.

I walk to the British Airways section of the main terminal. There are no uniformed people sitting at counters, waiting to for me to hand them my passport. Zero. It’s all machines. Scan. Scan! Scan! I don’t know what to do. I’m an hour and a half early… typical for me. Fuck that scan shit. I want a real flesh and bodily organs person-- not a machine. How can I tell a machine it looks like Diana Rigg?

Somewhere, there is a check-in area (AREA D) for the Nairobi flight. I have to check-in and get my boarding pass. There’s a map, showing where the check-in area is supposed to be. I follow the map and find myself in a large space with a lot of empty chairs and some of those stanchions with flat red ropes like you find outside of stores in New York, holding back lines of Generation Z’s waiting to spend their parent’s money.

[NOTE: I don’t know about your city. But one of the newest fashions in New York is waiting on line (most Americans says “in line”, in NYC we wait on-line) to shop. Walk down any Soho street and you’ll see line after line waiting to get into some clothing store or restaurant. Most of the waiting people are 20-somethings taking selfies and texting their friends. Wow! Look at me! I’m in line at the new Kith in New York fuckin’ city!]

“Can I help you, sir?” asks a… er… mature woman wearing what looks like a stewardess uniform.

“I’m supposed to be on the 9 o’clock flight to Nairobi,” I tell her. “I don’t know how to check in. No bags, I’m carrying everything on board.”

“I’ll help you,” says the matron. “Follow me.”

I follow her to one of the machines. “Let me see your passport,” she says as we approach the machine.

I hand it to her. “And I need to see your visa… and your PTA.”

“PTA?” I ask. “I’m not a parent. No kids in school.”

“ETA,” she says. “Not PTA… ETA… Electronic Travel Authorization”

I take out a folder with a printout of what I think/hope is my ETA. I hand her the printout. It has the ugliest picture of me anywhere. I had to take it from my home computer as I was doing the paperwork on-line.

 “This isn’t it,” she tells me. “It’s a piece of it, but not the whole thing. Check your phone. It should be in a message from the Kenyan Consulate.”

I turn on the the phone and open messages. Somehow, I to find the right page… a tiny attachment to a consulate file. I don’t know how it can be usable… but it is. The woman scans the phone, pushes some buttons, flips some levers, hands me my passport and a boarding pass.

“You’re all set,” she says.

“Thanks,” I answer, “but I’m never all set.”

She doesn’t laugh.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Diana Rigg?” I ask.

“Who?” she answers.

I take my leave and find the right gate at about 8:15. It’s an ordinary airport-looking gate. A few people are there already... and boy am I pissed off. They’re all white. How is Willy going to find me among this crew? All white people look the same… except for hair color. That’s not enough.

[Note: I “met” Willy on the internet doing a search for PUNK and NAIROBI. Turns out he plays guitar in POWERSLIDE, a Kenyan punk band. We corresponded and he promised to meet me at the airport in Nairobi. He’ll also set up one night at a hotel. The next day, I’ll couch-surf with some locals. Willy asks me to bring him some books that are hard to find in Kenya. “No problem,” I tell him.]

Near the Heathrow departure gate is a DUTY FREE shop-- open now, I buy some Jack Daniels for my couch-surfing host. Willy will meet me at the airport... if he can find me. I still have half an hour before the plane leaves. I check my phone to see if there are any messages from the other side of the world. There is one from Albert, my future host in the Nigerian countryside:

The banditry crisis in our area has reached alarming levels. Even our area chief was recently killed while escorting some tourists. The situation has become unbearable—these bandits terrorize us every night, leaving us in constant fear and unable to sleep. Just yesterday, I was on duty with ten other men, trying to protect our community from another attack. We are doing everything we can, but without proper support, our efforts may not be enough.

Shit... just what I need to start the adventure. BANDITS! I look up how to say “Oy vey” in Swahili. Google Translate doesn’t.

I quickly text back to Albert, asking him if he thinks it’s too dangerous for me to visit. He tells me Kenya isn’t dangerous, but his area, Saburu, is. My friends who’ve been to Kenya say that everywhere is dangerous. Nairobi is commonly called Nairobbery, they tell me. I buy one of those chain wallets… you know. with thick links from wallet to belt… then a leather loop around the belt. I have a spare $20 and a 1000 shilling (about $10) note in a secret zippered compartment in the back of my belt.

“The pickpockets work in pairs,” my friend, Terry tells me. (She’d been in the city at the turn of the century.) “One person will grab your right shoulder from behind. You turn to him and his accomplice will reach into your left pocket and be off with the loot before you can say nakupenda.”

The plane boards on time. It’s a huge British Airways plane-- a US built Boeing 777... a dozen seats across in the economy section. Aisles so narrow that when the stewardess walks down them, she alternately hip bumps first the passenger on the right and then the one on the left.

FLASH TO INSIDE THE PLANE. While we sit on the runway, I wonder about my couch-surfing host and hostess... wonder about my bag of books… wonder how Willy will find me… I clearly will NOT be the only white guy on the plane. I mentally go over my Swahili.

Nimefurahi kukutana nawe (nice to meet you) Mimi sim Kenya. Mimi nim mwamerica. (I’m not Kenyan. I’m American) Nina njaa (I’m hungry). Samahani. (Excuse me) . I learned that you address an older woman as mama and a young woman as bibi. A male stranger is bwana. Which is what, I think, Tonto called The Lone Ranger.

We’re off! Regular readers know that I’m usually opposed to the death penalty. One exception I often talk about is driving at the speed limit in the left lane. Another, for public transportation, is leaning the seat back, often slamming into the knees of the person behind you. Yo! Look behind you! If no one is sitting there, you can recline your seat, but keep an eye out for a late-arriving passenger. If someone IS sitting there, sit up straight like your mama told you. Leaning back where there are only inches to go is rude, thoughtless, smug, and worthy of beheading. Luigi Mangione, you’d know what to do.

The “safety instructions,” usually given by a steward or stewardess… you know “you fasten the seat belt by inserting the tab into the buckle like this… and then pulling the belt firmly... like this.” is given in a video now. The screen on the back of the seat in front of you shows a video of middle ages knights in armor… strapping themselves to their horses. They have to put on their seatbelts. (Saddle belts?) The part about the dropping oxygen mask is given by the queen in her royal parlor.

The people sitting next to me seem deeply involved in the royalty on the screen. Yeah, I’ve got an aisle seat in this monster of a plane. Each section has four seats… that means there are TWO middle seats. I should have asked for one of them this time, so I could free myself from the stewardess’s hip bumps. The serious looks on the other faces in the row tell me this’ll be one of those flights where I’m not going to make any new friends. I don’t really care. The whole row is white anyway. That’s NOT why I’m going to Kenya!

I lean against the upright back of my seat… I still have 6 hours ahead of me… ahhhh! Shit! The asshole in front of me leans his seat back into my lap. I open the table in the back of his seat. Slam it open. Using two hands like I’m playing a bongo, I bang out an I Want Candy riff. The girl by the window... seeing what I’m doing… and knowing exactly why I’m doing it… turns toward me and smiles. The guy in the seat in front of me pretends nothing is wrong. We’ll see who wins this contest.

Ah, the food cart comes around. I signal the stewardess maneuvering the cart. I push my hands forward, looking at the seat in front of me. She gets it. She walks up to the guy and taps him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir. We’re serving our first meal,” she says. “Please put your seat in an upright position.”

He does, and I give a thumbs up to the stewardess. She’s cute… and I feel an stirring between my legs toward its own an upright position

British Air still gives free non-alcoholic drinks with its meals… though the portions are smaller than what you’d normally buy in the local deli.  

After dinner, I try to sleep. The asshole in the seat in front of me reclines it again. I kick his seat. He pretends not to notice. I half drift off to sleep, dreaming of the Nairobi airport with huge Barack Obama murals… maybe with the former president cavorting among the elephants and giraffes. Fuck, I can’t sleep... maybe if I turn and try to sleep on my side. BLAM! I slam my knee into the back of the asshole’s seat. He clears his throat.

We land very close to the scheduled time… 9:35PM. I’m sitting toward the back of the plane, where the cheap seats are. I’m in a half-sleep fog when the pilot announces we’re preparing for landing PUT AWAY YOUR TRAY TABLES AND PUT YOUR SEATS IN AN UPRIGHT POSITION. He does not say “assholes.”

As we taxi towards the gate, the more awake among us are already standing up and getting their stuff out of the overhead compartments. My backpack is under the seat in front of me and my computer bag (with trinkets for the natives), coat and hat are stuffed in one of the overheads, now being ruffled through by THE ASSHOLE.

Things retrieved, I follow the slow-moving line out of the plane, down the portable stairs rolled up to the door. We’re then shuffled into a shuttle bus to go through immigration. I check my wallet to see if I have an available 1000Ksh (Kenyan shillings) note, in case I need it for a bribe. Remembering my arrival in Senegal a couple decades ago… and talking with my travel agent in New York (from Ghana)… I come prepared.

It turns out I don’t need it. Kenyan immigration and customs is maybe the easiest of all of the 71 other countries I’ve visited. Passing through a large hall… with NO Obama pictures, I show my passport and that stupid ETA on my phone to a guy sitting at a table. He looks up at me. Smiles like a grandfather indulging his grandson, stamps my passport, and says “Welcome to Nairobi!”

I thank him and exit into the baggage room. Having no bags to retrieve, I walk through the room, asking a guard for the mensroom. He shows me the exit-from-the-baggage-pick-up door and tells me there’s a “toilet down the hall on the right.” Aaah, a civilized country where the word “toilet” isn’t taboo!

I take care of business then look around for Willy, who said he’d be at the airport to greet me. Not that I know what he looks like. Despite all the white people, there should at least be one local looking like he’s looking for someone. And no, there are no Obama pictures inside the terminal… or anywhere else I can see.

I walk around, trying to look like I’m trying to look for someone. It doesn’t work. In my trench-coat and fedora, in any other country, I’d have a man in uniform immediately asking, “Can I help you with something?” while radioing headquarters with my description.

I leave the terminal. Outside are a lot of men who look like they’re cab drivers looking for customers. I look around for someone who looks like I imagine Willy looks. No luck. I walk up to one of the cab-driver looking guys.

“Unaweza kuongea kiingereza?” I ask.

He laughs at my stumbling Swahili. “Everybody in Kenya speaks English,” he says. “We learn it in elementary school.”

“I can’t find my friend,” I tell him. “Could you speak to him and tell him where I am? I don’t know where I am.”

He laughs again, but says, “sure.”

I call Willy’s number on my Samsung, then hand the phone to the driver. He runs away with it. Naw, I’m shittin’ you.

Really, he speaks to Willy and explains where we are. Around ten minutes later, Willy and his attractive girlfriend, Jecinta, show up right in front of me.

“Mykel!” he says giving me a hug.

After a short conversation, Jecinta says she has to leave… work tomorrow morning I think. We give our good byes. This will be the last time I ever see her… for the whole duration of the trip. After she walks off, Willy texts his uber, waiting in the airport parking lot. We get it and the driver goes off to the expensive hotel, Hotel Ibis.

It’s near the airport. And it’s my first night... after a long flight, I can spring for the $70. No shower for the week in London. I expect there’s one in the hotel room. Nothing like arriving at a couch-surfer’s home smelling like Irish Spring.

I check in at the hotel desk. The woman at the desk takes my credit card, runs it through her machine and hands me a card for the room, and, as it turns out, is also a card for entrance to the hallway that leads to the room. And for the upper floors in the elevator. This is my first experience with SECURITY… actually over-security… in Kenya. In many ways, I think Kenya will prove to be a model for future America. I’ll write about that later.

After checking in, Willy and I go to a table near the entrance and sit down so I can give him  the books I bought for him. Mostly Nietzsche, and Eastern philosophy… [NOTE: as time goes on, I notice Willy sits with his eyes closed, hands on his lap in deep meditation before every meal. He’s a Buddhist... like YOUTH OF TODAY] I bring him one extra book he didn’t ask for and explain that it’s written by a much respected American author and he should read it to really understand America.

After that, I drop my bags off in the room. And go up to the rooftop bar with Willy. Oh yeah! Tusker beer at the hotel. Looks like it’s only us in the bar. I toast Willy with HONGERA, the Swahili word for “cheers” taught to me by Albert in a facebook message. Willy doesn’t react. The waiter frowns. 

“What’s that?” he asks.

“I thought it was cheers in Swahili. My facebook friend taught it to me.”

“Maybe it’s a local language word.” he says. “We usually say, mad-LOW-ba!”

Willy smiles. Now I don’t know if they’re shittin’ me or not. Serves me right. At Drink Club in NYC, I tell my Japanese friends that Besa mi culo means “cheers” in Spanish. I tell my German friends that Pitchka ti mate in Serbian means “cheers.” Everybody else learns from me that Mong chong ii is “cheers” in Korean.

After I buy us a few drinks. At around 12:30, Willy takes his leave, I go down to my hotel room and DON’T take a shower. I’m beat. I’ll just do that thing that guys do to help them sleep… and sleep I do. Check-out is 10 AM!!! Whoever heard of such a thing? But it is. So I have to get up at 9 o’clock, eat my free breakfast and make my way into downtown Nairobi.

My phone alarm wakes me at 9. I stupidly hit the SNOOZE button, and get up again with 10 minutes to spare.

[To be continued…]

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

→ Next Surveillance Dept: Sid Yiddish sent me this… about a new bacteria find that can be traced by machine. I can’t imagine who would be interested in the possibility of infecting people with a bacteria that makes them easy to follow. Can you?

→ I Wrote on Facebook Dept: I posted this on Facebook. So sorry to see George Santos going to prison for longer than he has served in Congress. That guy was such a great actor... and the most atoms person in government. Only my pal Tony Autoharp asked what “the most atoms person" meant. The other commenters –and there were a bunch– were just interested in chiding me for my opinions, even though I’m sure they didn’t get the "atoms" either. Oh yeah, you know atoms, right? They make up everything.

→Repeat Performance Dept: The Week magazine had this article that shows the effect of a well-placed sharp piece of metal. I hear the insurance company in the article reversed itself right after the Luigi Mangione adventure: See? It works.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

LINKS

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him.

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year.

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the US

Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it here.

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.

You already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their online version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher!

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brian asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com