Judas Priest - Better By You, Better Than Me

This weekend I went on a Judas Priest binge.

HEADING OUT ON THE HIGHWAY, DIAMONDS AND RUST, ROCKA ROLLA etc, until YouTube popped up the lead singer's testimony in a 1990 Nevada civil suit accusing the group of inciting two Reno teenagers' suicide pact via subliminal words 'do it' in their reprieve of the Spooky Tooth song BETTER BY YOU BETTER THAN ME.

The suit was thrown out of court to the protest of conservative lawmakers and church leaders threatened by the demonic aspect of heavy metal. Comedians rallied to the defense of Judas Priest and Rob Halford suggested that a better death command would have been 'buy more of our records'.

Those forces of revision; the church and the right, ruled the country for the last 40 years.

In the summer of 2009 in Iowa City I was siting in a bar whith Alan Lage aka Colonel Rockford, and Brock Dundee, a Brit spy serving the West's Endless War in Afghanistan, when I overheard one of three overweight corn middlemen say, "This country was founded on conservative values."

I put down my drink. My good friend Alan Lage lifted his hands. "Violence doesn't solve anything."

"You're right about that." I signaled I was cool, calm, and collected and said to the old hippie, "I'm just going to say one thing."

I walked over to them and glared , as I said, "This country was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and it makes me very happy to tell you dumb motherfuckers to shut your holes."

The fattish trio were stylish attired in Midwest Stretch-band khakis and a blue skirt like they were cult members. I was in black leather. No one threw a punch, but I felt vindicated by my exercising the freedom of speech. The young bartender, who had recently returned from a National Guard stint in Iraq, gave Alan Lage and me a beer.

"I'm working, so I can't say a thing. Thanks for being my voice."

"Can I ask you a favor, can you play HEAD OUT TO THE HIGHWAY?"

Coming right up."

And I still love Judas Priest.

Rock on.

To hear BETTER BY YOU BETTER THAN ME go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqAPVB4u9Zs&NR=1&feature=fvwp

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

"Where are we going?" Brock studied the map. We hadn't seen a single human being for an hour. The low sky muttered distant thunder. To the west clouds gathered in a darkening threat. I had never seen a tornado and stepped on the gas. "North." The rural dirt road paralleled US 169. No one in New York or London had ever seen this route through Iowa. "I know that." The Scotsman couldn't drive, but knew the points of the compass. "When you think that family left that house." "Back in the 90s." The paint peels off its wood like potato chips. "Stop." He was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt. I got out of the rented Ford. Metal ticked on plastic and the V6 was in time. Brock set up his movie camera. I had been on film shoots before. His was the most minimum set-up of all. "Barry once said to a journalist, “I enjoy the third dimension and I appreciate material in time and space. I find it exciting to the eyes.” "Then he'll love this." The house was timeless. The sky was changing. The May trees bend to the wind. "Let's go." We stopped at the Blackcat Fireworks store. "I love a little pyrotechnics." Four days ago Brock had been in Afghanistan. He spent $100 on rockets and M80s. He was homesick for the noise of war. We blew up the fireworks on a dirt road. Iowa had them by the thousands. I lit the fuses and Brock watched the explosions. "Not even close," he said as the report of the last M80 faded into the treeline. We got back in the car. Des Moines was Iowa's capitol. We arrived after 5. The city sidewalks were empty of people. "Is America dead?" Brock meant that a plague had killed everyone. "Only sleeping." I wished it was the truth. We visited the city's hare. Brock focused his camera on the statue. I sat in the car and called Thailand. My son Fenway was better. His mother was angry at me. "Why you go trip? Why you not see son?" I said nothing, for a man is always wrong in the eyes of his woman. We spent the night in Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs. The restaurant was next to the motel. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag. "Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I saw no different between hares and rabbits. "One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him it represented freedom. All kinds of freedom." Freedom was hard to find in America of 2009 and I called Rockford in Iowa City. The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us. The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway. "This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America to me. "Corn and wheat." "Tortillas and bread." "And prisons." "My friend Rockford spent two years doing hard time. The cops found something else other than the grass they knew he had." Snitches were a problem everywhere. "And we're meeting him tonight?" "But of course." Rockford and I went back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach. The year was 1975. He was more than good people. Train tracks were quiet out of Des Moines. I took to the Interstate. Rockford had called to say he was holding something special. Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. The years went fast. I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved it being red. His friends picked him up. We spoke to the bartender. Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq. "It sucked." Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar. A chubby one said, "This country was founded on conservative values." I slammed down my PBR. "This country was founded on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, so shut the fuck up about your conservative values." I liked Obama as president. "Calm down, my friend." Rockford suggested we move to the Deadwood, which was Iowa City's best dive bar. "Sounds good to me>" Brock and I had more front teeth than any of the regulars at the Deadwood. Rockford broke out a bottle of Bolivian Pink 1975. "I've been keeping it for a special occasion and nothing more special than an old friend visiting me." Rockford offered me the first blast. 1975 had been a good year. "Was he a hippie back then?" Brock's 'he' was me. I hated being third-person. "Not even close, but he was good people." Rockford knew my soul. I got another blast. 2009 was even better, because we were alive and alive was all there was everywhere in the world. Rockford was still at his pile at dawn. We had to go. A museum in Minneapolis was expecting Brock. We said our good-bye and hit the road. It was heading north.

YOU BET I WOULD by Peter Nolan Smith

During our 2009 trip through the American Midlands filming Barry Flanagan statues Brock Dundee and I detoured from our route to meet Colonel Rockford Ret. in Iowa City. The three of us began the evening at a sports bar. The bartender had just returned from his third tour in Iraq. We toasted his return with tequila shots. After the third Cuevo Gold Brock Dundee, Rockford, and I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette.

A trio of Bud Lite drinkers were disparaging the President in the alley.

"I don't know how we elected a nigger."

The fattest was leading the hate parade. He looked like he had played second-string linebacker in high school, but this fat boy hadn't touched his toes in years. I clenched my fists. I hadn't seen my family in months. Thailand was on the other side of the world. I was not in a good mood.

"Don't start anything." Rockford grabbed my arm. He was still a hippie. "It's not the place."

"Assholes." I glared at the trio. I was more a punk and repeated the word louder.

This time they had heard me and turned to face us.

"What your problem?" asked the fat boy's friend. His head was shaven to the bone and his body had been morphed into a smaller steroid version of a WWF wrestling wannabe.

"That's no way to talk about the president."

"And why not?"

"John Wayne said it best about JFK," interjected Rockford, whose favorite westerns were EASY RIDER and OLE YELLER.

"And what was that?"

"I didn't vote for him, but he is my president." Brock beat Rockford to the quote, then added, "I might not be American, but I do like John Wayne."

The three of us traded opinions about our favorite John Wayne films. I picked TRUE GRIT and as a director Brock classically voted for John Ford's THE SEARCHERS, while Brock surprised us with his choice.

"WE WERE EXPENDABLE. It's set in the Philippines. A PT boat crew trying to escape the Japs." The old appellations lived long in Iowa.

I watched the three conservatives bunch together like they were discussing a stratagem, then the fat one ranted about having a black Muslim communist illegal alien as president. I clenched my fists, but remembered that I was passing through Iowa City. Tomorrow I would be hundreds of miles away.

I stubbed out my cigarette and walked toward the entrance to the bar. The skinniest of the three was feeling his oats and loudly told to his friends, "This country was founded on Conservative values; church, family, and flag."

"That's it." I stormed over and pointed my finger in his face.

"This country was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so shut the fuck up about 'Conservative values'."

"I can say anything____" The butch muscle boy started to say.

"Do yourself a favor and shut your piehole and I don't want to hear any muttering behind my back either."

I strode inside the bar and ordered a Stella. Brock and Rockford joined me two seconds later. I looked out the door. The three locals were gone from the alley.

"Fuck them."

>"What happened to the Freedom of Speech?" Colonel Rockford was a firm believer in speaking his mind.

"Fuck the Freedom of Speech. It's an amendment to the Constitution." I was more than angry after eight years of hearing Conservatives bullshit about family values. "I'll say what I want and I'll tell anyone to shut up when I want too. That's my Freedom of Speech."

"I don't think that phrasing was guaranteed by the Constitution." Brock politely said and then continued, "And to be truthful this country is very conservative. Look at what happened to your Senator Gary Hart in 1988."

"Gary Hart?" I hadn't thought about the Colorado senator in years.

"Yes, he was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 election." My British friend's erudite tones had nearby drinkers listening to his every word. "Right up to the moment when the Miami Herald published photos of Donna Rice sitting on his lap."

"On the yacht MONKEY BUSINESS." Colonel Rockford had a good memory for a man in his early-60s.

"Aptly named. The Senator denied there was an 'hanky-panky'. Even his wife said the relationship was innocent."

"The wife is always the last to know." Colonel Rockford signaled the bartender for three more tequilas.

"His poll rankings sunk to the point where he only received 4000 votes in the New Hampshire primary, but if he had said, "Sure I screwed Donna and so would you all, Gary Hart would have received every male and free love vote in America, because people here and in the rest of the world are sinners. Not Conservative, but fun-loving happiness seekers. But no one likes a liar other than those people who don't want to look at themselves in a mirror."

We picked up our shots and Brock said, "America may be Conservative, but most Americans thought that Gary Hart's indiscretion had little to do with his ability to be president."

"And they got Dukakis to run against Bush." I remembered the photo of Dukakis' head sticking out of a tank like a turtle, then again he would have looked just as silly with Donna Rice on his lap.

"Now that was one unsexy guy." Colonel Rockford shivered with the memory of that election. "I voted Communist that year. Gus Hall I think. And he was even more unsexy. You're right, Brock. All Gary Hart had to have done was say, "I fucked her and so would you." and he would have been president."

"Who was Donna Rice," the bartender asked with interest.

"She was a hot blonde."

Unlike John Wayne movies the three of us were in complete agreement on that subject.

And agreeing with your friends was the beauty of Free Speech.

ROADS OF THE FLYOVER Part 3 by Peter Nolan Smith

Threatening clouds roiled over the Iowa cornfields. Monstrous flashes strobed through the thunderheads. The still air was charged with electricity.

"Have you ever seen a tornado?" Brock asked with his video recorder out the window.

"Only in WIZARD OF OZ." Twisters killed people and I stepped on the gas. Brock studied the map. We hadn't seen a single human being for an hour.

We're heading north, right?" The Scotsman couldn't drive, but as a covert agent he knew the points of the compass.

"Yes." I was headed away from the storm front.

"You know where?"

"Roughly."

The unpaved rural road paralleled US 169. No one in New York or London had ever traveled this route through Iowa.

"When you think that family left that house?" asked Brock, as we passed a one-story farmhouse haunting an overgrown yard.

"Back in the 90s." The paint was peeling off its wood like potato chips.

"Stop."

Brock was the boss and I punched the brakes to batslide to a halt on the dirt road.

I got out of the rented Ford and shut of the engine.

The storm lurked farther to the south. The mutter of distant thunder invaded the still spring fields. I didn't feel safe.

Brock set up his camera and explained more about his documentary on a dying Irish sculptor.

"Barry once said to a journalist, “I enjoy the third dimension and I appreciate material in time and space. I find it exciting to the eyes.”

"Then he'll love this." The strengthening wind bent the trees. The four elements were gathering force.

"Barry will love this."

The Irish sculptor was losing control of his body back on Ibiza.

"Let's go." I didn't like the look of the sky.

Thirty miles down the road we stopped at the Blackcat Fireworks store.

The sky was clearing. We had outrun the storm.

Brock tried my cellphone.

There was no service.

"I love a little pyrotechnics." He entered the store and spent $100 on rockets and M80s.

Four days ago Brock had been in Afghanistan and he was homesick for the sounds of war.

Twenty minutes later we braked on a empty road. Iowa had thousands of them. We pulled out the fireworks. I lit the fuses and Brock watched the explosions.

"Not even close to the real thing," he said, as the report of the last M80 faded into the treeline.

"Much louder?"

"Much." He didn't want to talk anymore about it and we got back in the car.

Our next destination was Des Moines, which was Iowa's capitol.

We arrived after 5.

The city was devoid of people.

"Is America dead?" Brock said, as if a plague had killed my countrymen.

"After work people flee the cities for the suburbs."

Des Moines has suburbs?

"

They were the great social experiment of the 60s." I had grown up in a pink split-level ranch house south of Boston. It had a two-car garage. "Cars gave Americans freedom to go where they wanted."

"Away from blacks?"

"Yes." Iowa was 95% white. My hometown had a population of 25,000. Only three families were black. "Segregation is the American Way."

I drove to the Flanagan hare at the city's Art Center. I stayed in the car, as Brock focused his camera on the statue. He interviewed homeless people for their impression of the hare. No one else's was left in the city. I called Thailand.

My son Fenway was better.

His mother was angry at me.

"Why you go trip? Why you not see son?"

I said nothing, because a man is always wrong in the eyes of his woman and I missed Fenway

We spent the night on the outskirts of Des Moines. Brock and I ate ribs at the restaurant was next to the motel. The TV over the bar showed fast cars. This was Nascar Country. At the end of the meal I ordered a doggie bag. Neither of us could finish our ribs.

"Why did Barry sculpt hares?" I discerned no difference between hares and rabbits.

"One day he bought a dead rabbit from a butcher in England and remembered a jumping hare. To him the hare represented freedom. All kinds of freedom."

"Freedom is a rarity in America these days. All kinds of freedom."

"Better than Afghanistan."

"I'm sure."

"What about your hippie friend? Doesn't he live in Iowa?"

"Thanks for reminding me. No one was freer than Rockford back in the day."

I loved being a hippie almost as much as being young.

Before I went to sleep, I called my friend Rockford in Iowa City.

The old hippie was looking forward to seeing us.

"I have a surprise for you."

"What?" I hated surprises.

"You'll see when you get here."

The next morning we left Des Moines. Silos towered over the old highway.

"This is farmland." Iowa was the center of America.

"Corn and wheat."

"Tortillas and bread."

"And prisons. My friend Rockford spent two years at the state penitentiary. It's across the Mississippi from Illinois."

"I doubt he had a room with a view. What he get done for?" Brock was very open-minded for a spy.

"The police raided his farmhouse for pot." Rockford had been growing weed on his Back Forty. Someone had snitched him out on a plea bargain. Snitches were a problem everywhere. "Growing pot is a felony, but the police also found some cocaine and the judge hit Rockford with a three-year bid."

"Better here than Bagram prison in Kabul."

"Bad?." I had seen pictures. The government claimed the abuse was an isolated case, but the US military and CIA had tortured thousands.

"Very bad."

"Rockford doesn't talk about it.

"Most people don't. Are we're meeting him tonight?"

"But of course. Rockford and I go back to an acid trip on Moonlight Beach in 1974. "LSD? Do tell."

I told the story of speaking with seals, as we followed the train tracks out of Des Moines. Brock laughed upon hearing about my attempt to speak French with the seal.

"What's for lunch?"

It was getting near noon.

"There's this old Pietist colony in Amana." Iowa had plenty of religious sects. We had passed through several Memmonite communities and seen Amish in horse-drawn buggies.

"Pietists?"

"An old German sect rejected Lutheranism back in the 1700s." I had no idea about their tents, but hazarded a guess. "The Lutherans were too zealous. They fought wars over their beliefs. The Pietists fled Germany and then America. Iowa is a good state for freedom of religion. They were skilled craftsmen and now make refrigerators."

"I knew Amana sounded familiar." Brock had lived in America for a decade as a playwright. The Arts were a good cover for covert agents. "Their food has to be better than McDonalds."

"We'll soon find out." I turned off the highway.

Only a few tourists were visiting the Heritage site. It was still too early in the season. I ordered chicken pot pie and Brock chose a ham steak. The waitress served us water. There was no beer on the menu.

Brock filmed our meals.

"Barry likes to see everything."

"How much longer you think he has."

He had been a young man as had Brock and I had once been back in the 70s.

"He might last to the end of the summer." Brock intended on visiting the artist in Ibiza after our return to New York and aimed the camera in my direction.

"Hmmm good." I knew how to act for Brock.

Nice and natural.

At the end of our meal Rockford called from his farm to make a rendezvous at a sports bar in Iowa City.

"What do you think he has for us?"

"I can only guess."

Something told me it was something good.

Rockford and his son met us at a bar on the outskirts of town. I hadn't seen John since he was a baby. He was a teenager now.

I gave John a Ferrari jacket from my defunct internet site. He loved it being red. His friends picked him up. They were going to a movie.

"What?" I hoped it wasn't a blood and guts slasher film.

"Star Trek."

"Cool." I had been a Trekkie from the beginning and said "Live long and prosper."

We ordered another round and spoke with the bartender. Jake was back from a 3rd tour in Iraq.

"It sucked and my commanding officer wants to go again."

"Bastard."

"You got that right."

Three right-wingers were drinking Bud-Lite at the bar and I overheard the chubby one said, "This country was founded on conservative values."

I slammed down my PBR.

"This country was founded on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, so shut the fuck up about your conservative values." I liked Obama as president. These three said nothing and drank their Bud-Lites.

Brock shook his head. He liked stealth better than brawn.

"Was he like this when he was younger?" asked Brock.

"Our friend has always had a good temper, but with good cause." Rockford stared with eight ball eyes at the threesome and suggested we move to the Deadwood, which was Iowa City's best dive bar.

"Sounds good to me>"

Brock and I had more front teeth than any of the regulars at the Deadwood. The Iowa U co-eds danced to punk. They accepted our offers of tequila. After a few minutes Rockford broke out a small bottle packed with powder."

"Here's my surprise. Bolivian Pink 1975.

"No way." The Cali cartel had destroyed cocaine in the 80s with the help of the CIA an the Mexican gangs were even worse.

"I've been keeping it for a special occasion and nothing more special than an old friend visiting me." Rockford offered me the first blast. I did it at the bar.

1975 had been a good year.

"Was he a hippie back then?" Brock's 'he' was me.

I hated being third-person.

"Not even close, but he was good people." Rockford knew my soul.

I got another blast.

2009 was even better, because we were alive and alive was all there was everywhere in the world.

At closing the coeds asked, "Are you going?"

"Going where?" I was hoping a cheap hotel.

"To River City."

"What's in River City?'

"It's the future birthplace of James T. Kirk."

A minute later we were in a taxi heading south. Brock, Rockford, and I were in no condition to drive.

We arrived at the small town to discover that there wasn't a statue, but a plaque.

I cried just the same and had the taxi driver take us back to the hotel. I was ready to call it a night, but Rockford wasn't in the mood for sleep and poured out the rest of the Bolivian Pink. Brock and laid our heads on the pillow.

"This is a night to remember. The night you came to Iowa City and my ice let me out of the town.

I slept until dawn.

I sat up in bed and looked out the window.

Prairie grass ran up to the hotel.

"Hope I didn't keep you up." His voice was a growl native to the Hawkeye State.

"Not at all."

"I guess I'll be going. My wife will be real happy to see me, but I have a good excuse."

I was certain that my name belonged to that excuse.

"It was nice to meet you." Brock stirred from his bed.

"I wish you could stay longer."

"Me too." Brock was no angel, but a museum in Minneapolis was expecting him tomorrow.

Rockford said good-bye and drove back to his farm. We skipped the motel's complimentary breakfast. Our stomach were in no condition for food. We drank black coffee on I-380 northbound.

It wasn't a pretty road, but it was fast.

I pushed the Ford to 90.

We had to make some time.

And time was easy to make on the highway especially with James T. Kirk at my back.

He liked fast too.

Warp speed fast.