Welcome to Songs, Stories, and Spirits. We’ll be jamming unwanted opinions on good music, good stories, and good booze down your ears, eyes, and throats on a weekly basis. We hope you enjoy. And if you don’t, there is a comment section below that we more than welcome you to ignore! Cheers!
Song: “Fire” by Gino Parks
Daniel Ford: You’ve got to love a song whose lyrics feature the refrain, “I feel like fire.” Gino Parks’ “Fire,” released by Tamla in 1962, should get you grooving while you’re sitting at your writing desk with a head full of half-baked ideas.
According to a blog post, Parks only recorded three records that featured five songs in his brief, underappreciated solo career. We’re all lucky that “Fire” was one of them. If you’re not lighting a match, dropping into an unreadable first draft, and then strutting out the door headed for a bar, then you’re not doing Friday right.
This musical “red hot furnace” will keep you warm all night, so just play it on repeat until the sun comes back up.
Story: “Fire and Ice” by Anne Leigh Parrish
Daniel: If you haven’t read author Anne Leigh Parrish’s short story “Fire and Ice” yet, stop reading this post and get on that. Parrish has been a tremendous supporter of Writer’s Bone for a long time, and it’s been an honor to have her words appear on our site. Once you’re done reading “Fire and Ice,” check out “Smoke,” the short story that launched our original fiction series.
Parrish is also the first author to send me a blurb for my novel, which I’m happy to share with our readers (and any perspective literary agents):
“Sid Sanford loves three things: baseball, his family, and women. The first two don’t cause him any trouble, and are a source of happiness and inspiration. Women, on the other hand, threaten to be his downfall. To say he is a serial dater is a gross understatement. Sid has a big heart, and gives it away time and again, usually with disastrous results. Heavy drinking gets in the way of romance all too often. And when he loses someone close to him, and believes he’s responsible, Sid’s world takes on an even darker hue. Can Sid overcome his crippling sense of guilt and self-destructive behavior? Will he ever find the one woman who can make him whole? Daniel Ford’s fine, sensitive debut novel, Sid Sanford Lives!, follows a young man as he comes of age, matures, and gains both wisdom and a measure of peace.”
I couldn’t be more thrilled that Anne took the time to read my novel and send that over. I hope she’s hard at work because I’m looking forward to all of her future work!
Spirit: The Flaming Homer
Daniel: There are plenty of actual drinks we could have chosen to go along with our fire theme, but we do that when we can showcase a fictional one from a classic episode of “The Simpsons?”
Ah, the Flaming Homer. A drink whose creation depended upon a cigarette ash, but won’t make you go blind. Plus, it has its own theme song (granted, it was penned after Moe stole the idea, but still)! Things don’t go great for Homer or Moe in this episode (shocking, I know, considering Moe’s excellent track record), but at least it birthed a drink to make you forget everyone’s name (including your own).
Sean Tuohy: I like to believe that Homer Jay Simpson is a trendsetter. Yes, all the rappers are drinking cough medicine now but where did they get the idea? The same places that most rappers get their ideas: middle-aged bald, yellow men with drinking problems.
The Flaming Homer is a drink that brings together the best of friends or turns them into backstabbers. Also, it is a drink that will make members of The Red Hot Chili Peppers sleep with Bart's fourth grade teacher (yikes). Also, besides being a great name for a drag queen comedian, the Flaming Homer helps you forget your troubles and feel like Lil' Wayne at the same time.