Creative Loafing voted juju b solomon critics choice for best singer songwriter in atlanta 2007:

http://atlantahappenings.creativeloafing.com/gbase/BestOf/BestOfAwards?Award=oid%3A397606

http://www.npr.org/openmic

FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY!!!
HIPPIE IN LOVE IS DOWNLOADABLE!!!
PLAY IT FOR YOUR MOM AND YOUR DOG!!!
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I was twelve, camping in the mountains with my mother and father. I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of footsteps outside our tent. Rigid with fear, I could not wake my parents. I could do nothing but listen to the footsteps, circling, crunching the frosted meadow grass. They never came closer and they never moved away. This lasted forever and still it was night. Still my parents slept. The footsteps were slow and random. They were senseless, directionless. Outside the tent, I was sure, a drunk and dangerous man was staggering back and forth, deliberating. Would he kill us or rob our packs? Would he beat my father and rape my mother, or just remain there all night, savoring the moment before the crime? I began to shiver. I could not be still. My face pressed into the nylon sleeping bag and the footsteps grew louder. He was right there, only a thin sheet of fabric stretched between us. I blinked and he stepped. I blinked and he stepped again, in synch, as if he knew I was inside, awake, blinking my fear into the dark of our tent, waiting for the knife to plunge through the wall, or the bullet to rip through the fabric, or the club to slam against the tent poles. I blinked and he stepped. Blink-step. Blink-step, the crunching of frosted grass never ceasing as he circled the tent. I pulled my face away from the sleeping bag and his footsteps stopped. Now he knew I was awake. He was deciding what to do. I strained to hear him breathe, but my father was snoring. Hopeless, I pushed my face back into the nylon sleeping bag and gave myself over to death. Let this death be quick, I prayed. Let me die first so that I won't see my parents die. Blink-step. He was coming for us now. Blink-step. I prayed, and as I prayed we became the same being. I blinked and he stepped. I could feel him now, inches away, his arms raised high, ready to attack. In this moment before my death I merged with my killer. There was no separation, no distance. Death will visit us in many forms before we die. That night, camping in the mountains with my mother and father, death came to me as the sound of my own eyelashes scraping against the nylon sleeping bag.

It was shit or get shat upon, he who shits last looses, and shit for your dear, dear life: that was the basic law of the universe as Harold Wells knew it. He learned this law at a slumber party in the eighth grade when Trey Woodall took a shit on his face as Harold Wells slept.

In the infallible, Old-Testament-fairness of boys, it was decided that Harold Wells, in return, should shit upon Trey Woodall.

Five grave sentinels held down the squirming Trey Woodall, who hadn't yet begun to scream. Harold Wells stood over Trey Woodall and began to lower his pants, but suddenly he was aware of his penis. Was it possible that at that very moment he had an erection? He paused, thumbs looped in his jeans, and tried to feel if it was so, but with everything happening so fast, the smell of Trey Woodall's shit still clinging to his face, the boys egging him on, Harold Wells simply couldn't tell.

Trey Woodall began to yell. The noise jarred Harold Wells into motion and he dropped his pants and squatted over the twisted face of Trey Woodall.

"No! No! No!" screamed Trey Woodall. "Don't Please!"

Harold Wells squeezed and strained and grimaced but he could not shit. He grew red-faced and some of the boys began to laugh. Trey Woodall was silent again, as if praying for a miracle, praying that Harold Wells would be empty, dry, a hollow body with nothing to shit out of him.

But Harold Wells wanted it. He wanted deeply to shit all over Trey Woodall's face, and so concentrated was he on this goal that he was surprised when he began to pee. The stream hit a few inches above Trey Woodall's shaking head.

"No don't!" screamed Trey Woodall.

Harold Wells pointed the stream at Trey Woodall's face, and what he witnessed was perhaps the most thrilling event of his short life. The urine was deep yellow, pungent and steaming, and it gushed out of Harold Wells in a rushing, splattering fury. Trey Woodall sputtered and gasped and clenched his eyes shut, his whole body writhing.

"Watch it!" yelled one of the boys holding Trey Woodall down. Harold Wells had peed on his hand. Now all the boys let go and backed off, afraid of getting peed on. Trey Woodall rolled away, undercutting Harold Well's legs and he toppled, pee streaming out of him, spraying the boys, the walls, the sleeping bags and the carpeted floor. And when the parents burst into the room in their pajamas, they caught the final sprinkles across their sleepy, beleaguered faces.

Yes, Harold Wells had some experience with how the universe functioned.

She carried the dead puppy through the shadows of the living room, out onto the terrace beneath the green light of the fiberglass roof. Wrapped in a pillow case of quilted blue gingham, the animal made a soft, droopy weight in her arms. Placing the bundle down on the earthen floor of the terrace she went back inside to get a stool for herself. It was about noon, and the puppy had been dead for a couple hours now.

She sat there looking at it. Half-grown, lanky, mostly black little dead thing with a patch of white fur on its throat, tongue tip poaking out of a slender jaw and eyes glazed over, the dead puppy was nothing but a thing now, a thing of weight and fur and dead mass.

A fly buzzed around the puppy's head and she swung at it. It came back and she punched the air until it went away. She punched and punched and began to cry. Out on the dusty street a vegetable hawker stopped his nasal cry when he heard the sobing, but he could not see over the high garden wall. He passed in silence and resumed his call.

She picked the puppy up and took it inside. It wouldn't be shitting on this terrace anymore. It wouldn't be chasing any red squeaky balls over these dirty bricks anymore. Those bowls over in the corner were pretty useless now. She could take the plants down off the ledge. It wouldn't be digging all the dirt out of terracotta pots anymore.

When she called the taxi service a man said it would take 30 minutes. I am waiting, she replied. She sat down on the dusty floor and held a dead forepaw in her hand tightly. She held it tighter than a living puppy could take without yelping. Grief swelled inside her chest and washed to the surface in waves of low moaning that continued for minutes, only choaking to a stop when the doorbell rang and it was time to go.

She would bury this puppy somewhere, but as of yet she had no clue where.