Do it like Kinky

By Joe Brown

Thursday, July 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Are you ready for a Kinky week in Las Vegas? Kinky Friedman — eminently quotable satirical sage, author, singer-songwriter, Texas gubernatorial candidate, animal rescuer and star of his own mystery series — has just published a new book, “What Would Kinky Do? How to Unscrew a Screwed Up World,” and he’ll be popping up (but mostly sitting down) around town for the next few days.

Kinky Vegas

The Kinky carnival starts Monday at the four-day International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Trade Show at the Sands Expo Center — he’ll be celebrating the first anniversary of his own line of cigars, Kinky Friedman Cigars (or as he calls it, “KFC”), posing for photos and discussing cigars, politics, smoking laws and virtually anything else at Booth No. 0636-0642, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 4 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The cigars — Governor, Kinkycristo, Texas Jewboy, Utopian and The Willie — are made of hand-rolled Habana wrappers grown in Honduras, with a blended filler of Honduran and Nicaraguan tobaccos and Costa Rican binders. He’s also going to catch “The Beatles: LOVE” at the Mirage and his friends Penn & Teller at the Rio.

The Kinky Chronicles

Friedman (born Richard Friedman, in Palestine, Texas), will read from his new book Monday night at the Clark County Library. “The 28th book that I’ve churned out — I mean, carefully crafted,” “WWKD?” is a collection of new essays and selected favorites from his columns for Texas Monthly magazine — in the guise of an advice book. “I guess it’s nonfiction,” says Friedman, 63, on the phone from his Echo Hill Ranch, near Kerrville, Texas. “Except that my life is pretty much a work of fiction. I always like to say there’s a fine line between fiction and nonfiction, and I believe I snorted it in 1976. So, most of the stuff is true, and there is good advice in here. But nobody takes good advice.

“So my plan is to disguise it in the form of stories. This is something Mark Twain did, and Molly Ivins did. It covers a lot of spiritual waterfront, mostly my opinion that the world is deteriorating rapidly, (on) which I think most of us can agree. I think we’re turning the country into a condo association, unfortunately. And I think if George Carlin or Richard Pryor were to be coming up today, they wouldn’t make it, this climate would not allow them to. America’s most precious gift to the world is freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom to be different, to be who you are. All of which corporate, politically correct culture destroys.”

Friedman says he’s not a big fan of author readings, and the self-selling involved, but he’s glad to do his bit for the Vegas library. “I’ll do a little talk, answer some questions, do a reading and sign books,” he says. “And as I said in my campaign for governor recently, I’ll sign anything but bad legislation. I signed a man’s scrotum once in Scotland. In indelible ink.”

Kinky Vegas II

In his downtime, you’re most likely to find him playing the $5 slots at the Flamingo. “Only the true geniuses play the slots,” says Friedman, who has been known to conduct phone interviews while sitting at a one-armed bandit. “Although I think Dostoevsky played roulette. But most play the slots, because it represents the least chance of winning and the greatest chance of destiny, i.e., a jackpot. I don’t play any poker slots or video stuff. I’m a purist. There’s something very meditational about it that I really like. Two times ago, there at the Flamingo, I hit a jackpot of $36,000.” (“Wow,” says the interviewer). “Of course I was down $200,000 at the time. I hear that my casino host at the Flamingo has said, ‘Kinky’s play is strong.’ And of course when you play the slots all the time, that’s kind of like complimenting a monkey humping a jukebox.”

Kinky thinking

Friedman’s ranch is also home to his favorite cause, the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, a nonprofit organization that rescues abandoned and abused dogs, nurtures them and places them with loving families. He just returned from a concert tour of Europe with bandmates Jewford and Ratso, where they played 18 shows in 18 cities in England, Ireland and Scotland. “They see us very, very clearly — more clearly than we see ourselves,” he says. “And of course they’re lovers of cowboys and Indians and Ira Hayes and Martin Luther King and Pretty Boy Floyd. You know, we live too close to the pyramids to realize how beautiful we are, us Americans.” Friedman says he’s thinking (“not very hard”) about running for governor again — in 2006, he got 12.6 percent of the vote, placing fourth in the five-person race. “I would run as a Democrat this time. That would give me a chance to win,” he says. “Because if we can get the rednecks to come back to the Democratic Party we’ve got a winner.” He’s also toying with writing another one of his gonzo mystery novels, “which is a little difficult, because I killed the detective in the last one.” Friedman frequently folds his famous friends — including Willie Nelson, Tom T. Hall and Kris Kristofferson — into the cast of characters. “They’re flattered to be in the casino of fiction,” he says. “I think everybody likes to be in fiction. It’s nonfiction you’ve got to worry about.”

Kinky Vegas III

“I like Vegas,” Friedman says. “You can smoke — the smoking regulations are a little slower to strangle us. And everything’s comped. Of course, as they say, the most expensive thing in the world is a free hotel in Vegas, and I’m comped to the eyeballs.” He confides that he has just completed a magazine essay about being a gambling addict. “I’ll give you 8-5 that I’m not an addict,” he jokes, adding that he once went to Nelson for advice. “I thought I was becoming a gambling addict. (Nelson) said, ‘Sell, mortgage your house, do whatever you can to get more money so you can go to Vegas and gamble. Just do whatever you have to do.’ And that’s part of my advice, which is, find what you like and let it kill you.”