It's Rob

Presidential... statements. Your call.

2012-02-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Chalk it up to being a quintessential outsider as a child, or a centerless rabble-rouser (read: asshole) as an adult – your pick, or list a third choice – I refuse to think tribal when it comes to politics. I will occasionally call even the guy I voted for on his crap. I tend to relent from speaking up too often, because more often than not I'm accused of being different and stubborn for its own sake, and will in some cases risk being horrendously wrong for the sole sake of being different. That tends to piss people off.

In this case, I hope to intentionally piss you off.

I gave myself a rather simple-sounding assignment recently: to go online and find a photograph of a U.S. President, of any party, either hugging or accepting a hug from someone he isn't politically obligated to; an electoral non-entity according to his party's agenda – and doing so with what at least appears to be genuine emotion.

Why did I do this? A whimsical question popped into my head, and it made me curious.

What I discovered may surprise you, and in a few cases it will definitely anger you that I would show "that guy" in the same heroic light as your Chosen One.

As my search term, I merely typed "President (insert sir-name) Hugs". I performed a separate – non-partisan – search of every POTUS who has held office since the year of my birth, and a few prior.

The list of those I could NOT technically find, will just as harshly rub you raw.

Roosevelt and Truman were apparently not huggers. Neither was Eisenhower. One may stumble upon plenty of pics of them shaking hands with cronies or foreign dignitaries – or even squeezing family members – but those shots wouldn't qualify. Read my criteria above, one more time.

President John F. Kennedy shook many hands, but only hugged his children. Lyndon Johnson never hugged on camera.

Nixon hugged, but Ford wouldn't.

Carter was not exactly a hug-junkie.

Hugging wasn't presidential enough for Reagan, or apparently Bush Sr.

Clinton must receive an asterisk (*) on this list, because though his Presidential Hugshots are numerous, finding one that didn't look like he was copping a feel (with everyone it seems except his wife Hillary) was a bit more difficult than you'd probably like to imagine. He still made the list, though.

Dubya made the hug roster, as did Barrack.

What statement am I making with this? Do you perceive a statement? Stop before you mentally answer that.

Again, are you merely grousing that I'm showing someone you dislike in a favorable light? The real statement is whatever you feel when you look at who's shown here, and who isn't.

I'm only asking you to examine what I had to, in seeing these photos in the context of themselves as a group.

Myself.

"But Rob, you fool, our guy is a man of heartfelt connection and a sense of humanity... their guy is obviously putting on an act."

This blog post is really starting to drive you up a wall, isn't it. These photos, in no other context but their own... your whole body is itching to cuss a blue streak in my ear.

No, I'm not favoring, supporting, or endorsing anyone here. In fact, a least one of the guys pictured above is definitely not on my favorite people list. But all I'm doing is showing the photo – with no comment. My mind has printed every sarcastic caption that yours is, as you read.

The change you want begins in the mirror. Sometimes I've boo'ed or applauded merely out of knee-jerk partisanship. That is inherently unenlightened.

I don't know what this little piece of cyber-vaudeville means – I only know it is bound to get a rise out of someone. And maybe, if they can stand outside of themselves, see a higher truth than mere party loyalty. At some point, we'll have to cast that aside anyway if we want our country back.

All I have as a commentarial capstone are a couple of quotes from a semi-hugless Commander-in-Chief:

A man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.

– John F. Kennedy, "Profiles In Courage"

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

– John F. Kennedy, 1963 Speech at American University, Washington D.C.

Last Randoms of 2011, or "Doomsday AGAIN??"

2011-12-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

Overheard during the holidays...

"Give this box of candy to your department, with my compliments. I ate all the ones I like."

"Don't pay any mind to that Christmas tree – our actual Christmas tree is in the other room."

"Remember when they made Christmas lights that could set the house on fire? Yeah, it was fun then."

"I talked to Santa Claus. She ain't buying you THAT!"

"Hey all you all all have a good ol' – all of you have a good – whatever, OK?"

"Stop that crying right now, or no more brussels sprouts!"

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According to the ancient Mayans, we now have less than a year left until... something. Maybe it's a big cosmic "Go Back To Square One" card.

I've often wondered if they really believed the world would just stop and disappear, or did the invading Spanish disrupt any further carving at the Mayan Calendars-R-Us? Or maybe the carvers just ran out of room and figured that the calendar they had already was aesthetically pleasing?

My marketing idea for an End of the World Party kind'a fell through. Four words: Mayan Calendar Jello Mold. Thoughts?

In 2011 we've already sent one Doomsdayer, Harold Camping, packing to Zealot Palms Retirement Village, rubbing his temples in frustration and shame. Will he have historical company in 2012? Will we skewer the Mayans with a similarly jocular post-modern cynicism? The only difference is that the Mayans aren't around anymore, to catch their blank, humiliated expressions for YouTube.

I think we will sooner bring about an "End" with our ever-expanding, techno-ccentric distractions from actual life and each other's tangible proximity.

On that note, Happy New Year!

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In the past I have made a tradition out of getting on everyone's nerves with those stupid end-of-year wrap-up newsletters. I realize you are all fainting out of building anticipation for that pithy, condensed summary of what happened in my previous twelve months. Alas, I'm out of wind.

Let's see if I can do it in a paragraph. (Big breath...) I marked my 1-year anniversary with neuropathy. My graphic art career came to an abrupt end when my employer of 20 years decided to outsource my work to somewhere on the other side of the globe. I got a Red Ryder BB Rifle for Christmas, and no, I didn't put my eye out – it's still in its packaging in the hope it will transform into a collector's investment at some point years from now.

The only meaningful change has been... YOU. The cherished friendships, old and new, have made the hugest difference in my 2011, and I'm more than sure that miracle will repeat in 2012. Happy New Year everyone! Luv yaz!

Kids' Letters to Santa... Answered by Batman

2011-12-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

Last year at this time, the Joker's most daring heist involved derailing a huge mail train out of New Jersey. After bringing the deranged clown of crime to justice once again, among the recovered goods was found a time-stamped parcel containing letters all marked to one addressee – a "Mr. Kringle" residing at the North Pole – all now hopelessly past their delivery date. Out of a sense of moral completion, The Dark Knight took it upon himself to personally respond to each undelivered missive. What follows is a small sampling:

I am trying to talk nice, and not say words I shouldn't say. Even if I am just repeating what daddy says all the time, it is still bad. I am very good to my sister, Hannah
- Sara, 4.

Dear Sara
I am appalled that any parent, directly or indirectly, would instill such a vulgar trait in his 4-year old child. Sounds like your dad could use a hour or so dangling at 50 stories by a batrope, staring fearfully into my angry gaze. Your call – let me know.
Season's Greetings – Batman

What type of fuel do you use for your sleigh or are your reindeers just hyper? Either way, I hope you won't miss our house.
- Matt, 11.

Dear Matt
The Penguin genetically altered his namesakes to fly once, each carrying an explosive charge to dive-bomb Gotham. Luckily, I was able to divert them into the maw of a nuclear reactor where they were each vaporized harmlessly.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I WAS AT THE MALL TODAY AND I WAS WAITING FOREVER IN LINE TO TELL YOU WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS. SO I REALLY LIKE THAT I CAN MAIL YOU MY LIST RIGHT AWAY WITHOUT LINING UP. WELL EXCEPT FOR AFTER MY LITTLE BROTHER.
- Nichole, 8.

Dear Nichole
Your little brother is indeed fortunate to have such a thoughtful older sister. I am deeply moved.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Santa, you know how it is nowadays, my parents are divorced, so please put me on your special delivery list to come 2 nights, Christmas Eve at Mom's and Christmas night at Dad's. Thank you!
- Ashley, 7.

Dear Ashley
Greed is the enemy of all free people, young lady. And you should be thankful you have parents, even crummy ones. Yes, crummy; they produced you. Do some time at a homeless kitchen and get back to me.
Season's Greetings – Batman

It is really cold here. Make sure Rudolph wears his sweater :) and Reindeer mittens.
- Donna, 9.

Dear Donna
Mittens would hinder a reindeer's hooves from sensing a need for traction and balance. They have fur for a reason. Basic biology, dear child. Science is your friend – hit the books a little harder next year.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Dear Santa, I would love all the presents I asked for but my mom deserves them more. I have been getting presents all year from my mom and she works hard to get them for me. My mom doesn't know how much I love her that's why I want her to have all my presents. Love, Victoria
- Victoria, 12.

Dear Victoria
I almost teared up over this letter – nearly had to utilize the ol' bat-hanky. Nice try – but I see through your ruse. And one of those presents would no doubt be TICKING, wouldn't it. Rest assured, Victoria, your evil plan will fail. Didn't count on ME seeing this, did you? Give it up, Victoria, a life in prison isn't worth it.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I have tried to be good Santa, but boys will be boys. You must know that cuz you are a boy.
- Henry, 8.

Dear Henry
Bring your evil to Gotham and you'll have me to deal with, mister.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Dear Santa, Did you know that people here used to think that you were a goat?
- Johanna, 17.

Dear Johanna
A goat? Actually, I'm rather unhappy with the costume design for Christian Bale's persona of myself in the second film. The cowl looks like a doberman's head from the rear. Interesting observation, young lady. Thank you for allowing me to vent.
Season's Greetings – Batman

If my brother been bad, do I get all his gifts?
- Bradley, 8.

Dear Bradley
No, technically you wouldn't want that option. Santa, according to tradition, brings a lump of coal to bad children. So if you take your bother's gift, you'll only get his lump of coal. Interesting power-play attempt, young Bradley, but next time think things through a little more.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Please make sure the reindeers eat all their carrots, tops too! becauase they're veggies are good for them!
- Tara, 5.

Dear Tara
Reindeer are naturally vegetarians. So they probably don't need much encouragement to eat VEGETABLES.
Season's Greetings – Batman

You are very good at keeping quiet on christmas eve, but I know you`re there.
- Edwina, 8.

Dear Edwina
Yes, Santa is far and away the master of stealth. Though I have never met the man, I consider him a mentor. Truly an inspiring individual.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I know that I may not get the bike because mom & dad said I had to wait until I was 9 to get a new bike.
- Brenna, 7.

Dear Brenna
Your parents said 9. Are you 9 yet? Rhetorical question; it is obvious by the undertone of disappointment in your letter that not all the necessary elements are in place in order for you to obtain a bike, according to your parents' sensibilities. I'd say you would have wasted Santa's time with such a comment – grow up.
Season's Greetings – Batman

My friends didnt beleive that I could mail Santa. This is cool!
- Mikaela, 8.

Dear Mikaela
Cool but pointless. Your letter contains no gift request, which is the most basic purpose of a letter to Santa, is it not? So you may think you have showed up your friends, but the joke is on you, isn't it. Think next time.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Thank you for thinking of me and all the other kids around the world.
- Michael, 7.

Dear Michael
I'm certain Santa would have been touched by such a comment. To me it is meaningless. But if you are ever in danger at the hands of evil, Michael – the Riddler, Clayface, or someone of that nature, rest assured I am on the job.
Season's Greetings – Batman

My Dad did the naughty/nice test and was called a little stinker. Please give him somthing he did'nt mean to be bad.
- Saoirse, 10.

Dear Saoirse
My initial impression is that your dad certainly failed the "name your kid something pronounceable" test. My sympathies.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Dear Santa, I have been I good boy this year but I have had quarrels and even fights with my little brother and I'm going to try and be better about stopping a fight instead of always picking fights with him. After all he is littler than me and I have realized it isn't fair.
- Austin, 10.

Dear Austin
I have an even better idea. How about I come teach your younger brother how to, oh, say... spin you like a top and send you head-first into a wall... or dislocate one of your shoulders with just his thumb... basically how to use your larger size against you and OWN YOUR BULLY ASS in any number of situations? I'm betting that would shut down all the "fight" problems at your house, wouldn't it. Spend Christmas THINKING ABOUT THAT, Austin.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I want everyone in the world to play nicer with each other. Mommy wants everyone to take better care of the world and Daddy just wants to read his Sunday paper in peace.
- Ellis, 7.

Dear Ellis
Your mother is likely the very reason WHY your dad wishes for serenity during his Sunday newspaper read. As you grow up, you too may find yourself in the company of a similar woman, if your mate selection instincts echo those of your father. Just a heads-up, young man.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I think I heard you in my house this morning but when I looked I could not find you.
- Candice, 9.

Dear Candice
I'm Batman.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I have tried to be very good all year, I only messed up a few times, but I tried my best, and thats what my mom and dad said counts.
- Heather, 8.

Dear Heather
Just make sure when you mess up, it's not in Gotham. That's my burg. 'Nuff said?
Season's Greetings – Batman

I help my mom with the dishes and i help my grandma and grandpa by giving them lots of hugs .......So please give them something nice too!
- Katelyn, 6.

Dear Katelyn
You could seriously injure your grandparents. Their bones are brittle at their advanced age. Try a joyous, but gentle, handshake instead. They will appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Thank you for waving at me at the mall. You really do love me!
- Marisa, 2.

Dear Marisa
If I "waved" at you, your next thought would have been "ow, that batarang glancing off my eyebrow really smarts... oh, I'm blacking out..." So it wasn't me. Sorry.
Season's Greetings – Batman

could you bring me some nail polish too, cause other kids in school have some, and i dont.and i would like to wear it cause im a girl and girls do that kind of stuff. thank you Santa
- Deryn, 5.

Dear Deryn
You're 5. Your parents have earned my wrath.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Dear Santa, I'd prefer you bring us love and happiness not only during Christmas holidays, but also throughout the whole year!
- Stavroula, 6.

Dear Stavroula
The world is a dark place. Even a Santa Claus can be overwhelmed by a world of shadows and nefariousness. That's why there's me. I'm Batman. Tell your friends, scum.
Season's Greetings – Batman

Dear Santa, I'd like the new Spiderman action figure play set. He is my favorite superhero.
- Danny, 7.

Dear Danny
Spiderman is merely a fictional character in comic magazines and cartoon TV shows. Wouldn't your parents disapprove of your living in such a fantasy world? How about instead one of the many Batman action figures and accompanying accessories? They're educational, well-made and really "cool." Reputable toy manufacturers like Mattel® and PVC® offer a wide array of posable action figures of myself and my friends, plus my "rogues gallery" of dastardly arch enemies for your playtime amusement – balanced against adequate periods for homework and chores of course. Look online, with your parents, for the best bargains – and shop early for the holidays!
Season's Greetings – Batman

(And finally this letter, unstamped, was among the others:)

Dear Santa, all the time you tell folks to be merry and joyful. I see smiles everywhere I go at Christmas. But I have a permanent smile that doesn't always reflect my mood, and all I'd like is a normal face that doesn't attract attention all the time. I'd really like to frown at something, not because I'm angry or sad, but because I'd just like to have the option. I think if I could change my facial expression occasionally, I'd actually become a nicer guy, and would be able to stay out of trouble completely... law abiding... actively involved in the betterment of my community and a boon to my neighborhood and family. Sincerely, The Joker.

You twisted fiend. Next time, you're going down for good. That's a promise.
Season's Greetings – Batman

I'd Love To Stay and Hear the Context, But I'd Rather Keep Walking

2011-09-10T15:48:00.001-07:00

A shirtless guy pacing his livingroom, on the phone, heard through the front window: "so... I do raspberry syrup down my left forearm. And I'm doin' slidin'. Y'know? Y'know how it is?" (Uh... yeah, sure.)

Shock-yellow mullet/mohawk combo. Fu Manchu facial hair. Tattoos on every inch of body. Sleeveless t-shirt and engineer's boots. With his spotted pit bull on a very long leash. Sitting at an outdoor coffee venue chatting up (how do these guys do it?) an attractive woman in business attire: "I go inside sometimes, but they make me feel awkward in there."

Parent, yelling across park at wayward youngster: "Brandon! Don't pet the water!"

Big guy in shorts and spats gets out of creaky 80s sedan to greet tall skinny guy in shorts and spats across the street: "Yo dawg whassup! Fugginbeautyday, isn't it?" (I'm going to try that one on my pastor this Sunday.)

Two elderly women walking ahead of me suddenly stop in their tracks, and part to either side of the walkway to let me through. Winded, but with a smile: "Sorry, we just passed our oh-shit distance."
_________________________________

HORRIFYING TALES OF... PASTRY!

In 2002 I worked at a large supermarket bakery department in Washington state. Part of my daily routine was to refill the donut case whenever it got sparse, and keep the donuts nicely arranged in pleasing aesthetic display. As time went on, I realized a few regular customers were, in effect, keeping tabs on my donut schedule. They knew about when I'd be pushing the big rolling tower-cart of fresh donuts out to the floor, to restock the self-serve case. One of them was a blind man, whose cane I could hear clicking toward me. I soon learned it meant that I should pull out two large cinnamon twists, in reserve. He'd ask if they were the best ones in the case, and I assured him they were, as I slid them into a bag for him. "I trust you, dude. The guy that used to do this would give me the cruddy ones he couldn't sell."

My favorite customer was Della, the "tall Texan lady." I loved her Lone Star drawl, as thick as boot leather. Her hair was snowy, worn long, down past her shoulders, with a streak of jet-black down the right side. Maple bars were her passion. One day she snuck up behind me. "Two big ones." I knew her voice, and by that time I knew what she meant. I found the two biggest maple bars without raising from my position, and swiveled around to present them to her. She smiled.

My other favorite old donut enthusiast was Anna. She'd put her soft little hand on my arm, and point deep into the donut case. She'd whisper, like it was top-secret. "Get me that great big chocolate thing there." I sometimes felt like I was climbing into the donut case to locate the exact treasure she desired. Once, I got for her the largest cinnamon roll the baker had made that morning, directly out of the tower-cart, rather than the case, which was technically against the rules. "My doctor says I'm not to have such things," she said, then beamed with self-assuredness, "but I'm 85 years old, and my doctor can kiss my boney butt." Rest in peace, Anna, if you are not still with us.

My least favorite was unfortunately a regular customer as well. I forced myself to forget her name, but I can picture her in my head as if she were painted by Norman Rockwell after a few stiff drinks. I recall her only as the "snicker woman." She had that classic little half-snort that she used to punctuate her statements if she disapproved of anything you said to her or did for her. A typical encounter would be her suddenly appearing at the counter with a loaf of national brand bread from the bread aisle. "What's the difference between this and the bread yer sellin' here?"

Not really having any insider bakery expertise to wield, I resorted to stating the obvious. "Well, that bread is baked at some factory and shipped here overnight. Our bakery bread is made here, and most likely fresh this morning."

"Why!!"

Why? Why exactly does a large supermarket bake its own bread (as markets have for decades), then also offer the prepackaged national bread (as they also have for decades)? I told her it was so that we could offer her all available bread options.

She decided I was getting smart with her, which I was. "Well I think yer all fulla shit," she said, with her patented snicker. She tossed the national bread in her cart and defiantly rolled on. She came in nearly every day.

But my all-time favorite bakery moment was the night Husso became indignant.

Husso was a large, blond master-race baker from Russia, who worked the night shift – he would bake specialty items like raisin-cinnamon loaf, poundcake, white and chocolate layers for the Wedding Cake Designer, and other items in quantity, that required a level of focus and discipline that just wasn't doable during a bustling shopping day. Husso considered himself a culinary artiste, and wasn't afraid to tell you so. "They just bake... but I AM HUSSO." It was pretty impressive for a guy who worked at a bleepin' supermarket!

At about 2:00 a.m., he'd clean the kitchen for the all-important Donut Man who'd arrive at 4:00 a.m. Sometimes the donut guy wouldn't show, and Husso would, without complaint, work a double shift and produce the following day's supply of donutage.

It was around 9:30 p.m., and I was in charge of closing down the front counter for the night. Husso had just arrived and was busy prepping for his shift. In the middle of the bakery stood the Mighty Donut Tower, still about a third full from a slow donut day. Day-old donuts are usually arranged in those large pink boxes with plastic windows in the lid. Always remember... pre-boxed donuts = leftovers.

Out of the corner of my eye, I witnessed Husso sneak around the donut tower, raise the cover and snitch one.

He just as quickly disappeared back into the kitchen. I wondered why he felt he needed to sneak around. He was in charge. Hell, if the donut man had gone on another bender, it's possible that Husso had even made this particular batch. They were his anyway. Bakers are allowed. It's code-named "quality control."

A few minutes later, Husso did it again. He sneaked open the cover, grabbed something, and zipped back out of sight. I paused what I was doing, in amazement, and looked to see where he'd gone. Damn, Husso, if you're hungry, don't be shy about it. Grab an armload. And toss one my way while you're at it!

About ten minutes later I had mentally skipped over it, and was trying to concentrate on getting my work done, so to leave on time – my shift ended at 10:30. Just then, Husso snitched another donut. And he looked me right in the eye as he did. He motioned me over... "Rhoberr... come." 'Rhoberr' was how he said 'Robert.' And he'd said "come" with a hint of alternate-lifestyle butch-seductress. I froze.

"Rhoberrr... come here, I show you sometink."

What have I got to lose, I wondered? I made up my mind to remain calm, remain CLOTHED, and not walk directly under the ceiling mounted security cam.

I followed Husso into the kitchen, and discovered he was not eating any of the donuts he'd swiped. He was WEIGHING them.

A medium-size apple fritter sat perched on a large shiny metal scale. "Look dis..." Husso sighed, pointing to the digital read-out. "Eight ounce." Husso never spoke in plurals... ever.

"Yeah, eight ounces. So?"

"Look how small. Eight ounce of dough, to make THAT! They waaaaaaasste." He said this like Lex Luthor. The world was about to kneel in fear at Husso's white-sneakered feet. They wwwaaaaaaaaassste... I haaaaate theeeemmmmmmm."

He swatted the apple fritter away and replaced it with another one, much bigger – about twice as big as the previous fritter. "Look... this one I MAKE."

Five ounce... er, ounces.

"Look at this one," Husso breathed, like a master chef presenting the main course at a White House fundraiser. "Only five ounce of dough, look how big, how fluffy... it good, yeah."

"Yeah," I said, unsure if he was going to make me eat something out of retribution – like the "evil" fritter that he'd just back-handed into the trashcan.

"Their fritter NO-GOOD. Husso's fritter GOOD."

For a minute I flashed on Boris Karloff in "Bride of Frankenstein."

He continued, "they waste so much here. I make twice as many donut, half the money. But no, they get bastard to make donut."

"That's a shame, Husso," said I. "Yeah, they'd sure be smart to put you on the donut shift."

"Hell no, I want to live in daylight. And I want to sing."

The conversation was taking a turn for the surreal, but I hung tough. "Oh, you sing too?"

"Yes, Husso sing, and bake expertly. Donut. French bread – a thousand loaf a day. In Russia, I bake donut in afternoon, and at night sing in club. You know, like a nightclub."

"Wow."

"Husso make donut... sing country, rock and what you call light-rock. Mellow rock."

"Ballads."

"No... donut. And I sing."

It went on like that for five more minutes, then he brought the discussion full circle. "But this place, they get bastard to make donut. I will not stoop to bastard. I am Husso."

That said it all. Husso and I were pals after that. He had allowed me into the Golden Fritter Circle of his confidence, and I felt honored as I made my way down the dark sidewalk, munching on a free cinnamon twist gifted me for the trip home.

Mid-August Hurlings

2011-08-22T02:28:00.000-07:00

DAMN POETRY CORNER RUNS AMOK

Thank you for a day of laughter I won't soon forget.
Thank you for an evening stroll against a gold sunset.
Thank you for your kneecap, peeking out a parted robe.
Thank you for the candlelight and its warm romantic strobe.
Thank you for an enchanting night.
Too soon was dawn's reprieve.
Thank you for having a home to go to,
I thought you'd never leave.
____________________________

If a Ferrari in the McDonald's drive-thru isn't a sign of the Apocalypse... what is?
____________________________

I was at the place where I regularly get my hair cut, this morning. An attractive Korean lady barber took me right away, no waiting. She sat me in her chair, and flung the giant bib around my neck. Just as she began clipping, my usual barber, a Korean man, strode in. "Sorry," I said, "you can get me twice next time," I joked! "Hoho, Mistah Rob," he answered, "no – last time was enough!"
____________________________

Funny how a strange weekend can make one long for the normalcy of a Monday morning, at the job you hate.
____________________________

Oh, by the way, I've given profundity the night off, in case you hadn't noticed.
____________________________

I recently saw actor John Lithgow in an incredible performance he gave about a man struggling with Alzheimer's, that unfortunately was undermined utterly by the very movie that contained it: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." I only saw half the film, because of something that happened to me that has never before. I'm beginning to think I am viscerally allergic to the mimicked reality of today's CGI movie effects. Movies rely so heavily upon them now. They are essentially ultra-hightech cartoons, yet they are rapidly coming to replace flesh and blood. "Apes" put Lithgow, an artist of remarkable scope, in a backseat – to rest its hopes on the "emoting" of a computer-graphic; the film's actual star. The ape "Caesar" was portrayed in the original film this one is based on, by Roddy McDowell, another actor I'd watch read the phonebook, rather than "marvel" at the unreal escapades of this CGI counterpart. Anyway, I had to get up and trot to the mensroom at the 1-hour mark... to hurl. Really, I had to blow chunks. After I cleaned it up – the cinema staff were all on toke break – I decided not to return to the film. Watching all the right-brain grating just-a-bit-too-odd animation of animals not actually photographed... and so many real actors pretending to interact with them... made me physically ill. Like a rollercoaster designed by a sadist. I'll let some geek in a coffeeshop tell me how it ended, thanks.

August Randomness: In which I firmly cement my literary credibility

2011-08-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

It's especially difficult to find Houdini action figures – all those mysteriously empty bubble packs on the racks...

Last night at a Chinese restaurant I saw "Kung Fu Chicken" on the menu. I asked the waiter what it was. He said "oh, that's our dinner special... it's guaranteed to go down fighting."

At the table across from mine:
WOMAN: "Where were you?"
MAN: "The mensroom... it's just one thing after another in there."

I spent a half-hour following the YouTube meme of the song "Sukiyaki." A catchy melody, but it seems to bring out the latent weirdness in people. One encounters everything from bug-eyed Yankee drummers in Bangkok nightclubs to Urban Boyband harmonizers, even to Indonesian Everly Brothers imitators – singing in German. Not to mention Japanese Beef Hotbowl recipe videos that use the song as a background track. And the translations of the lyrics leave a lot to be desired – no two are even remotely alike. The song is apparently about both unrequited love and eternal union, long distance oaths of loyalty, and even perhaps the musical transcript of "Brunch With Der Führer." This song is a multi-faceted lullaby into insanity. It has to be the melody that attracts me, and even that played often enough may be suitable mewzak for prison camps. Who needs therapy?

Speaking of which, here's a dream I just had recently with plenty of Freudian undertones – perking up already, aren't ya?

I walk into the mensroom at work to find employees of both genders lined up for turns at the urinal. Yes, it got weird fast, but you were warned. Anyway, I take my place in line... and I see that in the corner of the mensroom is a lounge area, with a casual no-host bar, and large plush beanbag chairs for people to chat and relax while they wait. A female co-worker (portrayed here by an individual who no longer works at my place of employment) offers to let me pull up a beanbag next to hers, which I do. She informs me with a smile, that she "owes me a bowl of chili." Yeah, I know, I'm starting to squirm myself just writing this. Anyhow... I and this lady commence a discussion of favorite chili recipes while we sit sunken into our plush beanbags in the mensroom waiting for a shot at a urinal. It's then we notice there is a huge venomous snake in the mensroom with us. I turn to warn my grandmother, dozing in a beanbag behind mine, that "the snake is back." Your mind is racing trying to interpret this steeping mess, isn't it? Everyone makes for the exit, but being the gentleman my mother raised, I bravely hold the door and shuttle everyone out ahead of me... only to find myself trapped alone in the mensroom with the snake. I begin to climb out of its path... up onto a toilet tank... then higher, to balance myself straddling a toilet stall partition. I notice I am wearing thin black dress socks and rather expensive looking leather shoes... laced, not pull-on. I then decide my ruse is no good, and jump down. The snake knows I'm there and is stalking me now. I let it chase me through the door, where, once its head pokes out, I slam the door closed, decapitating the monster. The SWAT team arrives. I wave them off... got it handled, guys. Do I get a kiss thank-you from any of the ladies who were in the mensroom... whose fine little butts I saved from a painful, venom-soaked demise? No, because they're all married. AWAKE.

DAMN POETRY CORNER UNLEASHED

I just brought home a truckload of farts.
A big truckload of farts I wish weren't mine.
A truckload of farts and you'll not find better.
A whiff of corn.
A hint of cheddar.
Don't turn up your nose at my truckload of farts.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand scene.

Sucking 20 Years Later

2011-08-13T00:19:00.000-07:00

Oh Ross, we apologize. That day you said would come, when we'd remember your words and hang our heads, has arrived.

The year was 1992; the presidential election cycle of exactly two decades ago. America had something pretty rare happening – a 3-way race for the White House, in which the alternate party candidate was actually making the dialogue a "trialogue," and had odds-makers wondering if he might just be the dark horse who could deny both Red and Blue teams of the win.

On the right was George Herbert Walker Bush, Dubya's dad, attempting to win a second term four years out of the shadow of Ronald Reagan. On the left was a "golden boy" candidate named William Jefferson Clinton who seemed to be channeling the muse of Kennedy, appealing to a burgeoning Gen-X voter core.

In that enigmatic middle-ground stood a demure, trophy-eared monolith with a 1950s haircut, named Ross Perot – a fantastically successful business magnate and pragmatic traditionalist, who unlike the other two, claimed he came to the contest with reluctance, but for a passionate devotion. He didn't need the Presidency – it would actually represent a pay cut to him. His was a call to duty alone. He was "drafting" himself. His country needed him.

While the Red and Blue factions bombarded the nation with buzzwords and sound-bites as usual, Perot went about campaigning in a bizarrely quaint fashion. Instead of mudslinging ads and slick marketing, Perot bought half-hour chunks on network television, and methodically presented his plan for rescuing the nation from the clutches of the Politicrats... with cue-card sized graphs and pie charts that looked hot from the toner roll of his Lexmark desktop printer. He presented the vague impression of an obsessed newscaster who'd spent the afternoon collaborating with an Office Depot copier clerk.

He often punctuated his points with homespun metaphors, like "gettin' the old jalopy back on the road," and "convincing the ducks to walk in a row again." He was as magnetic as a favorite grandpa, as entertaining as a marathon Saturday Night Live skit, and most striking of all, he was utterly sincere.

And what no doubt scared his Red and Blue opponents in private, was that in his wrinkled little southern-drawled way, he made sense. He was not a shill for a mere party philosophy – he really wanted to "fix" the country. And once done, he'd return to the private sector where the pay and the perks were better.

His basic demeanor in each debate – in which Bush and Clinton were forced to tolerate his unprecedented grassroots gravitas – was a symbolic Post-it Note reading "Tired of the bullshit yet?"

He chose as his running mate a gritty "right stuff" era Navy pilot, Vice Admiral James Stockdale – a gruff old crewcut centurion who had no desire to graduate a Toastmaster's course. In a vice-presidential debate, pitted against the Red Team's Dan Quayle and Team Blue's Al Gore, Stockdale answered their eloquent over-souling with dry, stoic grunts-on-point. His most famous retort, when asked his view of Gore's economic theories, simply burped, "They won't work." Period. Silence. Not even a lifted eyebrow to signal the moderator that he was done. Beating the five-minute buzzer by 4:59.

Satirists loved him.

It ranked as the most surreal election year America had witnessed in memory. Perot's biggest obstacle, which ultimately he could not hurdle, was his image as a maverick industrialist, a CEO, rather than a diversified statesman and diplomat. What he succeeded in doing on election night, despite having been higher in the polls leading up to it than either Bush or Clinton individually, was to divide the conservatives in sufficient numbers to give the Oval Office to Bill Clinton, who carried the night with only about 40% of the vote, and who would go on to hold a full two-term Presidency.

What makes Perot suddenly relevant twenty years later, amid the election cycle leading to 2012, are his prophetic little Kinko's pie charts.

Perot's most remembered quote, was his commentary on the then-hottest political bone in the dogfight – the North American Free Trade Agreement. Both Reds and Blues touted it as the medicine America needed to make the economy boom, and argued only on its nuance, and how to go about assimilating its supposed benefits into the system. Perot instead, spoke of a "giant sucking sound." He said that sucking sound would be the nation's job market circling the toilet.

He said we would rue the day we allowed NAFTA. It would ultimately amount to a financial bitch-slap on Americans, on a galactic scale... in oh, about... TWENTY YEARS.

Dingdingdingdingdingdingding. Good answer.

Now we know. That twenty-years has passed, like a glittery parade marching south. And unlike either Bush, Clinton, Quayle, Gore and every politico and pundit of the early 1990s, Ross Perot appears to have known exactly what he was talking about.

He'd won straw polls galore, but the media lived in denial of him. He wasn't a member of either established cadre. A "kook."

This year we again have a platoon of standard agendafied, party-line towing, well-groomed shills competing for a shot at the nation's highest office, currently occupied by an individual who was carried there on a crest of national dissatisfaction with the status quo... who has proven stale, whose policies appear to have been theory-based only. Whose message of hope has been drowned out by that terrible sucking sound that Ross Perot nailed, long long ago.

The nation is falling into the trance of tribalism. To those who've woken from the Matrix, the 2012 Presidential Election will NOT be a battle between Red and Blue ideologies.

Like Perot, the lone voice in the wilderness crying out for a revolution away from Party Agendas, in the name of loyalty to country, is again confined to the Media's Deadzone. Ron Paul, ongoing straw poll champion, is ignored, because he isn't in the country club of media approval. Satirists can't figure him out. Pundits wish he'd go away.

Instead, Mitt Romney basks in the pole position, shrouded by a mysterious "front-runner" fog, based on some imagined magnetism equally as solid. And in the wings, another Texas governor, Rick Perry, in mere hours as I write this, is about to announce his candidacy. Something he denied he'd do... but was being groomed for, undoubtably. A late-entry, he somehow has every campaign strategy and accessory in place – his mighty slogan-emblazoned jet sits waiting in the hangar. He steps forward with the other combatants somehow already knowing they are defeated.

Apollo Creed. Ron "Rocky" Paul will symbolically stand alone, his wiry muscles thin but willing – while the crowd of glass-jawed posturers will pretend for a time to draw swords, but use the move to silently finesse their way toward the exits.

2012 will be a scripted confrontation, between "chosen ones." Perry and Obama share something in common that is as surreal as the 1992 election. Both inherited budgets – Obama as President, Perry as Texas Governor – from George Bush. That means that neither can pull that trump card against the other when the mudslinging starts. Interesting, huh?

The winner of 2012 will not be the just, but the better purveyor of The Message. The Matrix. The Tribal Dance.

Twenty years hence, will we again look back with a saddened, worse-bruised brow? As we realize much too late, that once more a rough-edged man who did not mold with our comfort zone had offered to reluctantly put his nobility on hold to rescue the country with tough love? Like Perot had?

If only we'd listened?

For Father's Day

2011-06-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

Groucho Marx once sang a song on television called "Father's Day," by the old tinpan alley man, Harry Ruby. I remember it on the Dick Cavett Show*, but I also recall he sang it on the Tonight Show once too. The Cavett Show rendition was the better of the two, for it had a comic poetry to it, that only Groucho could create – despite the song really being about something a tad ribald. Not Father's Day, but the comedic underline of "I love you dad, even if I might be a bastard."

Now, the song has a secondary punchline concerning my shildhood. No, I'm not a bastard myself... I know that much. But as a Father's Day joke, I found a recording of Groucho singing this song, on an LP – we didn't have the Internet then – and I marked down the lyrics. I drew a cartoon of my Dad, and printed the lyrics on the back of the drawing, folded it, and gave it to him as a Father's Day card. It was one of the few times in my life that I actually made the old man crack a smile – at least a smile in front of me. He really liked it.

It was 1979, and as it turned out, it was the last Father's Day we had him. He passed away less than a year later.

Let me take a paragraph to backtrack... it will help the story. My dad had been a rough-necked athiest all his life. A critical illness caused him to accept conversion, on what would have been his deathbed. His doctors had given him two years to live at most... he was at the finish line. He got up, and lived four more years just to spite them. My dad dove into the church with the same hard-edged tenacity that he'd practiced as a non-believer, but he still did things his own stubborn way, which sometimes made my Mother's eyes roll, and the minister's brow tremble, even though they knew his intentions were in the name of his own calloused-handed attempt at saintliness.

Well, here's the punchline. Bringing us back to Groucho, and the song "Father's Day." My dad liked that joke card so much... during that morning's Sunday service, he got up, asked the minister if he could take the podium, and perching his drug-store generic reading specs on his bumpy old nose like a professor, read those lyrics to the entire congregation.

As my dad, beaming with delight, stepped down, folding my Father's Day card to put it in his pocket, I saw that the lyrics' double meaning wasn't lost on the minister, who stared a hole in me from across the house. I tried to make my expression "I didn't know he'd get up and PREACH IT."

I love you, Dad.

____________________________________

*Click the blog title to watch the Cavett Show clip.

Pondering randomly upon a Saturday in June

2011-06-04T18:39:00.001-07:00

At the bank, at the teller's window next to the one where I stood (are they still called "tellers"?) was a category of person I've noticed a number of times, the Disenfranchised Philosopher. A person who looks exactly like the life he or she leads: disheveledly marching to a distant drum just a beat out of sync with all the other distant drums... a walking solo act... who never speaks but to expound... and whose only topic is inevitably an update on his or her Personal Epic. In epically worded terms. Explained downward.

"Hello... I'm presently searching, along with thirty million others. I'm wading through unfortunate circumstances in the quest for solvency..."

I think he actually just needed to transfer fifty bucks from savings to checking. But why couch his need so mundanely? I agree! Don't let a week-unwashed plaid shirt and grungy cross-trainers lead anyone to believe they see a mere pedestrian before them! Excelsior... snurfff...

––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Technology has served one other purpose – to create a whole new higher level of idiot.

A lot is said about the benefits of a sunny day, both emotionally and physically, but a rainy day that is brisk and silvery – as opposed to grey – offers its own brand of beauty and mellow inner reward.

Sitting at home, I think I should get outside and walk, and enjoy the exercise and pleasant freedom. When I do, however, I think I'd rather be at home in my easychair enjoying the downtime and pleasant freedom.

I'm constantly amazed that there are still people who go online, and behave as though the rest of the Internet doesn't exist. "Hey has anyone seen that video of the talking dog that everyone's talking about online? How can I see it??"

––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A DREAM FROM 2002

I was a major league baseball pitcher – and I was good. During a game, this loudmouth came up to bat, who thought he'd get me to crack under enough verbal abuse. But he hardly got to put that theory to test, because I had him figured out and beaned him on the first pitch, hard, in the knee. Split his kneecap. He crumpled to the ground in screaming agony – for all intent and purpose innocent, for I had not given him opportunity to provoke what I'd dealt him in preemptive fashion. I walked over, grabbed his bat from the ground and tossed it into the outfield. Then I flipped his team off. The dugouts emptied.

Sound barrier, 1969!: The Apocalypse Begins!

2011-05-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

Overheard today:

A rather fetching little siren in tank-top, shorts and way-too-big headphones, chatting up a wifi-laptop dude at the coffeeshop this morning: "See, like my vocabulary is like, awesome, but, you know..."

Methman tweaking at alternate coffeeshop, later same morning, out loud to himself: "If you wanna bring up electroshock... I'm down with that."

ULTIMATE NON-SEQUITUR OF THE YEAR AWARD:
An even stranger, more eccentric old loner than myself, traveling with his world-in-one-backpack, his beanie pulled low over his forehead... completing a journey to the other side of the crosswalk: "Sound barrier, 1969!"

These are certain signs of The Apocalypse, no?

CHURCH LETS OUT

The coffeeshop I frequent was more interesting than usual this Saturday. Lots of young people, formally dressed, marched through casually and kept the baristas from getting bored. The young men all had on ties and expensive shoes. The ladies wore... is this where church-formal has gone? I gotta start attending again. I think I rediscovered how much I love legs. Though I'm sure there were mace-misters attached to each set of swaying hips. At least this dirty old man can fain harmlessness, seated at a far-off table, hugging a coffee mug. There was a run on choco-lattés and espressos – that's what I seemed to hear repeated with every register-ring. I guess the minister had ended the sermon early, so everyone could get home in time for the Big "R," and they were starting their last day on Earth by getting their gourmet caffeine freak on. If the way those parishionettes were dressed was any clue, I'd say there's some serious after-church commandment-breakin' taking place about now. Damn.

Enraptured

2011-05-20T01:58:00.000-07:00

There aren't very many days left – less than a week, as I write this. This Saturday, May 21, 2011... 6:00 p.m. on the dot, yet. The Rapture.

Harold Camping, Presbyterian minister, broadcaster, media CEO and degreed engineer, says so. He's read the Bible cover to cover... several times, worked out the math on his calculator... several times, and has leveled his prediction of the exact time of The End. Several times.

First, whether you are a believer or not, there's something you need to hear. He does not speak for all of Christendom, just his little fanatical corner of it. In fact, there's another key figure in Christianity, that you may have heard of, who disagrees with Harold... Jesus Christ.

Saint Matthew records Him saying, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven." You can keep reading right up to the last page – He never adds "... except Harold Camping."

Camping's self-styled exemption to Christ's proclamation, is courtesy of his engineering degree. He's the guy who took a slide-rule and, durn it, finally ran the numbers – or at least his own wacked interpretation of them. And even Bible scholars who've based their careers on studies of the main prophetic books – Jeremiah, Daniel, Revelation, et al, are a little unsure where Camping got his numbers from. He may say it's the Bible, but... they don't just mismatch slightly, they swing wider out of sync than a poorly dubbed Godzilla movie.

Without going into Harold Histrionics, suffice it to say that he has made a cottage industry over the years of riding the evangelical merry-go-round and grabbing for the brass ring of the Apocalypse.

When it didn't happen in 1988, as Camping promised, he just shrugged, "whoops, I meant 1989." After 1989 came and went with no Rapture, he reset his watch yet again, always simply claiming "I miscounted... sorry. But next time, for sure!"

Some, astonishingly, never held his feet to the fire regarding any of his loose-cannon apostasies.

He has never, to my knowledge, apologized to the throngs of loyal followers who took him at his provenly fallible word, going as far as to gather in their Sunday formals on each of the appointed "end dates" and patiently stand by for the clouds to part on schedule.

If anyone has seriously studied the actual timeline of "Endtime" prophecy, as presented in the Bible, even a non-believing neophyte can see the disservice Camping has perpetrated – devoutly – upon the rest of Christianity; the millions leading lives of humble ardor and fidelity... some waging silent, noble battle against their inner demons in the endeavor... to follow the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And remember, the Endtime officially began after Christ's ascension, according to Paul. So we've been at the precipice for 2,000+ years now. Perhaps that's a little too open-ended an answer for some. But Jesus warned it would come when it is least expected – when everyone was over-confident that it was just a fairy-tale.

Perhaps to militant-level atheists we look foolish anyway, but Camping is proactively adding a tangible layer of validation to that image with his cockeyed zealotry. Or oily charlatanism, if it's that.

To understand the basic flaw of Camping's claims, it pays to be aware of a few things.

1. The Rapture, and Christ's Second Coming, are not the same event.

The Bible clearly does not indicate that Jesus even makes an Earthly appearance at the Rapture. In fact, the Bible doesn't even refer to it as "The Rapture," which is merely a celebrant nickname bestowed upon it by 19th and 20th century religionists. The primary Bible passage referred to, is in the Book of Thessalonians, which describes a future occurrence that – sorry, I won't sugar-coat it for fence-straddlers and doubters – reads like the world's remaining true believers in Christ being swept up in the blink of an eye, just prior to The Tribulation.

Would it really happen like that? What about some Christian piloting an airliner? Are his atheist and agnostic passengers suddenly on their own, trying to land the plane without him? What about the animals of Christian pet owners? Are they stuck locked in a house with stale water and an empty food dish? Lots of nit-picky technical questions hang like barnacles onto the Rapture's "beam-me-up-God" narrative.

Is the Rapture a physical, spiritual or merely symbolic "departure?" Does it happen in a heart-beat? The Bible says the raptured will be "transformed" in the twinkle of an eye. The Book claims, to paraphrase: We shall not all sleep, but will all be changed. The original word means "caught up," or taken away. A quick cut to the chase, as God decides He is no longer patient to sit back and wait for every last believer to grow old, die off and complete the attendance list for the Big Reunion.

An escalation of an itinerary.

Some atheistic folks have once again offered to, magnanimously, adopt all the doggies, kittahs and birdies left behind to fend for themselves after all the Christians selfishly rapture off the planet. It's an attempt to inject an element of indictment into people for certain beliefs that may be more subconsciously self-serving than spiritual.

It's nice to know the "innocent" will find shelter after all the dispassionate religious jerks ethereally jump ship.

But a person who dies leaves their loved ones to carry-on whether prepared or not. Death is part of life's way. Orphans happen. The counter-logic is just as inconvenient, to assume your survivors are completely lost without you is too the epitome of selfism. So which evil is lesser?

Should the Rapture come about, it would only serve to guarantee what is foretold to follow it. If so, it seems a kibble shortage will be the least of Lucky's problems.

2. Camping ignores the elements of the end-scenario that Jesus and the other Biblical Prophets emphasized.

According to Camping, his earlier 1988 marker wasn't the Rapture after all, but simply the opening note of the Tribulation, which has now lasted 23 years...

The Reader's Digest version of The End: The Rapture is the event that signals the commencement of The Tribulation (mankind's darkest hour, which no historian can doubt we've had many many dress-rehearsals for, over the past few decades). The Tribulation lasts approximately seven years, during which one particular world leader – with amazing magnetism, charisma and apparent acumen – graduates to prominence; the guy who may just have the ultimate answer, the "way out" of humanity's expanding quagmire.

Finally, at the 3.5-year mark, he acknowledges that he is indeed The Chosen One spoken of within the algorithm of all the world's belief systems, including even perhaps the secular Sion that atheists have indirectly suspected was due to appear, somehow. He makes it official by ensconcing himself in the newly built Temple, with its restored rituals of Mosaic Law (after the Rapture, you'll still have the Jews, Catholics and Muslims to put up with), which he suspends, in favor of having everyone aim their new age of enlightened "worship" at himself.

He wins over the staunchest non-believers with miracles that seem to mirror those of Jesus in the first century, including, the Bible says, The Resurrection. Even the Nihilists find it difficult to smirk after that neat trick. Will he really perform these wonders, or have unseen help? What epic-cool stuff did your favorite superhero do in that last movie?

The Bible indicates that the entire planet will be able to witness it all – something physically impossible when that prophecy was written. How many cable channels do you have?

In short, the 7-Year Tribulation doesn't kick-start until after The Rapture... not linger for 23 beforehand, as Camping claims is currently underway.

If The Rapture is The Rapture, that is. Some believe you'll be stuck with us through even The Tribulation – wow, you'll really hate it, then.

And no, The Guy won't ever come out and call himself "The Antichrist." Nothing is that simple.

But Jesus, the Christ-Christ, said that when you see all these things in place – though progressive and heroic they may appear, as opposed to dour or doomsday-ish... bada-bing. You missed The Rapture. You're in the Eye of the Tribulation. The blissful societal awakening is about to turn ugly, in a way that "suddenly" just doesn't quite parcel.

3. Finally, Jesus said the actual "End" would not be pre-announced in TV Guide; the very act which Harold Camping has been trying to excel at repeatedly.

When His disciples asked Him how anyone could possibly spot the Beginning of the End, He said the only clue would be the same that pre-flood folks got. "But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."

He's not talking about any rapture there, but the actual Second Coming. A completely different ballgame. Everyone carried on as usual, assured that the only one still believing in an "End of the World" was some kook building a big boat out in the desert.

Maybe it's a tad unnerving that Harold Camping sounds a bit like a modern-day Noah, in that light. He plans to float away while the rest of the world parties toward oblivion. But Camping isn't building an ark, he's shoring up his media branding. He's making himself, and his distracted ministry, a top search-engine term on Google. Nothing more. Nothing. More.

Sad part is, there are still alarming numbers of otherwise well-meaning, good-natured, reasonably intelligent people buying into it. No one rises in the morning with the deliberate idea of "I think I'll surrender my awareness to a cult leader today," but it happens. Ask Manson's loyal, Jim Jones's... Hitler's.

As you ramp up your mock-o-meter to eleven this weekend, and in your mind, box the rest of us Christians in with the Camping Camp as targets of your scorn, please ponder this: What has our society become, that some people might consider their only hope of escape to be a mystical occurrence they can neither fully understand nor explain, much less justify beyond potential cultural ridicule?

As a Christian, I sincerely hope that this Saturday serves as a new enlightenment for Camping's congregation – that they will come away from this empty exercise – from being "owned" again, with a fresh look at themselves. Whether they remain Christians with a new outlook, choose another path or decide to abandon the journey all together, at least it will be a birth of self-honesty within them. I would hope they realize they didn't see Christ in Harold Camping, but another opportunist claiming Christ's divine authority – just as Jesus said they would crop up more and more, as time drew near.

Lastly, my hope, and prayer, is for Camping himself. Will this be the splash that sobers you up, Harold? The drop of cologne in that razor cut on the cheek of your soul?

You are a man of intellect and calculation, Mr. Camping. Both descriptives are usually preceded by the same adjective: "cold."

Ultimately, religious people living just for The Rapture may be akin to anyone who, say, dreams of finding a mysterious suitcase on the beach, filled with $1,000 bills. All of their problems and frustrations wiped away, instantly, and without any government paperwork. You don't have to be religious to harbor that far-off hope.

But even a misplaced satchel of dirty loot comes with a list of built-in difficulties if you overthink it. You couldn't just walk into the bank with that suitcase and make an anonymous deposit, without setting off a few security bells and whistles. Or at least branding yourself. The downside of winning the Lotto is that you give up your hiding place, to claim it.

Christians are not called to twiddle their thumbs, watch QVC, have a Slurpee, and wait for The Rapture as some kind of vindictive "Gotcha" moment for the rest of the world. We are to remain diligent in our faith, until our final reward, whether it really is to participate in some incredible worldwide transformation, or simply take the Big Nap, and wait it out like everyone else throughout history.

Jesus condensed the Ten Commandments into One Big One: Love one another. Do that One, and the original Big Ten seem to fall into place anyway. And that's the real story of The End. If it takes one more weekend, or 2,000 more years, it will all fall into place exactly how it is supposed to. All pilotless airliners and housebound cats not withstanding.

_____________________________

Post-Doomsday Update...

Harold Camping's only real miscalculation may have been his own longevity.

When he first named May 21, 2011 as the new "End," it was the mid-90s, and Camping was already in his mid-70s, agewise. He probably reasoned that that was long enough to keep his followers financing his ministry, and him, until the end of his life. He didn't figure he'd live long enough to have to live it down.

_____________________________

Funny how the more you ponder something, the more nefarious it can become. Is Harold Camping evil? Probably not in a Darth Vader sort'a way. But his intentions are assuredly self-centered, and his regard for third-party consequences, small.

Think about this: Camping never cared whether or not his prediction materialized. May 21st, 2011 was the date his accountatnt told him he'd have enough cash to retire, thanks to his congregation of loyal donators. Could it be that simple?

Random May, or May Not

2011-05-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a coffeeshop, next to two tables full of people speaking in various languages other than English. Each table sported a hand-written, block-lettered sign, designating which language was to be spoken by that particular gathering. The one closest to me read, "FRANCAIS." So it was a little disconcerting to see the individual leading the discourse at that table to be barking in German. The others stared apprehensively. Someone had become very upset at this otherwise amicable bi-lingual encounter group.

At the next table, the sign read, "ESPAÑOL." At least there they were speaking in the tongue that coincided with their sign. Then a new participant showed up; a woman blinged out beyond comprehension, with big hair and long nails, who greeted everyone in an awkward attempt at Spanish, with her volume knob turned to eleven. To make herself just a tad more insufferable, she liked to accompany her topic points with rhythmic clapping of her metal-bedecked fingers. "Mu-cho-gu-STO!" Whack-whack-whack-whack.

So we had Mega-Lung Bling-a-trix at the Spanish table, and Hermann Goering having a bunker meltdown at the French table. I sipped my coffee as inconspicuously as I imagined possible.

Then something remarkable began to happen... one by one, the non-talkers began to excuse themselves. In about twenty minutes, both squeaky wheels were down to one conversational partner at their respective tables. The loudmouth knocked it down to a respectable decibel level, and began speaking English. Meanwhile, the angry Teuton likewise reverted to The King's, and seemed a degree saner. And both seemed to default to the same topic – the colleges they'd attended, the countries they'd visited, and the advanced degrees they were hoping to earn.

The people who'd begged out of the conversations, were the native speakers of each language, who'd politely indicated they'd had enough.

Never have Americans with advanced educations made this college dropout feel so hopeless. The big-hair lady glanced at me, then smiled. I pretended I was deaf.

-------------------------

DAMN POETRY CORNER

I had an old dog dumber'n crap
Way too big to get up in my lap
Sniffed on my face when I took a nap
Dang old ugly mutt

When he was a pup I named him Blue
A question-mark stare and breath like glue
His hobby was makin' piles o' poo
Dang old ugly mutt

He died and I dug a garden plot
'Neath his old favorite shady spot
You should see now all the flowers he's got
Dang old ugly mutt

When I move on to my home in the skies
Won't be quite Heaven no matter how it tries
Unless I'm greeted by those vacant brown eyes...
Dang old ugly mutt

April Quickies... Not What You're Thinking

2011-04-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Overheard recently – you supply the context:

"She really likes karaoke, so let's not go there."

"No honey, walking behind you is an endless parade of joy."

"You could go in there, drop a pennie, and fart, and it wouldn't matter."

"It's not like you wanna bite the head off."

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TMI + Vaudeville:

Powder blue, XL too,
Caught some accidental poo –
Some dumpster diver gets my drawers!

Can't go play, it's laundry day,
These doo-doo undies cannot stay –
Some dumpster diver gets my drawers!

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Only a tattoo-sleeved war vet in a wheelchair can get away with saying at Denny's:

"How does a one-eyed turd sniper with false teeth and three toes missing go about getting an order of bacon & pancakes from one of you clap-magnets?"

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From the Banana Split Room high atop the fine Hotel Crystal, it's Red Cherry and his Rainbow Sprinkles, whipping up the cream of yesterday's hits – sweet music with taste! Featuring the treacly vocals of Miss Vanilla Scoops, and laying it on thick is the 'Old Ladler' himself, Sir Upchoc O'Latt! Also singing second layer is Cara Mell, and Pia Nutz!

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It took me 45 years to realize I'm nobody, and the world was dropping hints all along!

You just realized you're an aloof over-acheiver? Well, now you've GONE and DONE IT!

No, You're Not Just Like The Rest Of Us, Mr./Ms. Politician...

2011-04-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

Just like the rest of us, huh?

You have guaranteed travel accommodations, that we pay for. We have self-funded travel that we must budget, or even severely limit in order to make our finances stretch the month.

Your paycheck and personal security are locked in for a definite time period, regardless of what the economy does.

You have stipends and monetary allowances above and beyond your salary for additional mundane expenses. We must make one monthly sum suffice for every expenditure that arrises.

You can intentionally abstain from your job without being docked pay, much less dismissed for non-attendance.

You don't have an Employee Union because you don't need one; your "employee rights" and huge benefits are guaranteed, and irrevocable, and should you come under scrutiny for abusing them, you have a guaranteed opportunity to address matters publicly in a national forum, and then vote on them too.

You're paid to argue: to speak out and act on agendas based on your philosophies and opinions – that you can safely claim reflect the views of those who elected you. We form our opinions based on the potential consequences of your actions, speak and argue them in public at risk of alienation or even reprisal, and have to make our living doing something else perhaps unrelated, even possibly contrary to our hopes and ideals.

If your "views" parrot those of middle-management (The House Speaker or Majority Chair) you are granted unspoken permission to bend the company rules, to sabotage accomplishment.

We get the opportunity to affect your future once every two, four or six years. You get to affect our future every day.

You can vote yourself a raise, not just when you need one, but when you think it would be nice – regardless of the cost of living.

You have large, sometimes non-gratis volunteer, staffs to help you accomplish daily mundane tasks.

You have access to networks of contacts to aid you in securing your future once your employment has been terminated, in case you aren't set for life via the diligent efforts of action committees working in your best interests.

You can exempt yourself from the laws you mandate upon the rest of us.

You are given waivers, sometimes mysteriously so, from the so-called "beneficial" government programs you shill.

You get away with accumulating massive debt, then pass the burden onto a non-blood related successor. We're stuck with ours, to the grave if we can't even the balance. Then it's our children's problem.

Corporations seek out mutually beneficial relationships with you. We get sent to collections.

You enjoy guaranteed deferment from any type of duty that would place you in personal danger.

You can successfully argue that your responsibilities are merely symbolic.

The press allows you a broad forum whenever you want to speak out on something that concerns you, and proactively seeks out your opinions on current affairs. And you are taken seriously, no matter how disconnected from reality your views are.

You're the one making our country a hated enemy among the nations, and a laughing stock among their leaders. We're the ones getting shot at.

Just in time for March: April!

2011-03-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

If Denny's gave out fortune cookies, there'd be one that says "You again?"

Enlightenment should never venture out unaccompanied by self-awareness.

You aren't crazy. I'm not crazy. We just buy different brands of Normal.

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Up next on Country Station WISC:

She went back to the party and made me independent.

He took up with a Walker, now our union's on the curb.

She's right, I'm left, it's wrong.

South of the border, down Illinois way.

She's Keepin' Madison Honest, I'm Keepin' Milwaukee Famous.

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FUN AT THE DOCTOR'S

I went recently to see my nutritionist. Every visit, they have me take off my shoes and socks, and stand on an electronic scale – a metal plate – connected to a computer, that also apparently can tally up such exotic measurements as body fat, muscle mass, pulse rate and such, while it mundanely records weight too. I hopped on, in what has become a routine, and the nurse monitoring my numbers on-screen casually danced her fingers on the keyboard with a chirpy "all done!" I put my shoes back on and followed her to the examination room, where I'd wait for my doctor.

While I sat in yawny meditation, staring at the back issues of "Shape" and "Self" magazines, my ears caught what sounded like a sudden commotion outside the door of the exam room – something a little out of the norm for a sedately efficient doctor's office. I leaned in the chair, toward the door, nudged it open a slight crack, and peeked out. Apparently, from what I heard, there was a woman wandering around the medical complex somewhere, whose numbers were so out of whack, that she was a walking emergency... and no one could find her.

Several nurses hustled about – that double-fast clip that indicates their next step is to whip out cell phones and alert security. At every turn of the corner: "Did you find her?" "No, they're looking down the hall, in the restroom..." Etc. Etc. Etc.

At once, one of them said something like, "hold it..." I think I was the only one who heard this, because nobody else sounded like they were "holding it." The nurse who had weighed me, entered the room where I was. "Robert...?"

"That's me," I said, "long time, no see." I grinned, in my usual, habitually annoying, just-made-a-funny custom.

She was looking at my scale print-out. "Oh good gawd..." This didn't sound good. "I marked you down as female." She then turned and addressed the rest of the office. "Hold up, everyone." The mysterious wandering woman about to explode, had been located. It was me. The numbers were perfectly fine, for a man. A man my size.

For the next five minutes, as she took me back to the electronic broiler plate to re-weigh me as the correct gender, I was the center of attention amid an entire office of 20- and 30-something females carrying clipboards and thermometers. I'll take what I can get.

Februarandumb

2011-02-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

I'll go Confucius one better... If a tree falls in the forest, how does it know whether anyone is listening? If you're alone in a sealed room, how do you know you're anywhere?

I was out on the sidewalk in town recently, and four men passed by me in a line; two of them were identical twins, the type who trouble themselves to dress identically as well. Only, the twins were the first and fourth men in line, respectively, as they passed – like human bookends. The experience was just a tad unnerving.

I've made this comment before, but it never ceases to amaze me how bicyclists wear all this trendy streamlined protective gear, and literally brandish their physical fitness at the rest of the non-bicycling world they navigate through... then habitually run stop signs, something no conscientiously life-savoring individual would ever do, on foot or in a vehicle. Proof that arrogance is actually an evolutionary safety valve to help keep the population down.

Whenever I go somewhere to browse, like at a bookstore, I find either beautiful women congregating, or spaced out wanderers. Never an even mixture. It makes me wonder which group I belong to – and I'm definitely not a woman.

I have about five different versions of "Clair de Lune" on my iTunes list. I enjoy listening to them in succession, like a great debate where I agree fully with all points of view.

A mental exercise I do – that I think probably places me among a very small group of human beings indeed, if I'm not in fact the only one, or certifiable – is making up lists of comically outrageous words. A few past examples would be like, "glittertwit," "rectalooza" and "crotchurion." I was a little distracted one afternoon, at a coffeeshop, engaged in this little writing warm-up... coming up with some real groaners and eye-ball rollers. I felt a presence behind me, and turned my head to look. An elderly woman with a five-or-six year old granddaughter were reading over my shoulder. "You see," said the woman to the girl, "how important it is to practice your spelling." I could only grin, like an enterbuttual.

Ranuary Jandomness

2011-01-16T00:09:00.000-08:00

Why doesn't Victoria's Secret offer senior discounts? Just curious.

I need to find a cold remedy stronger than M&Ms.

Diabetes means you must greatly reduce or eliminate most great tasting food. Neuropathy means you are now a slapstick comedian below the waist, and impotent. So basically, all I can do with a prostitute is take her to Safeway and buy her groceries.

Just thinking... if Charles Lindbergh had flown backwards from Paris to New York, he'd still have the record.

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I went with my nearsighted, partially deaf uncle, to stroll a Farmers' Market, and we came to a BBQ Rotisserie with some tasty looking chickens on the spit. "Let's get lunch," I said.

My uncle looked and said, "just a minute, I need to tell this guy something." He stepped up to the man running the rotisserie and said, "buddy, I hate to break this to you, but not only is your crank organ not making any music, but I think your monkeys are on fire."

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I did something today that very soon the DHS may consider an act of terrorism: I sat in public, writing. Not on a computer, but with a pen and paper notebook. In our new culture of instant incrimination, writing in longhand may be interpreted as subversive behavior. Because I may be... what? Taking names? Drawing a diagram for a plot? Casing the joint and taking notes? Question: wouldn't it seem more nefarious if I were typing on a laptop computer, instantaneously transmitting what I typed somewhere else via a wireless connection? Apparently no. Why is writing on paper so potentially evil? Because I'm not generating income to some third party by doing it. The pen and the paper are already mine. My thoughts are mine and remain so, even though I am releasing them into reality by writing them down. No internet portal is being accessed, no application process utilized – I'm not even draining a battery. I don't owe anyone money... that's why it must be demonized. Frowned upon. Okay, maybe that's taking it a bit over the top, but at the growing rate of technology, the top is closer all the time.

Last Randoms for 2010!

2010-12-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the message your inner voice is shouting is "shut up and listen."

I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to write here, and all that came out was this.

You haven't truly experienced the post-modern professional business model, until you've stood between two executives having a staring contest – each hoping the other will suddenly become competent.

A flash of tit can turn even the crappiest day around.

There are days when I'm just out of tune, like an old guitar in cold weather.

I own about thirty blank notebooks – each one I purchased, thinking "I wonder what I'll write in this one." Then I blogged.

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A few things you'll never read on a tombstone:

"I wish I'd spent more time at work."

"Jogging was totally worth it."

"I ate all my veggies."

"He knew every knock-knock joke."

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RETURN OF THE DAMN POETRY CORNER

Little Johnny Harmon, he went to town,
loaded up with water balloons, to make folks frown.
That night Johnny Harmon lay in his little bed,
Next morn, police found Johnny with concave head.

The meat wagon pulled up to carry him away,
The cops asked his parents had they anything to say.
"When was the last time you saw the little sport?"
"Hopefully just now," was their thoughtful retort.

One Thing I Like About The Media: Nothing

2010-12-16T18:40:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure if this ranks a "coming of age" story, or merely one of waking up. I can say for certain that a paradigm shift has taken place in the last fifteen years, between me and the newspaper business.

Part of this tale is truly sad, for as I've become more aware, others in the print industry have only increased their denial – arrogantly so, in some cases. Arrogance, as a defense mechanism, is not that surprising if you've been around the various personality types who populate this self-gratified media world as long as I have.

First, a reality check – if you've paid attention to business news at all lately, you know that the newspaper industry is currently trudging through shit. It held its own against its chief rival, television, when the two believed they were the only dogs in the fight. They scuffled, routinely, like pro-wrestlers re-fighting the same match night after night along a tour circuit, to an entertaining but intentional draw. They shared the mass audience to mutual benefit, under the guise of competing for it.

Just as the big three terrestrial networks fought a naive ratings game with cable only to become subservient to it, the news-pulp empire has too become an Alamo, fending off the ever proliferating Internet – like survivors holed up in a barricaded shopping mall against the growing zombie horde.

The immense torrents of misinformation, rumor and jabbering opinion that masquerade as "news" online, combined with journalism's own inner decay, have resulted in an intellectually barren media landscape. Viral video-casts and ethics-free satellite broadcasting, where it's more important to work an F-bomb into a sentence than a truthful noun or adjective, have opened the bombay doors beneath us. Self-abandonment is the new "freedom" – a free-fall that looks just like flying, until the nasty old ground rises up and spoils it.

What I've encountered – and kept a running mental tab of for nearly two decades – has been astonishing, and not in a good way.

When I first got into newspapers many years ago as a young compositor – what graphic artists were called then, and when I was genuinely young – I was put through the standard gauntlet of passive-aggression. I took my turn in Intimidation-101, which I learned each newspaper had its own spin on. There is no official "paying of one's dues" in the paper business. When you move to a different job at another newspaper, there is no acknowledgement of anything you endured at the offices of your former one. You are expected to run the gauntlet once more – be fresh meat again and prove yourself against another pack of cronying, self-distracted little-bigshots.

The only rule that all newspapers have in common is that they have each established their own constantly evolving – if improvised habituation can be classified somehow under 'evolution' – "system" for getting a new edition out every morning. And squeezing as much work out of their staffs for as little compensation as can be gotten away with – even when labor knows it's over a barrel because of the strapped economy, and management knows that labor knows, and proceeds to pump the dildo harder anyway.

There are very few businesses where so many disparately tasked departments work side-by-side under one roof, and care less about each other's welfare. Each faction does its job with as little regard, or more and more, with as little competence as necessary, and escapes home to leave someone else holding the bag.

A surefire trick to going home on time is to con another department's workers into believing that some of your duties actually belong to them instead. I've never had the privilege, but it must be sweet.

Management are the people who've mastered the art. They talk all day, and little else. They unctuously discuss what "needs" to be done, until the subject bores them, or the phone interrupts – another discussion concerning some other unctuous "need." The urgent business is ushered out the door with a wave, for the drones to worry about, with a vague notion that their meager livelihoods are at risk.

Some quick definitions.

Management: The ones who get to go home early, even at the outset of apocalypse.

The crisis: Your problem, not theirs. The only upside is that it only lasts until tomorrow, to be replaced by another crisis even more dire. If it isn't taken care of, they get to complain about YOUR incompetence. You get to complain about the length of the unemployment line.

If your faith already wanes regarding our journalism media, you probably don't want to be a fly on the wall for a meeting of your local paper's editorial board. You'll come away looking for either a razor for your wrists, or the nearest gun shop to get on the waiting list.

A quick revelation, in case you were still wondering: Media people hate you.

Once a day they gather around a conference table to discuss which of us on the outside world is most deserving of their everything-but-objective spotlight. If they deem you foolish enough, you'll be tomorrow's featured player at the circus.

The generic, categoric reference to those of us toiling to survive in the real world boils down to "Looks like old Shit-for-brains is at it again."

They decide each afternoon how to repackage a product that we civilians will pay to have thrown at our doors, one more time, tomorrow morning. In short, newspaper people are celebrities. Their names, after all, appear in print regularly.

What today's journalists and media people practice is more accurately the progressive spin of elitism, which balances out the elitism of the corporate right. Haven't you noticed? We, bound to lives of day-to-day survival, are the ideological "middle class." The corporate moneychangers and media trendsetters are the ones enjoying actual "options" in life. The ones whose incomes are not completely consumed by monthly bills and playing by the rules. Journalists used to report what's happening, but now "review" it. Many young journalists enter the industry precisely because they've been taught it is salaried activism. Activism for their own shit. Political. Trendy. Cool. Whether or not it's relevant.

So too is advertising a collusion of loose cannons presented to resemble a disciplined business. Some of the reasons modern advertising gnaws at most people's sanity are actually not too sublime. The ad industry doesn't try to bombard your id with hidden messages in ice cubes anymore – it has adopted the sledge hammer approach. Relentless, repetitive, aggressive behavior modification.

By simple contemplation, nearly anyone who reads a print ad, watches a TV commercial, or pays vague attention to a car radio will perceive a brazen con being pitched. The era of an earnest business "getting its message out," is long over.

Some might label it all an indictment of capitalism, but it's more accurately the sublime triumph of greed. The cure is not socialism – the system where private sector greed is outlawed so that government greed can enjoy impunity. The only thing worse than the maddening caterwaul of advertising, would be an enslaving federal mandate that you MUST buy a bigscreen TV and a smartphone with a government surveillance chip – which is likely coming.

So smoke 'em while you got 'em. You're already surrounded by folks who think you don't deserve 'em – even though you planted 'em, grew 'em, rolled 'em and then paid for 'em, too.

Yuletide Yammer: The Sins of a Santa

2010-12-12T20:50:00.000-08:00

I was amazed recently by a story of "dueling Santas." Two guys – one maybe a bit pathological – who identify so intensely with Santa Claus that their very lives are dictated by assorted Kringle-isms.

Both are naturally roly-poly, sport real snowy beards, and make all or part of their respective livings portraying The Jolly Old Elf. A special breed of men who need nothing, save to dawn the red coat and cap, to create the illusion – no extra padding or fake facial hair required.

As well it so happens, though they may brighten the days of the children they encounter, they apparently hate each other's living guts the rest of the time.

"Patho-Santa" is one of those fellas written about or featured on the local news from time to time, who's turned it into a lifestyle. In Santa drag 24/7, living in an ornately festooned house – even his casual-wear is all reds and greens. And his wife rues the day she said her wedding vows unawares that she'd be drafted into "Mrs. Claus" duty, fleshing out the fantasy; powdering her hair, wearing wire-framed specs and baking gingerbread men for the next thirty years.

The other Saint Nick keeps his fetish in check, wearing normalized clothing on weekdays. He keeps a bag of candy treats or trinkish giveaways stashed in his car, however, in case he's, say, out grocery shopping and some kid "recognizes" him – in which case the astute tike wins a prize. Oh yes, this "Real Santa" has also unionized all the other Real Santas; men like himself, who stay fat, grow genuine Santa beards and earn money with it come the holidays.

Fulltime Santa, meanwhile, has come out as verbosely unimpressed by these organized "once-a-year" Bitch-Kringles, has bucked their union, and has so earned their collective ire.

It all brought back to mind a time years ago, when I too earned a little extra holiday cash as Big Red – though technically a minor-leaguer in false whiskers.

Portraying Santa, done long enough, can become a nerve-racking ordeal requiring steely patience and a willingness to turn a blind eye to candid, random evil. Santa is either highly revered, or utterly hated – and no one in either camp is willing to dampen their feelings simply for the sake of social grace. Both forms of attention can get scary. It's astonishing to me that a Mall Santa is a minimum wage gig, considering what they endure, and how strong the urge must be, for some, to go home, shooter an entire bottle of NyQuil, and leave a churlish suicide note written in crimson from a raggedly opened vein.

No wonder they unionized!

One year, working Fisherman's Wharf, dressed in the furry red-n'-whites, with a bag of peppermint candy, I met everyone that most people might assume would avoid hassling poor Santa.

... No, Santa doesn't want to pet your pit bull – especially when dogs aren't allowed on the wharf. If I don't pet him, you'll sic him on me? Fantastic! And if I do pet him, those strolling cops who've just spotted you will cuff me too? Awesome. Thanks for giving me options...

... Oh hi, ho ho ho, you work at the Wharf too? You're the stinky-pored rummy caricature cartoonist? You belong to what union?? No, I'm not a member. My name is SANTA CLAUS, and that's all the I.D. you get. My real name? Kris Kringle – there, happy? Your semi-drunk handshake is turning into a vice-grip. If you don't let go, Santa's free hand will drop the candy sack, become a fist, and make you spit your teeth out – all six of them...

... I mean it, pal. You'll find out why Santa wears RED. The stains don't show. That's right, go draw someone. Goodbye. And next bath, put some actual water in the tub, you smell like ranch dressing on ass...

... Hello. Santa's your "homie?" Is that right? Take a picture with you? And your posse... who all wanna flash their semi-automatics for the camera? You're kidding. No, you aren't. Holy muther of gawd. Quick, snap the damn thing before the coppers walk by – or a rival group who wants a picture too. Sure, hey, Santa loves everyone. I'm glad I'm loved back, at the moment. Red flannel doesn't do diddly-jack against a 9mm...

... Ma'am, will you please NOTICE that your 4-year-old won't leave me alone? Santa's getting really bugged. She wants to hug me continuously, but her head only comes to my waist, and well, yeah... it looks EXACTLY like THAT. Another few minutes and Old St. Nick will have a bunko squad tailing him with a video-cam. Here come those wharf cops again. Guys, I'm aware what this must LOOK like, but really it isn't – and no, I'm not enjoying this underneath the beard. I think her parents are glad Santa apparently has NOTHING ELSE TO DO and is willing to babysit their LITTLE PERVERT while they waddle, windowshop and slurp down fried squid...

... Whadda ya know, the fat kid who wants 17 peppermints is also a junior conspiracy buff – he's shouting that I'm NOT REALLY SANTA! Of course he waited until he got both sticky paws full of candies before he commenced tattling. That's right, tell everyone I'm punking them. What's wrong, can't cram your cheeks full fast enough and still yell? Spewing wet peppermint rubble every time you exhale? Right, move in closer, thinking you can snag another mit full – while I aim for your chubby little sausage toes with my size 13 boot. You'll tell your parents? But you ditched your parents back at The Lobster Mill stuffing their own gullets to bursting, so you could wolf free candy off of Santa...

Sometimes, you either have what it takes to be Santa, or you find out the hard way that you're ill-equipped emotionally. I had one of those, too.

One holiday, the company I worked for at the time, "adopted" an impoverished family for a surprise visit from Santa, along with a cadre of company elves, delivering a Christmas bounty of clothing, necessities, toys for ten children (all born a year apart in their parents' ten-year marriage), and a holiday feast with enough food to make leftovers until well past New Year's. I had Santa duty.

They were working-poor, in a house with no heat. Some windows had wooden planks to replace broken glass.

We were on a tight schedule, because we couldn't start until Dad left. According to Mom, he was yet still a man of overruling pride who would not have allowed us entrance. It would be easiest if everything were already in place, and we were gone, before he returned – thereby sidestepping any proud, knee-jerk anger – making rejection pointless. Yes, she was pulling one over on her husband, for his own good, and the good of her children. The oldest child of the ten would not come out of his room, overcome by a like sense of self-induced humiliation. Their mother told us not to worry, that he'd eventually get in the spirit and come out.

As Santa, I determined to play it to the hilt – go the extra mile. I set about to memorize all ten names, and what was on each of their wish-lists (Mom had secretly spilled the beans beforehand) so when I met each child in turn, I'd seem to "know" them, just like Santa Claus would – and that would clinch the deal for these kids to hang on to hope somehow, that the joy of the holidays was theirs as much as anyone else's. Yes, I was so darn noble!

Full of myself. Stupid. Still believing I made a difference by putting on a fake beard. Miracle on 34th Street! Tch.

Well, there's nothing that'll melt your heart and numb your senses quicker than kids who've spent their entire young lives in a state of "without" – who suddenly see SANTA CLAUS paying a personal visit to their run-down little shack of a house.

My "Santa voice" turned into a cross between Julia Child, and... Julia Child. The next-to-next-to littlest (3-years old?) hugged my knees and wouldn't let go. The 9 and 8-year old daughters were as smart as 20-somethings, and helped hand out toys. Mom never had to raise her voice once. Angels all. Little angels, I tell ya, every one of 'em. I'm misting up just writing about it, two decades later.

The oldest peaked through an ajar door. I saw it, and motioned for him to come out and join us. The door drew closed. I whispered to a company "elf" that they needed to get me out of there, because I was maybe two heartbeats away from dropping character – becoming very worthless very quickly. The kids didn't want me to go, but I had to. And Dad was due home soon, so we all had to scram anyway. It was too much. Back at work, I got out of that red get-up as quickly as I could – before I turned into a quivering lump.

In stark contrast, there were times I worked as a Renta Claus for various corporate holiday events, in the ritzy Carmel/Pebble Beach country club zip codes. Able to buy Santa's workshop a thousand times over, some of these well-off folks wouldn't be so pitiful in spite of themselves were they not such walking clichés.

How many 80-year old men really NEED perfectly quaffed hair? And gleaming mani-pedis. Trust me, the ONLY reason that old men this rich wear sandals, is to show off pedicures. Yes, at that mere notion, the back of Santa's beard nearly became drenched with vomit.

Some of the women were no doubt sizzling mamasitas once, with their big bling and holiday-red cowboy booties. When Eisenhower was in office. Ma'am, Santa doesn't intentionally harbor rude thoughts, but what you've got below-neckline no longer qualifies as "cleavage," and should be covered up.

There was that time I waited for my entrance cue in utter darkness, in a parking garage, at the wheel of an idling tool cart draped with a ton of holiday lights, wreathery and other yuletide objects. Upon hearing my official introduction out on the event grounds, I gunned it and burned rubber around a long swoopy corner, from behind a giant hedge, and into triumphant view of a hundred cheering children.

One problem. Someone at the event wasn't aware that Santa was scheduled to appear that night. Tight on my butt around the swoop, honking horn, flashing highbeams, was some drunken James Bond wannabe, late for an orgy, aboard a thundering Hummer SUV. And in no patient mood for some guy in a Santa suit driving a tool cart between his Hummer's front grill and the exit gate he was aiming for.

Even pedal-to-metal, a weighed-down, maybe 12-horsepower tool cart can only – just barely – break a meager parking-lot speed limit. But, believe me – I know – it increases speed if rammed from behind by a Hummer. Enough "oomph" anyway to get THE DAMN THING CORNERING ON TWO WHEELS; wholly Mother Teresa on rubber crutches munchin' Snickers bars!!

Santa made quite an entrance that night, to be perfectly damned sure.

Another occasion, out on the walkway to the club, past the putting green, Santa gets ready for his entrance. Nearby, within shouting distance: Tub o' Lard. Super Golf McDude. $800 cowboy hat. $300 sunglasses. Rolex. Stuffing a silvery polished golf iron into a huge leather quiver already crammed solid with an arsenal of similar Back-9 Warrior's weaponry. "Hey Sanna," he burps! "You BLEW IT last year, I din't get anytheen I even wanned! You better shape up THIS YEAR, you (slurred, trailing-off) sonuvabitch."

And pray tell, what is it you possibly wanted last Christmas, that you don't already have, buddy? Another layer of blubber? A fatter head? 70 more golfclubs? 24-karat gold wheelrims for your SUV? A slobbery blowjob from Carrot Top? (Before he hit the gym and got all way-too manly, of course?)

How about if Santa uses his special Facebook status with God, to have your dead father claw himself out of the grave and sucker-punch some manners into you, like he should have in life, but obviously forgot? Santa's big red mitten shields your eyes from a stiffly-burdened middle finger, sir. Happy Holidays.

One thing I learned while doing country club Santa gigs, is that not all the traditional assumptions about moneyed-peeps are accurate, or at least not universal.

At the Pebble Beach Lodge (yes, I'll name names) I had one of the most gratifying experiences of my Santa career. A huge easychair by a fireplace, on the end of a long plush green carpet, and nearly 200 kids lined up to meet and greet – all well-mannered, all delightful – and those just old enough to know, were willing to play along that I was "really him" for the sake of the tiniest in line. I got kid-scribbled wish-lists, and warm, bright-eyed smiles. We sang a carol or two together. I found myself becoming genuinely jolly and merry, my Ho-Ho-Ho's increasingly heartfelt. And I was ushered away at the conclusion of the event by employee "helpers" who knew Santa had a schedule to keep, and needed to have the all-day crotch-huggers gently pried off – for the sake of their parents' – and Santa's – mental unease, embarrassment, and reputation.

A quick golfcart ride away, waited the Inn at Spanish Bay. Which rhymes with "night and day." What a different story.

It was there that I encountered Mr. Lardass Ingrate of the Fairways, mentioned above. What followed, I imagine, would cause even a soul as forgiving as St. Nicholas to pound his forehead against the nearest wall in a spontaneous meltdown of blazing Torrettes.

Here Santa was hired help, nothing more. I had to do what is known in the "Rentertainment" biz as a walk-around. You go from table to table attempting to grab someone's attention away from something else they'd rather be doing, and inflict your shtick on them. It is utterly degrading for the performer, annoying to the customer, and leaves everyone in general with a disturbed awkwardness which colors the memory of the evening for all involved, ever after.

Once is painful enough. But then those paying for your services insist you revisit the same tables twice, three and even four times – feeling not just uncomfortable, but like an enormous idiot-whore – plus royally pissing off the patrons you are now technically "stalking;" well, it's enough to make one quit the racket for good, no matter what the money is. Which is exactly what I did.

It went down thus...

First, the tables were crowded not with adults, but their self-distracted, snot-nosed blueblood spawn, who cared about as much for Santa's presence as they did for their own untied shoelaces. They already had everything at home that a crassly wealthy set of parents could dump on them. The fuzzy old man in red was probably an abstract concept, amid all the holiday indulgences lavished in their greedy little honor.

That year's toy-to-top was called the American Heritage Forever Doll. An assuredly expensive, life-size plastic neo-mannequin, customized to look exactly like the child who would own it. Imagine for Christmas receiving a mirror-image replica of your privileged self, for you and your parents to build an altar to. Even the janitor emptying the wastebaskets of a Psyche 101 class would spot the raging dysfunction at work there.

Other toys were present, sure. There were large stuffed animals, one of which each and every child in the official "holiday playroom," was given. The left-over stuffed animals – about ten of 'em – were locked back up securely in a metal cabinet, in plain view of three children who happened to be standing in an open doorway. Gazing longingly. Apparently not allowed in. Denied even toy left-overs, which were in such abundance, that three would hardly be missed.

Who were these poor kids?

Exactly. They were the poor kids. The kids of the custodial help. A cook's two. A busboy's one. Their parents weren't clubmembers.

Now Santa was getting pissed.

If that weren't enough, one of the other Rentertainers, a juggling, balloon-twisting elf, decided that he hated Santa, and made no attempt to hide it. I was informed, under his breath, that I could go "find a chimney to stuff myself into." Great. A merry'n to you too, freak.

In the years since, I've surmised that Bad Elf must've been up for the Santa job, and lost it to me. Well, they didn't invite me back the following year (and you're about to read why) – so I'll bet Chuckles eventually got his wish.

Then came the coup de grâce.

For what follows to make sense, I must first explain one of the foremost rules of Santa Clausing. When you are fully in Kringle gear, red fur, boots, beard and cap in place, and emerge from the dressing area with toy sack in tow, you are required to ASSUME CHARACTER. The very first set of eyes that witness your arrival, even if it's the coat-checker, must get a HO-HO-HO, and not in nasally practice mode.

If you give anyone an impression that you're just a hired Shmuck-In-A-Santa-Suit, it's over. Any pro-wrestler worth his paycheck knows exactly what I'm talking about; if you're billed as Santa Claus, or Chainsaw McGuirk, bro, that's who you BETTER BE when you hit the entrance to the gig. Even fellow performers who know it's just you, must see a transformation as soon as that beard is cinched. It's just a long-held rule of Santa School.

So you can imagine my utter, soul-crushing angst, as I finally encountered one of the world's rudest, most ill-informed event planners, mid-gig.

Two of the waiter staff, a man and young woman, brought Santa a small cup of cold water to sip. They then assured Santa that they knew his big fur coat might be a tad too warm in the climate-controlled environment, so they had adjusted the A/C just a tad. Santa thanked them in his cherubic, traditionally jolly fashion, and gave them a ho-ho-ho of approval. Enter Clipboard Bitch.

Clipboard Bitch, in perfect hair, nails, gold accessories and smart concierge's color-coordinated jacket and skirt, took Santa by the arm, led him aside and announced loudly, "Alright? Santaaaaa? I need you to FOCUS ON THE CHILDRENNNNN."

Need I spell out how woefully uncool this was?

You don't SCOLD SANTA. You especially don't SCOLD SANTA in front of kids, even hyper, mis-parented, over-indulged ones. Santa decided at that moment, that he didn't need the gig fee that bad.

I was doubly insulted, because as far as outward presentation goes, I approached these jobs as a pro. I knew exactly why I was there wearing that big red fur coat. I knew exactly who the "clients" were, and was still willing to turn the aforementioned blind eye to what they'd apparently felt comfortable revealing to a "nobody" in their world, like Santa Claus.

If this individual-of-importance accomplished anything meaningful in her – hopefully – very short career, it was to mark this indelible image into my memory. I still got paid. But if I could have done it to their faces, I'd have torn up their check into paper snowflakes. Instead I was shown the door, which slammed immediately after I exited through it. So I rode Rudolph to the bank. Again, that was The Inn at Spanish Bay, in case you'd like to take note for future reference.

No, not very Santa-like of me, either. One more testimony to my being done, to closure, with the Jolly Fatman. Just for the record, I never took issue with whether a parent allowed a Santa Claus to exist in a child's mind, or never at all. I refuse to call Santa a myth, because Saint Nicholas was indeed a real historical figure – the watered-down commercialized trappings that repackaged him in early America are hardly fodder for indignation. Santa is one way, in the past we provided, and in some ways still provide, children with a few joyous seasons of innocence before the real world's coldly calculated manipulation colors their lives – much faster now than when I was a kid – and technology jades them all too soon away from the wonders of their own imaginations. My opinion.

I'm past him now, anyway. Years later, I'm trimmed down, and greatly resemble Vincent Price. I'm looking for an agent.

Another Year Come And Gone of Being Harmless, Industrious and Adorable

2010-12-03T02:53:00.000-08:00

The first decade of the 21st century will soon be just a reference point, and it's about time for one of those damned end-of-year "wrap-up" newsletters that some people – like me – insist on inflicting on the rest of us. This one, however, may read a tad raw. I woke up grumpy in 2010, and its blessings were decidedly mixed.

My greatest gift of 2010 is that so far I've managed to get through it... just a few more days left until it won't qualify for the end-date on my headstone. Yet it's hardly a small wonder, the way some select forces in life united in collusion, my own stubbornness and stupidity, regarding my health, chief among them.

I finally went to the doctor in 2010, to find out what I already suspected but was in blissful denial about – I'd been committing slow suicide for five years. Type-2, known as "adult onset" diabetes, has manifested as neuropathy – nerve damage. I can't always feel the sun's – or an electric blanket's – warmth. It means I'll be one of those doddering morons whom you've occasionally seen dressed for autumn in July, and wondered about the number of cards in their mental deck.

I've still got both Jokers, that's all I'll say.

For some reason I just brain-shifted onto politics.

I voted democratic in the last presidential election, but didn't at the mid-term. Our local house-rep here on the central coast is a typical political career-cretin who's never punched an honest timecard in his pink, tubby, over-privileged life – Spanky with a prostate. I can hardly believe he was granted another term to keep waddling to the bank. He happens to be a democrat.

On the other hand, our nation's book buyers gave a hardy middle-finger to Karl Rove, and that warms my heart. The only difference between Rove and Luthor, is Lex's cooler hairstyle. Our aching sphincters haven't shrunk to normal yet, Karl, so it's a little soon to bum a post-coital cig.

Speaking of which, let's outlaw tobacco... please... let's. But by all means, keep Big Tob in business, by replacing their landscape of croplands with industrial sized pot farms. No jobs need be lost. They can go on raking in profits, and being taxed and regulated. Smokers can go on smoking. Keep various no-smoking areas in place, though, because I personally don't care for even THAT kind of second-hand smoke.

No, I don't buy nature's perfect bullshit about marijuana – nothing that is lit on fire and inhaled is ultimately good for you. The human body isn't designed to huff smoke. Period. Any substance that becomes a LIFESTYLE is not exactly going to make you a pillar of virtue. Tobacco, however, is so utterly evil that grass wins by default. Yes, I'd much rather sit in a room full of potheads than one full of tar-suckers, or boozehounds.

I'd feel much safer, and much less annoyed. I come from a family whose main goal in life was once to cover the globe with empty beer cans and cigarette butts – nothing good ever came of it.

I have no argument against pot's power to ease pain. If my mother had smoked pot, she'd probably still be with us today. Morphine eases pain too... after all the pot on Earth won't help.

We lived next door to a family of elderly Filipinos, who grew – literally – an acre garden of pot, cleverly disguised by a surrounding perimeter of less suspicious looking shoulder-high shrubbery. Guarded by a doberman pinscher and a marmaduke mastiff whose powerful jaws once bit through a 3-inch-thick grappling chain, just so he could trot up and greet the mailman.

They were such happy people. So pleasant. Shriveled old Mr. Cabbatic, all T-shirted 5-feet, 2-inches of him, and his 300-lb. mail-order bride from Manilla, Eleanora, who was a loyal wife, and outlived him. I can close my eyes now and still see their joyous, serene, humble – wise – smiles.

In our garden, my mother and grandmother grew everything from berries to pomegranates to squash and corn – but no pot. It was a different brand of wisdom.

My dad built a patio onto our house with a roof made from cheap aluminum siding – he was a rough-hewn genius like that. He loved Mr. Cabbatic so much that he took what was left over and used it to build an identical patio onto his house... for free. My dad was a contractor, but we were paupers, because he kept giving work away. I hope the Cabbatics let dad have an occasional toke. He was home alone a lot toward the end, in pain, and would've appreciated it. If he did, none of us ever found out. He died sitting at the kitchen table. His last words were "I feel great."

Their pot-garden patio was quiet, shady, an alternate universe from our patio; the scene of a few nicotine fueled, liquored-up Jerry Springer-worthy family blow-outs. And amazing, scarily-huge swarms of houseflies in the summer.

Thirty years later, that silver-topped patio on our old house can still even be seen by the Google satellite. I've looked.

All of them are gone. All belong completely to the 20th century.

All the old secrets are meaningless. Any illegalities have by now certainly fallen to a statute of limitations. Even the police who once cruised our neighborhood, if still alive, are sitting in rest homes talking about those mean streets of three decades ago, chalking the tires of the potato-chip man's delivery truck, or staking out the 7-11 for Sunday morning hair-of-the-doggers.

2010 was not a year of nostalgia for me, but writing about it has certainly stirred up a dust-devil of memories. In many ways I long to return home, but that's the one thing I can never do – the 21st century is one of forward motion, and gazes fixed upon horizons, not glancing back over shoulders.

The holidays approach, and I've come to know this certain time of year as one of inner calm. Unsure how accurate "inner peace" would sound, I'll play it safe. I enjoy the exciting, yet also soothing, space of days between Halloween and Christmas. Sure, I see and detest all the rampant commercialism and chaotic self-distraction as much as anyone. I once regarded Halloween as my favorite holiday, but have come to see a new truth there as well – its pagan self-indulgence is even a bit more dangerous than Christmas's, because it masquerades as ancestral virtue. At Christmastime we've come to make no pretensions about brazen selfism – that at least is an attempt at honesty.

The ancients had no monopoly on wisdom. They swilled just as hard, smoked whatever they could manage to roll and light, and were every bit as pleased with themselves. We just do it all better and faster because we enjoy modern time-savers like bottle openers and lighters, and our vice substances come conveniently pre-packaged.

I think Halloween began its descent on my personal score card when I noticed it had ceased being a kids' celebration of fun dress-up and candy, and become an adult altar-day for boozing and soullessness. I believe a certain contingent of people subconsciously use Halloween to let their pathologies breathe, or flesh out long-held secret yearnings, with a superficial belief that they are mocking something. What does that really say about modest girls who dress as sluts, butch girls who go as nurses and Little Bo-Peeps. The mama's boys as vampires. The geeks as powerful sci-fi warriors. The jokesters who become transvestites, never clowns. The bullies who morph into doctors, or hobos (there's a psychology term paper in the making). At least one slacker or hipster obligates himself to show up as a priest, or even more hardcore... Jesus.

Maybe that's the "honesty" I thought I was missing. I stopped dressing for Halloween, and stopped formalizing for Christmas, a long time ago. Maybe I finally got to a place where I figured I am all I wish to be, and don't need to keep feeding my subconscious. I'm not better than you, I'm just up late over-thinking it all.

I still miss the kids dressed up, out having fun. That's what Christmas once was too. Parents and kids enjoying some common ground. Halloween. Christmas.

Now my candy is sage stuffing, pumpkin pie, and good coffee. And I have an excuse to, sparingly, fall off my own wagon. 2010 was the year I got serious about The Wagon. The year I admitted there was a Wagon. And that I'd fallen off of it, and had been tangentially jogging along behind it.

I let undeserving people tighten my jaw in 2010. I lost some battles in 2010. I let good things slip by me in 2010. I had to resign myself to a few not-so-nice paradigm shifts in 2010. But I made new friends in 2010. I embraced my responsibility for my own health, finally, in 2010. I took steps forward, and stopped my whining by a degree in 2010. I became – as a result of my illness – worthless below the waist in 2010... but perhaps a better man between the ears in 2010.

I've wasted years of my life being harmless, fooled myself being industrious, and denying of myself by trying to be adorable to everybody. If I prove to be less cute and cuddly in 2011, just chalk it up to my nearness to 50 – what I can only hope is a halfway mark.

I do not wish to offend, but neither do I wish to defend. If you want Happy Holidays, have them by all means. If you celebrate something else besides Christmas, do. I'll say Merry Christmas, and when it arrives may it find you merry, and well, feeling joy and love. Some of that love... will be from me. Thank you for your presence. Among my life's ups and downs, you're in the "up" column. Trust me on that.

Random Briefs

2010-11-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

There is only one idiot you'll never meet: the last one.

I watched an HD online trailer for the latest sci-fi blockbuster, "Skyline," tonight. The aliens are bigger, louder, more inescapable than in any previous billion-dollar special effects blow-out. Yet the surf tonight, pounding the beach just blocks from my window, sounds like it's right outside, more real and more awesome than anything CGI artists could ever conjure up.

Some people will spend a year on the toilet just to shit a pile big enough from which to stand on and look down on people.

The more I hear candidates talk, the more it sounds like kids trying to talk their parents into getting them bikes. The more I hear elected officials talk, the more it sounds like kids trying to explain to their parents how "monsters" wrecked the bike.

It's one thing to see people taking the low road. It's another to see people setting their ambitions toward it.

Don't Vote By Rote

2010-11-02T00:38:00.000-07:00

Just a word before we all step into that magic booth, the one that so many like to tamper with.

I consider myself an "independent," that's neither red nor blue – right, left, center – I'm one of those damned idealists still living in an apolitical fantasy world that exists only in that tiny space between my big waffly ears.

Media big-mouths of both the liberal mass-media and the conservative alternative media, the extreme religious right and the extreme pagan left, in order to assuage their subconscious fear of people like me, have labeled us as indecisive political non-entities, without any true intellectual virtue. Soulless, jumbled, confused, discrepant, spineless.

Good God, it's the one point they seem to fully agree on: Us.

Why are they afraid?

Because people of my ilk aren't persuaded by their buzzwords. We remember the past uncolored; we compare their "spin" to what we actually recall. We can't seem to get ourselves over the one relentless fact that THEY'RE LYING.

To paraphrase Groucho Marx, "What would you rather believe, what they say, or your own eyes?"

Here's the real "independent" position.

If you see this election day based on notions of red versus blue – republicans and democrats, "blue dogs" and "rinos," liberals and conservatives, elephants and donkeys – you're in The Trance.

A useful idiot. An eater & breeder. A part of the money train. Nothing more.

The real villains we fight, are Elitists. They have no official party, or political leaning, other than what they insanely believe is their birthright: our money and our servitude.

The only kind of politician they are is "career." They spend their time thinking of ways to get more money from us than they could last year – and expect a salary from us, while doing it. In the meantime they exempt themselves from the laws and regulations they force upon the rest of us.

The only ones more ambitious than career political office holders are the eager hopefuls after their jobs. The ones chomping at the bit to get "their turn."

They don't run for office to help their fellow citizens, but to lock in their own careers. They don't see the talking-points they've memorized as what they are – tailored lies to convince us marks to vote for them – but as the tools of their trade, to advance up the ladder. Lying is what their opponents do.

The potent spellcasting words that grant them ultimate power. A witch would tell you exactly what I'm talking about.

Some of them have been in congress for 20, 30 or more years. They die of extreme old age. And always... rich.

They fight to get to congress, or to a governor's mansion, or to a county seat, as a stepping stone to something bigger, with more perks. At the least, they achieve millionaire status.

Some get into politics because it's the last unconquered frontier for them, already possessing their billions from a career of corporate victories.

What are the most important topics this election year? Jobs. Taxes. Size of government. So therefor, of course, that's what they all claim are foremost on their minds. Those are the "buzzwords" that get your attention. If these 20, 30, 40-year veterans of The Hill really are – suddenly – concerned about jobs, taxes and runaway bureaucracy, wouldn't they have done something about them by now?

They've had decades in which to act. What exactly were they doing all that time, if they are only now on a mission to save our jobs, lower our taxes, and... blah. Blah. Blah. Why haven't these points of interest been prevalent in their lexicons until now? Because suddenly now their jobs depend on them. The only unemployment that fazes them is their own.

America is bankrupt, now nearly to the point that soon we will have to depend on government – The Ascended Masters – for everything we need to keep our "lifestyles" afloat. We're unemployed. We're taxed beyond solvency. We're held firmly at a solidified disadvantage by foreclosed mortgages. We're right where they've always wanted us. At last.

They rule.

But we elected them. A mere detail. The means don't matter, just the end.

The Rachel Maddows and the Ann Coulters of the world, the James Carvells and the Sean Hannitys, all merely bully and out-shout the competition. Verbal bullies. Afforded the bullying power of a mass-media.

They are the "tools."

We impotent, indecisive, immaterial "independents" are the kooks.

Yes, most of us are poor. We're used to voting for candidates who don't usually have a prayer. On occasion, a candidate with major party affiliations comes along whom we actually can place some hope in. It happens. Truth is the loneliest hunter. Call us unrealistic, but sorry, our souls just aren't for sale.

We may be kooks, but we haven't sipped the Koolaid yet. And we won't willfully.

They've got most people slurping. I'm not talking about the other party, I'm talking about YOURS. If you side with the "correct" party, the "enlightened" class... all I ask is that you stop living in denial and enjoy their cold fingers fondling your soul. Or whatever it is inside of you that they've replaced it with.

Even if they manage to cage us, they won't own us. They can't blind us. They'll have to kill us. Otherwise we'll just keep voting our conscience, the one thing they can't write a check big enough for, even with your money.

Guess Who I Met!

2010-09-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

No, my "Met A Celebrity" stories are not better or worse than anyone else's. Anyway, I happen to know a few people whose interactions with the famous and infamous make mine – and trust me, yours too – seem like accidental run-ins with the meter reader. So I simply can't portray myself as some kind of star-magnet.

My stand-outs, the ones I find the most amusing in hindsight, are those that weren't according to a traditional "script." I didn't own all their CDs. In some cases I hadn't seen all, or even a single episode, of their hit show. Their films weren't exactly on my must-see list.

We crossed paths, and I either knew vaguely who they were, or just happened to figure it out later.

I myself, on the other hand, meant absolutely nothing to them. They were at least on a "list" with an actual letter designation – A, B, C... H.

Some are mere single sentences in length. Like the time Larry King brushed me aside with what was probably his standard duck-n-cover line for strangers: "Hey-how-are-ya-dere."

Think a gravel-throated New-Yawker gurgle of, "I'm not stopping, I don't know you, please be nice and get lost."

There was that magical moment I found myself holding a door for Mary Tyler-Moore, mentally stunned by how impossibly petite she is – like watching a 5-foot-tall animated pencil with perfectly coifed hair, drawing a line out of the building, unaided by any push from some gigantic etherial hand. I could only grin politely, unworthy of actual speech in such close proximity to her awesomeness. I imagine she was used to it.

I've written before of my surreal encounters with Judge Lance Ito and CIA Director Leon Panetta.

There was one instance in which my long held perceptions of a particular famous person were altered 180 degrees, simply by a chance meeting as brief as a gasp. I was standing in the right office at the right time, at the newspaper where I worked, when Julia Child ambled in to hand-deliver a copy of her own press release for an upcoming culinary event in town.

My mind made the connection that I assume most minds would (you may even be doing it now) – a vision of Dan Aykroyd in drag as Julia, inadvertently slicing open a vein on Saturday Night Live.

Just the short batch of minutes I spent in the actual Julia's presence eradicated from my soul the premise of that cruel skit. She was everyone's grandmother – as warm as a cup of hot cocoa to the palm of a hand just in from a winter morning – as sweet as a box of chocolate cordials – as honest and earnest as a summer rain amid a dry spell. It was difficult to forgive Aykroyd after that, for a very long time, about a piece of TV comedy that had once brought laughter. Once.

Some encounters weren't as personal, but equally as touching – as the one in 2002, when on the catering crew for the Latino Film Festival in Los Angeles, I watched Edward James Olmos help his mother around a salad and dessert bar, holding her plate, describing each item for her.

At the same event, I was elected "Honorary Righthand Man" by the late legendary character actor Vincent Schiavelli. The caterer employing me that night made a spiced tortilla wrap that Schiavelli became addicted to. Upon serving him his second platter, I made the standard Waiter 101 comment that if he needed more, to just let me know. He took it literally, and whenever his plate became empty, he had a way of focussing a laser-like gaze at me from across the expansive dining room and drawing me to him – with a smile, and a fresh plate of tortilla wraps in hand.

I'll never forget the visage of a man whose hawkish face graced the screen in so many cherished films, mouthing from a distance with great urgency shaping his brow: "Rob! More!"

The most surreal meet-ups happen in places one would least suspect, but in retrospect suddenly reveal themselves as completely natural. In 2004, I was producing and co-starring in a stageshow about the iconic comedian Lenny Bruce. On our second weekend we arrived at the theater to find another event just concluding, with various crew packing up equipment and cleaning up a lavish hospitality area. We couldn't begin the set-up for our own show until after this group had finished.

During the wait, I stood around with a cup of their caterer's leftover coffee in hand, shooting the breeze with one of the people in charge of that earlier event. We chewed the fat about the combined hardships and joys of producing, and the general rollercoaster ride that show business can become. He asked me about the show we were about to set the stage for, and when I described for him our bio-play tribute to Bruce, he was intensely interested.

"You ought to stick around and see it," I said. He answered that it was a tempting offer, but he was expected at another social gathering elsewhere that evening. "Well," I replied, "if you're back in town the next three weeks or so."

We shook hands, and said our "see-ya's." He left with his crew and cadre of pals, and I went about my own tasks at hand to prepare that night's show. It had been refreshing to talk shop with someone else in "the business," especially someone who made it a full-time living – a trick I hadn't quite mastered.

Not long after, the CD for which that other group's event had been a "release party" hit the retail shelves. It was Brian Wilson's "Smile." The person I had chatted up in the theater kitchen weeks prior, was the man himself. Somehow within the context of a local hospitality event, and a personable conversation so casual, I had distracted myself from recognizing him.

One of the biggest clichés in Hollywood, is that when you meet a star, your "big break" is near. More often than not, it's exactly the opposite. If they are indeed real persons beneath the hoopla and sparkle, their meeting you is a much needed "break" – from their entrapment by the public spotlight – a moment to disengage from the pressures of stardom and allow their very-human real selves to breathe.

If you want to be a celebrity's instant ally, the surest way is to be the kind of person who allows them that freedom.

Up Yours

2010-09-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

I'm a very permissive guy, despite my inner code of ethics. As long as you're not intentionally trying to bug me, harm me (or someone else), or engaging in some self-indulgent distraction with no regard for anyone else's risk of arrest for simply being in your vicinity, I'm pretty much okay with whatever it is you do.

Just because I will rarely verbally reflect upon or complain about your behavioral choices, enlightened or stupid, please don't assume that I embrace them myself. If I want a beer, I'll order one. You haven't ordered for both of us just because you've bought a pitcher. It's all yours – go for it, Wundergut, I'll watch. And the next one is on you, too, just like the first.

But there is one act that makes me cringe when I see it done incorrectly. I cringe because it is one of the few social body language cues meant to be pretentious, and in that regard, requires purity. And it's so simple, that to botch it is to shout to the world of one's lack of competence – with a misguided enthusiasm for its pretension. Like driving a racecar into the wall while waving victory to the crowd, on the NEXT-TO-last lap.

It's the "thumb-up" sign. It was invented by the ancient Romans, to communicate to the emperor from the back row how much blood and carnage was needed down in the arena to sate their dark loveless hearts. And in its original form, the "up" sign meant death. There was no "down."

The Upward Thumb underwent a transformation in World War I, used by the then-new breed of warrior, the fighter pilot, to let his crewmen know he was ready to hit the throttle – "Outta the way, I'm headed upward!" He used it to encourage his fellow fliers from across the airfield. And in the air, to reassure them from great distances, that he'd survived a barrage of enemy bullets. It was even used to salute a particularly brave or talented combatant of the other side – the first-generation sky soldiers actually revered each other, regardless of tail insignia.

The tradition continued in World War II, only reserved for one's own, not freely exchanged with those shooting at you.

So this is a hand gesture with a formidable history. Its pretension is counter-balanced by an unwritten résumé of gallantry and emotion. There is just one solemn rule regarding the thumb-up: it's sublimely masculine.

Sure, a woman can do it. A child can do it. There's no restriction as to who may give or receive a thumb-up signal. Roger Ebert considers it his all-but-legally copyrighted trademark, despite being a roly-poly moviehouse nerd his entire life.

The thumb-up is all-inclusive, and universally understood across most every creed and culture around the globe. A few cultures may consider it an insult via symbolic rectal indiscretion, but they are a definite minority.

It is ultimately a manly gesture to be sure. Its heart is hetero, yet that doesn't mean alternate-lifestyled individuals are denied from it. A drag queen managing a beauty salon in an orange-sherbet colored jumpsuit, pumps and painted toenails is totally welcome to utilize a thumb-up to approve the completion of a customer's handsomely worn beehive – no problem.

But the classic execution of a thumb-up... is macho. Despite the irony, it's like ballet: you either point your digits correctly and do it absolutely, or you're a pretender, and even those unschooled in its nuance can spot you.

The fay thumb-up, fraudulent and disgraceful, used by people who lack its implied self-confidence, is a feeble handshake pantomimed. Make a soft fist with your fingers, but poke your thumb out like a meerkat from a dirt hole.

It's holding an unused spatula in cooking class. It's making the head of a hand-turkey with watercolor.

A real thumb-up is a solid fist, with thumb held aloft. Hitchhiking in Death Valley. Popping off a rattlesnake's head. Make it look like your thumb's mere downturn will transform your hand into a pain-dealing flesh hammer. Your intensions need not be ruffian, and ideally shouldn't, but the true thumb-up is a rude buddy. Its message should be the exact polar opposite of the flip-off, but its intensity should be similar.

Just get it right. Regardless of your gender, orientation or circumstance, either do it like a man, or kindly mince your candy-ass out of the room.

I Want Your Blood

2010-09-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

I was at a nearby medical center very early in the morning, to have blood drawn for some tests my doctor ordered. Before I could hand my paperwork to the old male nurse, who looked just a little too satisfied leaned back in his creaky office chair, he informed me that he could not accept me just yet. I was required to backtrack across the medical center commons to another office and "register." My name on my paperwork matched the name on my driver's license – not good enough? It was the rule.

Another man, sitting in the waiting area, yelped "do I have to, too?"

"Did you already," the nurse grunted?

"No," the man said, like a command, his face already purpling.

"Then you hafta."

I and this angry fella walked together back to the registration office that we'd apparently skipped over so nihilistically in our earlier haste. "That guy really burns me up," he sputtered. "This here crap. I sat there a good fifteen minutes and he knew it, before you walked in. I could'a done had this crap overwith."

I responded sheepishly, in an acquiescent attempt not to egg him on. Jeans, boots, plaid workshirt, bulging veins – a loaded shotgun I reasoned was close by, in his parked vehicle just an extra minute's walk farther.

"Yeah," I breathed, with a sufficient pause, then committed myself to a complete statement. "He seems pretty comfy in there." What the hell did THAT mean? I didn't know, but my big mad buddy found a grain of mysterious wisdom in it.

"Cushy-jobbed needle-pokin' ... whatever!" I imagine the word "whatever" was meant as a generic stand-in for the epithetic pronoun of one's choice.

When we arrived at the Registrar's desk, she shuffled us off to another waiting area, larger, more nebulous, easier to become lost and forgotten in. My new pal was just getting warmed up. "I sure don't appreciate this," he fumed lowly. "I sat in that other room for fifteen minutes with that nurse sittin' in there, and he knew all the time he was gonna make me walk over here."

The lady behind the computer terminal nodded, with a bent brow and a sympathetic curl at one corner of her scarlet-painted lips. "We're trying to get a sign made," she said, "so people will know to come here first. We sincerely apologize." She'd undoubtable repeated that a hundred times, it sounded so rehearsed. The building looked brand new, spotless and expensive – with no sense that any signage was intended that would lower its real estate value. Without question a recited apology was cheaper than hiring a sign maker.

"He could'a told me right off, but no, he let me sit there fifteen whole minutes."

Whole minutes, not just any. What could she say? He was right. I'd be a little insulted myself. Slowly he resigned himself to sit across the desk from the kind computer woman, who glanced over his paperwork, asked if the contact information on it was correct, typed it in, and deemed him freed to go resume his place in the bloodwork office with the rude male nurse. Just like that. The look on the man's face was quite obvious now. Words he did not speak were nevertheless roiling off his crooked, reddening brow. He rose like a hungry attack dog who's just realized his collar is off. I sat next.

A minute later I was too retracing my path back to the nurse's way-station, about fifteen steps behind Mr. Congeniality. I slowed my pace a beat or two, so as not to become again a human tampon for his torrential disgust – which I could hear pouring out even at my present distance. Finally he got inside, and I was able to fain blithe disregard, and concentrate on my own need to get past this methodical phase of preliminary medical bureaucracy.

By the time I made it into the office, he had already been ushered into the nurse's realm beyond the front counter. Muffled words were being exchanged. Then a low chuckle bounced through the duct system. And all fell silent. The needle had been brought into play.

A minute later, the nurse returned to his front post. My gawd, how sitting in that deskchair had distracted from his size. He was huge. And dressed in medical greens intended to routinely endure blood spatter.

The guy you don't mess with. And keenly self-aware of it.

Mr. Unfairly Treated eventually waddled out, holding his free hand to the bend of his arm, where a mesh bandage held firm a large swab of cotton. His once fiery countenance had been erased, or perhaps, glazed over. He chuckled at me nervously as he passed. "He's really pretty good," he said, as if auditioning for a radio ad for the medical center.

And with that he was gone. Out the door. In a hurry.

The nurse leaned forward, extending his giant hand for my paperwork. I was registered. And I was next.

I attempted to make my facial expression telegraph my thoughts. "All I said was that you looked comfy."

-----------

RANDOM IS AS RANDOM DOES

Bureaucratic committees sit around creating compelling reasons not to let something happen. Let go of your "inner committee." The ego is a bureaucracy of one, with a thousand voices. How do you know "You" from your ego? That voice listing excuses is your ego, and the one listening to the voice is You. Listen to You for awhile.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Randy Travis look like some WWII vet had two families – one in Austria, and one in Arkansas.

Overheard on the Safeway Market loudspeaker: "Bakerage, you have a phonecall. Bakerage, you have a phonecall." It must've been on purpose, she said it twice.

When You Walk Through A Storm

2010-09-04T04:05:00.000-07:00

Here I am, up very late, or very early depending on whether you watch the clock or the balance of light and dark between the blinds. Right now it is pitch black, and around three o'clock – when sleep experts tend to think most people are slumbering deepest.

I am not. I now live with a stubborn partner who loves the nightlife – neuropathy. Nerve damage in the lower legs and feet. His favorite time to party is when I'd rather be in bed, joining the rest of humanity on this side of the globe. If I'm not rested for work, keeping a roof over my head will become a bit more difficult than it already is. My pal neuropathy doesn't care.

If he were a separate person, I'd be on the web, looking up the criteria for justifiable homicide under California law.

Most times, my feet don't sense heat, and so assume room temperature. The human body's thermostat is set to run at 98.7 degrees, so room temperature translates into the sensation of standing barefoot outdoors in March before sunrise. That's while in bed with the covers pulled up.

If it were as simple as bundling up, I'd be fine. It's a kind of cold that seems to exist beyond the third dimension; my perception is wacked.

When my numb, frosty hooves aren't shut down, they are hyper. A toe will suddenly think it's just been pounded by an invisible hammer. Or a spot near my instep will at once feel a phantom wire brush being thrust into it, over and over, in rhythm with every other heartbeat.

The only real treatment is to retrain my cells, who've lived on junk for the past five years or so, to start welcoming glucose again – the kind produced by real food. I've actually starved my nerves by consuming so much wrapped and processed garbage, now they are on the brink of a systemic collapse. Only my cells have basically forgotten how to feed them... so I've got to convince them to resume their original job description, with a doctor's and a nutritionist's help.

Then I can walk in the meadow again, or at least feel like I can.

In the meantime, my nighttime companion continues to burn the midnight oil, well into the morning. I have ceased to enjoy the oncoming of bedtime, because I know I won't be alone with my thoughts, my mind free to drift off into the ether.

Well tucked in, I feel like I've been short-sheeted at a cheap motel. And a bland breakfast awaits, by prescription. There's no witty closer here... if I get this thing turned around, maybe I'll write one then.

Rename It, Claim To Blame It!

2010-08-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

I made a personal vow not to take this blog into political waters very often, unless something occurred on the order of an epiphany that compelled my fingers to punish the keyboard about it. If you'll indulge me – my apologies in advance to you who've already figured this crap out.

In 2008, the satirical "newspaper," The Onion, produced their own movie, titled sensibly enough, "The Onion Movie;" a skit-driven film much like "The Groove Tube" and "Kentucky-Fried Movie," spoofing cable-TV news networks and their knack for combining – and often confusing – actual news with integrity-free sensationalism. I gave the film an Ebertesque "thumbs-up," even though not every friend I forced the DVD upon shared my appreciation – and a few may be friends no longer.

There was one scene in particular that I now find disturbingly prophetic, though when I first saw it I just considered it funny. In it is interviewed a "man on the street" so morbidly overweight that his tent-like red shirt nearly makes him indistinguishable from the cars parked on the curb behind him. He yells that it's about time "somebody did something" because he is tired of "bein' obese!"

The conceit of the skit is that the government has apparently found the quick and easy solution for American obesity by simply redefining the term until the problem has become statistically impotent.

Nobody has lost a pound, or missed a single Butterfinger, or gone without a bucket of deluxe extra-greasy Church's. Yet, with the definition pushed way back, suddenly the percentage of the population classified "obese" has taken a refreshing nosedive, overnight. Those who can still even manage a struggled waddle, may now do so around the buffet line with impunity – no matter how bloated and purple their near-bursting ankles.

Only those unfortunate, doughy, lard vat sized Jabba-The-Huts confined to their trailer homes because they can no longer rise out of bed, much less squeeze through their own front door – who need their daily ration of Ho-Hos and pizza funneled through the bedroom window via an elaborate homemade rope-n'-pulley system – who require the presence of gym-muscled nurses to help them bathe and evacuate their tortured bowels – must live with the social curse that is "obesity."

What gawddamm fun! "Madge, we ain't obese no more! Where's my keys, we're celebratin' at Claim Jumper bygawwwd!!"

The epiphany grew gradually as I observed government over the past decade, until it emerged fully-formed, big enough to knock me on my complacent ass. Rather than bore you with politicized histrionics, let me just randomly mention some talking points. See if you notice as I have, the government's method of "curing" serious social ills – by redefining them, until the statistics simply no longer reflect anything urgent... thereby, widening the berth for the problem to explode, go under-reported, and streamline clandestine political agendas.

Ambrose Bierce stated it thus: "Depravity is merely the moral state of anyone holding an opposing viewpoint."

In other words, to disagree is tantamount to admitting defeat. Many, many despots and dictators – and political hot-heads on both the Right and Left – throughout the centuries have based their entitlement to power on this shallow belief.

Let me reiterate, that this dysfunction lives on both sides of the political aisle. Don't watch too closely who's in bed with who, you'll only get depressed when you suddenly realize it's all one big orgy. And we're the ones stuck with the booze bill.

THE REDEFINITION OF REAL ESTATE VALUE

It makes my head spin whenever Alan Greenspan is queried for his take on one of the main battlefronts of our current economical plight, because frankly, it sprang from his loins. His estimations regarding falling interest rates – to affect the stock market for the benefit of his fatcat buddies – eventually gave birth to the sub-prime mortgage stampede.

The euphoric bong hit of greed run amok was destined for a crash of equal proportion. The result was a landscape of financial ruin. Vaporized retirement savings. Destroyed credit histories. Erased futures.

Of course, the Corporate "victims" were redefined as "too big to fail." This didn't make them immune to failure. The ruling cadre of government gravy-slurpers were merely claiming the right – simply because they were in charge – to shore up their personal investments with federal funds. So was born the government's license to dig deep into the taxpayer's pockets to bail these huge, bloated entities out of the hole – in some cases, assume ownership of their assets (without having to share with the taxpayers whose money had made the purchase).

Technically, that means those corporations failed anyway. Only their dirty diapers were relabeled "collateral."

Common homebuyers, with the wolves at their heels, were redefined: Pound-foolish cretins who had no business qualifying for those mortgage loans in the first place. Summarily, they were on their own. Problem? What problem? As Charles Dickens had Scrooge proclaim: "Are there no workhouses?"

THE REDEFINITION OF TERRORISM, THE "WAR" ON EACH OTHER

Until September 11, 2001, America thought it knew what a "terrorist" was: Over there.

Terrorism redefining its boundaries sent us into a tailspin to redefine our perception of it. The ongoing, evolving redefinition of the word "terrorist" has created a fearful, paranoid – yet strangely arrogant – social climate in this country. Now we're all potential terrorists, even when the cause championed is American liberty, and the tactics used, no matter how peaceable, are judged against ignorant stereotypic notions...

Liberals are elitist snobs. Over-educated yet street-stupid. Communist/socialist leaning secularists. Faith hating, evolutionist Deity-phobes. Sarcastic, flag burning, cliquish champions of pessimism. Etcetera.

Some of them are. Some.

Conservatives are common-clay morons. Gun/flag waving rednecks. Beer chugging reactionaries. Inbred, church-dependent science-deniers. Racist, homophobic, isolationist, globally ignorant cattle. Etcetera.

Some of them are. Some.

Unfortunately, the majority tends toward silence. The fringe element usually serves to embody the identity of the entire group, to the opposing side's thinking.

Stereotypes once "owned" by certain societal factions are not just changing, but making 180-degree swings. If the sitcom "All In The Family" were produced for the current generation, Archie Bunker might be a Liberal, and Meathead a young Republican.

TOXIC UNIONIZATION

I am not down on Unions. I have myself belonged to several in my professional life. I belong to one now, and have been an active participant in Union negotiations – in one case I was the sole signature-signer of a Union contract affecting over a hundred coworkers, when the "official" representatives were conspicuous no-shows. There are still a couple of Unions whose membership I hope to acquire.

I cannot deny that, as an hourly-wage employee, I've enjoyed the benefits of a Union watching my back. I've also seen Union regulation run rampant to the point of self-destruction.

Union leaders can be just as susceptible to the hallucinogenic addictions of power and greed as their corporate counterparts.

I was a bit stunned not too long ago by a comment from a fellow union member, concerning general economics – that businesses existed, first and foremost, for job creation. My jaw loosened and wagged in the wind like a wet beach towel on a clothesline.

No, they don't. Businesses exist to turn a profit for their owners. Show me a business owner – or stockholder – who doesn't devote primary energy to the pursuit of profit, and I'll show you a budding failure.

That evil profit line, vilified in the mind of my fellow unioner – whose vision of a perfect world is likely an entire Main Street of 501c3's – is what keeps a business in business, and the growing needs of a thriving enterprise are what in turn, out of necessity, create new jobs. Yes, to the thinking of some, a too-harsh reality.

Viewing profit as utter evil, some Unions feel perfectly justified attempting to eradicate it from the landscape. This sets the downward spiral in motion, as less and less profit dictates a ravenous need to downsize – which worsens working conditions and disintegrates jobs – which destroys morale – which infuriates the Union into an even more hardline posture – which starts the hellish cycle anew.

Consider the words of arguably our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln: "A house divided cannot stand." One side over-stresses the other, the system collapses. Isn't that what's happening now? Ask the once proud autoworkers of Michigan what the redefinition of business's purpose has done for their industry over the past 20 years. In Detroit there are homes with selling prices pushed back to 1960s levels – and still no takers. The proposal is even now on the table to bulldoze empty neighborhoods and reclaim the land for agriculture.

That might create a few jobs. For migrant workers, illegal or otherwise? Who knows. Let's not go there, the discussion is already sprawling.

We could go on with this. I think I've illustrated my point. As you watch the news, open your eyes just a bit wider, to see if you spot "redefinition" happening – in lieu of legitimate action toward real solutions.

Curtains!

2010-07-20T15:11:00.001-07:00

An astounding chapter in American entertainment came to a sad, grisly end today, as the formerly deceased Oscar Hammerstein II, recently reanimated in a stunning cyrogenic laboratory experiment, had to be felled by Army snipers from a Manhattan rooftop.

The celebrated Broadway librettist and producer, once thawed, became enraged upon his first venture outdoors to experience what he slurred "my great white way today," and happened past the Lunt-Fontanne, where "The Addams Family" currently holds court starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth.

"He turned purple," said Dr. Horgus Reem, director of the New York Cyrogenic Center for Research. "Then came a string of epithets I'd never dreamt could emanate from anyone whose been dead for 50 years – much less a showbiz legend."

A SWAT team was able to end the episode in timely fashion with a merciful bullet. All hostages were recovered with only minor injuries.

NYPD Captain Kyle Durley likened the incident to a similar past event. "It was the same when they thawed out Disney," he said. "He was really jazzed about the innovation of VHS, until someone let him see a cassette of 'The Black Cauldron,' and he went postal."

"I can still see him," continued Durley, "screaming like a wounded boar, waving the 9mm.'"

Today... Hurray For Us!

2010-07-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

Forty-one years today, long enough ago that some people who've just reached middle-age were not yet born, the three bravest men on the planet sat perched atop what was essentially a big metal stick of dynamite over half as tall as the Washington Monument... and lit it, bound on a journey that would have left Leif Erickson, Christopher Columbus and Magellan faint of heart, with their jaws hanging.

From when the countdown reached zero, the lives of those three intrepid souls sitting in the nosecone might be wiped out in a heartbeat, at any given moment during the next eight days. Where they were going, there would be no places to rest, rethink, or ponder turning back. Their destination offered nothing hospitable to life – not even air to breathe. They would spend nearly 22 hours there before lifting off again for the voyage home, if they made it that far.

Just the trip there might kill them. Landing might crush them. Once down, their equipment – which despite rigorous testing back on Earth, could not be tested in the actual environment for which it was designed – could fail, stranding them there to die. Merely exiting the craft, once on the alien surface, might spell doom. The blast off for home could go wrong. The trip back was just as potentially dangerous, and they'd be "landing" in the roaring Pacific Ocean aboard a craft as fatigued by the same unprecedented ordeal as they.

Again, if they made it that far. Those were all still unanswered questions in July of 1969.

The entire planet of humanity became still to watch, counting off every tiny milestone – the rocket got off the launchpad, everything worked, nothing failed.

We lost them from radio contact somewhere along the way, for an anxious interval, wondering where they could possibly be – if they were alive – up in the black unknowable cosmos. Their voices were believed lost forever until someone thought to locate them by simply pointing the radio dish in the direction of their destination, the Moon.

And there they were, still in business, hardly aware that every other human had momentarily forgotten how to breathe.

The Moon was barren, but benign, and allowed the adventurers to roam, leave bootprints, take souvenirs and plant a red, white and blue calling card... along with a plaque that spelled out our intentions. "We came in peace for all mankind."

A few days after placing his foot upon a land where none had ever before, Neil Armstrong and his fellow pioneers – the only word fully accurate but woefully impotent somehow in this case – Edward Aldrin and Michael Collins returned to the Earth. Just as John Kennedy had proposed in a famous speech nine years earlier.

There were subsequent missions, by men equally as brave, each a step further in terms of the tools and toys we took to our new big grey oceanless beach, but none of them quite matched the magic, the dread, the elation of that first time – the one you never forget.

I was not yet seven years old when we bridged the dark gulf between worlds. I remember that fuzzy grey vision on our family TV, when the moment happened. I am so grateful that this event happened in my lifetime. Today's young people, who take for granted digital technology that would have made Jules Verne rethink his every word, will never fully understand the wonder.

The personal computer was still over a decade away. We went to the Moon via analog methods. Would that fact give them even a clue, or is it lost on them as well?

There are some who claim we never did it. Others say we've never gone back for nefarious reasons of galactic intrigue. They can't both be right. Let them have the other 364 days of the year to rage at the debate table.

Today, July 20... let's remember. And if you were there to witness it live, as I was, you know what it is to look at that photo of a bulky white faceless form standing before an American flag made to "wave" artificially by a right-angled rod... and feel a tear form.

You Title This One

2010-06-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

THE DAMN POETRY CORNER RETURNS

MY CUP

I broke my favorite cup today
upon the kitchen floor.
I stood in trancelike disbelief
and saddened to the core.

It wasn't done on purpose, just
a clumsy whim of fate.
It should've been that old glass jar
or tacky decor plate.

A million curses filled my brain,
I bent a mournful stoop.
A slo-mo replay of the death
went into endless loop.

So much we'd shared, this cup and I;
from demure sips to swill –
coffee, cocoa, juice and tea,
or water for a pill.

I doubt I'll find a duplicate
in fifty Goodwill shops.
A runner-up must now suffice
to slake my thirsty chops.

Nevermore to runneth over,
or sit empty vigil there.
Wait, up in the cupboard –
I forgot, they were a pair.

-----------------

Gender inequality aimed like a luger;
A man's a Rasputin, a woman's a cougar.

-----------------

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR JUNE

Denzel Washington to star in The Gary Coleman Story? No way.

When you walk... through a storm...
Wrap your lunch... in plastic...

What I don't know about quantum physics would cover the head of a pin a thousand times over. At least.

Hammer as loud as you need to, but whatever it is, get the damn thing BUILT already!

Proportionately, the space between your ass cheeks is deeper than the Grand Canyon, only the echo doesn't last as long. Thank heavens.

Before Editing...

2010-05-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

AND THIS WAS THEATRE
by Angelica Gouté

It is with sheer delight that your humble reviewer reports cashing the advance cheque in the sum of $150 for this review article, concerning last night's premiere. I shall have dinner tonight, which is more than is deserved by the unfortunate rabble of players whose meager talents were taxed beyond their limits by an original local play at the Kiln Playhouse in downtown Oceanside less than 24 hours ago.

If there is justice in this dreary, tainted world, these languishing cretins would be banished to the dark countryside and down to the unforgiving sea. Such was there collective crime against art and mankind.

Said production, "Hathaway's Calling," by neophyte playsmith Dell Harpsham – a gurgling dullard who should have been strangled in his very crib – opens ironically on the fair morning of a baby's birth; a loud DIY affair heralded by shouts of "Push! Push!" somewhere offstage. After a thunderous scream, and tidal thrush of breaking womb water, emerges from the wings Anna, played by that wobbling birch log, local actress Kay Fong. Anna cradles the newborn in her vice-like arms, and looks decidedly unfazed for a woman who has supposedly just pumped out a greasy bald littl'n.

Ginger-haired, freckle-plagued leading man Roy Lunst, is neither pleased nor pleasing as Anna's husband, LaRue. The child is female, and LaRue's heart was set in stone in want of a son to carry on the family name.

In this reviewer's opinion, the gender of the tyke should have been the least of LaRue's concerns, as the toy doll used for the babe, bore skin a rich chocolate. This anomaly was never touched upon.

LaRue's fury threatens the sanctity of the new family, and he confesses a strange obsession with a far-off yearning, or yearning with a far-off obsession. The road beckons, and he is off, duffel in hand, in search of an unspoken dream. Anna's tears do little to douse the flame of LaRue's passion to wander – and absolutely nothing to foment audience sympathy, as said tears never truly appear – such is the girth of Fong's repertoire.

From there, the story tumbles forth like a platter of leftover lasagna thrown into a quarry.

Actress Fong's placing of her newborn in the cradle, holding it by its neck while straightening an uncooperative blanket, was certainly attention-getting. As was tossing said bassinet offstage like a sack of old workshirts, in a sudden rush of what could only be frustration – likely at her faulty memory for dialogue, which she liberally peppered with volleys of 'gawddammits,' various slang for fecal matter, and strategically placed 'f-bombs,' all seemingly aimed at the show's producers.

Geriatric dynamo Audrey Wurztram, as Anna's loyal housemaid, Opal, turns in what is arguably the most interesting performance of the show – wearing a costume that seems part period, part anachronism, and muttering "Good ever-loving gawd" under her lines, exiting with a syrupy pale orange zig-zag of urine trailing after her. Was it in the script? Writer Harpsham was unavailable for comment.

The show's director, local treasure Cleve Dozier, who boasted his pleasure during last week's rehearsal at the show's "verité and daring," seemed unable to contain himself from his choice front row seat last night, with teary raving cants of "oh mother," and "oh dear gawd, mommy!"

LaRue – Lunst running the emotional alphabet from A to B – continues on his journey, to meet Randa, a worldly wise prostitute (played by geriatric dynamo Audrey Wurztram in a quick-change dual role) who has taken a vow of silence, and Father Gullem, portrayed by area thespian and restauranteur Ford Krevich, a priest whose unbridled addiction to cabbage and asparagus threatens to unravel his faith. He speaks to LaRue in riddles, with each mystery translated into exotic dance by Randa, with all the arousing gyration of the mechanical T-Rex one sees advertised at Air Shows.

But LaRue has a riddle of his own for Father Gullem, and whispers it in his ear, which causes the pious padre to go into convulsions, bellow like a speared wildebeest, and pee-pee dance his way offstage, never to be seen again. The riddle is never revealed, though may be fairly guessed at, considering the barrage of half-muffled epithets from beyond the scrim, and what appeared to be a dog-eared, Post-it note covered playscript suddenly heaved onstage.

An unannounced intermission occurred at this juncture in the proceedings, when director-producer Dozier stood up upon his front row seat, and loudly offered to refund the audience's ticket costs, along with pleas of "Get me a rope!" and "just castrate me!" His Local Treasure-ness was just as quickly subdued by two large usherettes who punched him copiously in a headlock and dragged his limp body off into the darkness below the exit sign.

Like a three-chilidog nightmare, the show marched on.

Fortunately, the comic relief got their cue. Area theatre stalwarts Herc Jenson and Kell Harris attempted to, as usual, wow the crowd as master traveling salesmen "Jim & Jules." Sadly, it was their old standby song-and-shuffle, which perhaps they have drawn once too often from that moldy vaudevillian well:

"Hey Jules, I heard your cousin's in the hospital!"

"Yep Jim, he saw a billboard that said 'drink Canada Dry!' so he drove up there and tried to!"

I ask, how often can one gild that lillie?

The actual intermission, at the 94-minute mark, consisted of warm tap water and margarine sandwiches, sold at the downstairs snack counter for a dear five dollars. Smoking is allowed on the lobby's central aviary roof, which is constructed of half-inch thick pine planks and chicken wire. It creaks menacingly. Cigars are prohibited as the ash may actually burn through the nigh paper-thin platform, which covers not an arbor suite of our singing feathered friends, but a two-foot deep repository of their pungent droppings, which is assumed highly flammable – condemned yet strangely ignored by the City Sanitation Department.

Nothing like a billowing bird shit inferno to mark time 'tween theatre acts.

Sadly the curtain still proved operational for the commencement of Act II. And what an "act" it was!

The sullen morality yarn had suddenly become a musical extravaganza, with two dozen flower-clad maidens tap dancing their way into our lower colons. All ages of tap artisans were represented from junior high to age-spot. The song's title could only be guessed at: something akin to "I Love To Slo-Mo," or "I Lube Up Tofu." I know I'm in the ballpark.

All the more irritating was the lack of an orchestra of any kind, despite a wide, empty orchestra pit. The acapella warblings of the tap maidens, combined with a bare wooden stage pounded into toothpicks by relentless brass-studded soles, reminded me of the old joke about the man who hit himself repeatedly in the forehead with a hammer.

"Why do you do that," asked a friend?

"It feels so good when it stops."

Unfortunately it was only a fresh beginning. The hellish test was born anew as the cast reappeared to pick up where they had left off in the first act.

Once more embarked upon his sojourn of self-discovery, LaRue is again confronted by strangers bearing headachey riddles. The next encounter involves an unwashed, cauldron guarding biddy wearing shredded Goodwill attire (again, versatile senior Audrey Wurztram). "Riddle me..." I assume was the line she attempted. Instead, an electrifying nausea consumed all remaining audience, at what sounded like "Diddle me..."

LaRue's attention, or perhaps more accurately, Lunst's, suddenly is drawn to a mystery beyond the curtain. "Oh..." he grunts, and shoves the grimy witch-i-tute offstage, with a hoarsely whispered "Go go go screw it." An avant-garde scene transition to say the least.

At first the impression is that LaRue has accepted the "Diddle" invite and is hustling his gruesome paramour behind the wings to consummate the deal. If so, it is the quickest quickie of all time, for LaRue is back on the road in the next scene, which thankfully wields his third and final riddling stranger.

Returning for a bizarre encore, Herc and Kell, the former upon the latter's shoulders, beneath a 20-foot long overcoat – with Kell in a $1.75 halloween mask – enter. The "Dreaded Creature of the Lost Highway," as the character refers to itself, asks LaRue his last and ultimate riddle that will allow him passage to the "wondrous dream world" according to writer Harpsham's glorified toilet tissue.

LaRue wails defiantly his answer, which sounded like either "Tell me reality, what!" or "Hell you're really a twat!" The Kiln Playhouse's sound system truly deserves the junk heap.

At LaRue's timber-rattling retort, Kell loses his balance atop Herc beneath the "horrifying" creature outfit... which causes the macabre stage presence to appear to break in half – the top half slamming the boards with bone cracking finality, to be dragged off by two frantic stagehands who appear out of the ether. The creature's bottom half throws up its arms beneath the costume, and waddles off in grim contemplation.

The creature defeated, and all riddles answered, LaRue is granted entry into the above-mentioned "wondrous dream world," to discover it is merely his own home, with Anna and plastic brown infant waiting for him. Fong played the scene having already disengaged from her costume, wearing what could only be her personal "par-tay" attire and "stylin'" make-up. I'm willing to bet she skipped the aftershow party, nay, was the first out the door after the curtain.

She was certainly artist-absentia for the final bow. Which made the moment a tad imperfect, for the curtain descended as if completely unhinged from its moorings, knocking Lunst cold, and pinning Ford Krevich to the stage with enough gusto for him to bleat piercingly in less polite terms than used here, of a potential lawsuit. Fong's presence in this injurious turn of events was sorely missed, though intensely wished for.

Your humble reviewer, unencumbered by any remaining audience as she made her hasty exit, was waved a cheery goodnight by the theater's janitor, who seemed none too hurried to venture into the auditorium with his mighty mop and soapy suds bucket. "Fight on, brave warrior, your reward is nigh."

The final parting shot of the evening occurred outside, where local treasure Cleve Dozier, in an inebriated ecstasy, was seen with bottle of liquid freedom in hand, directing traffic at the intersection. Hazzah, sir.

"Hathaway's Calling" leaves many questions not requiring immediate answers. The first of which is, who the hell is Hathaway? As a theatrical experience, I can only site the words of LaRue: Go go go screw it.

It's Nice To Be Back, Even Randomly

2010-05-25T10:08:00.001-07:00

Some think they're on the "A-Train," but are really just on the "Hay Train."

----------------------------

At my local supermarket I came across a cart of used books, marked at $1 each, the sale of which would benefit some charity. There was one particular book perched on the very top of the pile, which caught my eye – it seemed a bit out of place. I grabbed it and leafed through it, replaced it on the heap, and went about my shopping.

That book stuck in my noggin as I went up and down the aisles, and I decided to look at it again, if it was still there, before I headed to the checkout line. It was. I took it and flipped it into my cart. "Only a buck," I reasoned. It was a very old Bible, bended and floppy, with dog-eared pages, some scarred with penciled notations and underlines, and with a dozen or more aged Post-it notes of different colors, containing the previous owner's scribbled references to pertinent chapters, verses, etc. Said owner's name was embossed on the lower right-hand corner of the cover, in gold: Michael Scott McLean. This to me was a clue that Mr. McLean was perhaps passed away, and this was a cherished tome discarded by indifferent relatives after the house-clearing.

It seemed about twice as thick as any Bible I'd ever seen. I soon discovered why – the book contained both Old and New Testaments, a Bible dictionary, an index, the Book of Mormon, a "doctrine guide" and a map section pertaining to the Middle East of Biblical times. McLean was apparently a studious man, but not a petite one – or else had biceps like Hulk Hogan, to carry this hefty little volume around. I'm not big on the Book of Mormon, but considered the entirety of the book as something worth having, so I took it home. Inside was the most curious find of all: a Post-it, stuck on the first page of the New Testament, that contained, in scribbled pencil: "I love you. Please call me! Mary McDonough, Miss Utah 1997." I wondered if this was worth the time to Google. I did. She had indeed been whom she claimed to be. I can only conclude that if McLean really did hook up with this person, the cause of death was a heart attack.

----------------------------

Sometimes a "conspiracy theory" is the most logical answer as to why certain things have happened. It at least gives the offending party the best benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, the only alternative is incompetence and stupidity, and it would seem reassuring to think that in America even our evildoers operate based on a sliver of intellect rather than random witlessness.

Overheard at work: "Disregard what I wrote – it's just instructions."

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I designed a program booklet for a local Wine Festival, and was given prepared text by some local PR person. It was typical Chamber of Commerce chicken scratch, not only creatively bankrupt, but a bubbling cauldron of typos and atrocious grammar. One of the articles for this program was for an oyster-themed attraction to appear at the event. A stand-out quote from their sensational ad copy runs: "Those coming to this years (sic) grand festival in search of oyster deliciousness will not be disappoint (sic) by these wonderful product's (sic) served by many fine establishments around the peninsula for those valued customer's (sic) who wish to experience a sample of gourmet excellence and perfection with every bite and/or slurp!" This PR person was paid real money for that. These are the people in charge.

----------------------------

It is just a tad bizarre to me how we can be so dependent upon foreign fuel production, and still have an oil leak just off our own shores big enough to threaten seas around the globe if it isn't contained.

I cannot help myself from staring in gentle wonder, when I see a beautiful woman walking alone, crying. A man crying makes me turn away.

Don't ask me what put this notion into my head, but I think it's notable: The people most likely to make it through a zombie plague... agoraphobes.

A Pope Benedict action figure doesn't seem all that fun, until you team him up with Batman!

Random Showers

2010-04-06T14:24:00.000-07:00

Overheard today: "I wasn't busy until I started doing something."

Nothing really "makes history" anymore. The first this. The biggest that. Milestones have become cheap. Nowadays, even the once-believed unbreakable history markers are so fragile that the only thing that inspires awe anymore is the notion that the old record holders lived in a completely different paradigm. Babe Ruth's "steroids" were beer and steak. Elvis's gold records were earned by sales of 78s. Jim Brown's rushing record was accomplished with nobody blocking for him.

Here's a way that technology has changed our lives that you'll never read about. My home internet goes down, so I walk to a nearby college, where I can use their computers via a library card. I arrive to swat my own forehead in frustration at my faulty recall; the college is closed for spring break. So I figure I'll stop at the mini-mart near my home for a snack. Their ATM is down, so I have nothing to buy with. I'm on foot, so other locales around town are a bit out of the question, time-wise. I wind up back home. Nothing accomplished, and a little worn out. This is called "thwarted at every tech-turn."

I went to a drive-thru for dinner on my way home after an exhausting day of jury duty ills. The young woman at the window was bright-eyed, with a glow of youth, and an earnest smile that lifted my spirits – even as she handed me my bag of neo-synthetic, edible death. (I ordered it, don't blame her.) Before home I had an errand to run as well, at a nearby department store. On the way out I was accosted by a different kind of eager young person: A something-teen zombie with a petition for me to sign. His eyes were aglow as well, with the agenda-fueled tribal unction of his "calling." I let my sarcastic side get away with me and came off sounding like a ranting kook, when all I actually had for him was mere disagreement. I pondered this the rest of my way home. Lifted up by a young woman earning her living, and brought down by a young man biding his time with annoying activism. Some people in our current political climate would actually scoff at the cute wage earner, and cheer that sleepwalking petition-peddling shit. Someday, it's likely that the work ethic shared by both I and that pixie will be his meal ticket. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

The most impressive pin a pilot can earn has to be that of the "Winged Astronaut." Air Force Major General Robert M. White won it for flying his jet fighter 59 miles, straight up. It is essentially the act of reaching outer space in a craft that is not designed to do that. It is the will of a pilot overcoming the limitations of the plane, and returning to the ground alive. Indeed, there's a lesson for life in that, somewhere.

If it doesn't fit, it doesn't matter how big the discount was.

Once in a while, a single piece of music will be played, at exactly the right time of mood... and for the next few days, only that song will suffice to play, in a loop.

We choose how important yesterday was, while tomorrow is important no matter what we think.

Fab Feb

2010-02-25T07:40:00.001-08:00

Toilet Paper – use it by the wad and need a plumber, or use it by the square and need a shower – the choice is yours.

The sideways ball caps, the pants worn down at the thighs... it was all a little odd, but trends and fads tend to be that way. I dealt with it. Today I saw a fifteen (or so) year old... with a binky. A baby's pacifier. In his jaws like a pro basketball player works a toothpick. Let me say that again: a BINKY. Now I'm just plain scared.

How come the most overpaid, least in-touch people at a business get all the perks and best vacation packages? Because if given the choice, they'd most likely return to work afterward.

SNIFFLE SNURF, HACK!!

How can something that feels so huge up my nose blow out to just be a damp spot?

I'm not necessarily that tired, it just feels so good to lay here like a sack of potatoes.

If I had a dollar for every cough, I could make your rent and mine both.

Let Hollywood teach you something about our nation's capitol: the sole purpose of all activity in that town is to generate billions of dollars to keep its own gears turning, to keep its leaders and stars wealthy and desirous of a continued career there, while the cogs who keep the machinery operating have to punch timecards and pay their own bills. A government program is no more societal betterment than a movie is tangible reality.

THE DAMN POETRY CORNER IS BACK

Thirty days has September,
April, June and November.
February showed up late,
that's why it just has twenty-eight.

Somebody Knew Something

2010-02-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

This is a blog post that I sincerely hope will provoke you to think about a few things just a bit differently. It is based on first-hand witness experience, and as accurate as I can recall it. A few essential factoids were verified (if one can do that) via Google-searching – but I didn't really find enough to claim irrefutable verification about any of it. So bear with me.

Most people still brush off conspiracy theory. Even though I am a conspiracy "buff," and possibly see intricate webs of deception where others see, oh, a few extra nuts in a Snickers bar, it doesn't mean that intrigue is non-existent. Here are a couple of examples of real-life mysteries that still "haunt" me in a contemplative lunchtime kind'a way.

NO, NOT 9-11.

Try twenty-one months earlier; December 19, 1998 to be exact. For some reason out of the blue, the U.S. Military decided to hold a simulated "attack" on an American west coastline. Namely Monterey, California, where reside the Naval Postgraduate School, the Defense Language Institute (where Lee Harvey Oswald learned Russian) and the Monterey Presidio.

This "urban warfare experiment" involved squads of armed Marines and Coast Guard prowling otherwise quiet oceanfront neighborhoods, waving on old grannies and college frumpkins walking their dogs, a few FedEx trucks, and the Amway lady tootling around in her rusty Dodge Colt station wagon.

Personally, my paranoid concern, as a resident of said neighborhood, was making it to my car in the morning for work without being mistakenly strafed by rubber bullets.

In some ways the event seemed somewhat logical – the Monterey Peninsula was and perhaps still is ripe for the type of foreign assault that was only pretended at, that day. The above mentioned locales of strategic interest – back then – sat literally unguarded. The Presidio was open and free to civilian auto traffic, using it as a shortcut across town. The gates were shut tight on September 12, 2001.

Just the memory of camo-suited guards suddenly present there, just off the street, casually hefting black metal, seems a bit surreal and disconcerting.

There was a time long ago when the vast Pacific Ocean was considered adequate defense against someone else's army. We at least had the technology in place to see or hear them coming. That was yesterday's "conventional wisdom."

It became apparent that someone, somewhere, in 1998, thought it was time we reevaluated. Monterey was not the only place where simulated combat situations were staged. And yet in retrospect, something was odd.

Such training simulations, at least one on this invasive scale and far reaching magnitude, had never bothered with little old Monterey before.

Twenty-one months later... September 11, 2001, we really were attacked, on our own – east coast – soil. By air, from a foreign power, for the first time ever since Pearl Harbor.

The military has never held a simulated "invasion" here, since. Why not? Wouldn't 9-11 have ramped up the call for regular training runs?

Maybe in 1998, someone knew that something was coming. And currently they believe that nothing like it is due in the near future?

THE GHOST OF SANTEE

Now this one is even a tad scarier; a case of the jim-jams coming home to roost on a personal level. Consider it a warning.

For those who have lived on the Monterey Peninsula since the late 1990s, the name Christina Williams has a certain meaning. Her kidnapping and murder led to an exhaustive search with bizarre twists, turns and a Twilight Zone conclusion, that all served to galvanize the population in the process.

Christina was the perfect post-modern girl next door; Eurasian, raven haired, pencil-slender and of course cuter than cupcakes. Out walking her dog one evening. Shorts, sneakers, dressed to be noticed, as most young urban teens are wont to do. At just thirteen, perhaps this was not an ideal place for her; out along a boulevard near a military post where lots of young men with raging hormones tend to partake of adult beverage, and cruise around for something to "notice." But there she was. An almost stereotypically perfect opening scene for a documentary about a kidnapping, that of course fades out with "never to be seen again."

The public notice of Christina's vanishing was immediately more than just any typical missing persons case. Fort Ord was still federal property then, and a kidnapping on government land wasn't any mere felony, but a potential breach of security. The story grabbed the front page and stayed there for weeks.

A beach-combing hobo found floating face-down in the bay would be lucky to make the next morning's police blotter.

Christina Williams became everyone's little girl as the massive search began. Celebrities like Mariah Carey, Reggie Jackson and Clint Eastwood each made public appeals for help and prayers for the Williams family.

A most bizarre twist was the sudden presence of the lowrider community, who taped photocopies in their back windows, of Christina, and the police sketches of the two individuals whose low-slung car she was seen getting into. Were they genuinely concerned about finding the girl, or was it a gesture to symbolically eliminate themselves from the suspect list?

Every inch of the Peninsula was searched, especially the trails in and around the expanse of Fort Ord – searched and searched again. And again.

About a month into the case, a body turned up fifty miles north, that seemed to match Christina's description. Tests were performed. The entire county held our breaths.

No. It wasn't Christina. It was a woman much older, but whose petite framed body gave the impression of a teenager's. Someone else's case. Though it was not exactly reassuring, it gave pause for hope; the longer Christina didn't turn up dead, there was all the more reason to believe she could still be found alive.

At this point in the story, is where the headlines crept their way into my own day-to-day life. During this time, I worked at Monterey's daily paper, The Herald, which was then owned and operated by Scripps-Howard, Inc.

I worked as an advertising designer and compositor. One morning an ad insertion order came in from a walk-in client. I was given the raw copy to typeset. It only took me a minute to realize that this was no ordinary newspaper ad.

For one thing, it wasn't an advertisement for anything. A full page in size, it was a random pastiche of the client's prattling personal manifestos. A laundry list of bumper sticker "truisms."

"I won the Superbowl more times than the 49ers, so where's my money?" and "I don't waste time picking lotto numbers, I just want the girl." are two of the gems I recall from this huge, rambling "word quilt."

The sales rep handling the client excused herself. Her calm walk to the back office became a gallop once she was out of the client's eyeshot, straight to the publisher's office to scream for help.

The client refused to give his name, but insisted on being referred to as "The Ghost of Santee."

I decided I had to get a look at this person. When I walked out front, I discovered him chatting up one of the Classified Department sales reps. I chose to just observe, and moved on after a few loiterous minutes.

He was slicked back, every hair in place like a swatch of chestnut corduroy. A waxed mustache and goutee of the same color. What stood out most was his attire... a custom-looking suit with pants and coat made of the same silvery fabric, only the coat wasn't a standard suitcoat, but more of a priest's frock, with no buttons I could see.

He seemed weighed down with gold chains and various neck-worn ornamentation. Every finger had bling. A pair of highly polished snakeskin boots completed this strange "cosmic wild west chaplain" ensemble.

After he left, the publisher decreed that The Herald would not run such an ad. I wonder if the verdict would be different now, when anyone coming in with an open checkbook is treated like royalty, regardless how good-n-nutty they are.

Later, the salesperson who'd handled the account told me some of the off-planet comments that TGOS had made while placing his goofy ad. He tended to steer conversation toward the subject of... Christina Williams.

He was amazed that nobody else, especially at the city newspaper, already knew the identity of Christina's murderer. This was still before a body had been found, and hope still lingered that she was alive.

TGOS said that "everyone" knew who offed Christina. He then, incredibly, predicted that her body would be found in exactly a week. He left before going further with his "insider info."

Christina Williams was found... dead. A week later. Two miles from her home, on Fort Ord land, along a trail near Imjin Road – a location that had been covered, and covered again, thoroughly during the search. Whomever possessed Christina's body for the months prior to its discovery, had recently placed it there.

It was quite easy to conclude that The Ghost of Santee was Christina's killer, coming in to place an ad that he thought would taunt authorities – like The Joker, leaving a baffling public clue to goad Batman. But strangely, nobody else involved ever mentioned TGOS afterward – as if he'd never appeared at The Herald office.

Nobody, including the editorial staff with its clan of supposed advocates and champions wanted anything to do with the incident. It became a forgotten anecdote, and nothing more.

But, I kept saying to myself, THAT had to be the guy. Am I crazy? Doesn't anyone else see it?

Out of curiosity, I wondered what hidden meaning might be contained in the title "Ghost of Santee," and Googled it. It turns out that Santee, California is a paranormal "hotspot," with ghost sightings considered somewhat of a tourist attraction. One of the most prominent ghosts of Santee is an adolescent girl who is usually witnessed before dawn, "meditating."

Over a decade later, Christina's killer is still technically considered to be at large. Marina, California rapist Charles Holifield, currently serving a life term in state prison, however, is believed by the FBI to be a suspect. They try, ongoing, to coax a confession out of him, to no avail as of this writing.

But if you take Holifield's photo, and pencil a mustache and goutee on him... well... maybe. I wonder if they'd get anything out of him if they asked "have you ever referred to yourself as a ghost?"

Chapped By "Chopped"

2010-01-26T10:16:00.001-08:00

I'm a little miffed by the Food Network show "Chopped," which I enjoy in general immensely, but am irked by its panel of judges.

The show's premise is brilliantly attention-commanding: four chefs are each given a "mystery basket" containing three oddball ingredients that in an ideal world would never be served on the same bill of fare, much less combined into a single entrée. Havarti, yams and eel. Tongue, rhubarb and marshmallows, etc. The chefs must then "think on their feet," and improv these nauseatingly disparate factions into a tantalizing gourmet treat within a hellishly brief 30 minutes.

The maddening preparation intervals are edited down to a more reasonable chunk of time, so that the entire show isn't consumed by a single round. There are three; Appetizer, Main Dish and Dessert. With each, the chef that conjures up the least palatable dish, is eliminated, or "chopped." By the third round, the Dessert round, the competition has been pared to two competing chefs, slugging it out for the judges' favor. The last chef standing is declared "Chopped Champion."

The judges, whom are each given brief yet grandiose introductions ("... the Grand Wizard of the Sauté Pan"), get to sample each chef's creation and then enjoy informing him/her what a disgusting, back-alley scavenger's plate of wet garbage they've toiled upon.

Here's where I really have a problem.

Most of the time, the judges' critiques boil down to the dish being undercooked and well... weird.

Hello??? You give them ingredients that Lizzie Borden wouldn't throw in a pot together to serve to her parents, and only 30 minutes to plan, gather additional elements from a spaceship-like "pantry," combine and cook in whichever manner the chef is proficient, and then "plate" – arrange in an esthetically pleasing manner for presentation. Any dish birthed in this environment is bound to be somewhat rushed and a tad strange! Needless to say these chefs have bulging neck veins and soulless staring gazes after the conclusion of each round.

And the judges apparently can't discern anything out of the ordinary about this kitchen equivalent of a bad LSD trip.

The judges, by the way, also get to watch and comment during the preparations, which I'm sure endears them to the contestants even more. Not to mention the studious shmuck with a microphone standing in the way, asking each chef for a play-by-play. "I'm putting a lid on the sauce to simmer, bitch. What does it look like? Get away from me!"

And just as the nightmare seems almost over, the judges ask each chef to describe – in a style not unlike a job interview – what they have cooked.

"I've seared the GORILLA THIGH in extra-virgin olive oil to offset the power of the TANG brûlée, and garnished with GUMMI BEAR wedges on a bed of chopped bacon and field greens. Enjoy."

Each judge takes a demure mouthful, with a far-off stare of contemplation... then unloads.

"I think you're a very creative person... but in all honesty, you could have dropped trow and grunted out a butt-fudge enchilada on this plate and I'd have respected you more."

The victimized chef must keep retort to a minimum. "Ah. Umhm. Yes, I understand."

"You're a fraud and a lowlife. This is just a step removed from boiled vomit."

"Email that online culinary school and demand your 20 bucks back."

"Memorize this, because you're going to need it: 'Pull to the next window please.'"

I will never be on this show, because frankly, I'd lose it. I don't mean the Championship. I'd. Lose. It. With. These. People.

It would go down like:

JUDGE: "Your pasta is underdone."

ME: "And you're undone."

JUDGE: "Your fromage filling is running out onto the plate."

ME: "And your teeth are spilling out onto the floor in a minute."

JUDGE: "This is frankly unacceptable."

ME: "The ingredients you made me use were Whale Semen, Spinach and Mini-Butterfingers. A dung beetle would find it unacceptable!"

The Food Network should rename this show "Meet The Asshats."

Chef Dave, sorry, you've MET THE ASSHATS. Goodbye.

An eliminated contestant is always filmed walking down the "hallway of shame" back to the dressing rooms. I'm waiting to see when a "chopped" chef flips the bird to the camera... I'm sure the editor has a collection.

Again, I am kind of addicted to this show.

Some Free Spec Script Ideas

2010-01-20T20:39:00.000-08:00

As a busy screenwriter with several projects in various stages of development and/or production, my idea bank (brain) has been backlogging like a constipated hockey player at a Nathan's Hotdog semi-final. Naturally I have a huge list of project ideas that I know will never make it to the top of my to-do list, much less a pole position on the track to development hell. Therefore I now choose to release the safety valve, and free up space in my "Next Big Thing" vault. Here they are, ready to be greenlighted – yours to expand into a future blockbuster. No copyrights lurking in the b.g. here. My fellow aspiring script-smiths, take 'em and run!

SLAMMIN' DOWN TO BRISBANE
(Blame It On Rio meets Bumfights)
Myrtle and Sam "Spammy" Wilkerson click an internet pop-up and win a second-honeymoon trip to that dazzling vacation capital, Brisbane, California. They pack up the Dodge Valiant and are on their way down 101 when they pick up wayward hitch-hiker Bobby Boo, once famous radio crooner and Hollywood royalty of yesteryear. Hilarious adventures ensue when Bobby mistakes an eastside hoorhouse for the 3-star hotel where he was once a fixture in the heyday of the great Tinseltown musicals.

JUNIOR ASSKICKERS 2004!
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Our Gang)
(This synopsis was written in 2003, when the title would carry a bit more relevance, but it can easily be changed to something up-to-date.) The plot: Angry at being flunked out of DeVrie Summer College and thus denied his electronic associate's degree, scientist hero Jameson Goldenrod suspects foul play afoot among the institution's adminstratti. He injects ten preschoolers with super-hyperdyne steroids, then teaches them kung fu, aided by his own Yoda-like mentor Hibachi Sokomotamoto-Tannenbaum (I wrote the part for Alan Arkin, but any competent character actor with good dialect presence should work). Can the Junior Asskickers get to the heart of a corrupt Junior College and deliver swift, bonecrunching, action-packed justice? Or will campus security shut them down with a few tazers, and by playing the Macarena over the school's sound system?

STAR BANGERS!
(Star Wars meets The Food Network)
No, not a tale of celebrity groupies, but of a platoon of intergalactic bounty-hunters, on the trail of half-lobster/half-super android, Krorgon! Aided by his army of Space Bears, Krorgon is secretly a hero of the galactic gourmet underground, whose mission is to free the planet X-98-D from the culinary tyranny of the tantalizing ten-breasted Princess Moparra, seductress of heroes, enslaver of billions, and host of her own mid-morning cookery show "Brunchtime Brainwash." Her ultimate recipe for Uranus Sausage holds the entire planet in bondage, addicted to the savory tubular delicacy. But with his mission top-secret, and led by the guidance of the cloned bodiless head of Julia Child, can Krorgon succeed while being hounded by both the Federation AND the interstellar bounty-hunters? Will Krorgan and his troops become Uranus Sausage on Princess Moparra's next show? By the end credits, will it make any more sense?

THE THREE STOOGES MEET SATAN
(Three Stooges meet... well... Satan)
Yes it's those three madcap nutty goofball slap-happy... guys, who get a job as wallpaper hangers, and paste-n'-press their wacky way right down to the Underworld, where they must elude capture by the Big Red Horned One and his pitchfork wielding minions. Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Phil Donohue make hilarious cameos! (Yes, I realize the Stooges have been dead for about 30 years, but they can do wonders now with computer graphics, and I hear production orgs like NBC Features and Turner Instant Classics have now acquired the rights to film on location in Hell. Start developin'!)

CREAMED!
(James Bond meets Mary Kay)
Joe Revlonné is the "Cool Hand Luke" of the feminine hygiene industry. His products sell, and his "nose for the business" has served him well. He can sniff out the difference between a 'fresh-n'-fuzzy' and a 'soggy clambake' from across a retail cosmetics convention floor! At just such an event he meets his match in Asian synthetic beauty queen, Chi-Ki, CEO of Dragonflayer Cosmetics, and creator of their #1 selling fem-hy sensation, "Sprunt." But there's something fishy about Sprunt, that leads Joe to suspect a world-domination scheme in the making. Can he get up his unique talent in time to screw Chi-Ki's plot?

METER SQUAD
(Inglorious Basterds meets the 10-minute zone)
Washington DC Ticket Officer Bill "Chalk-demon" Taggart is sick as hell of cars parked over the time limit! Spurred on by retired politician Arnold Shwartzamutha's HUM-V parked 20 minutes past the red-flag on the meter, he snaps. Before he can "chalk the town red," he is recruited by elite Pentagon parking specialist Perry Lell, who urges Taggart to let out his frustrations upon America's enemies abroad rather than moronic line-straddlers at home... Now an ultra-secret team of meter police have banded together under Taggart's command. They accept a covert government mission to chalk up the tires of overseas terrorists and anti-American war factions... they're Meter Squad.

NOTHING IMPORTANT
(Boring meets Pointless)
David "Jack" Smithers gets some bills paid, washes his car, and does laundry. He rewards himself with a snowcone. This angers Wanda, his shrewish nextdoor neighbor who decides, for reasons known only to herself, to make an example of Jack to the neighborhood. She hires her brother to knock on Jack's door and club him with a waterpolo mallet, as she watches from behind taut drapes. Wanda's brother knocks, and goes inside with Jack. He and Jack watch the game and have a couple of beers. Wanda's brother returns without harming Jack. When confronted by Wanda as to why he refused her orders, the brother says he forgot. Wanda hires the town drunk to lay in wait for her brother, at a nearby bar, and club him with a length of PCV pipe. That doesn't happen either. Wanda will have her revenge!! (Can't you just picture Clooney as Jack?)

FLIGHT OF THE FLYING FLIER
(Horse Ass meets Propeller)
Jockey Bert Jertson sends his ailing horse "Flying Flier" to the glue factory after losing ten races in a row, and decides to take up piloting – naming his plane "Flying Flier" in homage to his dead trotter. Drama erupts when Bert accepts a race from New York to Paris against fellow airman Charles Lindbergh.

THE GALAXY'S GOT TALENT
(American Idol meets Independence Day)
Leeza Chimps, a young pop vocalist wanna-be, and her newbie agent Trix, find themselves beamed to the planet Velcro, to represent Earth in a galaxywide talent contest! The stakes are high; Leeza must win the competition or our world faces total destruction! Leeza surprises the interstellar panel of judges by besting every alien act thrown at her – from Crab Nebulan quick-costume change artists to a Jupiterian insect twelve-million-legged clogdance ensemble. Along the way, Leeza gets the milky way rockin' with soft-pop and faux-blues hit after hit, earning her megastar status back on Earth, as the entire human race watches on intergalactic HD TV. Leeza makes it to the final, but comes in second to a glob-like Andromedan magician who can squat and produce small brown clones of himself. As fiery death-rays ravage the Earth, leaving it a burnt-out lifeless cinder, Leeza counts it as a coming-of-age experience and moves on to a hopeful tomorrow.

BLARNEY STONED
(Up In Smoke meets My Left Foot)
Irish poet Fagin McFlaherty spends his days blissfully indulging in his two favorite passtimes, rhyme and weed, until one day he falls in love with Haarga, a raven-haired beerhall waitress with only one handicap – she is a deaf-mute armless, legless human stump, who navigates between tables upon a small wheeled platform, propelled along by her own flatulence. He devotes his life and art to her, but soon discovers that the market for stoner poetry – particularly about voiceless human logs who can fart at will – is too small to make a living from. He takes a job in the town coal yard to support them, laboring on his fanciful words only by night. Successes are few but Haarga believes in him, earning extra money working at a circus sideshow and raking in a small fortune, which she secrets away, in the hope of surprising Fagin by getting an operation to have new arms and legs – of styrofoam – duct-taped onto herself, for their blessed honeymoon night to come. Fagin finds the money and uses it to travel to Scandinavia, to the annual pothead poetry jam and competition – which he wins handily with his poems of Haarga. But when he returns, he finally learns of her styrofoam dream of love that he has unknowingly thwarted. Haarga forgives him, and they marry. Years later at an award banquet in Fagin's honor, Haarga pays tribute to him by farting out a soulful rendition of Ireland's National Anthem.

Upon A New Year's Randomly...

2010-01-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

The really amazing thing regarding Tiger Woods, is that he secretly led the life of a porn star for 15 years while being one of the most WATCHED INDIVIDUALS ON THE PLANET.

A guy in front of me at the checkout line puts down a litre bottle of soda, a small bag of chips, and a jar of ranch dressing dip, large enough for the whole bag of chips to swim in. He then asks the clerk to add a pack of cigs to his order. She obliges, asking "and how are you today?" He grins and answers "lunchtime." I get a sudden urge to projectile vomit, just on principle.

I had to drive downtown on an errand. The level of foolhardiness to sheer insanity on the part of other motorists and pedestrians made me tremble at the wheel. Just three days prior, it had been Christmas – in less than 48 hours how quickly we can shift gears back down to viewing each other as annoying carrion.

I witnessed someone who knows "the secret." A little over five feet tall, unwashed t-shirt with heavy metal rockband logo, lots of bling, a dirty baseball cap, a cigarette and three days growth on his chin... at the wheel of a new, gold HUM-V, making an entire string of other cars wait while he struggled through a U-turn, and then painfully parallel park in reverse, between two much, much smaller vehicles – actually wedging them in. He then got out to dude-strut into the coffee shop. I kept thinking... this guy qualified for a $150,000 loan. What am I doing wrong? Is everybody in the state dealing drugs except me?

This month's post is a bit depressing so far, you think?

It has always struck me strangely, how people who screw over others always claim to believe in karma.

OVERHEARD ON A TRIP TO THE SUPERMARKET...
Not all in one night, but close enough:

Someone across the parking lot – "Chips!! Two dollah-fawty cent!! Mawda-Fawk!!"

Over the in-store speaker – "Dina to the likker 'partment... Dina to the likker 'partment."

A very well groomed young aisle attendant briefly gets his wires crossed – "May I assist your ass this evening?"

Guy with long hair and a waaaay-big mutton-chop mustache sees the beer aisle (for the very first time ever?) – "Ooooooooooh, check THIS out."

Yes, my mind is like a camcorder, and I tend to have too much fun with it.

1970's FRESNO: The Golden Age of Local Television!

2010-01-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

I'll take you back to a time before everything was so... slick. I will sift a wild dozen years of being raised by the one-eyed electric babysitter, and glean some priceless moments that, thankfully, were probably erased long, long ago by some cost-cutting studio flunky.

"Indoctrination" was hardly a word one could associate with the public school system of the 70s. We were too busy having our slushy little minds diluted by the conspiracies of a more innocent age. Toys that drained out parents' bank accounts and lasted mere hours out of the box. Candy that turned our young bodies into walking chemical waste dumps. Quick neo-synthetic food that would help us grow up to be wheezy, half-blind, heart patients.

But some moments were golden indeed. Most of them are preserved only in the memories of those who witnessed them, within that pale grey electronic haze.

Our house, in the hills of California's central San Joaquin Valley, was doubly-blessed when it came to the respective broadcast footprints of the local TV stations. We were ideally situated to receive the NBC, CBS and ABC signals of both the Fresno and Bakersfield markets. On rainy evenings when the thunderheads rolled just so, we could get Sacramento – indy station KXTL 40 had the best (early anime) cartoons – Speed Racer, Gigantor... and – yikes, get the popcorn – Ultraman back-to-back with Superman (George Reeves)!

We had our own local indy, KMPH 26 – at the time hardly the media behemoth it would become in the 90s and 00s – back then, merely a catch-all of classic b&w films and 60s/70s syndicated sitcom reruns. Station-breaks were heralded by cheesy hand-drawn graphics on colored paste-board. A fun watch.

Fresno's KMJ 24 (now KSEE) had a splendid library of Laurel & Hardy two-reelers, while KBAK 29 (Bakersfield) was where one went for an afternoon Three Stooges fix. Years later, KGET 17 would inherit them, and run them at midnight, cognizant that the kids who'd loved them long ago on KBAK, were now adults working the swing shift.

KAIL 53 burst on the scene in the mid-80s, and pro-wrestling returned, but that's another blog. Remember, these were all terrestrial broadcast stations – cable was still just what people in motels had to make do with.

Each station's "personality" was indirectly dictated by which ever local celebrities – if one must call them that – populated their programming schedules, appearing in everything from commercials to newscasts to sometimes even their own shows. But each was loyal to his or her own station. If you saw KMJ's stalwart local news anchor Bob Long suddenly appear on say, KJEO 47's six-o'clock report, he wasn't doing it freelance – it meant he'd flipped off a station manager earlier in the day.

Bob Long was also a college instructor at Cal State University Fresno, whom I knew as a student there. For the record, he was not the kind of man to flip off anyone, and for as long as I can remember, was a beloved fixture at KMJ/KSEE. The above is a fiction, used only to illustrate a point. Rest in peace, Bob.

If any man owned the title "Mr. Television" in Fresno at that time, it was a ruddy faced, balding Irishman with an infectious smile and banjo eyes, named Al Radka. On a local level, "Uncle Al" was every bit the early television pioneer as Dave Garroway and Milton Berle were, up the corporate ladder.

He did it all! Pitching everything from used cars to olives (Oberti Olives from Madera! O-B-E-R-T-I, they're the ones you gotta try!), and hosting everything from afternoon chat shows and matinees to weekend-ruining telethons. And making it look like he could do it in his sleep. His flushed cheeks, and pulsating red nose offered no clues then to the average preschooler or kindergartner, that he wasn't that far from sleeping through most of it.

Before Sesame Street hit the airwaves (I witnessed the very first west-coast broadcast in the late 60s), mornings were greatest on KFSN 30 – Uncle Al and yes... Channel 30 Funtime! Strike up the organ!

(A studio full of kids singing as one:)
It's Funtime!
It's Funtime!
It's Channel 30 Funtime!

We're happy
to see you!
We hope you're feeling fine!

We brushed our teeth
and washed our face
and now we're smiling in our place!

It's Funtime!
Channel 30 Funtime!
We're smiiiiiling,
whyyyy doooon't yooouuuuu...

Yayyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!

(Cue Uncle Al into frame, wearing an off-the-rack plaid JCPenny suit with sleeves a half-inch too short, holding a foot long silver mic, and visibly licking the remains of a quick swig from his upper lip. A smile... a mug at the camera lens... and it's on with the show, kids!)

But one could easily tell how Uncle Al adored the youngsters who shared the stage with him every morning. Only occasionally did a little smartass chafe his hide, like the soda-bottle bespectacled girl scout, who demonstrated how to bake and decorate patriotic Fourth of July Cupcakes in a 25-second ADD plagued stream of consciousness. "...thenwhenthetimergoesoffyoutakethemoutoftheovenandthenyoutakethetwobowlsoffrostingovertothe..."

"No honey, you go too fast. Now explain it all again, slow enough for the little shi... our little friends at home to understand."

A typical Uncle Al "save;" woozy, pissed, yet avoiding an on-air S-bomb at literally the final buzzer. Then at the commercial, almost beyond mic range: "Gawd, someone get me a rope."

Uncle Al's hijinks were more than just filler between cartoons. When Channel 30 got the rights to the syndicated reruns of "Lost In Space" for its after-school time slot, Radka shrewdly had them also hire the services of Bob May and his "Robby the Robot" suit gathering dust in some Hollywood warehouse, to come north to Fresno and make a few personal appearances on his morning show. Everyone stayed glued to Channel 30 throughout the day, because Uncle Al and "Robby" would also make surprise walk-ons on other in-studio programs. When "Lost In Space" finally premiered, every kid in the county was tuned in.

Al had a remarkable background that his on-air persona hardly disclosed. He played lineguard for Fresno State in the late 1930s, and was an Air Corpsman during WWII. Radka served as a Fresno community leader for many years, under many hats, from Chamber of Commerce duty to newspaper journalist and advertising executive. But us kids knew him as that wacky Uncle Al... Mr. Television.

The last time I saw Al on screen, was in a commercial for what was probably one of his many favored Fresno watering holes, The Old Fresno Hofbrau. His fine chestnut scalp-ring now turning snowy, and his purply Irish nose now to W.C. Fields proportions, Al was finally getting to literally phone a performance in from a bar. His local trademark Christmas-red fedora in great evidence, he hoisted a round clear goblet of golden suds and read the cue-cards perfectly. A perfect cue-card read is something Bob Hope never mastered: Read it word-for-word like it isn't written down, and look right into the camera like you aren't reading it. Al was in his element, and he was always a pro. Rest in peace, Mr. Radka.

You can see a rare clip online of Uncle Al in action – type his name into YouTube.

While we're still tuned to Channel 30, we should meet another local legend, a hulking blond grizzly of a man named Gus Zernial.

Gus had played professional baseball in the 1950s, rubbing elbows with the celebrated sluggers of that era, and basically being one himself – an American League homerun champ in '51 and '52. Though his claim to fame was baseball, Gus was a true "old school" sports star – an all-around athlete, who could hurl a football, a javelin, and shoot three-pointers pretty handily as well.

After his sports career, like a number of pros, Gus kept alive his connection to the game he loved by becoming a sportscaster. Only instead of taking a network job, he returned to his hometown, Fresno, to lend his imposing presence before the local TV cameras. He made quite an impression behind the sports desk, being twice as tall and at least half again as broad as the typical studious newscast "twink." A dimple-cheeked Paul Bunyon. In fact, Gus Zernial looked like he could BBQ and eat the rest of the on-air news team.

I remember one incident, vaguely – and I hope I'm recalling correctly – Gus intentionally put his imposing countenance into play, on-air, after a "witty" post-report remark from the newsman sitting next to him.

It came after a pre-taped feature segment, in which this same anchorman interviewed female softball pitcher Rosie Beaird, leader of "The Queen and Her Court," who were touring through Fresno. They were a four-woman exhibition team who traveled the country, playing various local – full-size – teams, and handing their guts to them with a razzle-dazzle style of softball, much like the Harlem Globetrotters still do on the basketball court. Rosie was famous as the world's fast-pitch princess, who could roundhouse-fling the "fat apple" with the power of a major league fastball – from second base!

I once recall Beaird guesting on the Mike Douglas Show, and Cincinnati Reds hall-of-famer Johnny Bench managed only a single hit off of her, on what would have been strike three if he'd missed.

Anyway, this anchorman had concluded the segment by trying to bat against Rosie. She shut him down with three bazooka-like heaters. He swung like a Pop Warner beginner on a Pixie-Stix buzz – the bat never even grazing the ball.

It's a little hazy, but back in the studio, I recall an exchange that went something like:

ANCHOR: "I'll bet you never came to bat against anything like THAT in your time, eh, Gus?"

GUS: "That was remarkable, I must say – and that remark would be, 'too bad you can't even hit a softball like a man.'"

That was it for the night, folks! Roll credits!

My other favorite Gus Zernial memory came years later, after Gus had retired his seat at the Channel 30 sports desk, and only appeared occasionally in commercials for the huge car dealership he either owned or at least managed, along Highway 99. It involved another 70s Fresno broadcast icon, the RV King, Mack Lazarus.

To briefly backtrack: Mack was a demurely suited, gentle-souled man – of the sportcoat, bling and white leather shoe tribe – big glasses, big wristwatch – who ran the central valley's most widely known RV dealership, in Kerman, California. He was legendary for his cornball TV commercials, which he always concluded with "Come to Kerman!! I'm Mack Lazarus, and I'll STAND ON MY HEAD to make you a deal!!" The schtick was that a cartoon caricature of Mack, in a kind of "jumping jack" pose, cut out of cardboard, spun upside-down as he uttered this trademark slogan!

Comedy gold, trust me.

Well, it seems Mack struck a deal with Gus, and they were sharing a TV commercial, promoting some über-spectacular sales event for which their two respective dealerships would temporarily join forces. It had to be Zernial – I can't recall any other former pro that was as visible on Fresno TV at the time. The commercial had a football theme, possibly because it was around Superbowl time – anyone's guess.

There they stood side-by-side – rows of sparkling new automobiles gleaming behind them – a Mutt-&-Jeff duo of sales and showmanship! The closing note of the ad involved Zernial holding a football aloft and thundering to the effect of "we're passing the savings on to you!" – then delivering Mack a full-on gutcheck with the ball!

Poor Mack. Poor, poor Mack. He and athletic prowess were obvious strangers. Whether or not they'd rehearsed the action – Mack did NOT see it coming. Big Gus – I can only hope unintentionally – fed a sucker-punch right to Mack's lower abdomen, drilling him out of the frame!

The studio's editor had either gone to lunch and left the commercial unfinished, or most likely had only one "take" to work with... for at the fade-out, Mack visibly crumbled, barfing out "rrr-uh-right, Gus... OH GEEZUS!"

No, I wished neither Gus nor Mack any ill – I loved them both – but I just could not stop laughing.

I eagerly watched for days afterward, hoping to see the spot replayed, but apparently someone at the studio saw it too, and pulled it.

So ended another broadcast day at good ol' "Channy Thirtle" as my grandmother referred to it.

Finally, we must journey back to Bakersfield, and the merry wonderland of yet another afternoon kids' favorite, Uncle Woody!

Many people fondly recall him; it was on his show that we got our daily dose of Popeye (the old Fleischer Studio black-n-whites that were superior in every way to the Sailorman's modern day cartoons) and of course the eternally favored Three Stooges. A lot of young fresh eye-pokers got their first addictive dose of Moe, Larry & Curly (and Shemp) thanks to Uncle Woody (Briant)'s show.

Like Uncle Al in Fresno, Woody had a studio full of kids raising blood-curdling havoc behind his back. Running herd for Uncle Woody, so's he could keep both eyes aimed at the camera, was a ragtag, flop-top hatted clown named Chester, who didn't speak, but communicated with a bicycle horn – can anybody say Harpo Marx?

Uncle Woody himself was actually a somewhat handsome feller with boundless energy and a winning smile. He wore a red-n-white striped jacket, that gave the sublime impression that somewhere around the studio, the other three members of a barbershop quartet were on coffeebreak.

Uncle Woody's show was sponsored by Bakersfield's premier kids' emporium, Toy Circus, which Uncle Woody also happened to own, and may still. Over the years, The Uncle Woody Show broadcast on several stations around California – at the time of my loyal viewership, it enjoyed the afternoon slot at KBAK 29.

Like most kidshows of that kind, Uncle Woody and the gang would play games, hold contests, laugh, sing, and in general keep our little worlds spinning – between cartoons. But one seemingly typical afternoon, proceedings suddenly became not-so-typical, and Woody's universe nearly came to an ugly, grinding halt.

It began innocently enough. It became apocalypse in a heartbeat.

Knock-knock jokes. Everyone loves 'em! "Okay," Uncle Woody beamed to his rambunctious troop of adorable scamps, "I'm going to come around to each and every one of you, and you tell me your favorite knock-knock joke!" It was just to mark time while the crew spooled up the Stooges.

All went just fine for five or six knock-knocks... then Uncle Dubb came to a freckly cross-eyed wonder who's grin was just a tad too broad somehow, who smiled even bigger as the mic neared, to reveal a disturbingly cavernous absence where rotten little teeth had once wiggled.

You just knew this wasn't going to end well.

UNCLE WOODY: Okay, little fella, your turn!

KID: Knock knock!!

UNCLE WOODY: Who's there??

KID: (F-BOMB!!)

If KBAK even had someone at the bleep-button, he wasn't fast enough. An entire studio of restless brats – and Chester's horn – all became eerily silent. Uncle Woody's glazed eyes peered searchingly off-camera.

At least he'd had the presence of mind to not respond "(F-bomb) who?"

The little bald-mouthed lizard smiled hugely into the lens – Mission Accomplished! An hour seemed to pass – it was actually about 15 seconds.

Someone behind the camera cued the Stooges. Just. In. Time.

When the film concluded, apparently so had the show. About an hour later, KBAK's manager, the unflappable Gene DeNari, broke in on regular programming, with Uncle Woody seated next to him. Woody did not look happy. DeNari never looked happy.

(DeNari himself hosted a weekly half-hour called "Let Me Talk to the Manager," in which he sat at a desk and responded to viewer mail. Though apparently quite effective behind-the-scenes, his on-camera persona was the cure for insomnia. An expression-free funerial monotone that brought to mind a vision of Frankenstein reading the whitepages.)

I don't remember if Uncle Woody spoke, or just sat solemnly while DeNari groaned out a carefully cue-carded apology. Nevertheless Uncle Woody endured a lifetime with every flat, drawn-out word.

After that night, I don't recall ever seeing Uncle Woody on KBAK. Ever again. Ever. If he was, it has been wiped clean from my mind, like a chalkboard after a summer break's soap-down. Which is a shame, for the tragedy was not his fault.

I think the kid grew up to run for the Senate.

That's how I remember it, Uncle Woody. Please know that I loved you. And still do. I hope where ever you are, you're warm, dry, with a full belly, and surrounded by loved ones.

How does a person grow up even marginally normal, with a mind colored by such things? Somehow, we all did. And even marginally counts. When I channel surf today's line-up of entire networks devoted to single topics, like all-food networks, all-sports, all-renovation, all-kids, all-you-name-it, I can see how far we've come from the golden days of under-planned and over-rushed local TV chaos.

Now and then, one of these classic trainwrecks on video is rediscovered, and preserved on some blooper show, or on YouTube. Thank somebody for that – for these moments say more about the legacy of television than any pristine documentary on the History Channel.

Great Halloween Costume Ideas... for 2010!

2009-12-29T10:25:00.000-08:00

I had a notion to jump way ahead in my efforts to wish everyone a Happy New Year – eleven months to be exact. In a way, just planning a new year's eve party by itself is the epitome of living for the moment. There's a whole year still sitting there, that could use a little long-term thinking. We didn't do much of that in 2009, and look where it got us. So let's rattle some cages and set an itinerary for the NEXT holiday season, beginning with everyone's fave dress-up day!

Nowadays mostly grown-ups do Halloween, while the kids stay home and Wii. In that light, I'd like to offer – a year in advance – a few costume ideas for young-at-heart Halloween adventurers. Stunningly original outfits that are sure to be real attention-getters around any neighborhood. Enjoy.

10. AN ANNOYING NEIGHBOR WITH A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT

Old jeans. Tank-top. Flip-flops. Lots of bling. And before wearing it, store your costume in a misty cuspidor for that aroma of chain-smoker goodness.

Insist on giving that four-part tribal handshake that nobody can do right, to whomever answers the doorbell, with a loud "Awwwrriiggghhhhhh!" Don't ask, but DEMAND several helpings of candy. Complain about their yard, and how much better it would look if they took care of it as well as you do your own. Remind them how crappy everything they own is, compared to yours. Then ask if you can come back later for whatever candy is left.

9. A SACK OF MONKEY CRAP

Find a cheap gorilla mask. Create the body of the costume out of an old burlap bag – smudged liberally with spots of brown paint. Carry a concealed baggy with actual poop (horse, dog, any species of feces will do) to provide the olfactory element.

PERSON AT DOOR: "Holeeee shit, what's that smell!"
YOU: "It's me, I'm a sack of monkey crap! Give me some candy or I won't leave!"

8. A FAST-FOOD DRIVE-THRU

Fashion a body-sized cardboard box with two eyeholes, plus make your candy receptical out of an old fast-food bag of your choice.

When the door is opened, do a quick 'static' sound effect and say "ticcchhh-er-tee." When they ask you to repeat, say again "tigggcchhh-errr-teeee."

7. AN EMO ON THE REBOUND

Color your hair and nails black. Wear black lipstick and go way over the top with mascara, blush and eye-liner. Wear lots of purple, green and BLACK. Conceal a few chops of onion about your person, to help you stay teary and sniffly, and also to give yourself the air of someone who sleeps in their car frequently. Bring along some pre-crumpled sheets of binder paper, that your 14-year old niece has covered with bad teen poetry. When the door is opened, start reciting.

Then ask the person at the door if your poetry is worth all the candy in the bowl. As they slam the door in your face, scream "WHY WON'T YOU ACCEPT MY LOVE??"

6. AN iPHONE

Scan your iPhone's front on a copier, then blow it up until you have a costume-sized picture of an iPhone that you can wear! When knocking on doors, instead of holding out a bag, present a 70-page itemized bill for all the candy.

5. AN OPEN MIC NIGHT GEEK

Go for big laughs with jokes that would get a poker-face from even a sugared-up 3rd grader. When the people at the door don't laugh, flip them off. Tell them how long it took you to come up with your material. Hold your bag out for a chance at "sympathy candy."

4. A URINE SAMPLE

Cut leg holes in a huge industrial-strength plastic bag. Tape the leg holes water-tight to your thighs. Tie off the top after filling it with lemonade. Make a cap out of Saran-wrap and a rubber band. Paste a label to your chest, hand lettered: "Herpes Simplex III" or simply "Bladder Infection."

3. KANYE WEST

The minimum you need are expensive sunglasses and a hand-held microphone. When another trick-or-treater rings the doorbell, jump in front of them, and burst into a loud, improvised rap about how bad their costume is. Swat away any candy tossed at their bag. Then show up later at the same door, ring the bell, and apologize for your earlier behavior – call the trick-or-treater you had abused a true artist, an unheralded genius.

2. MIDDLE MANAGEMENT

Dress like a JCPenny closeout sale exploded on you. Hold an empty coffee cup as if there is still one more lukewarm sip left. Nod your head at everything said to you with a vacant 10-mile stare. Call out obvious single-word proclamations as if they were life-affirming mantras. Example: "Candy... ... ... awesome." High-five the person at the door. Tell them what great work they're doing. Take a fist full of Mini-Snickers bars and powerwalk to the next house.

1. YOUR PARENT OF THE OPPOSITE GENDER

If you're a guy, go in drag as your own Mom. A girl, go as your own Dad – even paint in facial hair if necessary. Explain to those at each and every house you visit, that you are dressed as your parent of the opposite gender. You will get all the candy immediately. The door will slam. The porchlight will go out. Nobody civil wants to interact with your level of sandblasted nutjob.

A letter from Kris

2009-12-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Giftee... Dear person who has been "good" all year... tch.

I thought I would break tradition and send a letter to YOU for a change.

It's about time you knew a few things, foremost among them how Santa, yours truly, is getting a little green around the gills at being taken for granted lately.

Oh, I've always had that little complaint, but in the past few years it has really started to bug me, and now I need to get something off my chest. And I need you to sit there for a few minutes and just listen. Can you do that? Listen? It means to put down your damn "networking" gadget, take your mouth out of fifth gear and pay attention, in case you've forgotten. Don't worry, I'll be finished before your ADD kicks in and you're back sending photos of that Fiesta Taco Salad you had for lunch to your 11,000 Facebook friends.

Pause for just a second, and mentally list all the wonderful things you look forward to every year, at the Holiday Season. No, I don't give an elf's ass what religion you officially hate and feel an urge to remind everyone of it. I just mean whatever it is you like doing around this time of year; partying, shopping, hanging out with your family, the break from work, what-the-hell-ever.

You know what I have to look forward to? Can you imagine what a high-velocity cork of reindeer shit coming right at you is like? Think of a baseball pitching machine, set on "high-fast," shooting reindeer turds. Now imagine riding behind EIGHT of them.

I kid you not. You know what kind of metabolism a flying reindeer has? You realize how much a flying reindeer needs to eat? And how efficiently its body processes a pastey mixture of grain, grass and molasses??

Let me just say that by the time I'm just over the Pacific Northwest I'm ready to hurl. And the last thing I want to see when I get inside a house, is a big glass of room-tempurature milk, and a plate of stale snickerdoodles. I'm gagging right now just thinking about it.

It's a wonder I can sneak in and out the way I do, the smell alone must give me away for half a damn block.

And your gift lists... oh-gawd-take-me-now.

Why do you even bother. The Black Friday sales KO'd me a long, loooong time ago. Don't get me wrong, I so so sooo don't mind you taking some work off my back – ever wondered how hard it is to get a 67" flatscreen down a chimney? Oh, I can if I have to, sure. Yes, I'm magic and all that shit, but back when I got my magic, most people were whittling D-I-Y flutes and fiddles, and making mammy-jammy with their third cousins for entertainment.

The magic bag wasn't so heavy, then.

Yoohoo. Over here. No, let it ring. They'll call back if it's important. Or if it's irrelevant.

Just a moment more, then I'll let you get back to what ever it is you "do."

It occurs to me that you, and pretty much everyone else now, has come to take the Holidays as a time to "emo" out. To talk yourselves blue about "peace and joy," then turn the volume knob of your "belief system issues" up to ten.

Yes, I understand, traditions get old. And your parents came from a repressed generation of outdated notions and crappy music. And you're into something way better. On all fronts. Yay.

Let me tell you something. I came from the era when people died at 25 from things like a rotten peach or an infected pimple. In other words, Santa don't sweat the Spaghetti Monster, OK? You live in the age of electric blankets, automatic climate control, designer coffee and pre-bagged salad – that's why you have all this free time to be "Sky Wolf, the Enlightened One" and burn scented candles while you Wii.

Is that pink clamshell on your belt really a phone? Yeah, go ahead, grab it. Connect with your posse.

I'll just sit here and wonder why.

Wrong number? Oh, sorry. I know how much you love having that thing grafted to your ear, especially when you're doing something that requires your complete attention, like driving.

And you call ME a fairy-tale. To be honest, you're becoming pretty hard to believe in, too.

In closing... yes, it won't be long now. First I apologize for being allll-like yoo-know, harsh wid yo ass, know-whut-I'm-sayin? I was simply trying to air out a few things, not dump on your Merry. The Season really is what you make of it. I just get a little ticked when I see people who can only feel like they win by making other people lose.

Disagreeing with you doesn't make someone your target. And some people still derive inner peace, hope, strength – all that "old age" stuff, from embracing tradition. Complain to your spirit guide; maybe he/she/it/both/all-three will s'plain it to you.

Being as I'm usually a harmless passé symbol of Holiday gift-giving, and mainly just an overused presence in advertising and on greeting cards now, I assumed I could rattle off a few grievances without dousing your mood too much. Thanks for holding your breath.

Santa Claus

P.S. That's "Claus," not "Clause." I'm not an addendum to a legal contract.

A quick plug for my other blog!

2009-12-22T11:58:00.000-08:00

You can read my movie articles, like the one below, without wading through my other random silliness, at "Laughter Wax," my classic comedy blog. Just click the title above.

Chaplin's "Limelight" – A Critical Appreciation (including the Keaton scenes)

2009-12-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

With his Little Tramp long gone, Sir Charles Chaplin – one of the forefathers of modern screen comedy and perhaps the most important single screen presence in the history of early cinema – makes his final film, and some might say, life statement.

The scripted plot of "Limelight" (1952) may be summed up as a May-December love story set in the by-gone world where Chaplin began his career as a child performer, the British Music Hall. The story between the lines, however, is a revealing glimpse into the mind of the artist as an old man – and his final attempt to re-invent himself.

Chaplin creates a complex, if somewhat trite persona in Calvero, an aging stage clown who saves a young ballerina – Claire Bloom – from suicide, and nurses her back from a near career-ending paralysis. Their relationship as mentor-and-mentored becomes strained as he falls in love with her – and she of course never realizes it, until it's past too-late.

If it all sounds familiar, it is. Like the Tramp had done numerous times, and even the lowly barber masquerading as demagogue in "The Great Dictator" (1940), Chaplin's Calvero willingly lays everything on the altar of righteous sacrifice for the sake of an ideal.

It is a window with only an inward view. Chaplin seems to relish his own sage presence. In his sound films he never fails to gift himself with a younger – or at least naive – protégé upon whom to inflict long-winded monologues about the real Chaplin's off-camera worldview. In the silent days, interestingly, it was usually the Tramp who "discovered" these political revelations on his heroically innocent journeys.

In this rightly named finalé to his screen career, Chaplin's performance is visibly calculated. He has nothing left to prove, given his already well ensconced status in film history, and knows it. "Of course I'm brilliant," he exudes in each episodic scene, though this is not to deny the scope or formidable quality of what he offers throughout the picture. That white-haired elder statesman is still "Charlie" somewhere inside, and it shows, despite his obvious struggle to step out of the immense shadow of the Little Tramp.

For those familiar only with the Tramp, his performance here may strike a surreal chord. "Limelight" is arguably his most "talkative" talkie, and Chaplin's character is awash, nay, glowing in self-importance, even when down on his luck. The Tramp would've found this utterly incomprehensible, possibly immoral.

Chaplin was the last great silent era filmmaker to cross over to sound; a maverick holdout against the talkies. They were a blasphemy to him. And only Chaplin could have held out for as long, before finally relenting to the age of the microphone. His "Modern Times" (1936) is in fact, considered the very movie that officially closed the American cinema's silent era. Like his earlier silent masterpiece "City Lights" (1931), it was completed and exhibited well after theaters equipped for sound had become dominant.

The "Limelight" soundtrack boasts surprises on many levels. Chaplin doesn't just speak for novelty's sake, but displays a casual expertise with dialogue, and in a scene or two, a handsomely robust singing voice. The music hall boy still lurked inside him.

The mind reels so slightly for an instant: Chaplin's voice...!

As if he'd never spoken on film before, in each of Chaplin's "soundies," his voice seems to mesmerize. The ear hangs on his every word, seeking to capture it, like a rare bird. Charlie Chaplin's presence on any soundtrack is a somewhat mystical experience. Like witnessing the fleeting passage of a wraith across a dark hallway.

But with some of Chaplin's speaking roles, he'd misjudged its value. In "The Great Dictator," Chaplin's bromide-heavy speech for universal solidarity, in the final reel, is a single flaw in an otherwise peerless black satire of Hitler. On the other hand, in "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947) he definitely released his vocal powers to memorable and even haunting effect. Verdoux, a serial murderer 30 years before that term entered the lexicon, was certainly his greatest, and perhaps most successful, attempt to exorcise the Tramp; the "little fellow's" mirror opposite in every way.

Yes, Charlie Chaplin, playing a serial killer. Intrigued? Rent it!

Instead of waddling off into the sunset, Verdoux marches defiantly to the waiting gallows at dawn, after swallowing a glass of brine, with a hint of dark ecstasy – the Tramp's delicious death rattle: "I always wanted to taste it."

In "Limelight" he portrays a man very much dependent upon his voice. Calvero is a song & dance comedian. Up until his sound films, Chaplin spent four decades perfecting the caricature of the Little Tramp, living in a visual universe where voice was not only unnecessary but in some cases irrelevant – where those who spoke could only mime a stammering jaw-wag that visually stood in for the outpouring of words. The want hardly even occurs to imagine the Tramp's voice. Everything the Tramp ever needed was visual. Though Chaplin may have loosely made the Tramp a template when he manufactured Calvero, he drew an outline only, and replaced the center with a stunning departure from his realm of masterful visual storytelling – a character for whom sound and voice are not just crucial elements, but defining ones.

The Tramp's voice had been heard only once before "The Great Dictator." In "Modern Times" he takes a turn as a singing waiter, and when his crib-noted lyrics fly away during his opening dance, he sings a song of faux-French gibberish. The meaningless yet saucy non-word lyrics served to only further illustrate Chaplin's philosophy that visual presentation was the true focal point. The verbal was garnish, nothing more.

In Kevin Brownlow's incomparable book on the silent era, "The Parade's Gone By" (1976, University Of California Press), he declares that the silent and sound cinemas were more than just opposing sets of expository rules, but were in actuality two entirely different art forms. Charlie Chaplin proved Brownlow's hypothesis, although in ways that were sometimes disappointing – he would never dominate the talkies as he had the silents.

"Limelight" has a contrivance-on-rye flavor. The plot lurches and shuffles around the most obvious corners and twists. The dialogue is stiff and intemperately punctuated, though delivered undeservedly well. Chaplin unwinds his yarn like a teacher reading a storybook to a room of kindergartners; overstuffed even by 1950s standards. And as it is later revealed, all a set-up for one of his self-indulgent manifestos.

Calvero's flea circus act is over-simple, and overlong. It is enigmatic only for being a sanded-down reprise of a rare performance filmed nearly thirty-five years earlier.

During his stay at either the silent Mutual Studios, or First National, Chaplin attempted his first departure from the Little Tramp, with a character almost exactly the Tramp's opposite. "The Flea Circus" (1919), also known as "The Professor," is a freakish little presense in Chaplin's canon – a gift from an alternate universe, never officially released, but restored and viewable within some modern Chaplin documentaries. Chaplin plays a cynical, wrangley sideshow gypsy, dour and grimy, down to a moth eaten longcoat and ragged top-hat. Performing his act in a flophouse, chaos erupts when his flea performers mutiny and quickly infest everything, and everyone, in sight. Chaplin had even created a comic, misanthropic walk for this dour persona – a polar opposite of the Tramp's optimistic waddle. The only commonality was in the film's final shot, where Charlie exits into the sunset (or in this case, moonset) offering one last leg-shake to dislodge one of his insect tormentors.

Technically, "Limelight" is at times a groaner. Sound effects scream out their tinny artificiality. The most glaring sins occur in the theater scenes where the audience is clearly present on the soundtrack only, as evidenced by obvious volume manipulations to raise and lower the applause.

The one moment that earns this movie a permanent place on every cinema buff's shelf occurs in the last reel. And what a moment it is. For Calvero's farewell performance, he enlists an old friend to assist him – an old friend portrayed by none other than real-life old friend, Buster Keaton.

Though they are both slowed by age, the scene is nonetheless historic – their only appearance in a feature together, ever – and cosmic for silent comedy aficionados. Rembrandt and Di Vinci share a tea break.

Keaton's first line is so pregnant, it's hard to imagine the two men were unaware of its significance: "Well who'd have thought we'd come to THIS."

Buster's line delivery looks and sounds earnest to a fault – the still-present stage method from Vaudeville, and a main gripe among critics of Keaton's sound film work. Chaplin, meanwhile, remains aloof and catlike; an almost subconscious betrayal of his defenses being triggered by Keaton's close proximity, perhaps? Or was he simply Calvero, as his own script dictated?

Word spread that Chaplin was curt with Buster during filming, but this seems to be mere rumor. Other historical sources have revealed a few basic facts that outweigh the claptrap. Chaplin adamantly barred people he didn't like from his sets, therefore, he and Keaton were obviously on good terms. Some sources claim he personally requested Keaton – which seems most likely; rather than a cartoonish scenario of Buster Keaton answering a blind casting call for a Charlie Chaplin film.

Neither can we overlook the photographic evidence: still shots exist of Charlie and Buster working out the choreography of the scene, between takes! These details seem to dismiss any gossip of on-set tension between the two.

It's difficult to imagine Buster being hostile toward anyone on-set – if anything, he may have tried too hard to be helpful, to a point that perhaps annoyed Chaplin.

In the production of his last film, "The Railrodder" (1965), a travelogue shot in Canada, the only thing that apparently got under Buster's skin was his perception of his young director's inability to stage shots properly, in order to be matched up in editing. Keaton could only watch – and occasionally diagram for the youngster how certain on-screen business should fit together – then wander off to shed tears of anguish when his suggestions were overruled.

There exists footage of this, in the behind-the-scenes documentary "Buster Keaton Rides Again" (1965/66). The visage of the Great Stone Face openly weeping is heart-wrenching indeed. Then he sniffs it up... and proceeds to take his mark before the lens and be BUSTER KEATON. A remarkable man, under-appreciated, and used up.

But on the set of "Limelight," there were no such moments of private torment. All was as it should be; Chaplin and Keaton, each the other's only legitimate rival, yet with their private competition settled long ago to a mutual satisfaction. It was a draw. Both were content. Case closed.

They do a comic duet on stage in which Keaton plays the piano while Chaplin takes the violin. Hardly a note is played, as the comedic business involves the attempts of the two "virtuosos" to prepare to play. Chaplin emerges as the dominant performer in the scene, perhaps because he gives himself the majority of the business in the script. Despite the non-balance, this is one – and for some, the only – scene in the whole movie that causes audible laughter.

It is also the scene that displays Chaplin's showman genius in top form – not just in his performance, but his strategic involvement of Keaton, for the "skit" contains a subliminal geography of historical respect and appreciation for his chum.

Chaplin's comedic action is a study in "low" pantomime – consisting of body gags and facial expressions. Keaton's business relies on slapstick and the abuse of props – garnished by Keaton's stone deadpan. Chaplin's half of the scene perspires of the British Music Hall... Keaton's of Vaudeville. It is a testament to Chaplin's cognizance and keen measuring of his fellow silent clown's roots, against his own – and his ability to mesh them together so pleasingly. It might indeed be observed, that from all of Keaton's film roles that he did not self-direct, his best director was possibly Charlie Chaplin!

One bit involves Keaton accidentally stomping on Chaplin's violin, causing the two to briefly share a double-take at the destroyed instrument. No, it isn't the funniest thing ever captured on film, but on the galactic scale of cinematic comedy, Chaplin and Keaton double-taking at the same object has got to rank somewhere just below the Big Bang. Hardcore comedy fans may come away with the moment still looping in their minds, to the point of distraction, perhaps even missing the film's ending because of it.

Did the two men wonder if reality itself would shudder? Probably not. Did they just view it as another job? One wonders.

"Limelight" is an anomaly in Chaplin's cinema catalog for yet another reason. While important for being his last screen appearance, and rare cinematic evidence that he and Keaton shared the same planet, it is also a strange prism of distortion regarding his own theatrical moorings.

At its core "Limelight" is little more than B-movie fodder; an unremarkable work, considering the magnitude of its star. The screen personality whom at his peak was arguably the most famous human being on the globe, takes his final bow with nothing more than a death scene hardly worthy of low-budget melodrama. Calvero suffers a heart attack on stage, and passes away in the wings, watching his young ballerina enjoy the "limelight" of a renewed career.

The film's "fin" is utter cliché. Chaplin ends an incredible forty-year solo with a cough.

A white cloth is draped over his brow. Everyone looks on, including Keaton, probably wondering "oh brother," but playing his role exactly as his old pal requires him to.

Charlie does not amble off toward a horizon of tomorrow's promise, with his lady love, as he had done in "Modern Times." In fact, the final shot of that film may have served as a far more satisfying farewell regarding Chaplin's career.

When the Tramp made his final exit, so too did Charles Chaplin, only he apparently failed to realize it.

Many believed Chaplin lost his edge when he abandoned his derby hatted alter ego, including fellow silent era icon, and longtime Chaplin friend and associate, Mary Pickford. "When Chaplin got rid of the little tramp with the cane, the tramp turned around and killed him," she once said. Over a half-century later, her observation still appears spot-on.

______________________________________________________________________

This article is also located at my blog "Laughter Wax." (Click article title.)

Random Novemberness

2009-11-24T12:11:00.000-08:00

This holiday season it's becoming a little disturbing around certain areas of the Monterey Peninsula; retailers so desperate to lure the wealthy and famous into their stores that their inner greedy morons are coming out to play. One client insists on describing their "wonderful, festive decorum" in their ads. Yes, a few people have attempted to explain to them that the word they seek is simply "decor," but their superior determination has prevailed. The best one yet is a local golf course advertising 7-day fairway passes at discount prices... and reminding potential customers in the final line of copy: "You can use the savings to buy your kids some gifts this holiday!" (Unlike last year when your kids had to make due with a card because you had to pay full price to get on the green.)
______________

Some mornings, getting up is the chief accomplishment of the day.

It isn't health care reform, it's health care payment reform.
______________

Edith visited Martha one morning, to discover her making breakfast for her husband, who was not at work, but still in bed sawing a log at eleven o'clock. "He's getting breakfast in bed, the poor dear," Martha said with a smile as she garnished the tray with a single rose in a narrow wine glass.

"Is he sick," asked Edith?

"No," answered Martha, "let me tell you what happened. He was out all night barhopping with his buddies, and came staggering home at 3 a.m. – first thing through the front door, he puked on the floor and made a vomit trail all the way down the hall to the bathroom. Then he tried and failed to get his pants off before he let loose with an explosion of diarrhea. I found him passed out on the toilet, his clothes drenched in vomit and poop... and a huge puddle of stinky pee forming beneath him on the bathroom floor. It took me two hours to mop everything up as best I could... he was too heavy to lift off of the toilet. I just managed to revive him enough to get him cleaned up and in bed an hour ago."

Edith's jaw dropped. "... And you're making him breakfast in bed?? Are you nuts, woman?? If my husband did that, he'd spend the night in the backyard with the dog – if he's lucky! Why, why, why are you doing this??"

Martha sighed happily. "Because... when I went to undress him, he pushed me away and said, 'dream on, lady, I'm married!'"
______________

Remember what an "expert" is: an "ex" is a has-been, a "(s)pert" is a drip in a hurry.

What am I thankful for? I cannot count all my friends, with all my fingers and toes. And that's just the beginning.

Money doesn't make you smart. It does, however, apparently win arguments.

If it weren't for dreams, no one would ever remember being asleep. Waking up and feeling rested or drowsy are merely clues that you've been asleep. Actual sleep is a non-experience... unless a dream is involved.

ANOTHER ONE FOR THE DAMN POETRY CORNER

I sat on the porcelain throne
Pondering adrift and afar
I rose to see what I'd done
A nail, a cork, a cigar

Randomness Or Treat!

2009-10-29T23:49:00.000-07:00

A scientist tests a frog to see how far it can jump when frightened. He honks a siren which startles the frog into jumping four feet. He chops off one of the frog's limbs and honks the siren again – the frog only jumps three feet. He chops off another limb and honks the siren – the frog jumps two feet. He chops off a third limb, and the frog jumps a foot away from the honking siren. He chops off the frog's remaining limb and hits the siren. The frog stays put. The scientist writes in his journal: "With all limbs removed, frog becomes deaf."

If beer weren't involved, "Octoberfest" would go completely ignored in America. I have a feeling Cinco De Mayo would fade somewhat, and Independence Day would go the way of the dodo, too.

True story. The other day, a guy sitting next to me at a lunch counter was chatting up his buddies. I missed what preceded the statement, but suddenly he says, "yeah, I always order a Big Mac, hold the secret sauce." Then he chuckles to himself and says, "yeah you never can tell about the secret sauce." Then he takes a swig of coffee and adds, "yeah I stay clear of that secret sauce." A pause. Intentionally not looking, I could still hear his mental gears grinding away as he pondered how to work yet a fourth "secret sauce" comment into the mix. Loud enough for everyone to hear, I order bacon & eggs... "and... you have any secret sauce left?" Everyone else at the counter gets up. They each leave a dollar tip. You decide what it means.

Why don't banana bread and banana sandwiches taste the same? Aren't they both bananas and bread?

One of the things I'd like to do with a time machine is travel backward about 150 years or so, and take along a few common items from the present that would really mess with people's heads in that era... like Piña Colada ice cream... a pair of sunglasses... a Nerf football... a Pampered Chef catalog...

Finding someone reliable isn't the only chore these days, it's finding someone who actually knows how to do whatever it is that you hope they're reliable about.

Ever had one of those days when you think "somewhere there's a wall, calling my forehead."

ONE FOR THE POETRY CORNER:

If your speech leans heavily
toward upward inflection,
it's likely your brain
wouldn't pass inspection.

Intersecting Parallels: Keaton and Kovacs

2009-10-14T19:33:00.001-07:00

In the early 1960s, the careers of comedians Ernie Kovacs and Buster Keaton crossed paths. This despite the maxim that two parallel lines can never intersect. It occurred literally at the concluding note of both men's lives, though Buster's journey to Griffith Park in 1962 had taken thirty years longer than Kovacs.

Buster began in Vaudeville, and graduated to the movies, the world that all but eluded Ernie – who had started in radio, the only medium Keaton never mastered. The nexus point was television.

Buster became a TV star almost as a last resort. Ernie had arrived intentionally, on a fast track.

He had ignored red lights before, with a certain cocky impudence, and once with a mildly startled Jack Lemmon riding shotgun. It may have been precisely why he did it.

In the first rainy Los Angeles hours of January 12, 1962, there was nobody in the passenger seat to playfully – perilously – agitate. Ernie Kovacs was alone. And distracted.

Unclear is why he arrived at this particular intersection, supposedly trailing home after his wife, actress-singer-ingenue Edie Adams, who'd driven ahead in another car – it was not the route she had taken.

Maybe he felt one more nightcap beckoning. He was after all, alone with his thoughts, perhaps for the first time in several days, or even weeks. His favorite watering hole, PJ's, was not conveniently near his opulent home on Coldwater Canyon Drive. Or given a dark, drizzly morning after a day just a bit too crazy, even for him, his dulled senses may simply have gotten him lost.

The day before had begun hundreds of hours ago, it seemed. He'd been up before dawn – a steambath to shore up the horizontal and vertical holds of his low-ebbing energy. Giving a friend a lift to the airport. Then down to Griffith Park for a morning-long shoot on a show that wasn't his own, which likely meant he hated it – all but for the chance to work with a particular legendary co-star. A late afternoon editing session for his own network show, that would broadcast weeks later, posthumously. A productive day, but not really a relished one.

Sitcoms were among the televised fodder he'd once vowed never to do, but circumstances had pressured him into taking the gig – he needed money.

Gameshows were another personal taboo he'd compromised to embrace for a badly needed wallet boost. At least they'd given him liberty to turn "Take A Good Look" (a playful rip-off of "What's My Line") into a nonsensical catch-all of Kovacsian chaos. Much like his fellow mustachioed, cigar-trademark comedian, Groucho Marx, Ernie was a natural at quiz-mastering. One would never guess from his cordially feisty on-camera demeanor, that the everything-but-logical half hour disgusted him.

He'd often reveled in spoofing shows like it – now he was saddled with the real thing, and forced to make it work. Like teasing the poorest girl in school, and then having to take her to the prom.

He loathed the gameshow's confined format, so he robbed it of all sense. The taped skits were supposed to disclose clues about the identity of the contestant, for the celebrity panel. He made them intentionally vague, so that anyone – a milkman in full white uniform, a dog catcher with a torn net and a spotted mastiff clamping down on his wrist – could come on the show and stump the famous-folk.

Ernie stumped the panel for them – so that they, like himself, could accept a pocket full of quick cash courtesy of Dutch Masters Cigars.

He'd stood in the eye of winter, shirtless, to film the predicament of a lovable snake-oil villain, for a comic-western something called "Medicine Man" – the pilot episode was titled "A Pony For Chris." His co-star shared more with him than just billing on this wretched mortgage-payer.

Like Kovacs, ancient icon Buster Keaton needed the paycheck. The show was only slightly more dignified than the Beach Party movies he'd been paid to wander through. Like notches on the handle of an old gunfighter's pistol, every hard-earned laugh of a tumultuous career was etched somewhere on his now frail body – a scar here, a permanent bruise there, a whelp, a discoloration – even a broken neck that he'd learned about fifteen years after it happened, when a veterans hospital doctor showed him a telling x-ray. A wrinkled, sad-eyed Father Time of show business, he was four short years away from death. Ernie would hardly imagine he was mere hours from his own.

The show's whirlwind shoot made the type of cosmic summit meeting some might envision between Ernie and Buster hellishly difficult, if not impossible. It is perhaps pleasant to contemplate them acknowledging each other, even confidentially. Getting some quality time between takes with Buster was reason alone to endure what must have been an otherwise joyless project, garnished in post production with canned laughter – another unpardonable sin Ernie silently tolerated in animus.

Critic John Barbour once summed up Kovacs with a review as powerful as it was concise: "Ernie Kovacs, the Charlie Chaplin of television." The compliment was great, and accurate, but on a stylistic level, Kovacs was more in tune with Keaton. And moreover, on this final day of his life, Kovacs found himself in an inner place not unlike where Keaton would wind up as he neared his own finish line.

In his senior years, Buster's trademark caricature had become marketable again in the movies, for its novelty appeal. But Buster the human being underneath the pork-pie hat was otherwise a persona non grata; a dogfaced geriatric answering a casting call. He would never helm a motion picture again, despite his silent era canon consisting of classic after classic – a body of work rivaled only by Chaplin's.

His legacy would have been lost forever had not actor James Mason discovered stacks of film canisters in a gardening shed of the southern California residence he purchased, which was formerly Buster's. Keaton had been certain that nobody past 1940 would ever watch a silent movie. So he hid them away. He intended eventually to use his cinematic gems like "The General" and "Cops" as packing tape.

He considered his past to reside in another Hollywood, an alternate universe that existed only in the memory of those who'd survived it. There weren't many left.

Based on that, he spent a number of years drinking himself into obscurity, becoming less and less employable – and more and more diluted. Hollywood's new younger casting agents and directors were clueless about who he had been.

One quick and dirty production actually had him in clown make-up, and its oblivious director tried to make him smile. Keaton dropped out of Hollywood not long after walking out on that grievous turn. His career, if not his liver, found a bit of renewed life in foreign films – where he was still considered the "Buster" of old – even if the poor quality of production materials and preservation methods, or a lack thereof, left those years irretrievable, even in the modern age of digital mastering.

Hollywood rang Kovacs supposedly due to his uniqueness, because of how different and larger than life he had been on television. Then as it had to Keaton, it merrily attempted to homogenize him. Ernie's handful of films contain only his presence, and a sample of his competent acting ability, but lack any hint of the substance of what made him Ernie Kovacs.

Back home that evening, drooping, worn out, yet stubbornly relentless, he was due at a party. A christening for Milton Berle's adopted son, Michael, at Billy Wilder's house. He'd promised Edie that he would show. As he busied himself dressing, the weight of the day finally cracked his veneer – in front of one of his children, yet. It was vile, but not directed at her. He told her so, mid-rant.

On the way he detoured by PJ's, and had a couple quick ones for a relaxer. As if an insomia-plagued 24 hours wasn't enough.

At the gathering he was, of course, on.

Bags under his eyes and all, he was Ern. Everyone loved Ern. Later, they'd all claim he'd been the life of the party. Lucille Ball's husband, Gary Morton, would deliver the obligatory "the Kovacs trademark cigar was in great evidence." Predictable, patented PR pabulum. So had the Berle trademark cigar, and probably the Burns trademark cigar, and the cigars of other well-knowns who kept them a private trademark. Kovacs was running on fumes. He got a giggle out of Dean Martin's wife, Jeanne, with his secret of eternal life: "cigars, steambaths and one hour of sleep a night." Finally homeward bound after midnight, Ernie asked the French movie star Yves Montland if he needed a ride. He said thanks, but no.

The Ernie Kovacs headstone, at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills cemetery – a two-minute walk from Keaton's, which bears only a name and a date – is inscribed with the legend "Nothing In Moderation." It was the motto of Ernie's coat of arms. Even with creditors dogging his ankles, Kovacs settled only for things he could less and less afford. His unpaid tab at PJ's was scary – and why he had to keep showing up, lest they think he'd skipped town.

Emerging from Berle's party, Kovacs did something most curious. Living beyond his means was exacting a huge toll on his health, his marriage, and his work quality – but sudden, impulsive frugality would come at a premium. He and Edie had driven to the party in separate cars; he in the Rolls and she in their grocery cart, a '61 Corvair Lakewood stationwagon. For the trip home, he switched with her – one documented instance when Ernie decided to break conspicuous form – and it cost him his life.

Was he cavalier? Was weariness eating him? Or did he just want an hour to himself? A quick return to PJ's for another mellow-maker, in a ride that wouldn't attract attention.

A light rain fell. His driving was a bit lubricated, and unfocussed.

The peck of the rain drops on the Corvair's thin metal hull, the damply hypnotic twitch-twitch of the wipers, the glow of a Los Angeles midnight, and his aloneness – Kovacs was perhaps for the first time in three days, silent. Eugene at the wheel. If he had told Edie that he'd be right behind her, he wasn't. It was not necessarily a lie – perhaps once behind the wheel, things changed.

In the last phase of his life, Buster Keaton had transformed into a shriveled little paperwad who just still resembled, vaguely, the American silent cinema's Van Gogh. He'd been adored and then rejected by Hollywood, both with such magnitude, that up to his dying afternoon, he'd remained stone-like and defiant. Even if it was only in his mind.

In a dream marriage to an ex-dancer many years his junior, Keaton nevertheless retreated to a private cell of self-containment – a bare-walled, gray little room in a merely average suburban dwelling, that he'd bought with the fee from his "consultation" on the movie of his life, "The Buster Keaton Story." They had ignored him, but still paid him.

The most sublime insult of all – they'd cast cherubic Donald O'Connor to play Keaton. O'Connor had the physical magic to ape most of Buster's mesmerizing stunts of a past lifetime, but he was the very antithesis of the stone-faced stoic, and made no attempt in the film to hide it. The level of indirect mockery Keaton endured from the biopic's inaccuracies was sadly garnished by O'Connor's indelible grin. An extra twist of a an already deeply lodged dagger.

To catch Buster Keaton smiling on film is akin to spotting a UFO over the White House. Only in his earliest films, along side the mentor he surpassed, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle – Keaton curled his lips only when the script called for it, and never, ever, ad-libbed even a smirk. He'd learned it from his boyhood, in the most violent act in Vaudeville, the Three Keatons.

O'Connor's face was a child on Christmas morning, etched in blond oak.

Ironically, O'Connor was the only person associated with this cinematic donnybrook of Keaton's life to actually take an interest in the truth, and spend time with the man himself.

In the film, a brave young Buster witnesses his father's death from the circus high-wire. When O'Connor asked him how he'd dealt with such a blow, Keaton duly informed him that it didn't happen. The Keatons were never a circus act. Buster's father, Joe, had actually appeared as an extra in many of Keaton's early films, and passed away after Buster was himself past 40.

Nobody cared. O'Connor, oddly, never complained.

By the time Keaton was done – in his heart – with Hollywood, his one true joy had become cards; Rummy, Bridge, Solitaire... and his most sacred remaining possession, his solitude. Even a visit by hot young comic Bill Cosby could not roust Buster from his comfortable self-exile.

In his mind, Buster lived on an island. With his past. He seemed uninterested, distant.

In his final hour, the damn burst. The human monolith of silent clowns would not shut up!

He'd begun a game of Bridge with his wife and two guests... suddenly he was marching restlessly about the house, allowing 60 years of repressed energy and frustration – the volcanic ash of his life as exiled Hollywood royalty – to issue forth in a pauseless torrent. Stories of the old days... long pent-up complaints about Louis Mayer and the rest of those sons of bitches... the years lost away from his children (whom were smuggled out of his life by his first wife Natalie, in a way similar to how Ernie's first wife, Bette, kidnapped their own daughters). A stroke finally quieted him... and once calmed, he did not lay down, but sat upright, on the gurney, and once safely at the hospital, died.

In Ernie's final hour, he too was feeling used up. His final comedy special for ABC seemed to show a man frustrated by the enigma of his situation. He faced the only thing on Earth seemingly larger than his talent: his debt.

Tired. The show was not up to his usual standard for what turned out to be the end run. The wick that once burned brightly, was now charred and bent, the melted wax rising like an oily tide, to snuff the flame.

Hollywood was slowly devouring him, using his one great weakness – an addiction to extravagance – against him. He wasn't the first to be applauded while perched on the gangplank.

To be a fly on the barroom wall, and listen to Ernie share a drink with an Orson Welles, or more surreally, an Erich Von Stroheim.

The Ernie Kovacs presiding over that last broadcast was a man caring less than ever before. Not carefree, but careworn. Gone was the suit and black razor tie. Instead, he sat and spoke at the camera, hunched upon a console in a nameless editing room – in a pull-over golf shirt that looked like it hadn't seen an iron lately, of either kind. The makeup was a token gesture – Kovacs looked dimmed, running on auxiliary since yesterday.

The cameras were switched on. He needed it in the can a week ago.

He was at the point to which a tipsy midnight drive would be enough to do him in. He held on just a few days longer.

The last show Kovacs guest-starred on, was also the last in which Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball appeared as a couple.

"The Desi & Lucy Comedy Hour" was not so much a sitcom as it was a business deal, to keep rolling the gravy train that had been "I Love Lucy," after the two leads admitted they were pedal-to-floor for divorce court. As with Kovacs's pokerface smile on TAGL, however, on camera Lucy and "Ricky" were still seemingly holding it together.

The show was fraudulent from opening credits to final fade, and subliminally illustrated just how Hollywood could not get its head around an Ernie Kovacs – and how it had decided to quick-fry him, in a way that Buster Keaton could probably relate to.

The final Desi-Lucy episode, entitled "Lucy Meets The Mustache" was about a powerful Hollywood TV comedian named Ernie Kovacs helping out a Cuban ex-bandleader named Ricky Ricardo, who is desperate for work, whose marriage is stressed.

In real life, Desi Arnaz was the epitome of Hollywood financial godhood – the once mighty RKO Studio now wearing his "Desilu" logo; an empire that Lucy herself would helm after the dust had settled. Even the affected marriage angle was partially inaccurate – the marriage had been over for years. The two were now just business partners.

Ernie Kovacs was anything but the network power player he portrayed. He was in fact the one flat broke, with a troubled marriage. Hosting a low-on-the-dial gameshow – keeping just two skips ahead of the IRS and other creditors.

The show's final gag was one that must have irked Kovacs right to the core; it mocked his every triumph of a decade reinventing TV comedy – an exploding cigar. A doubletake that every Vaudevillian knew by heart. The laugh that Kovacs wanted least, all his life.

Even a pie in the face was only acceptable in the Erniverse if hurled at a spoof of someone real... like Loretta Young, or a June Taylor dancer.

Like Keaton, Kovacs braved the clueless insult of an industry he had helped birth.

An exploding cigar? Typical dim-bulb sitcom-think. Do it just this once, Ern. It's a natural gag since you smoke cigars n' all that. Don't it just kill you? (Pick nose here.)

Like "The Buster Keaton Story," "Lucy Meets The Mustache" proved just how soon and how much Hollywood could forget, about someone it owed so much.

The light was green or red, yellow or lavender – when he made the intersection of Santa Monica and Beverly Glenn.

It didn't matter – he didn't see it. Some imagine he took his hands off the wheel to grab a cigar from his inside breast pocket, or already had it out and was lighting it – allowing the car to drive itself. Or it was something simpler, after the preceding marathon of unrest – even an insomniac must slumber some time – a nod that lasted a moment too long.

When the car didn't auto-pilot the left turn, Ernie bolted to grab the wheel and correct the car's trajectory, and likely overcompensated, given the wet road, and his lubed reflexes. The turn became a spin – once, counter-clockwise. A power pole at the corner stopped it, horseshoeing the thin-shelled Corvair. The impact might have been less, and survivable, had the car's engine been in the front – or even merely anecdotal if he'd been in the Rolls, the car he'd driven to the party.

No car in the early 60s came equipped with an airbag. Kovacs was knocked across the Corvair's front bench seat by a forty-foot steel ballbat. His head glanced off the steering wheel in the process.

The split-second mangling burst his aorta. What did he see in that instant – in essence punched out of his own body? Were his eyes even still registering images?

Some reports said he died instantly, but certain clues indicate something terribly different. Ernie Kovacs experienced a few unimaginable seconds after his moment of death. He crawled. His last cigar still clamped in his fingers, he scooted himself out the blast-open passenger door. He made it to the asphalt, then blipped out, into the unknowable. The cigar freed itself and rolled a few inches from his hand.

The 1963 movie "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" starred, among an avalanche of the day's most popular comedians, the two Kings of TV Clownery, Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. Ernie would have made it the comedic triumvirate, had he been alive. Ernie's widow instead played the wife of Caesar's character, maintaining Ernie's presence in spirit, in a cinematic blockbuster he had deserved to share, after too many films that are now merely footnotes of other actors' careers.

Buster Keaton, incidentally, had a bit part in that picture.

Both Keaton's and Kovacs's final bows were to serve scripts that cared nothing for their respective legacies. Both had first wives who stole their children; Keaton's boys and Kovacs's girls. Each took the conventional wisdom of his era's comedy and defied it, forced it to reveal its full potential, even with still-primitive tools.

When one man's career is summed up, it eerily mirrors that of the other.

"He" left a successful career in an established medium, to pioneer an experimental one – and wound up virtually reinventing it. Buster abandoned a star spotlight on Broadway, something most actors would kill for, to follow a sudden compulsive fascination with the motion picture camera. Ernie left the well-oiled radio industry for the new game in town, television.

"His" most productive years, containing his greatest achievements, were the first ten.

Both Buster and Ernie created forms of comedy that were unique and exclusive to their own respective mediums. Verbal humor was neither man's style. Kovacs made videotape itself his straight-man, as Keaton had with celluloid.

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This article is also located at my blog "Laughter Wax." (Click article title.)

Septemberandom Memorandum

2009-09-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

I'm willing to bet that the professional sector's largest group of functioning cocaine addicts is in the insurance industry.

'Tis better to be seen vertically than viewed horizontally.

The only evidence of life is growth. The only evidence of growth is change.

A tiger may not be able to change its stripes, but if a leopard could rearrange its spots, who'd know? Besides the leopard?

Intelligence is knowing what to do. Smart is knowing when and when not to do it.

Nobody ever slices a donut lengthwise, like they do bagels. Why is that?

There is plenty to write about, it's just not passing through my consciousness at the moment.

A GREAT DUO-MOVIE TITLE:
"What Heaven May Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia"

Would the work of an abstract artist from Indiana be called "Hoosier Dada?"

The Garrulous Spiral

2009-08-31T11:51:00.000-07:00

This is a subject I simply cannot play passive about, although in public I generally keep my thoughts to myself. Here I am not as restricted.

More and more lately I've found myself picking my jaw up off the floor, from the increasingly harrowing stupidity my ears have been witness to – and I do not refer to political statements. I mean sheer parachute-free spelunkings into the bottomless cavern of mental absenteeism.

Let me just quote the stand-outs (with my afterthoughts in parenthesis). You be the judge. Keep in mind, all these quotes were made by adults.

It helps to hear the true idiocy at work, if you read them with an upward inflection, y'know??

Heard across a row of pumps at a gas station, on a particularly bright morning.

"Geez, where IS all that sunlight coming from!"

(Uh, that big shiny ball dealy-bob... a couple miles overhead... maybe. Just a guess.)

__________

Heard, unfortunately, at work:

"Yeah, I have this thing in my car that tells me how warm it is."

(That would be the THERMOMETER. I asked the guy who sells cars at the car sale place.)

__________

Heard in a coffee house, between two twenty-something twits, talking over their respective laptop screens:

"Then like, like, you know, the whole, like, issue of, like, the English learning thing."

"Oh God, yeah, like, all, like totally."

(May I point out something: The above conversation, though consisting of English words, is not English. I'm sure there are angels pondering what these two believed they were discussing.)

__________

I'm sorry. In the world I grew up in, adults did not talk like this. In my formative years, there was not usually a shortage of adults who were worth looking up to, in terms of emulating their character, and working to match their level of reasoning and mental maturity.

Should I be scared?

Augustus Randomus

2009-08-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm willing to call Coke and Pepsi a tie.

When Denny's redesigns the menu, they think they're fooling you into believing the food's better.

Every so often on the news, you'll catch a glimpse of the anchor-person adjusting something – his tie, his earpiece, etc. Just once I'd like to see Katie Couric straighten the torpedoes... then strike her serious anchor-woman pose. Just once.

Most of Hollywood's great stars of yesteryear could not pass a screen test today.

Don't answer a personals ad that contains, in any way, both the words "fuzz" and "butter." Just don't.

During an interview, Oprah should get up and casually put on a strap-on dildo. Not use it, necessarily, but just wear it. The look on the guest's face. That would be great.

Public farting has only been out of favor for the last 150 years or so. Not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things.

I admire people who have their shit together, I only hope they've washed their hands.

An Afternoon at Forest Lawn with a Few of My Heroes

2009-07-27T12:40:00.001-07:00

It took 90 minutes of tramping up and down rows, and finally backtracking over a hill, to the information kiosk, to find Ernie Kovacs.

Someone had placed at his grave a tiny purple bouquet, which I immediately, carelessly, knocked over, then with great apologies re-stuck about where it had been planted. Ernie is in the Court of Remembrance, in the oval lawn in front of the mausoleum. A little red churchhouse and the open countryside are beautifully visible from the gravesite. Ernie's signature hewn right into the stone serves instead of a block lettered stamp-job, and the inscription below reads "Nothing In Moderation, We All Loved Him." We still do.

To Ernie's right are two of his daughters, Mia and Kippie.* I was glad to finally find him. I took a second sojourn inspired by Kovacs; to the intersection where he was killed, the crossing of Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Glenn. The power pole array at the corner is still there and it was easy to visualize taking a left turn too sharply on a rainsoaked road and spinning right into them, just like legend has it that Ernie did. Ironically, with today's better built cars it would have been a survivable impact.

Into the mausoleum, one must get past Bette Davis, standing sentinel like a pit bull. "It's going to be a bumpy night."

Inside, one might never find Lucille Ball if you expect something huge and ornate with "BALL" emblazoned upon it. She's in an urn, in a shoebox sized tomb labled "Morton" which is owned by her last husband, comic Gary Morton. Behind a bouquet of (again, purple) blossoms bigger than the grave they marked... there's Lucy.

Across this tiny sunlit chamber, Charles Laughton and George Raft keep Freddie Prinze company.

Driving on toward that little red church mentioned above, one comes to a huge court – the military section – resided over by a giant statue of George Washington, along with other brooding gods of warriors past.

Behind George, against the wall – is Stan Laurel. Sharing the plot with his wife Ida. His plaque says it all. "Master of Comedy." That's the league above any mere "King of – ". Even Chaplin revered him. Stan Laurel forgot more about the art of laugh-getting than most comedians ever know.

Like Lucy, Stan was cremated, so the marker is really just symbolic. Ida's body rests at the marker's foot.

Another good Brit rests near Washington, in front, to his right. Marty Feldman. "Damn your eyes!" "Too late."

But wait, look closer at Washington. He's pointing to something. What could it be? What could our country's father not want me to miss?

I followed his silent command, out to the front lawn of the military court. I kept checking to make sure I was lined up with his stern direction...

There, beyond the small stone wall of the court is... Buster Keaton.

This was the most emotional find in the park. I was taken unexpectedly by my own feelings.

I think (General) Washington pointing RIGHT AT Buster Keaton was what took me over the top.

Below this tiny stone with only a name and a date is a true giant. I stood there several minutes pondering. Someone had placed pennies over the loops of the sixes, as if they were eyes. A "General" golf ball rested on the stone with the word "the" scribbled on it. I actually started misting up at this small, unremarkable headstone – the inconspicuous resting place of the most remarkable man in the entire cemetery. Keep pointing, Mr. President. I got it.

On one afternoon in Hollywood, around 2001, I bought a bottle of all-purpose cleaner and a metal brush. I returned to Buster's grave and polished it up. The bronze caught the sun like it had when brand new. The Sons Of The Desert, the international Laurel & Hardy fan club, had left a pot of daisies for him, for Veteran's Day. I wondered why daisies? I went to get my camera to take a second shot of the tombstone now bright and polished, but my battery was low, and I had to get on the road. Perhaps I'll be back before too long, and take care of unfinished business.

*Since I wrote this article some years ago, Ernie's wife, actress-singer-ingenue Edie Adams has passed on, and joined the family at Forest Lawn.

__________________________________________________________________________

This article is also located at my blog "Laughter Wax." (Click the article title.)

My Uncle and the Statue

2009-07-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

Before our narrative begins, it may be helpful to some of you born during or after the 70s, if I summarize who "Festus" was – or more accurately, the actor who portrayed him; Ken Curtis. Curtis was a popular entertainer in the 40s. He began his career as a singer in the Big Band era (as Frank Sinatra's replacement with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra), then went into acting. For a time he was one of John Wayne's cadre of regular supporting players. He was Captain Dickenson in Wayne's version of "The Alamo," and was quite memorable in the Wayne classic "The Searchers," as the guitar strumming savant who vies for the affection of Sara Miles away from Jeffrey Hunter. His greatest ticket to fame was his being cast in the long-running western TV series "Gunsmoke" as Marshall Dillon's wily sidekick and deputy, Festus. He was sort of an old west version of Barney Fife.

"Gunsmoke" had the longest run of any television series up to that time, and Curtis retired when the show finally left the air. He returned to his musical moorings in show business, and formed a trio of folksingers that made limited tours, based in his adopted hometown of Clovis, California.

Which brings us to the crux of our story. The town of Clovis is a bedroom community of Fresno. The California State University of Fresno campus overlaps the two bergs like a giant hinge. Clovis was extremely proud of its bonified TV star resident – THE Ken Curtis. In the early 80s, just after Curtis's death, the Clovis Chamber commissioned a memorial statue of him – it stood right in front of City Hall, like an Old West sentinel. Right from the get-go, there were two main problems with the statue.

First – the artist who created it had leaned toward shlock; the likeness was more cartoonish than reverent, and the statue was painted (holy freekin' crap) to look lifelike, including a peach/beige fleshtone that featured blushing cheeks suspiciously reminiscent of gin blossoms.

Second – the statue was not sculpted from a material suitable for a permanent memorial, like say, granite or marble. It was fiberglass and plaster. Repeat; a statue meant as a long-term landmark – in fiberglass. And plaster. In addition to that little choice judgment, the statue was erected at ground level, rather than upon an elevated pedestal as most statues are, to keep them at least symbolically at bay from potential vandals and pranksters. Big mistake... OH, Big Mistake!!

Now then, the original statue (yes it had to be replaced... but don't jump ahead) was posed with both its hands at Festus's lapels, as if he is happy as hell to welcome you to Clovis City Hall. The gnarly "just consumed an astonishing quantity of beer" grin on the statue's face certainly added a unique enhancement to that intended sentiment.

In short, this was a kitschy mannequin of a grizzled, drunken cowboy with a subliminal hard-on; just the welcomer that I'm sure the local civic leaders reveled in bestowing upon tourists and locals alike. In even more succinct terms, this statue was a piece of fucking shit that embarrassed the whole town.

With that scenario firmly in place, the story now backtracks briefly again, in order to introduce our protagonist; my uncle, the late Johnny L. Rankin.

Uncle Johnny, to be absolutely fair to him, was a fine, upstanding man when he wanted to be. His sense of humor was cosmic in proportions and he was a legendary prankster and walking jokebook. He was one of the earliest influences on my own humor. He also, however, had a certain mean streak that was fueled by a love for drink.

His life had some incredible career highs to counterbalance an ongoing alcoholic low. He served in World War II, and in his younger years both before and after the war, he was a working Country & Western entertainer. He was a Los Angeles area session musician on some of the recordings of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, among other popular acts of the day. He played with the band of Dave Dudley, who recorded the great trucker classic, "Six Days On The Road." (According to legend, Johnny once got pissed and threw Dave off the stage mid-song – guitar and all – into the audience. Both were shitfaced, of course. Dave wasn't hurt, but Johnny had to buy his destroyed guitar.) He performed solo in nightclubs under the stagename Johnny Lee. (No relation to the later C&W star Johnny Lee.) He also hosted, and performed on, the last live C&W radio show in southern California, broadcasting from a station in Long Beach. After his music career faded, he went into semi-tractor maintenance and was rated as one of the top semi-truck trouble-shooters in the country by Popular Mechanics magazine in the 1960s. So, as I relate this sordid tale of my uncle's mischief, I also want this document to serve as a tribute to him – for the sake of Uncle Johnny's memory, not to mention other family members who may stumble upon this – to keep his bright side reflected as well as his dark. The short description of Uncle John might be: Imagine a countrified, beer-bellied Jack Nicholson. Now back to our story...

At the time of the Festus statue's unveiling, Uncle Johnny was also living and working in the Fresno-Clovis area, as a mechanic. He was also a devoted "Gunsmoke" viewer and so made it a point to be present for the statue's debut. His first look at the Festus memorial apparently stoked a flame of indignation. Driven perhaps by rabid fan vengeance, a good portion of alcohol-lubricated prankster angst and even a touch of civicism (read: "Not in my town, gawdammit,") Uncle Johnny lagged behind after the ceremony and staked out City Hall!

He sat in his truck, chain-smoking cigarettes and probably making intermittent trips to surrounding Quikky-Marts for empowering beverage, until the early morning hours. Sometime before dawn, he got out and removed a "clubbing" instrument from his truck's flatbed toolchest. A ballbat? A crowbar? A sledge? The exact identity of the object is lost to antiquity. He then proceeded to walk over to the Festus statue and slam the fucker off at the knees!!

The statue's unveiling ceremony had been covered on the local evening TV news. The very next day's morning news opened with "Tragedy at Clovis City Hall!" with a shot of two fiberglass blue-jeaned legs standing minus a torso. The statue had stood intact less than 12 hours. The final fate of the thighs-up portion of Festus remains unknown to this day. Uncle John took that secret to the grave with him.

Festus, however, returned in the form of a second statue (see photo at top) almost as ghoulish as the first, only in a new, somewhat more dignified pose. And oh yes, now he is protected (?) by a short metal railing (the one reworking that Uncle Johnny's attack had brought about). The statue has since been moved across the street, to stand guard near the entrance to a bank, but it is still at ground level, though... proving that the Clovis City Commissars still managed to hold onto part of their original vision.

Ode To A Warhorse

2009-07-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

I did not test drive it, but a nearly identical bright red one. One that had already been sold to someone else, but not yet delivered. With another person's car, once out of eyeshot of the dealership, I floored it, slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel and left ruts. Blasted across railroad tracks in a fashion that made audible contact with the undercarriage. Then after arriving back at the lot, pointed to another car and said "I'll take it."

I passed the dealership a week later and saw the abused red vehicle still on the block, with a sign that proclaimed "Marked Down!" I suppose the former buyer had a change of heart. I wonder why?

There were a few scars on its résumé. A previous rental, it already bore a few bruises and bumps from serving nameless under-the-radar pilots for the first thousand miles of its life. The AM radio was merely a grumbling hiss. The turn signal sometimes chose to take a nap. The dashboard service warning lights refused to cooperate. Souvenirs from battle. I had a few myself, and empathized.

My relationship with the creature was uneventful until we moved to Los Angeles together. Packed to its windows with what mostly became fodder months later, it handled the Grapevine like a barebacked philly. It took on the L.A. snarl with gusto, and hardly a complaint. It sat in miles-long freeway backups merrily playing soft rock ballads to me. It maneuvered around clueless ten-thumbed fish-tailers like a two-ton, four-wheeled gymnast.

I got the feeling that the beast loved touring Magnolia.

We courted potential playmates, gave lifts to important industry insiders, and journeyed to auditions together. Ever faithful was the career support offered by my adopted metal partner.

It slept in a funky underground garage with strangers night after night, and still greeted each morning with a confident roar.

When our luck changed in LaLa-Land, we hightailed it north together. It took the endless grey ribbon in stride, and willingly hung out in rest stops and along side roads. Never a cough. Nor a gurgle.

In Washington it again commuted me to and fro – waited long-suffering in cold parking lots, and at icy curbs. Little did I know it was hiding a worsening war wound.

Still, when time came to sojourn south again, it mastered the road with a secret limp that was never revealed – with no whine, no grimace.

It got up to a 90-mile-an-hour gallop past Mt. Shasta on a rain-slicked highway in the lone, moonlit night. It kept a game face as I released a torrent of stomach flu debris at its dashboard, and kept going.

Back in California, it bore me to odd jobs, on apartment hunts, and a four-hour trip to Fresno to visit family.

Finally, it could bare the burden no longer, and released its feeble grip on its brakes one morning on the way to work. It hobbled on its emergency brake, to the repair shop.

Once well again, we picked up the journey anew. The hills of San Francisco. The mind-numbing circular thinking of the San Jose spaghetti wad. The maddening stop-and-go of Santa Cruz. We sampled it all again.

It went unwashed for weeks at a time. Got service sporadically. And made yet another four-hour trip to visit family with its exhausted tires deteriorating into black mush.

Finally the years were taking their toll. One morning the key was turned and all that would emanate from that battle-weary throat was... silence. Many mechanics explored the inner workings, in attempts to revive the oily soul – and for brief moments, they were able to raise it from the dead. There was no heart in me to use a bullet.

At last a Dr. Frankenstein was called in to administer electrical voodoo. The monster rose to animation, artificially resuscitated and responsive via a patchwork, primitive rewiring of its dead brain.

Its final task, after nine years of adventure, was to ferry me on a search for a replacement. The end chapter is now, as the loyal zombie waits to be pulled away, to serve a charity – marching on aimlessly toward a fate unknown, but in the name of yet another noble purpose.

July, Random July

2009-07-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

I have no problem with someone being richer than me. It's when that person has an obsessive need to keep reminding me of it, that's when we have problems.

The Ark was built by an amateur, the Titanic by professionals.

The "Big 3" network newscasts are in trouble, ratings-wise. Katie Couric seems to be the "bottom" no matter how you juggle the numbers. That's a public ménage à trois scooting closer to the gutter with each thrust.

Ronald Reagan was right about one thing: an intergalactic invasion just might be what the world needs to eliminate a whole slew of problems.

Hey kids, the big secret is that grownups are just guessing at life too.

I often wonder what plans Lee Harvey Oswald had for the weekend before he got the big phone call.

I've had a sad feeling, that we've entered a strange era in America – where all the bullshit that used to just happen peripherally, which our parents handled, now has taken center-stage, and has become modern life's main struggle to the average adult, on top of all the "normal" hardships. We've allowed the demagogues, money-changers, politico-paths and talking heads to strip the land of its ability to support the needs and desires of the common man, turn it into a giant bureaucratic colander that drains away the human spirit to achieve, and leaves only a bulk of manufactured dependency. A place where neither science nor religion retain any genuine influence, as both are simply manipulated to shore up the agenda of those in power. I've always held the belief – and still do – that science and religion are not adversaries. As we grow and come to understand both fuller, we will discover, I believe, that they are just two different languages, telling the same story. Science represents mankind's collective desire to understand his place in the universe, and religion is the expression of his deeper consciousness to appreciate it. We've abandoned both, and set the two concepts at odds with each other, just as we have turned upon ourselves from within. Everyone is a self-contained center of a personal universe – oblivious to the searchable truths of science and the self-evident insights of religious morality. We've become our own zombie plague. And now that you are cheered up...

Popping a really big pimple sort of brings on a feeling of conquest.

Tanya Roberts played the title role in "Sheena," and was a Bond girl. In her vacation-shilling radio ads for Las Vegas, she sounds like a chubby New Jersey housewife working from home part-time as a travel agent.

I stopped having a mental "Top 10 Babes" list when I realized that half of mine were by now senior citizens... or dead.

Reality check: More people are on to your bullshit than you realize. They're just being nice.

Howling at the moon doesn't make you spiritual, it makes you predictable. Think about it.

The most complicated version of Coca-Cola: Caffeine-free, diet black cherry-n-vanilla Coke Zero, with Splenda. No, that can't be it. I'll try again later.

Dreams of Dead Celebrities and a Few Not-Dead-Yet Ones

2009-06-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

In a most vivid dream, I once had a conversation with John Wayne, one of my personal cinema heroes. In a way most peculiar, at the beginning of our chat, The Duke was young, trim and seemingly sculpted as if by Michelangelo – tall, lean and confident, the gunslinger in all those sepia-toned Republic Studios westerns of the 30s. By the time we were saying our so-longs a short while later, I was looking at the grizzled, salt-n-pepper stubbled Oscar winner of "True Grit."

The ageless advice he left me, about pursuing a career of my own in the movie business: "Pay yer dime, n' take yer chance."

I think I'm still paying my dime, many years later. The "take yer chance" part, I am learning, is ongoing.

CHUCK BERRY

At the other end of the spectrum, was a more recent dream in which the iconic rock-n-roller Chuck Berry was inflicted upon me. This was a strange one, especially in the wake of Michael Jackson's untimely demise. In the dream I was employed as a caricaturist at some kind of media event – an occupation I do have in real life, so that part wasn't strange at all. The high weirdness began when Berry showed up to entertain the crowd.

Like Wayne in the earlier dream, Chuck was young, slick and full of whatever it was that made him him, back in the day. Even his suit and slacks seemed lacquered with a layer of Vaseline – he was a hit from the moment he stepped through the door. His guitar in great evidence, he Berry-danced his way through the crowd, playing... something.

It sounded terrible, as if filtered through a tin can on a string. If that was "Mabeline," she needed a fresh coat of Clinique.

Yet the folks seemed really into him, clapping and rocking along, despite this technical shortfall. He casually improvised a few extra riffs, and approached me. Someone – I presume the person in charge of the "event" – whispered in my ear at this point, that Chuck had heard what an accomplished caricaturist I was, and wanted a drawing of himself. Fantastic. I extended my hand and motioned for Chuck to take a seat. He set his guitar down, sat, smiled, and without pause, blew a gooey explosion of grayish yellow snot all over me.

No "excuse me." No pause of astonishment. Nothing. I was so startled by this that I woke up.

Did this dream contain some cosmic parcel of wisdom, as the John Wayne dream had? If so, I'm still pondering.

MOE HOWARD

Why Moe? I have no idea. I only know that I had an incredibly strange and hilarious afternoon one deep, sleepy night, in the company of the "cruel stooge."

The fact that I actually interviewed The Firesign Theater not long ago for a feature newspaper article may have something to do with this dream, as I found myself sent to get an interview with Moe. (Not to compare the Firesigners to the Stooges – such a pairing would be like taste-testing champagne against root beer.) All the obvious questions raced through my head: Where were the other stooges? And aren't they all long dead? But none of that mattered as I finally found Moe walking along a busy city sidewalk. Bowl haircut and all.

I caught up to him, and he seemed to be expecting me – he slowed somewhat so that I could match his pace, though he wouldn't actually stop walking. "Whatta you wanna know, chucklehead" he asked?

I asked if there were somewhere we could go to chat with a little more privacy, and he led me to a nearby synagog. This is a dream, remember.

For some reason, he believed we had to sneak in. We found a slim opening in a hedge that surrounded the building, and crawled through. We arrived at a back door, and paused on a stoop to chat.

I asked Moe a question that immediately seemed to draw out his smoldering homicidal ire. "Weren't there some later films in which Joe Besser's scenes were interlaced with older footage of Curly – a sort of recycling of the originals?" Moe stared at the ground with a glazed-eyed countenance that silently shouted his contemplation of exactly what manner of physical assault to launch at me.

His fist trembled as he channeled the nuclear stooge-force, preparing to bury his whitening knuckles past my stomach, into my liver. I had obviously crossed a line. How could I have known how sensitive Moe was concerning the cinematic pillaging of Curly's comedic canon.

Just as I attempted to steer the interview into a dialogue on Shemp, Moe suddenly allowed his fury to subside, and became wide-eyed with a bubbly joy. Somewhere inside the building – violins! "Listen!"

We entered, to discover a group of young boys delivering a violin recital to a large church audience. Moe became ecstatic! "I love this!" Suddenly he bolted to a nearby piano and began a stooge-like attempt to provide accompaniment to the violinists. I got a sudden urge to flee as I witnessed a group of thuggish rectors advancing up the aisle.

We both booked out of there just as Moe pounded out a ham-fisted final thrush upon the keyboard!

I don't know how, but Moe got ahead of me in the chase. We wound up hiding in the bushes around the synagog, with the choir thugs hunting for us. Moe peered out to check if the coast was clear, and saw a Rabbi craning his neck to locate us. "How duh-ya like this," Moe muttered, "to think I have to sneak around a Jew!"

This is just a dream. And keep in mind, Moe Howard was Jewish, as were his brothers, Shemp and Curly... and though not related, Larry Fine's real name was Fineberg. I was just along for the ride here.

Somehow we escaped the baying hounds of the synagog search party, and were then back out on the street. I stood at the curb, but Moe had disappeared. I turned a 360-circle looking to see where he'd gone. I spotted him across the street – disguised as a catholic priest. He waved at me. "This'll fool 'em!"

He then produced a huge cardboard sign and held it aloft, to the bustling street full of motorists and pedestrians, his cock-browed stoogey grin beaming. The sign proclaimed in a hurried scrawl: "FUCK YOU!"

"Moe," I yelled, "I have nothing against religious people, in fact, I am one myself!"

He then ran past an oncoming bus, across the street, and gave me a loud fwappy slap in the face. "That's the spirit, puddin' head!!"

Awake!

I have sat in silent amazement at this dream, and still wonder exactly what I am supposed to decipher. Another coffee refill, please.

June Is Busting Out At Random

2009-06-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

Little kids running and screaming make me want to, too!

If everything were really your fault, you'd go to the electric chair. If nothing were ever your fault, you'd be really boring.

If you think life should have no rules, hold your dinner out so I can take a few bites of it while I pee on your leg. You say I can't do that? Hey, you just made a rule!

Muffins aren't so great. Just the tops.

NONE of the people using laptop computers in that coffeehouse are using them to solve problems. Eighty percent of all cellphones are being used for pointless brain-free yack-yack – thirteen percent are being used to close semi-illegal business transactions, and the rest are being used by terrorists to remotely detonate explosive devices.

Psychos work in distracted collusion. The sane are alone.

Someone who deserves to be looked up on the Internet, but is inexplicably now missing from all of humanity: Daton. One name... like Madonna and Cher. Daton was a surprisingly engaging lounge singer, whose style was bright, plucky and vaguely Sinatra-like for the first song or two, but never changed from song to song... so it slowly but steadily drained down to tedium by the second-set medly, and turned into a handcart ride to Hell by his closing number. He was a mail carrier or sump-pump repairman by day, who got his "fifteen minutes" in the mid-or-late 1970s when some exec at a mail-order LP company discovered him, and actually allowed him to record a "best of" album. (Hint: there were NO preceding albums from which to glean any "bests.") The Daton album was sold on TV, a 2-record set, as I recall. They correctly surmised that nobody would want a follow-up record, so they put everything on the first. "Gum fly with me, gum fly, lesss fly awaeeeeeeeeeeeee..." It deserves to be on CD, if anyone can locate it. Yes, it's DATON!!!

Tony Bennett sings like he just finished an entire 3-foot long hero sandwich. Robert Goulet sang like he was smoking a cigar through the recording. Bing Crosby sang like he was getting a blowjob. Maybe he was, a few times.

A new beginning doesn't suggest a new attitude, but demands it!

Another thing about people who believe the whole world is centered upon them: don't let them order pizza for the whole group unless you like pesto AND jack cheese on EVERYTHING.

At Last! May Randomness!

2009-05-31T13:09:00.000-07:00

Horses, rabbits, and geese may consume the same grass from the same field, yet the horse's shit comes out in large steaming clumps, the rabbit's shit exits as tiny pellets, and the goose's shit goes forth in long green ribbons. Consider this the next time you hear a newscast offer a segment consisting of "differing opinions" on any given subject.

Love and hate aren't the opposite ends of the spectrum, but passion and indifference.

There are people in government who wish you and I would just shut up, stay indoors and eat our Big Macs like good little drones.

Bill Clinton has done two things that no one else will ever do, at least both in the same lifetime. He's been president. And he's seen Hillary pole dance.

A few ideas of what three wishes to ask your genie:

1. A do-over fourth wish (which, when you think about it, is pointless, since you must use up a wish to wish for it – leaving you with the original three wishes. Hmm.)
2. Immunity to the coming zombie plague
3. A Dennys staff becomes inexplicably competent whenever you enter

1. The ability to produce and hurl flaming porcupines
2. Instant mastery of all dances
3. A standing 30-foot tall pile of cow shit that obeys your every command like the Golem of Prague

1. For the words "... and much, much more" in advertising to actually mean something
2. An epic, $100 million dollar film that begins with a scene of a sheepherder lighting an M-80 firecap in his ass (this one just might come true, have you seen what passes for movies these days?)
3. The first 3-D, smell-o-vision movie: of a movie ending, and a walk through the exit door of the theater, to your car. The title: "Dejavu." Guaranteed you'll be thinking about it for the entire drive home.

And we jump right into April Randomness!

2009-04-20T19:21:00.000-07:00

What do JFK's brain and Benny Hill's porn collection have in common? They both had to exist at one time, based on the observation of recorded history, yet neither can be proven to have ever existed, because there is presently no physical evidence.

There is a one-world religion. It's called Facebook.

Facebook is a phenomenal anomaly built around a contradiction; despite so much paranoia that the cyber-culture is becoming too intrusive, destroying our privacy, every waking hour millions of people log on and give away practically every secret they have!

Best Presidential quote in 40 years. Obama, to the banking CEOs: "Gentleman, remember that my administration is the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks."

Fast. Cheap. Good. You can have any two, but whichever two you choose, you'll have to settle for the opposite of the third.

In the uncut version of the 1946 Three Stooges comedy "Uncivil Warbirds," Moe Howard utters the word "ejaculate." And does a scene in blackface.

Another old comedy factoid: Bill Cosby once tried to buy up all the old "Our Gang" films, just so he could excise the characters Buckwheat, Stymie and Farina from the historical cinematic landscape. Now, doesn't that qualify as racist on some level?

As one grows older it becomes easier to smile, and easier to dislike a wider array of things.

Is it possible to be "rested to a frazzle?"

The biggest fallacy we make when we take steps to change our environment, is that we assume we'll be in better control of the new one.

The person who asks "How bad can it be?" is the one that everyone else will hate when "it" is over.

Randomness On The March

2009-03-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

It isn't good when your dentist's first words to you are "Don't worry, the room is soundproof."

I wonder if David Copperfield ever feels an urge to pull out an uzi and wipe out the audience when he messes up a trick? After all, they'd tell others.

We are all time travelers, moving into the future at a steady speed of 60 minutes per hour.

Today's rapidly advancing technology allows us to create spaceships that can travel, unmanned, to other planets and send back stunning images of their extraterrestrial surfaces... and to play Halo with a 10-year old kid in Great Britain who beats us using a cheat code, then disconnects after pecking out a misspelled insult about our poor bandwidth and a P.S. to go fuck ourselves.

I'm waiting for the Broadway Musical version of "Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster." You know it's gotta be in someone's head besides mine!

Someone, somewhere, considers us both fucking idiots.

You cannot split infinity, because even if you do, both halves still go on forever in either direction, and the second half still just picks up where the first half left off.

The last cookie, donut, bagel, snack item in the container is the "half-life" one. Who ever comes upon it will break it in two, and eat half... so as not be the person who denies someone else a share. Even if it has been broken in half so many times that it is now a mere nugget. They'll still attempt to leave a portion... Rare is the self-confident individual who sees the last one and takes the whole thing. He or she knows they make more – and if someone comes along wanting one of whatever it was that's now gone, the answer is simple: Go buy another box of the damn things!

I'm beginning to wonder if my ship is being pulled in by a tugboat.

Memorable Auditions IV

2009-03-02T00:05:00.000-08:00

YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME DOWN WITH A MONKEY BALL!

There's a phenomena called the Standard Hollywood Epiphany. At least that's what I call it.

It happens elsewhere, to a lesser degree, but never like it does in Star Town. You go about your day, perhaps even following a routine that has remained unchanged for months, years. You run into someone who by odd chance, just happens to cross your path in some mundane, otherwise unremarkable way. And you get a strange feeling that you know that person, as if from a past life – in fact, you know them on some unnameable but nonetheless intimate level.

In Hollywood and its neighboring southern California communities, these sudden run-ins are worth craning your neck for – worth clicking on Google about, as soon as you get home.

Anywhere else, save perhaps New York City, London or Paris, this glancing encounter might be meaningless – your eyes playing tricks. In Los Angeles, it's more likely that you've collided with a celebrity on his or her off-hours.

As abstract as it may sound, you get used to it. It matters not that their last blockbuster was a smash, or only a semi-hit, or even a dud – or if they've been out of the A-list spotlight for some time. And even more strangely, your mind does an instant full circle – from realization, and a mental reference of their résumé, back around to an everyday encounter with a fellow human.

"Mr. Affleck, could I squeeze my cart past yours? I'm after a can of those stewed tomatoes."

The odds of these incidents becoming routine, goes up, when you are on the audition trail. But the dynamic is altered; for within those boundaries you're supposedly a pro, just as they surely are. You might even get to – briefly – talk shop with them.

You get to "hang" in their sphere. A temporary confidant. And in the first few days or weeks of one's foray into this alternate universe called show business, these moments are electrifying – yet one knows not to let the cork out of the bottle until safely home, frantically dialing pals to tell them all about it.

And then something changes. You are colored somewhat by a tinge in the atmosphere. It dawns on you – the "show" in show business is what the world outside sees, as opposed to what you are assimilating to, the "business."

Finding yourself in the same waiting room as that stunning tall-drink-of-water brunette you saw last night in a Macy's commercial takes on the same ambiance as passing a coworker in the hallway to and from the copier. You are both at work.

And forget the "opportunity" factor, Mr. Howly-Wolf. It's a non-issue – she likely has an engagement ring weighing down her demurely thin hand, given her by a 7-foot tall, bald and devil-goateed, Teutonic techno-geek named Vinn, who can make the cables on a Bowflex home gym smoke like an unoiled crankcase.

When in Hollywood, do not trust that old adage that extremely beautiful women likely have low self-esteem, and just want to be appreciated by an honest guy whether or not he's as attractive as she. That may work in Duluth – but here these ladies know exactly how beautiful they are, they take self-defense classes with an ironman gusto, and if she can't bitch-slap you back into your place, her boyfriend certainly can. Begin with "hi," and end with "nice meeting you." Make it out of this audition alive, even if the role is lost.

My round-about point is that finding yourself in line with someone famous, especially "at work" is a commonplace happening in America's media capitol, and as time wears on, it becomes that to everyone involved, at all levels. I stumbled upon this, at just such an audition, for a new video game, of all things.

Now I myself do not play video games anymore, so the new releases are as mystifying to me as they are to any old fart who say, still misses rotary phones. The video game commercial being casted was for Sega Monkeyball 2, which I imagine now is a well worn old hat to most gamers, but it was brand new and ready to hit the store shelves as I arrived to read my lines.

The conceit of the ad, was that thousands of people from all walks of life were raving about Monkeyball 2 as the ultimate gaming experience, even though the product had yet to be unloaded even from the first delivery truck. Much like those 1-1/2-star stinkers opening at theaters, yet already heralded by critics no one has ever heard of.

It boiled down to all of us doing improv, praising a video game we'd never even seen the box for, let alone played. Yes, it's a huge con-job, slapped together last-minute, by advertising execs who can't even spell "scruple," to sell a product with built-in obsolescence to people who have nothing better to do than flush their money away. Business as usual.

The waiting area was ornate, with oak paneling and plush leather divans lining both sides of the room. I had never been here before. I signed in, and simply sat for several minutes marveling at the surroundings. Serious folks, these. You hafta dress like it's dinner with Dracula just to audition here!

In minutes I became aware that I was sitting on the opposite end of the room as everyone else at the audition. In fact, everyone seemed huddled around one person, who was in essence holding court. Even more stunning, was that all the others were men about my age, wearing clothing similar to mine, while this attention magnet at stage-center was dressed in something other than what I'd consider "work clothes."

Let me describe him – as you paint his portrait in your mind.

A short, pudgy Asian man, with olive skin. Ragged cut-off jeans shorts. A tank-top that looked like off-the-rack at Goodwill. Plastic and foam flip-flops. An expensive looking watch. And not a single hair on his body, save his penciled mustache and not-quite-bald-yet comb-over. I mean, he was so hairless as to look uncatchable if he were soaking wet. Like an oiled up piglet.

No chest shrubbery poking out of the tank-top. Not even any light armpit fuzz. He was like a tanned water balloon from head to toe. Normally I wouldn't mention a thing like this, but in this case it wasn't just noticeable, but downright hypnotic – it was in fact, his body's chief feature.

A Cabbage Patch Doll.

And this little potato had his audience spellbound. Every word uttered by his round, smooth jowls was pure gold to those surrounding him. "Who is THIS guy," I wondered to myself?

Well, he did look somewhat familiar, the more I watched. I was mildly curious. But then I decided not to lemming this guy, whomever he was.

I wasn't here to sit at anyone's feet and absorb crumbs of gossamer wisdom like some transfixed opossum. I was here to work – here as a pro. Let those rubbing up against Mr. Backyard Swapmeet miss the point of being here – I'm in the hunt for a callback. Yet, I was still just a bit interested, for trivia's sake, to know this guy's identity – even though he looked like he was in line for a waffle-cone at the county fair, not auditioning for a TV ad.

Remember that the word "celebrity" is somewhat deceptive in the grand scheme of the media-entertainment business. It's hardly a matter of playing by any rules, written or unwritten. There are NO rules to this contest except "Be What They Want." Being a celebrity is not synonymous with being talented, or even attractive. It's having what the Casting Person wants, and in turn, having something that the public at large decides it desires. Pat Sajak, for instance, proved that he couldn't carry a talkshow for even one season, but as the master of a large, spinning, glitter-sprinkled wheel on a gameshow, he possesses an irreplaceable brand of charisma.

The front desk gatekeeper called a name out, which apparently belonged to one of the man's cadre of listeners. His turn to audition – he rose, and proceeded to the studio door. "Nice to meet you, Your Honor."

The guy was a judge. Okay... he's an important person from another profession, here for one of his fifteen minutes, no doubt thanks to some connection from across the bench. He let someone off the hook... his payback was a free pass to a brief moment in pop-culture. He was here without his black robe... dressed in his idea of Ellay Informal. It just happened to be Van Nuys Garage Sale. Then again, who's going to tell a judge what to wear to audition for a video game commercial?

Then the real bomb promptly fell. Another of the entourage was summoned into the studio. "A pleasure, Mr. Ito."

Ito? Judge Lance Ito. Who presided over the O.J. trial. The most watched and most recounted media event of, oh, the entire 20th century, shall we say?

I sat awestruck. This guy had told the World Media to sit down and shut the hell up, on national TV. He'd browbeat celebrated attorneys like Marcia Clark, Robert Kardashian, Johnny Cochran and Chris Darden with a rueful stare and a pointed finger.

After that, endorsing a video game ought to have been like scratching a chaffed nipple.

I stared across the carpet in silence, knowing I was NOT going to get this job.

Monkeyball 2 went on to some degree of success after that commercial, but I did not. Another guy who was there didn't even have to dress up for it, because in the world of celebrity status, he had the cheat code.

Welcome To Hollywood: My Turn In The Barrel, Part II

2009-02-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

After acquiring an official L.A. apartment, I went about the next leg of my journey to stardom – finding an agent.

Among the most galling ironies of my initial jump into Hollywood, was that I hired the services of a firm called "The Smart Girls" and then merrily proceeded to ignore their advice and make every cliché-bad decision in the Movie Business Loser's Handbook.

I'm sure it exists somewhere.

At any newsstand within sniffing distance of the film industry, one can find scads of badly bound periodicals pertaining to anything – and seemingly everything – that an aspiring participant in the Hollywood dream-search might deem indispensable. I call 'em the Quik-N-Dirties.

Printed at Kinko's, on multicolored stock, in every ink color except black, and held together by haphazard stapling, they promise to reveal all the short-cuts, hidden passages and ultra-secret codes within the Movie Capitol's matrix.

GET AN AGENT NOW!

READY FOR YOUR SAG CARD?

ACE THAT AUDITION!

THE CASTING DIRECTOR'S BEST KEPT SECRETS!

FROM EXTRA TO LEAD IN THREE MONTHS!

And the classic DON'T BE FOOLED!!

Typically 50 to 75 pages, typeset on a Dell shitbox, and costing from $8 to $10 a pop, they contain many, many things – all of which is available elsewhere, for free yet. But that doesn't dawn on you 'til way later.

They're betting you just got off the freeway, still in yesterday's clothes and smelling of a showerless weekend, your nerves and brain fried crispy from first-day L.A. culture shock – not to mention the twelve Starbucks pit-stops you made along the way in – and you're anxious to start your Hollywood career right-fucking-now, caution and prudent deliberation be damned. And that isn't quite as shallow a marketing strategy on their part as it may sound.

The "exclusive" info you do get boils down to the contact numbers and emails of the D-List office-lessee asshats who "publish" this timely tome. They've also thoughtfully provided additional links to any back alley partners they have in their hip pockets – fellow fly-by-night jerkwads, some of whom may have shared the printing costs on their Discover Card.

You see, they publish this treasure only as a sidebar to their actual occupation: Starmakers!

To be fair, some of them are on the level; what they offer has legitimate boot-camp value to aspiring actors, models, writers, etc. A straightforward publication of general neophyte-friendly insider intell, that must otherwise be gleaned via hard work, time, gallons of sweat, failure and hindsight, is invaluable.

But by and by, the usable content peters out, to become diluted, and ultimately drowned by the endless flow of promotional diarrhea sold as the useful blueprint it has usurped. Most readers don't catch on until it is almost too late, and the riptide of bullshit is dragging them out to sea. I know the feeling first-hand.

Yes, I bought a couple. I even found them at the Samuel French Store – a chain of media outlets run by the Samuel French publishing company. It's like a Borders for industry players. You might see celebrity directors and producers searching out literary properties to transform into their next blockbuster (I walked in one afternoon to hear I'd just missed Ron Howard)... and struggling aspirants looking for how-to stuff. The entire cross-section of H'wood Humanity.

It is also a place where one NEVER dares reveal the presence of a credit card, lest be swarmed upon by empty-pocketed amateur filmmakers, pretending to browse, waiting for some rube willing to "finance" the next reel of their stalled, permit-free shoot. I think they routinely police the place for those jerks, nowadays.

It was here that I found an advert flyer for the aforementioned "Smart Girls."

TSG turned out to be every shade of legit. In fact, if I had listened more to them, I might actually have gotten somewhere further up the line. For a set fee, the Smart Girls create a self-promotional package that one can take to Casting Directors, Agents, potential Managers and the like, and not look like a clueless, starcrossed burp-waffle wearing Dad's tie, trying to "git discovered."

For me they composed a superb cover letter, formatted my résumé to look as if I actually knew how, and also provided an up-to-date mailing list of key industry people which to send my brave little press kits. Adding a headshot, addressing and stuffing envelopes, and finding funds for postage was up to me. And it paid off! Instead of bloodying my knuckles on countless doors and wearing my shoes into tattered spats on an endless cement carpet, I had agents and various representative pros dialing my number. And most of them B and C-list – with an occasional "A." When you're just starting out, that qualifies as "in business."

I also met a few people at TSG who became not only friends, but collaborators. Another tale for another blog.

In fact, I'll go as far as to recommend The Smart Girls. Here they are! Go for it: www.smartgirlsprod.com

Within a week or so, I'd narrowed my field of candidates to about 10 agents that I would interview. It was here I made my first, and biggest mistake.

The whole process had given me a swelled head – a sense of power. Or more accurately, I had a sense of instant psuedo-expertise. Let me humble myself here and now: making it to Hollywood indicates only that you can follow freeway signs.

Occasionally, someone from Smart Girls would phone up, to ask "how is everything?" I was cordial at first, then boneheadedly began to treat these calls like they were from overly diligent telemarketers. I was blowing it, thinking I was becoming wise.

And so I got another well-deserved "Welcome To Hollywood" moment, courtesy of the very first agent I interviewed. Let's call this little tale...

THE OVERCONFIDENT TURD AND THE SELF-IMPORTANT DOUCHEBAG

Has a ring not unlike "The Ant and The Grasshopper," wouldn't you say?

My first clue that I was about to be a dung-target at the monkeyhouse, was when I discovered his office was actually an add-on to his suburban stucco home in Palm Springs. Now, having a house in The PS is a definite indicator of success on many levels... but a Hollywood agent working in the same location he sleeps, eats, wears his kimono jammies and sits on the toilet with his Us Magazines... isn't. In fact, an agent living this far off the beaten path, is either a sign of a tremendously successful player, or a wanna-be with intense denial. The under-a-million-dollar dwelling should have spoken volumes to me, but I was also in a denial state – still as blind as a 1920s jazz guitarist.

I found the place with a bit of difficulty, and when I arrived, had to park in an alley. His garage was crammed solid with cardboard boxes full of old paperwork. His driveway was occupied by his gold Jeep Cherokee. And his front curb wasn't an actual curb. He lived on one of those pretend streets where only one vehicle may navigate at a time, in one direction. A parked car would effectively block all traffic.

"Don't worry, the parking cop has already been by today. You're safe." I gulped, locked the car, and followed Mr. Wrong to his spare bedroom add-on, on the other side of an under-chlorinated pool from his main dwelling.

Here was more boxes of paper. A "lounge" area, with a grey leather couch and matching recliner, and a bigscreen TV. A "media command center" which consisted of two more smaller TVs, one turned to an all-day Entertainment News network, and the other to CNN. There was his computer CPU with (wow!) two monitors. His tubby, jeans-n-Reebok wearing secretary's cubicle contained a phone, another computer and an intercom unit (to where?). There was also a washer and dryer (the one feature that actually had me jealous) and finally, what looked like... could it be?... and why? A CB radio.

This guy had his fingers on the pulse of an industry – and a maxed-out Circuit City card.

Photos of his "stable of stars" adorned the walls. A few awkward looking ingenues... an equally awkward grandmotherly detergent commercial matron... and a crowd of chisel-chinned beau-hunks – pursed-lipped, confident browed – the "type." Were all these guys clients? I didn't see anyone up there like me... was he branching out?

Here's a real Hollywood tidbit from the "unwritten" rule book. Trust me on this. Hollywood Bullshit can only be recognized by smell. Trying to spot it by sight is like standing in a car lot, guessing which Cadillac has been farted in.

The answer: possibly all of 'em. But you'll never know until you've sat in each and sniffed.

For all I knew, this guy had found a formula for success that suited him. An office-sloppy but street-savvy pro with a network of CB cronies who had grown tired of the Hollywood Boulevard sardine can? Or... Ass Hole.

I was about to find out.

The first thing he said to me was his all-purpose notice to the Universe: "I only represent talented people who get work." I could sense his pride, if not his logic. "And I only wear shirts THAT FIT," I wanted to quip back.

Before I go further, I must spend a moment on the headshot I was sending out at this time – it was a photo that displayed my comedic side somewhat well. A tilted eyebrow. A devilish grin. There were A-List comedians working in Hollywood who used this exact same look. And this headshot had gotten me work, a few times even on its own strength, allowing me to bypass the audition and jump straight into paid jobs before the lens.

A national commercial for Coit Drapery Cleaners. A local spot for a building contractor. Another national for a tax consulting firm. This headshot had paid for itself many, many times over.

Naturally I was a bit proud of it, and perhaps smelling of a little self-entitlement because of it.

Mr. Stucco-and-Two-TVs had received a copy of this headshot in the package I'd sent, as part of the Smart Girls-assisted mass mailing. I followed him to his grey little "lounge." His walk was strange – as if he mentally deliberated each step. He walked in a slightly disturbing toes-first fashion. He picked up my headshot from his desk, and held it at arm's length as I entered. He assumed I was a smart-ass. Maybe he was right, but along the way he also confirmed the old proverb, "it takes one to know one."

"Well, what a piece of fucking shit," he sighed. "Nobody uses headshots like this. Who do you think you are?"

"I think it's okay," I said. I wanted to say lots more.

"Frankly," he coughed, "this would just take up space in my files. Here. Thanks but no thanks."

He was tossing my headshot back to me. Dismissing me, literally, out of hand. And we were done.

He had phoned me up... set up an appointment... had me drive all the way from Van Nuys to Palm Springs – an hour on the 10 Freeway – and lured me to his tight, tucked away little three-bedroom on a one-way needle... just so he could tell me I wasn't worth his time, and personally put my worse-than-wet-garbage headshot back in my hand.

W... T... F...

He could have just wadded it up, done a two-pointer into the trash basket, and saved his dime, not to mention my afternoon. But no. His dark little heart had something demonstrative to prove to a green piece of newbie scum like me.

I kept a game face. I wanted to hand him a bill for my wasted time and gasoline, but those things are intangible to phony-tanned and over-blinged creeps like this. It was then I noticed something odd about the little arrogant toothpick. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was there. Something.

He escorted me back outside, toward my car. "Like the pool," he asked? The nerve. The bloody nerve. I wondered how long he could hold his breath in it, and fantasized about helping him get into the Guinness Book.

He even waved goodbye as I pulled away, the steam emanating from my collar fogging up my windows.

Then... there! His hand... his fingers... his nails. He's been removing colored nail polish. Those tiny bright purple flicks of...

His forehead... his eyebrows... his LACK of eyebrows. This guy plucks his eyebrows!

His earlobes... stretched out... earring holes.

That toes-first walk of his... of course – his stilettos were missing!

This guy wasn't all agent!

This Suburba-dise was home-base for a nightclub stage queen. Little had I known that I'd been turned away, not by a star-broker, but by crossdressing royalty. Imagine my shame!

I'd never been to where ever this guy conceivably held court as a duct-tape gelded Cleopatra, but the sudden realization created a vision out of the very ether of my mind...

Princess Trippi! Twirling batons, shaved sinewy insect legs in net-stockings, a black-widow lashed abominatrix!! Nasally Mermanesque medleys of off-key Cole Porter tunes, followed by a death-defying trampoline and tomahawk juggling finale. A pet rat that dives through a hoop. Groaning X-rated one-liners in between sets. Fake boobies jiggling in rhythm to The Deltones and Jan & Dean.

Somehow, something about the episode made sense. Though, don't ask me to explain it any more than I already have. I drove away knowing this individual would never, never represent me, not even on my best day. I wasn't his type, and he'd been very very determined to let me know it. My entire wasted afternoon had been for the self-empowerment of a scrawny Palm Springs man leading a most complicated double life.

Was the applause at the Queen Mary nightclub not as fulfilling anymore?

The drive back to Van Nuys was beautiful... beautiful. Welcome to Hollywood.

Feb. Rand.

2009-02-07T11:33:00.000-08:00

Whenever I wonder how fantastic flying cars would be, I have to remind myself that half the people in real cars either won't or can't figure out how to drive safely – with painted lines on the road yet! And clearly marked road signs. And huge overhanging directional lights on timers. Do I want those people trying to FLY something from point A to B?

The most unmanly phrase I've ever heard out of the mouth of a man, at Target: "Oooh-looky, this-n's cheaperrrrrr." Try it. There's no way to say this in any way even remotely heterosexual.

For years I thought Slammin' Sammy Firebaugh was a real person – perhaps a sports figure from the early days of football, or something similar. I Googled him and discovered... it's nobody. Just a name I'd made up – and somehow misfiled in my brain, under "long-term trivial factoids."

The reason they don't "make 'em like they used to?" In some cases, it's because the damn things weren't selling THEN, either!

I think there's something subconscious in the way we've developed keychain computer storage units with more and more memory capacity, that are more and more the size and shape of anal suppositories. Ponder that one. We are paring all life down to mere digital information, compressing it into something we can carry like loose change, and shaping it into something to DILDO ourselves with!

A coughing fit while sitting on the toilet is one of nature's instant laxatives.

Oh yes, ma'am, you CAN have TOO MANY DAMN PETS.

Sorry, but "Moons Over My Hammy" is by far the greatest thing ever printed in a Denny's menu.

More Denny's tips: Getting to know your waitress on a first name basis is not the way to get into her pants, or even get better service – it just means she won't feel as guilty for taking 45 minutes to bring you a cup of coffee, and you won't have any real right to get steamed about it – you two are buds, after all.

Sometimes the only therapy that works, is bacon.

I wonder if, on the Titanic, mere seconds before the iceberg, someone at the bar ordered a drink, and said "and make it on the rocks."

Getting older is hell, but for some reason I'm glad I was born when I was.

Those Moments

2009-01-31T12:01:00.001-08:00

Years ago, I was sitting in a laundromat, in Merced – a central California town which should have its slogan changed from "The Gateway To Yosmite" to "the Gateway to Obscurity" – when one of its citizens-celebré came in and sat down beside me. Does she have a name? Probably, but I doubt that knowing it would lend anything to the story. I'll bet you do know her, though, or more accurately, someone just like her.

The Wandering Hag.

Self-distracted. Exact same outfit every day. Occupying a unique little bubble of private reality, muttering in the unknowable language of her people from a far-off planet – but by-gawd, she knows every human curse word, and suddenly ceases muttering to speak with Toastmasters-level clarity when she needs to utter a few choice combinations.

Guhmu-to-dapuh-mummun-widduh-humma-hummuh-FUCK YOU WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT MOTHER FUCKER GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Merced's Wandering Hag also had a small fuzzy blond dog who was her constant companion. Constant to the point that the little guy probably wanted to run away to the Pound. She pulled him along as she staggered up and down the boulevard – his tiny raw, tattered-mitten paws pushing in protest along the rough cement. His personal level of doggy Hell. Completely silent, no doubt because his doggy brain had learned that yipping and whining meant nothing to his white-haired, sully-skirted tormentor.

Mercifully, they are both probably dead by now.

Anyway, with great apparent purpose, upon entering the laundromat, she spotted me, and made a bee-line for the chair next to mine. She sat. I ignored her, pretending not to care about danger.

She saw through the pretense. She grinned. I held my poker face as long as I possibly could, then finally, fightingly, glanced over.

She revealed her ultimate secret to me.

"I know where the papers are. They're buried."

"Oh," I said? Then I geared into a mode that I have become aware that I do occasionally, much to my regret later on. I humored her – pretended that I knew exactly what she was talking about. It's an odd defense mechanism of mine, that has actually pulled me out of the crosshairs of a bad situation a few times, but most times, like this one, has just made it worse.

"That's pretty smart," I said, "if they get their hands on those, everybody is screwed."

"I know," she said. "You think I'm stupid?"

"Of course not. You knew to hide the papers, and that took brains."

"Bet your ass it did. Now stop fuckin' bothering me about it, alright?"

"Okay," I said, "sorry."

She huffed out, royally ticked that her daily routine had been disrupted.

I waited in silence for the dryer to finish.

Day One Indeed!

2009-01-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

Where I work today, we had an impromptu in-office hour-long cease and desist of all activity, that began at 8:30 a.m., 11:30 eastern. Every department with a TV set played host to gathering crowds of employees. I was offered a chair several times, but I decided I would stand for this – for all of it.

There were those bewildered few who couldn't set aside their texting and cell addictions. And one or two who couldn't shut off their need to gum flap and wisecrack. I felt sorry for them – for I was moved to a stilled silence. My neck was craned. I was fixed.

The past 30 years was made to sit down and shut up. The future now has the podium.

The moment was not about me, and I am dumbstruck that there was inevitably someone, somewhere who still couldn't get their focus off the "inward" setting. If "I" is allowed admission to this event, it is in the cheap seats, the peanut gallery.

Cheney tried – a wheelchair? Come on.

Well then again, with the way they continually bent America over the barrel, it's no wonder there was a "sore dick" among the old guard at the Inauguration.

Across the street from where I live, there is a hardcore politico dwelling in a tiny apartment, whose car's entire aft is brick-stacked with bumper stickers – each of them a brandished opinion. In his street window, is a hand-drawn poster that displays a marker-colored countdown to the last day of the previous president's administration. "Bush has 9 (8, 7, 6, etc.) days left!" He changes it – draws a new one – daily. Now it's down to zero. This guy must soak his inky fist in hot water every night. What will he do now, for diversion. And how will he reclaim any resale value on his Kia Sportage now that the paint – from the rear doors back – has been irreversibly destroyed by a four-plus year long rant of bumperstickers?

At least he can add one more, that says, "See – told ya so!"

The images of the ceremony, and the patriotically festooned wedding cake capital building – the mass of people – reminded me of all the old photos I've seen. Of the Washington of a long ago yesteryear. President Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman or even an Eisenhower could have been about to step up to speak. It was a visual step through a time portal.

When Presidents were real. Unlike the "transient officials" who've occupied the seat since Kennedy was taken from us. As Jim Garrison commented: "The assassination reduced the President to a transient official. His job is to speak as often as possible of the nation's desire for peace... while he acts as a business agent in the Congress, for the military and their contractors."

That's a pretty good summation of every president since Nixon, up to this morning. I could swear I felt a fog lifting – a huge, massive sigh. My brow uncreased.

It feels like we have an actual President again. And he invoked our first, the father of our country, in his speech. Let the moment march on.

New Year's Randomness

2009-01-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

Watch out for pedestrians. They aren't as smart as they used to be.

She'll sleep with anyone. I'm not just anyone.

For some reason, I'm not nearly as annoyed at my neighbors for playing loud music, when it's Elvis. Why is that?

Whenever I ponder just what amount of talent and charisma is minimally necessary to earn a living in show business, I eventually think of Pat Sajak... and realize it's NONE.

The one thing that aging has definitely taught me, is to appreciate, as I depreciate.

Someone has to say it: Menudo Doritos is JUST GOING TOO FAR.

I've got an itchin' for a bitchin'! (I have no clue what it means, but it sounds great!)

A flash of tit can turn even the crappiest day around.

A thought, as we enter 2009:
If I could convince you to shut down your Internet connection... put down the remote... leave your iPod at home... never mind that your phone can do all that incredible stuff, and turn it off... take the earphones out... put the Blackberry in your coat pocket... all for just one hour? And avoid even referring to those items in conversation? Now answer this – who are you?

I Convened With Intell #1

2009-01-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

OBAMA PICKS PANETTA FOR CIA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama has chosen former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to run the CIA. Panetta was a surprise pick for the post, with no experience in the intelligence world. An Obama transition official and another Democrat disclosed his nomination on a condition of anonymity since it was not yet public. Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California. He served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for the reversing course in the Iraq war. Panetta currently directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at CSU-Monterey Bay.

Now it isn't every day that one brushes shoulders with someone in a position of mysterious power and potentially nebulous influence over the lives of every American. But in light of Mr. Panetta's most recent career advancement, a'la President-elect Obama, I'm compelled to place a record of this encounter down for digital posterity.

I had just returned to Monterey, after a time of dire poverty up north, Seattle way. Needless to say I was in just as dire a state of poverty in Monterey, but finally had some work lined up, and needed to make some phone calls. I was too broke to even keep a cellphone, so I was routinely surrendering all my loose change to Pac Bell.

I was on Alvarado Street, downtown Monterey, in Ordway Pharmacy. I needed change to use the payphone outside. Since I also needed a number of sundries sold at the pharmacy anyway, I decided to get my change via a purchase. Along the way to the check-out, I also snagged myself a Tootsie Pop. Red. No, the flavor doesn't matter – but the Tootsie Pop is essential to the story.

As I got to the counter, there was one person ahead of me... it was Leon Panetta.

He was getting a prescription filled – and yes, like Gelson's Market in L.A., if you want to see celebrities doing mundane just-like-you-and-me daily tasks, Ordway Pharmacy is one of the places you might want to hang out when on the Monterey Peninsula – just don't let your loitering become too obvious. Bruno's Market in Carmel is great too – Jenn Aniston buying coldcuts... Clint in for a case of Hogsbreath Ale... that kind of stuff. Just remember they are not there to sign autographs – it's their downtime.

Anyway, so I'm standing behind Leon Panetta, holding a tube of toothpaste, a roll of Tums, a Chapstick, a small bottle of Bayer Aspirin and a red Tootsie Pop.

Mr, Panetta completes his transaction, and lingers just a moment to sort out the contents of his shopping bag. I place my stuff on the counter. The clerk asks, as all such clerks are born to do: "Will this be all?"

I don't know why, but my mischievous side bounds forth. "No, I'd like a dollar of my change in quarters, please... and Mr. Panetta's thoughts on achieving world peace in our lifetime, and possibly my lollypop free of charge."

Oh, was I flippin' ASKING FOR IT.

I recall it vividly. Without missing a beat, Mr. Panetta turns, and calmly offers, "Complete peace, globally, will take a great deal of time, patience, and a concerted effort by all the world's leaders. As for the lollypop... you're ON YOUR OWN."

With a trace of a grin on his lips, he casually walks out, his bag neatly folded closed.

Me. And the future head of Central Intelligence. The Tootsie Pop conference. It happened.

Yuletide Randomness

2008-12-20T15:14:00.000-08:00

You saw mommy kissing Santa Claus? Kind of makes the milk and cookies you left seem naively passé, doesn't it?

I'm dreaming of a chromatically challenged Christmas.

Blonds don't really have more fun, they just forget their misery quicker.

A life lesson from McDonalds: You get your toy only after all your nuggets are gone.

Yo-yos were invented by the ancient Chinese, and originally meant to be weapons. With this in mind, I'd love to see Tommy Smothers just frickin' lose it one day and nail some smartass 14 year-old with a Duncan Butterfly, a big bright red one.

Sure, shop local this holiday to support your town's economy, even though you plan to return everything on the 26th.

With fuel costs what they are now, some parents are encouraging their kids to misbehave – a lump of coal is a lump of coal!

I've been given half a peace sign by several motorists this holiday season, so at least people are trying. Huh? What am I missing??

Welcome To Hollywood!: My Turn In The Barrel

2008-12-03T22:47:00.000-08:00

You know you're about to see daylight when an asshole treats you like shit and forces you out!

The most amazing thing about me & Hollywood, after all that's happened between us, is that I still go back. Fact is, I feel alive there, despite all the mind-warped forces working in concert – unknowingly in some cases, but still in an uncanny state of collusion – to destroy anything and everything outside of itself, that wanders in.

If you venture there and find that all doors magically open for you, that joblessness, homelessness and every other "lessness" shun you, consider that you just may be that lone visitor from the planet Krypton. The rest of us get our battered asses handed to us, in no terms uncertain.

At a party just off Melrose, a weekend a few years ago, I was told by a fella who worked for MTV, that "the whole point of your first time in Hollywood is getting your ass kicked. It's a rite of passage." If you aren't lucky enough to be born into a family already ensconced in the Entertainment Industry community – like say, Jamie Lee Curtis, whose parents were both established A-list movie stars – coming to Hollywood is sort of like joining Fight Club. It isn't necessarily showing them "what you got," it's showing them how much you can take – and smile with bloody teeth and cough, "shit, what fun."

Only there isn't always someone with a sense of reality among the initiators, who steps in to say, "Okay, he's had enough. Help him up."

I fared about as much in my first go-around. I met extreme versions of all the toxic personalities I'd thought I'd learned to avoid, during my life in the untanned outside world. I also made a few lifelong friends, but they were far fewer in number.

The two big Firsts of losing my Hollywood virgin status were my experiences with a first apartment, and the search for a first agent.

My first month was lived at Days Inn, on Ventura Boulevard. I got a distinct impression from the front desk-dude that I wasn't even near being the first rube he'd seen pass through on their route to stardom.

The more I drove up and down Ventura, I discovered all the cheaper dives I could have chosen – but they all looked like I'd be missing considerable sleep in them, answering middle-of-the-night knocks at my door – by women named Monique or Randi, with thick makeup and runny nylons, or guys on old bikes, named JayJay or Tulo, with bad goatees hiding faces of acne, and looking to hook me up with killer smokables. Days Inn was a tad pricey, but a tiny gated community unto itself, and a little more crowd-controlled by cruising peace officers. It may have been Red-State of me, but I stayed put, and liked it.

All the important addresses existed miles away on the 405 or the Hollywood freeway – all except one important outpost, which amazingly, wound up being a mere 50-or-so steps from the door of my first (and only) L.A. apartment: Anderson Graphics. This was a mecca for many actors, on many diverse levels of the totem – the Headshot Lithographer.

If you cared to rummage through A.G.'s back alley dumpster, you'd possibly find something that would fetch a few bucks on eBay, now. Things like, oh, shots of that actress who played a Klingon warrioress in a Star Trek spin-off series, in full make-up... or some old performers who were somebodies once, now trying to be again, and apparently not happy with their latest batch of publicity stills. Would you remember them if I dropped some names?

Sadly, the Internet, digital photography – and a drastic swing by the Industry to color non-litho headshots, killed off Anderson Graphics in the time I've been away – it is no more. And thus, a huge box of black-n-whites in my bedroom closet, that cost me every cent I had at the time, and took an entire afternoon – with a hypnosis session to calm my rattled nerves – to shoot, now amounts to little more than a block of dead weight that I can't bare to toss out. Not just out of sheer mortification at the multi-leveled, galling waste, but any possible symbolic embarrassment. Nothing says "failure to launch" quite like a whole box of unused headshots littering a garbage dumpster.

Yes, Anderson Graphics is but a memory. But I'm sure my little hell on earth is still there: The Oxnard Avenue Apartments, in Van Nuys.

First I must tell you about the town itself... downwind of Burbank, and bankrupt of all aesthetics. Visibly uninviting to anyone craving an afternoon walk. The air is ripe with the grease from twenty McDonald's locales, and the general funk of the freeway. Here, I'm sure, was invented the concept of the scary 7-11 where the cost of a Slurpee might be an unwelcome encounter with a depressed, pen knife wielding clerk on a cigarette break. A troll squatting under Hollywood's grimey drawbridge. The gateway to L.A. panic attacks, and unproductive weekends wondering if the neighbors have any other CDs besides that Hawaiian conga line mantra they keep playing over and over and over and over and over. This is Van Nuys.

The town's "fame" derives from its being the once proud Porn Video Production capitol of the world. I'd actually held out a small sliver of hope, concerning this.

Let it be said... the Hollywood of roving movie idols and majestic film studios lording over a sun drenched landscape of glamour and excitement is the stuff of old documentaries – the Gables, Cagneys, Bogarts, Monroes and Deans are now just gawdy billboard-size paintings on the sides of office buildings and downtown facades. The real money-scented, omnipresent industry that rises like sweat-steam from Hollywood's every pore, today, is PORN.

And living in Van-fucking-Nuys, I held a thin hope in my heart that at least once in a while my daily malaise would be disrupted by the sight of a blow-n-hump film princess... I dunno... window shopping at the mall – walking her greyhound – comparing prices on ground chuck at the supermarket...

A thundercloud of bleach blond hair... cyber-breasts defying gravity, and possibly other laws of physics... pedicured and painted toenails that cost more than my rent...

But no. I never saw even one SINGLE PERSON in Van Nuys who so much as smelled like they worked in porn. It was like being staked out in the backyard with a tent and a pen-light, looking for Bigfoot.

In fact, I myself was a bit of a visual anomaly. Everyone else: 5-foot-4, pudgy, tanktop, cut-off jeans and popsicle toes wedged into old flip-flops. Add the backward baseball cap of choice, and the cheapest sunglasses you can envision. This was the basic unisex Van Nuys ensemble – the children even wore a kids' version. At least when I was there – and no, I didn't blend in.

My apartment – did I use the "little hell on earth" line yet? Imagine a single room in your house – not a big room, but say, a small bedroom. Now imagine a narrow hall about, oh, three steps long. Imagine it connected to a bathroom with just enough space for a phone booth sized shower stall, and a toilet that when you rose from it, you were suddenly standing over the sink. $450 a month.

And I didn't need a job, or references, to get it. Lucky, huh?

And oh yes, most interesting of all – my front door, wasn't one. Wasn't a door, that is. It was a sliding glass window with louvres to ensure a sort of mock privacy. My front lock? You know those little aluminum hooks, on a screw, that just reach over far enough to hook when the door is closed? Yeah. That tiny piece of cut sheet metal, about as big as a half-dollar, was my only protection from all of L.A., just on the other side.

From outside, the latch could be unhooked with a key, that popped the nose of the hook up and out. It had a rather distinct sound – a sort of zzzip-click-click-kwok.

You can imagine then, the sudden quickening in my heart and soul when, one night around 1:00 a.m., in the apartment with the lights out, I heard my "front door" being opened from outside – with a key. And no, it wasn't the landlord.

I slept on an air mattress, which of course had a leak, and by about 3:30 in the morning I'd wake up to find myself basically on the hard floor between two air pockets. Fortunately I had a foot-pump, that had me back in business in a few minutes, and then the mattress was good till sun-up. I found the leak but couldn't ever seem to patch it tight enough. It defied even duct tape.

I had almost dozed off, with a cheap blanket over me. I had finally laid down at half-past midnight after assembling a mass mail-out of headshots and résumés. Another L.A. Monday lay in wait for dawn.

Zzzip-click-click-kwok.

That – that CAN'T BE what I'm thinking it is. Can it? I raised my head to look.

Someone. Is. Coming. In.

Have I mentioned that this was only my SECOND NIGHT in my apartment? It was. The sliding glass was pushed open. A large silhouette parted the louvres and came forward.

The cheap blanket was launched like a tuna net at the dark form! I couldn't do one on purpose to save my very soul, but I think I actually kipped-up onto my feet! In a flash I was nose-to-nose with my unannounced guest. Yes, in retrospect it seems very stupid, unarmed, in just my underwear – but in an apartment no larger than a desk set, with running and hiding both non-options, what choice did I have?

I hit the light switch. He was as tall as me, and carrying a metal toolbox. I think I was as just as much a shock to him – did I mention I was in my underwear?

When I asked his name, I got something in a Danish accent. I shit you not. Yorghensivsensven... or something similar, only not as deftly articulated. "I'm heer tue fix thee heetre."

"It's summer. It's 1 o'fucking-clock in the morning. I didn't send for a repairman. And the apartment DOESN'T HAVE A HEATER." I asked if he cared to try his answer again, in light of those facts.

He then resorts to a fine L.A. tradition – he lies. Even though the lie hardly bares even a slight resemblance to the first story, he goes for it anyway. This is something you just get used to when you move to Los Angeles. There is no use fighting it. Everyone is lying to you – and the even more amazing part is, most of them actually think you aren't aware of it. A whole county of shysters, somewhere near seven million, each of whom will calmly look you in the eye and tell you that night is day, hot is cold, pink is green.

"I din't know anyone wass home – I knocked and knocked fyor ten minutes."

I actually stared in breathless disbelief at him for about that long. "Uh... pal, you didn't knock even once. You OPENED MY DOOR WITH A KEY and CAME IN. I WATCHED YOU.

Now I'm arguing with him over something that we both know he is lying about.

Finally he opens his box to show me there really are tools in it. "I need to check the vents," he says.

"Okay," I said, "check them." There was only one vent. I let him 'inspect' it, standing over him like a monkey on a wino's back. If this guy was going to try anything, I thought, he'd have to be the most reckless, brazen asshole in the zip code – no cakewalk would this job be.

At last he was satisfied, or at least figured it was time to call it a night and back out clean. He left through the louvres without parting them. When the glass slid shut, I had a piece of PCV pipe cut to fit the slide gutter by mid-morning the next day.

This was just the first of what I would come to refer to as my "Welcome To Hollywood" moments. And oooh, yeah, they got better.

Novembre Randomnois

2008-11-12T22:33:00.000-08:00

If you haven't been to the bathroom since yesterday, you're full of shit.

Don't wait for spontaneity, be impulsive!

I fantasized about sex with Penelope Cruz... until I met her. I also used to think that the Dan Aykroyd skit in which he plays Julia Child, and accidentally opens a vein with a paring knife, was hilarious... until I actually met Julia Child. Then I thought the skit was just mean.

I don't want to be in charge, but I will defy anyone who assumes they are.

I enjoy seeing two women I've fantasized about standing in a hallway together talking. I'll leave it at that.

The ultimate answer to any question: "It's because people are idiots."

Paula Abdul is the new spin on Dino; the celebrity drunk... only Dino was pretending.

Half of life is trying to keep it from falling apart.

I've alternated between the same two pair of socks for the past week... and so far I'm okay.

How can a movie's dialogue be clever when nobody in real life talks that way?

Hammer as loud as you need to, but get whatever it is you're building built already!

... Dawn's Early Light

2008-11-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

My purpose was never to make this blog a political rant. It just seems to have worked out that way because of the proximity to what was likely the most historic presidential election of my lifetime. That's why I'm going to endeavor to make this post my final political one – at least concerning the President. I may from time to time cheer or hiss something federally or municipally related – but not make it the central focus. It just isn't what I prefer to write about. I'm not apologetic about my beliefs, just my temporary self-distraction and over-obsession with them, in this blog.

From this point on, I'm going to get back to the basics of my own life – where I belong.

To wit...

I'm not the only one glad the election cycle is done – I think at least one of the candidates themselves is too.

Giving what many have called a magnificently powerful concession speech – of a caliber he couldn't seem to invoke during the actual campaign – John McCain seemed utterly exhausted. Used up. It's possible that the loss was fortuitous for him, on a physical level. He may not have had even a whole first term in him.

The campaign itself was likely his last hurrah. He had no post-election aura of the defeated yet not humbled. He simply disappeared off the radar. It was time for a big, big nap.

Without the campaign's glamorous media backdrop, or the cloak of spin-controlled invincibility offered by the GOP public image machine, Sarah Palin suddenly had only a deer-in-the-headlights blankness which probably was the most honest moment of her 15 minutes.

Thank you. Your number's on file. Turn in your costumes to Wardrobe. You were fab, babe. Ciao.

As for 2012? No, I doubt it. Another empty chant of a tribe without a chief.

Now we have one of those rare moments in time when all the history books need a new chapter added. No, it hasn't all been done. No, we haven't seen it all. Those facts alone are reason for optimism. At least to me.

The cabal that had claimed ownership of the country for the past 30 years had hypnotized the common man into believing he didn't matter. Their final mistake was to lull themselves into a belief that the common man was still in the trance, and that a lukewarm dose of the same old rhetoric and catch-phrases and spin fixing would suffice to keep the charade going.

They had scooped out the financial shell of our economy right down to the rind, and that nerve-grazing peel was an awakening they'd least wanted from us. Now it's time for them to muster a get-out-of-Dodge pokerface, and a search for a literary agent for their respective tell-all books.

Cheney of course, will simply beam back aboard the Deathstar, for what he can only hope is an open-ended fadeout. I'm sure a bad heart is of no real concern to a person who will probably survive to the 22nd century as a disembodied head attached to computerized cyborg body – let's hope it's a Windows system.

What we have before us is that kind of glorious instant when every new day to come has promise. The bad dream has been cut off by the light of dawn – our eyelids are parting. No mistakes have been yet made. No blunders need living down or spun into harmless anti-matter. It's morning again. Smell the coffee. Embrace the day.

No power on Earth can ever take this moment from us. Amen.

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*Top illustration by Mike Lukovich. I'll remove it at his request if necessary.