What the hell is that?

Random Encounters

Did you ever meet someone, just by accident, that you'd never encounter in your regular life? A few of those stopped by yesterday, dressed as funny old guys and girls at the next table. Listen in...
"so he moves four times
it was just three
because we couldn't get reception. What are we watching? Well, he's the one watching - I just do my sewing, but anyway,
No, not, football. Do YOU watch football? My, my.
it's those Nascar type races, this race and that race, I can't even keep track of the names. So we're moving for the fourth time,
It was just three
rug and all
yeah, rug and all, cause some couple left early and there was an extra hook-up
but we're finally getting reception, and I unfold the stairs, and, I don't know, I just must have been tired or something, and I fell
ha ha, sure did
but I hit my head and had sixteen stiches
yeah, took her in, and missed the race. Good one, too. Did you see it?...
Traveling trailer people, making friends, and eating Cajun food. That, I believe, is a rare first for me.
The other that comes to mind was in a tres chic sissy little watering hole on the runway of Santa Monica Airport about a decade back. We were with a tiny little blonde New York Jewish writer with big huge eyes, when we learn it's motorcyle-something night. We ignore that, and this writer is telling stories about working at Mouschwitz (Disney), when I turned and saw the biggest, leather-wearingest, wild hairest, crazy-eyed biker on this green sphere. Listen in...
"Mongol? Nice to meet you. This is Victoria and this is Paul.
Mongol owns a business in Van Nuys - motorcycle business.
Really? Well, I guess you have TWO businesses then, don't you? So, what brings you to Santa Monica?"
Victoria with the big huge eyes bulged them wider.
"Are these some of your friends, Mongol?"
The chic little arty bar is now overrun with bikers. Big, scary-eyed crazy bikers. I decide to christen Mongol as Alpha Most Crazy Biker Boy, and buy him a drink.
"Fascinating. Tell me more."
Between the traveling trailer types and the biker boys, Mongol was my favorite - thoughtful, well-spoken, gracious and witty.
And could probably get you out of anything alive.

Pluto, Stud

Pluto, Goofy's former pet, is not unhappy with decision to move in with Ceres and Xena.

Pencil Necked Geeks vs. Pluto

Going steady as a young girl meant wearing a St. Christopher medal. It was a sweet thing, this mix of puppy love and an image of a man carrying the Christ child across a river on his shoulders. Stealing some sweet, cheap wine and hiding in the St. Elizabeth Church grotto, giggling and kissing with St. Chris around your neck was bound to be banned. It was too fine for the Catholati to leave alone. Christopher had to be de-beatified, de-sainted, taken off that medal and demoted to a mere nice guy. So be it, sayeth the old Italians with pointy hats.
Yesterday, in another fine room filled with eggheads and their pocket protectors, there was proclamated and promulgamed that our dear little planet Pluto was not a planet, but a planetette. Little far out dwarf, they say. Go hang with Ceres and Xena.
In the country with enough cool to make Frank Zappa their cultural ambassador, they managed gather enough goofs to decide that Pluto didn't cut it. To these boys, size matters.
But, don't you worry. This move has a love light all its own.
Ceres is the wife/sister of Jupiter, and Roman goddess of growing plants and motherly love. Xena, as anyone familiar with the warrior princess knows, is a lesbian. They've been rooming alone for quite a while now.
Pluto didn't even bother packing his bag when he got the news. He charged out to set up housekeeping with these two wild kitties as quick as you please.
Heard he's giving both of them St. Christophers, and they're fluffing up the pillows and cooking up something very special for their new man.
As any girl can tell you, size doesn't matter.

Agwe, One of Erzulie's Three Husbands

Spirit of the Sea

Brother Billy and Sentimental Sister

Smart Sentimental Bitch

How do you respond to the question, "Who are you?"
You have a name, but that's not really responsive. Most people I ask to tell me about themselves, respond with what they do for a living. "I'm a florist."
No insight there.
Years ago when I had patience, I worked as a professional trainer. Full of technical skill, my boss, an unattractive, jargon-spouting, relentless corporate climber, thought me in some need of andragogy.
Don't worry. I didn't know what it was, either.
Off to Cal State LA, in East Los Angeles where the parking lot was filled with low riders and Chollos, to master the art of adult learning processes. After eight weeks, my evaluation revealed that I instructed with a "come hither" stance. Coupled with arms crossed, I sent a mixed message that may interfere with adult learning.
Jesus tapdancing Christ.
Back to work with this invaluable insight, I took a barrage of tests (a banned word) that would reveal, not only my teaching style, but how I would interact with my boss, my peers and my students, our raison d'etre. Some of these evaluations were prepared for screening potential submarine personnel, some were the result of some shrink's research with the premise that there are 'four kinds of people,' or 'four kinds of management styles,' or 'four ways to interact.' Basically, it boiled down to leaders, followers, get-alongers and data gatherers. You could just ask me. I'd tell you. But, no.
Test result after test result, I was a leader (I had just been an Operations Manager, so that was no big surprise) and a data gatherer (I was also a Math and Philosophy major. Again, no big surprise.).
When you combine those two predispositions toward behavior, the result is a Nazi Bitch. If there is very little measurable get-alonger in the profile, the result is Nazi Bitch from Hell.
I was usually Nazi Bitch from Hell.
That is insightful, but only as to my predictable behavior in a room full of bankers.
Yesterday, I took a long walk with my friend Margaret. She was my first friend in Astoria - a local girl who is about as far from a banker as one can be. She has a Master's degree in Fine Arts and raised two boys completely on her own. She's a fiber artist (weaver), and is also hightailing out of town to find more stimuli. We were walking arm-in-arm down the riverwalk, and she noted, with a complete lack of malice, that I was a bitch. Smiling, she added, "like me."
Okay. Margaret's lazer-like insight is certainly more reliable to me than those 'there's four kinds of people' tests, so that settles it. One part of the answer to 'who am I?' is a bitch.
But what kind of bitch?
My brainiac friend Babette once told a co-worker friend of mine that she thought I was smart. That co-worker friend repeated that malicious gossip to me.
Bitch.
So, applying Aristotelian logic to that premise, Babs is smart, Babs thinks I'm smart, therefore, I'm smart. That empirically settles it.
Smart bitch.
There's one more thing. I'm hopelessly sentimental. I love my friends and the less psychotic members of my family very deeply. I love buddying around. I worry whether my loved ones are okay, am crushed if I think they're hurting, try to add something to their lives and hope they love me back. That's true because I know it is.
So, I'm a sentimental, smart bitch.
Thanks for asking.
And you?

For Billy

Hippest brother any kitty could have, who's so frantic, so sweet and so strong that he can lay the Naz on you from the jump to the stomp.
Dig it.

Unruly Teenagers Through the Ages

United Statesians are, by European standards, unruly teen-agers. We're young, silly and think we know everything. We have little history, especially on the West Coast, especially especially in Los Angeles. Our history is a relatively short one, and we don't seemingly pay much attention to it. It's so, like, old.
We leave little clues about what we were like, though, in the language and look of cool.
I've been alive during six decades. When I was very little, my evil babysitters watched Elvis and said words like "keen" and "sharp." These were edgy words in not very edgy times. Cool girls (or, big girls, to me) had names that ended in "ie" like Trixie and Dixie. Hair was in a pony tail or a DA (ducktails in polite company, and duck's ass, if you were a rebel looking to annoy your parents).
My sister had a DA.
Some fringie folks, like my second piano teacher, were Beats. These groovy cats and kittys dressed in black, wrote poetry, played jazz and laid down their hip welcome mat for the sixties. They was cool, babies.
Wow! We were hip and outta site in the sixties, man. Our language was easy and our lives got edgy. Our hair was long and straight, parted down the middle unless we were black. Then we had enormous afros. We dumped all that conformity from the '50s, tuned in, turned on and dropped out. We burned our draft cards and smoked our weed. We changed the world until tie-die got fashionable and the Hells Angels became our bodyguards and beat the shit out of us.
VERY uncool, man.
In the seventies, we cut our hair into a shag. "The Brady Bunch" is in re-runs. Tune in and dig Mrs. B's do. We became dorks, did Disco, but called ourselves freaks. Turns out, we were right. We may have even been Super Freaks.
So, now it was time to get rich. Even Abby Hoffman got a gig as a stock broker in the 80's. Greed was good. We was making bread, baby. We stuffed it in our shoulder pads until they rubbed against our short, spikey over-gelled hair (or our GeriCurl, if we were black). We did blow, rode in limos, wore pastel and thought about me me me me me, while we gyrated to Madonna and Prince if we were cool, and the Go-Gos and Flock of Seagulls, if we were not.
Life in the fast lane slowed in the 90's, but THEN we were wired. We started out-electronic devicing each other, drank tons of coffee and listened to grunge. We looked like shit, but it was quite a hangover from the 80's. Our hair shrunk, our clothes got black, and our mamas wore army boots. We tuned in to the information age, but, being unruly teen-agers, we didn't have a clue what to do with all that information. So, we invested our money in businesses with no brick and mortor, and created the tech bubble.
Pop went the millenium. No Y2K meltdown happened, but the tech bubble made gas station attendants out of nerdy millionaires. Bye, Bill.
Hi, George.
We ain't so groovy, after all. Closer to 60 in age than the 60's in cool, we go to war in the name of the Naz against them oily heathens. Lord Buckley, lead us in prayer...
"Look at all you Cats and Kitties out there! Whippin' and wailin' and jumpin' up and down and suckin' up all that fine juice and pattin' each other on the back and Hippin' each other who the greatest Cat in the world is! Mr Melanencoff, Mr. Dalencoff and Mr. Zelencoff and all them Coffs, and Mr. Eisenhower, Mr. Woosenwiser, Mr. Weesenwooser and all them Woosers, Mr. Woodhill and Mr. Beachill and Mr. Churchhill and all them Hills, Gonna get you straight! If they can't get you straight, they know a Cat, that knows a Cat that'll Straighten you!
But I'm gonna put a Cat on you, who was the Sweetest, Grooviest, Strongest, Wailinest, Swinginest, Jumpinest, most far out Cat that ever Stomped on the Sweet Green Sphere, and they called this here Cat, THE NAZ, that was the Cat's name.
He was a carpenter kitty. Now the Naz, was the kind of Cat that came on so cool and so wild and so groovy and so WITH IT, that when he laid it down WHAM! It stayed there! Naturally, all the rest of the Cats say:
'Dig what this Cat is puttin' down! Man! Look at that Cat blow!
'Let the Cat Go!
'Hey, there, Get out of the way, don't bug me lad, Get off my back, I'm tryin' to dig what the Cat's sayin', Jack, Cool!'
They're Pushin' The Naz! 'Cause they wanted to dig the Lick, you see, Dig his Miracle Lick.
So the Naz say, 'Wait a minute babies, tell you what I'm gonna do, I ain't gonna take two, four, six or eight of you Cats, but I'm gonna take all twelve of you Studs and Straighten You All at the same time. You look like pretty Hip Cats, You buddy with me!'
So the Naz and his Buddies was goofin' off down the boulevard one day, and they run into a little Cat with a bent frame. So the Naz look at the little Cat with the bent frame and he say 'What's de matter wid you baby?'
And the litte Cat with the bent from say, 'My frame is bent, Naz. It's been bent, from in front!!!'
So the Naz looked at the little Cat wid the bent frame and he put the golden eye of love on this here little Kitty and he looked right down into the windows of the little Cat's soul, and he say to the little Cat, he say:
'STRAIGHTEN!'
Up, Zoom-Boom! The Cat went up straighter than an arrow and everybody Jumpin' Up and Down and they say:
'Look What The Naz Put On That Boy, You Dug Him Before, DIG Him NOW!'
Now you see the Naz is comin' on so strong and so fine and so Great, They is talkin' about when he's gonna appear next, What did he do there? How he swung thru the land with great ribbons of love sounds, How he laid down the truth and made it live, just like a jumpin' garden of king size roses, How he stomped into the money changin' Court and kicked the short change all over the place, Knocked the corners off the Squares! How he put the Truth down once for the Cat, he dug it, did't dig it; put it down twice, the Cat dug it, didn't dig it; Put it down the third time, WHAM, the Cat DUG IT. WALKED AWAY WITH HIS EYES BULGING, Bumpin' into Everybody!
The Naz is comin' on so fine and so strong they is pullin' on his coat-tail. Wantin' him to sign the autograph, they want him to do this gig here, they want him do that gig there, play the radio, do the video and all that JAZZ, he can't make all that Jazz. Like I explained to you, 'cause he's a carpenter Kitty and he'd got his own lick. But when he knows he should show to blow and cannot Go 'cause, he's got some strain on him, Straightenin' out the Squares, he sends a couple of these Cats that he's hippin'!
So came a little sixty cent gig one day and the Naz was in a bind so he put it on a couple of his Buddy-Cats.
'Say Boys, will you straighten that out for me?
'Take it off your wig, Naz, we've got it covered!'
Ad they swung out to straighten this gig for the Naz when they run into a little old twenty cent pool of water. And when they got in the middle of the pool in the boat, All of a Suddden, WHAM -- BOOM! The Storm is Stormin' and the Lightin' Flashin' and the Thunder Roarin' and the boat goin' up and down and these po' cats figurin' every minute gonna be the Last! When all of a sudden One Cat look up and Here Come the Naz, Stompin' anyone you ever seen, Right Across the Water -- Stompin'!
There was a little Cat on board, I think his name was Jude and he yelled,
'Hey, Naz, Can I make it out there witcha?'
And the Naz say 'Make it Jude!'
And ole Jude went stompin' off that boat, took about four steps, dropped his hole card and ZOOT, Naz had to stash him back on board again, So the Naz look at these Kitties and he say:
'What's the matter with you Babies now? What's goin' on here boys? What's takin' place! You knockin' on that SOS bell pretty hard! You gonna bend that bell knockin' on it like that'
One Cat say, 'What seems to be the trouble? Can't you see the Storm Stornmin' and the Lightin' Flashin' and the Thunder Roarin' and the waves flippin?'
And the Naz say, 'I told you to stay COOL, didn't I?' (To stay cool means to Believe in the Magic Power of Love.)
Now the fame of the Naz is jumpin'! How he lays it down the same way every day, how he Hipped the Cats to fo-give and fo-get and how he say:
'Dig and Thou Shalt be Dug!'
'Drag Not, and Thou Shalt not be Drug!'
And many other His truths! The Beauty Sparks shootin' out the grapevine are sixty-five feel long til there is now Five Thousand Cats and Kitties in the Naz' little home town, where the Cat Live, Lookin' to get STRAIGHT! Well, the Naz know he kain't straighten them there, it's too small a place, don't want to hang everybody up, so nobody can make it!
So the Naz back away a little bit and he looked at the Cats and Kitties an a great Love Look came on his face and he say with the bird bell tones in his voice:
'Come on Babies, let's cut on down the pike.'
And there went the Naz with his Five Thousand Cats and Kitties behind him stompin' up a great necklace of beauty, Flocks of Blue Birds were flyin' along his side riffin' up a high orchestration of Bird Love. And it's brother to brother, sister to sister, and a great river of love is chargin' and super chargin' thru these Cats and Kitties, and the Naz is a talking and a swing with:
'How pretty the hour, how pretty the flower, how pretty you, how pretty he, how pretty she, how pretty the tree.'
Naz had them Love Eyes, he wanted everybody to see thru his Eyes, to Pin the Golden Rosetta of Reality. And they is havin' such a Wailin', Swingin', Glorianna style stompin' hike that before you know it, it was Scoffin' Time and these po' Cats is Forty miles out of town and ain't nobody got the first biscuit. Well, the Naz look at all the Cats and Kitties kickin' sand and he say:
'You Hungry, Ain't You, Babies?'
And one tall Cat say, 'Yea, Naz, we were so busy diggin' what you puttin' down, that we didn't pre-pare - Naz, we Goofed!'
And Naz say, 'Well, we got to take it easy here, We wouldn't want to go ahead and order up sumpin you might not like, would We?'
And the tall Cat, kickin' the sand say, 'Sweet Double Hipness, You put it Down, and we'll pick it Up!'
So the Naz back away a little bit and his head turned slowly to one side and then to the other, diggin' all these Cats and Kitties, and he laid down a Sound of Great Love:
'Oh, Sweet Swingin' Flowers of the Field'
And they answered, 'Oh Great Singular Non-Stop Singular Sound of Beauty!'
And he said, 'Stomp Upon the Terra!' And they HIT IT!!!
And he said 'Straighten you Miracle, The Body!' And the Body WENT UP!!
'Lift Your Glorious Arms to Heaven!' and he said 'Higher!' And they went Higher!!
And he said 'Lift Your Love Eyes to the Skies!' And they DID!! And he said 'Widen Your Eyes and Look HARDER' And they Did!!
And the Naz say 'Dig infinite!!' And they DUG IT.
And When they did, WHAMMMMM! Just then a Great flash of Lightnin' and a Roll of Thunder HIT the Scene! and The Cats looked down and in one hand was a Great bit of swingin' juicy stuffed smoked fish, and in the other a big thick gone loaf of that honey tastin' ever-lovin' good, groovey Home-lovin' made Bread! Why, these po' Cats FLIPPED!!
The Naz Never Did Nothin' Simple,
When He Laid It, HE LAID IT."
Amen.
May the Naz lay his Sweet Hipness on Lord Buckley in the infinite.
And dig. If we ever gonna be hip, we better get hip quick, or they'll be gluing the corners back on our square in the first ten of two-oh.
Be cool, my babies.

Intellectual Property

Vernacular

There's a shift in the air. The wind is blowing in a slightly different direction.
When I was an Operations Manager at a big, disorganized, busy bank office, I had, for a time, a remarkable staff. Well trained, proud of their skill, as harmonious as could be expected in a maelstrom of elderly savers in long lines, each was remarkable in her own way.
One classicly beautiful girl with an exotic accent comes to mind. She and her husband had literally run the Yugoslavian border,under fire. She had left her family and made her way to America.
That would be North America, since we greedy bastards sometimes forget there's one to the South, too.
One unusually non-frenetic afternoon, I asked her where she was from. She told her story in surprising, but detached detail, and I listened in awe of her courage and tenacity. When I asked her what impression she had of the States, her answer was both pointed and poignant.
"We had a table," she began, "in our family for generations." Hmmm, I thought. My Operations Officerial authoritarianism must make her nervous, and she's rambling. Poor thing.
She talked fondly, and at some length about her family dining table, and made her point like a slap across the face. "We appreciate what we have."
Her look had the vaguely defiant quality of a person who would run across a border under gun fire.
She was, and is, right, of course.
We throw everything away. We don't launder handkerchiefs - we use Kleenex.
Kimberly-Clark Corporation, which owns Kleenex, as well as Kotex, Huggies, and other fine landfill items, will sue you if you have any influence at all, and use the word Kleenex when you mean "facial tissue." Starbucks, which hands you tall, grande or venti disposable coffee cups in numbers that rival Kimberly-Clark's landfill mass, did sue a local hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere, owned by a woman named Samantha Buck. Her coffee counter was called "Sam Buck's." Too close, baby. If poor Starbucks doesn't fight these obvious forms of misusing their hard fought name, they'll end up like kleenex, a mere descriptive common noun.
Our throw-away society is a brand name disposable society, and don't you forget it.
The New Yorker recently published a fascinating, well-researched article about fascism. It defined the term and gave examples of those who did it best. Mussolini won, of course. Then, the article showed current examples right here in the good old U S of A, and we didn't measure up at all. While fascism is an accurate description of what we're trying to do, we aren't really very good at it. I felt ashamed. Aren't we ALWAYS number one?
I ask this same question of Kimberly-Clark and Starbucks. What is your real mission, disposable item purveyors? You're hocking to the disposalati of the world, and yet you are small-minded and entrenched in the past. You want to be THE brand, and yet you sue when you leak into the vernacular?
You don't see Google suing the Oxford English Dictionary for adding their company's name as a verb, do you?
The winds of change are upon us. Smart intellectual propertarians are outmaneuvering the disposalati, and I predict doom for the latter.
Point - Yugoslavia.

And Piece to Men of Goodwill

Blessed Be

This Sunday morning as the bells ring through the dense fog, my waking thought meanders to church, since my body sure the hell won't. Why does everyone feel so damned blessed?
It's the happening thing to feel, or to say you feel. Celebrities and athletes, at a loss for how they landed in the jackpot, find it a convenient explanation. Good message - short, humble and shows not only that they believe in God, but that God picked them for a fabulous life. That God did not pick you, is understood.
I know a thing or two about blessings. Not directly, mind you, but by training. My Meema taught me my prayers, my Bible stories and took me to church when I was a little bitty Kitty. I loved being around her, so whatever we were doing was fun by default. I thought church was kind of speechy, but I learned a lot of latin and got to wear my favorite dress. Gloria Patri, et Filio et Spiritui Sancto. Deo gratias for those blessings and the stinky incense. Amen.
My mom, Sister Marie, went for the built-in church model. She gives thanks for her three failed marriages, her bitch sister and her tenuous grip on reality right in her very own living room. Happy as a sheep with the Lord as her shephard at 85 years crazy, she feels truly blessed. Blessed be those with nine people and one bathroom. Gloria in excelsis Deo.
My aunt, Sister Catherine Marie was blessed with a sign from God. My dad (her brother), knocked up a police dispatcher, left our family to marry the floozy, then died - a dicey proposition for being buried in consecrated ground (a Catholic graveyard). She prayed and prayed- and suddenly, God smote my dad's picture from the wall, and it crashed to the ground. Halleluia! Blessed be the Catholic funeral.
Lesson one in blessing interpretation - always look on the bright side.
There are those who think it's a blessing that Times Square in New York was "cleaned up." Less hookers and hustlers, more Mickey and Goofy. That spirit has wafted to the West Coast, specifically on Highway 30 between Astoria and Portland.
There's an abandoned bar with an enormous sign that used to say TOPLESS. Some blessed tagger spraypainted the clever revision - TO.BLESS.
Go in peace, and keep your shirt on.
Amen.