Twister
April 23, 2010
tornado
Laguna Beach
March 13, 2010
The “what would I do” game
February 16, 2010
Let’s say somebody had a gun pressed against your temple and they were going to pull the trigger unless you, for example, prayed, or wrote a story, or stood on your head. Let’s assume that you didn’t want to die, weren’t anywhere near ready, had important things left undone.
Of course you can easily imagine such a scenario. I’m sure you play that game with yourself sometimes. It’s fun. The “what would I do if” game, the “If I only had a week to live” game. These games make sense because they are a cheaper alternative to years of psychotherapy or career counseling: Finding out what your life is worth to you and why. Read more
A Simple Martini
January 31, 2010
It wasn’t that I ordered the martini, or drank the martini and didn’t have a second. It wasn’t that she had a martini. After all, it was lunch with the girls, two for one, a few hours before I left town.
We hadn’t seen each other in a long while. Although we’d enjoyed a few socially acceptable wine and cheese fests, nothing seemed out of the ordinary until the second week of my visit. Behind the wheel of her car, at her computer, or walking on the beach as we chatted about the Haitian earthquake or our kids, the conversation magically steered itself toward the word “drink”.
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Pulling A Runner
January 21, 2010
In spite of self-help advice to the contrary, if you feel like running away from a problem, challenge, crisis, person or place, get going. You may have responsibilities, contracts, moral imperatives, and a car that needs a tune-up. Get in the car anyway and just go. Move. You’ll end up, at least temporarily, in a situation that is worse than the one you ran away from, but you will at least be away from something or someone that enticed you out of your complacency and into the realm of the sublime, i.e. A Comfort Inn in the retirement metro area known as Sun City, Florida. A place so far from where you want to be that you like it because it deduces each moment of your life into a fragment of pure disgust at American Culture. Yes, I ran away from something unpleasant in Savannah and then Sarasota, clocking 1,672 miles on my old Volvo, only to find myself writhing out of a bi-polar agony into a rapturous hysteria at the fact that I was comfortably comfortable at a Comfort Inn watching dead bodies being bulldozed past their relatives in Haiti. A big, beautiful TV Screen pummeled me with spitballs of media packaged terror, interrupted by advertisements for Thermacare pain reliever patches and Quietus, for ear ringing relief drops. I had found the ideal location to watch the horror. I decided, because the Haitians were dying of thirst, to drink the Sun City tap water, and while lying in bed I allowed one foot to dangle outside the comfort zone of my blanket. My toes felt a slight chill, but I was steadfast. If I had not Pulled a Runner, I would not have experienced tap water or the automatic almost dead zone of Sun City. It was cloudy.
Belly-Up Bead Shop
November 3, 2009
“I am not at liberty to disclose that information.” said the bookstore clerk when I asked who owned the Vermont Bead Shop. The bead shop, next door, had a yellow “By Order of Police” sign duck-taped to the window. The sign was large, the black tape slapped on crooked.
“I left my sweater there. I just need to call the owner and get my sweater back.”
“I’m sorry,” said the salesman. “I cannot discuss the bead shop?”
“Who owns the bead shop?”
“I can’t divulge that information.”
“Why? Is it a secret, who owns the bead shop?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care why it’s closed. I just want to call the owner and get my sweater.”
The salesman stared at me without emotion.
“Do you know who owns the bead shop?” I asked him, point blank.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You can’t tell me who owns the bead shop or you can’t tell me if you KNOW who owns the bead shop?”
“I don’t understand the difference.”
“I don’t think it’s top secret, who owns the bead shop. I can probably call the Chamber of Commerce.”
“You are certainly free to do so.”
“Why? Why would you put me through that trouble?”
“Ma’am. I simply cannot help you.” He said, not budging. He didn’t have any customers to wait on. He didn’t bother pretending that he did. He stood behind the counter, motionless, at liberty. He awaited my response patiently, as though we were playing chess.
Where did I go. I miss me.
November 2, 2009
The Hour of Crooks
October 19, 2009
It is the Hour of Crooks. Crooks write confessionals. Crooks advise. Crooks are key-note speakers. Crooks live in big houses. Crooks are admired and forgiven. Crooks get the girl.
A few slaps on the hand and a couple of crooks go to jail, but they already had their fun, so what do they care? Better to live like a crook for ten years then a clock-punching, spam eating clod for fifty years. That’s why crooks don’t stop crooking and crook classes abound. Where do I sign up?
It’s like this. Once you taste good cheese, good wine, and experience Egyptian sheets, you can never be content with anything less. Sure, you put on a good face and say, ” I can do with or without, I’m adaptable, I can live in a tent and eat beans.” The truth is, although beans are palatable with hot sauce, the memory of exquisiteness overtakes rationality.
Like any addiction. Maybe not the first taste of good cheese, but the second or third, and you’re quarked out with it. You’re broke, and you’re grocery shopping, and there in front of you, two cheeses. One is the good cheese, one is the lousy cheese. You will choose the good cheese, hell or high water, and either go bankrupt, or steal, or cheat, or fuck your way to that bar of cheese. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?
I suggest you don’t taste the good cheese if you haven’t already. Instead, best to enjoy the shit cheese and make up for it by wallowing in your self-righteousness. ” My life is not about cheese” You’ll say, ” I have more important things to do than eat cheese.” Good for you. Eat that shit cheese and smile, sucker.
Featured Article:
Dumb- Ster
The cop looked in the dumpster and noticed a picture of his wife. He had just received a complaint from the Olympic Sports store that someone had dumped bags of garbage in their dumpster. That someone was me. I’d cleaned out a few drawers of hometown memories that morning, – high school notebooks, graduation pictures, diplomas, clippings and headed into what I thought was a free-for-all dumpster tucked behind a strip mall. After I threw the bags into the dumpster I took a walk with the dog and when I returned to my car I was met by the policeman and the assistant manager of the Olympic Sports store. Read more »