Flaunt That Holiday Hula Mr. President

As you and I spend buckets of our stockpiled money in the final dash to ring cash registers like Salvation Army beggars' bells for Christmas, please forget I'm a Catholic conservative, that President Obama' s a Democrat, and know that as un-Christian sounding and unsavory as this picture is, I'm so mad I'm shitting tinsel-trimmed, blue spruce pine cones.

Is Mr President taking the peoples' 747 (Air Force One) to Camp David (the Presidential retreat for which we pay Maryland) for Christmas, or back to be welcomed in the arms of the community he 'organized' (Chicago, Illinois)--the home state from which he was elected to Congress--to drop some Obama bucks on that devasted economy?

Naw...in order to make his Yule less cool [okay, frozen-cold] and ensure Michelle and the kids have a swell (of the ocean waves' variety) Noel, he's taking his air taxi--a 747, its crew and secret service and personal/Presidential entourage, all the way from Virginia to Hawaii and what's that gonna cost us taxpayers?

I don't wish him or anyone a lousy Christmas while the country's on its financial ass, but I'm hotter than spiced cider that he's so flagrantly flaunting it in my face and yours when suffering seems to be the commodity of the Season.

While the White House P.R. team engineers accountability for this poorly timed, festive, financial faux pas to (somehow) be hung on George Bush like a Boy Scouts' bag of mistletoe on a door frame, the 'first family' will be doin' the island booty-shake to strains of Don Ho on your nickel and mine as the Presidential poi party sways under Hawaiian skies.

He might have earned his first shred of respect from me had he taken Winnebago One to the projects and handed out hams to the needy even if it meant the wholesale slaughter of more pigs than the amount of pork in the Omnibus bill, but this latest gargantuan gaff is just our fearless leader's continued, demonstrative lack of good judgement from the same side of a brain that made the decision to hand an iPod to the Queen of England.

Downed Angel Rebound

Jim would be self-conscious to hear me describe him as a 2-legged angel with "Awww, shucks" humility and selfless energy to help and empower others, just the kind of friend one's always sought.

But Jim is unconscious, in ICU, and has been on a respirator since December 2nd.

Jim, my brother's best friend since before my birth, and who helped me through my brother's death, had just left a Louisville restaurant when a car ran a red light and, at 45mph--without any evidence of braking--stuck Jim's car in the driver's door.

His exercise classmates, his walking buddy, his fellow retired teachers, church friends, neighbors, his fishin' buddies, his golf cronies, and his life-long friends all suspect a cellphone may have been the secondary cause of carelessness that's left Jim teetering on the frail thread between this life and the next.

My grief week in Louisville was spent in daily contact with Jim, in his company on the phone and in person, with him and his family.

Our conversations included a 6S discussion, leading him to my writing and this site, and awakening a voracious appetite to express himself in this form albeit on legal pads with a pen, and with exhuberant zeal I pray he'll recover to enjoy.

Actions Do Speak Louder

Still in his business suit, Phil nursed a scotch at the small cafe table as Carly breezed in, announcing, "We need to talk!"

She emerged from the bedroom in sweat pants and a tee-shirt, and plopped into the chair opposing him.

"Finances... errands... chores... work.... Look, we're just not having any fun in our marriage any more, Phil, and I know I own half that responsibility."

Her whine continued and so self-consuming that she didn't notice the hand he slipped into his suit coat's side pocket to fondle the gun, finding the trigger.

The gun was out and aimed at her chest, specifically at her breasts, as he emptied it while she shrieked and screamed until the squirt gun was empty.

Her nipples reacted to the ice water, popping erect against the cotton tee, and he yelled, "TURKEY'S DONE!!" prompting her to leap across the table, spilling the drink, ending-up with two entwined bodies giggling, rolling and trading kisses on the floor and a $49 table in need of repair.

Precip

The drizzle is cold on my skin. Summer temps in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert exceeded 140 degrees Fahrenheit (in the sun) during summer months. The signal that Fall has arrived is falling on, and cooling the desert. Transformations are forthcoming from flora and fauna. Dusty gulches will gulp Nature's elixir, even flow with it. The desert has changed masks, will again become life-giving instead of life-taking.

[Twenty-seven minutes after this was posted online, I received the phone call that Jack--my brother, my hero--was dead.]

Double Take

It’s an understatement to say Craig wasn’t happy Marilyn was going to her sister’s, leaving him stuck at home to answer the door for trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

About quarter-to-ten, he dumped the last of the candy bars into pre-teens’ pillow cases and sacks and promptly closed the drapes and turned off the porch light to signal he had had just about enough.

The bell sounded again about 11:45 and he opened the door with purpose only to find nothing but an orange and black Halloween bag in the vestibule.

He looked around and--seeing no child--stooped and had only raised the bag 6 inches from the concrete when he saw a severed human hand at the bottom, dropped the gory find and lurched to vomit on the grass.

Police assured him they were enroute and, when dispatch asked if it was a man’s or woman’s hand, Craig dared to take only the quickest glance, but long enough to recognize the ring he’d given Marilyn on the hand he had taken in marriage.

I Was One of THOSE Commuters This Morning

So the new car has such a fabuloso sound system that there are door-mounted tweeter speakers in front. There must to be 8 or more speakers in the stylin' new Joemobile.

So I made a 90-song mp3 disc for the car and road-tested it this morning.

I was in chair-dancing bliss.

Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” piped up and I seat-danced with my assivo-massivo pounding the leather oblivious to odd looks from other commuters.

Forget that the volume was deafening and I was singing along at the tops and bottoms of my lungs, arms flailing fluidly and flawlessly to the beat and, yes, occasionally extending out of the open sunroof on this rainy day.

For my entire, 25-minute commute, twas Bill and I, over and again, until I exited my car at the workplace with an explicable smile and spring in my step.

Storied and Commemorated Beyond Remembered

For a professor of American history, Boston and Philadelphia may seem like the ‘mother lode,’ but, to this observer, may pale in histories as diverse as the mix of cultures and residents of Orleans Parish.

Garden District homes bear embossed, metal plaques that typically herald an architect’s name and the year the home was built, for whom the home was built and notable residents, or both.

Statues and plaques commemorate territorial claims by the British, French and Spanish, and even the C.S.A., Confederate States of America.

The 9th Ward of Orleans Parish has a memorial to Hurricane Katrina which incorporates an ascending line of blue poles--tallest of them, over 10 feet--to mark the depth of flood waters that took 3,000 structures, displaced 14,000 people, and didn't recede until mid-October of 2005.

In one particularly lavish cemetery, many of the granite or marble repositories cost well over a million dollars to construct, have been privately landscaped and are hands-off to groundskeepers, with private funds paying gardeners to maintain the trees and flowers and grass into perpetuity.

Like Boston and Philadelphia, New Orleans remembers and, unlike them, doesn’t forget.

Ronnie Ray's Mama Just Ain't the Forgivin' Kind

“HEY LURLEEN, disspondent’s a word , right, like to say what Ronnie Ray’s goin’ through since his hog’s been stole and now this, right?”

(Sorry bout that but I couldn’t imagine the right word cuz it just don’t ever get no better for my 2nd cousin who's just hard luck in a steel case. )

He’s never smoked inside his Mama’s new double-wide which is a big step up from the two of ’em sharing that 1950s, 12x60 that looked about like twenty yards of crinkled beer can, and if the double coulda ever looked worse, now's it. .

Accordin’ to his Mama, she and him was cat-scrappin' over the remote when he heard the rain and he hollers, “Oh SHIT,” rememberin' his smokes and Bic lighter is on the table whilst a chilly drizzle is hittin' that pink slab patio like piss pourin' from a boot an' all over his smokin materials, an' all?.

Well, they was only 2 smokes left in the pack and he had a fresh pack inside, but you know no lighter's gonna work when the flint’s wet, and his dander bein’ raised has him wantin' a cigarette mighty bad right about then (his temper had 'im shakin' like a dog shittin' razor blades) and enough to wanna grab an umbrella, the fresh pack, and dry the lighter for a Pall Mall in the weather.

Thank Jesus he side-stepped the microwave to get a brew just as he hit the “START” button to dry the lighter because that smithereened glass door what blowed off the microwave with a ball o’ fire behind it lit-up the double-wide like a 4th of July sky and they was lucky to escape with their lives even though that double-wide’s a soggy smolderin heap of charred nothing and his Mama is pissed about her burnt house, now, I tell ya.

Ronnie Ray's Sellin' the Hog

Ronnie Ray told the Nashville feller he’d take the truck and let the buyer ride the Harley Davidson on over to the guy’s bank for the cash, and to sign the papers as the guy’s girlfriend pulled away from the trailer house in her shiny new Mustang.

He got to the bank and, after ten minutes, Ronnie Ray kinda chuckled that he’d have taken the long way, too, and hot-rodded the bike around town a little bit.

When 40 minutes had went by, it wuddn't a chucklin' matter as it occurred to Ronnie Ray somethin' was terrible wrong and wondered if that guy, ‘Rick,’ hadn’t ridden into the next county whoopin’ it up on the $29,000 motorcycle or piled it up somewhere outta the sirenses earshot.

Two hours passed and now Ronnie Ray blubbered whilst explainin’ to the sheriff just how he hadn’t seen his bike since this nice-enough 'Rick' and him had left the house, swearin' and moanin' the bike was prolly across the county line, underestimating the speed of the pickup and enclosed trailer that was through Chattanooga and already across the Tennessee line, headin’ South.

If he’d a knowed that girl’s Mustang was rented at the Knoxville airport---cuz it never occurred to him or the sheriff she done that--Ronnie Ray thought he mighta got somewhere with the law finding his bike and all although, as it turns out, he really wouldna.

Worser still, Ronnie Ray cancelled the insurance to save money onced he run the Craigslist/Nashville ad knowin' the bike would go fast and so, now, Ronnie Ray was exactly nowhere facin' 46 more payments of $453 a month on a ride that was gonna be chopped and cruising Florida’s coast before month’s end and iddn't that some shit?

Shards

If one dropped a mirror to find that 75% of the pieces were faced upward, there would be enough in the reflection to see the whole.

One of every four people displaced by Hurricane Katrina--and it's likely, more--have yet to return.

The connectivity of the Crescent City is a South-hewn spirit of resilience that has kept the city’s rhythm moving it along, getting back onto its toe-tapping feet, tapping into the will to move things along.

Some survivors live in scarred and broken homes that don’ t have hot water, awaiting judgements and checks to rebuild the physical remnants of what was.

Unlike the mirror, half a decade after the storm, New Orleans is coming together.

New Orleans is there, looking up, and worthy of a good, long look.

A Punch to Facebook’s Nose

 Google Me is coming.

It's no secret Google's sights are set on a knockout punch squarely to Facebook's nose or glass chin, with hope F'bookers will make the leap like cockroaches running from the animated Raid can.

Details are scarce about Google's Fall debut of its social networking application, but I'm probably one of the 25 million people I expect are standing in the cyber-line to sign-up on the undisclosed launch date.

I don't know why.

My Facebook participation seemed to demand more and more time, responding to friends, accepting and declining invitations to participate in game apps there, and the realization that there isn't an unruly crowd wondering why I'm not more diligent in updating my days' experiences and observations so the rest of the world can sigh in relief that I'm still functional.

Regardless, I know I'll be there, hoping...praying...obsessing that nobody steals the coveted "Joe Gensle" nic as I hit the < enter > key on my 'puter, with "Laszlo G. McGillicuddie" and "Grizzelda Crottenrotch" in ready-reserve if I'm to be denied.

Nelvana

The cloud that dropped onto the surface of the Mississippi River hurled rain with such fury that the drops’ felled predecessors slugged shoe-topping puddles hard enough to splash more than an inch from the riverwalk‘s pavement.

From my vantage, her navigation lights were obscured and only a river bend whispered sight of her name through the fog.

Having passed, reduced to a fogged silhouette, the freighter carefully navigated the waterway through the driving rain, avoiding sandbars and the little waterborne traffic willing to risk the conditions.

She approached the bridge just 300 yards off her bow, invisible to the eye, relying on every electronic means she had to keep her course, expertly held by the helmsman in the wheelhouse.

With deadweight tonnage over 76,000, ‘hurry’ was never a part of Nelvana’s working life, and this day weather reduced her to a blind crawl, even with the current at her stern.

Her thirst for salt and open sea, and the profitable call of a distant port beckoned.

Spring Revisited

I am wildflowers.


Without a soul, I have the precious gift of reincarnation.

I have come to you every Spring season of your life.

I shall return long beyond your being.

Your grandmother’s great, great grandmother, and hers have loosed their hair in breezes as they frolicked among us.

I shall delight your children’s children’s children, and theirs
by the grace of the same hand which has put us each in this day.

Six Haiku: Spirtual Showdown with Decadence in New Orleans

Love, Unfolded

Slow motion paced my awakening with her sating my every sense…with the warmth of her naked body contoured around me, the quiet rhythm of sleep’s respirations, the taste of her kiss and sexuality about my lips and mouth, her mix of faint gardenia and lovemaking too elusive for hungrier lungs, but it was just a petite foot that my vision held.

As the sheers filtered first light into the sun’s awakening in our hotel room overlooking the San Antonio River, my focus eased in, defining her toes, my vision inexplicably drawn to something small and delicate and gold atop the dresser a scant meter away.
Karen’s Japanese-Hawaiian grandmother taught her origami, with Grandmother Y’s arms around a little girl eager to transform small squares of paper into wondrous shapes perfecting a hobby passed on from her forebears.

From an expensive pack of origami paper squares I had given her, Karen had secretly quartered the size of a standard sheet and intricately transformed the tiny square into a tiny crane whose gold foil was now glowing in the light of, both, ubiquitous love and early morn.

I was more lucky than happy, loved unconditionally for the first time, affirmed by it’s envelopment without surrender or struggle, a feeling unknown before in more intimacies with wonderful, kind and caring women than any man’s deserved.

Karen’s daughter and job and my own circumstances could work themselves out into that everlasting love one can’t imagine or dream exists, until the next day when, overcome with internal demons and some selfishness, I crushed that love as completely and surely as if I had put a match to the tiny golden crane, origami delicate as her skin, her love, and her heart, breaking that heart and part of my own heart that still yearns for her and another chance at a love that can never take flight.

Air Scare

An hour into my 2¼ hour flight from Houston to Phoenix, I was squirming in my seat fighting for my breath, and heard a man several rows back coughing through his wheezes.

Despite my 1A seat assignment, I rang for the flight attendant, “Please ask the Captain what the cabin pressurization is,” and she made me repeat the request before contacting the cockpit.

“It’s at eight-one hundred, just like usual; why, are you having trouble breathing?”

I explained that I was, as was the gentleman several rows back to which she replied, “Oh, he’s just coughing,” which I rebutted with the fact that there's a difference in sounds of coughing and coughing while wheezing.

I declined her offer of oxygen but accepted the glass of water, fully knowing my body only reacts this way at 9500-feet above sea level or higher.

Instead of passengers reading or watching the DirectTV, chatting or sipping drinks in the first class cabin as they‘d done earlier, they had all dozed-off except for me and the coughing man, and I felt fear, got goosebumps thinking of Payne Stewart’s death, and suffered the anoxic headache’s reminder long into the night preceding a 14-hour work day.

Shhh! They May Be Sleeping

Yes, I'm in New Orleans, and yes, many of my 6S superheroes are here.
Yes, it's the most fun one can have with one's clothes on.

Yes, the people whose avatars are self-portraits really do look like themselves ten to fifteen years ago.

Yes, Harrah's casino took my money when I wasn't looking... er, rather I guess it's fairer to say I happily surrendered it willingly.

Yes,I really had a great birthday here and don't believe Teresa about the number of prostitutes present I gave myself but the procaine penicillin should stop the needle-laden lava flow from my urethra

And yessest of all, I'll be sad to leave this brilliant, witty, talented bunch of people but can't wait to see the TSA's faces when they excitedly open my bag to see what the bottle-shaped mass is only to discover the near-empty bottle of tequila in my suitcase is wrapped in underwear other than unworn and love and kisses to y'all #30 xoxox JOE, LIVE from HOWNOLA/2010, Doubletree Hotel Room #NotOnYourLifeBucko

Bittersweet

The HoW gathering in New Orleans is now an in-my-face priority, so imminent that I just checked-in for tomorrow morning’s flights delivering me to The Big Easy.

I wondered why the premium cable channel kept repeating the Spike Lee documentary, “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” and learned it’s because Saturday, September 4th is the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

That 4-hour documentary extended beyond Katrina and into the BP oil disaster, and ended with music and still photos of the storm’s devastation, of disfigured and bloated bodies, corpses caught in death poses trapped in rubble that either crushed or drowned them.

Saturday, I know my emotional baggage will be packed with the day’s historic relevance.

I sense it will seem a little surreal that 100,000+ people will be partying with no holds barred in ’the Quarter’ although the infusion of money is desperately needed.

I know I’ll find comfort in the company of writers whose work I respect (each, and all), now writing friends I’ve made here, and will be privileged to meet, there.

Dick, Jane, Sally & Spot: Where Are [We] Today?

We probably taught your mama or grandparents how to read in the '50s or '60s (pretty important, right?) and then got tossed aside like potato peelings, except that peelings sometimes get the chance to be mulched.

Because we're literary, we don't really move-on but we do live-on and I’m Spot, a pup of the 50s, hoping I'm barking up an empathetic pant-leg with all of this.

I got sick and tired of that little blonde bitch tugging on my ears all the time but got my revenge on Sally by pissing a yellow lake next to her bed so that every morning her footsie-bottomed pajamas would get soaked, but don’t blame me for her psyche being as scrambled as a Scrabble letters bag.

Poor Sally's a drunk who can’t handle obscurity, sleeps with every worthless loser-boozer in this little dive bar down on Jefferson, the one whose neon sign hasn’t worked right since Sal was America’s little darlin’--with a bigger and longer run with us than Shirley Temple (who at least got a drink named after her even if it is diabetic death and dry as a Mormon dance, for chrissake).Freckle-faced Dick still has that eldest sibling superiority thing when, in actuality, the poster boy for nerdism can’t figure out how to start the lawnmower sometimes and still hangs his Christmas lights along the front of his house in rows that frantically blink Morse code of, “Why are we the only crooked fucking string on the block, dick!” or maybe it’s “Dick” (because, trouble with Morse is, you can’t tell upper from lower cases, “dick” from “Dick” with that code stuff).


You had to know Jane went corporate, one of those MBA feministas, man-without-balls types who thinks she can get to the top without going horizontal, but I guess that’s why you people write, so that colorful characters like us flea-bitten, leg-humping old pooches can exist, even if it’s on dusty shelves or in old musty boxes in attics and basements, while some of the diminishing few of you cherish and collect us to warm your hearts or whore us out for whatever you can scrounge on e-Bay and never give a nanosecond of thought as to why poor Sally‘s a lush.

Inmated

Randy’s smooth ride on the heavily armored bus was eerily quiet and found him consumed by the heady cocktail of two jiggers of fear, a splash of remorse, and a twist of fate, for, his life was on the rocks.

He caught a 12-year stretch for separating fools from their money by illegal internet means--fraud and grand theft--but reality’s pinch of prison didn’t hit him until that bus ride.
After two hours’ in-processing, a medical check and a 90 minute orientation, the uniformed guard jokingly referred to as “Life in Your New Neighborhood,” which returned only mumblng, stares, and a murderous look from the man with a raised middle finger, it was time for a walk.


This 'white collar crimes' convict wasn’t sure he had a single skill or mechanism to survive life inside.

With bedding laden arms and handcuffed, Randy’s heartbeat was in his throat on the walk to his cell, a 200-yard walk that seemed like a 10-mile, uphill trudge experiencing aches that weren't there.

Less than 20 feet from his cell, one of the guards snickered, “Oh, you’ll love your cellmate, Louie, and I’m sure he’s gonna love a tight, new piece of ass,” and San Quentin’s newest resident, “M27696“, fainted into a heap onto a threadbare blanket and stained pillow.

Ronnie Ray's An' My Give 'n Take

My buddies have all gone tesstossterstone-wacky or however you spell that hormoan over the 2010 Camaro and paid 70 bucks to rip around town in it for a day. It jumps off the line and throws ya back on the seat when ya stomp it, and it surely gets eyeball, but they agree ya just can't see out the tiny rear window worth a tinker's damn, that it's useless as socks on a rooster.
The V-8 "SS" version, the one with the rally stripes, has nice tires and rims, though, so I rented the dang thing and Ronnie Ray done me a good turn, seein' as he owed me one. I only paid $360 for the tires he put on that Camaro I rented.

Them Camaro tires look sweeeeeet on my Mustang GT and them rental guys is never gonna notice they $1300 ($1150! Just saw they on sale, set o' 4) rubber has been replaced, and besides, it's a give and take world and it's not like I stoled 'em or nothin', is it? Cuz the cheap ones is new an' all, right?

[Before well-intentioned do-gooder readers report this blog to Officer Schmedley, note that it is fiction,and that the author does not own a Mustang or any car requiring or having the fitment for 'performance' tires.]

No One's Home for Saint Fastidious

2004
Carl Ponicetti turned his tan Lincoln onto the wide, L-shaped driveway. The car pulled up to the only house door adjacent to the 7-car garage. An elderly man got out and poked an electronic keypad next to the 9,000 square-foot home's door. A green light flashed, and Ponicetti entered the home. Every move had been watched.


1980
Dutch Lieber and his father crawled out from under a bungalow’s crawl space after working on a particularly nasty plumbing repair. It was a back-up with feces, urine, toilet paper and globs of Kleenex, tissues that didn’t dissolve like toilet paper and had caused the problem. The snake hadn’t cleared it and removing the pipe splashed the fetid goop on the man and boy.


Dutch emerged heaving and dry-heaving from the combined effects of the obnoxious fumes under the house, the heat and relentless humidity. His old man, Fritz, couldn’t help but laugh at his only son, now with hints of green in his normally pinkish coloring. Gasping for breath, it was all the boy could do to even look up and, in an unthinking moment, he raised his middle finger at his father.


The vise grip of his father’s hand grabbed him by a shoulder and his shirt, and the youngster was hauled over to the step-bumper of the plumber’s truck. He had never felt his father’s had hit or slap in anger, but he feared his gesture would bring pain unlike he’d known at his father’s hand. Instead, Fritz pushed Dutch’s rear-end down onto the bumper, and Dutch received the lecture of his life. He never forgot the last part.


“Other kids are get a $100,000 loan debt for a degree in something they’ll never use, you’re a ‘turd-herder’ out here earning a hundred grand, drivin‘ a ‘Vette before you‘re 30. There’s no high society parties but you’ll get everything meaningful you want in life, including a good woman and kids!” It got every ounce of Dutch’s attention, especially the ’Vette part. There was never another apprentice’s complaint.


Plumbing delivered on his dad’s promise. It all came his way: the nice girl seeking security in a working man’s home, and that beautiful home. Nice cars. Great vacations. Life seemed good for too-short a time.

Two months after marrying his only high school girlfriend, Dutch’s father passed away, leaving him parentless, mourning in a bottle. He found the cure and resolve in AA meetings.


Dutch’s mom was a flu victims you only hear about on TV, succumbing with every imaginable tube protruding from her body. Dutch was only a toddler, and later grateful his mom’s funeral wasn’t burned into his memory.

 Childhood friends’ moms took Dutch under their wings and apron strings, and teachers knew a latch-key kid with a plumber father may not be reachable or engaged. Dutch was a quiet kid whose only sibling OD’ed on her prom night.


2004
Dutch sat in his van using a toy telescope to watch Ponicetti. He’d faithfully been there eight mornings, and he finally got it. 7-3-2-8-8-4-3, the keypad dialer’s entry code to the back door.


Daily for weeks, Dutch scoured newspaper obituaries, circling select entries and making red X’s and horizontal lines on the calendar next to the morning paper. Tuesday. Ponicetti’s was clear and the show was on!


The better part of two evenings found Dutch in his garage. His van was backed into the garage with enough space to let the rear doors swing completely wide. Using an intricate design of bungee cords, a thirty-inch section of 2-inch galvanized pipe, and some wooden shims, Dutch’s knees were sore from kneeling on the garage’s concrete to test the device time and again, perfecting the angle and down force. When a particular scaffold board moved from the right side of the van’s floor, it triggered the shim’s release of the pipe near the van’s headliner, a release delivering a vicious, downward swing powered by leverage and tension from the bungee cords.


The plumber’s van pulled to the curb under streetlights unlike others in the city, dank illumination that seemed reserved for the projects. Ironically, the worst light was shed on the most violent streets.


With a predator’s eye, Dutch surveyed the scene through the van’s windows and spotted what he was looking for, the who that would become a what before dawn.


Mid-block, a singular young black man fidgeted nervously, sometimes interspersing what appeared to be dance moves, probably to the beat of whatever the ear pods were delivering from a pocketed music player. An occasional pedestrian would briefly engage the man in conversation, the two would seem to shake hands, and the walker would about-face to head off somewhere to enjoy the dope he’d just scored.


Just past 2am, the loner dope dealer called it a night and made toward the corner. Dutch pulled the headlights on as he fired the van’s engine. Approaching the dealer, the van slowed to match the man’s pace. Dutch pulled just ahead and rolled down the window. “Hey, mah-man, can you help?” he shouted to the approaching man who stopped short of the window.


‘Sup? Whatchu wantin’ or be needin’?


“I gotta forty that says you’ll help me a minute, pullin’s some stuff out for an emergency I got in that building right there. C’mon, 2 minutes help for forty bucks?”


Wary, the dealer shrugged off any suspicion and forty bones was forty bones.


Dutch hopped out, directing the man to the right rear door of the van and unlocked the door. He opened the doors, shielding all but the rear from anyone’s view.


“Just help me slide the scaffold boards out… right there….”


Grabbing the top board was the druggie‘s his last conscious act. The pipe’s crack against the man’s skull wasn’t just a fracturing blow. By design, it propelled half the body into the van. Dutch shoved dangling legs into the van, pulling a tarp over the man‘s form. The doors were locked and slammed quickly shut, and Dutch used cruise control to keep adrenaline from speeding in his exit from a neighborhood that had to have cops in it this time of night.


His destination was a good 20 minutes away, so Dutch made his way toward and onto the expressway, making for the suburbs and Ponicetti’s.


The back of the van was against Ponicetti’s driveway door. Dutch tapped 7328843 and gained access. Tightening the tarp, Dutch fireman-carried the doper in through a carpeted hall. He stopped at a reception desk to remove a key the top drawer. The “Staff Only” door was keyed open, and he hit the switch and the 24x36 embalming room of “Ponicetti Mortuary Services, Est. 1982” was awash in simulated natural daylight.


Dutch dumped the tarped body head-first onto rollers of metal conveyor track. He exited the room and the back door and trotted around the back corner of the building. With only a penlight, screwdriver, pliers and wooden toothpick, Dutch temporarily disabled the gas meter.


He opened the van’s side door and hauled out the wet-dry shop-vac. Reentering the building, carrying the awkward vac to prevent roller marks, he retraced his steps through the darkened hallway toward the tiny strand of light escaping the thick plush under the embalming room’s door.


Dutch almost pissed himself as the head of the body first hit the flames bringing a muffled scream from the tarp, surprising Dutch that the shit-bag dealer wasn’t yet dead, a fate coming true 4 seconds later as the super-burners ignited. In under 45 minutes, ‘Done dealer,’ he thought, stifling a laugh.


When his father and he had installed the stainless crematory oven, his dad had trained Ponicetti in its operation, again and again incinerating casket-sized, cardboard-woven trays designed for cradling fire-bound bodies.


As Dutch used the shop vac to suck-up the remains, he thought of the dealer responsible for his daughter’s overdose. The embalming room looked and smelled fresher that when Dutch entered, as he rolled the shop vac across the rubberized tile to the door and flipped off the light. He wrestled the key in to the door’s lock around the vac’s cylinder, then leaned the cylinder against the desk’s edge to replace the key.


It was pitch black outside. Not even paperboys were out with the morning edition.


Dutch reloaded the heavier shop vac and reached to his back pocket to retrieve the handful of tools as he reassembled the gas meter, ensuring it worked.


2010
White, black, taggers, pushers and bullies…. To date, I seen more than 18 scuzzes erased from the streets, people are still dyin’ to get into Ponicetti’s, Lieber & Son Plumbers have held the maintenance contract since the parlor’s ‘82 opening.


I like this guy. So why wreck a good thing by telling you what city. I supplement my social security, get cash on the barrel-head for cleaning Ponicetti’s, late-nights, cuz I don‘t spook so easy. This plumber ain't ever seen me and I always have the key right there.

The Kavanagh Succession

Liam emerged from the tool shed with a simple pole and reel, holding a cup of worms which he handed down to Keegan Kavanagh, wee but proud of his six years.

The father walked his son downhill to the soft bank of the loch on the clearest and most beautiful of summer morns, settled the boy on a stump, and smiled as the lad giggled whilst putting the worm on the hook and lowering it into the shallows.

Liam trudged up the hill to the shed and repeatedly put a whetstone to the edge of the sickle as his father's father before him had taught him.

Keegan yelped and hollered as a catfish of at least 8 kilograms took the hook through the lower lip and oddly enough swam toward the boy, hovering not a meter away, and staring eyes-on-eyes with the lad whose cries were lost in the breeze and steel singing against stone across the distance.

Keegan and the great fish began to blink in synchronous rhythm, and the boy laid the pole to the ground, the large fish's mouth opened as the youngster removed the hook, informing that fish, “Be seein’ your likes again, I will.”

Some 22 years later, Keegan trudged uphill toward the shed when he heard little Seamus shriek at the loch’s edge, yelling he had a monster fish hooked and the father turned to see his son’s pole bent to the point of near breaking and glanced to his father's, Liam Kavanagh's grave on the far hill, and with a plough-worn weathered hand, wiped a tear from his cheek on what looked to be the clearest and most beautiful of summer morns.

Psst, Fellow Conservatives: What’s All the Fuss?

I was vacillating between the choice DirectTV or Dish Network and, in three calls to the two companies, reached reps in the Philippines, India, and India, respectively.

This morning, I called UPS to compliment a delivery driver’s thoughtfulness (slipping my packages over my fence) and the rep who helped me was in Guatemala.

Fellow conservatives, you know I’m not a ‘bagger, but you have to give me credit for discovering the secret location the 600,000 new jobs Pres. Obama created!

I doubt those jobs pay very well but I’m excitedly anticipating the rollout of Washington’s plan for my daily commute, which he’ll probably liken to Rome not being built overnight.

This is such good stuff, I’m wondering if he’ll move my healthcare or V.A. Hospitals to some of those places (?).

Honing My Skills

When the elderly lady seated at my desk asked why I walked with a cane, I explained how I got hit by a bus when I was 5 years old, how my mother pleaded with the doctor not to amputate my leg, for, she wanted me to have two legs like other little boys and not be ridiculed for a prosthesis or stump.

She left dabbing her eyes, and the next customer who sat down asked why the woman had left my desk with misty eyes and a moist tissue.

I related that she had inquired how I had hurt my leg, and I went into great detail that, during the war, I had put this wounded guy up onto the tank to get us the hell out of the line of fire, and that when I jumped aboard, the tank turret swung around to blast the bad guys and snapped my leg at the thigh, shattering my femur now held together with pins and screws.


The guy who followed the (now) two weeping women departing my desk asked about the commotion, and I simply told him they were moved about how my leg had been mangled and horribly broken on my vacation to Hawaii, when I swam out way too far to rescue a swimmer in distress, how the lifeguards spotted the guy and got to him with a boat before I ever could have, but how a wave caught and flipped me, throwing my body into a jagged reef.

The 20-year old ‘hottie’ noticed my cane as I stood to greet her wincing with pain, and I answered her inquisitive glance recounting how I was stuntman some thirty years ago when I was her age, and how I’d been hurt practicing a stunt to be in a Steve McQueen movie, nearly losing my leg and absolutely losing the chance to be credited in the movie.

As they came and went away with different stories without the benefit of a "Fiction" ‘tag,’ I was notably impressed by the amount of fiction craft a writer can perfect without ever lifting a pen or using a keyboard, that—whether in print or by voice—it’s all in the telling, now, isn’t it ::wink::

Quayle-for-Congress Nails the White House!

This commercial just aired and I almost fell outta the chair.


Arizonans are fed-up with the Fed's inaction on the illegal invasion from the South.


Can this win an election? I dunno, but it's the ballsiest spot I've ever seen. Tough talk?

Click this and you decide.

Just Like on TV

Jobless drop-out 20-year old street-creature Tuff Guy was riding his bike, short-cutting through the mall's parking lot and not even thinking about being mischievous.

He spotted his dream car, a 'beamer screamer' BMW650i that cost somebody 90-grand, so he cross-cut the long rows, gliding over a couple to check-out the 'beamer.'

He pulled-up on the passenger side and eyed a prize in the front passenger's seat: a slim-line laptop computer case, and thought 'BO-NUS!'

To avoid looking suspicious, he laid his bike flat on the ground and, just like on TV, he bent his right arm and rared it back so his elbow would shatter the glass and he could make off with the computer before anyone could blink twice.

Just like on TV, the elbow's impact broke the glass, alright, but unlike TV, Tuff Guy nicked an artery, and collapsed in a heap over his bicycle and slowly bled to death as the car's alarm sent ear-splitting honks and beeps slicing through the morning's quiet air.

Just like in real life, none of the hundreds of people in the parking lot paid any attention to the car alarm going off or Tough Guy might have gotten first aid, lived through the ordeal and gone to jail, and maybe even been featured on "World's Dumbest Criminals," yeah, on TV!

Riding Out

Rain pounded-down the garden's flowers and shrubs with just the thorny rose stalks standing strongest against the lashing. In the back of the house, cold drops sped down the master bedroom's window as if walkers in a foot-race vying to reach the outer sill before puddling themselves into the eventuality of their falls to the ground

She sat on the edge of the bed peering through the window's streams, focused on nothing in particular, heard the door open and Vince's soft footfalls on the carpet.

He saw the hankerchief clenched in the white-knuckled fist atop her lap as he walked around the edge of the bed, saw her face mimicking the windows with streaking tears evaporated by her telepathically palpable numbness.

Practiced words from Vince's mental rehearsals were wiped as cleanly as a squeegee across a wet pane, as absolute as the wetted pain uncontained in her eyes.

In the moment's excruciating silence, any word would wound her, the more superficial as effective as the deepest, and he knew the only healing she'd ever experience was by sheltering herself--probably separating herself--from his stormy behaviors and a flamboyant lifestyle he hid, that she never deserved or saw falling.

Jeez I Love That Woman

I'm so pissed off I'm seeing red, turning blue in the face, and she's looking over at me from the kitchen, giggling like a pink-cheeked school girl.She knows I occasionally lose my temper like a tantrum-throwing 5-year old.
But this time, they better put out an amber alert for my sanity and there she stands, cool as a cucumber."Honey, I'm sitting here dying and I know you get it, that we writers are sensitive, that the computer is my 'vox clamantis in deserto,' my lone voice calling out from the wilderness' in that voice that usually calms me, that I don't find so terribly cute at the moment. "I'm not laughing at your computer problem. I'm laughing because, here you are coming completely unglued while your winky is out of your boxers like someone hanging out of a window trying to escape an apartment house fire."

Ten Voices of a Mind to Write

Ten of us, from here, will take-on the town, with ten different takes and in how many different voices remains to be seen.

We’ll rub elbows and break bread, laugh and mind-joust in games, and make merriment with drink.

New Orleans ghosts and some of her historic past will sing through our fingers, and her present, her presence, speak. .

The Big Easy will prod different muses to persist in seeking and finding their way into print, with perspectives from Alabama… Arizona… Maryland… Germany… Great Britain… Texas… Great Britain…and from wherever the heck Grey Johnson hails ;)

The Crescent City’s call to the writer will be heard and find voicing, writing that may be extraordinary, well worth my anticipated wait.

For this writer, I may look back on this experience and have to rename it “Labors of Love” weekend, instead of Labor Day.

Ended-Up...Really?

Did you follow your head… or your feet… or your eyes?
Did you follow your heart… or the crowd?
Did you follow your faith… or your finances?
If you led, with what compass?

There is daylight and the trailheads before you,
maybe one yet to blaze, for,
have you really ‘ended-up?’
Or have you just given up
before finding hope in the change
only you can make in your course?

One Undeserved Turn

Ronnie Ray had his big V-8 pickup truck about 3 weeks and it was a sweet dream, too, with 20-inch custom wheels, bed liner, killer steerio, 2-toned paint, and the pride of every mother-lovin' Southern boy's accessorizin', a heavy duty winch in front, and big-ass chromed, diamond-plate step bumper on the back.


Uncle Richie kinda fudged on the financin' to get Ronnie Ray into the thing cuzza Richie's sister Earleen (Ronnie Ray's mama, an' all), and that Ronnie Ray done hot-rodded it from Day One!


He stoopped kinda late and was way over the intersection line, yesterday, but the fellar behind him flashed brights, signallin' Ronnie Ray he could back up.


Well, the light turns green and Ronnie Ray stomps it, still in reverse, and plows dead into that nice fellar's car that had done him such a nice turn.


Ronnie Ray's insurance man 'bout fainted when he phoned it in, sayin' he'd put a major league hurt on the traumatic redesign of the front end on a Mercedes CL-63AMG.


Do you know that dang thing cost over $160,000, and Ronnie Ray 'bout shit when he finds it out, sayin', "You could buy a whole passel...mebbe a neightborhood o' trailer homes for that damn much money," and I know that's right!

A Sailing Lesson for Life

High winds white-capped Saguaro Lake so vigorously that when my Jeep rolled up with the sailboat in-tow, fishing boats were being blown-off home-made anchors of concrete-filled coffee cans. Anglers reeled lines and pulled anchor to seek safety before winds threw their craft onto the rocks. Ski boats surrendered to the chop and conditions making misery under a sunny afternoon.

Around me ashore, I saw the wind’s earlier victims. Trailer-secured power boats suffered demolished shade canopies whose supports had been mangled like tormented, minimalist, aluminum sculptures.

Boats from all directions aimed for the 2 launch ramps in lines resembling and with the determination of landing craft at Normandy.

Meanwhile, Prindle and Hobie catamarans were sporting trapezes and frolicking, with better sailors able to fly both floats out of the water in arcs mindful of 18-foot fiberglass dolphins. Single-hulled sailors were conspicuously absent. The cats drew impressed onlookers from shore, swilling beers seated atop their trailers and truck beds.

I began removing rigging for what must be a tricky launch from the rocks. A spectator trotted over.

Pointing at my boat then to the lake, he held his baseball cap against his head and yelled over whipping wind, "You're taking that out into THAT!??" He rightly knew conditions exceeded my hull and sail ratings. After all, I had just 13’10-½” of overall length. My gear was rated to 25mph breezes, half the gusting speeds over the agitated water.

I feigned nonchalance reeking of machismo, replied with prophetic self-doom. "It’s hairy. But I can’t let the cats have all the fun,“ akin to the adage of “A sport-biker's last words: ‘Watch this.’"

The exodus of fleeing power boats jammed the ramps so I used 4-wheel drive to gently bounce my trailer down the rocks to the water's edge. My hull was finally in the water, tied-off on a large rock and susceptible to being shattered if blown into or onto the rocks.

I emerged from the Jeep with laden arms: tiller assembly, a small cooler, ball cap and a very hi-tech 3-oz PFD (personal flotation device) vest I used as a seat cushion. I grabbed sailing gloves from (where else?) the glove box. Bare-handed sailing was okay in gentle breezes but nothing was gentle about this day. My hands might get sawn-through by rope-burn by the treacherous conditions.

Wading to the hull, I emptied my arms into the cockpit.

Wind gusts punished my mainsail so viciously that the luffing yielded angry, loud to nearly echoing slaps and pops of disagreement and refusal. I feared the sheet would tear and North Sails weren’t cheap. Not my performance cut.

I bounced the Jeep and trailer up to the parking area. Negotiating the rocks back down, afoot in howling winds, was no small challenge.

The bowline was loosed and I bellied over the rail to cotter-pin the tiller into place. I seated and secured the dagger board, turned and trimmed the main. The boat took off with incredulous speed, the mainsail's seams truly tested. My grin was 50,000 watts.

For almost 2 hours, it was exhilarating to terrifying’s teetering edge. Cats gave me thumbs-up for my skills in 40-50mph gusts. My hull cleared the water several times, exposing the dagger board to howls and cheers from the catamarans, as each time I'd brace for reentry’s slap back into the whitecaps not knowing what to expect. I whooped rebel yells to discharge excess energy disregarding their inaudible cores of fear.

My vang (a control line/rope) suddenly broke its cleat, succumbed to the strain. The line got away in sync with a wind shift, and I was in an instant jibe, swinging 180-degrees putting the wind at my back. The boom sliced across the deck and I ducked from harm’s way. I leaned into the cockpit reaching for the line flogging my calves. Got it!! And as I raised up frantically hauling line to regain control, another wind shift jibed the boat.

The boom caught me in the head, not glancing or direct but forcefully enough to knock me into the water like the head of a bowling pin being toppled by a bullet. The wind's fury of my presence kicked the hull onto its side in the opposite direction as the main quietly filled with water six inches below the surface.

My nose and mouth were bleeding, my jaw and nose maybe broken. Involuntary tears from pain and wooziness, the impact, blurred my vision. If I'd just worn the PDF instead of parking my ass on it.

At best, I had a concussion. If I lost consciousness, there was nobody close enough to save me. Even the cats would play hell tacking for position to get me, but they had run to the back lake.

I could bleed to death down the back of my throat if on my back, so I gulped big breaths and held them for vertical flotation. I brought a gloved hand to my face, pinching my nose, hard, to stop the bleeding, mashing the heel of that hand against my gashed mouth. Added pain might keep me conscious, alive.

Churning water moved me around, listlessly. A blurry glimpse to shore and the ramps caught once-seated onlookers shocked-still, watching helplessly. My hull lay on its side with the dagger board perpendicular to the rail as if sticking out its tongue in “I told you so.”

The boom strike broke the sunglasses off my face and deep-sixed them. My cap was 60 feet off and floating farther. The cooler was half a football field away. Gulping lake water, breathing impaired from facial swelling, I cursed myself for the expensive PFD way off in a third direction.

Through layered, translucent curtains of pain and surrealism, I prayed. Resignation. I would be swallowed by Saguaro Lake. Die. And knew it. Even my prayer was weak, asking only forgiveness for my wrong-doings and missteps.

I weakly treaded water, the nose-bleed now stopped from the agonizing squeezing, but still groggy. I heard something and craned my neck back to look.

My rescuers materialized in a 1940s runabout with a chalky, faded red deck and white hull. It was about a mile or so off and turning its bow to my sightline. No one was launching in this windstorm. They must have been campers from another part of the lake.

I managed a rag-armed wave as I was some 40 yards off my hull‘s position. I'd been spotted. “Shit. I just might live.” Inexplicably, my rescuers turned about 20-degrees off-course from me.

The fisher powered down 100 yards off, barely idling and now inching away at a 45-degree angle. I saw its antique Evinrude 40 outboard as dilapidated as the hull it pushed. I could make out a couple hunting-hatted guys.

The wind shoved them around and I saw a fisherman's rod tip dipping into the water. He had snagged my hat! Then the boat nudged off another way and the angler suddenly hoisted my PDF aboard. The boat swung, transom facing me, bow to the shore. Again, it angled off slowly. A plaid-shirted guy jerked my small cooler out of the lake, heavy with lake water.

My rescue was imminent. I rallied.

Then the Evinrude whined and screamed to full throttle, the old boat pirouetting to race toward the farthest visible shore. It shrank to a pea‘s size and, in horror, I saw it cranked onto its trailer as the truck sped off in its own dust cloud.

Anger-triggered adrenalin snapped me fully alert, powering scissor-kicks to my hull. I worked the water out of the main and crudely lashed it to the mast. The wind died, dropping from 50mph to 3mph as if a fan’s fuse had blown. I swam around and righted the hull on the 4th or 5th try.

I was a mess. My rigging was a mess but I managed half the sheet to get me to shore. Onlookers motioned me to the ramp.

Three waded out, one catching the bowline I threw with surprising accuracy. I plopped over the side into waist-deep water, taken by the arms and walked up the ramp and was attended to on the ground. A woman rushed up with ice in one hand, a first-aid kit in the other. The was chatter about thieving fishermen. If there was talk of my stupidity I never heard it.

I declined ride and ambulance offers, sure I could make the hour-long drive home. Aid givers got my keys, brought down my Jeep and trailer, and secured my boat onto it. I sat on the gravel, propped by my Jeep tire until the last 5 minutes of sunset.

I left, beaten.

I missed a week‘s work, recounting the incident like a looped videotape playing endlessly. It was a beating I'd never forget and a lesson I'd never have to repeat.

 I’d been beaten by the wind. Beaten by the lake. Beaten by thieves. I’d been beaten by ego-driven bravado bullying common sense into reckless endangerment.

A Night Sky for a Desert Sleep

From first light, the sky was dominated by thick quilts of grey clouds that never delivered on their promise of rain.


August’s skin-scorching sunshine was buffered and repelled, sneaking diminished heat around cloud banks' edges, tempering the day, offering an enjoyably noticeable respite.


It’s twenty hours later, 90 minutes into the new day, and I‘m restless with the agitation of wanderlust.


A moisture-cooled breeze is gliding across the desert with the ease and grace of a figure skater.


It’s as if the breezes are activating a windshield wash-like effect removing dust and pollution between me and my connection with a night sky awash in indigo ink hosting more stars than usually seen from this sleeping city.


I’m in the moment, at peace and able to sleep in the near while, but wishing it were out of doors, under such mesmerizing heavens.

Profound or No-So-Profound Discovery?

For more than five decades, I've heard about 'the unwritten rules.' Like, in elementary school, "It's kind of an unwritten rule that 7th and 8th graders blobbity-bleep-blope-bladda...."


In college, it was "Even though it's the student radio station, it's kind of an unwritten rule that we nibbidy-nop-blop bloo-biddy-bo...."


Uncle Sam did it to me in the service, "The unwritten rule for combat medics is that frickety-flobb-flurk-flom...."

Over espresso and bagels with a friend, I was bemoaning how sick I am of these unwritten rules you don't learn until you break one, and made an earth-moving discovery: Life's Unwritten Rules.


Here are the first 6:


1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Are all these sets of unwritten rules just monuments to illiteracy or what?

9th Circuit Court Jesters: Spirit of The Law, Will of the People?

It's physically located at San Francisco, California, and has earned an infamous reputation among learned scholars for rending decisions that baffle many of the USA's brightest legal minds, liberal and conservative, and may soon put the term "sore winners" into our vernacular.



California voters went to the polls and voted-down same-sex marriage, and the 9th Circuit has just intervened, putting a big hitch in the giddy-up of my view of "government of the People, by the People, and for the People."


That Circuit Court, in the city who has officially boycotted the State of Arizona law concerning illegal aliens, will hear arguments and sit in judgement of SB-1070.


First the California voters, and now the Arizona voters.


You vote, your measure passes or doesn't, and life goes on because you've earned the right to complain by exercising your say by way of your ballot.


In the notorious 9th, the will of the People, votes and elections, don't seem to matter which leaves this observer reflecting upon about how things were intended to work, because fairness would seem to dictate this boycotted state's issue should be moved to a less skewed environment for examination and argument.


Californians don't want gay marriage and said so at the ballot box: they voted against institutionalizing the legal contract of marriage between two parties of the same gender. I didn't see where they voted against gay people or gay relationships.


Can gay couples make a legally binding contract, call it something else (LifeBlend or something), other than the Judeo-Christian term without forcing the rest of us to redefine our concept? Sure they can. They don't wanna.

Some companies whose names you'd recognize extend health benefits to persons with a "life partner," yet, if I my "life partner" is a woman, I am not benefited. And it's legal. Is it fair? Or moot?


My company roomed me with a gay guy for 3 nights on a business trip at an expensive hotel. Would they have put me in a room with a woman? Did I like it? Was it fair?


This blog is about fairness, objectivity, and an embarrassingly questionable and overturn-ridden (US Supreme Court) track record by the 9th Circuit Court.

What it isn't, is homophobic

MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO IN NEW YORK CITY

Did you react to the title?


I believe in religious freedom in the U.S.--short of human sacrifice although I'm okay with Tennessee wackos who play with venomous snakes in church. That's just plum-funny to this Kentuckian and good TV that I'd watch on TBN or ESPN, and maybe even tithe to Sony to see.


A mosque at ground zero? Did we go to Nagasaki or Hiroshima in 1959 and, on that ominous ground zero site, build Our Lady of the Mushroom Cloud or Saint Meltdown Catholic churches, or erect The First Ebenezer Church of Fallout Jesus...?


I reacted to a mosque at the Twin Towers' site and am saddened, but tolerant, wishful it weren't so, yet I still believe in fortifying the tapestry of liberty with diversity as long as Old Glory is flying overhead.

Mob Puts Million Dollar Hit on Sheriff Arpaio

Renown (in conservative) and in some (liberal-left) circles 'notorious' Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has learned the Mexican drug cartel has put a $1 million contract on his head.
Known for enforcement actions against some of the 495,000 illegals who cross into Arizona every year and are stopped/found to be breaking other laws, to the delight of an electorate that keeps the zealous senior citizen sporting the badge, Arpaio seems nonplussed at a death threat with payola attached.

Before you decide to assassinate our most dedicated public servant, a few of us Arizonans and this blogger are just wondering....

After you slay poor Joe, what is the Mexican Mafia's Drug Cartel Division's cell-phone number that you're going to dial to claim your windfall?

Just how, exactly, are you gonna say, "Pay up, asshole," [because I really think you should practice that speech] in light of the fact their Juarez, Mexico, Chapter (Lodge? Franchise?) is murdering 400 people a month just across the river from El Paso, Texas?

And like any good reporter worth his salt, my last question is two-fold: What collection agency will you use to go after the mob once you figure out you're not Grand Marshall of their next 'Cinco del Estupido' parade or will you sue for breach of contract...and what the hell were you thinking when you sparked the ire of law abiding citizens already angry about a literal invasion Washington, D.C. chooses to ignore?

Duck for Boomerangs

Talk about a mixed bag, poor Lem seemed to catch life’s leftovers and I don‘t know how unluckier a kid in our town could have been born.


He was short, Jewish, had red 'Harpo' hair with ringlet curls that looked like copper plumber’s fittings, eyeglasses like two Petri dishes on stems hung over the bridge of a disproportionate nose.

Lemuel was destined to find himself in high school, shunned by athletes but proficient and welcome in the Radio Club, Science Club, Chess Club. He could always be singled-out from the marching band by the perpetually crooked, feathered band hat on the clarinet player’s head, earning him the nickname, “Pisa-Shit.”


Worse, Lem endured the suffering of being born with the surname, Lippschitz, (yes, pronounced LIP-shits), which made a much rougher and uphill road than had he been tall and handsome, or born blessed with the arm to throw a football 50 yards. His ethnicity was never an issue in our school, one whose Jewish kids excelled in every area, and got due respect for their achievements, from students and teachers, alike.


If ridicule were a magnet, Lemuel Lippschitz would have been the nuclear powered intergalactic electromagnet for mocking but he just seemed to trudge onward, oblivious to all that flew his way, and even the bullies gave up, realizing this kid had heard and endured it all.


I pitied and never picked on him...well, except for one time at a home football game’s half-time when the band was on the icy field and I rocketed a snowball toward him, It hit the clarinet's music holder thingy, causing him to slip and drop his horn, but you gotta know it was a one-in-a-million shot, and, hey, I was 15. We busted guts laughing and I got hi-fives for months when feigning a baseball throw walking across campus.


Nobody was surprised Lippschitz was a no-show for our 20th high school reunion. On the other hand, safe to say the whole room was in stunned silence when the committee played Lem’s “You Tube” apology for not attending.

It was taken from his house in Mallorca, Spain, citing that his absence was for a dinner commitment he had with his next door neighbor.

And that's when Heidi Klum stepped into the frame, waved, and said, “Hi, everyone! I had to steal him for the evening!,” as she slipped her arm around his and they exchanged checks on the peeks... omfg I can't even write this, right... PECKS...CHEEKS!

I hated that geeky, goofy-looking 'patheticism on two legs'  and wondered what lotto he hit to escape from total geekdom.

Have you noticed age sure hasn't been that kind to Heidi Klum? I mean she's hot, but not what she was.

I wonder if Lem-'tard spilled a drink on her.

The Nonagenarian's Gardener

My experience of physicians and nurses was gained from working elbow-to-elbow with them, in sometimes terrible environs and circumstances.

It was over thirty years ago, but one doesn’t lose the perspective of separating the good from the great, the flesh mechanics from the caregivers, yet, I met only one that ever--even remotely--resembled Michaela Tong.

Tong, my mom’s physician, greets her, treats her, regards her with tenderness almost palpable, as if they were mother and daughter.

I regarded the doctor’s level of interest as curiosity for a patient in her 90s, an oddity or lab specimen somehow exceptional from other octo- and nonagenarians, and couldn't have been more wrong.

This doctor practices with pathos (somebody defined as ‘the emotion of compassion’), evident when she holds my mom’s hand, not looking at her, but into her eyes, sandwiching a frail hand between her own, and connecting on a level I can only begin to approach as an intruder.

Tong may be as much Zen gardener as physician, seeing the woman before her as delicate, fragile and beautiful as the gardener’s wistful regard for a perfect blossom that’s been cut and begun to wither, on a stalk no longer sturdy enough to stand without bending, and leaning against the hand-blown crystal vase that is life’s very edge, so clearly beautiful whilst bereft of any lasting vitality.

Trivial Triumph Reveals An Ages-Old Truth

The sports bar hosted a 20-question trivia contest and promised the top table/team a $50 gift certificate.

The emcee repeatedly warned the 'house' that cellphones and Blackberrys were taboo, and would disqualify the whole table's answer sheets. Calculators were also a n0-no.


I led our charge, getting difficult answers correct, like the determining "hives" as the answer to its medical term and definition, sulfuric acid in reply to the name for H2SO4, Yuri Gagarin's 1964 feat as the first man in orbit, and without the using a calculator, figured there are 86,400 seconds in an Earth day.

The table of 8 around the pillar from us, had 2 girls sitting with their backs to the windows. My vantage was the only one with full view of their party.

During the game, I'd glance over, casually, and see the two young ladies looking into their laps where their arms led my visual interest. They'd be looking down throughout the contest. At one point, both had Blackberrys above the table, thumbing away.

They were a coquettish, 19 or so, straight blonde hair, snow-blinding teeth, and C-cups brimming like bulbous lookouts welded to undersized lithe frames.

At game's end, these teenagers were the only people in the answers-shouting crowd to correctly guess that the opening line of a particular book was from Orwell's 1984.

When the emcee asked the room which state was the only one to border eight others, they blurted out Tennessee. Then the two informed the emcee was wrong. Two states each border 8 other states;  Missouri also borders 8 states.

 The questions they missed were ones that could not be easily found in a quick Google or Wikipedia search. The hard ones they missed were my sure-fire path to victory.  Could I best them? My table-mates were confident my brain was crankin'!

But, the young women  prevailed, with a 1-answer advantage. Rules and warnings aside, they won. Tits, teeth and youthful beauty triumphed, tonight. 

In a gestalt moment, I realized that decades ago, attributes such as theirs seemed to rule, to gain advantage.

So it's true today, and probably a universal truth that will remain as breeding-aged beauty commands influence and permissable short-cutting and line-cutting, like 18 items in the 10-item express line at the supermarket or 10 minutes late for class being no big deal.

I smiled as I recalled a woman friend's assessment of her feminine empowerment coming from her lap: "With one of these, I can get as many of those as I want."

And so live goes on, trivial or not. I still know a shrimp's heart is in its head, that the "The Vine Line" is a publication of the Chicago Cubs, and that Minnehaha was Hiawatha's wife in Longfellow's fictional epic,"The Song of Hiawatha."

If only I could scrape that type of knowledge out of my brain like the last squeezings of the toothpaste tube and sell it to Jeopardy contestants, I just might have something.

Tonight, I had my integrity.

3000 Hail Marys

During the separation leading to my divorce, I had worked too hard to slum-it on move-out, busting my ass only to walk away from my $1.8 million retreat in the fashionable Lynn Ranch area of Ventura County, California.


So I guess my apartment was a little lavish, $2700 a month with upstairs and down, but what really sold me on the place was the idyllic view of the greenbelt at patio's edge, and the ocean-lined horizon.


A week into the lease, I came home to a note tied to the collar of my wife’s giant French poodle, "Chéri," a bitch (the dog) who had bitten me, urinated in our home at-will, chewed my shoes, crapped on the loveseat in my study, and only chewed cords of appliances and office equipment primarily used by me, a four-legged nightmare now mine by abandonment.


I always had a 'special' nickname for this canine demolition expert, and now officially renamed her in honor of my soon-to-be ex-wife.


The next morning, with 3 elderly neighbor ladies sitting on the adjacent patio, I executed a careful balancing act of espresso cup, newspaper, and bagel while negotiating the French doors and, in a blink, the dog fled, running for the ocean like a Cuban refugee.


I was pissed, yelling again and again, “GET BACK HERE, DOUCHE BAG, COME ‘ERE!!” and instantly realized my faux pas, worsened only by learning, later, that my wide-eyed, blue-haired neighbor-ladies were Franciscan nuns who taught school up the street.

Case Study: George Strenell, GRLEI Man

George walked into the lobby wearing what appeared to be an enormous, white poncho, fighting back tears as he handed his wife the sack full of his clothes, before hugging and kissing Paula goodbye, with a simple, "See you, soon. I love you."


He was semi-comatose over the next 90 days, bathed and shaved daily, with soft music playing and filtered news as auditory stimuli, and he seemed to enjoy the frequent turning, massages, and skin lotions which prevented bedsores.


Nutrition, vitamins, and hydration all came via intravenous tubes, next to the unit monitoring his vital signs.


Dr. Bluvais, Director of Girth Reduction Life Extension Institute, a social worker, and a trained mental health counselor were present on the big day when George was roused to full consciousness, and he couldn't believe what he saw in the full-length mirror, once the orderlies helped him to his feet.


When he strode into the lobby to greet Paula, she nearly fainted, seeing him in an expensive size-42 regular suit, tie, and a striped shirt, size 15-1/2x32.


He had lost 271 pounds, previously worn size 54 pants and 4XL t-shirts, his addiction to cigarettes and overeating were no more, and he joked that he was craving a Coca-Cola, correcting himself to say, "Coke Zero or Diet Coke," proud to be a GRLEI man.