Some of you may have noticed that I have changed my icon photo. Yes, I have … but it is not new.
This picture of me was taken on February 25th 2005. It was the first night that Lady and I met back up and I was ecstatic! The picture was taken in Salem, MA - somewhere that I miss terribly.
Now my hair is just above my shoulders as I just chopped off about 7 ½ inches. When I pull it back my ponytail is only about an inch and a half to two inches long. It was a sad day but one that felt refreshing.
I have no more beard beyond my ‘soul patch’ or what is technically called an ‘imperial’. The night I shaved my beard off was tragic. I really miss the damn thing. My hands are bored now that they have nothing to omnisciently stroke in condescension.
The other night at work, the conversation about me in a ‘supervisor’ role was being discussed between the grocery manager and myself. He explained to me that it would be easy for me to get one of those ‘title’ positions. He said first though that I would need to shave off that stupid thing beneath my lip (this was coming from a man who has one of those chiseled Baron Von Porno moustaches); he explained that it’s presence made me ‘unkempt’. He then proceeded to explain further that a haircut would be a must:
I knew a hair cut would again be in line for any sort of management promotion, but to shave off a ½ inch square of lip fur in order to have a title, and nothing more, seemed rather ridiculous to me. It still does as I reflect upon the exchange for conveyance in this post.
“I’m just a boy with a new haircut”
I suppose I should just focus on the positive.
I was told today via a phone message left by the dairy manager that the store manager finally had my pay rate increase approved and that it was something like a couple dollars more an hour. I am dying to find out the specifics as my 1000-hours-worked raise of one dollar is going to happen any day now. All said and done I could go from making 10.70 to 13.70 an hour any cheque now.
Hell, if it is only a buck I will be grateful!
I think I will take this Pavement song for another spin before I go to work.
Originally titled “Communion” but the later renamed film grabbed my attention harder than Charlton Heston declaring that, “Solyent Green is people, Solyent Green is people!”.
Yes, you are now wondering. Head is chiming in with all sorts of horror/sci-fi 70’s productions. Low budget? High budget? High budget pretending to be low budget? Low budget wishing it could pretend to be high budget?
A hint or two may help the medicine go down. A bit of my proverbial sugar!
Ok, there is a fat man with cats, lots of cats, who listens to opera, and is called Mr. Alphonso. His real name (the actor) is Alhponso DeNoble and he is a great birth cross of Devine and Harvey Fierstein. He feeds the cats ‘common’ food as he snacks with them. His record player is featured as much as he is. He is rotund and that is being polite.
Mmmm … have you grabbed this Billy Goat by it’s gruff yet?
Ok, there is lots of Catholicism in it; lots and lots of NYC Catholic 70’s donut drops to gobble down with your java of guilt and paranoia as you indulge in the conflicted experience of being a NYC Catholic watching a horror film in the 70’s.
Nibble, nibble; not yet noble. Have you bitten like the fish yet? Line is still gimp, take the bites as they come.
Ok, it has a little bitty part for the burgeoning Brooke Shields.
Do you have it yet?
Here is the trailer:
“Alice, Sweet Alice” has taken my late night attention.
Yes, it is a disturbing film. It makes all grow cold around you , like when Haley Joel Osment steals the Catholic figurine from the church in the first 30 minutes of ‘Sixth Sense”. It is a violation of all that seems fundamental in an ever-changing life.
Something about the mask and the yellow rain coat and the like really disturbed me about this film. It took me for a ride I was not expecting to feel. Upon the first few minutes of viewing I felt an immediate John Waters feel with the fat man with the cats. His albums playing and his absurd reality almost felt comfortable and I related with a verve and vigor.
So what is worse?
The gap toothed cry of people eating people as some sort of NRA battle cry in retrospect? Or, is it that of the deranged family found in the belly of a girl who had far too much religion and family dysfunction shoved down her throat in order to cope?
Here is the alternate trailer:
So I see it in the guide on my cable service. I see Brooke Shields. I see horror. I see 70’s. I tune in.
Not too long into it I see a child being lit on fire in church pew cabinets behind the scenes of a communion ceremony. I see the elongated tongue of hopefulness stuck out by a child who has been shunned. What am I supposed to think?
Makes me think ‘cool mask’.
Makes me think ‘sick world’.
Makes me oddly homesick regarding NYC and religion.
The whole time I am wondering if I am the fat man with the cats and I think of J.D. Sallinger.
These last few days have found rain through out the nights and into the early mornings. I love when the rain comes in after it is dark and the moon is already hidden; when you can smell the rain and feel it on the tips of each arm hair before you see the clouds or feel the drops.
The desert smells that come up after a good rain are something that can make a man like me appreciate where I am, even if I do not like it most of the time. Wet sage and damp cactus is a delectable flavour to have wafted about the nostrils.
When I go out for lunch at two a.m. and the thick grey mist of the impending downpour clouds the vision for much more than a ten yard span. When the streetlights and the stop-lights and store signs all melt their sheen into a refracted shattering of colour and stream. It is as if quiet has settled all over the world in anticipation of the rainfall to come. Shhh … listen to how it feels.
There are not many advantages to working third shift, or working third shift in Southern California for that matter, but I do find my little knick-knacks of sanity from time to time in this filthy garage sale that I am perusing day in and day out. This is one that I feel like sharing with you all.
Towards five a.m. I take my last smoke break and it is still dark these days. Not even a speck of teal and blue flirting with white on the horizon pretending to be dawn. It is still black, oil black, tar black, the black of depths. We are getting to the cold light. The daylight frame of references that coddle the colder months. I do love them so.
By the time I leave at six a.m. the rain has seemed to stop most of the days, however, yesterday was not like that. Saturday morning was one of those mornings that stubbornly holds onto the grey and the wet daylight without sun; a bad hairdo, that pair of pants that fashion forgot but still fit so good.
Today the sun did it’s thing and flailed up past the circumference and demanded that the precipitation stop. It bowed it’s subservient head and asked to be scolded once more. I wish that the rain in Southern California would get a pair and tell the sun where to go. Cest la vie.
And so I find a song that makes me wish it were lunchtime at two a.m. all day long. Kind of an odd wish. Maybe the song will help:
Can anyone hear me?
Am I talking loud or soft enough?
Does my phrasing upset or delight?
I am not too sure about much these days but I hold true to the thought that at some point it will all click a little louder than it has in the past.
I miss singing songs like “Peanut Butter Sandwich”, “Baby Beluga”, “Down By The Bay”, “Mr. Sun”, “Little Red Wagon”, “The Bridge of Savignoin” and so forth and on and on …
My grandmother used to sing to me "Frere Jacques" and it used to make me giggle with glee as she would suck down Velemints to prevent her smoking craving. I remember many an afternoon after school with my grandma and her song and mints - her candies, her substitution.
When I YouTube Raffi I do not find enough to quench my thirst.
He is the French Canadian Arab. He is hairy. He wears slippers on stage.
He is my hero.
I LOVED Raffi when I was 16 or 17 and I thought his music was GENIUS!
This tape, I received for my 17th birthday was how I introduced my tot to him and she has been a fan ever since, so have I.
"Bumpin' up and down in my little red wagon"
There is something seductive about him and his creative simplicity.
Funny that I never knew Raffi as a child but I have been a Raffi fan for over half of my life. I see that he was public office offering himself recently. He should. He is what we should try to be.
Here is a kid's video of a song that I had not heard until tonight:
Yes, that’s right. He is amazing.
You should hear his trilogy of ‘Whole World In His Hands’ it is a regular Dead set medley!
I am a sucker for Jerry Garcia’s child album too. It is pure Americana, child strings struck!
I was 17 when my youngest sister was doing the infant/child thing and many a Barney tape was watched. He was new. I liked Bob Marley and pot at the time but something always struck me as sincere when it was Barney time. From dark purple to his light purple, I watched him evolve.
I always get a kick out of the film "Death To Smoochy" for these reasons. I can taste the evolution. I guess I am a wack-job.
Apples and Bananas; Epples and Benenas; Ipples and Bininas; Opples and Bononos; and Upples and Bununus!
Cest la vie with the kid in me. Yet, I still like the the un-frosted side too!
I have thought a lot about me lately. In doing so I have concluded that drama is only something I put myself in to feel comfortable with all of the drama I grew up with. Some people have milk and cookies or a bedtime story that they remember and for me it was conflict.
Drama is my blankie!
NO MORE!
There has never been a time in my life where conflict was not a part of breathing, existing. Well, I should say until these past few specks of time through my hour glass. There is drama but it is much more human-like and the such.
I think back to doing laundry with Ami Berg and Jason Horne my freshman year of college and a tape that was found on the washing machine that night; it is a tape that I still have. It is Liz Phair’s ‘Exit From Guyville’ which is her answer to the Rolling Stone’s ‘Exile On Main Street”.
This album changed my life.
Once on a trip to Utica NY, I sang this song to an African-American woman on a bus going back from my first and only frat party and I was not even attending school there. I was visiting and was tossed from the party due to my friend and I being 'weird'. I also pissed into a snow bank in their driveway as they were not letting 'freaks' into the bathroom.
This song was sung to the black girl next to me via a four year-old’s Barney mitten that I used as a hand puppet or finger puppet, depending on frame of reference (they were serving beer, vodka, and grape blue-dini Kool-Aid as a blended beverage):
Yes, I used this as a pick-up line via a child's mitten while I stank of piss and booze in a foreign land all the while trying to cross racial boundaries on a bus to nowhere.
Yes, I am still sane.
Yes, I am still with it.
No, I did not get any.
I grasp what I have done and what was done to me and I have no more issues but rather peace. All of my ‘masculine’ role models growing up were addicts or drunks or some variation. Does it make me now? No. Does it make me wonder? Yes.
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