To Be Told

He knew me bloody
A babe from the womb helpless
Put down the Cutty
Grabbed ma’am, completely selfless

Drove out here kissed his daughter
Held me like Styrofoam brittle
Gave her the blanket he bought her
Dropped back (home) like Y.A. Tittle

Overseas mp, gloves of gold
Shipped Hitler’s hounds to and fro
Made it possible for last poem to be told
Sidearm fired. stormtroop blood salted sea below

Too many sweaty sleeps
Grabbed the bottle tried to forget
Remains how last rock on jetty creeps
Above salinity once high tide has set

Born August 1917 two monthses
Before October revolution of red
Lingers still. long past CCCP dunces
That believed greed wouldn’t poison like lead

Hard and bent like hammer and sickle
Sergeant of vigor reduced to Hee-Haw reruns
Well-traveled. Soul calloused like Tamanend’s thick heel
Cirrhosis and electro-shock therapy weigh tons

Two girl children. One gone
The other, my mother still around managing
Prostate checkups, pacemakers that stole his brawn
Oldwife co-loiters in life’s halls. pill brandishing

Man-machine antiquated like Chevy’s in Cuba
Broken and battered just lying whilst heaving
Skeeving kin because smell from him, dead fish in Aruba
Endurance and fast-twitch muscles gone, dignity not leaving

Dignified pride like a monstrous citadel
Staving off my attempts to sugar talk him into the shower
I don’t want to tell him he stinks, hygiene pitiful
Around geriatric nuisances I shimmy. still that infant in the womb I cower

Benettonenbaum

The fiery orator would’ve been in his grave, rotisserie.
Appalled at the state of the free world. My house specifically.
Hairs on neck erect,
needles on your average Black Forest Tannenbaum Christmas Tree.

Speaking of the devil, the plaster innards of my domicile were ablaze,
Friendly fir peppered with lights of various hues,
No popped corn lassoed ‘round,
Just ornamental intrinsic from days of yore clutching limbs like blue jays.

Even El Duce’s animated addresses proclaiming racial purity,
Never talked about mick, a spik, camel-jockey, and kyke,
United like wasps. Buzzed.
Sharing the joy of the grape, toasting the Axis Powers’ fade into obscurity.

Honey, It's True

Flat and circular. One side wet, the other dry.
Host placed on a tongue by the only priest in Dubai.
Windows on U-boat stalking destroyers on the zigzag,
Could also fit the description laid out in the first line. You dig?

Dag.

A favorite word for kids not brave enough to say damn,
Ever cautious that pop was around the corner with hands of ham,
Cracking the first underage mouth that uttered words profane,
So it was in the first days of television ads for Rogaine.
That was big news. For yous. New hair hopes weren’t so grim,
Back when Polynesian sibling singing act got it all over him,

Honey it’s true. Reuters is reporting some ill shit all the time,
Brokaw’s talking about how chicken sickens, human cloning’s here, but still a crime.
Nanotechnology, robot vacuum cleaners, SARS and AIDS got married,
Had a little virus baby, they gave birth to it in some poor bastard that carried,
Diseases started by some brainiac-fuck, control-freak. White coat, white sleeves.
No foresight as to what kind of tracks treading into virgin snow might leave.

I grieve to think about what life’s gonna offer when I’m long in the tooth,
Perhaps one of Ponce De Leon’s descendants will find that fountain of youth,
Unlikely. Me and everyone I know will be old, popping pills trying not to die.
Dropped train token in a puddle; one side wet, the other dry.

A.Y.R.T.E.?

Certainly I’m ready to eat,
What kind of question was that my sweet?

Anything you concoct will be quite suitable,
I just pushed back my filthy white cuticles.

No place at the supping table for dirty mitts,
I just counted out $7.50, or thirty bits,

Where that money’s been, only the chief of the cosmos is privy,
No talk of Him now, my appetite’s open like glasnost in skivvies,

And so is my tooth garage, which will soon be crammed with vehicles
Of caloric gloriousness way better than any Warsaw Falcon pickles.

Cured cukes won’t satiate the beast that lay within,
Nothing can preserve this hunger, not even lecithin,

Because you see, when I arise and make haste toward the kitchen,
I’ll make gluttony chic like only Abercrombie and Fitch can,

But there’ll be no half-naked party boys wearing boxers showing off obliques,
Just a man, his wife and a bunch of food that’s gone like Quebec Nordiques.

Quartet.

I’d like to teach the world to sing,
In perfect harmony, a song that will bring,
A tear to the eye, a choke to the throat,
Drown you deep in a sorrowful moat.
It’s a ditty about four kids in a crew,
Included each other in everything they’d do.

Dodge was the oldest and wasn’t allowed,
Out of his yard like a pit bull that growled.
Until one day his mom said it’s cool,
He didn’t have to come home right after school.
He ran like the wind and scored with the girls,
Too much southern comfort made him hurl.
On hillside’s steps he’d make out with some broad
He told her he loved her, so on his neck she gnawed,
Hickies were abundant and so were the fights,
He’d have with anybody that disrespected his rights.
And so it went, this life that he lead,
Until one night some guy from Jersey damaged his head,
Hit him with a cop barricade, drunk after the Eagles,
Strangers forever, now sudden enemies like foxes and beagles.
A month long coma, coupled with a stroke,
Now makes Dodge a slightly different looking bloke.
A sag to his face, but he still has that smile,
I haven’t seen or talked to him in a while.
A husband with kids, domesticated life,
Has a celebrated past like the drum and fife.

Another was a kid, who grew up on Smick,
Used to have a flattop maintained with wax stick.
He was the youngest and the newest recruit,
Moved down from Pennsdale, dishonest to boot.
He told some tales, of this he never grew out,
He’d tell us about the brand new bike his grandma threw out.
And the wiffle balls and countless ice cream sandwiches,
If he ate pizza for dinner he’d tell you he had manwiches.
Lying just to lie, we never understood it.
The fish tales couldn’t get any worse, really, could it?
Yeah it did, as he got older the treachery intensified,
Spewing mistruths about money and funds that were diversified,
His Pinocchio promises even got a guy locked up,
Writing bad checks. Finally, I think a girl was knocked up.
We always told him people liked him regardless,
He didn’t have to fabricate, Why did he lie? Take a hard guess,
His dad was a bum, nothing to be proud of there,
Mom dated a black dude— that he didn’t wish to share.
Always trying to hide a secret, of which he was ashamed,
The Lyingest Liar there ever was. His claim to fame.
It’s a shame, ‘cause to me he was a little brother,
Always laughing, ripping on people one after the other.
This was who he was, truly a funny dude,
Cracking up at something he found funny made laughs run like crude.
I’m sure he’s still like that to a certain degree,
Last I heard he’s a guy with a family.
Devoid of an epiphany.

Now Timmy, he’d give it to you straight,
If he thought you were fat, he’d ask your weight.
Almost as fast as Dodge, but no honeys to speak of,
His love life was grounded, perhaps like a weak dove.
But he did get a girl or two or three,
Used to rummage The Turtle for softballs, sell them back to the bar league for a fee.
Enjoyed running into the night like a mischievous mustang,
Threw smoke bombs and crab apples. Windows bust. Bang!
One day he just moved, out to the state of Buckeye.
His pop got a new job. His mantra was fuck! why?
Ten hours in a car his family traversed to relocate,
Cincinnati was the pot Timmy stewed in, main ingredient was hate.
He couldn’t stand it, everyone was a dork,
He felt he didn’t belong, he might as well have been Mork.
But we kept in touch, Philly he missed,
That’s what he wrote in his letters to me. Pissed.
We’d see him twice a year. In the summer and Christmas,
Of course, you know we got into some mischief,
Clipping colored lights and throwing anything throwable,
We laughed liked zooted hyenas. The quintessence of mobile.
But this couldn’t last forever; he had to go back,
The thought of returning to Cinci stained his mood black.
He’d leave. Soon things would return to normal,
Until I got a call at school, my mom was real formal,
Timmy crashed his car and ended his life,
He hit another car, in it a guy and his wife.
But they walked away, Timmy stayed right there,
Dead like a lion before having a chance to grow his mare.

And then there’s me, the completion of the quartet,
Gettin' all glassy-eyed over a perfect childhood
infants with Alzheimer’s couldn’t forget.

Murmur-Free

It’s a perfect fit. Like a left handed Koran scriber,
You and me. It’s a must now. It was a must then,
Bits of Smurfette’s tit, swiftly drifting down the Tiber,
Azrael got to the blue blonde. Gargamel’s an Etruscan,

Whether it’s miniscule mushroom huts, Romulus and aqueducts,
I’d elect you over Hanna-Barbera Saturdays wearing a toga,
Even plunking quarters, ducking ghosts, increasing Pacman’s luck.
It’s like I’m the Pro-Bowl and you’re home, ‘cause your Al Noga.

In other words, you’re the best and child hood nor Herodutus can claim it,
My blood spewer, tonight, beats murmur-free, wild with love
No stool, whip, or mustached man can tame it.

Polish Poconos

It’s not Broad and Erie; not Seventeenth and Shunk,
It’s better than your car and anything you got in the trunk.
Take a pile of trash; you take a pile of junk,
Put it all up on a hill and you call it Manayunk...

Old head limericks, complete with big, sweaty High Life quarts,
Little kids with dirt rings, broken Chic-O sticks in their knifed shorts.
Trash-truck juice stained streets, nostrils filled with summer,
Dad’s whistling from the door; game over. bummer.

Massive games of build-up, after the sun has run amuck,
Celestial satellite illuminates white parts of telephone-wire Chucks.
Out with the old, in with the new street type ritual,
Get laughed at big time, if your shirt didn’t fit you well.

If you asked me then, it was the center of the galaxy,
There’s other neighborhoods in Philly? Really? You speak fallacy.
Jallousy windows and ribbed green awnings were our favorite marks,
Throwing Grade A’s, Getting chased by a big Mercury, muffler dragging some sparks.

Manayunk, The Polish Poconos. What’s better? You tell me.
Especially when the objects of boyhood desires, on their feet, wore jellies.
Accompanied by stirrups, Aquanet, and Blow-Pops--a little boy’s confusion.
Kiss them? No. Throw rock at them. Trip on slate sidewalk. Knee contusion.

Now as a grown man, I’m still a little bewildered,
Not what to do with a cute girl; but I’m wondering, is it still her?
There’s still no parking and your sloped face remains the same; there’s no doubt,
But what the hell are these boutiques, Jettas, and sorority girls with big dogs all about?

It’s like it never happened, this childhood that I speak of,
What happens to a neighborhood gentrified?, I never got to get a peek of,
My little kid chasing his sister up Ripka Street, ignoring my dinner calls,
300,000 dollar row homes is what happened, that’s why I live in East Falls.

Coffee and Ointments

Parking in a spot not too far from the house, I’m beat.
No kids on the corner, it’s dark, so I’m incogneet.
Oh, would it be nice if time and money weren’t my opponents.
Pop would say, it sucks to be poor and white, don’t it?

He knows all too well about 16 hour days of duties unsavory,
Do what you gotta do, familial bravery.
As I sit in the idling car, ready to shut it off and get out,
I have thoughts that I’ve been spread too thin like wet grout.

When I was a little boy with more bone than muscle,
I played stickball all day, wishing I was Chuck Hustle.
Or maybe Mike Schmidt with the shimmy than home run,
But so far, life’s been short and prudish like a gnome nun.

Not saying woe is me; life hasn’t been all that bad,
But there’s vacuous voids, or shit that I wish I had.
Like making money everyday while feeling utter enjoyment,
Instead of working shit jobs, driving in a car full of coffee and ointments.

Neosporin and other stuff for people suffering from adult acne,
I can’t get rid of the facial Vesuvii, I’ve had them since I was a latchkey.
In other words, I’m tired and I want to be shot with a musket,
Thank God my little wife’s inside making instant mashed and chicken cutlets.

P__c_-N_z

My work had largely ground to a halt. I woke up some mornings uncomfortably sprawled over the giant cable spindles, odd-sized orange crates and double-rolled hobo blankets that formed the bulk of furniture in my shed-office. I would work some hours, as if in a fugue, but would review the words I'd written and find they were all complete garbage. I was unmoored. Also, I smelled a little funky.

Most nights I was sleeping in the house, and showering the next morning, but the number of hours spent in the poorly ventilated and badly decaying shed were starting to show in terms of odd smells permeating my hair and skin. I don't remember what exactly had happened, but one morning, I heard my neighbor mowing grass and I realized it must have been Saturday. I decided to walk the earth. Or at least walk the neighborhood.

Rondo, my neighbor with the lawnmower appeared to sleep approximately never. He wasn't like regular party-neighbors, overgrown frat boys and the like. He was of an undetermined age, and probably from some country in South America. He had large earlobes like an Inca, and was drunk between 50 and 75 percent of his waking hours. Sometimes his truck didn't work, so he would ride a bicycle. All the folks on our street lived in fear of the truck permanently ending its run on earth, because it was bound, therefore, to join the decaying Soviet-era Lada and similarly non-functional eggplant-colored Opel that marked the beginning of Rondo's large lot.

Rondo mowed the grass on Saturdays, quite early. He never 'won' the battle with the grass, and routinely was the subject of complaints from the townspeople. It is possible that this is because he mowed the grass still drunk from the previous evening's revelry. He told everyone he was an artist, architect of sculptor. Most people thought he painted houses for friends.

I wandered out past Rondo's wild patch of earth and saw him pushing the mower over a barren patch of dirt under heavy tree-cover. The mower was either missing a wheel or had the four wheels adjusted to different heights. I could see how his mowing was largely ineffective.

The walks had become more routine, but as the neighborhood had gentrified, there were less folks there Monday through Friday than on a Saturday morning like this one. I strolled down the street parallel to our own and thought about how smart it would have been to bring a dog on such a nice walk. I spotted a yard sale and decided to peruse the goods. There was very little chance I had any money to buy spend on my person, but I determined that there was equally little chance of finding something I really needed.

Then I saw the pince-nez.

They were in a leather pouch maybe three inches across and barely an inch tall. The inside was lined with delicate velvet. The tiny metal horseshoe that connected the lenses was gently used but silvery with a patina that made it beautiful. I may have even said it aloud, but I surely thought: "I must have this." I went to the person who seemed in charge of the yard sale to determine their price. My pockets were empty, I knew, but I felt as if these pince-nez had found me for a reason. I would possess them.

A clump of bills in my pocket formed my offer: "Seven dollars."

"Fine." The ornery homeowner turned his back on me and I dropped the leather pouch into my shirt pocket.

Returning to the shed at a half-run, I'm sure I looked like I had to use the men's room. I sat behind my word processor and with a flourish attempted to perch the pince-nez on my nose. In my head, a envisioned the great writers of a bygone era, sitting behind Underwood typewriters in tweed suits banging out exposes and muckraking novels with a pince-nez sharpening their focus. Upton Sinclair, I.F. Stone, F. Scott Fitzgerald, all surely used the pince-nez as an inspiration at one time or another.

The lenses were filthy. After some elbow grease, I made them usable. Perched on the end of my nose, with my head further than normal from the screen, I began to type. This would be my turning point. I would remember the pince-nez moment.

Genius at Work

My wife was more than skeptical of the shut-in plan. I insisted that my universe of distractions was making it impossible for me to write like I used to, and that this was the only way to recapture the magic. Both of us left untouched the possibility that my heavy smoking and drinking also figured into the equation. I could still drink with the best of them, but I felt strangely unmoored drinking in our suburban house while folding laundry or whatever. And I had quit smoking because we both agreed that dying of lung cancer would put a crimp in our plans to live together happily for the rest of our lives.

Realistically, I think maybe I wanted to put a lot of effort into this shut-in and write in the 'office' venture because I wanted to know once and for all if I could make this life happen. Somewhere in my head, I knew if I could get away with this, the experiment would end with me knowing definitely if I was a barista or a writer. I never highlighted this a motive for the plan. All I said was that I had too many distractions.

It's possible that my wife also secretly believed that I was going a little nuts. She has a real job, she goes places and types emails and has conference calls with Germany (so efficient), and in contrast, I'm just about fringe material. I had a string of interesting but unfulfilling jobs with non-profit organizations, all revolving around parlaying a meager talent with computers and a powerful ability to bullshit older ex-hippies. It wasn't a career, that's for sure.

I was basically on day two of the shut-in thing, though I was counting it as the first day, because I was all wopperjarred off getting the spit-flying call from the coffeeshop the day before. I thought things were pretty clear when I walked out with three hours left in the shift, after discussing my leave of absence, that I wasn't coming back. This was not the case. Things got ugly, certain statements were made, and a fourth stint at the Gigantic Coffeeshop Chain is probably not in the cards.

There I am sitting on a huge spool that once held shielding for underground cable with a keyboard on my lap and eleven words on the screen when my sister walks into the office-shed. She is already talking, and I am looking to see who is coming in with her, but it turns out she had just started talking to me early. It is 9:48 am.

"...and I just don't think it's going to work," my sister is saying. With these nine words, I'm prepared to conclude that my wife has summoned my sister to talk some sense into me, which would be rich. Though my wife is surely through talking about this, her efforts to decode whatever it is that is happening in the shed have only begun.

"I've got to figure out if I can do this, Lis."

"What? What is it that you're figuring out? People don't hide in sheds when they're figuring things out. They go to therapy, or they talk to their preacher, or their friends or whatever. Or they just accept what's happening and, you know, go to work."

My sister had never been happy at a job in her entire adult life. She worked at a bank once and liked it when they made her sit in the little tiny box (a shed, if you think about it) and process transactions for people too lazy to get out of their cars to conduct their banking business.

I rested the keyboard on a shiny box that probably held something organic and frozen once because the shine came from an impressive amount of wax treatment on the cardboard. I hadn't been writing very much, and, truth be told, at the moment my sister came in, I was wondering how people typed long messages on Blackberries because the keys were smaller than baby teeth and my thumbs would have pressed a half-dozen keys at a time.

"When I was in college, I couldn't keep it in, Lis. I was writing two columns, two reviews and two editorials a week, and probably throwing two more stories worth of work into the paper as completely re-written work by idiots. I used to be a writer. I want to be one again."

Lisa didn't see the agony of this former glory. She was terribly practical. "Then get a job as a writer." She was already leaving. I could see her heart wasn't really in this discussion. She wasn't really a tenacious opponent in arguments of this type, which is something that comes with middle childhood.

I had stood up to turn a record over (the shed-office was also the home of the LP collection and the turntable). She assumed I was rising to hug her goodbye. I complied. As she left, I heard her issue a fairly standard Lisa-dismissal to my wife, the kind we all heard about whatever parent or other sibling was under discussion. It was 10:09 am. Don Cherry and Gato Barbieri started talking on the back half of "Complete Communion." I sat on the big spool and typed the words "Blackberry teeth."

A Plan Is Afoot

I got it in my mind that I was suffering from a surfeit of distractions, and I decided to try an experiment. I would take a leave of absence from the coffeeshop, I announced to no-one in particular, and spend as many hours as humanly possible in my 'office.' (I'm forced to put 'office' in quotes because it was essentially what you might call a shed, or more charitably a garage, if your car was about twice as wide as a standard entry-level gas lawn mower. It had electric power for the word processor and various pieces of nearly-useless trash arrayed around which could be fashioned into a desk, chair, guest seating, drink table, night stand and what have you. There was a smell like a mulch pile passing the critical point at which 'mulching' is code-language for rotting. This is probably because that exact biochemical event was happening on the other side of a less-than-airtight wall behind the shed-office.)

Taking a leave of absence from a gigantic chain coffeeshop was easier than I thought. Getting fired, was what you might call it. Ten years ago when I worked for this same gigantic chain coffeeshop, they didn't feel so gigantic. They seemed to care about me, and we were always talking about 'having fun' and eating muffins and danish after fraudulently reporting that they'd fallen on the floor or spoiled in some other way. This was when there were only a handful of outposts of this gigantic chain in my particular neck of the woods. This most recent go-round at gigantic coffeeshop chain (GCC) was my third, and if I wasn't management material by this time, I was destined to be a bench-warmer forever. So I told my manager I needed time off and he handed me the restroom key, which is attached to a comically large (but no less frequently stolen) defunct home espresso machine. People attempt to steal this prop twice weekly. I asked why he gave me the restroom key.

"You've got to clean the mens room. That hobo showered up in there again this morning."

"I want to talk about my leave of absence."

"Good one funny guy. Restroom stinks, get on it."

That was pretty much it. I took the enormous key fob and the key and went into the restroom. The hobo hadn't showered in there as much as it appeared he had essentially exploded. There was hobo-related paraphrenalia everywhere. This included nineteen gold-toe socks laid out on a long piece of unbroken craft-colored paper towels. They were drying. After a few seconds of staring at the socks, I noticed that one of the stalls was occupied.

"Roy?" Roy was the fourth street person who had adopted this location as his home-away-from-home. Homeless people trace a lazy arc from recently on the street to hard-core hobos which frequently tracks closely with a declining mental capacity. The last three hobos had become more and more deranged until we had to ban them. Roy was early in the cycle, which was reflected in his commitment to keeping his nineteen socks clean.

"Hey, my man, you have the time?" Roy was shoeless but fully clothed, sitting like a buddha on the toilet, which didn't have a lid. It appeared he had somehow made the toilet into a chair be adding something rigid over the top of the bowl, and a surprisingly dainty cushion.

"It's like 10:45, Roy. We talked about getting out before the rush ended and all those old biddies come in for the cappucino hour, guy. Come on."

"Socks are drying, my man," Roy's stories were likable enough, though they had become a little repetitive. He said, 'my man' a lot, and left the impression that he hadn't exactly been living the high life before his recent turn to the streets.

"Well hey, let's get everything but the socks packed up and give the bathroom back to the paying customers, okay?" I was a little irked mostly that my request for a leave of absence had been essentially ignored. I'm not 19 years old or anything. This manager is like twenty-two months older than me, and boring as shit to boot. But perhaps my annoyance telegraphed over to my encounter with Roy, the toilet-dwelling hobo. I don't really recall.

In any case, he got weird at this moment, perhaps forecasting a steeper than expected decline into madness, which would be a sad thing. His face went expressionless and he said, like he was on a sitcom full of twenty-somethings, "You've changed, my man. You've changed."

I didn't know what to say, so I muttered something like, "Allright," and left the restroom. I recall that Django Reinhardt was playing on the carefully programmed ambient music which was conveniently packaged and available for purchase next to the register. The track was "How High The Moon" and it was scratchy. I took my apron off and handed it to my colleague working the register. She said, "What the fuck," and I left without saying goodbye.

Trust

It's hard when you're juggling about eleven-hundred little life items and something throws number 1101 right into the air above your left shoulder. I know. I'm not some magic man doing more than any human can, but I'm pulling a lot of weight for my class, regular-dude. I got the finances and a lot of the kid management, and all the trash handling, all the trips to the basement I hate more than anything on earth, all the non-flower-related yard work, all the car maintenance and recordkeeping, stuff like that. I keep the balls in the air, but don't fuck with me right?

I'm sitting at the desk in our house and I'm doing something I don't know what, because it's night, and the dryer's running and the kid's asleep. I haven't gone anywhere, and I don't care to, but sometimes I should. The way you should go visit your mom, the way you should get that degree, the way you should call your long-distance good friend. So I went out to some schmoozy shindig and come back later.

And I get the trust question. Because it's been about ten years, but I used to sneak cigarettes in the past. And cigarettes are my great vice.

Seriously, a decade in this thing, kids and a house and all that, and we're getting the raised eyebrows of a whiff of smoke? For real?

And it's got me thinking, because I trust her completely. All that she does, and all the places she goes, in a world she denies but I know is filled with chauvanists who sleep with their co-workers on their long trips together, and I don't blink an eye about her faith, her fidelity, her character. She is impervious, in my mind, whether it's true or not (and I believe it's true).

But I get the eyebrows. And I haven't smoked a cigarette, tonight or any night. I haven't smoked a cigarette in years and years and years. We almost broke up over a cigar once about nine years ago, for christ's sake, would I really be screwing with this arrangement at this point?

So what's with the looks? I don't know. I guess it's all about trust, and that's what I'm wondering about. That's all. I know she trusts me, because we're dependent on each other, we're connected, and every interaction is a reinforcement of that trust. People shouldn't start families and become this entangled if they don't have the trust. So I know she's got the trust. But I'm wondering to myself. How much?

Like the Stupidest People Ever

In the mornings, I, like every liberal-minded intellectual blah blah blah, listen to NPR for my daily dose of news. This week, both the public radio stations in my town are having their annoying pledge drives. It's wonderful that they are supported by the local folks, etc, and I'm not going to rail against the pledge drives, because they are important ways for the stations to function.

My particular membership isn't up until the Spring, so I pleasantly tune out of the pledge drives because they are all the things that pledge drives are. Apparently, I switched over to C-SPAN radio. This is probably because I changed the station in the evening, and C-SPAN's stultifying boringness is slightly dulled by the inclusion of peppy programming like 'Booknotes' or whatever in the evening.

Unfortunately, in the morning C-SPAN radio is shockingly, jarringly boring. Pre-7 a.m., they run White House briefings (which, in all honesty, have been interesting lately, because Scotty is getting his ears boxed). Then at 7, the C-SPAN program 'Capitol Journal' comes on. This is the show where a host reads parts of the newspaper over the radio (and on television, with the helpful visual aid of the actual parts of the newspaper) and then takes calls. Later, I believe, there are bland guests.

My major complaint, of course, is the stupidity. People call into the program, and are clearly among the stupidest humans ever to walk the earth. Their raw staggering idiocy, if harnessed properly, could power a nation, could launch a rocket to the moon, could feed the hungry. They are so mind-numbingly stupid, I have trouble believing that the program hasn't been hijacked by the Jerky Boys or Howard Stern.

Here's the functional problem with this. There are two types of people, apparently, who call in to this program. There are the shockingly stupid people, who appear to range across the ideological spectrum, though slightly biased toward the left, and then there are the probably stupid people, whose personal ideological right-wing biases are fueled by listening to the even more ill-informed people who I'm embarrassed to call liberals.

This is because, of course, the majority of Americans are actually more liberal than conservative (just check the rolling poll numbers in support of safe and legal access to abortion, which hasn't budged from 60% in a decade). They are just dumb, apparently, and calling C-SPAN at 7 in the morning. But they say stupid things (Bush bashing is fine, but it helps if you don't sound like a mental patient when you do it) which make the uppity conservative slightly less stupid person feel all high and mighty about how these dumb liberals are. One of these dumb conservatives argued the other morning that 'he supports freedom of speech, but these peopele shouldn't be allowed on the radio.' Um, about that first part...

In sum, cancel Capitol Journal, and save everyone a lot of trouble. There's plenty of dumb in the world, we don't need more.

Pearl-harbored by that half-a-sissy team from Dallas

Yesterday began like many, many glorious Sundays before. I didn't viscerally connect with a great orator at the local chapel or anything like that. Not that sort of glory.

I just meant that the old lady and I were roused from a restful Saturday night sleep by nothing in particular. My peepers couldn't delineate the difference between my toes and my dresser until I posted my see-betters on my anglo visage. I bare-foot it downstairs and brew a pot of heat, ostracize onions, potatoes, butter, evoo, and various salts from the rest of the kitchen into the frying pan, whilst listening to my wife from the couch speak onomotopaeiacally.

When we are home, weekend breakfasts are the only meals that I make. So my wife, who enjoys this emmensely, turns into a stationary, food-related Batman played by Adam West fight scene. Instead of "blam" and "zok", it's "mmm" and "mmmmmmm!" She's a veritable carbon-based pop-up book.

She's on the couch watching whatever involves Paul Newman. I'm in the kitchen bathing in diner vapors. It's the best.

However, it's only better during the 4-5 months when the Birds are playing. And that would've been yesterday, folks. Everything was in place: the aforementioned ritualized morning transpired. My wife ran out, or talked of running out, to get missing ingredients for Sunday sauce and meatballs.

The game was even at 4:15 against the Cowgirls, who everyone hates, save for the obligatory swollen, little-peckered gym dork that claims they loved the Cowboys ever since Roger Staubach was playing. Stop it.
You were wearing cloth diapers when Staubach was a waning hasbeen, showing only sporadic glimpses of what he once was. The truth is you swollen, fake-ass, car salesman types that haven't figured out that way too much hair gel has never been and still isn't the way to go; started liking the Cowboys after "Aikmen and the cokeheads" won their second Superbowl. Frontrunning jerk-offs.
With that out of the way, yesterday at my house might have been a place that Sir Thomas More could have called home.

Well my friends, after a few short moments into the first quarter, Utopia turned into Oz. Not ruby red slippers and little terriers in lunchbaskets. Oh no! It's was the shanks and man-rape HBO Oz.

Watching the game, helpless, 5'8", and from my couch while my beloved birds got trounced was tantamount to watching Carrottop make out with my mom while he simultaneously hanged dogs. I wanted to cry and punch; but given my adult and accompanied-by-others-in-the-room-status, I managed to control myself.
So on this quintessential Monday morning quarterback...Monday, my every thought is bent on the 30-10 drubbing.

I have no answers and I don't wish to make excuses. I just wish that while the Cowboys were savoring the taste of beating the Eagles for once in like, five fucking years, that the God of Heaven and Earth, could have saved that earthquake for later and, instead, mustered some classic Old Testament fire and brimstone, jealous God type shit by opening up Texas stadium right at the 50-yard line star and proceed to swallow-up everything Cowboy. Golden calf part deux.

It Pains Me

Okay, I don't intend for this blog to become a sports talk blog, mostly because I don't really know enough to compete with real sports talk blogs, or even fake sports talk blogs.

I'm kind of a poser, to tell you the truth, and it's for the reasons I cited below. I like to read about sports, because there is something lyrical and poetic about sportswriting, even if you don't like sports. Just read some Roger Angell -- oh hell, read his whole book and you can understand how someone who mostly doesn't give a toss about sports can enjoy reading about it.

So this weekend, trapped like a rat in the home of my wonderful inlaws, I was forced to absorb a lot of sports. These are Alabama people, and the college ball is something they care fiercely about. Fortunately, Alabama had a bye this weekend (they are 5-0, I'm reminded relentlessly), so attention turned to SEC rivals Tennessee and Georgia, who were playing in Knoxville. My father-in-law (Alabama, '73) is a good man with bad hearing who had the misfortune of buying a spacious home whose soaring ceiling seems to him to suck all the sound out of his television set. He is unaware, of course, that the sound is being perfectly transmitted to every corner of the house but his faulty ears. So up goes the volume. Louder and louder. The Bulldogs were threatened during the second half as the anemic Volunteer offense showed some signs of life. The volume went up. The Dogs seemed to put the game away, but minutes remained as dinner was set on the table. My father in law moved several feet from the easy chair to the eat-in-kitchen, and the volume was increased to accomodate the new distance.

Today was worse. The Falcons played the Patriots and everyone knew they would lose because Michael Vick wasn't there and blah blah blah. well, they almost won, with some boring old quarterback who won't have a real career until he gets traded in eleven years to some also-ran like Miami or the Jets. (Seriously, Gus Frerotte and Vinny Testaverde are still playing football? I'm shocked.) We watched the final few minutes of that game after the Inlaws returned from some grandchild bonding.

Then began the Braves-Astros marathon.

I had been sitting around inside the house because while the GPs were bonding with their grandchild, me and his mom were hanging out at the house since she wasn't feeling too hot. We watched some tv, which I regret because I had to watch SO MUCH MORE TV later on that same day. The Falcons finally threw in the towel and the Braves were about to put away this Astros game and move to a fifth game at home in the NLDS. They were leading 6-1, so I figured watching this dogshow end would be painless.

The crowd was noisy because the Astros thought they had some kind of rally going, and the actual sound coming from the tv was louder than normal, plus it turned out that the father-in-law was cranking it to hear the color commentary over my son's erratic and noisy play/forcing people to read him books. (He's very literary. Maybe he'll be a jackass blogger like his dad.) I've never seen a television broadcasting for sustained periods with the volume at 20. It was impossible to hear yourself think.

The Astros loaded the bases, hit a grand slam, then put up another homer to tie the freaking game. It had already been like an hour of baseball since the football game ended and this bitch was going into overtime.

As we all know now, the Astros and the Braves essentially played an entire second game after regulation, adding another nine innings to play and excruciating 18 innings of boring-as-shit baseball until Houston scored somehow or other (like I could give a good shit by this point) and the Braves were dispatched. We listened to the tenth-fourteenth innings at the house, two more innings in the car on the way to a restaurant where providence handed us a table out of view of the damn television and the spell was broken.

See, I can watch once football game. I can have a baseball game on in the background if I'm drinking beer and sitting outside and maybe barbecuing while talking to people about important things like, you know, earthquakes and the national debt. But I can't watch a football game and a baseball game and almost another baseball game not to mention twenty-four hours after watching another football game. That's ridiculous. It's torture, man.

So I feel for you and the Birds, Gees. Seriously, I was rooting for them because I like the gang in green and I think the Cowboys are a bunch of pompous pricks anyhow. I almost always reliable hate any athlete or team that gets the 'America's _____' moniker. People used to call Dallas America's team, which made me want to put lye in their cups, to tell you the truth. So that's a real killer there. I couldn't watch it, of course, because I was all full of sports. Completely. Full. Of Sports.

The only question I have now is this: will I be able to scrub from my memory thoroughly enough of this weekend of agonizing sports to cast half an eye on my beloved hometown Steelers (though I know nothing about them) as they play the apparently surging Chargers (who play where again?) tomorrow on Monday Night football?

Sports Talk

Look, I would hardly be considered a sports fan. And I don't watch much sport news programming on TV. I'm much more of a literary person, and that doesn't mean that I watch that nauseating BookTV on C-Span, it means I like to read about sports. Sports news on television (forget sports radio, it makes blogging seem like friggin' high art) is generally stupid and repetitive. I mean, I like a well-constructed four minute sports segment as much as the next guy, but for the most part the TV's got the fluff. And a lot of 'reporting' that happens on TV (sidelines especially) borders on the masturbatory. So I like to get my sports news from a newspaper. Call me old fashioned. At least I read it on the web.

Anyhow, as I said, I like to watch games, but not sports news, and I like to read about sports after it has happened and someone has answered all the questions and digested them into a useful format I can read in a few minutes.

Imagine, then, my surprise when the Monday papers were filled to bursting with tales of the 'emotional' victory of the New Orleans Saints over, I don't know, I think the Carolina Panthers. It was apparently a real big deal that the Saints won because their city (except the rich part) was destroyed by a gigantic flood, and they won't be playing there again until 2006 or so.

It about made me sick. Because football is such a nasty, commodotized industry that it's impossible for me to believe that this team has any more of a connection with New Orleans than any other team has with its hometown. I scanned the roster, and I count two people who went to college in the area, and only one of those grew up there (the other one went to a weird little junior college in Mississippi and was born in Connecticut, go figure). There's nothing wrong with this, it just means that the New Orleans Saints' win in the face of the hurricane's destruction of New Orleans is no more 'emotional' than my ability to catch the bus on Monday. 'Against the odds,' I was running late and I was 'playing for my hometown,' or at least trying not to be late for work again. Give me a break.

Oh, and what the hell, Gees? The Falcons ate the Eagles for lunch yesterday. Field goals? Field goals? Seriously, I didn't watch past the half because I figured I was in on the jinx, but things didn't get much better after I hit the sack. Thoughts?

Turn on, tune in, and die.

I'd rather be in NeverLand trying to catch the elusive Pan with my feet housed in concrete Timberlands, than watching say, ANYTHING on MTV. Especially the ocean of putridity that is the VMA's. Yes, it's no longer music television my friends. I shall rename MTV the more apt moniker "make them vomit".

And boy, was I choking back the chunks like a bulemic before she hits the bathroom when my senses were raped by the ever so shitty Diddy, his jutting jowls, and his terrible version of this out-of-control-boulder-of-dung-rolling-down-the-mountain awards show. And when I say terrible, I'm not just on a fan boat whistling the anthem of the slave states.

Yeah, I can't believe it, but I managed to stomach the VMA's for the longest time in years the other night with my wife; who, conversely watches shows like this as a mother crocodile watches her clutch of eggs. My mouth was agape and arid at what the once legitimate cable network tried to pawn off of as "cool". Seriously, you think 4 bucks a gallon for George W's crude is cruel and unusual? Try to watch Fifty Cent do anything at all without wanting to slice your wrists vertically and just leak. Absolute garbage. I wanted to jump through the TV with a lampshade, put it on Fitty's head, and kick him square. But he's sold drugs, been shot countless times, heavily tatted, on steroids, talentless; yet he's the truth dog. Fitty y'all.

And oh, how could I forget Kanye "I'm MTV's Newest Tampon" West's face on three straight commercial spots during this disaster. This ensued just after an abominable performance by Kanye and Jamie "I got an Oscar for a prolonged In Living Color impression" Foxx that was reminiscent of a Super Bowl halftime show sans Jimmy Buffet, Aretha Franklin, and Tim McGraw/Faith Hill. The overexposed duo were wearing old-school tuxes while Kanye's chipmunk cheeks spat out blather about girls goin' 'head,doin' their thing, gold-digging and such. During this televised abortion, I predicted that "Wanda" would be trippin' enough that he would be taking off his shirt to show the world his Bowflex body. Which he did. Sadly, Jamie isn't anymore entertaining as a singer/sidekick without a shirt. Oh, and by the way, Kanye West didn't put Chicago on the map; contrary to what MTV and Pepsi would have you believe. He's a semi-talent that just so happens to be the hugest sensation since the last gimmickcopeia MTV deemed their favorite son of the month. Last week.

But clearly, the worst atrocity MTV committed was when they thought it would be a good idea to link Paris "I am a rhythmless whore that has a different wang in my mouth ad nauseum and I'm wildly famous why?" Hilton and Bow "Don't call me Li'l" Wow, complete with his own velour doggy paw costume, for some good-natured "how much ice you rockin?'" banter. I have 65 karats, ooh, I've got 200! F'real? F'real. That's hot.

Folks, the end is near. A nimrod cowboy has the veto stamper of all veto stampers and uses it to jettison all things good. Lifetime jit-bag fratboys who wear power ties are spending over one hundred bucks a pop to fill up their stupid fucking I-don't-have-a-small-dick-Hummers. Hurricane victims shoot at rescue teams that attempt to help fellow hurricane victims with stolen guns from the "store" that killed Americana. And to make matters worse, Gilligan is dead.

Do you hear that? I think it's the four horsemans' horns a'blowing. Repent all ye sinners! We're damned; and I don't see G. Dubya or MTV dying for our sins.

So turn on one of G.Dub's inarticulate offerings whilst listening to Ciara or Li'l Jon's latest krunktastic gem and die in a puddle of cynicism and sweet disbelief. And thanks MTV for telling young kids everywhere that it's not their job to determine what's cool; it's yours.

And that's the way it is. Forever and ever, amen, yo.

The Problem as I See It

The trouble, I would have to admit, with this entire system, is probably greater in a lot of people's eyes than I see. But in my eyes, it's terrible.

We've taken this old warhorse as far as she'll go and I think we've got to give up the ghost. Just look at what 'success' is here:

Schools: We've got systems -- systems born of bipartisan support -- which the whole educational universe regards now as an utter failure. No Child Left Behind has an incredble system design to find the schools which require the most help. Only, the system then punishes those schools by cutting resources. People may complain about throwing money at problems, but I've never seen a kid do better in a school that can't afford books, maintenance, teachers and security.

Health Care: No matter what we do, we still have more than 40 million people uninsured. The government actually thinks this is okay. They seem to believe that if we insure people they will go to the hospital when they're sick (shocking!). This outcome is somehow viewed as bad by our leaders who, I presume, hope people will be healed by the power of Jesus, or frequent wars.

Security: There may not be a bigger joke in this country than the illusion of security. Just ask the black people from New Orleans. We have created a myth of security that we use our own knowledge to prop up. In fact, the only source of security -- internationally, nationally and locally -- is properity. But not the code-talk bullshit prosperity that Bush says when he really wants to say, 'less taxes for rich people.' Real, cold, surprising, lift-all-boats prosperity like we had to some degree during the Clinton administration. Now I'm a Clinton realist. Unemployment was down, for real, we had friends around the world and dollar-a-gallon gas. What fucking happened? Problems that were bad got worse and things that were good got shit on again and again. The result is this imbalanced daily screw-job that our soldiers and the economic class they come from put up with daily. That is getting honed by corporations, getting abandoned by your government and getting duped into believing that Jesus or the savior of your choice would want you to ask for more.

It's bullshit. We're sunk. Stick a fork in this fucker. It's done.

Suge Knight Won't Be Getting On Any Airplanes

So, Suge Knight got shot the other day. I feel like he is constantly getting shot. If President Kennedy had Suge Knight's ability to take a bullet, this would be one helluva different country right now, I can tell you.

A friend and I were discussing Mr. Knight's repeated misfortune (maybe people around him get shot and I'm just conflating the stories). He was apparently shot at a party MTV was giving for Kanye West (whose new album is delish) in the weekend before the Video Music Awards. We got to thinking about what the memos inside MTV must have looked like as the VMAs drew nearer:

To: All MTV staff
From: Corporate
Date: August 17, 2005
Re: Caps

Hey everybody. Just a friendly note reminding everyone that under no circumstances should anyone affiliated with MTV Networks or the Viacom Corporation shoot, stab, or otherwise maim Suge Knight during the Video Music Awards or any VMA-related events. Mr. Knight has made it clear that his ability to bounce back from repeated shootings and incarcerations is not an invitation to shoot him or confine him in a jail cell.

Any shooting of Mr. Knight will be investigated regardless of whether he is able to attend other parties/events during the weekend. MTV Networks and Viacom Corporation take all shootings very seriously.

Another memo we imagined was one circulated at Knight's record label, which used to be called Death Row Records, but keeps changing its name, so it's probably Kill House Records, or We'll Kill You Records, or Suge Knight Had Been Shot Again and Again Records. Tha Row. That's it.

To: All Employees
From: Lemuel 'Father Raper' Roggendorf, COO
Re: VMA Blood Drive

As you may know, Tha Row records co-founder and chairman Marion 'Suge' Knight will be attending two parties, a brunch reception as well as the awards ceremony during this weekend's MTV Video Music Awards festivities. As a result of this schedule, there's a good chance that he will be shot or stabbed at one of the events, all of which will include very high security and will take place in staggeringly posh hotels. None of this has ever affected the relentless drive of persons unknown to continually stab, shoot or otherwise harm Mr. Knight.

To ensure that a safe and stable supply of plasma is available, Tha Row Records staff phlebotomist Dr. Philip Steinberg will be collecting blood donations (type a-positive) in the small conference room today and tomorrow until 3 pm. Please stop by and make sure that Suge makes it out of Miami alive.

Where to begin?

It seems now that it was a year ago we visited the hallowed confines of the Five Guys Burgers and Fries. As the experience has percolated in my mind, I didn't see it, as my esteemed colleague did, as a singular shining experience. Rather, I viewed it as one more excellent visit to this delectable low-cost emporioum of delights, and I instead saw it as part of the larger gestalt of delicious chow-hound living here in the nation's capitol.

Perhaps the Five Guys live at the top of this slideshow of culinary madness, but my co-writer surely should be taken to task for failing to mention his own hometown trusty-and-reliable, the Philly Cheesesteak. While the Five Guys family of burger joints grows here with mercenary efficiency, the city of Philadelphia and its environs is quite literally overun with mostly-delicious and often alarmingly spartan cheesesteak vendors.

The home Sean and my sister occupy is eleven paces from the nearest cheesesteakery, and while many such places are simply ordinary (which is mostly good), this particular outpost of cheesesteak is in the still-plentiful 'quite good' category.

So the burgers at Five Guys are superlative, surely, and as Sean notes they represent a perfect balance of tiny starch sleeve and almost commingled meat and topping innards.

Now, imagine my surprise when I find, as I gaze upon the face of my friend, while he rises a level from his seat and ascends to this higher plane of burger-awareness, that this pleasure had never before been availed of him. I alone was responsible. I had never brought him to a Five Guys.

I was derelict in my duties as ambassador of local gastronomical delicacies. I had brought Sean from the land of the Dunkin Donuts (still a noble breed) and bade him to watch the steaming semi-plasmic hot Krispy Kreme Original Glazes Doughnuts roll off the belt and into his open mouth. I squired him into the fine dining arena of Georgia Brown's amazing food and unbelievable southern service zenith. And yet I failed him when it mattered most: The Five Guys.

To make amends, I can't offer much. I am but a humble man, with a family to feed (things far less greasy than burgers), but I present him with this gift, one I hope he will use but not abuse.

There is a Five Guys location on Wilmington Pike in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, approximately 25 miles from your house.

My work here is done.

Meat Master Quintet

The first contribution, from honored and hallowed headquarters of the city of brotherly love...

If I were the more compact, United Kingdom-descendant version of Julius Caesar; and if I was on the, let’s say, Arlington campaign spreading and enforcing Roman decrees and seeing to it that there was a vomitorium in every dwelling space; I would absolutely take heed to what that soothsayer had to say. Except for in my misshapen hypothetical Caesarian scenario, the witch o’ fortune wouldn’t tell me to watch my ass on the fifteenth day of March. No! She would have said to me with a slight gluttonous grin: “Beware the five guys of burger mastery!”

Now if the soothsayer knows anything about actually seeing the unforeseen, she certainly knows of my now fabled eating habits. If one’s enjoyment of eating large quantities of meat could be given an apt name, (unlike most perfumes) mine would be called “Red Filthy Lingering Lust”; and it would be sprayed skunk-style all up in the fair city of Arlington, Virginia.

The soothsayer is not alone on the island of I-am-aware-that-sean-is-a-connoisseur-of-the-moomoo-animal. My bazooka-brained brother-in-law and sporadic late-night donut accomplice knows all too well of my carnivorous exploits. Which is why it surprised not only myself, but he too was aghast at the realization that he never ushered me to or even mentioned the little peanut-shell riddled place that would become my new burger Mecca. Or dare I say, Burgvana.

Yes, as it turns out, heaven on the place formerly known as Pangea, aka Five Guys is and has been an Arlington staple for the last however many decades. Unfortunately, a nice chunk of those fattening years have been spent by my oblivious ass up here in the real capital of Penn’s woods attempting to notch time whilst staving off insanity like Thoreau on Walden Pond. And to think, I’ve known my wife’s brother for the better part of a dog year, and he never thought to tell me. For shame. But to his defense, his negligence could only be attributed to the fact that Sean Gray and the best burger joint in town had to have already happened. It’s like quarterback and cheerleader: Oh those two crazy kids?! They hooked up way back in freshman year.

The star-aligned coupling is always assumed. But I digest…

So after much ado over this grave, grave oversight. It was time to eat the damn burger! The next day we go to Five Guys, step on peanut shells and I proceed to order a “regular-sized” bacon-cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, pickle, ketchup, and a tear drop of mayo. I could continue to describe the General Patton, no-nonsense atmosphere of the place, the ever graceful passing of intoxicating sizzling flesh odors past my cilia into some probably large region of my brain causing me to prematurely and unknowingly make chewing-on-a-hambone-dog faces at everyone in my circumference. But I am growing sleepy and I fear that if I write the aforementioned descriptions and continue in this hyperbolic state of mind, I will get in my car and begin the three-hour burglimage down I-95 to Arlington. Tonight.

The number is called. The once neglectful turns heroic! Brother-in-law comes back to the table with two greezy sacks. He dumps them and I ascertain the whereabouts of my soon-to-be bludgeoned sandwich of ground chuck. I grab it and get to it. The events that took place soon after I sent my enameled meat rippers into the burger are not easily remembered. The story that I got from my tablemates was that I was in perpetual dog-face, I would not respond to my wife’s questions: “Is it good? Sean, is it good? Sean?” and that I scarfed the damn thing like it was a Skittle of beef.

All I can remember is that the bun was smashed around the burger to the point that it viced, rather, enveloped the calorie-rich contents that lay within its starchy walls. It took on the form of what would later be described by my brother-in-law as a “meatsule”. Abhorred but true. This capsule, of meat and other ingredients already mentioned was like a much larger, Rubik’s Cube sized profiteral of harmonious design that rang my bell like Quasimoto. It truly was the best burger that I have ever eaten in my life. Our gang relished the experience so much that we all went back for more the very next day where multiple burger slayings were committed. I wouldn’t know, I blacked out.

On my ride back to the city where the mayor looks like a homeless guy, I found out from my lovely wife that the “regular-sized” burger was anything but. There was a multiple patty situation, folks. In fact, it was reported that after I recorded my first bite, I looked at no one in particular with the face of a drowsy Dachshund and muttered the words “Et tu second patty?”

Welcome to Beauty in the Hideous

There isn't a mission. There isn't a goal. It's just words on fake paper, sliding and tripping and flowing all over the place, because we're all full up on words in here and there is no way we can keep them inside. Because we've got channels, channels, channels bringing in information, disturbing news, terrible stories, beautiful images, troubling tales and slide rules and H-bombs and who knows what else, we've got to let something out. And we've got to be able to tell you about the wonderful things we've done and seen.

Don't be surprised to see hysterical, over-the-top insanity and inanity in these pages, my friends. Expect nothing less.