One Line Says It All

Over heard today at the local grocery store:

My ex is so brutal that in the divorce settlement, I’m only allowed to talk to the voices in my head every other weekend.

A Vietnamese neighbor saw me coming upstairs with several pizzas for the Super Bowl. Later that afternoon, she knocked on my door and asked if she could borrow a pizza because she and her friends had run out of food.


In addressing a Tea Party audience this past weekend, Sarah Palin was seen with cribbed notes written in black ink on the palm of her hand. I wonder who will be the first person to remark that such an act adds new meaning to the term hand job.

Things to Watch For During Tonight’s State of the Union

Obama’s Introduction of foreign dignitaries including the Na’vi, the Cylons, and those creepy characters from District 9

Congressional members showing populist support by hanging tea bags from their $2000 Armani suits

The “You Lie” Glee Club receiving more applause than the President

Fox News Cutting In to Broadcast a 1994 Newt Gingrich Rebuttal

Supreme Court allowing large corporations to begin construction on luxury box Seats behind the President

Representatives of Indiana and Louisiana already drunk in anticipation of Super Bowl Game

Rachael Maddow in a Low Cut Pants Suit

Glenn Beck walking up and down the aisle hawking gold coins

The words “Saving Middle Class”, “Employment Opportunities”, and “Non Defense Measures” end up as a drinking game.

The best post analysis of the speech comes from John Oliver of the Daily Show

Sasha and Malia signal their father to wrap it up before the start of “American Idol”

Newly elected Senator Scott Brown showing off his own stimulus package

Smurfs on Steroids

Sitting in theaters watching 3D movies has always given me migraines. It is not the 3D process itself, which is enjoyable with or without an attached storyline. No, the migraine problem is rooted in my inability to keep my hands off the 3D glasses. I spend most of the screen time moving them up and down the bridge of my nose or taking them off completely just to see the contrast between 3D and blur. I have four eyes going into the screenings. Adding two more eyes becomes too weighty for me to bear.

These actions drive what few dates I have crazy -- especially my patented three-hand balancing act of glasses, barrels of popcorn, and several soft drinks in and around my lap. If I had had a fourth hand, I might spend some time actually holding my date’s hand, for my father told me that’s what is required of a good gentleman during a movie. I think the last movie my dad saw was the original "All Quiet on the Western Front." I told him times had changed.

A date once asked me why I couldn’t simply watch the movie without all the vertical hand gestures to my face. I didn’t have an answer for her. Luckily we stopped seeing each other during a "House of Wax" retrospective when I spilled a tall order of Coke down her left leg.

I hate going to movies by myself, so I don’t, if at all possible. That’s why I always carry singles in my wallet. Going to things alone reminds me too much of my teen years in Madison when I did everything as a gang of one, both legal and otherwise (and if truth be told, doing “otherwise” was even more strenuous).

Back then I couldn’t find a date even amongst the homeless. I spent most Saturday nights with a deck of cards, a pea, a card table, and three thimbles. The State Historical Society has pictures of me running for my life down State Street being chased by Madison’s finest and a few angry roughnecks from Black Earth and Portage.

I decided to see "Avatar" with a woman who fidgets in her seat even more than I do. I’ve known Adele for decades and it was she who coined this line after our first blind date:

"Not if you were the last guy on Earth and there were no German shepherds around."

Nor was I immune to her Dorothy Parkeresque insults even when I was with someone else:

"If breasts were brains, your cheap looking friend would be running MIT."

I still think about the psychologically damaged children the two of us could have produced. They might also have looked like police dogs. But I digress.

Adele is a member of one of the fast-growing subspecies in the world of web journalism: an online movie critic. She gets paid nothing for her reviews, but they show up all over the Internet. Since she uses big words and quotes Eric Rohmer in French and knows the difference between Heinrich von Kleist and Otto Von Bismarck, her remarks are taken earnestly by the literati.

Adele had already seen "Avatar" once in IMAX 3D, so she had no difficulty in allowing me the opportunity to pay the king’s ransom admission so she could see the movie a second time. She needed to continue to compile her "Avatar" cliché list for her column and one viewing was not sufficient. Since she hates sitting next to me during a screening, as it could construed a date with someone who was not a vegan, I bought her a ticket several rows below me and to my far left. The person sitting next to me was a little girl accompanied by her parents who became fascinated with my ability to juggle my glasses, soft drinks, and popcorn. Her mother kept muttering something to her about not imitating the strange man next to her.

This particular IMAX screening was packed with repeat viewers. I know this because half the audience kept whispering to the other half, “Wait till you see what happens next.” Crowds like this drive me nuts. Homeland Security should worry less about gun toters on airplanes and more about gun toters in theaters.

While I settled down to play with my glasses, Adele was fast at work jotting down notes. She can write in the dark without use of any illumination. She picked up that trick, she told me, from years of undressing in the dark with her dates. I never understood the correlation, and she always walked away from me without explaining. She had already counted as many story clichés within Cameron’s movie as the number of dollars it took to make the film, excluding the cost of prints and advertising during her first viewing. She decided to go a second time to check her math.

During the fifth or sixth or seventh flying sequence, my mind began to wander further than the hills of Pandora. This film had everything: the Cherokee Trail of Tears, Polynesian unison swaying, pidgin English, pantheism, and animism. It was anti-military, possibly anti-American, certainly anti-imperialist, pro-environment, and, I decided after witnessing the interaction with all the animal life, creationist to the core. Here was a place in the universe that obviously did have an Intelligent Designer: Humanoids flying around on cool looking pterodactyls while Venus flytraps waved at them from below

And the Tree of Souls. Who else but an Intelligent Designer would come up with a world where you blow up a big tree and everyone comes out of the woodwork to seek revenge?

I expected to engage in a spirited debate with Adele after the screening, perhaps at some vegan hot spot. So I began making a mental list of the questions I thought should have been answered somewhere within the movie:

Why didn’t the Tree of Souls do a smackdown at the first sign of environmental trouble?

How did the scientists obtain the Na’vi DNA in the first place? Was Gitmo still open 150 years in the future?

Why are the Na’vi blue and ten feet tall rather than red and the size of a Munchkin? Forget that question since this is a science fiction movie and not a fantasy.

How did a humanoid species evolve in an atmosphere heavy with carbon dioxide?

Why are the Na’vi wearing African tribal jewelry?

Why don’t the Na’vi immediately recognize the avatars in their midst, since they speak the language like Berlitz dropouts? Why didn’t they just kill them and turn a 160 minute movie into a six minute short?

Do the Na’vi walk around naked or are they wearing blue jump suits over their natural blue skin?

Why is it always the Marines who have to do the dirty work?

How did the Na’vi evolve when so many odd looking gigantasaurs could swallow them whole and use their spines as ten foot long blue toothpicks?

Why is their religious ceremony a cross between a Polynesian singalong and a Chautauqua revival?

Where did they get their culture and why wasn’t anyone smart enough to invent gunpowder?

Why just ride buzzards? Why didn’t they domesticate the hounds from Hell or any of the other wild life?

Why didn’t the white colonists simply drop fancy looking bows and arrows laden with small pox bacilli down on them to clear out the indigenous population? Who would know the difference?

Why hasn’t colonialist weaponry advanced in the 25 years since "Aliens?"

Am I the only one who sees a similar look between the Na’vi and some of the blue characters of "ThunderCats?"

Why does every pro-environmental film end with half of the environment destroyed or up in smoke?

Why does the unnamed transnational company give up so quickly? Why weren’t more soldiers sent in? It’s not like the Na’vi have lobbyists in Congress.

I never had that conversation with Adele. She met some guy coming out of the theater, waved goodbye to me and left. I threw my list of questions away, looked at the clock, and sneaked into “Daybreakers.” I also kept the 3D glasses.

The 2011 New Year’s Day Message from the FAA

Due to the hysteria created by the Underwear Bomber, the FAA went into a sanity lockdown and began a new round of regulations for the flying public that continued throughout 2010.

To the Flying Public:

Congratulations one and all for surviving another wild and wacky year with us here at the FAA as America continues to fly around this great globe of ours! We hope you've had as much fun working through our regulations as we’ve had making things up on the fly (aren't we the punsters?). We understand the awkwardness brought upon by observing those willing to walk across tarmacs at gunpoint, seeing their babies dropped on cold floors,or watching as infirm epileptics are held down by airport personnel during possible fake seizures. So in 2011 we will be making a few modifications to our bylaws to better assist you throughout your journey.

1) We will no longer require a colonoscopy 36 hours before take off-for those under the age of 100. 2010 has brought tremendous advances in technology. Many of our screeners (straight from Blackwater University) are now skilled enough to inject cobalt isotopes directly into the jugular. This hastens your ability to get through the day-long security lines since it irradiates all organs at once. Hiding anything anywhere on a human body is now a thing of the past. Frequent travelers have complained of the sienna-like color in their burning urine for weeks afterwards. We believe there is no scientific correlation between colored urine and sudden death; hair loss; shrunken genitalia; or anal and stomach bleeding. We have been told by government trendsetters that sienna will be the new Fall color of choice among the fashionistas, so frequent flyers are already ahead of the game.

2) The pat down, reach around, feel up finger jab will remain in force for the foreseeable future. We regret the unease this causes those young females whose landing strips don’t match up with their hair, and those well-buffed males who appear to be swaggering with a package far greater than they deserve. The latter will continue to be pulled over and strip-searched to see whether their equipment measurements are in line with those now listed on their passports. This is no time to enhance any numbers needlessly; for if you do the terrorists have won.

3) We at the FAA want all of you to know that we take complaints of using cattle prods and Bunsen burners very seriously. For the time being, we have stopped hiring any individual who has been employed either in slaughter yards or chicken processing plants, though some pesky applicants still sneak through. We certainly do not want our traveling public treated as if they were either cattle or capons.

3) As of January 1st, 2011, we will be stocking our own required brand of thong underwear for women and jock straps for men. We have listened to your screams of walking buck naked through terminals with only the harsh glare of searchlights and snarling dogs as your companions. Made of the highest quality of polyester blend, the FAA undies hopefully will be clearly delineated enough to keep our friendly genitalia-sniffing Dobermans at bay. Rest assured that we had no knowledge the Pentagon had mistakenly shipped us a pack of border patrol canines trained to bite down on all low-hanging fruit of illegal male aliens.

4) Expressions like “you call that a pee-pee?” and “dick-less wonder” and “let’s touch to make sure they’re hung properly” have been replaced with less provocative terminology for addressing male passengers as they wait to be manacled into their seats before flight. We at the FAA extend our heartfelt sympathies to all XY chromosome carriers traumatized by our playful female TSA operatives. Lucky for us, lobbyists in Congress have exempted all federal agencies from frivolous class action lawsuits. We are not to blame if your junk is undersized.

5) As of January 1st, females under the age of 30 whose nipples become erect due to the lack of heat in the cabins will be allowed to maintain them without incurring penalties. Those females over 30 must arrive at the airport with a doctor’s explanation explaining why this phenomena still occurs for them. Females suffering through hot flashes can continue to share their heat with passengers next to them.

6) Planes will continue to taxi from one airport to another if the flight is under six hours. We know this remains an inconvenience for those customers who find it quicker to walk to their destinations. However, strutting your stuff across the plains of the Midwest or traipsing around unescorted by federal marshals through the mountain ranges of Appalachia, for instance, will now immediately place you on the n- fly list and could cause you to be shot on sight. Trans-oceanic flights will maintain a glide of no more than ten feet over the surface of the water regardless of wave size.

We believe we have finally solved that embarrassing and sticky problem of public evacuation during a flight while bolted and manacled to your seats. We have replaced those holes cut in the seats that were hastily lined with adult diapers back in early 2010 with a new form of technology affectionately called “Outhouse Moderne” that combines the scent of French vanilla candles with a steady downward suction that keeps the rectum teased and delighted. Their stainless steel build makes for easier cleaning, and so far we have had no complaints of either splinters or cushion burn though it still remains cold to the touch.

We realize that flying is a privilege and not a right, so we at the FAA will continue to strive to make your future flights as unremarkable as possible. Wishing you all a Happy New Year and pleasant journeys in the year ahead!

PS.

Here is our winner of the 2010 Passenger of the Year at our new FAA approved snack shop at LAX.

Christmas Shorts In Between the Caroling

Those of us who scour the Internet looking for animated good cheer that doesn't involve liquids, find plenty to choose from this time of year in the files of gifted animators. Christmas means so many things to those with the talent to draw objects other than water from wells or long stretches in the state pen. Take these three samples for instance, all of which exhibit how expansive a holiday Christmas actually is.

PAPU Meets Santa Claus from Xeth Feinberg on Vimeo.

Jake Heifetz: A Real Mensch

Jake was one of my father's closest friends from the old days of the Greenbush area. Both met after World War II when Madison's Triangle Area became their home after long years of wanderings and displacements. The men knew each other for close to a quarter of a century before my father's declining health forced him to abandon the bitter Wisconsin winters in the late 70s for the warmer weather of southern California. My father never made it back to Madison.

Both men could talk the hind leg of a donkey and neither refugee ever grew tired of swapping stories about the good old days in the Shtetl which I always thought sounded pretty rotten and bleak for them and their families. They spoke to each other in Yiddish, prayed in Hebrew, and talked to the world in broken English.

Jake was the neighborhood handy-man. He could always be counted upon for his strong back and a steady carpentry eye. On most good days after work, he tended his garden, a lavish little backyard farm that supplied his family and friends with all the necessary vegetables for any dinner time meal.

In the early 1980s I came back to Madison for a wedding. In the last hours before the flight back to Los Angeles, I decided to visit the old neighborhood for the first time in many years. Walking past Jake's house I saw him tending that very special plot of land of his. He recognized me immediately and said how sorry he was to hear of my father's death. He offered me some tomatoes, corn and rhubarb for the trip home. I told him Madison's finest would be too bulky to take on the plane. No problem, he said. By the time I turned around his wife was walking towards me with cut tomatoes, steaming corn and whatever one does to make rhubarb edible. I had a great meal, missed my connector to Chicago and spent several extra hours at the Madison airport waiting for the next flight out.

I never saw Jake after that, but I'm certain that garden grown rhubarb from a lovingly cared for back yard plot on Chandler Street still clings somewhere near my spleen.

FROM HIS OBIT PUBLISHED IN A MADISON, WISCONSIN NEWSPAPER:

Jake Heifetz was born on April 17, 1917, in Lachwa, Poland and died Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009. Jake was a special man. He was a father of five, grandfather of six, and was soon to be blessed with the birth of his first great-grandchild. Jake himself was the second youngest of seven children born to Arieh and Leah Heifetz. All but two of these children were later killed by the Nazis (with a third older child already residing in the Unites States). In September 1942, Jake and his brother Zelig escaped the mass destruction of their town by the Nazis and their collaborators, and fled to the woods. There Jake and his brother lived for the duration of the war, homeless in their own homeland; fighting to survive against desperate odds. Jake not only fought against the Nazis, but he even managed to meet and marry his wife, Fania in the woods. The story of how Jake was able to obtain a ring for their wedding is emblematic of the way Jake lived his life. As the Nazi soldiers were fleeing from the Eastern front, one soldier begged for bread. Jake, who was armed could have killed this man to avenge all that he himself had been through, but he said that option did not seem right to him; instead he traded the man a loaf of bread for his ring. That ring served as Fania's wedding ring for over 50 years. Jake remained a person who believed in the kindness of others, and who brought joy to all around him. Jake carried candies in his pocket and all the children who knew him, knew to go to "Uncle Jake" for their sweet dose. With a candy in his pocket, and a joke up his sleeve, Jake was always ready to be part of any social gathering. Since arriving in Madison, Jake worked as a carpenter. His strong hands have helped build houses and cabinets, have held aloft the torah like nobody can, and have handed out countless candies and toasted many occasions with his ubiquitous shots of whisky. After his retirement, in 1974, Jake took on the role of caretaker at Beth Israel Center, a role which he has held for many years. In this role, many people would say, Jake was the synagogue. His recitation of the blessings were reminiscent of the world of the heder in which he spent his early years studying the Hebrew prayers. Jake was extremely well read, and perhaps under different life circumstances would have chosen to study or teach the Jewish texts. His humor and his great love of life, will be sorely missed by all his family and extended "family." May his memory be for a blessing. Jake is survived by his five children, Leah, Ethel (Tom), Pauline, Lawrence and Steven (Judy); and by his grandchildren, Tommy, Shayna, Bria, Allie, Jordan and Josh. Funeral Services will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, at BETH ISRAEL CENTER, 1406 Mound St., Madison with Rabbi Joshua Ben Gideon officiating. Burial will follow at Forest Hill Cemetery. The family would suggest memorials be made to the Morris Heifetz Welfare Fund at the Beth Israel Center.
Cress Funeral and Cremation Service 3610 Speedway Road (608) 238-3434

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Starman, 12, died Thursday October 15 in Boston, Massachusetts after being found comatose in his apartment in Cambridge. According to his family, the cause of death was kidney failure; he had deteriorated rapidly over the last two months.

Starman was known for his large size and his inquisitive and good-tempered personality. He tirelessly patrolled the front door, and supervised all visitors closely. Known for his extraordinary vocalization, he was able to engage his humans in conversation. Among his other achievements was the ability to leap onto any counter when running water, allowing a drink, was turned on. His penchant for unexplored water sources resulted in a number of upended or broken vases. He also showed unexpected precision in his movements, and while he put his entire head on the keyboard, he often was able to limit his keystrokes to CapsLock. He possessed extraordinary great big gentle soft paws.

He was first given the title of Great Cat by his human, Gary, who predeceased him. Afterwards, he worked with his housemate, Chicago, to support his residual human, Lynn, and he is widely credited with contributing to her survival. Since then he has received numerous accolades and honorary titles.

Because of his size, coloration, and disposition, it was rumored that his ancestry included a Labrador retriever. Although the claim was disputed, his ancestry remains a mystery.

His ceremony will be private. His ashes will be scattered one warm sunny day on the terrace, in his favorite sitting places. A portion of the ashes will be reserved for the daylilies and grasses known as “Starman salad” that have survived his quest for dietary supplements.

He is survived by his elder partner, Chicago, his human, Lynn, both of Cambridge, and another human, Jon, of Los Angeles.

He managed to purr one last time this morning as a final going away gift for his bereaved owner.

The Worst Pickup Line Ever

Last night I attended a screening near UCLA of “Inglorious Basterds” a film so tedious, boring and idiotic that halfway through the movie, my fingers began to reflexively Twitter Psalm 23 in Morse Code. I found this frightening, since I don't know Morse Code and have never Twittered anything in my life. I left the Westwood Theatre with fingers more arthritic than when I arrived several hours before.

Walking down the street, I noticed a couple in front of me on what obviously was a first date. How did I know this? The male was trying to hold the female’s hand; the female ever so politely kept jerking her hand away and trying to stick it in her mouth for protection.

I sped up my gait, for I love to hear the conversations of others -- especially those set up by Match.com or eHarmony. I stopped using Internet dating services when I discovered that profiling yourself as a man who loves going "Dutch" was more of a turn-off to women than posting on-line medical proof of non-erectile dysfunction.

The man, of normal height and build, was in his mid fifties. He was dressed as if he had just been kicked out of his house at 3 a.m. in the morning and forced to sleep in his car. The woman was rather attractive, though somewhat plump. She appeared to be in her late forties. She, at least, had spent some time looking through her wardrobe in preparation for this date. She was not wearing flip flops and professionally torn jeans.

This is as best as I can recall their post movie discussion:

MALE: I was really disappointed. I was expecting more blood and gore from Tarentino. This has got to be his lowest body count since "Reservoir Dogs." Did you see "Grindhouse?" Now that was fucking genius. I could tell you hated the movie. Your fidgeting was really annoying.

FEMALE: Damn straight I was fidgeting. Odd choice for our first movie, but I guess since you were paying, I had to go along. I haven’t seen any of his films. Now I know why: I find them too gory.

M: You just said you never saw any of his films so how do you know how gory they are?

F: I read the Internet Perry Mason.

M: Look I’ll make it up to you. I’ll buy you a Starbucks. You do still want to continue the date?

F: I’m a big girl.

M: You said it. I didn’t.

F: What?

M: Forget it.

F: You were a real charmer over the phone. You’ve been nothing but sarcastic and angry all evening. Did one of your ex-wives piss you off this afternoon? Were you like the high school clown?

M: At least I have a sense of humor. I'm a successful attorney, just like I said in my profile. You on the other hand left out a few key points. Like really important ones.

F: A successful attorney? From the way you're dressed, do all of your clients live on the beach with you? Tell me what I left out.

Here they stopped. Lucky for me I still had my Coke cup with me. I gulped down what was left, tossed out the ice, and then sat against the wall of Jerry’s Deli, holding out my cup for loose change. They did not notice me...just like my dates when I was actually going out with them.

M: Forget it. Let’s at least get some coffee. I'll buy.

F: Instead of that candlelight meal you promised over the phone? No, tell me what I left out of my profile.

M: The candlelight shit was going to be for the second date. I need some caffeine for the drive home. I'll tell you what you left out. That picture of yours is hardly current. What is it, like ten years old?

F: That picture was taken last summer in Jamaica when I actually was enjoying myself. Thank God you didn't volunteer to pick me up to see this fucking movie!

M: I live in Long Beach. You live in Northridge. Westwood is a convenient midway point. I use it all the time for these stupid get-togethers. I would drive up to Northridge if I saw any reason to do so tonight.

F: Are you fucking kidding me? Well there won’t be. You’ve been divorced how many times?

M: Let me tell you something. A woman your age should be happy any man pays any attention to her and is willing to try to use his junk to get her off.

F: Fuck you!

M: You only wish!

The woman stormed off. The guy turned around and walked past me muttering, “Fucking cow." Looking down at me, he said, "You’re lucky you’re homeless.”

He didn’t even drop any loose change in my cup.

Coming Up...More Blogs

Coming up topics:

Why I haven't blogged in ages.

The missing letter from a Disney superhero.

Looking for a Beetlejuice animation cell.

Lost in an August Minnesota blizzard.

Bumping into Miss Right 30 years too late.

My Divorce is Now Final, for Now

I just can’t quit her though She has grown big, fat and ugly since our first idyllic get together some three decades ago. Her face, once graceful, fine and gentle now is a lumpy mess; the curve of her calves, so svelte, beautiful, alluring now rage outward as an uncontrollable mass; and the simple luxury of a kiss and a hug long ago vanished, supplanted by the ubiquitous push and a shove. Her fingernails, manicured and delicate in her youth, now configure as gnarled lobster claws , a built in GPS system linked directly to my wallet and nothing more. She is mean, spiteful, and hard to deal with, but I just can’t quit her.

She has cost me a lifetime of fortunes and forced me into sleeping positions crack addicts wouldn’t be found dead in. I’ve abandoned friends and business associates. I’ve traveled long distances to be with her; lived in my car for her; forgotten to get a life, ditched girlfriends, forsaken showers and walked around like so many others under her spell -- dazed, confused, seeking that one dumpster to tie me over until her return.

How have I been repaid after years of extreme faithfulness, a fanatic subservience to all of her peculiar demands, and my blind tolerance towards her new BFF’s, speaking languages no universal translator would even bother inputting? Around her bloated waistline now hang, like malignant mothballs, the hip Hollywood tripe and their whiny "Entourage"-style acolytes; role-playing juvenile card sharks, and Renaissance Faire wannabees who stumble around looking as if they’ve missed the last botany boat ride to Fangorn. The worst of the lot are the gamers, ever confident that their opposible thumbs are gifts from above and therefore better than us mortals.

I want my old San Diego Comic Con back.

I first met her back in the late 70’s, in a poorly lit convention hall in a nondescript downtown hotel in San Diego. I didn’t know what to expect, me a fresh faced kid from the Midwest, she a southern California beauty of dubious background. I had never met anything like her before, certainly not in Madison. She had everything I wanted and more.She spoke my language and I didn't even need to hide my Midwest twang.

Her price for several days of companionship was in my budget, and so we danced the “come hither, you geek” fandango all weekend. The two of us were young, trim, our hormones not yet in need of high octane booster injections to keep us awake all night. I finally had someone to talk to that didn't nag me about cleaning up my room or bathing regularly or wearing shirts that didn't have button down collars.

I loved her from the very first booth of Fawcett Comics. This sweet little thing could have come from the wrong side of the tracks, off the beaten path, piping down from the valleys of no return for all I cared. She was all mine and I didn’t have to share her with no more than several hundred equally strange and pasty looking characters. The only girls I remember seeing were runway models that looked like Mojo.

She made all of us feel right at home for we were safe in her arms. Jocks didn't show up to beat us up; girls didn't pull surprise wedgies on us; and all of our milk money went to purchase additions to our collections. We were respected, cared for, made to feel like royalty. And no one laughed at me the entire time I wore my Superman cape.

Over the next several days I saw copies of all the comic books my mother had burned while mourning my death at either Antietam or Balaclava or Isandlwana or whatever battle she used as her excuse to rid the basement of everything I held dear. Early editions of X-Men, E comics, Mad Magazines, Fantastic Four. I could have them all back again, wrapped individually in clear cellophane and not in butcher paper, which is what I used to wrap them in.

I could have my collection back again. Just like new except for the inflation cost. Okay so that would mean I would have to finally get a job and no longer ask for pennies as a mime in front of LACMA on weekends. I could do that. I could finally go legit in my 20s.

Now, after all these years of loyal service and probably millions of dollars in bought goods, She treats me like a two bit hooker with speedball needles still stuck in my arms. She has gone big big time, paralyzing a city as if she were Godzilla and Mothra combined. 125,000 people arrive for her services this year. I am trampled on by hordes whose only connection to comic books is that they know how to spell paper, jostled around and packed into rooms as if I were practicing to become a Japanese commuter and forced to wait hours for over-priced hot dogs, cheap beer and cold hamburgers. Truckloads of paparazzi and gawking fans follow celebrities down halls that resemble Pamplona except here everyone resembles the bulls.

This is it. I finally want a divorce from her. I never want to see her again. I bump into no one any longer, except at parties where everyone is so drunk I am referred to as that crusty old spittle-soaked guy who hates the world. I’ve been shut out of too many panels and had too many of my feet stepped on by walking Hindenburgs.

I couldn't find anything I can afford. Hey! I'm buying comic book art, not Tiffany Crystal. The hotel rates are beyond exorbitant, including the one I stayed at that charged me $350 a night to swim in their fountain and scare off the pigeons.

I am now driving back on Interstate 5: angry, disillusioned, and exhausted and writing this post using both hands because cars are bumper to bumper so why worry about steering? And when I see her again, this time next year, mark my words, She’ll get a piece of what’s left of my mind. And I’ll be wearing steel tipped work boots so I won't care who steps on me.

NOIR OBGYN is finally out of the ER

It seems like forever, but it wasn't really that long ago. On May 6, 2009 I posted a wacky little piece entitled NOIR OBGYN: FINGERS OF FURY. At that time, I mentioned the treatment itself was about ready to go online. As you can see, I was off by several months.

I have always hated the process of writing. Twisting my head 360 degrees and spitting out pea soup is so much simpler an act than plowing into the thought process of producing one paragraph that seamlessly leads into the next. I just don't process thought that way. Creative passages lurch and jerk away from me, perambulating like some befuddled drunk muttering in sotto voce, "I'd rather be lost in the Gobi Desert than be part of this mess."

Despite my meandering prose and run-on sentences, no one ever confused me with Jack Kerouac -- unless we're talking about Garness Kerouac, the petty sneak thief I knew in Mad City years ago.

I remember at Madison Central High School, a teacher, upon reading one of my essays when I was in 10th grade, stuck her nose so close to my eyes that my lashes cleaned off the last snack she'd eaten in the teacher's lounge. What a caustic dog! She asked whether English was my second language. I told her it would be once I mastered stick figure cave painting.

For me to compose even my John Hancock on a worthless check, I go "method noir," turning as paranoid as a bag of snakes, as alcoholic as a beat poet, and as angry as a vegan at a Coney Island eat-a-thon.

I start smoking around the clock and even next to the clock. I prefer the cheap, unfiltered cancer sticks that make your eyes water and your mouth taste like twice-burnt flesh, though two-bit bargain basement stogies found burning on top of dumpster piles do just fine. I like second-hand smoke from hand-me-down cigars.

I punch myself in the kisser and kick myself in the groin. I cut myself shaving, yet leave a two-day stubble growth to assert my manhood. I toss my apartment looking for a bottle of three dollar gin to start a four day lost weekend. Energy- saving bulbs are tossed out the window, replaced with flickering neon lights.

An apartment ain't no damn good for "method noir" unless asbestos fibers flake downwards from the ceiling into your day-old, cigarette-filled coffee mugs, bought years before on the boardwalk when you were the captive young swain of some beat up old madame. I go out and steal this lung angina from condemned buildings around town.

I scrap away two layers of insulation, making my walls so thin the silhouettes of those next door neighbors performing nastiness aerobics on each other displace the need to download porn. I go out and hire actors to simulate whatever I just said.

I make additional changes to the mise en scène: A toilet functioning both as a bath tub and a dishwasher comes straight from a green web site called "Why Waste Water Fool?"

I collect dirty dishes from around the neighborhood and pile them sky high in the sink, then call in some favors and have a pest service deliver cockroach carcasses to throw around in a feng shui manner. For good measure, I cut up my "euro-trash furniture" to give the sense that either a drug cartel or the DEA has been rifling through my place looking for some blow.

I play the low cool bass of Charlie Mingus and rumble it against the wet cobblestone streets of that mean hydra the paparazzi call the City of Angels. I purchase both the rain and construct the cobble stoned streets. My back hurts; I now owe the mob plenty for they control both the rain and construction materials. And my last back alley crap game lost me my rent.

I stare out from cracked, shadeless windows and wait for the guns I've place strategically around the neighborhood to find owners that believe people do kill, not the Mach 10's in their sweaty hands. I hear a boisterous buxom blond knocking on my door, though any female over the age of 18 who doesn't outweigh me will do just as well. I get my babes from a new LA web site called "Los Angeles: Down, Dirty, Cheap and Free to be You and Me."

Now I'm ready to dance my fingers over my Underwood and compose sentences that don't resemble a schizophrenic's notepad. The end result: Noir OBGYN: Fingers of Fury.

So that's why this took so long. Oh that and I herniated a disc and found salvation in my cats trying to bury me as waste material in their litter boxes. According to this classy noir video I also need a sexy accent to go along with my stubble.

I Can Predict the Weather Because of the Moonwalk

I saw Michael Jackson perform only once. It was at Dodger Stadium and he was performing along side his brothers during their Victory Tour concert. My ticket stub reminds me the date was December 3, 1984. My high-priced seat in Chavez Ravine was so near the top of the vertigo section that had I fallen over backwards, I would have washed ashore on Catalina Island.

While I liked Michael and had followed his career since his Jackson Five days, I was light years removed from the fanaticism of the couple seated next to me. Both knew all his lyrics and dance steps by heart and proceeded to entertain those around us with movements best described as epileptics on crack.

The girl was a good 75 pounds heavier than her intended body frame making every one of her violent sideways gyrations potentially lethal to me. To make matters more dangerous, she was drunk. I had been an open air concert goer for two decades by that time. I had seen Joplin and the Doors and the Fuggs and the Stones and Led Zeppelin and The Dead and countless other performers; yet I never felt my safety more threatened than on that December night. Shortly thereafter I became a leg man.

After Jackson's signature "moonwalk" performance, the girl moaned for no apparent reason that Michael had invented that move. I was too stupid to remain silent. I told her that no, Michael had copied that series of steps from other choreographers like Shalamar and tap dancing wizards of yore.



Her head all but exploded. I thought she was going to smother me into the next time zone -- especially when she growled she had never heard of any tap dancers named "yore." Her boyfriend, Megatron, starred at me, telling me with his eyeballs, "Don't even argue with her if you value your life." After that evening, I realized I had arrived at the age where having a strange woman throw up in my lap was no longer an advantage in asking for her phone number.

But I had seen a variation of the moonwalk performed years before Michael Jackson made it world famous. I busted up my left leg trying to duplicate it. Because of my orthopedic condition, I now have advanced warning when either a blizzard or tornado is about to strike. Unfortunately, since I live in Los Angeles, that meteorological ability does me no damn good.

RIPPLE DISSOLVE PLEASE

One night back in the late 1970s, I found myself walking around that area of lower Manhattan known as Alphabet City. This was my first trip to the Big Apple, so naturally, I was all gung-ho to experience the true underbelly of what was America’s most bankrupt city at the time. No museums or art galleries or fancy restaurants for me: I wanted the urine essence of NYC. At 1 a.m. in the morning I was so lost amidst the abandoned buildings, the needle parks, the panhandlers, and the drugged-out Midwestern tourists that Rand McNally would have thrown up its longitudes in despair over ever seeing me again. Even the stray dogs stared at me with compassion, for they were just as disoriented as I was.

My sense of direction has always been lousy. I go missing in my apartment looking for the bathroom. I can’t read street maps; the stars above me all look alike; if I were a sailor, a sextant would be nothing more than an object I would feel guilty imagining myself with. That night I was so turned around I felt all Bonfires of the Vanities inside me, though the Tom Wolfe novel was still a decade away from publication.

I was staying at the Chelsea Hotel about a year before Nancy Spungeon created a reason to have her own Wikipedia entry. The tattooed woman behind the reservations desk had been very helpful, giving me an upscale room where the mattress was still drying out from the party the night before, its stained edges matching the garish yellow wallpaper that itself appeared to be tearing away from the walls in disgust.

My occupancy came with all the usual Chelsea Hotel amenities for that time: opened liquor bottles, someone's soiled underwear, and a number of used hypodermic needles. I don’t recall whether there were any surprises in my toilet, but there might have been. If I had looked hard enough, I would have found granules of heroin or cocaine lying around on the floor; however I was on a business trip so I ignored that temptation to speedball by myself.

That evening, I asked the hotel’s concierge where I could find the mean streets of Manhattan. He refused to divulge that information unless I paid for it. I had seen "The French Connection," "Superfly," and Death Wish, so sliding him some "jack" for some "411" made all the sense in the world to me. Why this concierge was whispering from behind a dumpster located in an alleyway across the street from the hotel I still don’t quite understand. He smelled like New York City in the summer, so I knew he was legit.

I greased his palms. He told me to look down, smell the wind direction, and then follow the yellow pee line from 23rd and Broadway down to East Houston, and then keep walking towards the East River. I would find all my dreams answered in an enchanted place called the East Village. He told me to hurry back before dawn or the hotel would rent out my room to someone living. If they found my body, I would be ID'd through dental records, which, remarkably, remain to this day the most valuable part of my estate.

In the late 1970s the East Village was an exotic, thriving crap hole: One of the roughest, toughest, most desperate areas of the city. This was still paradise compared to other areas of NYC. A cabby taking a piss on one of the side streets told me that as bad as this part of Manhattan looked, Fort Apache, the Bronx was Hell burning in overtime. I asked him where that borough was. I just wish he hadn’t turned to face me when pointing north.

Co-mingling together on the East Village streets like a social worker’s meal ticket were the starving homeless, the diseased hookers with their psychotic pimps, burned out bohemians, forlorn street artists, and the ever present white Wall Street East Sider looking to score some blow -- cocaine or otherwise. Amazingly, the vibrancy on the streets was as infectious as typhus. People were singing and dancing, apparently caring less whether this night might be their last.

It was so romantic. Love like the scent of feces hung marvelously in the air. "Why had no extremely talented though unknown playwright or composer ever thought of taking this roiling atmosphere of humanity and walloping it into a hit Broadway play?" I pondered as I stepped gingerly around the retching wretched.

Near the corner of Avenue B where East Houston turns into Clinton this dopey white boy found the goldless rainbow's end. Under a flickering street lamp and to the beat of a broken down, first generation boom box, a bunch of black and Puerto Rican street performers were sweating out moves as if auditioning for Jerome Robbins. These guys were taking turns bouncing off of each other, a repertory filled with exaggerated high side kicks, impossible splits and knee drops, head spins and the gravity defying one armed handstands. Their syncopated heel work was extraordinary. Either these performers were the scruffiest looking gang bangers out of Julliard or a bunch of muscled up guys working off steam because they hadn’t made the cut to a "West Side Story" revival.



I have always been envious of tap dancers. They can high step across floors, jump stairs, slide over table tops and in some instances march straight up walls and ceilings. Many times they perform with partners, making going to social gatherings that much cheaper. My own dancing skills remain limited to those movements one makes dancing at the end of a rope of one’s own making. The only time step I ever successfully learned was placing one foot in front of the other. I think my parents called it walking.

One kid in particular offered a time step that appeared to make him levitate across the sidewalk. I checked to see if he had a people mover underneath him. He slid backwards yet I never saw his feet leave the cement.

I asked him afterwords how he did that particular move. He wondered what a scrawney white guy was doing hanging around at this hour of the night in the East Village. I told him I got lost looking for Lambeau Field. Then we all scrotummed up to talk Giants and Packers and Bears football. You can bond with any other male as long as sports, guns, girls, and violent movies are the topics. I pulled off my shoe and give the group my cab fare home. They were that good and I was tired of limping with a bunch of coins in my sock.

Herky-jerky, on my way back to the hotel trying to emulate that dance move. My actions scared a drunk guy so badly he flagged down a passing cop car. I was forced to walk a straight line to prove I was not publicly intoxicated. I explained what I had just seen and what I was trying to do. The black cop turned to his white partner and translated to him that I was just another bow-legged, knocked-kneed, non rhythmic white kid trying to go urban. The white cop told me to stick to the waltz and the Twist. Learning street would just injury me into sterility. I asked if they would drive me back to the Chelsea. They laughed and with their siren blaring, they sped away.

Fast forward about a half a dozen years. I see Michael Jackson perform “the moonwalk” on television during the 25th anniversary of Motown. I immediately think back to this unknown 1 a.m. dancer in the East Village. Michael had carried the dance step to a new plateau; but, obviously, it was neither as new nor as revolutionary as so many of the non-dancing commentators were saying at the time. I signed up the next day to learn how to do the back slide, technically the correct term for this tap dance move.

I had taken a couple of lessons when I discovered that although I had two working feet, one walked south with confidence while the other traveled north under witness protection. I was more Fred Mertz than Fred Astaire.

Instead of practicing on a dance floor, which I found boring though safe, I decided to play fast and loose in a back alley one afternoon. I was making progress on the glide when, out of nowhere, much like a gaggle of mistresses at a Republican get together, a pot hole rushed forward as I was sliding backwards. I tumbled downward long enough to view nothing truly of importance flashing before my eyes. I landed on my ass, dislocating my shoulder and tearing up my left Achilles tendon. I was on crutches for a month. I found it very suspicious that my instructor paid me not to return after my recuperation. I never did learn how to moonwalk properly, but the gimp in my leg gives me first crack at weather predictions.

To my best recollection, this video approximates many of the moves I saw that night some 30 years ago in the East Village. And, yes, I still practice my version of "the moonwalk." People who have seen it dial Houston to tell them I have a problem.

Hoping Not to Blow My Fingers Off this July 4th

Today celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That means as a nation we are 233 years old, still young enough to repeatedly believe we lose our innocence every time something really bad happens to our national psyche. That hoary expression "America will never be the same again" has been used so often by commentators since our beginnings that it might as well be part of a Madison Avenue created brand logo by now.

In my lifetime, America has been irretrievably shaken to its very foundations so often that if this country were a condo complex, no self respecting building inspector would allow tenants to remain within its walls. We were shocked when the Russians launched the first cosmonaut into space; we were stunned during Kennedy-King-Kennedy assassinations; we were humiliated by the events of Watergate; we were surprised at the machinations involved over the Iran-Contra hearings; we were embarrassed throughout the Clinton impeachment, and, of course, 911 spelled the end of everything except numerals.

We have always taken the blow, standing stronger every time, returning to our place of prominence, bloodied yet unbowed. We can survive anything because America's uniqueness lies in its most abundant non-outsourced asset: amnesia. After every major kick to our collective head, we rush to our Lethe rivers, whip up a 200-proof broth of amnesia ambrosia, then triumphantly walk home to our City on the Hill. This must be a Puritan-Pilgrim thing, for we are forever being reborn guiltless, faultless and sinless. Best of all without a hangover.

I love this most about America. We stay magically virginal regardless of how many times we get laid by the patronizing politician, the snake oil salesman, or the cunning clergyman. Nothing fazes us. We are as bendable as a willow facing down a twister. Always as pure as the driven snow even if the slush has been trucked in over four states. Every day may tempt us with the perverseness of a prom night escapade, yet with the knowing expectation that if something nasty does occur, we can erase the mistake by ignoring it, forgetting about it, or shoving it under an imported carpet.

I love the 4th. I used to be one of the jerks who would hold lit cherry bombs in my hands until the last second; who would light sparklers in the dry tinder of the Madison Arboretum; who would eat so much at picnics that vomiting and viewing the fireworks became synonymous.


So before I again test my luck with illegal fireworks, loaded weaponry, and my stomach vs. beers and brats, I leave you with three of my very favorite videos. Each one describes an aspect of our national psyche that no other nation can lay claim to.

We are truly an optimistic country. We really are. Nothing will ever defeat us for we have nothing to fear except fear itself -- unless you spend your time watching Fox News. Then all the armaments granted us by the 2nd Amendment won't be able to protect us from THEM and, damn it, we know who THEM are or is, or whatever. Otherwise, no matter how bleak, dour or depressing the situation facing us looks, happy days are just around the corner even if those constructing the corner just went bankrupt. Not only do we make lemonade from lemons, we pour enough sugar into the mix to send us all into diabetic shock. Too bad if you don't have health insurance.



We are a religious country and with it a tolerant nation. Otherwise why would we have so many toe-tapping, knee-slapping, jumping up to the ceiling songs of spiritual redemption? Gospel music is our salvation. Without it, this country would be as poor as a deep sea fisherman in Kansas. Even a down on his luck white sinner like Elmer Gantry can find solace in a black church if he knows the words. Who would have thunk that Burt Lancaster could sing?




We are a nation that begs to be pickled and processed by polecats. Otherwise who would we buy our musical instruments from so we could eventually forgive them for leading us astray? Wall Street wrecks havoc on Main Street, yet we blame the unions. Politicians blame the weak, the sick, the infirm and the immigrants while they scrap regulations and rules so they and their lobbyist friends can make millions. Congressional representatives refuse to vote to to provide the electorate the very same comforts afforded them for life. No wonder all of us wait expectantly for Prom Night.

The Relaxed Wife: A Study in Serenity

I wish I could find a politician's wife to marry. Any female willing to stand by her man in front of the entire world while he fashions some horse's ass excuse for sliding back into teenage Porky's-Animal House stupidness is my kind of soulmate. Or sole mate, depending on whether she also shines shoes. I wonder if you have to be a politician yourself to purchase a relaxed politician's wife?

Whatever factory manufactures these porcelain dolls, I pray it remains on American soil. We need the jobs. Given the political hypocrisy rampant wherever powerful men gather, a healthy supply of Stepford crystal will always be in demand.

These birds come equipped with a morals free chip planted in their furrowed brow, a hypnotically induced blank expression on their faces, and spinal rectitude their mates can only aspire towards. I would love a piece of this franchise action. Imagine the money one could make selling these relaxed wives wherever good men gather to bond: strip clubs, stag parties, bordellos and, of course, those weekly males-only poker games.

To cavort with hookers, play footsie in bathrooms, walk along non existent Buenos Aries waterways and still be forgiven by your mate . They don't stock that syrup on the on the shelves of Walmart. But I bet Atarax is dispensed in its pharmacies.

This 1957 promotional film from Pfizer is for Atarax, a drug still administered today for the alleviation of anxiety and the embarrassment of nasal drip. With just the right medication, nothing will ruffle the feathers of this modern Eisenhower woman including being married to a guy who spends his waking hours making funny constipated faces and dreaming of money attached to fish hooks. That's evidence better living through chemistry is not merely for the young experimenters or the sick and dying. It's for all of us.







I love 1950s wives. They spend their waking days prancing around their apartment, dressing like Donna Reed, reading books in a monotone voice-over, cooking, cooking, cooking, and exercising their cares away with a hot iron over a bunch of clothes straight out of the washer. How would an upscale 1950s woman have taken the news that her husband had tom-catted around like some back alley wastrel? Probably the same way today's political wives do: whiskey neat, water back, with all the muscle relaxants from their last plastic surgery. Unless, of course, they were NRA members.

Goodnight Bill

I love short films. Perhaps it's because I have attention deficient disorder or a small bladder or the thought that I might forget where I parked my car if I stayed too long in the theater. As much fun as it is to see mind rupturing visual effects, or hear the best in ear splitting noise, or marvel at what great actors can do with awful dialogue (Lawrence Olivier as "Zeus" in Clash of the Titans readily comes to mind), sometimes all I need to stumble through my day is a good short film and plenty of aspirin.

I remember this short from a Los Angeles film festival of several years back. It made a tremendous impact on the viewing audience. Simple. Pointed. Powerful. Don't believe that bromide, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Too bad you can't teach old politicians anything.

Why do I bring this film up now? If you don't ask, I won't tell.