Archive for June, 2007
42 items.
Door to Door with Paris Hilton (The Woman, Her Bible, Her Purse) – Digital Painting
June 29th, 2007 |Posted In: Art-Paintings
Door to Door with Paris Hilton (The Woman, Her Bible, Her Purse)
Digital Painting 2007
20 in w by 30 in h
Thought I’d do a parody digital painting of Paris Hilton with the status symbol purse, the pre-incarceration Bible and “The Power of Now”, and the heart or flying “V” with which she uses to point her i’s, which under the appropriate circumstances looks like a touch of descending dove.
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She has more talent than in this single toenail clipping of mine
June 28th, 2007 |Posted In: General, Others Do Art
She has more talent than in this single toenail clipping of mine.
Wait. That doesn’t sound right.
Never mind. It doesn’t matter WHAT I say as long as you know what I mean.
Exactly what kind of genius she’s got I don’t know but the below note Paris Hilton sent TMZ, if it hit EBay, would probably sell for more than what I’ve earned and cost combined my entire life to date, and I mean my weight in blood and every thing I’ve ever done including creative efforts and that job where I ran across busy streets measuring them with that wheel that goes click-click and stepped on a rusty nail that put a big hole in my foot.
What an honest and brilliantly conceived self-portrait. And the hearts! From the heart. Like all great art.
No wonder some blogs are extolling her virtues, saying that on Larry King she was full of grace and humility, showing no self-pity, genuine all through.
If we chomped her genius–both physical and psychic–she’d go ouch and run off to have the teeth marks buffed down, because she’s she’s pure gold, that Paris Hilton, pure gold.
Less than 2 Days (like not 2 days at all, like right now)
June 28th, 2007 |Posted In: Social Studies (the big grab bag)
Resurrecting an old REAL ID graphic of mine from back in 2005…
Tomorrow’s the deadline for trying to get your Senator to say no to an employment verification system requiring everyone to have a REAL ID for a job. Read more here.
Will it make any difference all those faxes? If it does I swear I’ll try on a daily dose of optimism.
Going through posts I’ve never posted, wondering which ones I might salvage, and came across one made Jan 14 2006 in which I’d noted H.o.p. was wondering if Bush could be farted out of office. I also had noted how much I like marshmallows but rarely eat them.
Jennifer at Saying Yes has hit me with a meme where I’m supposed to post 8 random facts about myself.
The marshmallows strike me as a good place to start.
1.) I like marshmallows a lot but rarely eat them. In fact I never ate them for years then I realized a rare ooo wow treat didn’t have to happen once every decade and started picking up a bag every two years. I like them too much to pick them up more frequently. I don’t want to make a habit out of it. Plus, I just don’t like eating that much sugar. We can get a bag of sugar and it will last forever as we use so little sugar.
2.) I used to have a kind of weird fear of post offices because postal clerks freaked me out. I don’t know if I still do as I haven’t been to a post office in so long. But I’ve always liked post office boxes. Getting mail out of a post office box is more special than getting it out of your mail box. And getting mail out of a mail box inside your apartment building is more special than getting mail out of that big box outside your apartment building. (Or I just plain dislike post offices. They don’t make me hyperventilate. I just don’t like them.)
3.) I used to pick through and eat all the raisins out of the box of Raisin Bran.
4.) I can’t take liquid medicine. Gag reflex. If I do have to take liquid medicine that doesn’t immediately make me gag and throw up, I hold my nose and wash it down as quickly as I can with a really flavorful chaser, like cranberry juice, and still I jump up and down and flail my hands screeching yuck yuck agh agh gross gross for fifteen minutes.
5.) When H.o.p. was an infant, several months old, 1, 2, 3, 4 years old, I used to bury my nose in his hair and drink in as much of his wonderful H.o.p. smell that I could, because it was the best the most incredible the most special smell in the world and I hoped never to forget it.
6.) Street lamps used to turn off when I walked under them. Seriously. Nothing on me bright that was reflecting and causing them to shut off. Marty can attest to this. I would walk down the street and as I reached each street lamp it would shut off and then when I’d passed it would come back on. “How are you doing that?” people would ask. I know people will say, “Coincidence!” but it’s true.
7.) I never liked the music of The Ramones. Not that this was a secret or anything.
8.) I’m really pitiful at most card games, know nothing about odds or strategy, and I am terrible terrible terrible at Poker. I used to really want to learn to play, especially being on the road and bands many times playing Poker late after gigs. This was way back in my early 20s when I would try to play (I was still drinking and usually I’d have had too much) and I would always lose. Terribly. (At least that’s how Marty phrases it, that I lost terribly.) We didn’t have much money so I never could lose very much but we could ill afford to lose any of it. But I’m not a gambler type so I would play very rarely anyway. Still, as mentioned, whenever I did play I always lost. And then I’d hit that point where it would be my last hand because I would have no more money to bet afterwards. Each time, on that last hand, I always won back every cent I’d lost. So I never lost any money at Poker, but I never won any either. I only needed this to happen a few times before I said enough was enough and never played Poker again.
I’m now supposed to tag 8 people to send along the meme to but I can’t think of any who might not say, “I don’t think so.”
Me: A is for American International Pictures.
Me Too: B is for Brass! Washington DC! Night! Tense percussion. Pentagon! Cut to…uh wait, let’s rewind the brass heading into their meeting because I’ve got to watch these guys walk around the corner in that hall again. I’m helpless to fully elucidate my delight at such bad acting, right off the bat, that you could spend all night just replaying two actors rounding a corner. Helpless to elucidate it at all.
Me: I noticed. “Fully elucidate”. My god. We are so bad at this. Trade out “communicate” for “fully elucidate” or I’m going to abandon this post altogether.
Me too: I wrote that then all sit at a big rectangular table but I’m having to change that because it’s not so big after all. It’s announced that at 0300 that morning the Expeditionary X1 rocket ship, missing for 61 days, was sighted drifting 90,000 miles off in space. Is anyone left alive? The MR1 appears to be a dead ship. They’ve had no contact since it was preparing to land on Mars two months beforehand and had believed to have crashed.
Me: Is it the X1 or the MR1?
Me Too: Lesson one. Do not ask this film to be too exacting.
Me: Or you.
H.o.p.: This movie’s even more hilarious than Buster farting! Write this down, too! FFFFFBBBBTTTT!
Me Too: The confusion stems from their wanting it to be Rocketship X-M with a hindsight on space travel that could only be supplied by 1960 peering back a few years and seeing how, no, Rocketship X-M wasn’t the best date movie in the world, not with everyone dying in the end. But back to the X1/MR1 which must be retrieved. And if there is someone in the ship, how to get them home safely? I keep wondering what that is on the wall behind the guy standing at the head of the table but I’m too lazy to take a pic, and besides we’re just anxious to get this movie rolling. After a lot of talk striving to make things seem vaguely credible, because talking suits lend an AIR, whether discussing fuel or the dormouse in the teapot, the Mission Heads leave Hollywood/DC for Hollywood/Nevada where there’s stock footage to fill some space, and, again, presumably lend an air of credibility. And more stock footage. And still more stock footage. And finally they’ve got the MR1 on the radar screen. They start a countdown minus one minute for bringing in the ship by remote control. And the world waits for the ship’s projected landing in Nevada at 9:12. News reports show footage of the 4 individuals who were on board, including a woman, of course, for sake of sexual tension and HIGH PITCHED SCREAMS, presumably.
Me: And who are these four people?
Me Too: Colonel Thomas O’Bannion, the navigator, played by Gerald Mohr, Naura Hayden as Dr. Iris Ryan, biologist and zoologist, daughter of the late Professor Alfred Ryan…
Me: All women of science in the 50s were the daughters of men of science, weren’t they?
Me too: And look at that television. They knew the meaning of framing a story. Which in this case you can tell will be all about O’Bannion, with his flight suit baring a glimpse of chest, and Ryan’s suit nicely emphasizing her contours.
Me: Holy, flying pheromones!
Me Too: Would you shut the hell up, already, while we account for the rest of the missing? The professor with the goatee is Theodore Gettell, played by Les Tremayne, designer of the rocket ship and auctioneer in “North by Northwest”. And last but kind of not least, Chief Sam Jacobs, the beat-talking electronics expert, played by Jack Kruschen.
Me: All good sci fi names. I’m hooked and wondering who has survived. Is it the hunk, the babe, the wizened professor or the engineer. My guess is it’s not going to be the engineer.
Me Too: The rocket landing after more stock footage, we should soon be learning.
H.o.p.: Could there be aliens on board?
Me Too: The Radiation Monitors approach…
Me Too: The door to the ship opens…
Me: That’s a ship?
Me Too: “It’s the girl!” She ushers ground crew into the ship. Spacey music starts.
Me: She could only appear to be Iris Ryan, right? That’s what that dark door seems to be telling us. What if she’s a monster in disguise and is devouring everyone in the ship, and she’ll come back out and drape herself against the door frame again, allure more into the ship, devour them all, and so on and so forth until there are no men left on Planet Earth and she reveals herself as actually being from Cat Women of the Moon.
Me Too: I was thinking the same thing, so we breathe a sigh of relief when all emerge though it’s with someone or something on a stretcher, a bit of green something peeking out from under the blanket where an arm should be. Iris begs, “How can anyone cope with that?”
Me: It’s not easy being green.
Me Too: To the hospital where whoever it is has been given a sedative. We learn the growth is spreading rapidly and that all the taped records on the ship are empty, as if erased!
Me: Uh oh. Iris could still turn out to be a monster.
Me Too: She perhaps has some clues. But she can’t remember how her crew mate was infected or by what! So, they tell her to start at the beginning and tell them everything that happened from the day they left.
Me: Wow, the girl is the narrator of the story. Cool.
Me Too: They were all in high spirits, just after take off, until they’re almost hit by a blazing red, highly radioactive meteor! And still are in high spirits. I’ve never seen people look so unintimidated by the prospect of being destroyed in a couple of seconds. All in a day’s work!
Me: All in a day’s work? We are so lame at this.
Me Too: Teddie drags off Sam to get some beauty sleep. “OK, professor, I dig!” And Tom delivers a speech on a childhood dog to Iris, about how he wanted that new dog to sleep in his room but the family wouldn’t allow it, so he used to have to go downstairs at night when he was a kid to make sure that dog was still there, and pretty sure people will be just as sure of space travel as he was of his dog. “And as I’d like to be of you,” he grins at Iris, lecherous, debonaire, something, I don’t know.
Me: Iris is every teenage boy’s new dog.
Me Too: He calls her Irish. Guy’s got a major lisp or something. She compares space to the lights on Broadway and they make a date to see Broadway when they get back to Earth.
Me: Never even mind what the interior of the rocket ship looks like. Right?
Me Too: Because it’s just Two Seconds to Destiny in another Hollywood death trap.
H.o.p.: When are they going to show the title?
Me: That’s right, they haven’t shown the title yet.
Me Too: I guess that’s why they have Iris orally identifying, “Mars the angry red planet,” as she glimpses their destination outside the portal, having made it through the Angry, Red Meteorite Belt.
Me (as Irish): “Sounds so foreboding! I wonder if some things aren’t better left unknown.”
Me Too (as Tom the Navigator): “That’s what they said on the Santa Maria…”
Me (standing in for First Nations’ Populations): Sore spot! Can you guess why?
Me Too (as Tom the Navigator, who is anxious to bag both Irish and Mars then move on to other brave new worlds for taking): “You know Irish, you’re the first scientist I’ve ever known with lovely long red hair.”
Me: Do you think if this was a real rocket ship that Iris would be put out by the navigator hitting on her all the time or do you think she’d be the Flame On, hep cat Martini girl anxious for action?
Me Too: I don’t know. Getting some mixed signals here. She accepts a Broadway date but now she’s complaining she doesn’t like being called Irish as she never knows whether he’s calling her by name or nationality. To which, Tom portentously replies, “When I call you by name, you’ll KNOW it.” And Iris responds with a look somewhat like this.
Me: Exactly like that.
Me Too: Go to Sam reading FANTASTIC magazine, “The Monster and the Martian Maid”, “Loathsome Beasts”, “Weird Monsters”! The tale he’s relating is about a woman who runs across burning sands as a monster relentlessly pursues, his five arms reaching hungrily for her! “To be continued next week”.
Me: Sounds vaguely like Tom chasing Iris, doesn’t it? I’d run too with safari-eyed Tom after me.
Me Too: The cover looks very much like Iris on the run.
Me: Interesting.
Me Too: Never-the-less, onward to Mars. Or FORWARD.
Me Too: And we pass some time with Tom looking on while Iris does things like type and try to hide the fact she’s sneaking perfume. Finally, at 47 days, they’re orbiting Mars and preparing to land.
H.o.p.: How long is this flashback going to be? Through the whole movie?
Me: Apparently H.o.p.’s beginning to think the more interesting plot line must be going on in the hospital, in the present.
Me Too: They land. Mars is rife with vegetation and Tom expects there’s bound to be something alive out there. He then proceeds to relate another story about how his family’s charmed, his grandfather having had a sixth sense, especially in Indian Country, because if there was an Indian around his ears would start to twitch. “It runs in the family.”
Me: Second allusion to Indians. Should we take note?
Me Too: I haven’t a clue. Later, nothing having moved around yet outside, they describe the vegetation as being frozen and it’s remarked that if there are Martians then they must be vegetable.
Me: Because no Martians have marched up and said “Howdy”.
Me Too: But they know that SOMETHING has got to be out there. But they’ve got the speakers on outside and there’s no sound, nothing. Which prompts Ted, the Professor, to remark that the thin air might explain the lack of sound. Iris picks up on it and says that would explain perhaps why the plants don’t move, no breeze! But Ted thinks otherwise. “I wonder,” he says, “could it be intentional? I know it sounds unreasonable. But it just doesn’t seem natural.”
Me: Doesn’t sound unreasonable at all.
Me Too: To which Tom replies, “You mean you think it’s controlled?”
Me (as Iris): “What beings could possibly exercise such fantastic control?”
Me Too (as Tom): “There’s one way to find out! I’m going out there!”
Me: Bold!
Me Too: Remember? Tom and the Santa Maria? Nothing’s left better unknown?
Me: Right.
Me Too: So they put on their spacesuits and Sam and Tom compliment their biologist/zoologist by going on about how the spacesuit hides her lovely curves. Tom’s remarking on how the designer must have been a woman hater, when Iris’ eyes land on the portal and she freezes, a peculiar blue creature glimpsed. She SCREAMS.
Me: You did say that would be her job, to scream.
Me Too: And thus does the flashback end, with my first memory of the film, as I saw this from the back of a station wagon at a Drive Inn Theater when I guess I was about four years old. I don’t know. It was released in 1960, when I was three, but I thought I was around five when I saw it, so cutting the difference maybe I was four?
Me: Yeah, I remember the scary blue alien looking in through the portal window.
Me Too: What happened? Iris can’t remember anything other than it was horrible! She’s obviously had a tremendous shock and developed a mental block. The doctor observes her memory is already taking on a quality of unreality.
Me: How would they know? Were they there? Have they ever been to Mars?
Me Too: No, but it’s a kind of curious comment on the movie as a whole. Remember how the woman on the cover of “Fantastic” magazine looked a lot like Iris?
Me: The one trying to outrun the five-armed Martian monster?
Me Too: Right.
Me: Maybe none of this happened? Maybe she’s in some strange shock over Tom pursuing her and there were no monsters after all? Other than Tom?
Me Too: She is, after all, a creature of the weaker sex.
Me: What about narcosynthesis? Can we get the whole truth and nothing but the truth via drugs?
Me Too: That’s what the good doctors are discussing.
Me: But her mind might snap!
Me Too: Indeed.
Me: Who cares?
Me Too: That’s what I say, but realize this, “When we penetrate her mind block into her suppressed memories, her recall will undoubtedly be colored by her mind’s interpretation of what she experienced. In effect, whenever she’s remembering anything that’s alien, frightening to her, we’ll see it as her mind saw it.”
Me: “And remember. Her mind had to save itself by forgetting!”
Me Too: In other words…
Me: What she has to say is up for interpretation’s grabs.
Me Too: But forge ahead, for as Iris notes, that memory…
Me: However unreliable…
Me Too: Must be excavated in order to help HIM.
Me: Whoever HIM is.
Me Too: As if we don’t know. The injection readied, they needle her, she grimaces and we float back to Mars where she’s telling Tom how “Horrible” it was what she saw but Professor Ted and Navigator Tom aren’t believing her either because they saw nothing!
Me (as Iris): “I tell you, it was there!”
Me Too: “Hey, three eyes! What a crazy peeping Tom!” Sam says.
Me: We are so hip in this movie.
Me Too: And Ted and Tom insisting that nothing was moving, there’s nothing there, though they had been previously going on about how all that nothing moving betrayed that there was something out there causing nothing to move, they sallie forth to explore…
Me: The tropics.
Me Too: Yes, Mars has palm trees.
Me: I remember this from when I was little, the explorers exiting the rocket ship into all that red.
Me Too: Did you remember they have no glass in their space helmets?
Me: Maybe it’s Iris who doesn’t remember.
Me Too: For kicks they shoot a plant, which freezes it or something so that it shatters, then march off looking for Martians!
Me: Yes, pulling our guns from our belts, let’s go find us a Martian!
Me Too: The plants appear to have nervous systems and little chlorophyll.
Me: Seems they may have found their Martians?
Me Too: Iris, assuring Tom that she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself…
Me: Famous last words…
Me Too: Goes marching off to look at the plant life. Right into the arms of a big kind of Venus Flytrap with octopus arms that she conveniently wraps around herself in order to scream AGGGGGGHHHH and wail for Tom! Tom!
Me Too: Of course, Tom saves the damsel in distress, who recovers sufficiently to inform Sam her attacker was a giant, carnivorous plant that feeds by trapping animals and digesting them.
Me: Which means there must be animals running about somewhere.
Me Too: Enough excitement for one day, all agree to return to the ship, and Sam names his gun Cleopatra, as she’s such a “Cool doll.”
Me: The way she freezes things.
Me Too: Right. Though what that has to do with Cleopatra, I don’t know.
Me: Did you know that Abe Melchior, who directed and was a co-writer of the script for this flick, along with Sidney Pink, was also a writer for “Death Race 2000″ with Robert Thom and Charles B. Griffith?
Me Too: You’re kidding.
Me: The film rises a couple notches on the esteem ladder, heh?
Me Too: Nope. At least not yet.
Me: Can’t say until the ending.
Me Too: We could but let’s give it 99.99 percent of a chance.
Me: Back to the rocket ship.
Me Too: Wise Professor Ted again says he feels they’re being watched and that there’s some purpose to what’s happening. That things are intentional, controlled, and perhaps they’re being controlled as well through the actions of the life forces doing the controlling.
Me: Deep.
Me Too: An “angry” sun rising on a new day, they step out again to explore. And, Iris, who’d already noted the plants have nervous systems, decides to take a machete to one to see what it’s made of.
Me: AGH!!!!
Me Too: What the hell Iris thought she was doing hacking at a Martian nervous system with a machete, I don’t know, but Sam shoots and shoots but to no avail, until Tom gets the idea of blinding the creature with the new fangled gun and it goes stumbling off. Undeterred, the crew decides to push on and see what’s on the opposite side of the ridge.
Me: I remember this! It was too cool. Water! Lots of it. A veritable Lake Powell.
Me Too: Despite the fact she was almost eaten by a Martian Venus Fly Trap Octopus, and the professor was almost eaten by a Daddy Long Legs Bat, Iris remarks the lake has the same feeling of deadness as everything else.
Me: Just what do you have to do to convince this girl you’re alive?
Me Too: They decide to set across the oily lake next day, and as they walk away the strange creature which had Iris had seen in the portal peers out over some rocks at them. But once they are inside the ship, Tom and Ted decide not to stay the full five days but take off because of Ted’s sense of a “controlling force”. But they find that a force field is holding the ship there. Whoever it is controlling things doesn’t want them to leave, but also doesn’t want to harm them…
Me: Or at least not outright kill them…
Me Too: Or else they’d already be dead. So off they go the next day to explore and see what’s across the lake, which Iris remarks on again as being…
Me: Dead. Sooo dead.
Me Too: Exactly. Despite this deadness, Ted sights through the binoculars a city composed of buildings half a mile tall.
Me Too: And, despite this deadness…
Me: AGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!
Me Too: Yes, the waters bubble. A monster emerges. They furiously paddle in the other direction, away from the city and climb back onto land, the same three-eyed creature watching which Iris had originally glimpsed through the portal. The sea monster pursues them back to the rocket ship and they’ve all climbed up the ladder to board when somehow the sea monster manages to grab Sam though they’d plenty of time to get away.
Me: I remember this, too. It was scary to a little kid, watching Sam being absorbed by the monster.
Me Too: Yeah, I remember the monster then engulfing the entire ship, too. The same creature has touched Tom and the “compound” has eaten right through the suit. Iris says it’s an amoeba, single celled, engulfing its prey and digesting with extremely strong acids.
Me: An amoeba? but it had twirling eyes!
Me Too: If the hills have eyes, so can amoeba, okay? Are you going to argue with the zoologist?
Me: Not if she knows how to kill it.
Me Too: Which she thinks she just might! She’s experimented with the power from a small flashlight battery generating enough electricity to kill thousands of amoeba.
Me: Kali! Slayer of worlds!
Me Too: Tom decides to feed the radar power through the outer hull of the rocket ship and electrocute the monster. It works! At which point the three-eyed monster appears and proclaims, “RED ALERT, We of the planet Mars give you this warning. Listen carefully and remember…” Being of the weaker sex, Iris passes out. When she awakens the rocket ship is already Earth bound. The professor is dying, then is dead. She finds Tom comatose in his bunk, his arm engulfed in green jello slime. End of flash back.
Me: But “What was the warning? What did the voice say?”
Me Too: Curiously, she says that Tom had her turn on the tape recorder and maybe it’s recorded on the last tape.
Me: But she was passed out! How could she turn on the tape recorder?
Me Too: Don’t quibble! Anyway, now that they know Tom has an enzymatic infection they can attempt to save him.
Me: That’s a relief.
Me Too: Tom wrestling mightily against the pain of the infection is assured, “It’s OK. It’s all right.”
Me: Duh. No it’s not all right!
Me Too: No, it’s not! The infection resists everything they try, so Iris gets to work in the biological lab looking for a cure. And eventually she comes up with the answer. Electricity! It’s not a disease that’s eating Tom up, it’s an animal with a will to act, and as an animal it has the vulnerability of making the wrong choice. They’ll submit it to just enough electric shock to drive the creature off Tom to another, waiting culture. Tom is saved!
Me: So too the date with Broadway!
Me Too: And, finally, the audience hears the Martian’s warning, archived on the last tape.
Me: That warning is…?
Me Too: “We have known your planet earth since the first creature climbed out of the ooze of your primordial seas to become man. For millennia we have followed your progress, for centuries we have watched you, listened to your radio signals, learned your language and your culture. And now you have invaded our home. Technological adults but spiritual and emotional infants. We kept you here deciding your fate…you survived. Your civilization has not progressed beyond destruction, war and violence against yourselves and others. Do as you will to your own and your planet but remember this warning, do not return to Mars. You will be permitted to leave for this sole purpose, to carry this warning to Earth. Do not come here. We can and will destroy you, all your life on your planet…” Etcetera.
Me: And, finally, the credits.
Me Too: The Angry, Red Planet.
Me: They don’t want another Santa Maria.
Me Too: Nope.
Me: Humans should eat worms.
Me Too: Or grow up.
Me: Did Tom ever call her Iris?
Me Too: I didn’t notice.
Me: Neither did I.
The Child Experiments with Provoking Mechagodzilla to Attack the Neighborhood, 2007
I tell myself that walking is healthy for me and for H.o.p. Before he was born I used to walk miles. It was how I got around. Though sometimes in the summer it was difficult as the air quality here is horrible and it would give my asthma problems on hot days.
H.o.p. doesn’t like to walk. Playing is great. Walking is boring. But I try to get him out walking with me because I want to walk and of course he must come along. I try for a while and then give up and then try for a while again. I’m back to trying, telling him walking is great exercise.
It bothers me to lie like that.
We three times struggled to get out walking yesterday before it got too heated.
H.o.p., “It’s boring.”
Me, “Ah, c’mon, it’s healthy,” I lied, looking at the gray smoggy sky.
H.o.p. (after another few steps), “It’s hot and it’s boring.”
Me, “Ah, c’mon, look at all the buildings and architecture and stuff. Isn’t it interesting?” as we pass by several homeless lying sleeping on the sidewalk in the shade of a church, but H.o.p.’s used to that.
H.o.p. (after another few steps), “I’m going to melt and it’s boring.”
Me, “OK, OK, we’ll go back,” as I take a picture of an architectural detail at a bank I think is interesting, and then realize the security guard is eyeing me and is now staring at me hard and talking on her walkie talkie, and I scurry along becoming paranoid that I’m going to get in trouble for taking a photograph of a bank.
Anyway, here is Atlanta as viewed from Stone Mountain yesterday. Heaping serving of gray-brown photochemical soup. This is what I was saying was healthy. Twenty-five years ago and a county over you could escape the smog and breathe easier. No longer.
Below is Atlanta (twenty miles from Stone Mountain) on what is now considered to be a good visibility day. You can see how yesterday sucked air wise. It most often does throughout the summer.
Remember the fires in South Georgia earlier in the month? Which are now, thankfully pretty much out, but are still smoldering and could flare up again? Below is an image from one of those days when the fires were complicating the smog problem here and dropping soot everywhere.
By the end of today’s smoggy day, Marty and I both felt as though we were getting colds. But we’re not. It’s the smog, and even inside the apartment my eyes were itching after a week of this, for June 22 and 23 were red days for Atlanta, meaning very unhealthy for every one. The 24th and 25th were just “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups”, including children. We have extended periods of time in the summer when it’s like this. The 26th is supposed to be another such day.
In which I'm treated to a show at the coffee shop by some seriously embittered service workers
June 25th, 2007 |Posted In: Everyday Stories, General
On the way to a first birthday party, stop at a book store and find something that is not Winnie the Pooh or Beatrix Potter, of which ten copies will already likely be had. While Marty pays, my job is to grab two coffees. I order. The tables are full. Several pennies and a nickle and a quarter in the tip jar. I throw in a dollar and take my place at the other end of the counter, waiting, eyes soaking in the predominate muted red dulling the walls, the two male baristas, late twenties, dressed in their WE WORK HERE NOT THERE polos and undistinguished by individualizing ornamentation, hair short and the lighter side of medium brown with no sunny beach summertime highlights in the way that some of us more than others do live in smoggy midtown and don’t have an elevator to the Founders Son’s Club above the clouds of Metropolis.
I hear, “Do you…”
“No, we do not,” the first barista said.
And she who was ordering about four steps from me said something, probably finishing her order because by the time I glanced over the financial transaction was done.
And the first barista said then something to the effect of maybe you think we should have a comparison chart, that would make things easier.
“Maybe you should,” she said, a little too terse to be simply confused and wondering what was joking banter. Which is when I looked at her. Mid-forties. Manicured. Not blond. Eyelids and cheeks gleaming with cosmetics. Large light-weight dangling plates of gold earrings. I forget what she was wearing but it was more colorful than the walls yet fashionable enough to escape notice. I wouldn’t have looked at her twice had not the second of the baristas decided to spotlight her.
“Where do they think they are?” launched in the second barista, who was fixing my coffees. “Charbucks?” He took a beat, sized something up about her, and repeated, changing to, “Where does she think she is?” I was the only other person at the counter, just waiting for my coffees and he glanced at me, determining I guess if he had an audience and I suppose simultaneously measuring up what that audience was. I don’t know what his measurement of me was but I confess I flashed a wee grin and he decided he was ON. Loud. It was show time and he was stuck behind the counter when the Gay Pride Festival was in full swing a few blocks over. He was a little too over something to rise above variations on “Who do they think…?” and “Who does she think…?” and “Charbucks?” as he worked and harangued, glancing between me and his work and the other barista, and I looked a couple of times too hard at the woman to see what was going on there because she was waiting for her order as well and no she wasn’t smiling and she wasn’t going to look back at me. Not knowing what to do, she did nothing and stared into space. And finally the barista seemed to think he needed to excuse himself somehow and he made some loud murmurs to the effect that he was supposed to be off the clock now and he could say what he wanted on his time.
Should I empathize as someone who has worked on the service industry? Should I sympathize with the customer, being a fellow customer?
How about I just decided to take in the show? Which is what I did.
I glanced back behind me for the caps for my cups of coffee and there sat who I knew must be the woman’s husband, I could tell it by the brightly flowered large handbag on the floor near his chair, which had an obvious psychic connection with the woman at the counter. He was embarrassed, looking about as confused as she looked, perhaps even more so, staring at the newspaper on the table in front of him. He was torn on whether he should stand and rally to her defense.
Things wound down as I capped my coffees and left, the first barista remarking something about how he’d worked forty hours in three weeks. It was impossible to tell whether he was complaining it was too little or too much work but I imagined, having been in that situation before, it was a matter of him being handed just enough work to keep him on the payroll and not laid off and applying for unemployment.
Back to the book part of the store I walked where Marty was still in line with H.o.p. waiting to check out.
None of the four cashiers–two males, two females–had a smile in them. One female cashier returning from somewhere else, perhaps a break, taking her place, the female cashier next to her looked pointedly and said, “WELL,” loudly. The returning woman didn’t respond, just stared straight ahead into vacant air. The other female cashier did stare, then made moves to depart, perhaps for her break. The returning cashier, who was younger but how much younger was impossible to tell as her make-up was colorful as a parrot’s plumage and her physique and height that of an eleven-year-old boy, twisted harder away from the other female cashier as she passed. One of the male cashiers leaning in to her, she whispered something, then returned fully to her post, never looking at the customers. All the while one of the male cashiers argued with a customer that no they did not have his book on order, his name wasn’t in the system, then the customer producing a slip of paper he examined it then checked the computer again, found the needed info, and less confidently made a quiet point of saying it was because it was a USED book and he didn’t deal with the used books and he hadn’t been told, after all, it was a used book…
* * * * * * *
“BASH!” said the woman next to me, in my face, a couple inches from it. I knew who she was but didn’t know her. I looked and said, “Bash?” just to make sure, thinking she was perhaps referring to my birthday party the night before, though I wasn’t aware she’d known about it. Plus my modus operandi is to play dumb. If you’re being what I think is half-way obnoxious, I play dumb.
“BASH!” she said again.
“My birthday?” I said.
“BASH!” she said, ever emphatic.
“Bash,” I said.
“BASH!” she said.
I stared.
“BASH!” she said.
I smiled. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Can you repeat it?”
“BASH! BASH!” she exclaimed, imagining I was deaf and witless.
She had come over saying she wanted to MEET ME which seemed to me to amount to a few curious challenges which soon had me back on my feet without excuse and wandering back across the lawn to take pics of anything elsewhere, including the dog which was very friendly and kept passing back by for some pats on the back and scratchings between the ears.
The Child Experiments with being a Comedian, 2007
I’m not a party person so this was an exceptional event for me.
And I loved every minute.
Marty and H.o.p. outdid themselves. And H.o.p. really did help. He went down to the studio with Marty in the afternoon and he washed grapes and cherries and trays and he laid out the grapes and cherries on the trays alongside the other food and filled bowls with pretzels and chips. And he cleared away mic stands etc.
There was great food. Lots of food. Antipasto and tabouli and fruits and vegetables. All prepared by Marty. Except for the cake and the fruits and veggies H.o.p. prepared.
Marty got Sasha in to play. And I was torn. I wanted to listen to the music but instead of course spent the time talking with people, and throughout there were multitudes of children (H.o.p.’s cousins) joyously chasing after balloons and jumping and running and having a great time. And Sue Wilkinson and Marty later did a song together (beautiful, I managed to not cry) while H.o.p. leaned on my shoulder, beaming, and my niece, Elizabeth, leaned on my knee.
Sue and Marty also did an incredible rendition of “Happy Birthday”.
I took almost no pictures. I shouldered the camera a few times and realized I would be getting no good pictures as all I wanted to do was mingle and talk with friends and siblings and enjoy nieces and nephews running up with huge smiles and grabbing me by the knees. I love kids manhandling me, by the way. The endorphins soar when the nieces and nephews throw themselves around me like I’m the greatest thing in the world and yell, “Aunt Juli!” I may not be the greatest thing in the world, but they are and thus the rush.
It was suggested at one point I get a pic of H.o.p. with all his cousins who were there (a couple had to leave by this point).
H.o.p. took the opportunity to flash a peace sign at the camera. Top photo of the bunch. I can be as sappy as the next person and I like it that a peace sign managed to get into my birthday photos, especially one brandished by H.o.p. Despite growing up in the 60s, I’ve never brandished a peace sign, but I like it when H.o.p. does, though I’ve never mentioned it to him.
These are the kids in my life–H.o.p. and his cousins–who grant me a great deal of happiness, ever amazing me.
Here’s my oldest niece who’d had to leave with a sibling of hers who wasn’t feeling well. She’s holding her newest sibling, my youngest niece. She’s holding also her new acquisition of a Nikon DSLR.
When the mic was finally free, H.o.p. grabbed it and tried his hand at stand-up comedy.
“You’re a tough crowd!”
Really, growing up with a musician dad and around a studio, he’s far too comfortable with a mic.
A few people read my blog who were present. And I want to thank them for helping me celebrate my 50th. You don’t know how much it meant to me to have you there.
And for the friends and relatives who live at a distance and couldn’t be there, I thought of you often.
Via Think Progress
Bush claims he’s not part of the executive branch.
Vice President Cheney has exempted his office from a presidential executive order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.” Today the LA Times reveals that the President has also exempted himself…
Well, I’m glad they got that cleared up before H.o.p. and I got into Civics, because I’ve lived all these many years falsely believing that the Offices of the President and Vice President were part of the Executive Branch, and I would have erroneously passed along the same info to H.o.p.
Can someone tell me what branch they are under? I’m serious here. I would really like to know.
