epiphany

I've already leaked how much resolve my great ambition has left me with ('smoker'), and I can't say my expectations are any higher than they were when I gave Santa my list ('dear santa,'), but insomuch as I've learned from the events of 2007 (and I feel a pressing need to waste my five millionth parenthetical comment to praise the economy of words like 'insomuch') , so now do I 'resolve' to learn at least as much from what awaits [to confound] me in 2008. Maybe a pithy recap of the year will help raise the red flags for me;

• January- I garner a bit of media attention from local news sources for decorating Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday cake at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Though piping tile adhesive through a pastry bag to hide the construction seams on a ten foot high plywood 'cake', I wear a chef's hat. (the year seems to start out on a high note)


• February- I design the set for a dinner theater production of 'Grease', a musical I can't say less about. What I learned; just because the director is passing a snotty comment over his shoulder as he storms out of the final production meeting is no reason to believe that the consequence of calling him a "shitty director" to his receding back will not be revisited on me.


• March- I spend most of this month recovering from and regretting the last one.


• April- I remount a production of 'Don Giovanni' which I designed for Opera Delaware to Temple University. In the new production, my surreal set steps closer to surrealism with the introduction of a predominantly Korean cast, in ludicrous wigs, singing the Italian book to a Viennese opera set in Spain.


• May- With dozens of on-line inquiries netting nothing close to a job offer, I throw myself into designing the T-shirt for an upcoming family reunion. As though I've learned nothing at all from my dinner theater experience, I make this project more expensive and complex than it need have been. I faff around on the Internet; googling myself, exposing the mysteries of my clan (finding out how horrifyingly easy it is to summon some one's mother's maiden name), and launching arms-length emails to everyone I know, bitching about my pitiful circumstance. I discover the irony lurking within my ennui and- Smack Dab is born.


• June- Most importantly, my blog brings me closer to my parents (I'm {at the time}48). They hear my voice- which is meant for everyone- and they 'get' me. What I can't convey in cards and letters, even during holiday visits with my brothers and with all those little nose-pickers around, is that as alien as I might have always seemed to them, there is no one I've wanted more to be understood by. Our almost daily email dialog begins.


• July- I'm in family therapy discussing how impotent I feel when I'm out of work when THE call comes offering work (a lot of it)- which would keep me away from an exercise we might not have been entirely through with but which would keep me heavily and happily employed through...


• August


• September


• October


• November


• December-I am again a 'housfrau' with again no expectation of meaningful employment for quite a while. The good news (for my blistered ego) is that that dinner theater has decided ('insomuch' eventually loses what it may have bought in brevity by sentences which include '...that that...')- however tactlessly my assessment offered back there in February was, it was entirely on the money; I am asked to design "Gypsy" for them this Spring. I learn that there is an extremely fine line between designing sets and drinking bourbon all day long- and to take a polite pass on designing musicals which turn my stomach. (...but I love "Gypsy"). I have a few months to put in place a more carefully measured approach for winning the new director's confidence. I 'resolve' to [as they say] "stay in my own lane", to respect a director's vision (however dull), and to resist trying to have the last word when an actor is making his grand exit. [Yeah, right].

We limp into the new year with a Matterhorn of laundry (we're in trouble, it obscures the door to the front-loading washing machine), an even more pressing need for uninterrupted trash service (that bill zooms to the top of the heap), and bad news from the outdoors for an old furnace. But I am thankful for the modicum of perspective that has succeeded in piercing this shell of self-absorption. The people I complain about the most, my family, are the ones who suffer me the best, and...anything worth having is worth the acres of confusion and turmoil associated with having it. To paraphrase a quote from somewhere- who wouldn't give their right arm to be miserable in such a lovely pink house? Maybe I've been happy all along and just didn't know it.

whatsit

How did I ever get on without this thing? Speaking as an audiophile, here is what I now know I was starved for; bass. My life is filled with treble. Everything presents itself to me in high-pitched urgency. Demanding baby voices drag me from listening to my own heartbeat to feed them and satisfy their desire for this or that. Shrill associates want to know if this will be done on time and what that will cost. Ad spots seek my attention at a pitch that has surely caused me to bleed internally. It's been a long time, probably since Tom Snyder was on the air, that I've enjoyed listening to people. If you've ever heard the sound of aluminum going through a table saw (as frequently enough I do) you may understand how brain-rattlingly close to insanity an unfriendly note can send one. On a less extreme level this is what I endure daily. Maybe it's the cousin malady of how the tags inside clothing drive me to distraction. How to defend one's self against that high end of audio frequency that most people will accept and even seem to enjoy- surely one reason why I've never watched "American Idol". My new best friends- earbuds! Here are the benefits; No one can demand my attention from another room- they must now wave their hands in front of my face and mouthe their urgencies... the phone calls that are never for me are now answered by- not me... and that argument to decide who goes on the computer after I'm finished blogging is mediated by,....?{"scuse me while I kiss this guy..."}. It may seem like I'm only using this as a chance to shirk my responsibilities, but no. Today I played five games of 'Clue', sterilized the kitchen, did some laundry, picked up all of the same things I picked up yesterday, and made a hearty and nutritious dinner- happily oblivious to the barrage of complains and the constant drone of synthesized race track noise that normally scores our home life. These have been effectively doused by a thumpy soundtrack of my own choosing. And to think that only a few weeks ago I was suggesting to Santa, in near complete disregard of my own request for a sound-proof booth, that we could live without 'nano's. Oh no we can not! If you're under forty, you're probably marveling at how long it's taken me to latch onto this concept- how long ago did the Sony Walkman offer us retreat from our noisy world? First of all, I would have worn a rhinestone tiara before choosing to appear in public sporting a set of those corny headphones- who am I?, Lt. Cmdr. Sulu? Next, was I really supposed to carry around my library of recorded music?- I can barely find room on my person for car keys and a wallet. Last and most tellingly, things are only a good idea when I finally decide they are. Till then, I'll give you every reason in the world why they are the scourge of modern life. For instance, I've only recently decided that cell phones are a necessity- offers of employment arrive on them. If you choose to chit-chat away on one, that's your business. Just remember; once upon a time the sight of someone talking to themselves in public signaled that they were insane. At least for me, this impression has not changed. But I still offer a resounding no thanks! to palm-sized keyboards (and the subsequent dismantlement of our written language caused by the difficulty of typing with one's thumbs), programmable coffee makers (program this-just hurry up with the coffee!), and those new-fangled automatic transmissions (there are already too many fluids under the hood to keep track of). To think, the option of nodding in time and shuffle-stepping my path through the drudgery and assault of this demanding world was only ever several hours of transferring discs and a few hundred dollars away. I have to wonder (now that introspection is back on the table). What else may I have been wrong about. ....thump,thump,thump...."What's that?!"

morning

I'm not quite sure what happened during the twenty minutes while I slept, but I completely missed all of the "wide-eyed wonder". Slipping through the shredded packaging and spent cap gun shells on my path to the coffee maker, I thought I heard someone shout out "Wow! Thanks!" but I can't be sure. By the time I settled in front of our pink tree [to luxuriate in that new 'permanent tree' smell] plans were already being made to have this returned, that repaired, and the other phone call placed for tech support. Santa brought my two children the Rolls Royce of 'Dust Buster's which is [in real time] being used to clean up a broken mirror. I can't decide if this means Huckabee will be assassinated well into his second term or I'll be graduating from night school with a Masters degree in something useful. Michael is modeling his new underwear for me. As always, underwear models loom prominently in my 'happy place'. With earbuds plugged into his new 'nano', A. (again in real time) is rapping a [somewhat breezy] proof-reading over my shoulder. (The dog is napping- tuckered out from her new chew toy, or her face would be in mine as well). You might never have known my power of concentration would be so tested but, rest assured, this is generally how I 'compose'. As Michael and I both observed last night, the "....happiest time of the year" is- Spring!; the heater gets turned off, the mailman changes into shorts, what bulbs those damned squirrels haven't eaten offer their display, crafty 'black ice' is replaced by honest mud, and at the earliest possible date, we all head off for the beach. It's also the time when most of the things now littering our floor will be knee-deep somewhere in a landfill. I kinda feel bad about that- but can you put a price tag on five animals in one house being happy all at the same time? ( "Just dig them deeper!"). I offer these condolences; elephants de-forest at a higher rate per capita than human beings; despite winning a Nobel Prize, an Oscar, and the popular vote, Al Gore is still irrelevant; and this year at least, I have not [knowingly] killed or financed the killing of a tree. (My last word on that topic, I promise). My greatest hope is that this society will boil down to some delicious mix of asphalt, Kentucky Fried carcasses and pooped-in plastic diapers. Perhaps future societies paying $100. a gallon for this melange will wish we cared less..., who knows. If I still had a tail it would be wagging quicky between my legs like I just found duck innards in my kibble-(real time again) Mom-Mom gave me... what?!, a 'nano' of my very own! I don't know what color to turn! For me, it's a gigantic push in the direction of... well, piracy. I admit while that holds a great allure, I will download with only a clear conscience- songs I've already paid for on vinyl or [that shiny stuff] (I'm one of the last still out there 'browsing' through the bins). I could go off on how "The Man Who Fell To Earth" this device looks, who could resist wanting one no matter what it does. The bad news is that between everyone in the house downloading from i tunes, visiting game cheats, and managing the busy lives of five webkins, I have to fight for my time in this chair. So quickly, my Christmas message is this; You want to be socially conscious, to hope that swapping out light bulbs will make a difference, to hope that we are not all ultimately defined by how much trash we generate. But it all kind of goes out the window this time of year. Consumption becomes more conspicuous, and let no deadly sin go unrealized. To care too much about the shallowness of our desires would bring us all down. I accept my shallowness and I accept it in others. There are too many more days in the year to be harsh in our judgements. There is only one way (that I know of) to attone for our selfishness. That is to earnestly pray for the health and happiness of everyone everywhere. No bequeath, no hour of service, no amount of self-deprivation can accomplish more. Peace.

a warm and fuzzy feeling

Over twenty years ago Michael and I lived in an unheated storefront on South St. in Philadelphia. He waited tables moonlighting as a rock star, and I was a sign painter moonlighting as the follow spot operator for nightly performances of an idiotic but once popular musical called "Let My People Come" ( which featured live and playfully presented nude scenes {"Oh! Calcutta" for the cabaret crowd}). Here for a short time we ran a gallery/theater called 'plague', living in the back room and hosting weekend performances [limping] the gamut from really[!] loud music to un-metered (often pornographic in it's presentation) poetry. We subsisted on beer and jello, and the occasional deli platter which we provided for the [cough] talent. The street facade had been sculpted to resemble a cave entrance. The place was unwittingly a 'camera obscura'; with the door to our living space closed (and through the hole where a doorknob used to be) the inverted image of people passing by (some stopping to peer in) the front window would appear on the back wall. This was [redundantly] our only views to the outdoors. We slept till two or three in the afternoon (on a bear trap of a sofa bed), so it was perfect for that. At Christmastime we made the unpleasant discovery of soiled bathroom tissue and, well, soil coming up through our shower drain. Okay, it wasn't so much a shower as it was a bit of crude plumbing above an open sewage line for a toilet. Unpleasant?- oh yes, but a complete surprise?- er, no. We began taking our showers at the apartment of the kindly G. girls, sisters who waitressed (moonlighting as fine artists) and were enviably outfitted with designated rooms for cooking, bathing, and sleeping. We were all a bit challenged for cash and would pool our resources to share a hot meal [and cold beer]. They were able to afford a live Christmas tree- with not enough left over to buy ornaments. We were able to contribute a few logs which masked a red light bulb- but no fireplace. Together we filled a few home-spun evenings cutting things out of paper, wiring together broken glass from the street, tying on found objects, and managed to create a breath-takingly beautiful 'outsider' tree. On Christmas Eve the G. girls went off to be with their family in CT. Michael's sister came into the city to bring us home to the suburbs with her for the holiday, arriving in a full length white fur coat and matching fur hat, with a Lhasa Apsa tucked under one arm. That's the picture- a light snow falling on her, standing out on the cracked pavement in high heels in front of a cave, waiting for us to retrieve anything we really cared about from our squalid, everything-for-art, stench-filled, inverter of images.

trees

Several of my postings may have erroneously created the impression of me as a 'tree hugger'. This is not completely accurate. (I have on recent occasion spent thousands of dollars to empty our lot of them). Those trees that rain down some new brand of crap every season. Those which would reek havoc on one's carefully planned brick patio or undermine one's effort to sell off real property- all the time hogging up the sun for themselves. I've even heard stories of skiers being killed by them! Who would defend trees? 'Produces oxygen' is just so smug. I produce a great many things- could I rest my laurels on ' produces laundry'? It's time for trees to come down off their high horse and own up to what they're really good for; They go a long way in fleshing out a national park. They might aspire to become anything from parking tickets to Nora Roberts' latest tome. They create charming vistas, ripe for capture in Adamsian photos. They are home and pantry to any number of species (with an equally limited appeal {don't get me started on squirrels}). Their contribution to cans of mixed nuts should not be overlooked, though usually over fifty percent of that praise belongs to the ground-hugging peanut. And I certainly won't argue that in the hands of a craftsman, they can be transformed into objects of compelling beauty. These are all rather passive attributes. Producing a nut might require a bit of effort, but there ends their responsibility as a parent. In almost every case, from clearing the path for new construction, to putting out wild fires, to refolding road maps, trees rarely do other than tax our patience. Yet still, the sentiment I have confessed is that I'd rather not see them (or us in the process) humiliated. Now, this has only a little bit to do with the pre-lit, pink, fake ones being on sale this week at Boscov's, but the irony of tasteful Christmas trees has gnawed at me for some time. I believe that from the minute we drag a just-dead tree into our home and tangle a few hundred feet of string lights into it, we have made the commitment to considerably increasing our 'tacky per-cubic-foot' ratio. You may see "...ornaments hand-crafted for us in a darling little glass studio in Denmark" but I only see " Oh my God!, you have a f*&in tree in your house!" I am purely an aesthetic snob. I hate houses with shutters that couldn't be closed, mansions you can see from the street, streets named after real estate developers' daughters, 'semi-detached' paint schemes, and now; sharing one's home with a dying tree (that's what house plants are for). We've always had 'live' trees, I can't be exact in describing what makes this year different except that I am primed to revisit our traditions- the present political and economical climate has undermined the security of returning to that comfortable illusion of an old-fashioned anything. Few who have ever actually tried to string popcorn and cranberries could disagree; this activity raises blood pressure instead of lowering it (I'm almost sure that Martha Stewart 'pre-drills'), as does baking with children and shopping in the 'under $10.' price range. Retailers would have us running for anything that promises to remove just an ounce of the pressure of recreating that occasion pictured in Coke ads of the past. It's not that I lack sentiment entirely. The use of Christmas cards is absolutely perfect for maintaining updated address books and the friendship of those people [however] far removed from the importance they'd once held in our lives. And of course it's always nice to stumble upon that minute or hour out of a generally bleak month to recapture our own heightened sense of expectation. Happiness comes from that unconscious resolve not to be disappointed. Children [sometimes thankfully] don't seem to notice the difference between a morning you've gone heavily into debt for and the one where you have broken up the bag of tube socks to wrap individually. But when the year-end bonuses disappear, so does much of my sense of a 'holiday'. ("This year's present to the family is...two more car payments and another month of uninterrupted trash collection!") I'll put it on for the kids, but my heart is in mourning for the unrealized earning potential. (Don't sweat it, Michael will buy him the 'Nano' whatsit!) A story- the first year we started attending a Quaker meeting they offered us a live tree from the property as well as an invitation to a holiday evening gathering of hymns and cookies. We were not resolved to accept either, and spent that evening shopping around for a tree. Our fruitless search ended at Home Depot where we were just heading out the door empty-handed and cranky when I made a few last minute purchases; a saw and a flashlight. In the dark of night we led our three-year-old son (a student of the preschool there) out into the little grove of trees along side of the meeting house. To the dampened sound of carols emanating from therein, I had him hold the flashlight as I unjoined our tree from the earth. (I think we may have been giggling). It was A.'s first Christmas with us. We cautioned him to stay quiet. The consequence of being discovered would necessitate our sitting through a good chunk of the book of Luke, as haltingly performed by seven or eight children swagged in upholstery remnants. That night, forecasting the charge I knew was to be his to answer to for at least the next fifteen years, I wanted him to have an early understanding of how things are not always done. (We've rewritten that script a hundred times over). And now, ten years later, he is completely on-board with the idea of a seven-foot high, pink toilet brush dominating our living room on Christmas morning although, as would be with most other kids, this is likely based on the hope that any given evening will end with a tangible major purchase. (I'm holding out for the tallest pink tree I can find- the on-line search begins tonight!). Well there we have it. A tirade against a green planet, some holiday humbuggery, and a humiliating tale about parenting a fir poacher. Where George Fox and Britney Spears may forgive me, Joyce Kilmer might never.

dear santa,

I’ve composed my wish list for this year and hope that what you can’t make good on will be passed along to someone who can- baby Jesus; Rupert Murdoch, I know you’re connected. I have been generally nice, even on the occasions when I have slipped into light naughtiness. But who makes those calls anyway, "Judge not, lest ye be judged", I always say.
So here goes:
1- Gospel-specific Nativity scenes.
2- Viable late entries to the field of Democratic candidates.
3- An immediate recall of food items which follow this pattern; Pop’ems, Grab’ems, Snack’ems, Chew’ems...
4- A sound-proof booth wherein to spin this glistening web of profundity.
5- Global amnesia on the topic of Brittany Spears.
6- The chemical marriage of ibuprofen and caffeine.
7- Wider literacy.
8- AA batteries, enough of them to power the other half of our household too.

We’re thinking of going with an artificial, pre-lit tree this year, so don’t be alarmed. (I now believe I can hear the freshly cut versions crying for justice). One more thing- my son wants an ‘I Pod Nano’(?). I have no idea what it is and suspect I can’t afford it (actually, Christmas came early for us this year. I just paid off last winter’s heating bill), but if you could just tell him it was making your elves sick and you stopped making them, I could save a bit of face. Thanks. The bourbon and cookies will await you, as usual.

Yours With Breathlessly High Expectations, Smack Dab

a place at the little table

Two back-to-back turkey dinners with both my family and Michael's has reminded me again of the special relationship of cousins. To a stranger they couldn't look like a more impossible group of friends, cast together by an indiscriminate net. However unalike, they mix in defiance of the rules of the playground. With their parents yards away [laughably] attempting to bicker with each other under the radar, the cousins are treated to a sense of invisibility rare to be found in any other social setting. Free to tackle and wrestle one another, to slink off unquestioned to remote corners, and to spill their family's secrets to one another. Unchecked giddiness; the sweetest childhood plum. Sequestered from the grown-up table, they egg each other on to display the very best of their worst table manners. And as the conversation among adults becomes more adult or less so, anything each young cousin might have ever seen or heard can be poised for debate unnoticed. At our 'first in a very long time' family reunion this summer I re-met many of my cousins and their [in many cases, adult] offspring. It was exhilarating to collect a new generation of cousins, outnumbering the batch I had at my Grandmothers funeral twenty-seven years ago many times over. And by the end of the day my kids were up relatives by about seventy. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a novel called "Slapstick" which prophesied a nation with a decimated infrastructure, a far-flung caste society, and few if any resources for recreating the benevolent society it had once aspired to. Winning on a "Lonesome No More" platform, the new President installed a system of artificial extended family by issuing everyone a new middle name ( Chipmunk, Uranium, Daffodil, etc.). This entitled the bearer to one hundred and ninety thousand cousins across the country. Like many of Mr. Vonnegut's wistful notions, this one is explored to points most ludicrous. But few would label his work 'science-fiction'. We seem to be working closer to this age, not away from it. We revel in this familial blending, searching for those who would make us blow milk out of our noses, sometimes unsuccessfully in religious and political affiliations where similarities are celebrated higher than differences. At work I have taken to calling my [union] co-workers this way; Cousin Randy, Uncle Carmen. Freelancers all, we meet up every two, five, ten years from the last time, each time assembling a few more people we will bear our true natures to. And again we are respected and appreciated for the experience each of us bring to the [little] table. It reminds us of how it is still possible to feel broad and connected, to live outside the playground categories of age, sex, and...whatever- reminded that our connections are all the richer for placing the least importance on how we might read on paper, and the most on the uncensored comradery and commiseration we can share. These might be the sweetest plums of adulthood. Can't we all just be cousins?

adolescent relationship number one

It’s been a while, I know. I seem always to be waiting for the threads of a story to wrap up neatly so I can get on with the business of writing it. That sort of thing has not been happening. I'm between stops. For instance, in October, the waitress in a Greek restaurant we popped into, for whom I didn’t hold a glimmer of recognition, turned out to be my ‘high school sweetheart’. The application of this term to what we actually were to one another is a gross abbreviation considering she had a boyfriend. My insinuation into her life was both quixotic and disruptive. But our story takes place thirtysomething years ago, which is all it really takes to turn it into a tale of romance. In the present, we’ve only managed twenty minutes of conversation divided between two meetings in public and a couple of phone calls- our schedules are at complete odds. We concur on it seeming that what we know about one another happened to different people or in another lifetime yet nothing that has happened in the interim (which neither of us knows yet about the other) has dimmed the immediacy of it. [That's her in the trailer, arguing with me over the construction of PBJs... Oh and again, thrift shopping on the Main Line]. The last time I saw her was in 1979- I had then not seen her in a couple of years- Michael and I, led by a group of friends to the mall where she worked had lunch together in a Woolworth’s 'Grille'. Michael was freshly the new love of my life and quite a jealous boy. As we did a bit of reminiscing I could see him stealthily inching his glass of ice water closer and closer toward her lap until I, as casually, intervened. She says now that she never noticed. I suspect that her twenty six year old son will be reading these words before I have had the pleasure of meeting him (Hi J., I’m Smack Dab...), but even still, this wasn’t to be a kiss and tell piece- except perhaps to say to him that when I was sixteen I had every expectation that I would have been his father (speaking poetically- and a fatherhood not commencing until some long time after the age of sixteen). She, way before I, knew why I wouldn’t. But he should be ever the more thankful that her actual boyfriend back then wouldn’t be either. J.’d have spent his childhood crawling around an unheated loft while his Mom made pancakes on a hot plate for a bunch of unshaven musicians. (The musicians in my unheated loft would have spent their girlfriends' last dollar on a disposable razor to keep their sideburns looking sharp). I suspect that when we finally get to talk she will confide some of her regrets. These two things will not be among them. D. and I used to visit a cemetery near her family’s apartment, in particular a child’s grave whose wee headstone eerily bore just the first name and dates which made him only a couple of months old. It was strangely special to us for no other discernible reason than for being so terse and so wee. Probably a week or two before I met up with D. again I came across a photograph of that headstone and noticed for the first time that I had given my own son that same name. In telling her this story I may have freaked her out further by suggesting that she had named her own son after the main character in a TV show [maybe a little farther than] back then- the show that I postulate is responsible for providing adolescent girls of the time with three of 'GenX’s most popular boy’s names (each beginning with J). These characters were played by David Soul ( the blond), Bobby Sherman ( short, dark-haired, and dimpled), and the big one- many people's curly-haired idea of Hercules. This is really just the very long way around explaining why I haven’t posted in a while. I’m working on a movie set of a 1970s shopping mall, a fair replica of the one where D. and I were ‘rat’s. Somebody’s XM radio has for days on end been boring holes in my brain with bad 1970s music ("Rock and Roll never forgets..." {especially if you are forced to listen to the same song every day for thirty years}); the soundtrack to my own teen angst. And I’m even revisiting acne. I apologize for my reluctance to zero in on anything with clarity- the ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ of my life has been shaken so many times that a blurry ghost of the old lines confuse the new pattern. But even if I never manage to make sense of it, I’ll still continue to pace through it with you. If you don’t already know it; You’re my therapist.

olio

• First of all, does anyone else notice our [P]resident behaving as if he still has another twenty or so years to craft a legacy. He’s been working backwards from ‘Mission Accomplished’ for most of this term. I couldn’t blame him for being underwhelmed with the idea of a Presidential Library just yet. The Supreme Court who put him there is now a little more firmly casted to keep him there, and with all the bandying about of ‘executive privilege’ and being the ‘decider’, he may well have decided that the result of a general election would show weakness to our enemies. They’ve all been hard at work re-imaging democracy in ways we’re still finding out about daily- don’t take ‘bloodless coup’ off the table just yet.
• To the disgraced Singing Senator from Idaho: If ‘take-backs’or ‘do-overs’ worked in Congress, you’d be at the back of a very long line.
• "Just leave Brittany Spears alone!" I could do that. If only she weren’t such a compelling example of the sanctity of marriage between one out-of-control pop diva and one dancing boy with aspirations of being the next Vanilla Ice.
• Ron Paul: I don’t think anyone realizes you’re not Pat Paulsen yet. A slogan like "I’m already an elected Representitive" might help you break away.
• Mark Wahlberg: Every day I go to work, you’re there. Are you stalking me?
• I’ve been moonlighting, painting a set for a dinner theater production of ‘Hello Dolly’. I’ve overheard the cast to say things like "Hey kids, let’s rehearse the [blah blah] scene!" and "C’mon, kids, we open next week!" The theater is a converted barn. I’m painting a feed store and a hat shop. For four hours a night I am firmly in the middle of Garland-and-Rooney-ness. . Everyone (they all have day jobs too) maintains the level of enthusiasm for dancing and gossiping past eleven at night that I reserve for glasses of bourbon and pillows. Words fail me here, but the expression on my tired face says it all.
• More about traffic. No one likes to wait in a long line. Most people are rightfully piqued when someone butts in ahead of them. But insomuch as some intersections only designate turning lanes on the completely obscured asphalt, place signs for junctions less than fifty feet away from said turn, and not everyone hoping to turn holds as much hope for getting to their destination alive, much less early; could someone please let the guy in the wrong lane who’s holding up two miles of angry commuters in. It may not seem fair at the time, but it just makes the world a better place.
• Litmus test for the Obsessive/Compulsive. Could you ride behind a Teamster four times a day, fixated on the wild hair growing a half an inch straight out of his otherwise carefully attended ear and resist the urge to reach the fourteen inches forward to yank it out. (Teamster, don’t forget to factor that in). And remember, your job is to wait for the camera to notice the unrusted head of a new screw in the hinge of a doorway and to hold up the entire production while you make it disappear-the Teamster's job is to get you there. Not much time left, but my only hope is that it’s twin will grow out of the other ear, providing an excusable symmetry.
• Congratulations to Hung Hyunh, the new ‘Top Chef’. If I hadn’t actually tasted Head Chef Tom Colicchio’s gnocchi appetizer and his scallop entree I might have thought that sixteen ingredients couldn’t push a scant piece of duck any closer to delicious than it should already be. Bravo.
• Finally, my follow-up to ‘goodbye middle class’. I here go on record for being for employing Indians and Mexicans so long as they can join our national interest of not employing Indians and Mexicans. We live in a paradoxical time- (among other things, I might be a humanist). I believe it was Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, who spoke the "...stole his Daddy’s car..." line on a broadcast of ‘Hardball with Chris Matthews’. And, I can only imagine why Chinese people might want string lights, except that the demand for diffused lighting will always be there.

goodbye middle class

I’ve been asked to address the socio-economic climate of our times. On the one hand, it’s not always easy to think of things to blather on about- I’m grateful for the challenge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure where I fall on that scale. How am I to resist just bitching about rich people and how I am to shape my empathy for people poorer than me. My middle-class voice has been somewhat dampened after joining so many others in taking the earned income credit on last year’s tax forms. I would begin in the early eighties when I was young and didn’t even hold the expectation of greater security, just because I was working harder than most people around me. From washing dishes for people who could afford to eat in restaurants I moved on to cleaning their houses. My clients were what I supposed to be rich people. Because I spent my days traveling from one warm and well-furnished home to another and now had enough money to make a car payment, eat at Red Lobster, and wear izod shirts, I may have been seduced into thinking I was rich too. I was also in the position to observe what college professors spent on art and pedigree dogs, and what dentists spent on motorcycles and pot. And in the case of my richest clients (Dr. J; Secretary Of Transportation, Drew Lewis; Jimmy Trachtenburg, [something] for the Eagles), I could even imagine what it cost to stay out of Philadelphia for most of the year. That’s the kind of wealth I aspired to. Princess Di offered the most attractive option- to marry up. (But alas, I was already in love with a guitar player). We decided to work hard and keep shooting for the American dream. For a while there it looked possible. It wasn’t until we had actually reached the ceiling of our consumer credit that the floor fell away. I had about a year to see it coming. W takes the nomination, our stocks and retirement funds wither, and at my job they bring in some asshole in penny loafers to whip things into shape. [sound of the air going out of a tire]. The thing that saved our hinies was buying an investment property pre-W and selling it off in time to make a fair profit. I’m sure plenty of people in our circumstances who took the hit ‘decruited and divested’ without real property to sell off have a sadder story to tell than the six underemployed years that followed for me. When federally funded programs were cut in the Reagan dynasty [and mental institutions were basically emptied onto the streets of Philadelphia], I had no investments to protect. We packed up for Delaware and didn’t look back. In that ‘sluggish economy’ at least the entertainment industry didn’t take as bad a hit as say people who had sunk their money into inner-city real estate [without the assets to float them until they stood a prayer of making any kind of profit on their improvements]. By the mid-eighties most of the inner-city clients we cleaned for lost their stomach for that cycles’ 'urban renaissance'. I’m pretty sure they are the ones who’ve managed to move farther and farther out, working from home and populating ‘McMansions’ on plots of land named ‘Doe Run’ and ‘Fox Chase’- (the very things that were plowed over and rumpus rooms dug into). In any case, they probably didn’t have to watch their job be handed over to a twenty-five year old [Calcuttan]. The more marked lack of a ‘trickle down’ from the Bush cuts has meant such a higher burden placed on local government. Their solution; raise local taxes and cut services..., so little burden placed on corporate king pins- their solution; cut funding for the arts (no longer a necessary tax shelter); ditch the local economies who sold them their land for little more than a promise and who changed zonings and bent roads to bring their people to work quicker; raise prices to finance their quick retreat to Indonesia; and throw some of the extra cash at the assholes in penny loafers who dreamed it all up. This raises a question. Where are the rich people. Sightings are rare- and I don’t mean rich like ‘drives a Lexus’. Those people own well-situated dry cleaning establishments or sell crack. Rich people, if I ever really knew them, and I think I did-are gone. Well, the ones who are going to movie star jail for driving drunk or slapping their maid eventually end up on Larry King- but I mean the Astors' and the Guggenheims'. People with enough class to stick around and 'Found' something. (Come to think of it, the 'Society Page' is gone too). (Melinda and Bill- Good Job, I'm wrong a lot of the time.) The truly wealthy seem to be so engrossed in becoming wealthier still that living, shopping, and paying taxes in the United States has become 'de classe'. If any of their windfalls are trickling down, it's to family members. ('Death Tax', pleez!) [I knew this was where I was headed!] But who do we blame? The opportunistic Mexicans of course. They are just totally getting over on us- living in mobile homes and on condemned properties, augmenting their high life-styles with Catholic charities. They’re just running away with our six dollar an hour jobs (laughing all the way to the check cashing agency). And now that the coffers are 'beyond empty' (to use the crossword puzzle phraseology), what have the engineers of your two hundred dollar tax cut dreamed up? Fences. GMAFBreak. [Hey Lou Dobbs], Now that the word is out about how stupid we are for decimating our middle class, we have a lot more to worry about than writing a national language into law. ( I happen to know that an illegal immigrant can get in and out of a Wal-Mart as fast as an American). I can't imagine that even Chinese people aren't coming here to shop for 'Holiday' lites (ooh, I'm sorry, it's 'CHRISTmas lites again) and Sketchers. There is no end to this diatribe. There is- but it's pretty predictable and easily dismissed. I'll quote some editor of something (proper nouns will follow- I'm past researching right now), "It's like he stole his Daddy's car and crashed it into the world!" That was spoke easily two years ago. She had no idea.
Many ethnicities have [seemingly] been slurred in the production of this article. Again, research will follow, along with a version clearly denoting 'Idiom' and/or 'Sarcasm'. But don't hold back on hate mail-I can suffer anything but a misspelling.

'alf' coffee mug

Broke ;.(

str8

Larry Craig? Gay? I think not. Permit me not to choose the obvious path of catty remarks. (Well, maybe a few). I’ve read probably all the angles to his story- hypocrisy, self-loathing, entrapment, even the McGreevey woman’s slant. What has failed to surface though, is a little broader and a lot less intellectually charged than most wags have let on, viz; Straight men have sex with men too. Men are hard-wired to get it off, with only one low hurdle to clear in order to protect their self-image; justification. Let me site a few of them. "I was drunk [high][vulnerable][hanging out in a men’s room]", " He gave me money [a ride][a job][jewelry], I didn’t reciprocate [like it][ever do it again][talk], I was young [in prison][between girlfriends][feeling pretty]. I’ll spare you the hard links, but countless websites are devoted to straight men performing for a male audience. And they do a pretty good job. Unspokenly at the center of the current media frenzy is one of those shades of gray maybe not entirely clarified by the Kinsey scale; Str8 men (who have sex with men too). I resist using a "Brokeback Mountain" analogy because those boys shared a history, an emotional attachment, and [presumably] remained exclusive. Gay requires commitment, Str8 requires scheduling. Bathrooms, bars, parks, truck stops, apses- these all provide an accessible backdrop for str8 men to wander away from their identified orientation for sex that is as much a sport as it is a way of having it off- and we all know how they love their sports. Often enough, both parties identify as straight and after the moist towelette, neither is any less so. Let me make a clear delineation between these guys ‘trolling for trade’ and predators. I’m not talking about encounters where either party could be characterized as a victim, unless one of those men happen to be a police officer. I am most definitely talking about men negotiating to have sex with other men, with the courtship ritual reduced to just the few signals Mr. Craig demonstrated. I have no idea if there is a covert network of str8 men who will cover for each other (my knowledge of the subject is only general) but the willingness to accept ‘straight’ as ‘absolutely straight’ clouds too much of the commentary. If some woman in Boise were to surface with a headline like; "My Son’s Friend Larry Painted My Ceiling"or " Larry was such a polite child...not like the others.." I might have been ready to own him, but it’s clear. He’s only a sexual opportunist. Let he and the life he built around it work out the details.

it's over

...summer, that is. As I’ve outlined, the part of it I didn’t spend in an environment only a mushroom farmer might be jealous of, I spent as a job-hunting housefrau with children battling over my shoulder and debris collecting at my ankles as I sat here struggling to transform my ennui into a palatable form of entertainment. Am I sounding enough like Erma Bombeck? As to the children; it’s beyond me how someone with a pair of servants and a fourteen inch waist can still find things to gripe about. They blame me. I pass it onto ‘W’. We’re all shouting down rat holes. The few day trips we’ve made to the beach (which collectively strung together constitute our ‘vacation’) have on my end been marred by the tragic sight of acres of sun-poisoned flesh and [maybe not enough] Lycra sun wear. Personally, I have three bathing suit choices; the knee-length ‘jams’ which can pass as shorts for ‘from-beach-to-raw bar’ attire; the mid-thigh boxer cut in a fun print, which is exclusively for pool parties; and most revealing, the square-cut Lycra, which I do wear to the beach primarily because they fit well under shorts without looking like I’m wearing a diaper and because... well, I’m Russian- we take sun-bathing seriously. Pretend you hadn’t noticed. I am able to expand on that flimsy justification. 1- By ‘Russian guy at the beach’ standards, the square-cut is downright Victorian. 2- I don’t stand up. I am there to tan every inch of flesh I can get away with baring in public, and as I say- I don’t stand up. The amount of time I spend dropping my shorts or getting up to shake sand out of the towel is calculated like a chess move. A friend of mine used to take a camera to the beach to fill his album of people seduced into thinking that no one was watching- I pretty much know how long I have to fuss a towel with sweaty hams to the sun and my ‘joe’ [that’s ‘gut’, now] spilling over the drawstring. I rely on sunglasses to provide the necessary anonymity for just those few seconds. In my mind I’m the Prince of York fighting for a few relaxed moments as a commoner. (I’m all WASP on the other side). Last week a gigantic wave lifted my oldest son off of his float and deposited him on his head in the receding surf. Now, there have been few occasions to convince me that he isn’t made of rubber- he’s been jumping out of second-story windows for about four years now. (I have dreams about being Bam Margera’s fat father, waking up at 3 am to my son driving an ATV through my bedroom). I don’t want to seem completely jaded but I pretty much knew what the dozen witnesses and sprinting lifeguards didn’t. That if ignored, he would have shaken it off in two minutes before setting off to toss jellyfish at his little brother. But more likely that, given the moment, having the attention of a crowd of people would turn him into Blanche Dubois. I’ll call the several hours we lost going to the ER (no injury) well spent for learning how to keep him compliant on short jaunts. Next time we have to drag him along on an errand, we simply have to duct tape him to a plank and honk the horn all the way. Searchingly, I am forced to wonder if the several seconds it took for me to transition from jiggly sunbather into modestly attired parent would, on the occasion of a true emergency, have cost the response valuable time. To my past credit, I have jumped into pools fully [even formally] clothed to fish him out. I have carried him and also less intrepid (yet every bit as dramatic) playmates for several blocks when a bit of blood has rendered them inconsolable. I’ve logged enough time in the ER for ‘curtain rod-related’ injuries and yet avoided being red-flagged as a child-abuser so as hopefully to earn a modicum of discernable recognition for good judgement. In the meanwhile he’s been given swimming lessons and cautioned repeatedly against rough-housing near window treatments. But you’re only as good as your last call. Prioritizing insecurities is something I’m fresh to. (Lord!, there’s something new at every turn). I’m busy formulating my next call to arms; I’ll be dozing, like so many pivotal moments is my life, it will take me far too long to understand the full import of my inaction. I’d be wearing a thong- one of few sensible choices for ‘holding it up’ in humid weather. I ‘d happily swim out to rescue someone but pray I wouldn’t have to climb scaffolding to get to them. It would probably be the kind of emergency I could barely take seriously, like either one of my own children yelling, "Help, help!". I know!, I haven’t let go of enough to be a self-less parent. I’m getting close though, there’s not much left to hold on to. I don’t need to hear the actual words- I know when someone is correcting my children and I respond like mother Robin does when strangers intrude on her nest. I watch carefully from a distance. I dissuade them from becoming close friends with children whose moms make them wear bicycle helmets. (Don't jump on me, I have a helmet for every day of the week, if I could only get them to put one on. I've even suggested wearing two at all times, then, taking one off to ride a bicycle- it would still feel reckless.) And I’ve learned to be vigilant only on Sunday when I know that the waiting room at the ER is packed. It’s important to play the odds. I hope that I am reliable in an emergency but that I am never tested. In the end I’d probably be like one of those parents you see in the newspaper that keep their children locked in a closet for two years. (I think I know [where 'at' was their head]). A friend of mine was walking his dog on a beach in New Jersey when a ‘park ranger?’ cautioned him to keep away from the nesting site of the endangered "Piping-Plover". It was explained to him that the mere presence of a ‘boy and his dog’ would cause the adult Piping-Plovers to abandon the nest, assuring the demise of the wee Pps. My friend responded, "Isn’t that a bird that deserves to be extinct?". I’m not sure what my point was, except maybe to bring my narrative back to the beach. This week we managed to shake the ‘Baywatch’ hopefuls. We tried out a new beach. Number two son let go of his kite which managed on it’s own to tether to an empty WWII look-out tower. We were ever so proud, driving away from such a conspicuous tag. Maybe it would still be there next spring. God willing everyone is still alive, we’ll be among the first to find out.

notice to subscribers

As thrilled as I am to see my hit counter jump a decade, I should bare a few of the bones of this operation for you. While I draft in Word to avoid a particular snafu which in 'Blogger' has channeled many hours work into the nether, I must still faff around with 'Publish' to detect errors in link addresses (a comma where a period should be, etc.- and occasionally supply an after-thought or revision). If that is a matter of cut and paste, I haven't figured it out. [I beg your indulgence with inconsistant spacing between the last punctuation mark and the next capital letter]. Each untuned 'publish' goes out to you as I sort my way through it. Though I am greatly humbled for even having subscribers, I must confess that the anxiety attached with annoying the very ones I hope to impress with redundant postings is causing me no small amount of stress. I suggest doing what I do as I wait for the morning paper to be delivered. Smoke cigarettes and gulp coffee while pacing back and forth, cursing my name. Go repeatedly to 'Smack Dab' and slam down on the little x when 'no animals were harmed during the filming of this production' again tops the posts, and spend another day brewing over Smack Dab's sloppy work ethic- promising never to read him again. When the full import of Life Without Smack Dab has had time to settle, pick up on some older postings- maybe there was something that you missed. You suddenly realize, "where else will I go for endless prattling on". You turn to your Magic 8 ball and ask; Will Smack Dab Publish Today?. 'Reply Hazy'. But keep faith. I'll be here, waiting for your moment of desperation- it will be intuitive. Two or five days with those smarmy phrase-makers with the potty mouths over on the Huffington Post and you'll be running back for more of his caustic wit, embedded in liltingly Victorian run-on sentences. It will finally appear; 'notice to subscibers'. The trademark uncapitalized title, the cavalier dismissal of paragraphed form, descriptions phrased in threes. Puntuation that does everything but smile. I've rarely thought twice about "growing up in public with my pants down" but confess my uneasiness with an eager readership. In short, stop subscribing. It makes [all three of ] you look needy.

no animals were harmed during filming of this production

How is that possible? We're keeping close tabs on a bird's nest in the rafters of our make-shift paint shop in the barn. Mama is being a lot more cautious about bringing bugs around as long as we're there. While she is away, the two fledglings threaten to push each other out of the nest for both portions... I make a regular early morning assault on wasp nests around our work areas, few survive... I didn't have the heart to look behind us as the transport van took us back to our allocated parking area at the end of the day, rolling over a stone-still bunny in the middle of the drive, (they might have more presence of mind than squirrels, who always choose the wrong time to make a sudden move). We've disrupted hundreds of feeding paths and obstructed the entrance to hundreds of nests and safe places. I couldn't say what the 'greens' department are out there doing for a few seconds of fuzzily filmed foliage over someones shoulder, but they come back stinking! I try to give spiders a moment to observe the path of my brush before mowing right through them and their webs, they seem faster emergency responders than say, sleepy moths. Typically I shout, "WHO WANTS TO DIE FOR ART!!" when I paint an acre of shrubby ground to match the season called for in the script with an airless sprayer which delivers about three gallons a minute. (I try to speak slowly and enunciate, I know they don't speak English) . Oh?, what's that? PETA only cares about furry animal actors with eyelashes? Never mind.

film magic

I’m working as a scenic artist now on a film about lord-knows-what. I signed an agreement promising not to tell even if I find out, but they needn’t worry- I’m probably the least inquisitive employee on the books. I’ve been in the business long enough to know that the final release bears little resemblance to the film we all thought we might be working on. On ‘Unbreakable’ (2000) with Bruce Willis for instance, a crew of five or six of us spent several days carefully stuccoing a facade from scaffolding, under the blistering sun. A few feet away they had installed a built-in swimming pool, which of course we were banned from using. We were advised that this was for a climactic scene- all measure of vigilance should be taken with our trowel work, weathered age applied with studied care. You may know the scene from the film. The villain pushes Bruce off a balcony into the pool. You do see the back of the house- for a second, at night, during a thunderstorm, from underwater. Eh!, so long as the checks clear. I’m usually working on a set a few weeks before it's filmed. Only occasionally do I get a chance to see the Hollywood luminaries in person. They seem like regular people, only shorter. I saw Jean-Claude VanDamme throw a star fit because the snack table was out of peanut butter. Had a playful chat with a bath-robed Bryce Dallas (Ron Howard’s daughter) between takes of her ‘huddled in the shower’ scene in ‘Lady In The Water’ (2006). She was sick of showering and I really wanted one. Remember all the fantastic $250./roll wallpaper in that film?... all me. Again; blazing sun, dirty work, un-useable swimming pool yards off. There are just never enough reasons to make me regret my career choice. I did get to create a ‘star’ piece of scenery for ‘Fallen’ (1998) with Denzel Washington and Donald Sutherland. Denzel descends into a creepy, forgotten basement. Wiping away the [tempera paint] with a rag he uncovers the word "azazel", (rendered in my very best ‘culture-neutral, sans serif’ scrawl). I completely forget the significance of it, but it was probably an important enough scene to survive being cut from the television version. "And the Oscar goes to.." Film work is often like a lucid dream. Typically, after the last twelve hour day I show up in the morning feeling like I’ve been gone from the shop for all of twenty minutes. From there I might go out to paint walls in a convent or a penitentiary, eat lobster and clams in a tent in a parking lot for forty-five minutes, and spend the rest of the day in a [fictitious] twelve-year-old boys’[fake] bedroom, painting dust under his radiators and taking the just-out-of-the-package shine off of all his action figures. After five hours of sleep, the REM never really seems to stop. The trees, (sawed off and mounted to wagons, their leaves pulled off and replaced with silk replicas); a gentle breeze, (pushed through a fan the size of my first apartment); the rolling lawns, ( painted green); bracingly fresh drifts of snow, (a product resembling whipped lard, squirted from fire hoses and carefully raked into place). Nature doesn’t always get it quite right. That’s why we band of talented artisans stand at the ready to take the gloss off of ice or to paint rocks to look more like rocks. (I say 'paint' when I could mean floor wax, lye, or roof tar). I am reminded of the Hugo award winning sci-fi tingler ‘A Boy And His Dog’ (1975) starring a fresh-faced (and predictably shirt-less) Don Johnson who, wandering bomb-razed planet Earth with his matted and telepathic (yeah) Bearded Collie, stumble upon the entrance to an underground world of displaced Mid-Westerners. [Footnote: the role of the dog is supplied by the same actor who played 'Tiger' in the hit TV series "The Brady Bunch]'. Underground a cheezily costumed and made-up tribe of hayseeds (maybe robots or zombies, I forget), whose menfolk have lost the ability to procreate (that’s what they need Don Johnson for), live (and die) on what appears to be the set of ‘Picnic’(1955). I accept this world and these people as completely plausible. For months at a time I spend my days in a blacked-out warehouse painting ‘soot’ on the insides of fireplaces and hurricane lamps and eating my lunch next to a guy with a gigantic right arm who looks a lot like an embalmer I used to know... or saw on TV. 'Hardball with Chris Matthews' is my 'surreal'. I’m out of the shop next week, on location at a farmhouse where presumably I’ll be painting green weeds brown and making a hundred-year-old brown barn look like a hundred-year-old yellow barn. "I'll need twenty gallons of root killer and as much 'Aquanet' as you can find!" Enjoy the show, whatever it turns out to be, sorry about the harming of trees- it wasn't my call, and (if it wouldn't be giving too much away) keep an eye out for Mrs. Jones’ rain spouts, (they're plastic!).

organized

...Speaking of Grandma's recipes (see Grandma's Borscht)- hers for '[hk]oo-lyp-see' [stuffed cabbage] has seduced me with the phrase: roll them loosely, pack them tight. I've adopted the broader concept of 'general programs in apple-pie-order' into nearly every avenue of life. In terms of household organization it is an ever-changing system that requires above all else a careful eye to functional surfaces- what is likely to pile up? and how can one whip the ugliness into a picturesque conformity. Like a pile of books- within reason even newspapers- can lend an aire of voracious minds at play, if not too prissily aligned. Topped with the 'Magic 8-ball' the impression widens to suggest an appetite beyond things knowable. One must be careful when the height or sheer number of these piles threaten to obscure one's path from the door. The goal is to appear to be inquisitive while not quite bookish (which might leave visitors wary of sitting down on half-eaten candy bars). Be warned that family pets are not always respectful of what you're trying to accomplish- especially our dog, who is capable of rearranging entire furniture groupings. It is acceptable to have a kitchen full of dirty dishes provided that the are scraped and stacked restaurant-style beside the sink- not in it. Despite the number of days they may have sat there, it is the suggestion of a professional work ethic that buys forgiveness. Also, your stemware will fare much better. Plates should be kept on a lower shelf over the stove to stay warm, displacing herbs. I'll admit that spices and dried herbs require a better system than the one I presently employ where most frequently used items are to the front of an eye-level shelf holding a very busy collection of bottles, jars, and baggies. I won't brag about the convenience but it's a good place to hide things from the children. I keep glassware on a higher shelf than plastic vessels to discourage climbing youngsters, but it doesn't always work. Coffee, tea, Macaroni N' Cheese, oatmeal, rice and powdered drinks should occupy the "just add water' cabinet over the sink along with a shelf of the required mugs, pitchers, and bowls. Pots should be stored with their lids, not nested, unless you enjoy cacophonous struggles. Speaking of which, short of replacing your aluminum bake ware with the new-fangled silicone (which I mistrust because it still requires the support of what?, a metal cookie sheet), my only suggestion is to keep the Pyrex somewhere else. It's depressing enough to learn that mice are using your bunt pan as a toilet, limiting the frequency of having to open the cabinet at all is the best option. [I give you my word as a former professional dishwashist {dishwasher operator}, these items are sanitized before I use them]. Of course I assume someone will be peeking in my junk drawer which is why I am careful to assign actual junk to a box in the basement (especially corded electronic accessories, enemies of containment in drawers). What should remain are flashlights, batteries, screwdrivers, mousetraps, sewing kits (unless broad enough to warrant inclusion in a 'sewing basket'), IKEA wrenches, and for a touch of whimsy, the flattened out souvenir pennies from those cranking machines. These suggest, and let's admit junk drawers betray the order of our brains, a 'can-do' personality. Before hyper-organizing fasteners into dozens of baby food jars, consider the frame of mind one is in when one is stuck on fastening. If we knew what we needed and we knew what it was called, we could certainly appreciate going to an aptly labeled jar for hundreds of them. But in practice we need no more than five of them, and a quick rifle through four trays titled nails w/ heads, nails w/o heads, screws w/ points, screws w/o points (and with the designation of a box titled 'tape and glue') what couldn't be fastened. I'll tell you what- if you're that crafty. Go to an automotive center and buy a roll of the goo (in tape form) that sets windshields in place (butyl). I won't guarantee you can hang your bowling pin collection from your popcorn ceiling with it, but in the world of non-porous connectors it has no equal, and the one roll will last you your entire life. Communities located on active fault lines know I speak the truth. Mementos could be gathered into a Rubbermaid container labeled 'Cherished Crap' (for good-but-not-frame-able postcards, expensive personalized gifts you can't use, decks of naughty playing cards, etc.), but the mindful (appearing careless) display of old photos chronicling period hair choices, I.O.U.s from drunk friends, or anything to do with a deceased Pope should be allowed to pop up as a bookmark or stuck to the refrigerator. Clothes storage is a matter of personal choice, but consider devoting a large drawer for socks. It's a lot of space to devote to what most men would relegate to one of those small drawers up top but 1- can you own enough socks (and conversely, flip-flops?) and 2- the square footage (area) of a large drawer makes absolute sense for bleary-eyed groping. I accidentally wore two different socks to school one day in 1966- I won't make that mistake again! A seasonal change of short and long pants in the bottom drawer will afford the extra room. By the way, the Kurt Vonnegut rule for writing- "ruin your own jokes" takes seed in the fashion world as- "throw out the things you bought on vacation". Closets- see; William Sledd on You-tube. He didn't invent color grouping, (I think thrift stores did), but why not choose your tie first and hold it up to an array of shirts to find the right match. It's the jump-start to 'meticulous'. I do group by color but I am no William Sledd. Our closet is tragically disordered. Where it should be eight or nine 'stuffed cabbages' it's just the one. I have a few boxes of shoes on a shelf but since moving day over a year ago I haven't quite figured out what to do with the three or four gigantic boxes of them at the bottom of the closet. Maybe if my oldest son moves out in six years I can re-purpose his bunk beds as a shoe rack, but that's a shaky prospect to pin my dreams on. I've already outlined my frustration with junk mail (two Sierra Trading Post catalogs ago). My new plan is to buy one of those coastal homes with a ground floor basement and the actual living space starting one flight up. Happily, I don't care what my basement looks like as long as I can get to the fuse box. Somehow I only received the Obsessive half of Compulsive/ Obsessive Disorder, I own no such compulsion to make or follow hard-fast systems. But in this house that's enough to make me the Felix Unger. This is something my mother should find deservedly ironic. I located her last nerve thirty years ago when I left the bag of bread unclosed for probably the three hundredth time, an occasion which left me picking breadcrumbs out of my shag. "Wrong damn shelf.." I mutter first thing in the morning (after Michael has unloaded the dishwasher), swapping plastic cups for glasses when my eyes are open barely enough to recognize my Alf coffee mug. "What's this doing here" I say, picking my blanket up off of the dining room floor on my way up to bed at night. Finding out if anything will make this house run smoother will probably cost me my stomach lining- but I'll keep at it. Presently I'm trying to wrap my mind around the sixteen or so 'tote bags' (emblazoned with slick graphics for various medications) that litter the floor of every room. They might contain anything from unwashed athletic gear to May 16th's uneaten lunch, something I am happy not knowing as long as I am able to resist unzippering them. They constitute enough of a 'stuffed cabbage' for me, I'm thinking I'll drive a few nails into all the load bearing walls in the house, hang them up, and call it a day.

last will and testament

I usually take a moment out of every ten years or so to put something on paper. It's occurred to me that I'm due and a blog seems a happier venue for it than being buried in the junk drawer- so here goes;

I, Smack Dab, being of sound mind and body do hereby bequeath all monies, royalties, dividends, and worldly possessions to my partner of now twenty-eight years, Michael. For reasons known well to him the following exceptions shall apply;
1-My only surviving 'Alf' coffee mug shall be buried with me, along with a well charged cell phone with all speed dial locations programed to my home number- with the specific instruction that someone be at home and awake for at least three days following said interment.
2-"Selected Short Stories, Franz Kafka" should be returned to my father (but I promise I don't have your 'Yodeling Cossacks' LP, or whatever it was you think I have). Jan, you leave a book here every time you babysit- I've tried not to lose your page but they're all around here somewhere. Oh, and if anyone has my "Mozart's Requiem" please see that it is returned, I wouldn't be buried to anything else!
3- Capital One will probably want their car back.

The following provisos are not legally binding, but only encouraged;
1- An essay contest should be held; "My Thoughts On Big Narrow Feet", the winner to receive 40+ pair of assorted 'gently used' size 12 footwear.
2- My youngest son should inherit my opera collection on CD- he might as well find out early on that people with deep voices are out to get him.
3- My oldest son should inherit my "Miss Manners" library, his future first wife would thank me.

As to the actual interment; honestly, wrapped in burlap (if it comes in red or orange), no box, and on (where legal) government land- first choice, in the middle of a traffic circle. I envision a 'drive-by' funeral. Second choice, the ocean- not terribly practical because I would still want to be buried (and 'drive -by' now requires some sort of sea craft). Third choice is a median strip somewhere, but not Florida.

The greatest likelihood is that my marker would be a homemade wooden cross at the I-95/495 split just north of Wilmington, DE. It has been on my 'to do' list for quite some time, but I'd much rather have something cast in concrete with my name, Smack Dab, spelled out in embedded broken green glass - I saw it in the floor of a food court and really loved it. If it's not my gravestone first, it'll be my kitchen counter-top.

Finally, No 'in lieu of...', I want flowers- the less ordinary they are, the more everyone else will know how much you loved me! Save the roses for Valentines Day. I do love (orange) glads so don't feel like you have to spend too much. My favorite are poppies, burn the stems so they'll keep. ( I hate' baby's breath', go with dill weed or tarragon if you're looking for a filler).

Thanks everyone, I had a good run. I hope I live long enough to see them grow fruit with the SKU# already genetically tattooed in the skin, but if not, don't cry for me. My time has not yet come.

punk rock

Though I've touched on the fashion of the era (see; 'clothes horse'), there is much, much more to my 'punk' story. Popular music leading up to this time was fuzzily divided into two camps, both bloated legacies of the British Invasion (which was essentially repackaged American Blues). Half the kids in suburbia who took music seriously were having 'listening experiences' on their head-phones with groups like Jethro Tull and Yes- dreamy, poetic lyrics punctuated by slickly synthesized instrumentals and ten minute drum solos. The other half, as drawn to shiny objects as they were to outrageous personalities, were having a more direct experience with the music of Roxy Music and David Bowie, dressing and behaving like their idols. Participation in any of it generally required going to see them in sports venues, with the tallest people in the world in front of you, the scariest people in the world behind you, and flaming projectiles passing overhead. An American rebellion against this out-of-touch super-band stadium thing had already started with bands like the Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges, long enough before this time that their records were starting to show up in the bargain bins at Woolworth's, has-beens before they ever were. Lou Reed and John Cale survived the Velvets to become personalities in their own right, their early solo efforts drearily esoteric yet still, enough to tide us over until something more user-friendly came along. This limping deconstruction from polished and over-produced to gutsy and raw is most brilliantly narrated by the artists themselves and their satellite of hangers-on in the book "Please Kill Me- The Uncencored Oral History Of Punk" by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. The scene which I am qualified to narrate, called by some the beginning of this new music and by others the end of it, reached a creative climax in 1976/1977 on the Bowery in New York at a club called CBGB's (the possessive form having no reasonable explaination). This was about a year after the wildly outrageous New York Dolls were tragically re-themed and mis-managed into oblivion by smarmy London boutique owner Malcolm McLaren and less than a year before he again pressed style way beyond substance with the calamitously imported debut (and simultaneous demise) of the Sex Pistols. If there is a Harold Hecuba in the story of Rock and Roll (see; "Here On Gilligans Island" by Russell Johnson with Steve Cox, pp220), it is he. After the Dolls, it was the Ramones who snatched new music from the jaws of mediocrity (witness- the meteoric rise of Peter Frampton) and focused it into deeply satisfying bursts of noise and frantic motion lasting barely over two minutes at a pop. History dutifully records the New York bands like Television and Blondie, and they were the catalyst for every bored scene-ster in the country to climb into an ugly car and drive to New York City to see what it was all about, but exciting music was coming from all over. A typical weekend at CB..'s would almost certainly feature the Ramones- notorious for stopping in the middle of a song to argue with each other; probably The Cramps, with an original line-up featuring Brian Gregory who cleverly butched-up his on-stage persona by spitting in several directions at once (dryer seating toward house right) and an absolute lunatic drummer named Muriel; and the Talking Heads, irreconcilable to the backdrop, with their Hush-Puppies, expensive band gear, and methodically organized set-list. I usually traveled in the company of girls with enough make-up in their purses for me to forge the hand-stamp of that evening, which enabled us free entrance. Girls like Nancy Spungen were there to bag a musician boyfriend, most of them hanging outside to maximize the likelihood of meeting guys like David Johansen and Johnny Thunders (too famous to endure the press of another band's fans inside), to avoid being tipped off their stilettos, and presumably to keep their outfits dry. And if the band was any good, you could hear them just as well from out front. Concepts of personal space dramatically disentegrated upon entrance. (My own tactic for managing the humidity was just to stay wet, periodically baptizing myself from the sink). Though the Sex Pistols tour of the southern U.S. was tracked like a storm on the nightly news, it fizzled out before they ever made it intact to N.Y.C. A couple of their singles which trumpeted the release of 'Never Mind The Bullocks' were on the jukebox and the photo spreads of mohawked English fans were enough to usher the look and the attitude from across the Atlantic. Television co-founder Richard Hell was the American arch-type for the original look which owed more to a lack of laundry skills than it did to anarchist leanings. A week of Voidiods' gigs saw the same striped shirt on the cover of 'Blank Generation' pass from one to the other of them. And I can state with no fear of exaggerating that the Voidiods smelled as loudly as they played. My own look was marginally Hellish with one foot in David Bowie's 'Thin White Duke', though the combined effect was neither, but instead something we callously referred to as 'bag-man chic'. My roommate at the time, Chuck, leaned more heavily toward the safety pinned, dog-collared aesthetic. He mixed it up a bit with fish nets and stilettos which proved a remarkable advance for him in the sport of boy-baiting. Acts like Elvis Costello (whose ass received the tip of my army boot the night he pushed me out of his way to get to the bar), The Damned, Magazine, and Ultravox were among the first Brits to actually play here. Though punk in America has come to be most strongly brand-identified with it's angrier British step-child, musically they barely caused a ripple. It actually wasn't until some time later when the Psychedelic Furs had pared away all the socio-political posturing and delivered some honest tunes that the UK became relevant to the American club scene. But I digress into the subjective. To list a few of the bands who lacked the mass-appeal of the Ramones and Blondie yet have managed to pierce through the fog of beer and quaaludes which has compromised my memory of so many others; Lance Loud of PBS's "An American Family" fame toured with an adorable band called The Mumps; Paul Zone's The Fast, a show that was perhaps too New Jersey for my taste yet preceded a memorable evening backstage hanging out with the Cramps; The Marbles; (Jim) Skafish who wowed us all with "Disgracing The Family Name" (which he demonstrated in a silk babushka with red lipstick smeared into his cheeks); and The Dead Boys, who, along with most of their fans, were almost too idiotic to suffer, though I did- (and was that Chuck I saw gnawing on the other end of a piece of raw liver with Stiv Bator?). Two albums with Bowie had sort of homogenized Iggy Pop into something finally marketable. With seemingly no evidence that the clock had ever stopped on his path of notoriety, he took back to the stage in small clubs to rightly displace Lou Reed as the true Godfather of Punk. In 1980, I think, Michael and I went to see him at the Hot Club in Philadelphia, causing a stir of our own- we wore leather jackets and jockstraps, checking our pants at the door. We both might have predicted that Iggy would wear just that outfit to perform the following night in N.Y.C. We spent the next four years taking our first stab at being grown-ups with a real job- an ironic twist landing us in the unlikely role of housekeepers for Deborah Spungen, mother of freshly-murdered Nancy. Soon enough Michael began singing for a band which ushered in the next chapter of punk-inspired mystagoguery for us. I don't recall that the mid-eighties ever found a snappy designation like 'punk'. Too many artists where on their way up, out, or back again to be assigned a cohesive motive- though ours was just to postpone for as long as possible assimilation into Ronald Reagan's strange new world. Michael earned his mark on now worthless slabs of vinyl as yet another 'Also Rocked', though the mere fact that he out-lived three of his band's managers is success enough. (I'll save musings on that sometimes remarkable post-punk era for later). I have to say that it worries me a bit listening to our son pound away on his drum kit, and at the same moment wondering what gutter Muriel is likely to have ended up in. I met the Cramps again backstage at a theater where I used to work, at over a decade later- I forgot to ask them.

cover letter

Dear [undecipherable from your e-mail address],
I am an energetic and highly-motivated individual [with all the time in the world to sift through blind leads] for challenging work [with the next company who will suck that last bit of energy from me]. From my start in this business [when you were busy pooping in diapers] I have been able to distinguish myself [hand-holding for a bunch of nervous nellies] and have proven my ability to deliver an un-compromised product [despite tragically misguided budget cuts]. My vast experience with [hopelessly misinformed] clients and [their delusional time-lines] uniquely qualifies me to [point out what you should have told them to begin with]. I have a wide range of [obsolete] skills and a great desire to mentor [my eventual replacement]. My particular strength for [being one of the few people on your staff to give a damn] and for [routinely saving all your asses] has never failed to [pit your immediate subordinate against me]. I am confident that I can provide your company with [credit to steal] and [a scape-goat for your worst blunders]. If you are looking for a [magic pixie] who will [work for less than what you pay your dry cleaner] then please consider me for this [wildly over-reaching job description]. I look forward to an opportunity to demonstrate [how far I will ingratiate myself for the vaguest job offering] and sincerely hope that you [have the slightest understanding of the position you seek to fill]. Please do not hesitate to [treat this inquiry as if it were wholly unsolicited] or to [provide a clue that you have even read my resume].
Yours [with ever-lowering expectations], [You, one day]

2008

Last night someone tried to start a sentence with "If the Democrats were smart...". I had to stop him cold. Let me make that point quickly. John Kerry. It was incomprehensible to me how anyone walked away from those primary debates thinking this man had anything but height working for him. A common remark at the exit polls was that he looked 'presidential'. I can only surmise that to have meant- tall and grotesque, like Abraham Lincoln. The hunting jacket did nothing at all to humanize him. If the Democrats have gotten any smarter in the last four years, they're keeping it a big secret. They stand to win this time around because swing voters have had time to realize their supreme blunder. What will most likely play out before our eyes this year will haunt us all with it's familiarity. Success would look a lot like the mid-term, a voting out of the ins more so than moving toward a cohesive platform. Iowa and New Hampshire will pretend to carefully weigh the issues and then line up behind the one who can best state the obvious and flip pancakes at the same time. We'll all just have to wait and see the effect, if any, of the new batch of early west state primaries. This time around Hillary is cast as the not-so-left Howard Dean, with Barrack playing 'clean and articulate' John Edwards, and John Edwards playing John Kerry, only with a wife that doesn't scare people. The Hillary balloon will burst, Barrack will implode, and Edwards' message of "Hoep" will probably seduce the yokels. If that sounded like a prediction, I'm sorry. My pessimism is based on the fact that this is the party that couldn't even make a win stick. I have less concern for who wins either nomination, or the general election for that matter than I have for the massive 'undo' the next [I will predict- one term] administration will face. The mess we presently find ourselves in is unfixable without a time machine. Even if Joe Biden or Ron Paul could, they'll never get the chance to prove it. Neither will I, but here's my plan anyway. First, join a North American Union, three heads have got to be better than one, and then we wouldn't need fences- we have a moat. There is no such thing as a national identity that isn't the most unimaginative of us trying to preserve their own comfort level. At this point we need to be seen as bland yet viable, irrepressible yet civil, something our neighbors might help us with. Texas could be it's own little hold-out, like the Vatican City. Universal health care. Call it socialism if you want, but I would call it an investment. I don't have a research assistant to guide me through this but aren't drugs that produce side-effects like abdominal cramps and fetal injury the sort of thing the FDA should not approve? I've personally seen some of the talking points used at conventions of pharmaceutical salesmen and there's little evidence there to support humanitarian goals. It might be time to redirect the 'war on drugs'. Guns and gays, isn't it clear that social issues are black holes at the federal level and the last thing anyone should use to test a presidential hopeful. Civil liberties are already provided for in the Constitution, they just haven't been deciphered to everyone's satisfaction yet. Speaking of habeas corpus, let's come up with an ambitious schedule of wreath-laying and toll plaza openings to keep our next Vice-President busy. But first let's address the election process. Start with simple things like making it impossible for a State election commissioner to work on a particular candidate's campaign. Maybe we could use some of this satellite technology and just take a show of hands. It may sound a little loosey-goosey but calling convicted felons, servicemen overseas, and people without hands a wash, I seriously doubt many electoral votes will hinge on a margin of six hundred people again. In any case, do-overs would be a simple matter. Even if a fair election were guaranteed, I have only a wisp of confidence in any of the current line-up of candidates. Conventional wisdom (certainly an oxymoron) would point to the person you'd want to have a beer with, but I think I'll start with 'don't hate their guts' and grope carefully toward 'listen to for more than ten minutes without rolling my eyes'. 'Electability' is a trash concept- if you didn't used to think so, you should now. Intelligence and the experience to assimilate reliable information into a carefully measured plan are the virtues I'll be looking for. Being able to steer through the superfluities of a campaign without further lowering the bar will count for a lot. (If Howard Dean can't come through with some tactical defense I'll come down there and make him scream again!) Meanwhile the party has to sell that plan, which should be carefully confined to the big picture politics of world diplomacy, fair trade, and social services with a proven record of effectiveness. Most of the other issues people are rightly concerned about would benefit from a renewed focus on responsible global policies and carefully targeted domestic spending. (Duh!, I'm still writing in the hypothetical here, can you tell?). To state that you are for education and against taxing the middle class is not a platform, it's a sleeping pill. As are the words 'hope', 'values', and 'accountability'. I'd like to see a little moxy. Gravels got it and deep down I'm sure one of the non-lunatic candidates has it too. It's time to can the platitudes and get creative, if only for the purpose of eliminating the phrase 'in harm's way' (Danger?, Peril?, Deep Ca-ca?, it's not that hard!). And can we just borrow a term from Benjamin Franklin and call all of the criminal mis-steps of the current administration "self-evident" and get past spinning our wheels investigating them. They're way ahead of us on ever being held accountable. Let's tax the greedy, rich and poor alike. That should fill the coffers and still leave free-enterprise intact. Let's let our volunteer military decide if they want to stay or not. It would add poignancy to Rumsfeld's statement about working with the military that you've got. And [does it need saying] let's not depose any more dictators. They will be displaced in their own time and it won't cost us a rial. One last thing, and I'll slap myself now for saying it. If the Democrats were smart, they would debate in pairs, you know, how it's really done? This game show format doesn't help anyone. I'll even pair them up. Hillary with Dodd, Obama with Kucinich, Edwards with Gravel, and Biden with Richardson. Give the losers a can of Turtle Wax and send them on their way.

kill chickens

I'm working on a more substantive piece but while you wait for that, here's an appalling little story I drag out when the conversation gets dull. When we moved from a Victorian townhouse in the city to a two acre plot in the middle of nowhere, we took a stab at the 'gentleman farmer' thing we'd seen on TV. Our Sapphic goat-farming friends down the road lent us a tiller and we set about carving out an eight-hundred square foot vegetable garden. I meticulously laid out a grid of irrigation hose according to my carefully drafted and color-coded scale drawing, which was to be gravity fed by a pair of rain barrels I had salvaged and out rigged beneath the gutters on the barn. This isn't the real story so I'll abbreviate. Our labors were repaid with enough zucchini to feed an army, a thirsty looking row of corn, and a plot of tomato plants so heavily guarded by the most gigantically menacing spiders I've ever laid eyes on that most of the fruit was left to return to the soil from whence it came. The broccoli, eggplant, beans, carrots, celery, and assorted others were no-shows (we watched as the promising young foliage was devoured by who knows what). We decided this was an awful lot of work for a side dish so we moved on to the main course. With the indoor project of petting and naming boxes of chicks and ducklings ongoing, I set about building a pretty ambitious chicken coop and customizing a doghouse for the ducks. In hindsight that energy would have been more judiciously spent on fencing the entire property. By mid-summer every duck, in seeming defiance of my effort to corral them into their house at dusk, was carried off by mister fox or run over by cars. A neighborhood dog shredded over half of the chickens in a fifteen minute lapse of vigilance. Three hens survived along with a rooster the boys had named 'Charming'. By the following year when we had bought another dozen chicks, 'Charming' had grown resentful of his name and would demonstrate this on the legs of anyone who ventured too close. It was his own misfortune to one day try this on Michael- who happened to be carrying a stick. Daybreak was quiet for a time after that until four of the twelve new chicks turned out to be roosters. Googling "kill chickens", Michael printed out detailed instructions for the most humane way of thinning out the roost. I stole into the coop in the middle of the night and re-quartered 'Red' ('Charming's heir apparent) in a dog crate. Ever the careful planner, I awoke before dawn so the children wouldn't discover my murderous intent and strung 'Red' up by the heels on the clothes line. Comforted by the idea that in using this method he would painlessly slip into the arms of Morpheus, I inserted a paring knife, blade forward, into the side of his neck close to the bone and pulled forward. It turned out not to be the expeditious event I was counting on, his continued strained clucking and the advancing daybreak threatened to expose me. I relocated him to the barn where I positioned him, hanging from the rafters over a plastic pail while I took the boys off to Meeting. Ending this birds time on earth was not an easy thing for me, it was precipitated by an anxious dread and carried out with weakness in the knees and heartfelt contrition. It was to my own horror then, that when we arrived back home four hours later, my discovery in the barn was a knocked over pail of blood and no body. It wasn't until I was able to locate the source of a labored gurgling sound behind a stack of boxes that I realized it was my new onus to replay the execution, which I accomplished this time by sawing into the wound with a bigger knife. The second time around I became a little bit more the guy at the end of "Night Of The Living Dead", the Hero with an unpleasant but comically necessary charge. The effrontery of this zombie bird not to die! It was ultimately a blessing that the remaining three roosters were able to tap directly into this primal instinct by one day tearing up a bed of carefully tended begonias. In broad daylight (the boys were in school) I stormed the coop grabbing one after the other of them, swinging them against a fence post on the way out and chopping their traitorous little heads off with an axe. After taking only about fifteen minutes to mete out my hat-trick of revenge I discovered that the previous notion of 'humane' had been misdirected. ('Swift and certain' trumps 'calculated yet contrite'). Also that a chicken [spookily] doesn't need it's head to crow. Really, given that he aims it indiscriminately at the dirt, a hen's back feathers, beloved garden specimens, or people's shins, he is from the day's first ray of sun, begging for someone to take it off. The quieter hen can be forgiven that lapse of discretion for her eggs. From then on our roosters joined store-bought vegetables in the soup pot with a proscribed alacrity. I assumed the sobriquet 'Mr. Fox' for the purpose of making truthful explanations to the children and Michael has stories of his own about denuding and un-stuffing the noisier end of the bird, stories which he displays a higher level of gentility than I in not sharing.

clothes horse

...or, memoirs of an aging fashionista. If you haven't been paying attention to fashion trends over the past three decades you may be wondering why young people are paying someone else to wrinkle their clothes and splatter them with bleach before they buy them, something most of us have been able to do for ourselves in all that time. 'Distressing' is not new but like everything else, it has gotten prohibitively expensive. This will not be a forum for railing against nonsensical clothing choices, in any age. It's the inseparable point to it all, sensible equals dowdy. I just thought it all needed to be put into a time line for others to see the rhyme if not the reason for it all. My own story begins in the early seventies when I first wrested free of the husky corduroys and button down plaids my Mom used to dress me in. Up to that point it wasn't all bad. I was usually able to bring her around to buying the shoes I wanted (She was/is a shoe nut, thank god). And at the time we were close to the same size so she just started wearing what I was jettisoning from my wardrobe. The first trend to seize me was the resurrected interest in the forties. It was not something many of the kids in my high school were hot for, but the few of us who were had an uphill climb finding clothes to suit. In the year that Mr. Blackwell described Bette Midler as having taken "pot luck at the laundry mat" we were scouring thrift stores on the Main Line hoping to strike pay dirt with some deceased GrandMa/Pa's finery. The girls I would accompany always had the best luck (they always do). They would find things cinched and gusseted six ways to sunday, scarves, turbans, beaded bags, and rhinestone clip-ons. I was lucky to find a hand-painted tie. Once I found an impossibly small German tuxedo, still in the dry cleaners bag and every bit the Joel Grey I was hoping for. Alas, his size, but not mine. I had to settle for another tie, this one red satin covered with Miro-esque thingies. Most desirous was the high-waisted pleated front trousers with the pegged legs a la Cab Calloway. When I finally realized the real deal was not to be had I ventured into a woman's clothing store and bought a pair- pleats but with a wide leg. A forties girl herself, Mom ran 'em through the Singer and I was stylin'! Emboldened, I pulled this trick a few more times and quickly made a name for myself at school with my new threads. I won't repeat it here, though. The truly magnificent platform shoes were not to be had at the mall so I would cut school to shop for shoes downtown. What drew me to the city kept me there, a tribe of like-minded slaves to high-fashion (read: setters of trends yet to be). After painstakingly making pariahs of ourselves in our respective home towns, we drew together to sew for each other and swap accessories. After a brief flirtation with the more readily thrift-shopped fifties look, where I affected a rumpled Jack Lemmon sensibility, I fell in with the Punk Rockers. Let the distressing begin. Most of what we had been trying to pass off as polished a few years before was already half way there. What I remember most about this time was the giant heap of communal clothing I and an ever-changing mix of transient roommates would dive into, customize, and wear to death. A rumpled white button down shirt would make the rounds, loosing first the cuffs, then arms, buttons etc. until down the road it would be a gray vest with a circled 'A' spray-painted on the back. Teased hair with some plastic cutlery stuck in it for good measure and we were ready for a night on the town. Practically the only thing we didn't share were our black jeans, whip-stitched on the inseam so as to render them irremovable. In a strange slant on Orwellian uniformity, by 1984 the look was mass-marketed. I worked for a time in a punk clothing emporium (formerly a Glam emporium) with lord knows how many Vietnamese men living upstairs silk-screening rude T-shirts around the clock. Embarrassed for the parade of kids eager to throw their money away on cheesy skeleton jewelry and pretty bored with making the effort to dress (down) up, I adopted a uniform which would carry me through for the next twenty years. Uninscribed cotton tees, Indigo Levis, and Converse high-tops. I had begun my painting career and these would eventually end up looking very much like what's selling at Abercrombie & Finch today. They would lose the legs and sleeves for summer and be replaced with a new ensemble in the fall. A certain black leather jacket (layered over a hoodie for winter) lasted me most of that time until I left it in the back of a cab. These days I've kind of fallen in with the pre-washed crowd, though I've jumped camp from the ass-quartering Levis to the more callipygious Lee jeans. My favorite shoes are Adidas 'Daroga' or flip-flops- no breaking-in required. And after kind of making peace with a gut that won't go away, I go with 'wife-beaters' and/or fitted button downs. I wasn't fooling anyone with untucked larger sizes. It's enough work just keeping my face slim. I tried wearing a polo but synthetic collars are just too torturous, plus Rhode Island 'boatie' just rings a false tone on me. And of course I wouldn't be caught dead in a pleated pant or a pegged anything. I've put together a few respectable outfits for dressy if not formal occasions with one clumsy but shiny pair of shoes. 'Didn't-overthink-it' casual takes all of my best effort. The work attire is unchanged- plasticized with dried latex paint they last twice as long, except for knees. Here is where I may have lucked out. Even in a progressive century men's fashion is extremely slow to evolve and most men even slower to pick up on it when it does. (I'm still seeing mid-thigh jean cut-offs, though mostly at the farmer's market). I've stubbornly resisted that six foot jump across the aisle from young men's into a world of sad raiment for color-blind golfers. Other men my age have side-stepped into athletic apparel but I'm firm on elastic waistbands being just one more way to spell defeat. If I'm lucky and the young men's doesn't go completely off the deep end with the extra large sizing and the cartoonish contrasting stitchery, as it now threatens to do, I'll get another ten years out of it. A few designers out there are looking after me. Needless to say if I were adequately funded I'd stay out of department stores altogether. But back to reality. I'll know when I've gone too far, I know what that looks like on other people. One night an older female friend of mine tried to pull off fuzzy boots, tight jeans, and a lace cammie. It's hard to look out of place in an Atlantic City casino but she managed it. If she wasn't letting me drive her convertible I would have taken a bus home. I learned then that large footwear is only forgivable on teen-agers and winter Olympians, some arms require sleeves (stay ever at the ready to concede on their length), practice any illusion at your disposal for de-emphasizing the neck even if you have to employ props, and arguably most important of all for any age- carefully scrutinize the ass for fit. You don't want to look like you're hauling around a bag of mice.