christmas letter

Season's Greetings from the Dabs! What a remarkable year it's been, eh? If you had been hoping for one like this, well... you certainly got it! A new, more casual sense of decorum in the Houses of our government...all public forums set to the task of 'humanizing' our young President... and a massive restructuring of global priorities that has brought us all closer to our families [for warmth]. Rarely have we had so many reasons for keeping our eyes set upon the future.
Our youngest boy, obviously a showman in the making, has mastered all 96 variations of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on his violin- a few guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye. He has yet to transpose this hunger for variety to his diet. Consisting as it does of pizza and french fries, we are convinced that he is using this innate focus (so rare at his tender age) toward one day securing the coveted lead in "Ain't Misbehavin' ". His most recent appearance as the Lead Polichenelle in "The Nutcracker" has brought all our dreams of a carefree new life in Palm Springs one step closer to fruition.
Obviously a family trait, our eldest son shares this rare focus. This year he has it trained upon chargers and power cords. You really should see his adorable expression when just one of these connectors has escaped his meticulous system of organizing and labeling. The world around us just seems to screech to a halt. He continues to distinguish himself among peers and educators alike, to the point where just last week we had to take a step back from the 'hurly-burly' of concentrated study and complex social interaction for a few quiet weekdays at home together. You know what I mean; father and son time. Please don't be worried that he has taken his sights off of becoming a world-class drummer. We surmise that more people have already heard him practice (why, he just never stops!) than have heard Buddy Rich in concert. What a promising start!
Of course the boys cherish their 'down time' together- rarely can they even be separated! It just fills our hearts to overflowing (to bursting, really) to hear our lads exchange young fancies, and in so many ways, to help each other grow strong and resolute. What more could we ask for?
Big news to some of you; Michael & I finally tied the knot this past July, bringing our whirlwind courtship of thirty years to an end (sorry, boys- I'm off the market). For those who we felt might not appreciate something to do "all dressed up" in the middle of the day; we really did miss you. Don't feel awkward if you would still like to honor us with some thoughtfully chosen 'whats-it'. Protocol for the occasion dictates a full year (commencing last July 18th) for the giving of gifts. Attendant revelers were treated to a day of excitement, commencing with "Go Tell It On The Mountain" led by my Aunt Jane and which, predictably, did not end until the last hair-do had melted! The grooms would like to thank everyone for the photos, stories, fond wishes, and lovely gifts. All four of us Dabs are thankful for an occasion to share time with so many of our friends and family (delivered without sarcasm). I think the deepest impression was made when a dear friend whisked both of our boys off to a remote location for the rest of the evening. Michael and I were left bumping around our empty nest, free to contemplate how unfulfilled our lives might have been with only one Great Dane with a weak stomach to 'do' for. The experience was positively religious.
2009 also saw most of the plumbing in our 51 year old home revert to baser elements. While the sound of rushing water does have it's calmative effect, and it certainly does make easier work of keeping the bathroom floors clean, our holidays have been a teensy bit off-set by more urgent needs to... well, let's just leave it at "more urgent needs". A layer of drywall dust has settled over our lovely pink "permanent" tree like a blanket of fresh snow. And our Christmas cookies have taken on the distinctive flavor of a half-century old oven that, on a whim, will vary as much as 100 degrees either way (apparently the kitchen is jealous of all the loving attention we've been heaping on the bathrooms). By sheer luck, I haven't held meaningful employment for several months now and so have had these long days to flex my credit muscles at Home Depot and Overstock.com. Like that jolly elf himself, I've succeeded in filling almost every room with an array of large cartons. And now that I think of it...what spells out the holiday more than being inconvenienced by things you can't really afford?
Well friends, it was never my intent to go on bragging like this, nor to dwell on our challenges (don't you just hate people who do that?). But it's a special time of year, and I guess what I'm really trying to say is; If we can all just regard this season through the wondrous eyes of the children, just maybe we can recapture a bit of the magic of having a 13" waist and a pair of servants! God Bless Us, Everyone!

going 'amish'

My plan was to abandon all the technology on my desktop and in my pockets, maybe buy back a little of the time I fritter away- to fritter away on something else. The devices are deceitful lovers, betraying me at every turn. You wonder how much of your life you spend sitting at traffic lights or standing in line- ponder then the winding path of windows, passwords, & commands that lead to stark and mocking Error! messages. This very window has many a time sent carefully edited sentences off into the nether. I tip-toe through my work here, careful not to anger the soft buttons. My story, 'typewriter' details how much faith I had invested in an electric typewriter -and the following twenty years I composed in longhand after the advent of the 'word processer' turned it into a cartridgeless paper rattler. Me and Mike Nesmith's mom may be the only people left to still be smarting from that dubious advance in word-crafting. About a year ago I slipped away from blogging and into Crackbook. It seemed easier to deliver my sentences directly to the reader- perhaps nudging them to respond so I might deliver more. This is how I ended up waking two hours before I had to be at work slumped over in my chair. But then, an engraved [read; non-returnable] iTouch I received as a gift from a handsome admirer turned my simple frustrations into a mid-life crisis upon realizing; I smoke too much (stay with me here), the Touch practically demands a pocket of it's own plus some place to keep reading glasses on my person (Anyone, is there a large print option?), and how many adapers, chargers, cables, & headsets can one household sustain? I'm talking about a household where outlets are rare enough to force decisions between toast or coffee & the tangle of stepped-on earbuds and cables to long gone gizmos trip one at every turn. None of it is remotely worth the trouble... if I weren't such a people person ;] But seriously, as much as everything about the 'now' prompts me to pine over lost simplicities of the 'then'; I love renewing old friendships and joking with people I haven't seen in a decade or more. I love texting purely because I hate phone calls. I love summoning photos, articles, videos, etc. I love 'sharing'. One thing that put "going Amish" in my head was; I recently married my handsome admirer and had many 'thank you' letters to write (Miss Manners frowns on cards that say 'thank you' and sentences that begin "Thank you for..."). They took an entire week of full time personalized letter composition. But I learned this; judging by the number of thank yous I received for my thank you letters, people still appreciate things in the snail mail that don't beg an investment. Email is a speedy approximation, as long as the router and the modem aren't seaching for ways to screw you. I had a week of no phone- no internet (the honeymoon)- it happened after my resolve to collect addresses and write thoughtful missives on nice paper with my fluffy quill pen and a bottle of ink I found in an old desk. Stamps, 30 mile trips to the closest 'stationary' store, keeping it all timely- a whole new menu of frustration. So I'm revisiting quitting smoking if only to free up some room in the pockets and admitting that I need bifocals or a pince-nez or reading glasses disguised as a tiara.. or something. I'll continue to complain about every tax on my nerves and my purse, but I'll never abandon an opportunity to reach as far on the globe as I am able with idle chatter.

laundry list

1. Lint trap; always full, always bluish gray, no matter the load. WTF?
2. Backwards Day?- a boondoggle. Inside-out Day?- serving a nobler purpose!
3. Aren't 'darks' colors too?
4. Yellow is the new white!
5. Disposable diapers; a reality. Disposable underwear; my reality.
6. Fabreeze = dry cleaning.
7. No Iron- you're one quarter of the way there. Keep inventing.
8. Sew tags into underwear for a living? Guess what your job in hell will be.
9. Mating socks- why I'm such a fan of flip-flops.
10. Missing socks- they're mating with your darks and escaping through the lint trap.
11. Paper money stuck to the inside of the washer- inescapable evidence of God's love.
12. Carefully weigh the investment in time and effort laundering & folding towels to running around naked for a few minutes.
13. Fabric softener? Dryer sheets? There's a sucker born every minute!
14. In the modern world, every minute spent folding laundry is one minute you arrive late somewhere. [ ...to your child's first recital ;[ )
15. Wear stubborn stains like a 'set-in' badge!
16. Pheromones....ummmm!

See y'all down by the river!

miss me?

I'm working too much, long days- it sucks all the funny out of me. If I had a paragraph in me, it'd probably be spent railing against the fat faggot priest at the last Catholic funeral I had a front row seat to. Or on what an insecure L.A.sshole I'm working for now. Give me some time to find the humor in it all. Meanwhile, I'm over on facebook cracking myself up one sentence at a time. I'll give you a sample. "[Smack Dab] handed out a cigarette to an obese woman in a 'hello kitty' smock top figuring, it completes the look." I know, there is 'that of God' in her...and in my boss. (The priest?- I'm not convinced) It's hard not to be mean. I guess that's why I'm seeking refuge with my friends & family members- some of whom I haven't spoken with in decades. My lovely Dad reminded me that the good and the bad frequently run concurrently- it's not always easy knowing how to feel. Writing is a wonderful way of sorting through details and finding the plot. Editing, however, is a gigantic chore. It requires retro-fitting onesself with someone else's ears. The six or so things I have in draft read like a Wm. Burroughs dream journal (I flatter myself). I'll be back when the 'mojo' is. The encouraging thing; I'm also embroiled in planning a big, gay wedding. That should be good for a laugh.

soundtrack

INPUT
My iPod is the soundtrack to my live. I also have a very few other trusted sources. I tolerate no other music- unless it is that periferal, ambient buzz that is backround to life in public. The instant the character of that noise becomes decidedly teenagery (not to exclude well-crafted Pop, Rap, and Thrash) or too 'Southern fried' I make my objections known. I can tolerate Jazz or Reggae for about fifteen minutes at a time. The thing is; I don't think there's enough yodeling, bagpiping, Gregorian chanting, accordion playing, dense German techno, dittys from the Pirates of Penzance, Nordic supergroups, Japanese girl bands, Chinese opera, organ, harpsicord, french horn, tuba... I mean!, There's a cap on the number of times a person is going to let "China Grove' invade their neurons, and I have definitely surpassed it. A long time ago. And Easy Listening is anything but. Commercial radio is designed to milk the life out of a song (placing no value judgements on quality here) over the period of a year and then continue to sell it as something connected to a memory. Sure, 'Snowbird' by Anne Murray is a lovely song. But it deserves about four listenings through out one's life, not four hundred. I have my own Anne Murray memories, thank you. Green Day was good for about a hundred listenings- but they're over. See what I mean? Repetition and familiarity are wonderful things, but just due to the enormous stock of it we really should be rotating a little more heavily.


OUTPUT
Of course I uploaded a bit today. My recent rampage through the Virgin megastore's 'Going out of business' sale netted new fruit, over-looked gems, and discs I had previously thought twice about. I am so distraught about that particular Time Square vacancy that I can bearly enjoy my phenomenal savings. My soundtrack required purging of about two hundred songs that had reached their expiration date. The occasions to dick around with itune windows and make crucial, almost hisorical decisions are few. They require the ability to hear what one is doing and my family can drown out the train that runs through our back yard. freight. So after a month and a half of my (puny) nano running the same nine hundred songs I began feeling a little self-conscience. That's because I play it at work, real loud. I'm still teenager that way. But I aim to keep the program fresh and varied. It is because of my clumsy transition into the new age of gathering music that I had bearly enough time during the age of the CD to replace all the bagpipes and yodeling I had on vinyl. But if my future includes enough time here on my ass, gathering the proficiency to reharvest it all from the tubes, by Christ's wounds Building 120 shall ring with Latvian sheep calls.

AUX
I managed the online purchase of replacement needles for my turntable (in the house for a month before the needle grew legs and wandered off). It's silver plastic and looks like a launching pad. (I lament the loss of wood cabinetry too). I've decided that vinyl is a little too tactile a listening experience. The packaging is certainly an art form in itself, never successfully replaced by the little four inch pages of tiny print and godawful artwork in CDs, but honestly, records are a nuisance to unsheathe. And constantly jumping up and down to flip sides- records definitely warrant the excersize I didn't ask for. I'm not married to my vinyl but it plays it's part in my soundtrack, which is basically this;
Home: All CD players have taken the modern option to stop working two years out of the factory. The power cord to the boombox went missing as well. So the three hundred pounds of LPs and CDs cannot be played. But as I've said, we'll be hooked with vinyl again in a matter of shipping days. And I can listen to my itune library from the family computer, but it fails to understand that I need it to jump the ten feet into my laptop and from there into gigantic speakers that can really rock my world. So Home is more or less a repository for the hundred pounds of CDs that rotate to the
Car: No cable recepticals- it's a one disc changer that doesn't like cold weather. I can't tell you how many times I've nearly lost my life wrestling with 'ERR'. So I bide time listening to WMPH or WRPM... WPSI... WOMG, whatever- Delaware doesn't keep tidy airwaves. But when the player deigns to function properly, I treat myself to my favorite purchases. Being Michael's
passenger involves an entirely different playlist, but he has a six disc changer so I usually have one of mine loaded. And I trust him, (in the way you trust anyone who still listens to Stevie Wonder).
Work: I bust the tunes. I shake my groove thang. I do wincing Richard Butler impersonations. I do the Hokey Pokey AND the Boney Maroni! (laquer fumes play their part). I make people shout detailed instructions to me over the Laibach cover of 'Jesus Christ Superstars' [sic], (choral,it's loud). I do have a Db threshold and it lowers as the years pass but I have the din from propane blasters and chain saws and heavy equipment being driven through a noisy carpentry shop to drown out, (not to mention the conversation of LAssholes who just think they invented cinema). I chose my current docking station the way I choose all audio players; going through the store cranking all systems to MAX. It ensures prompt sales help as well. I don't mean to be dismissive or anything, but if anyone at work should be the DJ, it's better me than the guy with the Milwakee boom box that looks like a Jeep who doesn't even bother to turn the volume down for crappy FM blathering. I've devoted decades to musing over the term 'radio personality'. I do have pity for people who don't enjoy dance music, it's their sorry lot to be located anywhere near me. But hey!, I 'dance my eight (and four more) 'n skate! "Yall can buy ear buds, or go to hell." So there. I'm sensitive- but, ultimately not.

ON/OFF
Music turned on for me in Kindergarten with "I Want To Hold Your Hand". Scarcely a day has passed since then that I haven't wanted to know what my friend's older sister was listening to, or hitch-hiked many miles to hang out with someone who couldn't grab up new music fast enough, or turned the volume up to the tippy-top of any given municipality's written laws. As a painter I'm filled with jealousy about the accessability of music. People don't contrive such detailed plans as I to ward off the glimpse of an ugly painting (although I plan that too). We've whelpt two younguns on every brand of deserving music out there- they can sing along with Blue Oyster Cult. The oldest is drumming for a program (at the 'school of rock') of Woodstock hits. He made his debut at the tender age of three singing in the Gramercy Park Hotel Lounge with the incomparable Phyllis Love. He did 'Hey Big Spender" and "Now I Know My ABCs. The youngest is learning a dance routine (the only boy in his class) to that scarecrow song from The Wiz (he's in fourth grade now; he knows all about Michael Jackson). And he treats us to recitals on the violin (at home) and the recorder (in the car). On the Steinway, he is capable of haunting, Varese-like compositions. The oldest never really stops drumming. Both sing their little hearts out. They'll do 'Food, Glorious Food" for you in a hearbeat. That's our legacy. I admit that they are now as trusted a source for new music as any other. The down side? They don't have an off switch. They want to sing and dance at the most inappropriate times. Really now, there's more to life than all this gaiety. There's.....?

serial smartalec

This is what facebook has turned me into. Hopping from wall to wall, depositing my little 'bon mot's hither and tither. (I hear the words 'pre-existing condition' faintly in the tumbling dryer) The opportunity to comment on the lives and itty chat of my fifty or so [close] friends has proved irresistible- and I crack myself up. Like this one to a comment referencing a well-know Clinton'is'm; 'Get back here and wipe this blue-baiting, political turd off my wall!' Or this one to a friend who expressed insecurity with the fb challenge being circulated to list 25 things about yourself that people may not know about you; "google 'Wilhelm Reich character armor' ". I suppose this challenge is to prepare one's self for the Barbara Walters Special Report we all know we deserve. So here are mine. I;

1. have many shoes, buy many shoes, but can only really appreciate shoes on other people.


2. hate praise because I don't think people really know what they're talking about.


3. only wear sunglasses so I can look where I don't want to be caught looking.


4. part my hair dependent on whether I am to be the driver or the passenger.


5. rank correct punctuation over having a good heart.


6. care doodily-squat about 'art'.


7. am quietly jealous of almost everyone.


8. absolutely DO wash my hands frequently during food preparation. I wanted you to know.


9. feel bad when I pull an asshole move in traffic. Something else is in control.


10. just found out that in near sixty years of marriage, my mother has NEVER known my father to have vomited. I'm heavily impressed.


11. have vomited few times myself', almost always tractable to the consumption of duck eggs.


12. make all of my most embarrassing purchases at the same drug store. What they must think of me!


13. want to die- I'm just not in any great hurry.


14. would ideally subsist on organ meat and crackers.


15. am not afraid to cry, but think I probably cry too much, and now am afraid to cry.


16. have reoccurring dreams about parts of my body falling off.


17. have no greater aspiration than to be the answer to a crossword puzzle clue (three vowels & the coveted 'z').


18. adore being quoted.


19. have what other people call talent, which expressed in monkey terms is no more than a talent for pulling bugs out of fur.


20. hope my children will never leave me alone.


21. have only one word for 'snow', and it's not 'snow'.


22. haven't yet committed to an underwear type.
23. wouldn't be caught dead without eyeliner. To quote my friend Teesh; "What are humans without eye make-up?"
24. can't let it go. Human is an adjective, Teesh, not a noun!
25. think all my facebook friends are amazing people- and that's a testament to me, for sifting through and grunting at all the worthless dullards who mistake me for a smiling guy who would be the requisite smile-and-nodder for all of their narrow experience and damnable opinions .

Here's what it takes to be MY facebook friend; I love the old-fashioned pretense of being introduced- it's how we used to do things before Jerry Springer made it acceptable to shout across two lanes of traffic, "yo!, let me ax you somethin'...". The details of our lives are only slightly available after you've brought us a house-warming gift. User names including the fractional 'boi' are on everybody's radar. And, Profile pictures are key to knowing if old friendships are worth resurrecting. You might think twice about making so deeply a shallow person your own fb friend but consider this; What depth of pedestrian, lunchroom chatter would your wall succumb to without my pithy commentary? Don't answer, the question was rhetorical.