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!).