Lucy -- one year gone

She died on Thanksgiving
She was my friend
my walking buddy
my meal companion
my foot warmer
my first baby

It was a cruel circle of life
I cleaned up after her as a puppy
and again as a senior when she couldn't hold her own
I helped her up stairs when she was too little and gangly to make it
and again when she was too old and arthritic
I crushed up her food before she had teeth
and again when they'd all fallen out

She died on Thanksgiving
and I was never more thankful

Breakin Even

Growing up with a landscape of people as pale as the snow that capped the mountains that framed my State, I was oblivious to inner-city struggles, urban plight, and social welfare. “Gang” was just the four letter word that preceded “ly” when describing the boys in my town.

So when the single screen movie theatre – the only one in a twenty mile radius – showed Breakin’, we went in droves. Somehow I talked four different adults into taking me six times before it left town and was replaced by Karate Kid or Footloose or some other fish out of water story.

Rewatching it now with the wisdom of years, the experience of living near a big city, and the many gang articles seared into my brain, I’m as lost as I was then, just for different reasons. While I’m able to identify Adam as the flaming gay dancer friend – he just seemed unusually extravagant then – I’m unsure if gangs actually fought this way in the 80’s. Did they really dance it out, the best street corners going to the declared winner ala 8 Seconds? Or was Hollywood glossing over (or maybe oblivious to) the problem brewing right under their nose only a few miles away?

While the interracial relationships didn’t faze me – they’re just people of a slightly different color, albeit colors I hadn’t seen in person at the time – I now wonder if they were as easily accepted as the movie made them out to be. The only problem people seemed to have was “street” versus “trained” dancers. Maybe this was Hollywood’s way of slyly addressing the class differences in the hills and valleys of LaLa Land. Or maybe they just wanted to build that dance wagon everyone would soon jump on. If so, they were also early creators of the boy-girl-boy hero trio that’s still popular today (see Harry Potter).

Despite the movie not aging well (who the hell is Lucinda Dickey?), I was pleased to be able to identify Ice-T twenty five years later. He hasn’t aged a day. Now that’s some Hollywood magic.

Drunk Blog Dialing

One recent Friday night, I found myself bored with all my books, all two hundred TV channels,and every friend who might want to chat. I needed something different, unpredictable. A few years ago, I'd have hit a new club or called up my European entourage to entertain me for the evening. But since it's illegal to leave a baby unattended (go figure), I find myself at home on more weekends than not.

This is when I discovered drunk blog dialing. You don't have to actually be drunk, but it's fun to do a shot (or a sip of a shot) for every blog you like. Here's how to play. Go to a blogger site (like this one), then push the button at the top called "next blog." Blogger randomly moves you to another blog page.

For some reason, about ninety percent of them were German that night (this happens) but I did come across a few worth reading and some even worth following. Here's a highlight:

Fat Nat Sketches http://nategaul.blogspot.com/ -- a kid with a good hand for drawing monsters.

Film Girl http://filmgirlopinions.blogspot.com/ -- a girl with a love for old movies and the beatles. She reviews (and has great pics) of old, old movies. Very funny is the "spoiler" warnings she puts on each, as though these just came out last weekend.

Pittsbugh Daily Photo http://pburghdailypho.blogspot.com/2009/10/sometimes-most-sweetest-random-moments.html -- A nurse who went to art school in Pittsburgh and takes beautiful photos of the not-so-sh**burgh.

A Virginia Flyfishing Journal http://ridpathflylines.blogspot.com/ -- You don't have to like fishing or flies to enjoy the Garrison Keillor-esque writing this guy does.

Brooklyn Guy's Wine and Food Jouranl http://brooklynguyloveswine.blogspot.com/ -- A great guide to local wines and food from a real person. Only slightly snobby.

I also came across some really cute family blogs, where I watched the kids grow up years in a matter of minutes of surfing. I didn't "follow" these, though, and won't mention them here. They're minors, after all, and if the kid goes missing, you know the police are coming looking for the weirdo cyberstalking them.

Next time you have a minute, click the "next blog" button a few time and see what you find. Maybe a gem.

Seventy-two Tattoos

Your mad genius pierced my skin
Six dozen times
Drilling like my blood was oil

Your art is your soul
That I welcomed into my body
Like a conjoined twin

I enter your den
Drink from your well
Unbutton my heart

You ready your paints
Smile wickedly
Swab my chest

You tell me this time will hurt
No
The real pain comes with leaving

I only meant to get one
Then I fell in love
This time you will ask me out

A Dark Haiku

It was always dark
She dug graves in the summer
Odd for a woman

She found it peaceful
Preparing the resting place
For the dead and gone

She was no martyr
It was the least she could do
Because she'd killed them

PRIDE

They came with hopes of a better life, ten dollars in their pocket, and a phone card to call the only relative living in the States who might give them shelter. They left family, their homeland, the mother tongue. Their first English words were spoken when their feet touched this hallowed ground. With no land to till or crops to tend, they gladly took the jobs abandoned by the generation turning to computers and college.

Standing all day in near hundred degree heat next to machines as loud as lawnmowers, they pump out millions of items that magically appear on our store shelves, courtesy of the immigrant.

They’ll never be rich. They’ll never work in air conditioned cubicles. They know they are considered bottom of the wrung by so many Americans. But they have pride in what they do.

When “Bring Your Child to Work Day” comes around, they gather in droves, ushering their offspring to their stations, showing off their part in the assembly line of life. For some, it is the only time they’ve been known to smile.

They remember why they left and why they came.

Dead Hero

As a young girl, I was probably what the adults called “boy crazy.” I’d fixate on the cutest or most charming male around, sure that he was a god never to be outdone. Inevitably, he’d do something dumb, as boys are apt to do, and my fragile bubble would burst. His beautiful image would turn to ash faster than palms on Sunday. This was the beginning of a lifelong curse of being disappointed by that unreliable gender, of looking for that crack in the armor before it collapsed on me.

There were a few who persisted in their petrified state in my mind, frozen in time, untouched by human foibles. But eventually even those cannot help but expose their weaknesses, their indignities, their intolerant corniness.

I’ll never forget the collapse of one such memory, one I held so close to my heart for so long. Before cable TV and multiplex cinemas, we were at the mercy of program planners. We watched what they fed us, over and over. And before Harry Potter and vampire lovers on HBO, we had The Dragonslayer. I was ten and Galen was every girl’s heartthrob. A head of fabulously curly hair (it was the 80s), a slight frame perfect for a young girl’s obsession, and a smile so warm it could have melted the iceberg and saved the Titanic.

Galen was my hero. He slayed the dragon, saved the town, saved the girl – the tomboy of a girl, to whom I related oh too well – and was an all around brave guy. I went through life for years looking for Galen, only to meet silly boys with no interest in being men or heroes.

Then one day in the 90s, deep into my Ally McBeal obsession of all things “I don’t need a man but I’ll take one if he’s perfect”, I stumbled across Dragonslayer on cable. My hero had returned. Seeking a two hour reprieve from the disappointment that was my life, I settled in with flannel pajamas and popcorn to remind myself what I was holding out for.

Then I saw him. Not Galen, my brave, handsome dragonslaying hero, but The Biscuit. Yep, my childhood hero was played by Peter MacNicol, now better known to me as that stuttering, oddball from Ally McBeal. I made it about twenty minutes into the movie, wincing the entire time at the sheer campiness of it all, before I threw in the towel.

Another hero bites the dust.

Drool Me a River

Walking through "old" Vegas one beastly hot summer day (Vegas is cheaper in the summer, see, and all the west coasters stay put on the ocean cliffs, leaving the desert to the foolish east coasters), I see a sign for Deep Fried Twinkies, 99 cents. Unable to imagine anything but an immediate cardiac arrest at consuming this, I snap a picture and pass.

A couple of years later, I read about a girl who, during her lunar cycle,eats nothing but oreos fried in butter until her sanity returns. Then at the next four birthday parties and weddings I attend, marshmallows dipped in chocolate grace all the tables. My taste buds lurch in objection.

So I start wondering: What the hell is this obsession with finding the worst possible combination of fat and sugar? I'm a pretty basic chocolate type of girl. A few semi-sweet chips if I have a craving or maybe coco crisp cereal with skim milk. Like my fellow sisters, I can't deny the urges that hormones thrust upon me, but I've never sat around my kitchen, throwing things into a pan until something appeals to me.

I mean, just what was rejected if the winning result is a twinkie thrown into a vat of lard and cooked within an inch of its life?

Today, though, I might have found my new achilles heel. In an article about the best chocolates (most tastes like stale halloween candy: Nestle; most butter like: trader joe's), some kitchen wizard came up with the penultimum chocolate treat: chocolate covered bacon. My traitorous mouth immediately went into drooling overdrive. It seems to have it all: the much sought after balance between salty and sweet, crispy and soft, breakfast and desert.

So here I sit, whiling away the minutes until I can hit the grocery store to find the perfect chocolate and bacon for my concoction. No apple smoked meat for me. No ghiradelli or belgium. No, I'm pretty simple. Just give me some chocolate and salt and I'm happy. Until next month, that is.

Neighbors

My native New England was home at one point to many great, famous writers. In my mind’s eye, I always pictured the pen folk functioning within a secret writer society devoid of time and mortality. Neighbors in another realm.

I wondered if JD Salinger deigned to answer the door when Robert Frost took the back road, because it was less traveled, to see him, or if Robbie had to stand outside the wall and do the one-handed silent clap to get his attention.

I wondered if Cormac McCarthy carried the fire to the Filipino themed beach party thrown by Norman Mailer and if Stephen King told the creepy campfire stories that kept them all up at night.

I wondered if they all mourned Mark Twain’s death or if they realized it was greatly exaggerated so just sent flowers.

And as John Updike sat in his Norman Rockwell painted house, stuffing his pipe with tobacco, I wonder if he realized just how famous and influential they’d all be one day.

SECRET RECIPE

Image via Wikipedia

Today a man in Texas discovered the original secret recipe to Dr Pepper.

The browning, torn alchemy book was stuck under a crate in an antique shop, society having abandoned the expensive, time consuming tradition of using natural ingredients and manual labor.

Way back then, there was no high fructose corn syrup, liquid caffeine, or preservatives. Instead, the doctor used mandrake root, sweet flag, and syrup.

The man offered to sell the handwritten recipe to the company so they could maintain their lifeblood, their secret, but they laughed.

Nothing is as it used to be, so nothing is sacred.

AGE IS A BITCH

Elsa hated this job.

It wasn’t too long ago that she was in the islands doing bathing suit shoots, staying in the best five star hotels, being wooed by the richest and best looking men. Now she’s in a dirtied up backlot pimping shoes for print ads and they won’t even show her face for fear of losing their younger crowd.

If someone had told her that by 30 she’d be a washed up model with no career, no savings, no friends, and no future, she would have stayed in Idaho and married Tommy Keebler and raised his babies.
Elsa’s shoulders sagged as she sighed heavily, searching her brain to find the silver lining in this stormy raincloud she called her life.

Hell, she still had great legs and after this shoot, she’d have a kickass pair of shoes, too.

WE NEVER FEARED

Way back then
We had hope
We had dreams
Me the president
You my vice
Hillary and Bill

THE YEAR THAT WASN'T

They promised to meet every year on their birthday in the spot where their birthday suits were all they wore for their first time together and every time since.

They'd met in that very spot on this beach ten years earlier, when life's currency was their innocence and when adults made the unbendable rules that they gleefully and wickedly broke.

Every summer they returned with their families then later by themselves, just the two of them.

They have no contact the rest of the year, just an annual date for a week of carnal bliss.

It was agreed they would meet no matter who was in their lives because this was separate and different, but if by chance one of them truly fell in love, they reserved the right to pull out.

This year, he didn't show up.

NO MORE BEDTIME FOR BONZO

Image via Wikipedia

Starla counted to six while the vapors took effect then confidently whisked past the unconscious security dwarf.

Most people were annoyed and angered that dwarves had gotten first dibs in the government's genetic lottery that duplicated their defective DNA and turned them into superhumans, but Starla knew there was more than met the eye.

She wound through the building's labyrinth that would baffle anyone else, but Starla intuitively knew where to go, having gotten a little genetic tweaking herself.

She was obviously chosen for this job for her stealth and skill and she knew the peace of the world was dependent on her finding that one person who could once again bring about unity, that one person who could make them beat their swords into plowshears.

Then she found him, packed away in all his frozen glory amongst centuries old computers and other ancient artifacts from a time when humanity measured success by its gross excess.

Starla used her pocket knife to spill her golden blood onto the security pad, punched in the 100,000-digit code she memorized, and watched the brainwaves of Ron Reagan come to life on the screen as she prepared to ask him the favor of a lifetime.

GOD BLESS THE LAZY AMERICAN

They came out of the woodwork from every corner of the earth: the Greek, Russian, Italian, Romanian, French and British businessmen, all together for the annual summit.

They had impeccable manners, dressed beautifully, gave generously to all who served them, and were fiercely competitive with each other for the attention of the lone female bartender, drowning her with compliments but all the while maintaining respect.

They were all far superior to the slacker American who tipped poorly, tracked their entitlement to free drinks, and shamelessly hit on her as she worked her twelfth hour and endured their wrath when she politely turned them down.

The Europeans were a nice change, she thought, as her hotel bar filled for the evening with the raven haired gods, all white smiles and twinkling eyes.

But as the week wore on, the testosterone became heavy and suffocating, their competitiveness shined through as an ancient hubristic practice, and their elevated standards became a bar too high to jump.

Exhausted, she yearned for the lazy, rude, cheap American male who gave little but expected just as little from her in return.