F*** Me, Man. . . I Shoulda Gone to Coachella

 I haven't anything for you today.  Zip.  Nada.  Not a thought.  Not an opinion.  All I have is a trashy head full of Depp/Heard trial clips and Pt. 2 of "A Very British Scandal," season 2.  It is very pretty, that show.  

Before I watched t.v., of course, I had this.

Followed by this.

Raw fish and worm killer.  That's how you know it's Friday. 

I am beginning to understand why I am not so anxious to travel as once I was.  Travel and romance were once one and the same.  Hell, even going out in my own hometown.  I knew.  Now. . . I know.  I might get a first glance, you know. . . but the second is the killer.  Once, confident and choosey. . . . 

I am saddened by the emigration of the Country Club College kids.  It will be quieter around here for the rest of the spring and summer, but I will miss those long, shapely legs and the half moon of cheeks that it seems mandatory that they show.  I know, I shouldn't.  

But hell, I'll miss the girls, too.  

Ha!  I think I got you on that one.  

But it is very true that I like nothing as much as a pretty girl.  Nothing.  I am programmed. . . hard wired.  

Before you think me a lech, however, please remember. . . I've never asked one out.  And now. . . that is in part my sorrow.  I do not think to be asked out again.  

Though last night, I did get text messages from a young woman I know.  She was out having drinks.  I do think that gave me a lift.  

Ili knows her, too.  She is younger than Ili.  My mother shakes her head.  She thinks I'm nuts.  But my mother eats Jiffy peanut butter and has no taste for expensive cheese or wine.  

She is more content than I.  

Maybe I'm glum because I must work today.  I ordered mulch yesterday with the expectation that I would pitch it today.  I bought a VERY expensive wheelbarrow/cart to haul it in because it was all they had.  But the mulch won't make it here until Monday.  So today I will do some yard stuff and make a trip to the paint store to get a can of sealer or paint.  I'll suffer to make a choice.  I'd rather simply walk about with cameras today.  And who knows. . . ?  

I feel like champagne at a upscale bodega I know.  Not just champagne.  The whole nine yards of endless brunch.  I live in a Brooks Brothers town, so I haven't known how hip and current I was buying nothing but cheap Chinese Covid clothing, but I learned that I was today (link).  I'm so Gen Z and didn't even know it. I don't go on Twitter. . . so how could I?  But I've been bolder about wearing this funky ass shit and now will be even more so.  

Cheap ass China clothing isn't all I've ordered, though, as you all know--Japanese fishing shirts and fancy hats, etc.  

But I got another China-hippie shirt yesterday and get a pair of shorts today,  I have other stuff coming as well. 

Fuck me, man. . . I should have gone to Coachella.  

The Literal

The number of things I need to do around the house are piling up again.  I need to mulch the driveway and the beds.  I'm going to try to do that this weekend.  Need to call the mulch people and have that big truckload of mulch delivered.  I have to buy a wheelbarrow.  Mine rusted through.  I've looked and I can't find another like it.  The consumer's world is going to shit, I'll say.  

Before I take any trips, I'll need to stain/paint the new deck and the stairs to the apartment.  Sounds easier than it is.  It will take me at least two days.  I also need to try to touch up some paint on the house.  I'll need to get someone to replace the threshold at the apartment, I think.  I'll YouTube it, but that is not my bailey wig.  I need to put screens up over the vents in the attic (wasps are building nests), and I need to fix the vents that go under the house to keep out the varmints.  

These are things I've put off.  They must be done before I think of going on any trips.  

I tried to book a few nights in an historic hotel on a historic island a few hours from here.  Ma said, yea, she'd go.  When I pulled up the hotel's website, however, it was booked solid for May, June, and July.  Well, now, it seems that National Parks and places historic are being overrun.  People want nature.  People want historic.  I think I liked it better when all they wanted to do was go to Disney.  

I need to get these things done as quickly as I can, though, for May/June are certainly beautiful travel months across the old USA.  

If I were really writing here, I'd now try to universalize the dilemma, make it relate to the problems of all humankind.  Or I would winnow it down to the destructive forces of the natural world and reflect upon the fact that nature hates permanence.  Something.  Anything.  At least a small trope.  

But this morning, I am trapped in the literal.  Maybe time is the enemy of creative memory.  I don't know.  I am simply looking forward to what I will eat today and to experimenting with some film.  

And dreaming.  

Romance.  Remember romance?  I don't know if people still do that.  I remember what it feels like, smells like, tastes like.  It is delicious.  

The run up sometimes sounded something like this. 

(link)

In My Solitude

Everyone I know is traveling again.  My art/travel buddy is headed for France and then a few days in London.  C.C. is going to Paris.  My famous writer neighbor and two of my former colleagues just got back from NYC.  My tenant is leaving today for Minnesota.  We are on the heels of May.  I need to make some decisions.  May/June are pretty times for a roadtrip.  Everyone I know tells me I need to get out and move.  See something.  Have some fun.  

I know.  

I know. 

But. . . you know. . . who will take care of things?  And mom?

I think my friends see me as weak now.  They are vicious, rabid even, to point out my flaws, to paint them in blood.  My A.A. sponsor, for instance, has been incensed about my newest health report.  

"Didn't your doctor mention your drinking?"

You'd think that would be it, but "no" was not enough.  Mr. Knowitall has apparently gotten his degree as camp counselor as well.  

"Alcohol raises your blood pressure.  She didn't mention that?  Are you going to keep drinking?"

Some people are mad at my report because they are, they say, sicker than I.  

"Fuck you.  You should have what I have."

I sent an article to my old college roommate and his wife (link).  I thought I was preaching to the choir, but I got a quick right to the jaw when I said that often at the factory I was appalled by the performance of the theory. 

So, you mean when you insulted someone regarding sex/gender, you had a dreadful reaction to the objections of those insulted?

Whoa!   Guess someone has been waiting for an opportunity there.  "Not what I said," I replied, "but thank you for rewording it for me.  It reveals so much more."

I send things I think are funny to some and get back shitty replies.  My annual horrorscope tried to warn me, said this would not be a good year for my sign.  

So I hunker down.  I have fewer and fewer people on speed text.  

The gulf between us grows greater with time.  Those who live with family don't understand that at home, I don't get the chance to whine and complain as they do.  My A.A. sponsor doesn't have a blog.  He hasn't the chance to broadcast opinions and complaints to the entire planet as I do.  

But, you know. . . the Heard/Depp case makes you thank your lucky stars.  

Did you see yesterday's deposition, the Mexican guy sitting in his car and vaping himself practically unconscious?  It's right out of Cheech and Chong.  I about pissed myself watching.  

Really.  This shit is straight out of a movie.  Crazyville.  

Yesterday I made a Greek salad and roasted some beets.  I'd never roasted beets before.  It's easy, but they have to bake for an hour.  Don't get the juice on anything.  You can't get it out.  But sliced, salted, oiled, and sprinkled with goat cheese and topped with Balsamic glaze, it was awfully good.  I grilled three, ate one, gave one away, and will have the other today or tomorrow.  I will start grilling a bunch of them at a time.  I can refrigerate some and freeze the rest.  

You see?  Life at home is really awfully nice.  

But sometimes, I hear a thing and wonder. . . do you ever think of me?  

It's a question I never get to ask.  

Legal Drugs and Shannon Curry

I have a lot more to say about my imminent death, but that will have to wait.  I have another story to tell.  

In my search to find the secrets of eternal youth and life, I found that while THC raises blood pressure, CBD lowers it.  Almost all medicines raise blood pressure, things like Xanax and antihistamines, anything you might take to help you sleep.  Soooo. . . I took myself to the CBD store.  My cousin who is a lifetime pothead went there and came back looking stoned.  

"You smoked it up," I said.  

"No. . . it's the stuff they gave me at the CBD shop."

She gave me a card that gets me a 10% discount if I go there.  

So I went.  It is not a medical marijuana store.  It is on Main Street in a nearby shopping area with upscale bars and restaurants, float tank shops, hair places, etc.  When I walked in, the store was empty.  A woman came out from the back to greet me.  

"How can I help you," she purred.  

"My cousin told me she came here and got something that felt like Xanax," I laughed.  

She started telling me about the difference between Indicus and Sativa, etc.  I told her I just wanted something that would help me chill out at bedtime.  She took me to a display.  

"These two are a bit different.  This one does not have THC.  You will feel relaxed but not a body buzz.  This one has the legal amount of THC and is a Delta 8 compound.  Delta 8 is one molecule off from Delta 9 which is THC."

"Give me one of each," I said.  I thought to see the difference.  I mean. . . it's a CBD store.  

I couldn't wait to try them, but I resisted until an hour before bed.  I decided to eat the Delta 8 one.  I really didn't think it would be anything.  

I woke up in the middle of the night.  My body was totally buzzing.  I was flying.  WTF?  I got up to pee and drink some water.  Yup.  I was fucked up. 

I slept for eleven hours, and I had to force myself out of bed at that.  The sun was shining, the birds singing.  I was still in the big velvet bag.  

How can it be?!?  Holy smokes.  Is this what the Housewives of Lake Mary do?  Those are some pretty good over the counter drugs.  Or pretty bad.  

I will try the other ones tonight.  I will probably like them better.  I don't like getting fucked up.  I do like to "chillax."  

Q gave me shit for something I said about "special language" in a post.  Too bad he doesn't have a blog anymore.  He'll just have to tell his wife his barbed witticisms.  But I must say, he's found the secret to being a successful male--go along to get along.  The world loves men who don't cause trouble.  All a fellow has to do is say nothing to rise to middle management.  Men are toxic.  We all knew that long before it was formalized.  Just watch the Depp/Heard trial.  I guess after hanging with H.S. Thompson for a while, he thought he could be a writer if he acted badly and said outrageous things.  Sean Penn, too.  Like Thompson, they are short on formal education.  They take lots of drugs and use bad language.  Unlike Thompson, however, neither of them have any writing talent.  

Oh. . . if only drugs and bad behavior could make one an artist. . . .  But as Bukowski once said, God made a lot of artist but not so very much art.  

Speaking of Depp and Heard. . . I fell totally and completely and madly in love last night.  I watched Dr. Shannon Curry testify.  I will never ever be the same again.  

It is like they made her up in Hollywood.  She has to be completely fictional.  Truly.  We will find out that she has no credentials at all, that she finished High School barely.  But no, she is fucking brilliant.  She took the attorney apart with her answers.  Nope.  I am starting a Fan Club.  I am in love.  

You can watch her testimony here.

It has become my experience that all young professional women look like this now.  It's a new and wonderful world.  

The day has gotten away from me.  I need to move and discharge the Delta 8 or whatever it is that is making me so dopey.  I'll call today to have the annual delivery of mulch so that I can become a man again this weekend.  

I think I am going to switch things around.  I'll only drink Light Beer and meditate.  

It's the Cowboy Way. 

Luck

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday.  It was a three month follow up.  My blood pressure is high and I'm on the max dosage of the meds I can take to lower it.  Somehow, it's just not working.  

I hate going to the doctor's office.  I feel degraded when I go.  Shitty waiting rooms play ads for medicines to counter diseases you might not even know you have.  There is no way to relax.  Were I designing a doctor's office, the waiting room would be a most inviting place playing hippie trance music that puts you in a deep state of relaxation.  

But that isn't the case, so by the time I get into the room where they weigh me and take my blood pressure, I'm jacked.  

I had decided before I went, though, that my bp reading was probably going to be high.  "It's not your fault," the doctor has told me.  "It's nothing you did."  

Genetics and time, she says.  

She sent me to a cardiologist last year.  I went through the battery of tests.  My heart was fine.  The doctor had me take a sleep apnea test.  When the results came back, he had a company send me an aqualung (i.e. CPAP).  I couldn't sleep with it.  

"Did you go see Doctor So and So," my physician asked me yesterday.  

"Yes, you sent me to him last year." 

"No. . . the Sleep Doctor."

"No." 

She wants me to get the latest treatment for apnea, an electrical device that is implanted below the skin of your upper chest.  It has an electrode that stimulates the nerve that controls the movement of the tongue.  When it relaxes, the device sends an impulse to keep it from retracting.  You turn it on and off with a device that looks like a ray gun.  

"I've been researching it," I told her.  "It's new technology."

"It's new, but it's promising," she said.  

"So were CPAPs," I said.  "Now there are hundreds of lawsuits over them."  

She stared at me.  

"High blood pressure isn't a disease, it's a symptom of an underlying disease.  Hardening of the arteries."

She went on to compare my body to a house built in the 1920s.  

"When the house was built and the plumbing put in, the pipes were good.  Over the years, however, calcium deposits begin to form and the pipes wear out."

"I have a house built in the 1920s.  I've had to replace the pipes."

"Well I can't replace yours.  I can't cure you.  All I can do is treat you." 

Well. . . there it is, isn't it.  

"Do you see a nephrologist?"

"No."

"You should see one.  Nobody knows more about high blood pressure than they do."  She took out her prescription pad, wrote out a referral and handed it to me.  

"I have friends who are medical doctors," I said.  "I even dated a neurosurgeon for awhile.  I learned a lot about doctors then," I grinned.  "None of them give out medical advice, of course, but they all have a version of what I heard a famous cardiologist tell a fellow going in to have his knee replaced--'When you go to the barber, you get a haircut.'  If I have a bone spur in my heel and I go to a surgeon, the surgeon will want to cut it and boot me for 90 days, but I'd probably have the same result if I just put the boot on for 90 days."

That made me feel better.  

For a minute.  I had one last caveat on my way out, though.  At the window of the receptionist there was a sign that said "Check Out."

"Listen," I said, "you need a better sign.  I'm here trying not to 'check out.'  Maybe it should say, 'see you next time' or something a bit more positive." 

The staff in the office all laughed.  

In the car, though. . . . 

"You're just wearing out," is what I heard.  One day, I'm just going to explode. . . heart attack, stroke. . . whatever.  

Of course.  

My friends are all wearing out.  There are myriad problems.  Who'd have thunk it?  

I spent the rest of the day on the internet looking for solutions, but I couldn't find anything on how to maintain eternal youth.  Nobody's lived forever so far.  

Today, a new reality, or so it seems.  All I can control is my attitude, I guess.  Maybe.  I probably can't control that, either.  The idea that we have any control in life seems sillier all the time.  Everything is luck, bad or good.  

Everything is both.  

"Back in the Day"

That song I posted yesterday reminds me of the old Jack in the Box restaurants.  I had never seen one but I had heard Johnny Carson refer to the chain in many of his monologues.  They were a mystery to me, something simply California.  But it was like that then.  Things were regional.  You had to travel to experience things.  

On my first trip around the country on my own, I got to eat in a Jack in the Box.  As I remember it, they were always playing music that sounded like that.  

I don't remember ever eating in a Del Taco, another of Carson's touchstones.  Carson brought me that longing for California.  And now, thinking back, I may have eaten in a Del Taco in L.A. one night.  I was sitting at an outside table when a couple of Chicano fellows sitting atop a table across the lot started tossing some Spanish my way and laughing.  Getting cut by some pachucos wasn't in my travel plans.  

It wasn't just California, though.  There were things all over the country you needed to experience.  Jax and Dixie beers in New Orleans, for instance.  Coors, of course, was iconic because it had no preservatives and had to be kept refrigerated.  People would load up a big ice chest with Coors and drive it back from Colorado, and you might get one if you were lucky.  That was one of the things you looked forward to, though, when traveling through the Centennial State.  I had my first Lone Star in a barbecue joint a few blocks from the Greyhound Bus Station in Houston.  Big thrill.  Hamms and Schmidt beers in the American midwest, Olympia in Washington.  

Silly things, but it was part of your hip heritage when I was young.  Just like reading books.  At parties, you parried for cool with others by having read the right things.  

"Oh, man. . . you never read Reznikoff?  Jesus, he's like the quintessential poet of the working class."

Shit like that.  

"I met him once out in Washington.  Yea. . . we were sitting in this little dive spaghetti place drinking Olympia and looking out over this great, broad river.  No shit, man. . . he was really cool."

Girls were the score keepers.  If you hit the right notes, had the right panache. . . . 

Now Pabst, Miller, and Anheuser-Busch have bought all the regional breweries up.  I'm sure you can have them all delivered same day by Amazon if you a Prime member.  As with anything else.  

Don't misunderstand me.  I'm a Prime member.  I order stuff from Amazon all the time.  Hell, you can even get the cool, obscure authors that once would give you that Bohemian elan.  

Now, I guess, it is a trip to Disney to show your support for Say Gay.  

"Yea, we chose Disney over Universal, you know, 'cause we wanted to show our support." 

Everything is everywhere now.  

Jack in the Box wasn't all that good, by the way.  That song, though, reminded me of the time. 

Here's another cool tune from "Paterson."  You know. . . from "back in the day." 

One of the Things I'll Miss

I'm late writing today.  Q has been lecturing me on the efficacy of not getting an education.  At least not the formal one.  He prefers the wisdom of Burning Man or something.  I'm not sure.  He keeps telling me I'm missing the point.  Probably.  I mean Burning Man is where I would go to have surgery if I were ill.  

If I remember correctly, the conversation began with camping.  I said, like canoeing, it is the perfect way to end a relationship.  Or maybe it was the clipping I sent him about Tucker Carlson's cure for low testosterone.  I can't remember.  I may have said something about the love/hate relationship republicans have with pedophilia.  They are absolutely obsessed with it.  Nothing makes them as excited except Krispy Creme donuts that are coming hot off the line.  I'm pretty sure, though, I know what they are thinking about with that first sumptuous bite. 

Anyway, as my mother loves to begin, I had quite a day yesterday.  I was a man walking on a waterbed that was moving on a roller coaster.  I'm not as young as I used to be.  I "partied" too hard the day and night before, I guess.  Dancing around naked with my guitar at one o'clock in the morning singing "Born to Run" may have been what did it.  Not believing I was fucked up enough, I needed just a few more chemicals before bed.  

Saturday was my just reward.  

After writing my post, I went back to bed.  I got up around one, but I wasn't feeling so great.  There was an open beer in the fridge.  I needed to hydrate.  

I called my mother and asked her if she wanted to come over.  I'd grill steaks.  She said she didn't feel like it, that she had been "off" all day.  I told her I was too.  

"Maybe I caught something from you," I said.  "We probably have Covid.  I'm not coming over tonight.  I just feel like shit."

She, of course, was concerned.  

Having that off my plate, I lit a cheroot and poured some hair of the dog and sat on the deck.  The tenant came by.  

"Are you going to the party at the lake tonight?"

The neighborhood was having a celebration.  It is 100 years old.  My house was apparently one of the first ones built.  Aha!!!  Now it makes sense to me.  The party was a 1920s theme.  Jesus Christ. . . I'm slow.  

"No," I said.  "I feel like shit.  I overindulged last night, I think."  

"Really?  That's not like you."

What she meant is that I never have a hangover.  I'm not sure that it was the booze, though.  The billions of calories I consumed, the pasta and pizza and curry rice and the sweet coconut soup, the many French pastries. . . I think that is from what I was suffering.  

Eventually, though, I was driven to move.  I thought to go out and take photos with the Babylon 13 film.  Moving would make me feel better.  

It didn't.  I decided to simply stop and get groceries.  Crossing the parking lot was torture.  The prices were worse.  I shopped minimally--asparagus, little red potatoes, and a New York strip.  Well. . . on the way out, I couldn't resist some taffy.  

Taffy?  WTF?  I'd be lamenting that later.  Chocolate.  What I needed was chocolate.  

A stop at the liquor store.  I was going to drink water and tea Saturday night, but an empty library gives me the heebeejeebees.  Is that a bad sign?  Seriously, though, you can't eat steak without a good red.  And steak and scotch. . . I mean, c'mon.  

I collapsed when I got back home.  Still, I cut the red potatoes, oiled and seasoned them, wrapped them in foil and put them on the top shelf of the grill.  Then I lit a small Romeo and Juliet and sat down to "chillax" as the idiots say.  There is little an idiot likes more than special language.  It makes them feel like an insider in the Just for Morons club.  

Oh, Christ. . . I've been like this all morning. 

After the appropriate amount of time, I seasoned the steak and prepared the asparagus, took them outside, and put them on the grill.  Just then, the gas went out.  Done.  Kaput.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  

I pulled the tank and headed to the grocery store to make an exchange.  

While I was waiting for someone to come and unlock the metal storage box, I stood beside a small, young Black woman who seemed to be an off duty employee of the store.  She had a bunch of those shitty plastic bags they put groceries into so that there are more bags in the dumps and in the oceans, the ones that break all the time and spill their contents, the ones you can never quite pick up right, the ones that only awkwardly hold their contents.  Those ones.  She was talking to herself and futzing with a little silver chain with a heart locket.  

She didn't look complete, but she was functional.  

"Do you want some help with that?" I volunteered.

"Oh. . . yes."  

She handed me the locket.  I'm like a bear cub playing with his pecker when it comes to stuff like this, a real klutz, so I was fumbling and grumbling and she was trying to help me figure out how to open the clasp, but in a little while, I had it fastened around her neck.  

"Voila!" I exclaimed in triumph.  

"Thank you.  Those are my sister's ashes in here."  

I grinned.  "She wasn't very big, was she?"

Her eyes popped open in surprise or maybe dismay.  

"It's not all of them," she said earnestly.  

"Oh," I said, picking up the full gas tank the store helper had given me.  I left her standing there waiting on a ride or the bus or however she was getting wherever she was going.  

In the car, I laughed all the way home.  This, I thought, will be one of the things I'll miss when its over.  It is what makes life enjoyable, such silly moments.  

Back home, I connected the gas and took the steak off the grill.  You don't want to slow cook a steak.  I'd wait until the girls had been at 500 degrees for a few minutes before I put it back on.  

What the fuck--I poured a scotch and lit another Romeo and Juliet.  Obviously, this night was not going to go as planned.  

As my steak sizzled, neighbors began walking by the house on the way to the lake in Flapper style, I smoking and drinking and looking quite like Ted Kosinski.  

In a bit, I plated my food and performed a deep pour of the new bottle of Cab.  The cat had not shown up for dinner, but many birds had returned and were heading to my empty bird feeders.  

Just as I finished dinner, my neighbors came up.  They were going to the lake. 

"You come, too."

I just gestured to my outfit.  I hadn't even showered.  I told them I was still suffering from a rough night.  They looked at the wine bottle and glass and at the whiskey sitting on the table.  I just smiled.  

I lit another cheroot.  These Romeo and Juliets are tiny.  

I really didn't feel well.  The right side of my neck had a weird pain.  My right ear must have some congestion, I thought, as it was constantly making a popping sound.  

"I've probably given myself tongue cancer with these things," I thought.  

"Slowly I turn, step by step, inch by inch. . . . "

After awhile, I did the minimal cleanup required of a meal prepared on the grill.  Dinner had been quite good.  

"Shit," I thought.  "I should pour a drink and walk down to the party."

I went inside and looked in the mirror.  I put the blow dryer to my hair like that would fix it.  I slipped on my groovy Jap pants, put on a black t-shirt, and went to the library.  I wanted to make a rum and coke, but there was no coke and I was out of tonic.  I poured a giant scotch instead.

It is a short walk to the lake.  It is beautiful there in the late afternoon, the breeze a constant.  A woman at the gate asked jokingly where my hat and bowtie were.  

"Oh. . . I'm dressed as a '20s railroad worker," I said.  "You know. . . a coolie."  

That's the way I like to talk to rich people.  I'm the Nigger of the Narcissus here in my own hometown.  I have the smallest home, I think.  Most are now 4,000 square feet and larger.  They are tearing down all the houses they are celebrating here at the 100 year anniversary to make these giant faux-Mediterranean beige things.  I don't blame them, but I lament the historical loss.  

I walked down the lane and into the opening.  There was a tent and a d.j. and an empty dance floor and small groups of people standing around in tedious conversations with the same people they most often talk to anyway.  There were kids running around having the most fun.  Big drink in hand, I strolled the perimeter.  There was really no one I wished to approach, so I walked to the water's edge to enjoy the view for a minute.  Just as I got there, a fellow jumped up from his table and ran over with a very hearty hello, shaking my hand as if we were great friends.  After speaking to him in generic terms with the required orthopedic smile, I remembered who he was.  He told me he was selling his house in the Marina district of San Fran.  Politics and bums, he said.  He was keeping his house in Switzerland, though.  I wanted to tell him I was thinking of buying a fifteen foot camper, but he was being too nice to fuck with.  

When he was finished, I headed home.  

I made a cup of tea and turned on "Paterson," a film by Jim Jarmusch.  As I wrote to my friends, it was "a  slow, tone poem on a road to nowhere."

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.  But I'm certain about the music.  Yes and Yes.  

(link)

There'll be more tomorrow.  

Not Quite Tolerated

I got a million of 'em. 

Where do I begin.  Jesus.  I started drinking at lunch and didn't stop.  And I ate.  And ate.  Oh, god, did I eat.  Carbs.  Lots and lots of carbs.  Lunch began at a Thai place.  Coconut soup. . . you know. . . the high calorie kind. . . and crunchy spring rolls and red curry and lots of Chang beer.  Then off to the good French bakery.  Loaded up on things to take home.  An afternoon whiskey before going to mother's, then home made margaritas on the deck.  Plural.  Hungry again, I got spaghetti carbonara and pizza.  Whiskey and pastries.  I didn't even get tired.  Stayed up late playing "Born to Run" on my guitar over and over again.  Not the version you are thinking of.  The good one that makes you feel like you are an early Sam Shepard character. 

I watched her sing it live with different musicians in different decades for however long that took.  I'm trying to outrun something, you know, something that eventually catches you no matter what.  

Somewhere in between, I watched more of the Depp/Heard case.  My mother asked me, "How long is that going to go on?"

"Not long enough!"

Can you trust audio and video where one person knows she is being recorded and the other does not?

No!

Can you enjoy it?

Certainly!

About half my friends were confused by the Pepe LePew reference.  WTF?  Some thought I was serious.  

"Really?" 

I read a hard hitting article in the N.Y. Times this morning about the "new vibe" that is coming (link).  It is evident, if you can believe this reporter, at Coachella.  Bright colors, near nudity, and a hippie vibe brought about by the new mushroom craze.  These kids are hopeful.  They are going to fix the problems of the world.  They have tech.  They have social media.  Old people are fucked up.  

Last night, a pretty 35 year old woman sent me a phone pic from the concert she was attending.  Center, onstage, was some old man.  I guess it was a revival thing, maybe a Jefferson Starship reunion--I don't know.  

"Is this you?"

WTF?  Really?

Some of the "kids" I know from the factory are in their 50s now, so. . . . 

"Get the fuck out of the way, old man." 

I just want to wear bell bottoms and dance around with naked girls again.  

But Coachella?  Really?  Can there be anything less hip than Coachella?  

Still. . . Paris Hilton might go.  

Jesus. . . even she is in her forties.  

Amber Heard is 36.  Depp is 48. 

Pepe Le Pew is 77.  Keith Richards is 78.  Captain Jack Sparrow is their offspring, but god knows how old he might be.

These numbers might mean something if you are into conspiracy theories.  You may have read "The DaVinci Code."  

Pynchon's early works, however, are much, much better.  Obscure clues abound.

I have to go to the gym.  I have to shed the billion calories I consumed yesterday somehow.  I should quit drinking yet again.  I should eat veggie hippie food and drink coffee like I'm at an A.A. meeting.  I don't know that yesterday can be undone.  

I am struggling this morning.  There is the temptation of a Bloody Mary and bed.  But Jesus. . . I don't want to end up like Depp.  Nor Bill Murray.  

"Nobody here likes you!  You are tolerated!" 

Strange Interlude

 Just an update to today's post.  At an incredibly weird juncture in the trial, Amber Heard's attorney introduced this as evidence for the jury.  Depp's attorney made no objection. 

So Relatable

Right?!?  What can I say?  

I went out with the factory kids last night--and they were actually there!  Of course I faced a lot of ridicule for being a retiree who doesn't know what day it is.  But it was a grand time for about four hours.  And unlike last time I left that restaurant after meeting with the group, I didn't make that slow motion tumble into the bushes on my way out.  

Victory!

It was about nine when I got home.  The cat was lying on the welcome mat outside the kitchen door.  I hadn't expected that.  She often doesn't come around for meals, but lately, she seems much more dependent.  So, as is our usual routine, I filled her dish, poured a drink, lit a cheroot, and sat out with her while she ate.  The night was just chilly and the air felt fine.  I poured another drink when the cat finished her food, but she didn't leave.  She went around the garden a bit, but finally she went wherever she spends her nights.  

I moved inside. 

I turned on the television.  Just something before bed.  YouTube.  Apparently, we are all tired of the Ukraine horror.  It is too big and we are too small, and it reminds us that the United States we thought we lived in does not exist, that we are not the defenders of the free world, that we fear the great Russian Bear as much as anyone.  Impotent on the world stage, we turn to domestic problems.  

I watched Court TV clips of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial.  Jesus.  I can't look away.  

I am certain that all across the world, people are watching and identifying with one of the two parties.  Or, like me, they are simply fascinated by the idiocy of it all.  We have all been idiots in relationships to some degree, at the point where we hang on to a sinking ship thinking it won't go down.  All the arguing, and in this case, all the violence.  Where have all the recordings come from?  I thought that such things weren't allowed, that they could not be used as evidence in court?  Every audio and video recording they play makes me wonder at all the things not recorded, makes me think about how skewed a life edited by others can seem.  The crazy marriage, the outraged husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend. . . .  We get to see that money doesn't change any of that.  It all looks just like home. . . except they have multiple homes, penthouses. . . and somehow it must make people fighting in their trailer park homes feel better.  

I can't quit cringing.  But I keep watching.  Johnny Depp, poor fuck, seems to be trying to channel Hunter S. Thompson.  Bad choice.  

But maybe Bill Murray is, too.  Remember?  He played Thompson in a film before Depp did.  Now they have stopped filming a movie in which he starred because he has been accused of "inappropriate behavior."  God. . . what has he done?  Now come all the stories and reports of the things he has done in the past.  Terrible things like calling people names, insulting them, using inexcusable language. . . . 

I thought we enjoyed famous people BECAUSE of their inappropriate behavior.  They got to act in ways we couldn't.  

I guess the thrill, in the end, is to watch the plane go down.  

"Holy shit. . . look Margaret. . . . oh, God!"

Better than porn.  

I'm not pointing fingers.  As I've said. . . I can't look away.  It is all so. . . "relatable."  

I had a call early this morning from one of the old factory members wanting some advice.  Well, now. . . that kind of breaks me up.  Or would, but I had to limp to the phone and try to speak.  My voice was crackling and phlegmy.  I know that going out like I did last night has consequences.  Bill Murray and I are close in age.  I should take heed.  You know. . . saying and doing things that others wouldn't say or do was always my M.O. at the factory.  Everybody enjoyed it then.  

God knows how people feel about things now.  

Problems of the Aged

Yup.  I just stumble onto these scenes.  I know.  Maybe I just have an eye.  But you wait and see, one day these will be classics.  

So. . . let's start with the old timer's thing.  I went to a happy hour birthday party with the kids from the factory yesterday afternoon.  I showed up at the Cantina, but nobody was there.  I was late, so it was odd.  Then I looked at my text and realized it was at the other place that shares the same name except its called the Kitchen.  It is across the street in a separate plaza, so I drove over there.  Nope.  Nobody was there, either.  I texted the group supposing nobody had come.  Then came the realization--I was a day early.  

"Sorry," I wrote, "they don't tell us what day it is in the home."  

I drove back the way I'd come.  I'd spent an hour and $10 in gas for my guzzler.  

When I got home, I made myself a drink, lit a cheroot, and sat on the porch.  I was hungry.  I thought I was going to eat at the happy hour place.  Now. . . I didn't feel like cooking. 

Dumb.  Just dumb.  I mean, it tasted fine, but it is not the kind of food I eat.  And I ate a lot.  I got a four piece dark meat dinner.  Now. . . days of vegetables for me.  

Today is the real meet up.  I guess I will go again.  My friend has flown in from Virginia.  It is her birthday.  There is no way I can not go.  

I just looked up Tiny Tim, Miss Vicki, and their daughter, Tulip.  

The wedding on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show was viewed by 21 million people.  They had a daughter in 1971.  She is now 51 years old, but not much is known about her.  Reportedly she is married, has three children, and lives in Pennsylvania.  Tim and Vicki divorced after a dispute about her performing as an exotic dancer and nude model for Oui magazine.  Tim died of a heart attack in 1996.  Miss Vicki is still alive and runs a boutique in New Jersey.  She steadfastly refuses to talk about her marriage to Tim.  

I don't know why this suddenly became of interest to me, but it's O.K.  I had nothing else to say.  

C'est Si Bon

"How do you do it" you ask?  "Where do I find such scintillating subjects?"  You might not believe this, but I just see them when I'm walking around.  I don't do anything special, no manipulations of any kind.  The images just appear to me like magic.  I know. . . I know. . . maybe it's talent, maybe just luck.  Whatever it is. . . well. . . to quote Picasso, "it is what it is."  Or was that Warhol?  

No matter.  This is from the roll I shot this past weekend with the Babylon 13, the film I ruined the week prior.  It is a lovely film.  I will shoot with it a lot as long as I can get it.  And as long as I am in bright sunlight.  It's just creamy.  

Do you find it odd how sometimes a compliment will send you down instead of up?  How, I mean, you might take it the wrong way.  "Might."  In your paranoia, of course, you can never know.  Q wrote me that "The image you posted today on the blog is my favorite image that I have seen in a while."  Nice, right?  Well, I mean, sure.  But haven't I had nice images?  I liked yesterday's photo, too, very much.  I don't know.  I mean it sounded to me like he was calling the rest of my photos "shit."  He wasn't.  He was being nice.  I'm sure of it.  

I think. 

I've become such a paranoid isolate that I'm somewhere on the deeper spectrum.  My ability to understand social cues is almost gone.  

The maids came yesterday around lunch time, so I decided to go out to eat.  I wanted to try a new takeout chicken place in the heart of my own hometown, but when I got there, the sign said they were closed Mondays and Tuesdays.  WTF?  So I went to a place at the end of the Boulevard that I used to like when I still went out to restaurants and sat a the bar.  That was back before Covid, back when I still thought that girls would find me irresistibly handsome and would want to leave their boyfriends or at least resent them for not being me.  

O.K.. . . O.K.  That is how I remember it.  But fear not.  That is not how I felt yesterday.  The serving staff was young and hip and the girls were very, very pretty.  A young very attractive couple came in to be seated, and once again I war reminded that I am now Quasimodo.  No one was leaving their boyfriends, at least not for me.  I looked around the restaurant.  There were a lot of "ordinary" people, older couples, people having work lunches, and none of them seemed to be miserable even though nobody was leaving their boyfriend or girlfriend for them.  How do they do it, I wondered?  How can they be happy?  I remember that going out to eat was simply so people could see you.  That is how the pretty young people felt.  Their happiness was untouchable.  The pretty young people smiled at one another.  Everyone else was either invisible or an irritant.  I felt I was in the latter grouping.  

You see?  I've fallen and can't seem to get up.  I shouldn't write such things, but let me repeat. . . I have fallen deeper into the spectrum.  I've become more socially inappropriate.

There was an article in the Times today entitled "Sexy Lingerie for Men is Here" (link).  I told my friends that I've been looking for a new income and now this just falls into my lap.  I will become an Instagram influencer.  I will start a line called "Quasimodo's Lingerie: This Ain't Your Father's Underwear."  

Q suggested I call it "Daddy's Panties."  Maybe I could have a pair called "Balzac."  I don't know.  

Appearing in court to testify in the libel case against his former wife, Johnny Depp said he has never hit a woman in his life.  His appearance, however, suggests that this is all he has ever done.  My favorite quote from the Times article: 

“I am not some maniac who needs to be high or loaded all the time,” he said, adding that Ms. Heard’s friends, in fact, marveled at how little effect drugs and alcohol had on him.

I guess his attorney had not prepared him for taking the stand.  

I need to get out more.  I need to get "normal" again.  I need to see things like this.  Perhaps it would set me right. 

To Dream but Not to Sleep

I didn't sleep much last night, but I dreamed nonetheless.  I dreamed of taking photos.  I dreamed of having a dog.  I dreamed of having a girl.  Hell, I may have dreamed of writing, too.  Weird.  It was not like dreaming at all.  But when I'd wake from my non-sleep. . . I was happy-ish.  

Maybe I was simply thinking. 

I had a luncheon date yesterday, but I was stood up at the last moment.  N.G., as the kids used to say, since I had orchestrated my day around lunch.  After the gym, when I got the text, I was flummoxed.  Not in a profound way, of course, but in minor ways.  What to do?  I opened a can of sardines for lunch and drank the rest of the weekend bottle of champagne--sans bubbles.  I showered.  I napped.  When I got up, I thought about shooting more film.  Rather, I sat at the computer and cooked up some I'd shot over the weekend.  Then it was time for mother's.  

Dumb.  But the air outside was not inviting.  It was cloudy and humid and there was no light.  The pictures would have lacked drama.  The pictures would have been flat.  

But really?  That was all I could think to do?  

Yup.  I've told you.  

I think my lack of adventure and daring have killed the blog.  

The photo at the top of the page came from a roll of film I developed a few days ago from an old Holga camera.  Apparently the film had been in there for years because that is an arrangement that Ili had made.  The Holga, if you don't know, is a plastic toy camera that leaks light.  It has no meter or aperture stops.  You just put in a roll of Tri-X and push the button.  If there is enough light, you get an image.  I am surprised that I was able to see this picture at all.  But damn. . . I love it.  

The maids are coming today which always makes me anxious.  I never know when they will be here.  I have to put a lot of things away and wash and dry the sheets before they come.  Then I have to be out of the house while they are here.  I don't have to.  I mean they don't ask me to leave.  But there are five of them busting up the rooms, so it is better to be gone.  

All I can come up with is my constant lament--a studio!

That song I posted yesterday stayed with me all day.  I hummed and sang it off and on.  I love Lola Albright in the first season of "Peter Gunn."  You are surprised?  I know. . . right?  A middle aged woman and all.  But there has never been anything like her. . . except maybe Rhea Seehorn in "Better Call Saul."  

But I don't think she sings.  

Unreportedly Easter

Easter. . . come and gone.  It was the least Easter I have ever had.  I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.  I, as reported, was on shaky legs, and I got nothing for my mother.  Not flowers, not candy.  I sent out nothing in the morning and got nothing back in return.  My inbox was quiet all the live long day.  Eerie?  Just a bit.  I wondered about it only at the end of the day, wondered what others had done.  Not much, but some.  I thought maybe they had spent the day much as I had, without luster or fanfare.  Did children hunt for Easter eggs or did they spend their day playing Minecraft?  Did parents put together elaborate Easter baskets?  Would kids even take notice?  

I stayed in bed most of the morning.  That is what I needed to do, I think.  I got up a little past noon only because I had to get ready to drive to my mother's and cross the street to eat with the neighbors.  I had time to develop the film I had shot on Saturday and hang it to dry before I crawled into the shower and got dressed.  

Dressed?!?  Yea.  For the first time in over two years, I put on a button up shirt.  It was not one I had worn before.  When I was run over, after I left the hospital, Ili had gone out and bought me some crazy short sleeve shirts from Walmart or Target or someplace.  I couldn't get dressed, really, and she thought short sleeve shirts would be easier for me.  Forget that I never wear short sleeve button up shirts for aesthetic reasons.  They were still too difficult to put on, so I continued to slip on v-neck t-shirts pulling the left sleeve up over my left arm and then having her pull the rest of it over my head.  It was the easiest and least painful thing to do.  

I'm still wearing v-neck t-shirts, but I never wore the three short sleeve button ups.  I kept them though.  I guess Ili had a bit of a hipster taste, for the shirts have their own special charm.  At least for me.  They are patterned, something else I avoid in shirts, and they are in fairly outrageous colors.  Yesterday, I put on a pair of my Japanese pants and decided to try one of the hipster shirts.  It definitely did not look like me, but what does these days?  I stood awhile looking at myself in the mirror.  The longer I looked, the more I liked it.  Did that mean I was getting old?  Did I just not give a shit anymore?  Was it ever wise to care in the first place, all that dodgy egotism of the dapper dandy I never was?  

Fuck it.  I was only going to my mother's neighbor's house.  If that wasn't the best place to wear this carnival outfit, I couldn't think of a better one.  

I was fairly decorated in pastel Easter colors.  

If the neighbors were shocked, they didn't show it.  Dinner was the four of us, and as it turned out, none of us was feeling well.  The hostess was wrecked on alcohol and pills, her Easter shirt tied at the waist, her white jeans falling off her skinny ass.  She stumbled and mumbled around setting out little plates of olives and pickles and crackers and baked brie.  I had brought a good bottle of Pinot Noir and there was beer and Champagne and whiskey if I wanted it.  While the host busied himself in the kitchen, the three of us sat in front of a huge television broadcasting a baseball game across the room.  

"I hope you don't mind baseball," called out the host.  

"Well. . . normally I prefer reality t.v., but it's o.k."

Chit-chat across the dinner table, one after dinner drink, and my mother got up to go.  Good Old Mom.  I think everyone was relieved.  

It was four-thirty when I left my mother's house.  I looked forward to the quiet of my own house, to sitting with a whiskey and a cheroot on my deck and watching the passing parade.  But there was no passing parade.  No one, not a single soul, was on the street.  It was eerie quiet.  The cat showed up for her evening meal, but that was all.  My phone was silent.  The world was queer.  

When the second whiskey was gone, I went back into the house to read.  The air outside had been tropical all day, not that crisp, dry spring air we were lucky enough to have for the past few weeks.  The air conditioned capsule of the house felt fine.  I picked up a book on Hunter Thompson that was taking me far too long to finish.  Oh, but wait!  I remembered I had negatives hanging in the bathroom to dry.  I jumped up and cut them into six frame strips, putting them in the plastic sleeves to hold them, then took the first two to the scanner.  

So. . . it was not the camera's meter that fouled those last two rolls of film I so lamented all this past week. Nope.  It was user error, and not in the camera.  When I mixed the chemicals to develop the film that day, I realized that I had only put in one tenth the amount of developer required.  It is a liquid developer that you mix with water in a 31:1 ratio.  I never use that developer, but it is what the film calls for.  I'm not much of a chemist any more, I guess, because I had only measured out 1/10 of an ounce rather than the full ounce.  Why?  Because I am a dunce.  

The negatives I developed that day were more than fine, and I was more than pleased.  

For the next few hours, I read and scanned, read and scanned.  And then the Great Storm came.  Suddenly there were cracks of lightening and ground shaking thunder.  The sky just opened and dumped.  I haven't looked to see, but it must have rained five inches in an hour.  

I just looked it up.  I was right on the money.  Yup.  It was a real monsoon.  We are in for it now.  With the ground soaked and temperatures going up, the humidity will become unbearable.  I've decided to bear it.  I just don't care.  Let people complain.  I'm going to walk around with a sweat-soaked t-shirt without grousing.  

Or maybe I'll go someplace where the weather is drier.  

A quick look at yesterday's scans gave me pleasure.  I will cook them today.  But my first impression was that the shots were mundane in a wonderful way.  I mean, they are a somewhat intriguing.  They are just bits of the American life as it exists now, with American flags and no trespassing signs and yard trash and cars parked in suburban streets.  My eye was working, I think, even with the most common things.  We'll see.  As I say, today I will cook them up.  Or some of them.  If I have time.  The work week has begun.  I must go to the gym, then come home and get ready for a luncheon date with two kids from the factory.  They are going to play golf at the little nine hole course in my own hometown, then meet me at my favorite Spanish restaurant.  Their choice, not mine.  

And then, I'm sure, I'll be exhausted and maybe tipsy, and I will want a nap.  Then it will be time for mother's.  Then. . . home for a cocktail and a smoke.  

Jesus.  Like everyone else, I'm back to the old workaday grind.  

But it's spooky, this silence.  My vertigo is waning, however, I do believe.  Maybe the world will spin back into place, too. 

Mother's?  Hey, wait a minute--that's the club's name in "Peter Gunn"!

Peter Gunn is a suave, well-dressed private investigator whose hair is always in place and who loves cool jazz. Gunn operates in a gloomy waterfront city, the name and location of which is never revealed in the series. He can usually be found at Mother's, a smokey wharfside jazz club that Gunn uses as his "office", usually meeting new clients there. Gunn's girlfriend, Edie Hart, is a sultry singer employed at Mother's,

 God. . . I love this song.  

One Day

I don't want to write today, but I can't help myself.  I've not felt well for a couple of days now plagued with vertigo and a general malaise.  "Probably a brain tumor," I think, "or some delayed neurological problem related to the accident."  

One day, you know, you just don't get better.  

But I must power through somehow.  It is Easter and I have to go with my mother to dinner at her neighbor's home.  I will not be my usual jolly self, I fear.  I just want to sit in the dark.  Movement is not my friend. 

It hit me hard yesterday.  I got up too early, read, wrote, and went back to bed.  When I got up again, however, I felt no better.  It was a bright Saturday morning.  What to do?  I grabbed my Leica and loaded it up with the Babylon 13 film that failed so badly last weekend.  Using a different camera, I would try again.  But when I got into the car and began to drive, the vertigo would hit me in spurts.  I would grip the steering wheel trying to regain some balance.  My gyroscope wasn't working.  This happened several times.  

I parked the car and got out.  The day was already warm and my lower back was killing me.  I was an essential mess.  But I walked.  And walked.  I covered some of the same territory that I walked last weekend, but there were no hippie celebrations to see.  The streets were dead.  I looked for light and shadow and shot the same old stuff, houses, shopping carts, reflections.  I just wanted to see if the film would be better exposed by the meter in the Leica.  

By the time I got back to the car, I had sweated through my t-shirt.  I was weak, and I was hungry.  I wanted breakfast, but I could think of no breakfast restaurants I wanted to attend, so I stopped at the grocery store.  Fresh sliced bread from the bakery.  Small sausages.  What the hell.  Orange juice and champagne.  

I pulled into the driveway.  It was all I could do to exit the car.  When I got inside, into the cool air, I dropped the bags and fell onto the couch.  I didn't have the energy to cook.  I made a mimosa.  

Oh, yea.  I made another. 

In a bit, I felt I could make breakfast.  Four sausages, three eggs, two pieces of toast slathered with blueberry preserves that had been in the refrigerator for at least three years.  But the are "preserves," right?  They should be fine.  

Goddamn, breakfast was good.  Really good.  But it made me feel no better.  Just the opposite, maybe.  I piled the dirty dishes into the sink and went back to bed.  

I didn't sleep well.  I tossed and turned and rolled around as I had the night before.  When I got up, it was almost time to go to my mother's.  I wanted to develop the film I had shot.  I started getting things together, though, and realized I felt like shit.  I decided to shower instead.  

And then I went to mom's.  

The sausage had not cleared my stomach yet.  The whole meal was "riding high" in my gut.  I still had vertigo.  I was not much use as a guest, and in a bit, I said so long and headed home.  

I didn't feel like eating and decided I would just snack on raw cabbage.  When it got dark, I turned on t.v.  

And that was it.  In a bit, I went to bed.  

I feel no better this morning.  I didn't sleep well, and I feel listless.  No joie de vivre.  No elan vital.  No Easter egg hunt for me.  I want to go back to bed. 

I have no idea what the object in today's photo is.  Some kind of weird sculpture/monument I photographed in downtown Gotham last week with the bad film.  Again, you can't see the image on the film, even on a light table, but somehow through technological wizardry, I was able to pull one out.  

Maybe I am suffering the effects of the full moon.  I don't know.  I simply wait and hope that this stuff will pass.  It always has, but you know. . . one day. . . . . 

Crepuscular

What a convergence of events--Good Friday, Passover, Easter, and a Full Moon, not to mention that we are in the middle of Ramadan.  Feel free to worship/celebrate in your chosen way.  But for the full moon, all these events are tied together by that little patch of desert in the Middle East where monotheism was born.  

The full moon is universal.  It is called the Pink Moon in April. Mostly.  By many, anyway.  

We've yet to meet consensus.  

I didn't go to see my mother yesterday.  I feel bad about that as it was Good Friday, but in my childhood, that was never a thing.  I mean, I don't remember it being a special day.  Maybe we went out to eat at Morrison's Cafeteria. . . I don't know.  But by chance, I had fish last night.  I went for takeout sushi.  Not quite the Catholic Fish Fry of my childhood, but good nonetheless.  

This was preceded by a Cuba Libra on the deck.  The reason I didn't go to my mother's house was what we believed was the coming storm.  The sky darkened and the air was concussed by deep thunder.  I was sitting with my drink on the deck when the phone rang.  It was my mother.  

"Listen. . . I don't think I'll make it over tonight.  It looks like it is going to storm and Friday traffic and all. . . ."

"That's alright.  You don't need to come over every day."

I felt both guilty and relieved.  I just wanted to sit with my drink and read.  I would read all night long, I thought, if I don't drink too much.  Yes, I just wanted to spend a quiet night in solitude and peace.  

But first, I needed to make a photo of my drink so that I could bug the hammerheads.

It's what I do.  It is part of my particular charm.  Did you say "peculiar"?  Yea, yea. . . .  that's what you people with social media accounts might say.  Me?  This is the only way I can assure people I'm still alive.  

But the storm never came.  The thunder and the rain just passed us by.  The drink had made me hungry, though, and I'd only eaten grilled vegetables in the past 24 hours, so I decided on an early meal.  I had a bottle of sake in the library, so it would be one stop at the restaurant just half a mile away on the Boulevard.  In and out.  

I was finished eating before six.  Full now of food and drink. . . well. . . I never got back to reading.  I poured an after-raw-food worm killer and repaired to the deck.  The sky was clear.  It was hours until sunset.  The Bad Son Guilt of a Good Friday Evening had set in.  There was that and the liquor and my own brand of miscreant heresy to deal with.  

I believe I have often been motivated by guilt.  I was an only child who felt things too deeply.  My grandmother, who sat me in my early life, was probably responsible for inflicting me with a "good boy" syndrome.  I've carried that burden since.  Fascinated by the "bad," driven to do "good."  Like Martin Luther, but I'm not into self-flagellation.  

There seems to be little need for self-flagellation these days, though.  The masses are more than willing to do that for you.  They are like pack wolves on the scent of blood.  The least little nick can send them into a fury.  That's why I try to keep a low profile.  Put on the costume.  Wear the mask.  Avoid lengthy conversations when out of the Bat Cave.  Stay put or keep moving.  There is home and there is away from home.  Bury the dark secrets deep.  Share only pictures of food and drink.  

And take to your bed early.  We live in Manichaean times where there is only darkness or there is light.  Crepuscular creatures beware.  It has become so difficult to live in the liminal zone, to live in between.  

Easter Seder

My mother had a good time yesterday.  She took her two neighbors, both women in their 90s who live alone, to the movies.  One is blind and the other is deaf.  But it was free, and they got free popcorn.  

My mother is crazy for free things. 

She just committed us to Easter dinner with the across the street neighbors, the ones who had us over for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I have no say in the matter.  I don't want to go, but there is no way out.  

"I'm making ham," said the neighbor. 

"That's how you know it is a Christian thing," I said.  

She looked at me quizzically.  

"I mean. . . it's not a seder."

She kept looking at me.  

"You know.  Ham.  Jews don't eat ham."

"Oh.  Are you Jewish?"

She looked at my mother.  

"Only culturally," I said.  

"I can make something else," she said.  

"No.  I was just. . . I was just making a joke."

So ham it is.  And some creamed corn from a frozen package, green beans, a pear on a sheet of lettuce with half a bartenders cherry on it.  

I'm hoping there is no Easter egg hunt.  

Thus is my life.  Not much else.  I baked vegetables last night.  Let me recall: red and green bell peppers, green jalapeño, shiitake mushrooms, broccoli, yellow squash, cauliflower, carrots, red onion, split cherry tomatoes, red potatoes,  and tofu.  Lots of chopping.  Olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper, then soy sauce.  Roasted in a pan on the grill.  

I'd show you my phone pic of it, but. . . you know.  It was more than delicious, though.  I'm getting really good.  I've decided to make another never-before dish here at home.  Rice pudding.  I always make too much rice.  I love rice pudding but never have it.  

Maybe I'll take it to Easter dinner.  

I Had a Story, But Then The News

Through the miraculous power of technology, I was able to pull images from film that was all but invisible.  The film is incredibly thin and there are a billion pinholes in the emulsion, not to mention tiny scratches, and there even seem to be light leaks which I don't understand at all.  

So of course, I am enamored of them.  

You'll see. 

It seems I had some things I wanted to report--narrate, if you will--from yesterday, but I have been reading the news this morning and now can't remember what it might have been.  The news is just so incredibly distracting.  The world is, really.  Cuba Gooding Jr., for instance.  He gets convicted of unwanted touching for kissing a waitress and Will Smith gets an offer to fight Chris Rock's brother for god knows how much money.  David Mamet has gone Full Trump and the world of ballet now needs "intimacy directors" to coach them how to touch without offense.  

All that is left is to raise the age of consent to forty-five.  I'm not sure that is safe enough, but it is sure a start.  

The West is sex obsessed.  Terrified of it.  Worse than Puritans.  Fewer acceptable ways of touching intimately are allowed.  I don't think Puritans required a consent form that was officially filed first.  

"Mom, Aunt Thelma is touching me again."

"Jesus--tell her to stop it!"

". . . uh-uh."

Those were the bad old days when we didn't know so much about the psychological damage of sex related things.  

I do remember that a girl in our jr. high school got a kick out of showing her privates to the boys.  Once people started talking about it, though, and the school officials found out, they suspended everyone who looked.  True story. 

They also told us not to masturbate.  They said it was bad for us.  But you could join the army at seventeen with parent permission.  I knew some boys who had to do that. 

Well, it's not just the West, I guess.  I need to expand my world view a bit.  

Thank God for Covid.  It has kept me away from people.  The kids at the factory tell me you can get in trouble for all sorts of things now.  It is dangerous, they say.  They all prefer to work remotely and not write anything controversial.  

My radical friends and I are beginning to think that Trump was right about everything.  The only people having orgies come from the right.  

Not that I'm interested in orgies.  I find them a useful trope, like drugs.  I have no desire to be like Hunter Thompson, but I sure as shittin' enjoy the tale.  He sacrificed himself for my pleasure.  Like MMA fighters.  They just go in and beat the shit out of one another for chump change by and large.  It is something to see.  They do incredible damage to one another as I eat popcorn and go, "Jesus, oh my God, did you see that?" 

I pretty much have the same reaction to watching right wing politicians.  And I think, "Where the fuck is Will Smith when you need him?"

I made one of my better phone pics last night, I think. It's a snob's picture with snob scotch and a Leica Monochrom.  The photo could get me robbed in L.A.  You've read about that, right?  Gangs are targeting rich people on the street in L.A. stealing the Rolex right off their arms.  They follow them from expensive restaurants.  The rich, you see, for the most part, anyway, don't really know how to fight.  Oh, they go to gyms and take kickboxing classes, but they aren't really MMA rugged, if you know what I mean.  Did you see Will Smith slap?  He'd give up that Rolex in a microsecond.  

You know the world has gone to shit when rich people can't enjoy themselves.  

I think the world went to hell when gay became acceptable.  No more secret pajama parties.  No more evil pleasures.  Now they are just heartbreakingly adorable and Disney wholesome.  My older gay friends say they miss the old days so full of glory (holes).  

Bohemia Lost.  

I think that's it.  It's all I can remember now, anyway.  If something comes to me, I'll let you know.  I've limited my news sources to only a few now, and only the headlines, so if you find something of interest, feel free to share.  

What the F*** Is Wrong with Me?

Things just didn't go well yesterday.  My superpowers may be waning.  

Oh. . . I exagerate.  It was fine.  I just don't seem to be able to fly anymore.  I'll probably get better.  It will come back.  But for the time being. . . I'm stuck on the ground.  

The days are getting warmer.  The humidity is rising.  The days are still pleasant, but everyone has that terrible notion of what is in the offing.  We've had a string of the most lovely days anyone could want, a fairly long string of cool, clear, dry days with pastel skies and soft breezes.  When the breezes end. . . watch out.  

But to my waning powers.  After the gym, I went to lunch at my favorite Spanish place.  I didn't send any photos to my friends, though, having been chastised for "the same old same old" the other day, so I sat at the bar "virtually" alone.  Utterly, really.  

I had the same bartender I often have on weekdays.  She is a nice woman with two children and a husband.  See?  She used to be chatty.  But she wasn't as friendly yesterday.  She was chatty, just not with me.  It hurt my feelings.  But, you know. . . sometimes I guess I come off a bit like the fellow who lives underneath the highway.  I don't know.  I didn't check my hororscope to see how the Neptune/Mercury relation was going.  

I had wanted to walk and take some photos after lunch, but I really wasn't in the mood.  Maybe it was being ignored.  Maybe it was the Sangria.  I went home and took a nap. 

When I got up, I didn't feel right.  It was late afternoon.  I wanted to develop the film I had shot over the weekend, but time was running short if I was going to go to my mother's.  I was slow moving, sluggish, but I decided to give it a go.  A trip to the garage with the film and the new bottle of developer that needed mixing.  I put the film into the changing tent and tried to pry off the canister caps with the expensive film canister opener I recently bought.  It didn't work.  I tried to muscle it, but as I say, my super powers had waned.  I took the film back to the house where the little film retriever tools were.  I should have done this in the first place.  

Brain fog.  

It took a few too many attempts, but finally, the film was ready to load.  Back to the garage.  But the tenant caught me.  She wanted to show me something that needed repair.  Right.  O.K.  I'll get right on that.  

We chatted.  Time moved on. 

Back to the changing tent.  Film in the developing tank.  But when I mixed the developer, it was too warm.  Back to the house to get some ice.  Back to the garage.  Wash the film.  Develop for nine minutes.  Wash for two.  Fix for four.  Hypo clear.  Rinse.  

I took the tank back to the house to do the final rinse in distilled water.  I pulled the film out to see.  Piss, shit, fuck.  There were only ghost images.  The film was completely underexposed.  I would never be able to pull decent images from it.  

C.C. texted me the death notice for Gilbert Gottfried.  Kryptonite got him, I guess.  

The world gets smaller.  

By this time, it was a bit late.  I didn't want to go to my mother's.  I called her and said so.  I felt like a shit.  

"You're so lucky to have your mom." 

I poured a rum and coke, lit a cheroot, and went to the deck.  The cat was waiting.  It was past her mealtime.  I thought of something.  When I went inside to get her food, I grabbed the mask.  

I smoked.  I drank.  I took a selfie and sent it to Q.  He sent me back a photo of me from twenty years ago. 

"What happened," I asked?

"Too much jazz," he said.  

"Don't worry.  You're special.  You'll be fine."

I put on the mask.  Superhero or Supervisor of Lonesomeville?  I couldn't decide.  

Maybe a simple janitor.  

I decided to send the photo around.  Another in the Self-Betrayal series.  The same old same old.  I've been making many.  

I like shooting film, but I hate how awful it can be.  It is expensive, and it is often difficult.  When it works, it's great, but digital works all the time.  I'm fatigued by its immediacy, though.  It's too much too soon.  Film is a mystery.  

And a nightmare.  

The morning has grown bright. I must go out and lose some weight if I am to fly again.  Q has not had a drink in 2022.  He has lost ten pounds.  That is about a gallon and a half of whiskey or 17 bottles of wine.  He is marching toward his six month badge.  He has superpowers.  

I cannot let him know that I've lost mine.