The Four Humours

While in the throes of something like a high fever, an attack of nausea, food poisoning or in labor, it's not a good idea to ask me questions. I don't understand the things I do when I am about to vomit, and no one should even try.
Just back away and let me crawl up the wall, and don't panic.
Rest assured, it's mostly the demons acting themselves out. Haitians are fortunate to have voodoo ceremonies, as few religions or cultures provide a comparable release. In my experience, becoming violently ill is sometimes all you've got. I don't look forward to these events, by any means. Like having a sebaceous cyst lanced, it's necessary and intense.
A vicious stomach bug which I recently contracted (just 2 days after the exciting Obama victory) got me thinking about the 4 humours: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. No, I'm not going to get that specific. Suffice it to say I spent several hours with my head in a garbage pail while seated on the can. Lots of humours...
Having known each other for close to 20 years, Bisq has stuck with me through a lot of grizzly events - not the least of which was watching our son being "sectioned" out of me while I flailed around on the operating table with a case of the DTs (Delirium Tremens) from the epidural. Puking into the wind on numerous occasions, making an emergency #2 on the side of the road, and howling next to his SUV after ingesting 'shrooms in the 100+ degree heat in Utah back in 1996 may fill the pages of his memoirs.
This particular bug kicked in on Thursday night around 6:30 PM, just after I had made myself a chicken burger with broccoli. The nausea was immediately relentless. My face was going numb, and my breathing became coarse. My complexion was turning from peach to lime sherbet. During this obeah transformation, I began to pace in order to regulate my breathing. Meanwhile, Zev was begging me to draw strawberries for him on his etch-a-sketch pad. I panted a cryptic message to my neighbor's voicemail, breathily urging her to come over and deal with Zev so that I could convulse in privacy. I just needed someone to give me permission to temporarily leave this world. Minutes later, Bisq called. He was about an hour away in Northridge. I must have sounded like Linda Blair in The Exorcist (if you need to refresh, have a quick look). I really wasn't in any shape to be giving a status report, but the 911 call was entirely unnecessary. Bisq didn't want to take any chances, so in about 8 minutes, the guys in uniform appeared. They saw that I was in distress and began running tests on me - blood pressure, blood sugar. I knew that puking was in my future, which would probably resolve the demonic episode. However, the cluster of people in my living room only served as an obstacle to me getting a hold of my garbage bucket. Wrath was released in the form of vomit everywhere and covered everyone involved. Sorry guys. I told y'all that I could do this on my own.
It got me thinking about my dear old family members in their finest hours. My mom always knew how to puke quietly...and for that matter, how to get back to whatever it was she was drinking. She puked a lot when I was growing up: as a means to keep her weight down and in keeping with her philosophy: "Better Out Than In." She managed to keep the toilet bowl clean of all residue and burned incense when necessary. It didn't really bother anyone.
My dad was/is an ugly sight when sick. I've only seen him "ralph" few times. But, like myself, he shouts while vomiting. I think we also have "nose vomiting" in common. He's rarely ill, but I vaguely remember a few periods of weakness/shame while recovering from 3 of his 5 significant surgeries: vasectomy, hemorrhoid, and gum surgery. After the hemorrhoidectomy, doctors had ordered him to stay in the prone position for a number of days post-surgery. Watching Tom and Jerry on the television in my parents' bed next to an ass is not something that's easily forgettable. Non-scalpel vasectomies had not yet become available in the late 1970s. My dad always had been on the cutting edge (no pun intended) of surgery. He got hair plugs right around the same time which left crusty bloody dots all over his scalp. He bled a lot, for a man. In his drawer, a reminder of his vasectomy remained for years and years: a pair of hospital-issued undies, fashioned from netting. But, live long enough and spend a night or two in the hospital, and ye shall have a pair of your own. The vasectomy worked, as far as I know.
One of my earliest memories from childhood was when my parents were trying to force an enema on my brother after they had mistakenly given him penicillin, to which they remembered he was deathly allergic. It was my medication that had accidentally been given to him. I wasn't allowed in the bathroom, but I kept my ear to the door. Out of habit, I suppose, my mom had the bathwater running. It sounded like they were in Niagara Falls and very stressed out. I'm not sure whatever resulted or which orifice the tube went up or down. But, Augie survived and has continued a penicillin-free life. Now he struggles with low-back pain and frequent colds. Nothing worth pressing your ear against a door.

The morning after I spent puking all night, it was the inevitable trip to the laundromat to throw the pukey rug into an industrial machine which brought me back into the real world (the world where oozing goes on behind closed doors). I'm lucky it didn't last long and I'm lucky enough to have shed 3 pounds the old fashioned way. Bonus! I was due for the exorcism, as it had been quite a few years since my last gastrointestinal emergency. How many more times will it get ugly? Who's to say?
You may or may not agree with my hypothesis here, but, in some weird way, it's a privilege to bear witness to healing crises.
Gross, yes. Still, it's reassuring to know that there's still a voodoo exorcism brimming in us all. How else are you going to release all that trauma? Just be prepared to clean up afterwards.
PS: those are really discarded Cheetos (uneaten) in the toilet.

Arizona--FireWorld

I've moved four times since I was 18. Big Deal.
I've had friends who have relocated three times as much in half the time, so I don't consider myself overly-nomadic.
Nevertheless, I still get the same question when I show up in a new place: "Why are you here?"
I never have a good answer. Twice the answer has been "school." That works. Once it was "for the money." Anyone who has ever lived in Atlanta should have the same answer, even if they're in denial.
This last move was "just because I wanted to." Admittedly, I do feel like a smart-ass if I give that response. So I usually say something like, "a lot of my family is here." Or, "a lot of my friends are here." Though these statements are true, they just don't seem to legitimize my presence. I was thinking about making my new answer 100% weather-related. That one seems to sit well with people; folks can relate.

This entry is about how a little thing like weather prevented me from loving and living in Arizona back in July of 2000 when we found ourselves contemplating yet another move. I have a feeling that you readers will deduce that I have an aggravating need to question the obvious.
I had recently completed my graduate program and knew that remaining in Santa Fe and practicing acupuncture there was unacceptable. I felt that way based on the advice of former graduates from the program who had stayed and were working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. The area was crawling with these acupuncturists and herbalists, and I needed to strike out on my own into a new territory.
Bisq and I had grown very comfortable in the desert Southwest. We liked the weather: dry, bright, cool in the mornings and evenings, heart-breaking sunsets, double-rainbows, good weed. It never got too hot up there at 7,000 feet in Santa Fe. Maybe Arizona would be a place we'd like... I had an old friend who loved living in Tuscon when she went to U. of Arizona. Another friend raved about Flagstaff. Plus, there were supposedly great business opportunities there in the alternative medicine field. Lots of rich old white people like John McCain!

Arizona was, in our minds, the next best thing to New Mexico, so we set out to spend a week there in July. "Might as well see it at it's worst" was our philosophy, so that we don't fall in love with it's abnormal season. Just to reiterate, I know that it gets hotter there than anywhere in the country, but I thought that 22 years in the Deep South would've prepared me. But, Arizona is a different type of place.
The drive was endless. We were in Bisq's 4Runner, "Heather," crossing the desert at a conservative pace. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in order to check out a few books-on-tape. We scored with Jackie Collins' American Star. Our first night en route to AZ was spent in Silver City, NM, which is fairly funky. It's a desert college town that is surprisingly full of trees and shady areas. We were in good humor and still hadn't gotten overheated.
The next day, we headed towards Tucson. The landscape was something out of a Road-Runner cartoon - the combination of a blistering hot bright day, no trees and saguaro cactus along the I-10. The AC in Heather roared to keep up with the demand. It was quickly turning into a Peak Oil nightmare, as we realized that we had arrived in FireWorld.

Tuscon, when you get off of the busy traffic-filled boulevards, is a cute college town. It's just a shame that one couldn't casually step outside of one's air-conditioned car to experience it. Everything is done in haste when it is 120 degrees. We checked into a neat hotel, the Smuggler's Inn, which had a pirate/hacienda theme going on. It was kept nice and dark and, most importantly, cool. It really felt like a safe-haven from the colorless fire that loomed on the other side of the windows. We managed to make it outdoors once the sun went down and the cement cooled to about 100 degrees. We purchased sandwiches at a world class kosher deli called Feig's and sped back to the hotel. We ate the sandwiches (in haste) in our underwear, in the dark, next to the AC unit in our hotel room. With the absence of the sunlight, our heads cleared, the panic retreated and we concluded that the week in which we had intended on spending between Arizona's 2 major cities of Tuscon and Phoenix was going to be greatly abbreviated. Afterwards, we had plans to check out Prescott and Sedona in the north.
We didn't see the point in singeing the soles of our shoes, guzzling gas, and putting ourselves in danger of sizzling to death. How in the hell was I going to have an acupuncture practice in this town when I was afraid to get out of my car? We knew that Phoenix was supposedly hotter than Tuscon and way less charming, so we decided that we'd quickly drive there, not get out of the car and - mission accomplished! - we'd been to Phoenix. With Jackie Collins' help, we drove through FireWorld along the I-10. From the sky above, we must have looked like an ant crawling in the desert sand - like that cartoon strip B.C.
Phoenix, Tempe and Scottsdale turned out to be a three-headed, soul-less desert mega-city peppered with golf courses. We nearly tried to enjoy some of its culture by attending a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright House (Taliesin West) in Scottsdale. However, when we arrived, we were told that the tour would begin in an hour, and we couldn't bear the idea of waiting in the car - or anywhere that wasn't a dark freezer - for 60 minutes. We'd have to check out Frank Lloyd Wright's places outside of FireWorld. What was Frank doing there, anyway?

And so, we steered Heather north and stopped in Prescott. The temperature became civilized, and we slowly regained our sanity. Prescott was a nice town to ride bikes and see other white people (many of whom are pleased to grow old in an R-V.) I think that Prescott might also be famous for it's candied apples.
Then, we headed to an old favorite spot of ours: Sedona. We had visited and camped there the previous year and had good memories of the crystal cool waters of the Oak Creek, which flows down from the Grand Canyon. As had become a tradition, we found ourselves at Sedona's Center For the New Age. The previous year, we had our astrological charts read there, as well as our auras photographed. In 1999, Bisq's aura was in big trouble: Note the black hole at 1:00. Several sessions of art therapy and playing bass in Santa Fe's most famous reggae band, I-Life, must have remedied the situation. How else can this Irie aura featured from trip #2 to Sedona be explained?
We arrived back in New Mexico realizing how scary life could be in Arizona. We never again took air conditioning for granted, though we still don't have it and lust after it during the summer months. "How did y'all like Arizona?" friends inquired after we arrived home several days earlier than projected. "Oh, it was too hot." That response never failed me. People would nod once in agreement and move on to the next topic. They were kind enough never to chide me for doing such an obviously stupid thing.
So, revisiting the old question as to why I am here - my answer is: the weather is usually pleasant.

On To Oregon - The 50 States Series

The one and only time that I've been to Oregon was on a road trip that Bisque and I took back in 1996. Yes, this was the trip where we got busted at the Canadian border. That's another story for another blog. As we made our way down the coast from Vancouver, we decided to check out a few places in Oregon. We took in lots of nature, slept in a yurt, hiked Crater Lake.

One of the main reasons for us to spend time in Oregon was a man by the name of Liebler. Another ex-friend of my dad's, Liebler used to live in New Orleans. I met him around my senior year of high school when he and my dad were practically inseparable. He had moved to New Orleans in the late 1980s to work for an AM radio station called WSMB. Liebler was an older beatnik, I guess you'd say. I guess you're old, by virtue of being a beatnik, right? Long white hair, a New Yorker from way back, a pothead...but now, a pothead with a raging hiatal hernia.
Sometime around the mid '90s, Liebler had high-tailed it to a tiny town near Ashland, Oregon, when he found out that he had a son there. Okay, let me clarify: apparently, Liebler had been sleeping with a woman who turned out to be a born-again Christian, who later shunned him and denounced him as a heathen. BUT - she had a baby in Oregon whom she claimed that Liebler had sired. However, she refused to let him do the blood tests. Liebler took her word for it, and moved to Oregon to provide this 5 year old boy named Leon with a Dad - a Dad who was not full of fire and brimstone. One who liked to hang out by the creek, carving wooden statues of a vaginal nature. Liebler wanted this kid to have a fighting chance.
When we showed up to stay at Liebler's place , we immediately noticed his issue with the hiatal hernia. He couldn't get too many words out without burping. Funny at first, but really like a speech impediment. The marijuana he smoked continuously throughout the day was medicinal and served to relax his esophageal sphincter. The other thing that made a big difference in his condition was the Lithium spring-fed water fountain in the town of Ashland, just 20 miles away. Shortly after arriving, we had to cruise out there in his white Chrysler LeBaron convertible. People swear by the healing powers of the Lithium springs...it made a huge difference for him. The results lasted about an hour or two, and then he'd have to smoke, since it was a bit of a trek. Unfortunately, the Lithium water, once bottled, lost its powers.

I can't remember how we spent our first night there, but we spent the next day with his 5 year- old son, Leon, on the property/farm adjacent to a creek. Liebler, as I mentioned, busied himself with whittling & sculpting. His son was great with numbers and negotiating, so Monopoly was the natural choice for the day's events. It didn't seem impossible that Leon was Liebler's son, but it wasn't perfectly obvious either. A request was made for me to return to the house to get the game board as well as some other supplies. When I came back to join the others by the creek, I innocently put my hand on a gate that had previously been propped open.
Doesn't everyone need to be shocked by an electric fence just once in their lives?? Apparently, I let out a shrill scream and wound up on my back - Monopoly pieces, get out of jail free cards, Marvin Gardens - all of it whirled around. I recovered quickly and played badminton afterwards.

We traveled to Ashland each day we were there for Lithium water as well as entertainment. On that trip, we saw 2 horrible movies: Striptease with Demi Moore and Independence Day (which we actually watched on Independence Day). On the way home, our host mentioned that his botanist son had left him with some opium poppies which he had stashed in the trunk of his LeBaron the entire time! It was a miracle we were never pulled over, since Liebler drives
like a maniac...a burping maniac, at that. We requested that he remove the contraband from the vehicle, since we were trying not to get arrested that week. The three of us contemplated trying the opium, but somehow never got around to it.

The kicker is that Leon is not Liebler's son. A DNA test proved that there was not a drop of Jewish hippie blood in that cute little blond boy. It was just a coincidence that he was great at Monopoly. I would imagine that he and Liebler grew very close during the years that he spent in that remote area of eastern Oregon. I have no idea if they're still in touch.

I just spoke with Liebler back in September. He's living on the Oregon coast, in some tiny town up north. He was still burping throughout the entire conversation, but it seemed better. He is still sculpting spread-eagle women and had a mixed media installation at a gallery in his town. The state is paying him to live in the house he bought, since it's an historical marker. He's in the process of restoring it and living off of the mammoth vegetables he grows, since he says he has practically no money.
He told me that he is still searching for the potion to cure him of his hiatal hernia.
In the meantime, he is sticking to his vigorous daily regimen of lunges, squats and chin-ups that he does to a Fleetwood Mac mix-tape that I gifted to him after our visit.
I hope that little Leon, who would now be 17, remembers his few years with the dad who really wasn't his dad. I've managed to stay away from electric fences since that time in Oregon, but I'd like to go back and check out Liebler's new digs and meet any new possible offspring of his.

Florida - The 50 State Series

Serious case of writer's block, folks. Maybe you've enjoyed the 2 months or so without having to endure these weekly rants. Well, I'm back on purpose. I'm going to take a stab at patriotism by kicking off the 50 States Series. I will attempt to write about some of the states I've been to or about people from particular states. I may not cover all of them...in fact, I know that I will not. But, it is a topic to help grease the wheels, so to speak. Here goes Florida.

I wish I knew exactly how many times I've been to Florida over the course of my 34 years. I've covered the Gulf side, Atlantic side, inland (though not too much)...never been to Tallahassee or as far north as Jacksonville, though.

The trips to the land of Ponce de Leon started pretty early on. My paternal grandparents, Izzy and Chickee, moved to a retirement community in Margate (near Fort Lauderdale) in the late 1970s. We went there very few times back when we were a family unit. My dad wasn't a big fan of visiting his own parents. Out of guilt, I still head to Margate every few years to put in a lunch visit with my grandfather, Izzy, who is 93.

I think of my last trip to see Izzy back on my 32nd birthday. Bisq and I were staying with Uncle Beast at his condo in DelRay Beach, about an hour away from Margate. Over that weekend, we had many unexpected encounters with parrots, which we take as a great omen. Even cruising on the interstate, Bisq spotted a blue and gold macaw in the passenger seat of a passing car. Come to think of it, my bird, Raj, comes from a breeder near Jacksonville. It's no stretch to say that parrot owners, much like old people, flock to Florida.

A dear friend of ours, Don B., lives in West Palm Beach. He is a yacht broker who used to own dry cleaners in his former life before Florida [BF]. He still loves his ciggies, his rum and coke for breakfast, and blow-dries what's left of his hair, making sure that the area that grazes his collar is curled under and not too frizzy looking - a fairly tall order when you live in Florida. Like us, Don hails from Metairie, LA. Don used to sail with my dad (see The Family Gun, for more details) before they had a huge falling-out in the late 1980s. I couldn't bear to give up my relationship with Don, so I secretly visit him when I'm on the Atlantic Florida coast.

I've definitely spent some time on the Florida Panhandle. People in the know call that region the Redneck Riviera. I feel like I know every inch of the Gulf Coast, and I can easily say that I don't miss it very much. I am sad to see that the changing weather patterns are doing away with this region a little faster than the rest of the country. I have some almost trashy, almost sweet memories of the Panhandle.
For some reason I am remembering a trip to Gulf Shores, Alabama (which is spitting distance from Pensacola, FL) that I took as a teenage babysitter along with another family who had two very young kids. The main attraction, besides the beach, is the mammoth wave pool where the undertow is so deadly that girls' ponytails are tragically snapped off each day. I've had some unpleasant encounters with the treacherous metal grating on the side of the pool that sucks everything from hair to jelly-shoes off of the typical buck-toothed southerner on vacation in Gulf Shores. While on that trip, I pilfered a joint off of the cool mom, Elaine, who made the mistake of carelessly leaving it on the counter in the bathroom. What a score. I carefully guarded that joint in the pocket of my white perma-press tennis shorts for the entire week, just waiting for the perfect Florida moment. I walked along the beach with it to a bar that straddled the Alabama/Florida border: the Florabama Bar. I thought for sure that I would meet the right people with whom I could whip out this bit of contraband and have a legendary time. At 14, looking more like 12, standing at about 4'8"- it's a good thing I was widely ignored at the Florabama Bar. That very joint of Elaine's came home with me to New Orleans and stayed in my jewelery box for years un-smoked, but quite kinked from the journey it had made in my shorts all the way from Florida.

I journeyed back to the Panhandle around Easter 2002. We traveled there with some of our Atlanta friends and stayed with Jeanne (whom we lovingly refer to as "the Coach") at her beach house which they called Puckered Out. A team of heavily drunk and twasted lesbians and gay dudes were also guests at Puckered Out that weekend. A key player during this Easter beach trip was the frozen toddy machine set up to make super-sweet margaritas and rum-runners round the clock. As you can imagine, the scene got ugly fast. It all culminated around midnight when Coach's ex, the Roach, was wasted in the kitchen making pancakes with a six year old girl (the unfortunate daughter of a visiting neighbor in this beach community). One of Roach's eyes was crossed and the other closed. With spatula in hand, she was cursing under her breath, "alright, you little shit - one more pancake." Roach was particularly ornery because it was obvious that the Coach was hooking back up with her Florida girlfriend, right there in front of Roach's drunken eyes. That poor little six year old would have to experience the wrath.
On that same expedition, Brian, a.k.a., "the Brain," broke his toe while we walking to the beach to watch fireworks. We heard it break, and I think someone in the group re-set it for him back in the living room at Puckered Out. While inebriated, he proceeded to give us a lecture where he emphatically repeated the phrase, "I LOVE MY SIBLINGS!" Bisk and I did our best to escape all of the wasted guests who were up to no good and trapping us in their drunken tirades. On that particular weekend, it was unsafe to swim in the Gulf due to an algae that was spotted via satellite. As Brain put it (way too many times): "Thi-entists (scientists with a lisp, in case you couldn't catch it) are baffled!!" After spending 2 frightening nights with the tireless toddy machine, Bisq and I decided to head back up the I-85 to our apartment in Atlanta.

Leaving the pan-handle and heading southeast, you get to the Tampa/St.Pete region.
I attended practice management seminars which were based out of Clearwater, FL. The last one I went to was in early September 2005. My friend, Leena, and I stayed with a pretty offbeat (to put it kindly) married couple, Bob and Marion, who I'd met several times through these seminars targeted toward Acupuncturists and Chiropractors. We stayed with them at their house for one night in Dade City, so that we could avoid paying for a hotel room in Clearwater. I probably need an entire blog to describe these people, but here are some keywords: rat-tail, ex-Parrot owners, 50-ish, ex-coke-heads, swingers, overweight, acupuncturists, vocal sex enthusiasts. They took us by their impressive acupuncture clinic in Dade City where Bob (husband with rat-tail) prescribed me some kind of female topical sex enhancement cream (unsolicited, by the way). He and Marion spent the better part of the night begging us to smoke a joint with them and trying to coax us into their indoor swimming pool for a nighttime dip. They couldn't have barked up a wronger tree. Gotta love Floridians...

You really want to love Key West, especially after reading Hemingway's Islands in the Stream and short stories by Bob Shacochis (a literary find by Bisq). It's pretty laughable that I wanted to move there, sight-unseen back when I was 22. The shame about Key West is that it pretty much sucks. It's way more Florida than it is Cuba, to say the least. Hemingway knew a much different place than the one that's there now. Bisq, Zulie and I visited back in 1997 and stayed pretty wasted drinking at a variety of shitty tourist bars that have you seated on white plastic lawn furniture. At least in New Orleans, they try to give you some sort of unique experience. Over there it's all go-cups and mid-westerners with fat pink legs. We actually managed to have a great trip - the alcohol helped tremendously. We kept ourselves entertained by falling into the hot tub fully clothed and getting into fights with people at the B&B where we stayed.

Like I said before, I can't even remember all of the times I've been to "Flower-da," as my great-grandmother called it. These are just some vague memories of a state where I've worn a lot of bad French-cut bathing suits, drunk a lot of red, blue and green beverages, been scared as hell of its inhabitants and witnessed some twasted behavior.

Stay tuned for Oregon.

Goodbye Amma

I returned today from Amma's funeral. Amma was my 87 year old grandmother. I wrote a eulogy replete with jokes and sweet memories of all of our years with her. I salted a few members of the audience so that my jokes wouldn't fall flat. This was the first time I had ever delivered a eulogy. I was sort of nervous and worried that my voice would quiver and that I'd be a puddle by the end of the first page. Things went surprisingly well. I have a Southwest Airlines flight attendant to thank for some coaching. I met this particular flight attendant on the flight from Phoenix to New Orleans. He appeared too old and well-spoken for the job. Turns out he was a rabbi in a Reformed congregation in Phoenix for 30 years before he fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a flight attendant. He informed me that his salary is the same (low triple-digits, in case you're curious). It's just that now he doesn't have to deal with Jews complaining about his sermons for a living. He cracks dumb jokes in front of the cockpit and pours diet cokes. Look for a balding man with the last name Pinkwasser the next time you're on Southwest.

I'm feeling good about the send-off we gave Amma. It was a simple grave-side funeral. The young rabbi, Uri, who presided had all of us shoveling dirt over her grave. I've never seen Augie (my brother)do that much physical labor. My uncle, Norman, was clutching his chest after 4 feet of earth covered her pine coffin. Amma would've said, "Isn't this what we paid the funeral home for? "The rabbi did the symbolic tearing of our clothing; for the ladies, it was a ribbon pinned to our lapels. We cried when my mom yelled "Goodbye Mom," down into the grave. All of our speeches included imitations of Amma's high-pitched thick southern accent.
Augie's speech involved a prop: an oatmeal cookie. Light rain fell as we walked away from the grave. God's tears, according to Uri.
I've said goodbye to a lot of loved ones over the past few years. This whole cycle of life thing is proving to be true. I guess I'm not getting out of here alive either. But in the meantime -
happy Halloween, keep in touch, and make your friendship with me a huge priority.

The Harvest On Its Way: A Birthday Dedication

It's with a heavy heart that I am in L.A. right now and NOT attending Blake's 35th birthday
in his backyard in San Francisco. I've got a valid excuse and it weighs about 21 lbs and crawls real fast.
I was along, via cell phone, for all of the decisions and hardships that came before this blessed event, so it's just not right that I'm AWOL. It sucks, and I spent all of today in a cranky mood.
For his birthday, Blake orchestrated a way for all of his friends who aren't afraid to get dirty and can handle a shovel to plant him a garden of his own replete with fruits, veggies and herbs. A chef should have his own artichokes, tomatoes and squash, right? Having friends with "agricultural"operations up in Mendocino County and lots of friends who know lots about landscaping, he should have it made. That, and a spit-roasted lamb - what more can someone with a belly want for?
Tonight's waxing crescent moon will glow over his new garden in his backyard. I look forward to the meals we will share over the next 35 years. Happy Birthday, saster.

Playing Swanee

You'd never know it now, but I spent ten years of my life taking weekly piano lessons. That's roughly 520 lessons! Put me in front of a piano now and I might play the same dirge that I was working on back when I stopped taking lessons at age 15. Or, I might piddle around and play a little part of Swanee by George Gershwin - lately, I find myself tapping it out on my son's Fisher-Price alligator xylophone. It needs some work...to say the least.

Over the years, I had four different piano teachers. The first was an older, bearded gentleman (at that time late 30's seemed "older") named Greg. He came to the house to teach me. We played a few songs that involved middle C. One song was called Halloween:

C-D-E, C-D-E, E-D-C, E-D-C: Halloween, Halloween, let's have fun, let's have fun

Bust that out at a holiday party. I accused Greg of stinking once. He never came back to the house after that. I was 5 years old. Years later, I realized that it wasn't him, but rather broccoli steaming. My mom was a vegetarian at the time.
Ava Rosenberg was next. She taught lessons to me and my brother out of a small studio at my school. She was sweet and had a dyed blond fuzzy mustache. I'll bet by now she's discovered wax is better than bleach for that kind of thing. She taught my brother how to play Saucer Man.

Then came Mrs. Phillips, who I studied under for the longest stretch of my career as a piano student. She worked at our synagogue and had actually given my parents lessons when they were newlyweds. She was a classic mean old lady who wore too much rose-scented perfume (luckily, she was never in the same room with Greg! Broccoli + Rose= ?). For years, she scolded me while I played, struck my hand with a pencil when it stumbled over the wrong notes and screamed, "that's an E, honey!" She entered me into recitals and forced me to play a duet with her on stage. These were my first episodes of anxiety that I can remember. I would get up on the stage, forget to say my name and what I would be performing, and do something really awkward like lick my lips in a circular motion. I must have looked quite psychotic. While on stage I would often blank-out on what piece I was playing - it was as if I had left my body there on the stage to fend for itself. I wonder if Mrs.Phillips is still kicking?

The last teacher I had, Tim Davis, is someone who keeps coming back to my thoughts. He died shortly after I quit taking lessons from him. Tim really wasn't a piano teacher by trade. He was, however, an excellent self-taught pianist and entertainer. My parents discovered and befriended him at a fancy party where he was performing. He was pretty stunning to behold: skin the color of caramel, a well-designed handlebar mustache and a body rippled with muscles that he didn't have to work for. He was a complete clown and really wasn't effective at teaching me piano. It probably had more to do with me and my programming. After years of traditional and classical instruction, I couldn't learn piano the groovy way. Playing by ear was out of the question. I needed to slave over sheet music, and I had no jazzy inclinations. Mrs. Phillips had ruined me.

Still, my parents payed Tim to come over every week. That's when I began working on Swanee by George Gershwin. Tim took away the sheet music and tried to teach me to feel the music. It's a project that was never completed. Perhaps my cousin, Jason, can sit me down and show me how it's done. We spent most of the lessons goofing off. Tim liked to imitate me, and I couldn't get enough of him. He made me laugh at myself and my mechanical approach to the keys. Sometimes we'd shout to each other during the entire lesson, as a means for more effective communication. He had nicknames for my different wardrobe ensembles. At that time, I was in a preppy, girly phase involving sweaters with hearts and tightly closed collars. He called my look "very puppy."
Tim and his wife, JoAnn, partied with my parents. Often, they would join us on our boat during the weekends. Tim was a one-man-party. They were guests at one of the rowdiest Thanksgivings that my house ever witnessed. Tim showed up at this jeans and tee-shirt event wearing a white tuxedo.
According to Tim, his mother was one of the vocalists from the original The Lion Sleeps Tonight - you know that backup melody? It was probably a lie, but I still think of Tim whenever I hear that ubiquitous tune.

Well, here's the heartbreaking part of this whole story. Apparently, Tim had a drug problem: crack, to be more specific. I never witnessed it, but JoAnn confessed the problem to my dad, who mentioned it blithely to me, as if a 15 year-old could handle that news. I became hysterical when I found out. I had only heard about people doing crack, and I never imagined that I actually knew one of these people. And, of all people, Tim! Things kind of fell apart for Tim; Jo Ann and her daughter kicked him out, and he stopped coming over to give me the lessons. My parents gave me the green light to abandon the piano, though I would, on very rare occasion, sit down and try to figure out the rest of Swanee. My dad still communicated with Tim, who was living in a rough part of town. He had become skinny and hollowed-out, but still maintained his handlebar mustache. I can't remember the last time that I saw Tim, but he didn't seem to have any special affection toward me at that point. Maybe he had left his body behind to fend for itself, like I did during those recitals. When you're a starry-eyed 15 year old, it's hard not to take things personally.

It's fun to think back and remember Tim and how he would croon along with my mechanical piano playing. I'm looking to get back into playing a musical instrument. Something where I can let go of my inner robot. It might not be the piano though. My dad, at 67, still takes piano lessons sporadically. He, too, plays like a robot, but one who's low on batteries. Next to him, I'm Ray Charles. My step-mother winces when he sits down to tickle the ivories. If Tim were around, he'd be marching alongside Dad at the piano like a member of the Korean People's Army with crossed eyes and his tongue wagging. Where did that Tim go?

To Share Or Not To Share

W.W.J.D? Is there anything written about this in the 10 Commandments? How about the Qu'aran?
TO SHARE OR NOT TO SHARE?
That is the question.

This morning at 7:58 AM, my landlord and his hound appeared at my locked gate. He rang the doorbell because he was desperate, I suppose. For the second time in less than a year, he had stopped up his toilet and came up to our house to borrow our plunger. Wire hangers weren't cutting it this morning, I'm assuming. Let's define the work of a toilet plunger, shall we? What is does is make mince-meat out of poo. Right? It's a job that needs to be done, and some years it has to be done more than others. Eat your fiber and you will be blessed - God willing, Baruch HaShem, Insha'Allah. And, it's worth taking the plunge (pardon the pun) to buy one of these things because you will inevitably need to do some mincing during your many decades on this planet (again, God willing, Baruch HaShem, Insha'Allah). Plus they're still pretty affordable.
Come upstairs once, fine. But, then go and buy one! And while you're at it, get some other personal items that you might not like to borrow from others: Prep H with the long applicator, Tucks pads, lube...what have you. Lending out my plunger to another person and then storing it, knowing it was mincing elsewhere - I have a beef with this. As my grandfather wrote in a letter he sent to me over 20 years ago: "neither a borrower nor a lender be."
I know it sounds crazy. I don't mind having one plunger per household for all who dwell under one roof to share. Guests are included. I just don't like the idea of mixing family matters. I like to think that there is some kind of biblical taboo.

Later on, when my awkward lonely landlord tries to return it, I'm not sure if I should allow it back in. It's been tainted too many times. It will be one of those conversations with a lot of fake politeness:

"No, really, you can keep it."
"You sure? I can buy you a new one?"

No, really, I insist.

What The World Needs Now Is Michael Franks

For many of you who admit to reading this blog, perhaps you'd also admit to owning a few Michael Franks albums. Maybe it's thanks to me. Or, maybe you happen to have impeccable taste. Since I've completely run out of blog-topics for the last two weeks, I thought I could turn some of you on to this exemplary adult contemporary music. Some friends have caught on and can see the genius, others think he's a cheeseball. My pal, Bruce, called it "Tootsie music" years back when I professed my love for Michael Franks. I happen to think Tootsie was a fine movie, and would have been even better, had they chosen a musical score by Michael Franks.
I got my first taste of his brand of music in the early 80's. My parents were fans and often played The Art of Tea, released in 1976. Back then my 2 favorites tracks were "Eggplant" and "Popsicle Toes." I used to run around the house reciting the lyrics: "You got the nicest North America this sailor ever saw - I like to feel your warm Brazil and touch your Panama."Of course, the interpretive dance that went with it was really special. If I'm not mistaken, I think it involved tennis balls and a pair of high-heels.

Undoubtedly, his finest album is Sleeping Gypsy. Every song is a work of art. Listening to this album makes you feel like you've lived on a yacht your whole life...and I'm not talking about the yacht that I lived on with my Dad yelling at me. This is the yacht where you eat tropical fruits and play the steel drum with your pet monkey on one shoulder and your Amazon parrot on the other. Oh, and in this world, you don't look like a ridiculous white person when you dance, either. Check it out if you don't already have it. A lot of peeps like to do the nasty to this album.

I like how ubiquitous Franks' music is, and it always appears when you need it most. I just received an e-mail from Sklave while on his honeymoon. He let me know that while dining in a kosher restaurant in Rome, "The Lady Wants to Know" (from Sleeping Gypsy) was cued up just as they finished ordering. Italians know what's up...
The television show Northern Exposure was smart enough to use the song "Monkey See - Monkey Do" on one of their episodes. I always wondered who were the Michael Franks fans out there? Are they fat and white? Lesbians? Are they always eating coconuts?

Fast forward to 2001. We find out that Michael Franks is coming to Atlanta, so we buy tickets to finally check out his crowd and get to see him live. [My mom had seen him in concert in the late 80's and was disappointed that he no longer looked like he did on his albums. Basically, he had gotten fat and looked old. It's kind of like the Christopher Cross thing. He was smart to put a flamingo on the cover of his hit album. Once you see him, "Ride Like the Wind" doesn't make you feel so foxy. Anyway, Franks hasn't had a decent album since Passion Fruit in 1983.] The crowd, much to my excitement, was mostly upscale African-American. Lots of the same people you'd expect to see at an Al Jarreau concert. But, the concert sucked. Franks looked haggard and didn't have a saxophone accompanying him. The band was dominated by an annoying pianist who thought he was playing free-jazz and some bad back-up singers. One thing Michael Franks' music is not and should not be is challenging. If it doesn't groove you into melancholy bliss like some kind of musical rum drink, then it ain't happening. We left early. It's not that we'd given up on him, it's just that we wanted to hold on to our image of Franks with long wavy hair, a mustache, tight jeans and a halfway unzipped Members Only jacket.


This photo of Biscuit in Peru was inspired by Michael Franks and our quest to capture his essence: There are 5 albums of his that should be in everyone's collection: The Art Of Tea, Sleeping Gypsy, Tiger In The Rain, Objects Of Desire and Passion Fruit. You can skip almost everything that came out between 1983 and 2006. I almost like his latest release, Rendezvous in Rio, as it feels like a throw-back to his old style. When morale is low in your house or you'd like to feel a little more like you just got back from Tahiti instead of Costco, pop in some Franks.
These days, Michael Franks has been splitting his time between Woodstock, NY, and Sanibel Island, FL, where he runs a shelter for errant Dachshunds. Is there anything jazzier than a wiener dog?

G-Dawg: The Kissin' Bandit

Today, around 11:50 AM, Bisq's 31 year-old cousin Grant, a.k.a G-Dawg, arrived at our doorstep with a six pack of Miller Lite and a cracked-open bottle of Diet Pepsi in hand. It's a rare occasion when G-Dawg comes to visit us on our own turf - maybe once per decade. You can't count the other miscellaneous visits that occur in between which take place at painful family pow-wows while I'm under considerable duress, being forced to eat desserts laced with Splenda and being drowned in syrupy small talk. It's so hard to get down to brass tacks when you're surrounded by a bunch of hyper kindergarten teachers, peanut-butter fudge, ladies in light blue polyester leisure suits and no alcohol.

Cousin G-Dawg flies planes and helicopters for Customs and Border Protection, a department under Homeland Security, and has done so for the last 9 years. He attends an annual three-day helicopter training in nearby Orange County, and that was the reason for the visit. He's Biscuit's only good-looking relative. He gets paid to shoot guns, fly planes and lift weights. He's possibly the most self-actualized person I've ever known, next to Oprah. He's a fine mixture of Bill Clinton and Forrest Gump: a smooth operator disguised as country pie. He was, of course, a high school football star in his backwoods Louisiana town, along with being an altar boy (more on the Catholicism later). His good looks are of the all-American-Varsity-Top-Gun variety. Plus, he's got the heavy duty Southern accent and is so polite that he opens the car door for the (female) driver in even the tightest of parking spaces. It really threw me off when we were both walking to the driver's side door with a mission. He wears a snug-fitting gold chain (which I've always been a sucker for) with a St. Mary pendant. Today, he donned an LSU ball cap, a polo shirt and some almost trendy jeans with a wide enough boot-cut leg to accommodate the Glock strapped to his ankle. His year-round tan is part of the job description, I'm sure.
Sexually, he's as screwed up as can be. At Bisq's bachelor party, he was throwing C-spots at the strippers so that they would expose Bisq's weenie. That's kinda...different. Mix that with the Catholicism and you've got yourself one twasted dude - so twasted that he goes to confession only at churches where he won't know a soul. When he confesses to his own priest, he'll say something like, "Well, I have been swearing an awful lot." He saves the good stuff for anonymous priests in far-away towns. There's a very real possibility that he'll be headed to a strange confessional in Costa Mesa before he catches his 6AM plane out of John Wayne Airport tomorrow. More on this later.

Shortly after his arrival, we went out to lunch and listened to all the tales of hot single gun-slinging southern pilots with badges. Good stuff. Much debate has ensued between the husband and I as to whether or not G-Dawg is a virgin. Remember, he is a devoutly guilt-ridden Catholic and has made allusions in recent years to holding out for the future Mrs. G. Dawg. And, as if he wasn't already crazy as a bag of mice, they have this uncle...let's call him Uncle Hugh, who is constantly dangling prosti...I mean escorts and wads of casino cash in front of him. The word on the street is that G.Dawg will do "everything BUT."
After lunch, I took him on an outing to Trader Joe's. I have to admit that being with G-Dawg makes me want someone to start some shit. On his badge, it states that its bearer is entitled to make arrests, conduct seizures, shoot your ass - whatever he's up for. While shopping for groceries, we had a buggy disappear with a few items in it that we had not yet purchased. I told G-Dawg about this and basically the two of us divided the store in half in order to chase down the outlaw with our cart. We were on a mission, and I saw that LSU cap bobbing down the supplements aisle out of the corner of my good eye. I felt like I was taking part in my first sting operation. Of course, I wasn't armed with anything more than some double-Ds and my keyless entry unit for my Altima. I figured G-Dawg would catch the "criminal" and conduct some border patrol-style seizure or shake-down. About 8 years ago, I had him handcuff me in my kitchen in Santa Fe. He could only get better with time. He's got moves.
Long story short, I found the buggy. No harm, no foul. G-Dawg found another buggy which he thought was ours and began to lay claim to it. It all ended with an "Aw man, mah baaad." I think he tries to conserve the searches and seizures for the border. It's tough being the guy with the guns, the badge and heart of gold!

At 6 PM he joined us on our evening walk to Bellevue Park and an idea came to me - wouldn't it be fun to watch G-Dawg go bonkers for my saucy red-headed upstairs neighbor? She's single, wears platform shoes and lives to Tango. At first, I thought she wouldn't go for him. She's somewhat artsy, part of that breed that goes to Argentina. Some grouches might view G-Dawg as a highly-paid, trigger-happy aviation cop from a small town. How hot is it to work for Homeland Security? Turns out, she's no grouch.
We waltzed upstairs only to find her and a few of her horny girlfriends lounging on pillows on the roof-top deck, uncorking bottles of everything from Champagne to Riesling. I had G-Dawg holding the baby as part of the plot to see if the girls were interested in more company. Within less than 20 minutes, he'd infiltrated the system, in spite of kicking over 2 wineglasses. My saucy neighbor was charmed by his country-ham accent and his faint resemblance to Matthew McConaughey. The girls were busy talking about sexy things in front of him whilst he slapped his knee and laughed goofily, flashing those pretty white teeth. This is his signature move. I was onto him, but the girls were eating it up; so much so that I left him up there to fend for himself. A little later, he came downstairs to tell us of the supreme pickle he was in: his plane back to Louisiana was leaving from Orange County at 6:00 AM. How would he manage partying all night with these 2 horny chicks and still make it home? "Maaann, it's fixin' to get ugly," he kept moaning. I believed it. This one roof-top chick, Felicity, mentioned the word "threesome,"which really got G-Dawg pumped up. I encouraged him to find a way to make it work. After all, flying down the interstate at 3:00 AM can't be much harder than shooting down a plane over the Gulf of Mexico.

Now it's Saturday and time for me to put this story to rest. I saw my red-headed neighbor this morning who told me that I could fix her up anytime. She spoke of the Dawg's sweetness and the smooches they exchanged around 1:30 AM. A perfect gentleman, she said. He didn't even try anything. Just a few minutes ago, when G-Dawg called to say thanks, he started the phone call off with a "HO-LEE COW!" and defined last night as a "wild time." The kissin' bandit does it again! I forgot to ask if he made it to a confessional this morning. After all, he claims that priests out here in California hear it all. No doubt, maaannn.

Big Blonde Hair, Highlights and Frost Jobs

I spent a few years as a blonde. I've taken the journey from brassy to platinum, streaked to frosted. Some actually thought that I was a natural blonde - gosh, I'm flattered. The times that I had my blonde variations, my mom was so proud; our family is terribly deficient in blondes. She always dreamed of having a pug-nosed Aryan daughter. Genetically, this was close to impossible. But, the dye job brought me a lot closer to this ideal. She still displays a photo of me from 1996 that we affectionately refer to as the "Lady Di." When I look at my wedding pictures from February 2002, I really do look like a Jewish Barbie Doll, which is a bit of an oxymoron, I realize. Biscuit has certainly had his share of bowl cuts, shags and spikey up-do's and could write his own hair annals, since his notorious looks deserve their own column. Look for that in August.

Let me explain something about my longest stretch as a blonde - once you move to Atlanta, GA, you feel it incumbent upon yourself to do away with dark hair. You start with a few highlights (right Roach?), then move on to blonde panels, until finally you say "what the fuck" and let the Roach dunk your head in a vat of bleach. For those who don't keep up with our impressive roster of stylists, Roach was and still is an influential hairdresser in the pricey Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. She styles everyone from sorority sisters to lesbians with mullets to straight men who look like middle-aged women and lots in between. Over the course of our 5 years in Roach's often inebriated hands, we were regularly morphed into any of these archetypes.
Our chance encounter with Roach occured at an Inman Park porch party back in 2001, shortly after 9/11. At this point in history, the world needed more blondes. It was no time to look drab with untreated dark hair and unpainted toe nails. Look like that: the terrorists win. Back at the party, it was difficult not to notice a wildly intoxicated bodacious blonde in the crowd. Bisq actually recognized her from some topless toga party pics he had randomly seen a few months before at a friends' house. Fate brought us together, one might say. So began a 5-year friendship which involved many a drunken haircut and loads of other activities that could only be shared with someone as twasted and fun-loving as the Roach.

Back in Santa Fe, we had Bob D., a gay Texan cowboy who lived on Coke (the soft drink, not the powder) and Creatine supplements and also taught us Body Pump. Once, while teaching Body Pump, Bob informed the class that he was wearing a thong and requested that we not gaze up his shorts during the abs routine. Love it. Mix a West Texas son of a regional soft drink distributor with a lot of International Male garments, a few missing teeth and a keen interest in beautifying Santa Feans and you get Bob. He had some incredible erotic art in his townhouse, which was littered with empty Coke cans with cigarette butts floating in them. Bob started me off with a few highlights framing the face - a pretty conservative look. Mostly we liked having breakfast with him at Harry's Roadhouse after Body Pump class where he treated a whole table full of female fans...and Biscuit.
I remember showing Bob my engagement ring at his salon. Like a good gay man, he called everyone in the salon over to have a tearful gasp. He looked me in the eye and said, "Oh dorlin..." And he meant it. Before we moved to Atlanta, he taught Bisq how to do my highlights out on his porch, so we wouldn't have to suffer once we got to Atlanta.

For some reason, we've gotten into the habit of befriending and socializing with most of our hairdressers. Actually, it all started back in 1996 with a dude named Henry Falcon. We met him through my fashion-forward grandmother, Amma. Amma was pissed at her hair salon and decided to have Henry come to her house to get her weekly coif.
Henry, as you can see, was a skinny, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed stylist who resided on the West Bank (New Orleans, not Israel). Henry liked to hang out with my grandmother who could have also been described the same way about 40 years ago, except she never lived on the West Bank and she never cut hair. Henry had a crush on Biscuit, but I have yet to meet a gay guy who doesn't. He was so surly that it didn't really matter. In fact, if I've ever called any of you "saster," it was Henry who taught me how. It was a fun relationship which resulted in some twasted hairdos. Last I heard, Henry had married some older wealthy dude in Asheville, NC. Every time I've been in Asheville, I've looked him up in the phone book - but to no avail.

I have to give a quick shout-out to Blake's ex, Rachel Milham, who briefly styled my hair at Gerogie's salon in Kenner, LA. She introduced me to Velcro rollers, which I used for a few months to give me that just-got-back-from-the-prom look. I felt like JonBenet! It's worth mentioning that "Milham" is a respected surname in New Orleans. Her dad, Dan Milham, is the trusted weatherman on Channel 6. I was definitely impressed at Blake's score: less than five years in New Orleans and slapping skins with a Milham. Not only that, she had a tongue ring, drove a white Mitsubishi Eclipse and had a best friend named Hottsey. That's the stuff of legends in Kenner. Kudos, Binki.

Of all of the relationships one might forge over a lifetime, I do think it's worthwhile to get tight with a stylist. It's always served me and Bisq. Although, after looking over these glamour shots...you be the judge.

The Exchange Student

Back in 1992, I was an exchange student in Guanjuato, Mexico. It was a great experience, but I doubt the Ballesteros family, (the family that hosted me), so much as remembers my name. Let's just say that I really didn't make much of a splash: never had sex with anyone in their house nor in their country. I showed up promptly for siesta and was even polite to their door-to-door bible teacher. He came by to visit with the family every Thursday with a guitar in hand. I believe he "invited" me to have a look or basically test drive the New Testament. I told him that I still had not taken the shrink wrap off of my Old Testament, but that never deters the New Testy folks. It seems to be a standing invitation that I know I'll always have....and I'm thankful.

But, today, I am choosing to write about an exchange student that my family hosted during one of the most pivotal summers in the history of my family - The Summer of 1987. His name was Christophe and he hailed from Beaune, France. Like most things in my family, the decision to get an exchange student was brash and sudden. In fact, I didn't even know about him until I came back from my summer program at Wellesley College. Apparently, my parents got a hankering for an exchange student while both of their children were off enriching themselves. As I mentioned before, I was participating in a college program for kids in high school and Augie was off in Mexico, living aboard the S.S. Kiki.*
*For those of you who haven't read The Family Gun, go ahead - this way you'll understand about the Kiki and the role she played in our lives.

So, Augie was off in Cancun, getting deflowered and tanned. He came home with an earring - need I say more? A little farther up the Gulf Coast, a group of exchange students showed up in New Orleans, and arrangements were made for them to stay with families from my school, Isidore Newman. I don't know what happened with Christophe's arrangement, but my parents received a phone call about a homeless French boy, and the rest is history.
I got back from Wellesley to find this Christophe character completely integrated into the household. Lots had changed while I was away. He had Zulie (also known as my mom) wearing heavy metal t-shirts. In fact, she was wearing an Iron Maiden one when I arrived home. Cokes lined the shelves of our fridge, a beverage banned a decade earlier in our house. Our VCR was getting plenty of use because we now had a membership at the brand new Blockbuster on Veterans Blvd. Christophe was hooked on horror movies, and his habit had my parents making daily stops there. The three of them actually watched the Freddy Kruger movie together. It was a summer full of horror movies, caffeine and heavy metal. On the other side of the coin, my summers typically were filled with summer reading, rations on TV and subtle encouragement to lose weight.

My parents were getting the biggest kick out of this kid; so much that they began pimping him out to everyone with a daughter or anyone who had ever been a daughter. It had come to their attention that Christophe had arrived in New Orleans a virgin. I don't know if they made a conscious decision to send him back to his homeland with "experience," but it's safe to call them "the enablers." He dated a plethora of neighbors, teenage friends of mine and Augie's, as well as some of my mom's horniest single ne'er-do-well friends.
One was our interior designer, Cindy. She was pretty long in the tooth, but willing to show him the way...I guess. I specifically remember Zulie picking up condoms for his dates with Cindy at the drugstore. Then there was this friend, Susan C., a drinking buddy of Zulie's from her days as a return-student at U.N.O. Susan was one of the first "fag-hags" I had ever met. It made sense, since she managed a hair salon called Busta's. She was pretty much fried from alcohol, bleach and a lifetime in Metairie, LA. This might give some of you the willies, but she also diddled Augie at some point in history. I think my mom orchestrated that one, too.

Christophe's summer in the Crescent City, which began innocently enough, became a non-stop sex fest. At one point, my dad was supervising a swim date that Christophe had with this chick, Rachel Ogg. She was ogg-ling Christophe at the airport on the day she was picking up her family's exchange student. My folks made sure to get her number. It's like they had a plan or something! The date was at the next-door-neighbor's pool. They were never home and we had free reign of the pool at all times. So the story goes: Dad was lying on a lounger, reading a business weekly. Zulie was off in her car somewhere. He happened to glance at the kids in the pool, who were huddled together in a corner bobbing rhythmically. You know what I'm saying. Dad clumsily ran next door in a panic, looking for Zulie, anyone. I don't know what he expected - for them to play Marco Polo? He was out of luck. She split. So, he called up one of their friends, Adam, an alcoholic who married into New Orleans drugstore royalty. Adam couldn't do a lot from his mansion on St.Charles Avenue. So, I guess it hit Dad that being responsible for someone else's son in a foreign country might, just might, entail some limits.

They had turned Christophe into a porn-star in less than eight weeks! I was pretty grossed out by him at the time. He sort of tried hitting on me right when I got back from Wellesley, but I gave him the cold shoulder. I didn't like French guys. They smelled musky and wore really bad jeans with white canvas Keds. He laid some line on me about my green eyes which are, in fact, blue. It's no wonder that I remained a virgin for several more years. It was a good thing, because I really did not need to be included in the line-up with Cindy, Susan C., and Ogg.

Things cooled down considerably once Christophe left. Not surprisingly, he wrote us letters begging to return. They were written in felt-tip ink on what looked like tracing paper. Unfortunately for Christophe, there had been shifts in our family situation which prevented his return. You know how you can never really go back, right? I went back to Guanajuato to see the Ballesteros about a year after the exchange program. The parents had divorced, and there were a couple of new toilets in the house. Interestingly, the summer after Christophe's visit, my parents divorced after 18 years of marriage. No hypothesis here...just noting a coincidence or phenomenon.

Honk If You're An Armchair Activist

I've had my nose in a book that perhaps I should not be reading. Have any of you (besides Blake) read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins? Maybe I'm totally behind the times - this book was published in 2004. Either way, it's taking me to a very dark place, even though it's certainly worthwhile to learn the truth about the three-way that goes on between the government, mega-corporations and the World Bank. Read it for yourselves...or stay blissfully ignorant. I won't fault you for whatever decision you make.

So, I'm giving you the background for my trip to the mall yesterday. It helps not to think too much when you're shopping. Otherwise, you'd have to come to terms with the fact that all of the crap that's sold in these giant chain stores is made in sweatshops. Also, look at all of the people buying dumb shit that they can't afford. Yeah, it's best to leave me at home when you want to get your shop on.
But please don't mistake me for one of those people with actual principles. You won't find me strapped to a redwood tree or even participating in a single organized protest. Instead, I know how to walk around like I'm having a bad acid trip: sad and paralyzed to do anything except hope that the feeling passes. I've signed a few online petitions in my day, but I had to ditch moveon.org because I couldn't handle the daily e-mails in my in-box. Sadly, the only thing you can count on from me at this stage is a honk of the horn. Recently, at the junction of Hollywood and Sunset, Bisq issued a peace-loving honk, on request, for a sign that read "Honk if you think the U.S should leave Iraq" or something like that. We didn't even have to slow down in order to get the job done. That's the kind of activism for which we can be counted on.

God, we're wimps. I was just watching interviews with the 2 veterans of the Iraq war who are in danger of having their honorable discharges revoked for staging peaceful protests while wearing their uniforms. If you knew that you'd lose your health care benefits for speaking out, would you still go through with it? Therein lies the problem. This is how armchair protesters such as myself came into existence. I remember being afraid to put a bumper sticker on my car a few years ago that said something like "Save the Troops, Impeach Bush." In my neighborhood in Chamblee, GA, it wouldn't have earned me any bless-your-heart's. Why was I worried about offending these people and their yellow ribbons? The answer is simple: what if one of us needed a jump-start one morning? Or needed some help with our lawn-mower? Therefore, the 2 bumper-stickers intended for our cars were tacked onto the bulletin board.

It seems to be our way, I guess. Bisq jokes that he can't believe that his horn-honking didn't get Kerry elected in 2004. It's never too late to get some principles and become a protester, it's just too inconvenient and expensive for me right now. In the meantime, forget you heard me talking like this.
Honk if you like chicks who write blogs who'd like to someday drive a hybrid.

In Search Of Larry James Hamilton

Due to the fact that he has a lot to say about our old buddy L.J. Hamilton, I’m handing this one over to guest blogger Biscuit:

The wife and I have made a few artistic discoveries in our day. I’m not saying we’ve had any sort of impact on the artists’ careers, but we’ve at least hipped a handful of friends to them. That’s gotta count for something. Sometimes it’s hard for even our most twasted of peeps to see the light. I guess we have some very particular perversions. I mean, any old honky can laugh at a televangelist, but when you make it a point to attend Wieuca Road Baptist Church’s musical review twice a year (because your not-out-to-the-congregation gay neighbor is starring as both Mr. Rogers and Elton John), well…that’s commitment.

One of our most prized discoveries is/was an R&B singer named Larry James Hamilton. I can’t decide on the verb tense because I don’t really know if L.J. is still alive. We lost track of him about 4 years ago, and Katrina didn’t help. Now we can't find him. True New Orleanians are virtually immune to Google searches.

I found L.J. back in 1996. Val was still living in Austin and I was spending a lot of my free time hanging out with Zulie. At the time, “hanging out with Zulie” meant getting stoned, going on power-walks around the Lakefront, drinking steadily and going to bars. While investigating a “Free Crawfish during Happy Hour” banner, Zulie and I found ourselves inside what was essentially a big white tent with Astroturf on the ground. The crawfish were decent, the drinks were dirt-cheap and there was L.J., at the piano, playing the funkiest version of “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” you ever heard, accompanied by a drum machine playing through a crappy guitar amplifier. He followed up with lots of Earth, Wind & Fire, solo Lionel, Marvin Gaye and Al Green (this was before Al’s hits had been played to death, at least to me). Since Zulie talks to everybody, we of course cozied right up to L.J. during his first break. I don’t think he understood the conversation (neither did I), which consisted mostly of Zulie’s clouded memories of the songs he’d just done. Either way, now we were friends and fans. Give me a soul singer with a drum machine in an empty bar any day.

Everyone should have his or her own private R&B star, if only for a day. That’s what I was going for when I hired L.J. to play at my 23rd birthday party a couple months after the discovery. Zulie hosted and provided the piano (and probably all of the food and alcohol for my broke ass; maybe I brought the weed?). Zulie made red beans, I rolled lots of joints and L.J. showed up in a blue velvet blazer. It took all my too-cool-for-school rock’n’roll friends a while to warm up to L.J., but this being New Orleans, soon enough everyone was drunk and dancing (and making-out sloppily). I decided to take a little nap around 11:00pm and woke up the next day at noon. Happy birthday.

We kept up with L.J. and went to see him play regularly until we moved away at the end of ’97. He had a little buzz going on for a minute – he recorded an album with Allen Toussaint producing which, for us at least, was an instant classic. Alan released it on his NYNO record label and L.J. did some classy gigs to support it, but I guess the world wasn’t ready for hits like "Back Rub" and "Love Is A Two Way Thing."

He moved on and started playing with a backup band called Blue Horizon (probably the best backing band name you could ever want). We went to see them at a club deep in the Ninth Ward. Being the only whiteys in the room, we were more than a little uncomfortable when L.J. introduced us from the stage as “my good friends from Metairie” (at the time, Metairie was still a racist stronghold [David Duke ring a bell?]; plus, we didn’t actually live there). L.J. played guitar at that gig, which just added a whole new layer to my obsession with him.

Our last time seeing L.J. was when he played at our wedding in 2002. We had a pretty amazing “meeting” with him about 3 months prior, the intention being to go over the set list & specifics of the event. L.J. showed up looking a lot worse for the wear. He looked pretty thin, his hair was in bad need of some activator and he was eating a little box of ‘Nilla Wafers. I suspected some, oh, let’s just call it rock cocaine, was involved, but who knows; we all have bad days. We gave him our detailed, computer-printed list of song requests. We tried not to be too difficult, staying in his style and even requesting lots of his own tunes. He agreed to everything, gave us a copy of his new self-produced album Love Is and gave us a final piece of marital advice: “There’s 2 people you never listen to – ‘I Heard’ and ‘They Say’”

So, it was in the spirit of not letting meddlesome neighbors and street corner ho’s break-up our relationship that we were married under the eyes of God and a cantor named Seth. L.J. did a great job at the reception, though he completely ignored our song requests. He didn’t even do his own songs that we’d asked for. He did do "Mustang Sally" at least 3 times and let my drunk cousin G-Dogg do his own ramshackle instrumental version of "Great Balls Of Fire." It should be noted that L.J. was performing on a Radio Shack keyboard and that his guitar player was a Japanese dude with red hair.

And that was the last we saw of him. Not surprisingly, I’ve since become obsessed with Love Is (the self-produced cd). I’d love to link to somewhere that people could buy the thing, but L.J. wasn’t exactly hooked up with CDBaby when he ‘released’ it back in 2002. I just think it’s the perfect basement R&B-electro record (if you know of another, hip me to it). L.J. plays all of the instruments, meaning all of the instrument sounds on his Radio Shack keyboard. The drums are from the keyboard’s drum machine, but he plays them live instead of programming them, so the rhythm and timing are all over the place. It sounds like it could fall apart at any moment, but somehow it’s funky. There are some keyboard-sax solos and lots of cheesy bass sounds. The overall sound of the album is dark and metallic, much more like Joy Division than, say, Otis Redding. Ya gotta love an R&B record that’s inadvertently Goth. I kind of wonder if anybody but me will ever love this record like I do. I know that I dig it in a way that L.J. surely never intended.

I really hope that L.J. made it out from Katrina in one piece. I hope he made it back to Brazil or somewhere his talent isn’t taken for granted. And I have to keep hoping that, in spite of the fact that I don’t drink, another happy hour freebie will lead me to my next discovery.

Update:
As we go to press here at Just Yoking, L.J. has suddenly turned up, now going by the name Larry Love Hamilton, complete with his very own ghetto website. I guess this news renders a lot of this post moot, but at least you can all go and buy Love Is from CDBaby immediately.