Maugham Malraux's CoffeeHouse Diaries

It's All About Them Chum Part 1

2008-03-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

It's the little secret.

And it is true except for the dramatic reversals like men who are abusive.

Those men should be dropped into John Carpenter's New York with Snake Pliskin, Sly Stallone, Slingblade, Arnold, Condi Rice and Nancy Pelosi (oh...and the guy with the wood chipper from Fargo, or maybe Roy Batty from Bladerunner).

Now that we have disposed of them, there are the rest of us men....about 64 percent.

And here is the secret guys....shhhhh...it's never been about you.

It is always about women, or your woman. Make no mistake. It's as sure as gravity.

They are the deal, you are the occasion.

Word.
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I just want it to sink in. and yes ladies...I am on to you...and I live in a fortress and have hot pitch on the stove for when you attack and I will not go easy into the night cuz I've had enough!

It's All About Them Chum Part 2

2008-03-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

Stephanie Gilmore. She rocks.
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Like Mac tells Miss T..."wait for it...wait for it". I think it use to be a double entendre. Let it sink in.

It was never about you and never will be.

God has a delicious sense of humor if God exists.

I don't know if God exists or not. But Mac and The Saint do and they are both wusses.

I saw Mac earlier and he was doing laundry and muttering under his breath.

I sat on the dryer and very purposely did not help.

I just asked questions and the naive sod answered blindly.

The Saint lives in the corner apartment...the one that flooded recently (which is not easy when you are 250 feet up on a hill).

When that happened he made biblical jokes and thought he was being clever.

He isn't.

So it was in this way that the duty came down to me to write about what is true and real, because these losers lose heart so easy.

They call me a "thug" and so I am. I like it.

I like the swagger and the fresh air.

Plus...I will get laid a lot sooner than either of these assholes.
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The secret unfolded...

It's All About Them Chum Part 3

2008-03-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Cool pic huh?
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It is about "women-folk" guys.

You may have slightly advanced physical prowess (never underestimate a small woman with a large heavy object). You men may funnel your testosterone into your professional drive and someday be as mad with power as Martha or Oprah.

It matters not.

If you take the biblical model...you guys were the first prototype and just used for parts on the superior model.

Deal with it. It's in the Bible.

Women have it over you hands down. They are smarter, more verbally adept, and they have a shape that can make you do the unconceivable at the right moment.

They also tend to rise above the major world-wide crap we men produce. They can produce children out of their bodies and you are just a donor. Build a missile, or create a videogame. You cannot compete.

They also have breasts that feed your offspring and also tighten and get hard when you touch her just right. You have one sexual center. She has several.

She’s a swirl and you are a stick.

Your only advantage is that you are taller and can open jars that she can't.

So why was Mac so forlorn?

Typical. He's in love with a woman who is not in love with him. Idiot.

I told him this would happen. He's a shmuck. He never listens, or at the wrong moments.

The Saint is worse off. He has a woman email stalking him.

Because he deems himself literary (I am the only one the three that published regularly in print) he answers and it just gets weird from there. She sends him a sweet note, followed later by one with all manner of accusations and assumptions.

There will be a rabbit in his stewpot soon. I will only laugh.

Me? I just wanna get laid. I am an animal. I just wanna be conquered and get it over with.

Lay alien eggs in my chest, decide my karma, assign me duties, make me a sex-slave. It's all okay because it really is only about women.

Not the environment, not politics, not truth, taxes or values, etc... It's just about them.

Face it. Yer just Chum. Chum.

He "Urned it"

2005-10-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

Mac's "Urn" for his lost brother Scott, who is, by all reports, far less loss than Mac.
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As some of you know Mac, myself and The Saint all took off three weeks ago for different destinations. Mac's reason was more personal.

His twin brother died over 48 years ago and no one ever took any kind of public notice. They do not even know what became of his tiny premature body.

He lived a day. Scott was three pounds something, just like Mac was. Mac is a lot bigger now.

This is what eating does.

Mac confided and conferred with his Ex-wife. They still look at each other with some small suspicion, but neither is stupid enough to miss the fact they are both wicked smart and savvy about such things.

She came up with a great idea where people could choose to write down a poem, or a scripture, a drawing, or a letter. Whatever people felt comfortable doing. They could then read it or not, but then drop it in a fire to become ash.

That meant they needed an urn.

They quickly laughed and agreed that the old rusty Smoker was not the right instrument.

Cough...ahem...cough..cough...

As I was writing this first part, Mac was out back trying out his solution...a large sealed planter.

He explained why it was perfect (sigh...). Then he tested it to see if it would break...which would be typical. I could see it breaking and firing rifling up the dry grassy hillside at China Beach. I saw Mac, as he so often deserves, in manacles being loaded into the Fire Marshall's car.

It didn't crack or split. What you see in the picture above is the 2.5 seconds it looked good and ignited. It was followed by mass quantities of billowing smoke, extinguishing it, then nothing, then more smoke, then extinguishing it, then more smoke etc...for 30 minutes off and on.

90 minutes later a delegation of the local Pomo Indians from Inverness showed up at his door.

"Yes?"

"You rang?" they said.

"Rang what?"

"Don't be coy...you definitely rang...we can still smell it."

"Oh that. No, I was just testing out a potential urn," Mac said. "Didn't you hit Smoke 69?"

"That's not funny," he said. I couple of those behind him grunted with disgust.

"Let me see the urn," he said flatly and walked through the room followed by at least 11 others.

He led them past me without introduction to the deck where the "urn" was still smoldering.

"That's no urn," he said. "It's a planter bowl"

"It has no holes?" he offered.

"You are clearly an idiot," he said, then smiled and said, "Go make us some sandwiches."

He did as he said and made a delightful tray of sandwiches, and whipped up some easy potato salad followed by a small Baked Alaska for dessert.

"You folk really do not understand the dead," he said.

"Heck I do not even understand the living" Mac said. Then he pointed at me, and then to Manfred sitting on the couch, who was channel switching between Montel and Oprah and eating a huge tray of lasagna which had obviously not even been reheated..

The head of the delegation said something in native Pomo and they all laughed. Mac started to collect dishes.

"Well what would you do?" he finally asked.

"Do not see through normal eyes," he said.

"Let him come."

"Let who come?" Mac said, "God?"

I shook my head. Manfred burped loudly and used it to say "barabbas" in the burp. The chief rolled his eyes to the others, got up and started for the door saying to all in a general sense "thanks for lunch. Stay away from matches, use more mustard on the potato salad and some balsamic vinegar. No more smoke."

"Let who come?"

"Your brother you idiot," he said.

Mac was about to argue with him on a metaphysical point, but what was left of the Baked Alaska was collapsing loudly in the kitchen like a Bush Administration environmental policy. So I let it go.

Well, they left.

Mac's kitchen was a mess and all our eyes hurt from the smoke. Manfred was whining and swearing in Basque. But Mac had an urn now...and we have a good focus for Sunday.

That's the reason he sent us on vacation. Selfish bastard.
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More tomorrow...part 2

Maugham Responds To Reader Comments

2005-09-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

Is this a sexy picture or what? Beautiful.

Okay..okay...men and women seem to fixate a bit on B&B...you know. But it is a mistake. See it's really about the "swim"...that wonderful curve above the hips that sweeps up into her ribs, arching back and chest.

Look at the swim on this girl.

But the cool thing is women of all sizes and all ages have beautiful swims. I'll leave it at that. But dang!
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It's a well known fact, Sonny-Jim that only the FINEST people read this Blog and have the most amazing comments in response to my endless prattling. Thus, we gig into the comment bag today!

This from the now wonderfully-red-headed-dreaded Tabs in an exchange with very astute husband:

"tabitha jane" he says, "the only reason men do anything is so that they can have sex"

"really?" i respond.

"yes. why do i take a shower and shave? so i can keep my horrible job. why do i work this horrible job? so i can make money to pay for school. why do i work so hard to do well at school? so i can graduate and get a good job. why do i want to get a good job? so i can be seen as dependable and stable and therefore be attractive to a woman. why do i want to be attractive to a woman? so i can get laid."

"oh."

This is very good but only during certain stations of life. Stations of life are a lot like the "stations of the cross".

The Ever-Gracious Martha said...

sounds to me what Maug wrote about was the 'princess syndrome' which all women have to an extent.

Well this is the Romantic Myth at the core. The betrothed is to be wed to the King, who, it turns out is a good man who actually loves. But the hum-drum of their lives leaves her empty and wanting. Plus he farts in bed and snores.

So she dreams of another and there he is...the new warrior and friend of the king (or perhaps just a guy on Craigslist).

A love triangle ensues which creates a heightened sense of drama and excitement, all of which serves to keep all three of them, and their many minions, from dealing with the more real questions about life and existence that are there every day.

That was 12th Century France, or 14th Century England. Today we just email flirt or eat Hagan Das out of the carton while watching other people do it all for us.

tabitha jane said...

companionship . . . men also need companionship.

This is underated. Of course some men do not need companionship, just direct supervision.

I am the wrong person to ask about this, but I suspect you are right.

Maugham Malraux said...

Tabs- yes they do...and more than they can fathom. But it flows both ways.

Find a man who is in touch with that and a woman in touch with her need to be intimate and physical and you got soemthing. Without it...you got fleets of ships passing each other in the cold silent night.

I'm gonna stick with this cuz I see a sea of ships.

Mitzzee said...

as much as i want this to be true...it's just not that simple...it's not all about us...i mean, we'd like it to be, we'd like to think it is and i'm sure even some men (yourself for instance) believe it is....but truly sex is a two way street and for the best results....both parties should participate with their animalistic intentions and raw passion and sexual drive....but who am i to talk, huh?

Personally I think a whole lotta other human stuff gets way inbetween the animalistic and passionate. Everybody has a reason why it will not work. Frankly, many times these reasons are good ones. If you get more than seven reasons listed that ring true, it's best to become a monk.

We make most everything too complicated. And when we don't, it is. So this is why humor and humility are so important.

Even though they are related, the human race is good at one, but sucks at the other.

I bet you can all figure out which one is which.

Manfred the Faithful Manservant who Poaches

2005-09-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Manfred.
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Now I know he looks a lot like Ben Kingsley, but that is just superficial. He is actually more handsome and less intense.

Manfred is half Spanish and half East Indian. Then he is bi-polar...which essentially makes him "quad-polor" as well as inter-continental.

Manfred has been Mac's "faithful" manservant for 17 years. As such his main duty has always to "bring the car around". Beyond that Manfred simply watches soap operas, eats all of Mac's food and tries to (soap opera style) pick up on, in his words "Oh yes, whatever womans hee is so drawn too I will indeed by jove make a run! And many good thank-yous to you!"

Given Mac's track record it is obvious Manfred is often successful.

Examples to come...

Manfred and the Connelly Incident

2005-09-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

Manfred tries to hit on Jennifer Connally during the filming of The House of Sand and Fog.
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It is no secret around The Citadel that Mac has a certain penchant for dark-haired beauties with amazing eyes and high cheekbones. He, himself, will admit this after a few beers.

He claims he is not ruled by it. And there is some evidence for this. Apparently he has override capabilities if needed, but still...that's his default.

As such he has always had a goofy celebrity crush on Jennifer Connelly.

You can see it when the utterly stupid film Career Opportunities comes on and his eyes glaze over as JC skates through the aisles or dances alone to music.

Sucker. He might as well be Pavlov's retarded dog.

Anyway...the Connelly Incident...
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The House of Sand and Fog was set in Northern California up high not far from The Citadel.

That's where they naturally filmed it.

At a locals casting party for extras, Mac struck up an unusual conversation with Connelly. He has never revealed what the substance was except to say that it involved a convoluted discussion of Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer and his own private recipe for Swedish cardamom Bread. Later the two were seen out back playing one-on-one basketball. I believe he let her win, but only by four.

When Manfred brought the car around, early I might add, he spied Connelly and got out to both introduce himself and find a way to drive an immediate wedge.

"Oh Sahib!" he cried aloud. "Who indeed is this most wonderfulnesses of women?"

Before Mac could stop him he continued.

"Oh you are the goddess what Mac speaks of so very very often...usually late at night when he is alone!" he exclaimed.

"Manfred!"

"Okay okay...I just here you mumble" he said quietly.

"Yeah, yeah..c'mon Manfred stop with the act" Mac said.

Connelly chuckled and sort of half-blushed.

Mac panicked inside, started to sweat in odd places, but held it together.

"I should go," she said. "I have an ealry call. Then she held out her hand. He took it and slid a glance toward Manfred that said "I will fucking kill you in ten minutes."

Manfred giggled.

"Can I give you a lift back?" Mac asked.

"Oh I have a driver," Connelly said.

"Care to trade?" Mac asked sarcastically.

"Yeah sure...that would be fun!" Connelly bounced.

Mac felt a tightening in his chest and the sudden urge to chain Manfred to the back of the Jeep and take him for a long scrape.

"Oh!!" Manfred cried out..."what a wonderfulness this is in all its splendor!!"

And he absconded with JC and left Mac to deal.

________________________________

The story continues...

Manfred and the Connelly Incident 2

2005-09-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

So Mac wakes up the next morning, after walking home in the fog and settling in at 4 a.m. with a glass of scotch.

The apartment is unkempt. Manfred has left all his dishes in the sink. He is unaccounted for even now. Several Soap digests litter the table and a bag of fresh incense. Mac lights one but it smells like cow dung. He flushes it down the toilet, takes a pill and collapses.

When he awakes he is alone at in The Citadel. His roomate is gone to work, Manfred and the Jeep are unaccounted for.

He considers throwing himself off the balcony but figures the drop is not nearly severe enough.

He considers that if there was not a landing inbetween it would be enough. He wonders if he could do it in stages, then decides against it on pain principles.

He has no car and Manfred has gone awol.

But he has his mountain bike. So he grabs it and heads down the stairs before realizing that both tires are flat.

He walks two miles to a station that has a pump, but they need quarters...two of them...to pump simple air.

He begs a woman in a huge SUV and she relents.

She curses under her breath as he leaves.

It starts to get hot but he moves ahead. Mile after mile he pumps away. It gets colder and colder and it actually feels good to him. It cools his fever.

When he pulls up to the house he sees Manfred walking down the drive of the house and quickly grabbing Connelly's arm in anger.

Mac is overcome and he bolts for Manfred and tackles him in the dark gravel in a mad rush.

Suddenly others are on him pulling him off. In a daze he looks off West and sees Manfred standing serene against a long fence.

He has attacked Sir Ben Kingsley and utterly mortified Jennifer Connelly.
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Oooo...ooo..what next?

Manfred and the Connelly Incident 3

2005-09-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Two security guards pulled Mac from the ground and hustled him into the house of sand and fog where they promptly called the police.

Kingsley walked in and said, "Are you nuts?"

"I'm sorry sir," Mac said. "It's just I thought you were Manfred and you were attacking Ms. Connelly."

"The film crew didn't clue you?"

"I thought he had busted into the set," he said wagging his head. "Instead it turns out to be me."

There was an awkward silence while the security guard called in to the police station.

"I mean no disrespect," Mac said, "but you and Manfred look an awful lot alike."

"Who is Manfred?" Kingsley asked.

"He's, er...well..." he shook his head again. "We joke that he is my 'man-servant'," he said flatly.

"You have a man-servant, yet you ride a bicycle. Is this typical for Marin?" Kingsley asked with steely precision, a look not unlike several he does in Sexy Beast.

That image shook him, especially since he was handcuffed. He tried to think of another film...and got it.

Death and the Maiden where Kingsley was handcuffed to a chair and interrogated by Sigorney Weaver.

"I feel a bit like Dr. Miranda in your movie"

"They will be along soon enough to administers your rights," Kingsley said slyly.

Mac laughed.

"That was a good one," Mac said.

"And if you remember, despite his protestations Dr. Miranda does confess and is guilty."

"Well I am only guilty of mistaking you for Manfred. If you could just have Chester over here fetch him it would become clear."

Just then Ms. Connelly walked in which both excited Mac and made him wish he was in another country...Preferably a neutral one like Sweden.

"I think I have an explanation," she said with a smile. "I met this man last night and he was a perfect gentleman. He loaned me the services of his manservant Manfred who drove me back to my hotel."

Mac looked up at Connelly and smiled then at Kingsley.

"Apparently Manfred did not understand the deal," she continued, "and she stayed out in the Jeep all night so he could bring me here this morning."

"So?" snapped Kingsley. "What does this man have to do with him attacking me?"

"Well Manfred does look a great deal like you," she said then kinda bit her lower lip. Mac almost fainted, but held in.

"Let me go get him and I think you will understand," she said then smiled at Mac. "And let's get those handcuffs off him.

"Hey Chester!" Kingsley said, "get the cuffs of Dr. Miranda will you?"
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The genius of Manfred.

.

Manfred and the Connelly Incident 4

2005-09-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

Manfred walked in a few minutes later with Chester and Sir Ben Kingsley began to laugh.

"He looks like me?" he said. "Ha! Oh yes, I suppose a bit," he said shaking his head and looking away.

"Oh indeed by jove sir! What a wonderfulness to meet you here in the flesh!" cried Manfred in his typical Ghandi-like fashion. "Why did Sahib tackle you in the dirt?"

"He thought I was you and that I was attacking Ms. Connelly here," Kinglsey said calmly.

"Oh No Sir!" Manfred said defiantly. "I would never disturb Ms. Connelly. "I JUST bring the car around." Then Manfred lifted up his pant legs and began to hop around doing a little dance around the living room chanting "Ghandi-Gee, Ghandi-Gee! Ghandi-Gee!!"

Mac looked away in disgust. Connelly looked down at her feet. Chester put his hand on his billy-club. Kingsley stood up.

"Well I think we have all had enough," Kingsley said.

"Manfred?"

"Yes, Ghandi-Gee?"

"If you would be so kind I would like you to take this gentleman home safely. We will explain to the police that it was a misunderstanding."

"Yes, Sahib," Manfred said grinning.

"And now you must go and we will go," Kingsley said steady. "Later today I have to put a plastic bag over my head and suffocate. I feel quite prepared to do that scene now."
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De-briefing...

Manfred and the Connelly Incident 5

2005-09-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

Mac stood up and walked toward Connelly and the door.

"Thanks," he said quietly when he reached her.

"What was the name of that book?" she asked.

"Oh, in this case I'd choose another by Kierkegaard... The Concept of Dread."

"I actually read some of that in Grad school," she said.

"Perfect." he said even. "I'd stay and discuss it with you but the police will be here any minute for me. Fitting huh?"

She laughed and they shook hands. Then Manfred said "Sahib!! An autograph!"

Mac pushed him out the door without a word and they walked down the sidewalk toward the Jeep.

"Autograph?! Idiot!" he muttered low and lean. "So why didn't you come home Manfred? Weren't you hungry! Didn't you miss some episodes of your favorite shows?"

"Oh Sahib, you are so silly!" he exclaimed. " I have Tivo in my room! No no no no, Indeed I wanted to tell the wonderful Ms. Connelly all about you."

Mac looked off to the side as if talking to God and said "You see what I deal with?"

When they got to the car Mac said "I'm driving," as he unlocked it and slide in. He thought about making Manfred ride the bike back but didn't.

"Can you get the bike and put it on the back rack please?" he asked. As Manfred scampered off he saw him waving to Ben Kingsley who had come outside. Mac's head slumped into the steering wheel.

The bike racked, they tore off down the road toward San Rafael. Then he just had to ask.

"Okay, so what did you tell her?"

"Oh in sublime moments of self-revelation and utter disclosure I did in full gloriousness depict you in all your splendor!"

"You told her about my ex-wives in other words."

"Oh YES!! She was most intrigued, especially about the incident in Mazatlan!"

Mac groaned. "I suppose you told her all about Miami?" he said glumly.

"Nope."

"No?"

"Not enough time."

"Great," Mac said.

"But Tahoe-Condo...yes."

"Do you hate me Manfred?"

"No no no no Sahib!" he exclaimed with joy. "I love Sahib! You are my Mortifier!"

"You mean role-model..."

"Oh?...oh okay...that too," Manfred said more quietly.

"Anything else?" Mac asked looking out the window.

"Ummmm...thinking," Manfred said looking out the other window. "Oh YES!! I told her that you are a Horny man!"

"You mean holy man," he said under his breath.

"Oh yes!! Indeed!! Yes, that is what I should have said! But I did, in goodness and conjugation depict the deep level of your spiritual horniness!"

"So it all worked out then," Mac said sardonically.

"Did for me."

"How so?"

"I got her phone number."

It's Time to Meet the Team and Cast of Characters

2005-09-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

Alfonso
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There are a cast of colorful charcaters that reside in and around The Citadel and it is time we named them.

We all know Mac is the ringleader, but he attracts the oddest people.

I'm the only normal one.

There is , of course, the infamous Manfred, Mac's long-time manservant who has never done an honest day's work in his life. Hans Gruber is his turgid German interior designer and just, well, a bit particular. Every once and awhile Col. Smythe will drop in from British Intelligence, or Pastor Derrick BacGhee will come by to counsel him.

Then there is Tim Whipple the "Concerned Guy", and Tele-evangelist Juan Terrel.

But in this post we are gonna talk about Alfonso, Mac's semi-Italian gardner who has the most annoying voice you have ever heard.

Alfonso suffers from Blocusglandulusinflationada in which the tail end of puberty is prolonged through the rest of your life.

Thus Alfonso's voice is always cracking at the oddest moments and is far too high for a man of his years.

3/4s of a Million Smart Singles Sold into Internet Slavery

2005-09-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

Click for a closer view. Unfortunately it is not a spoof.
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It's a true story worthy of The Onion's own pages and spoofing. The hip, funny and creative personals owned by Spring Street Networks hosted at hotspots like The Onion, Salon.com and Nerve.com has been swallowed whole by the huge and utterly ghastly Friendfinder Network. The 750,000 or so members that enjoyed the site have now been, essentially, acquired and thrown into the big 30 million-person vat of singles soup like seasoning.

Their profiles, pictures, witty comments and ability to find other like-minded singles have all been compromised. Worse, their creative and beautiful pictures (see below) will now be lost in a sea of the world's worst personal photos.

3/4s of a Million Smart Singles Sold into Internet Slavery, Part 2

2005-09-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

There have been huge technical problems at the old site once all those souls were sold.

My neighbor Mac suddenly showed up with warpaint on his face; his former girlfriend's name, date of birth, Zodiac sign were all changed. Her "Hot List" of guys was also deleted (Mac confided later these did not bother him as much as it should for a friend he loves. He's a selfish man).

Personally, trying to access my account I was fed pages of line code. When I tried to hit technical support I was sent to the page above.

These are classy people with a great sense of customer service and what people want. Many of the women at the site appear in pictures with the heads chopped off. I shudder to think what the men's pictures include and exclude.

When I did more investigation I found that many of the personal items in many profiles had been somehow "shifted" like one of those "temporal displacements in the tachyon field" that regularly occurred in Star Trek. Given the vast size of the Friendfinder and its large number of related, yet subjugated, personals sites I fear for the worst.

Here are some of the their listed but related sites where data can so easily (given their marvelous coding) shift and be transported, sometimes en mass:

AdultFriendfinder
Friendfinder
Amigos
BigChurch
ItalianFriendfinder
AsianFriendfinder
IndianFriendfinder
FilipinoFriendfinder
KoreanFriendfinder
GermanFriendfinder
FrenchFriendfinder
JewishFriendfinder
SenorFriendfinder
Outpersonals.com
GayFriendfinder
Alt.Com

and now added to this the Spring Street Network, which they will probably rename the three popular spots:

ParodyFriendfinder = The Onion
LiberalIntellectualFriendfinder=Salon
Sexed-upLiberalFriendfinder=Nerve

In the July 26, 2005 press release it was announced that the "sites acquired through Spring Street will continue to be branded independently and will not be connected to the Friendfinder network."

Which is a bald-faced lie. It has already happened.
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Next...what happens when bad coding meets your personal information as a single...

3/4s of a Million Smart Singles Sold into Internet Slavery, Part 3: The Matrix

2005-09-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

When I clicked on page two of a search this is repeatedly what I got.

Don't they know Matrix code goes up and down, not left to right? And it is GREEN on black!

Sheesh.

People are reporting (those who can...my posts have been deleted repeatedly) lost credits (that's money folks), changed passwords, deleted posts, messages, and Hot Lists.

But worse are the ways all of their personal information is getting lost and showing up elsewhere...probably on someone else's profile. I suddenly became a Capricorn and an old deleted photo depicted me like Harrison Ford on Mosquito Coast. I've only conversed with a few people, but birth years changed, names mispelled or changed outright.

Then it hit me. If that's true, what other viral issues now exist within the massive 3.2 million person Friendfinder Network? (By the way this will get me banned for life, but who cares? It SUCKS and I wouldn't use it again. Besides, I am just a fiction and my dates always pick up the check anyway and accuse me of being two-dimensional.)

So suppose all those on the former Spring Street Network (SSN) have been mis-slotted on the new juggernaut?

What if atheists gets thrown into the "Big Church" Friendfinder lists and suddenly they are being hit on for "missionary dating" (which does not include the missionary position by the way) by those who simply want to "hug in the spirit and kiss in tongues"? I mean, nothing personal to either group, but I don't wanna end up on either BigChurch or Alt.com (Bondage & Detainment/Sado-Masochism).

I do admit sometimes they use similar tactics, but maybe that's why I want none of it.

And what if this incompetence happens between the races on their massive site given their obvious coding issues? It could be like that scene from Ghandi where the Pakistanis are on the one road and the Indians on the lower one passing each other and there is a suddenly breach and they sort of spill into each other and a massacre ensues.

No, this is potentially ugly folks.

What if the upcoming KKKFriendfinder gets co-mingled with NAACPFriendfinder? What if SwiftBoatFriendfinder members get thrown in with MoveOnFriendfinder members? What if I'mOkYou'reOkFriendfinder members are suddenly identified at AAFriendfinder (the reverse would not happen-"What is said on this Friendfinder site stays on this Friendfinder site")?

I shudder.
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Do I have to remind you that some portions of this are satire? I do, because some of our readers are Fundies looking for a fight. They have no sense of humor.

Next... oh the Photos!

3/4s Part4: what's in a mug shot?

2005-09-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

I am not suggesting any of these woman are not attractive in person. It's the photos.

Scientists have a great deal to say about human attraction, but they did not have Internet dating in mind. I cannot think of a scenario where such eye-candy is delivered to both men and women in such rapid succession with the actual possibility of meeting, and even mating, no matter how small, is actual.

Don't be fooled. Men and women both look at the pictures first to see if they could remotely be interested. It may be a 60/40 male thing, but it still exists.

Facial structure, hair, smile, and some idea of physical presence can make a person want to learn more.

Of course, once they read the attached profile there is usually quick "red-flagging". "I'm a Bush-lover" or "Karl Rove fans need not apply," can be immediate show-stoppers no matter how initially attractive.

Now I do not know why, but the photos of women (and that is all I have looked at) on the Friendfinder network are, er..mostly just awful at best, and scary at worst.

Take the headless women above, the woman who has photoshop blurred her face (I assume she has self-esteem problems) and really just plain bad photos. Even the "glamour shots" are...well. No, and this was a random sampler.

The profiles are generally not much better, and with 3.2 million members and a search engine that produces women from the Ukraine and Namibia every third profile...well by the time you find someone to contact they've already dated someone else, become attached, engaged and their next child is due in the Spring.

Mac tried this service several years ago and did find one beautiful, intelligent and charming woman. But by the time they met she really just needed him to store her car for awhile while she hunted for a new place to live in LA.

He is so chivalrous.

Wuss.
_____________________
Next...SSN profiles...may they R.I.P...

Al Michaels on God

2005-09-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

Al Michaels.
______________________

So I do a thing on dreams and Simon Templar decides to also do a serious piece on dreams. Okay. Enough!

Dreams are ridiculous. Take this one from last night...

I'm following Al Michael's around asking him questions about announcing. He just wants a Coke at this ridiculous giant chicken restaurant. I'm immediately pissed because I see they want 1.79 for a stupid 8 ounce Coke.

Rip-off.

Michaels turns to me and says "Don't worry, it's on me."

I figure he can afford it I follow Michaels into the restaurant and we go up to the counter and order.

"Let me ask you," I say "I know it's very tough to be ON all the time during a broadcast...but you guys do coast, right?"

"Coast?" he asks incredulously.

"Yes, coast. I mean whenever you tell a story that you have told more than 8 times, you are just coasting...it's just filler." I say. "You just start it and your brain goes elsewhere. I mean I've heard you tell the Bobby Bonds story 11 times...you are just coasting."

He grins back at me and says "Yeah, but I am still angry at God."

"You angry at God? Why would you be angry at God?"

"Who said anything about God?" I am thinking as just then a man in a dark blue suit walks up and looks me in the eyes and says "There is no such thing as God. It is a projection of human need and desire and the fear of death. It is not scientific and therefore irrelevant."

"Oh Geez," I say to Michaels. "Ya can't go anywhere these days."

"Look buddy," I say. "First of all you can't even explain your own existence and consciousness. Haven't you heard of Heisenberg's theory? Hey I have my own doubts about God's existence but let's not be stupid here."

He reaches across the counter and takes his order of chicken and walks away mumbling about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Michael's is not amused.

"Just get the chicken, okay?" he asks. "And the Cokes."

I do and follow on behind.

We sit down on a park bench to eat and he says "Well I was angry. But not so much anymore."

Just then we are interrupted by a commercial break...or the equivalent in dreamland.
________________________________
Why is it always three names and get him out of the pool!

Al Michaels on God, part two

2005-09-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

Sarah Jessica Parker...not my fav.
_______________________

Suddenly in front of us is a large pool and there are several people bobbing around in it laughing. I see Sarah Jessica Parker, Mary Louise Parker, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

This pleases me until I see Philip Seymour Hoffman also bobbing in the pool, then Anthony Michael Hall.

"Do you have a middle name?" I ask Michaels.

"No," he says "Shut up and eat your chicken."

"I don't have to shut-up," I say.

"Why?"

"Because it is my dream and I could throw you into that pool with only AMH and PSH."

"Point taken," he says. "How is your chicken?"

It's pretty good and I can have all I want and not gain a pound."

"You have gained weight," Michael's reports.

"Shut-up."

We sit in silence and watch SJP and MLP and JJL bob and laugh in the water. They seem to be having a good time.

"Why don't you get in?" he says.

"I have a date later with Nicole Ari Parker," I say flatly.

"Not Parker Posey?" he asks slyly.

"Naw, she's a bitch, has weird teeth and has no middle name.

"I don't have a middle name" he shrugs.

"That only means you are here for a different reason." I say. "Hey you got an extra napkin? This stuff is kinda greasy."

Al Michael's hands me a napkin.

"You have everything Al," I say "yet you coast on old stories and have no middle name."

"You gotta point?"

"Yeah...what's at your core...your center?"

"Right now?...Chicken and Coke," he laughs and some small bits of chicken end up on my pants.

"I can't take you anywhere."

"Hey, I paid. Look PSH is trying to hit on MLP."

"Great," I say "You wanna do the play by play?"
___________________________________
Every Body Out of the Pool...

Al Michaels on God, part three

2005-09-04T04:32:00.000-07:00

I do kinda dig her...
_________________________________

"So, Michael's...why were you angry with God and why aren't you now?"

"Well we all have a reason to be angry with God," Michaels said. Then he started into a long rambling story that I have heard at least 300 times. Everybody has a reason but the same story.

"You are coasting," I said.

"Yes, I am."

"What happened then?"

"I realized it was my life," he said "so I just embraced it."

"Yeah and you got a $4 million dollar contract."

"Didn't hurt."

"Yeah and you get to work with Madden."

"Yes, he's alot like God."
_________________

Just then I got an outside email on my subconscious palm pilot....

Subject: conjugal yukon advantageous adherent

Do I want to buy a Rolex watch for $3.99, get free Viagra, get 4.9% on my mortagage (I do not have a house) and have a date in an hour?

I decided continuuing to sleep was a lot better and more real.

"Oh God...please let me sleep" I prayed to the unknown.
_________________

SJP got out of the pool and walked up to me seductively.

"You are married," I said grimly. "And you remind me of my ex-wife."

"The angry one?" she said sweetly.

"No, the other one...though she was pretty angry too."

"What's your middle name?" she asked.

"Christopher. But I don't wanna talk anymore."

"Why?'

"It's not funny dialogue," I say "and I am really into funny dialogue" and she slaps me in the face and leaves.

"That was smooth," says Michael's laughing.

"Yeah? Yeah?" I say kinda mad. "What's your middle name and what is your center?"

Michael's looks off in a lost way.

"Did I ever tell you about 'Pudge Fisk' in 1975?"

"Coasting..."

Just then JJL gets out of the pool along with AMH and PSH.

"Dismissed" I say. They leave.

Mary Louise Parker swims over to the edge of the pool and throws her hair back and smiles that amazing smile. She keeps looking and smiling. The water sparkles around her. Michaels puts some small chicken bones down on my shoe to see if I will notice.

I do.

"That's where we are all headed," I say.

"No, " he says "I'm supposed to be in New York in two days."

"Yeah, but eventually you will be just bones."

"You're a drag sometimes...a guy can't just have chicken and a coke and watch people with three names swim?"

"What's your middle name and your center?" I ask again.

"I don't have a middle name and I am lost," Michael's says sadly. "But did I ever tell you about McCovey in 1977?"

"No, you didn't" I said smiling. "Tell me that one, again."
_____________________________________

Dreams Fly When Freed by the Sea...

Al Michaels on God, part four

2005-09-04T03:22:00.000-07:00

Nicole Ari Parker.
___________________________

"Phone calls Mr. Malraux," the receptionist announces.

"Who?"

"Nicole Ari Parker line one, Mary Louise Parker line two...Philip Seymour Hoffman line three."

I punch the buttons.

"Nicole...how are you?" I ask.

"I am pregnant," she says weakly.

"How far along?" I ask.

"7 months" she replies. "I'll be right down."

"Nicole?"

"Yes?"

"Who is the father?"

"Philip Seymour Hoffman"

"Figures," I say. "He's sitting right here.

"I thought he was on line three" she says.

"No he just showed up next to me...but it doesn't mean he also is not on line three. Let me check."

I put Nicole Ari Parker on hold and push down the button for Philip Seymour Hoffman. "You there?"

"Yes..I'm here," he says.

"But you realize you are also sitting quietly next to me, right?"

"Yes, I realize that," he says.

"How do you account for that?"

"I don't have to," he says. "I've been studying Zen for three weeks."

"How's that working for ya?"

"I'm talking with you, on the phone, and sitting next to you in your dream," he says.

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, I've lost twelve pounds."

I hang up and turn to him.
__________________________

Deep pools...

Al Michaels on God, part five

2005-09-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

Philip Seymour Hoffman
______________________________

He looked at me with his glasses down his nose, and smiled.

"I had a date with her," I said.

"Not anymore."

Then NAP was there all plump and out of breath.

"I'll leave you two," I said and then I walked over to the large aquarium window and put my hand up to the window and Mary Louise Parker swam up and put her hand up to mine and smiled.

"I'll get back to you," I mouthed.

Al Michael's walked up. he had a patch of barbeque sauce on the corner of his mouth a a bit of chicken.

I didn't mention it.

"I thought about what you said," Michaels said.

"And what did you conclude?"

"I'm gonna be Al Franklin Michaels" he said.

"I'm not sure that is a good idea."

"My name is Franklin," said the man in the blue suit reappearing.

"See, it's taken," I said , "And...well...I'd find another."

I turned and was in a strange room. Very nice and they were dishing up squab. I really like squab but wanted lobster instead. Michaels show up again and sat down in the corner and began to cry. I walked over and sat down next to him and poured him some cold water.

"It's gonna be okay," I assured him. "I'm here if you need anything, just let me know.." He quieted down and I smiled at him to reassure him. "It's not wrong not to know if you are open," I said. Then I stood up and walked to the window.
___________________________________
Lobster with butter and lemon...

Al Michaels on God, part Six

2005-09-04T01:50:00.000-07:00

yummy...
__________________________

I turned around and saw a table filled with lobster tails and white plates and ramikins of butter sauce and lemon.

"Hey Michaels," I yelled, "Over here!"

"I love lobster!" he exclaimed and he laughed as I tied the lobster bib around his neck.

I did not need one. As we sat down and ate and we grabbed the hunks of sweet lobster meat and dipped them in the warm slaty lemon butter and ate I made sure every drop of residual butter flew his way and splatted on his bib.

He glowered at me at one point.

"This one's on me Al" I said. Spack, spack, twick!

"It's good lobster isn't it?" I asked as a big glob of yellow goo started to drip off.

Spack!

"Oops! I missed."

"Very funny," as he wiped his cheek off.

"So what is your beef with God Al?"

"Don't have one Maugam," he said. "Rather have lobster."

A waitress brought over the phone and I hit line two.

"Dr. Malraux?"

"Yes?"

"The baby was just delivered and Mr. Hoffman wanted you to know."

"What did they name him?"

"How do you know it's a him?"

"The name please?"

"Stanley."

"Stanley Ari Nicole Seymour Philip Parker Hoffman?"

"No."

"NO?"

"Stanley Simon Sarah Seymour Jessica Mary Louis Ari Nicole Philip Parker Parker Parker Bowles Hoffman ala Antoine."

"Oh this is a stupid dream."

I hung up and went for another plate of lobster, They had also brought a tray of very large scampi. I was very hopeful I would not wake up anytime soon.

Which was a mistake.
__________________

The end...

Al Michaels on God, part Seven

2005-09-04T01:02:00.000-07:00

Michael Clarke Duncan. The Big Man.
_______________________________________

I was on my way to go and wash my face when I met her in the hall. Her hair was wet and sexy. Mary Louise Parker.

She smiled and kissed me on the mouth and said "you are damned sexy."

I love dreams like this. Then she said "Go wash up and meet me upstairs Big Man."

"Big Man?" I thought. I guess I am on the tall side...but it was an unusual reference.

I went into the bathroom of the hotel and washed my face. When I looked up I jumped back. I was Michael Clarke Duncan. Or I looked just like him.

Handsome devil, but a bit imposing. I scared the living crap out of me.

Then Anthony Michael Hall walked in and smiled and used the urinal. I almost stepped on Rodney Allen Rippey on the way out. There was no sign of Fred Dalton Thompson to the right or Tommy Lee Jones to the left.

I crept upstairs to room 333 and entered. Al Michael's was sitting in a comfortible chair and MLP was sitting on the bed nervous.

"It's not my fault!" she said nervously and looking away.

"Hey!" I said "This is my dream and it'll do what I say."

Then Michaels got up and said, "How do you feel Big Man?" I looked down at my huge dark hands and said "I feel really good Al. How are you?"

"I found out my center and my last name Maug." he said cool as placid ice. But there was a hint of menace.

The man in the blue suit showed up in the doorway.

"Should I take him now?" he said.

"Yeah, take him now." Michaels said, and the man hustled me out the door.

On the way down in the elevator he quoted Sartre, Henry Miller, and Miguel de Unamuno.

When he started whispered passages from Hemingway's A Clean Well Lighted Place, I turned and tried to punch him in the mouth. But he had turned into Rodney Allen Rippey and my large hand splintered harmlessly over him into the elevator wall with a crash. He simply gave me a swift kick to the nuts and I fell like a huge stack of newspapers on a New York street corner.

"It was the lobster, idiot," little RAR said. "He would have let you off easy but you had to get cute."

I groaned and the doors slided open on the bottom floor and there was Anthony Michael Hall and Gabriel García Márquez. I looked up half dazed and said to GGM "You're not an actor...what are you doing here?"

"This idiot doesn't know how to tie an animal to a tree," he said. "I do." They dragged me out, still in pain.

They tied me to a tree. Well GGM did. AMH just watched and giggled.

"The wolves will be along shortly," AMH said and GGM said it would be easier to let me go mad.

"Get a beer?" AMH said to GGM.

"Sure," he said. "Can we get nachos too?"

"I'll check."
__________________

Okay so it wasn't the end...but you never can tell with dreams now can you?

2005-09-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

Moving video by Green Day. Simple...almost like a tiny film.

The core idea is a good one. How do we get past September? How do we move on?

Beauty

2005-09-01T08:56:00.000-07:00

I swam off into sleep and awoke inside a large room. The ceiling was at least 50 feet high and sepia-toned clouds on old wallpaper were high above me.

The expanse of the room was impressive and I knew it was a dream so I got up and marveled at what the human mind can conjure as it sleeps.

Yes, I was awake inside the dream, yet still somewhat it's captive (it is rare to be able to make things happen once inside...but I have done that).

I walked around and it changed. The high ceilings became a dark industrial charcoal which came down about ten feet. The last forty feet became a warm reddish color interspersed with large windows revealing a dark cool blue moonlight. Then I saw the most dazzling array of candles around the room in clustered bunches of 3 or 5 or 7. Stunning really.

I wanted to capture it's beauty and maybe interview a few people along the way. There were others, but they had their own agendas. My agenda was purely aesthetic and simple.

I was dressed in a dark black suit, a white Oxford button-down and good shoes. I walked down the room and turned right past a few other rooms. Each had the same ambiance. There were also some dark black bamboo dividers which were just perfect. The same candles burned in those other rooms with a rich orange glow.

I found a pad of art paper in the kitchen and asked for a few pencils. When I got back to the room I tried to draw it. It was futile.

I am just not that good.

So all I have are my words (this is often the mix in my art). The room is 140 feet long and 60 feet deep. The floors are richly-aged hardwood and there are thick padded sofas and the same bamboo divider for two major areas. I am a bit in awe and try and draw.

No go.

She walks in. I call her "The Betrayer". She is not a looker, she is a seducer. I am leaning back on an ottoman of some sort, trying to draw when she flops down next to me. I have not seen her in 3 years. The candles are burning and the room smells wonderful. It is the most beautiful room I have ever seen.

But it is not my room. I start to believe it is hers. I do not trust her. I do not hate her, I just do not trust her.

She makes a play and I disregard. "I have to draw" but then my drawing sucks. She leaves.

I do not miss her.

I stand up. "You know you are dreaming" I say to myself. "Yes, I know. It's still a good dream. Look at this room. Imagine having candles like that in a regular house," I say to myself.

Recently someone accused me of possessing a split personality. That is ignorant or silly. We all have different streams of consciousness. We all have a song humming away in our head while we work out a line of thought. We also pick our thumbs at the same time. This is not rocket science, it is just the human brain that dreamed up rocket science, the Jupiter Symphony and dreams deep into the night about beautiful rooms that do not exist in time and space.

The human brain is often a gift and a curse. I know mine is. But I had the most beautiful dream last night, and then a funny one after it that made me laugh when I woke up. Then I remembered that I said some pretty stupid stuff last night to my former girlfriend.

Then I wanted to go back to that expansive room and just lay back and take it in, then sleep for a long while as I walked around inside that room and enjoyed all its eloquence and taste.

But it does not work that way.

The room is a momentary gift, a vision of what might be. I place of great beauty, expanse and warmth where we have some real sense of what we want and what we do not want.

Then we wake and have to live.

Next?

A Short Romance

2005-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Dylan entered the large room and settled in front of a large movie screen, his back against a pillow and a small split of wine in his bag and some bagette with small pats of butter in a small plastic container. The students filed in and he thought about his opening remarks, but thought it better to simply start the film on time and handle it all on the far end. The lights dimmed and just as the film started to flicker up and spill around the room Regina walked in. He had not seen her since she was, well a girl too young for him to take interest in. But her long black hair and tall thin frame were unique. Large green eyes and smooth cheeks that were Asian, though not really. She saw him and smiled, though it had been at least four years. He had heard she might choose Exeter. She had. She came right over and sat down next to him and said nothing. She just grinned ahead. The movie, a black and white classic, droned on. He leaned over a bit and smelled her neck. She looked at him and he could see her dart in and out as the movie went light then dark. "Can I have some?" she said looking down and up. He gulped, and passed his cup to her and she drank. "And now some bread?" He broked off the bread and fed it to her and the world seem to move away from them. There was no film, no other students, no bread, no wine, just the two of them. He reached up and pushed back her dark hair and smiled. They were in love. They had always been in love and all became quiet like the bottom of a Zen pool and he smelled her again and reached up and drew her into himself and kissed her and she tasted like the sweetest tangerines and smelled of light ginger. He was finally in love and it was a perfect moment that deepened. Then he heard a sound from a distant place that started to grow in intensity. It started low and rumbly and grew more shrill and more loud until it filled the entire hall in an irreversible howl that thundered all around him. The other students fled and Regina left crying. He blinked his eyes. Then again, wide open and saw her, his wife standing over him with a naked child of about 7 months dangling directly over him and the bed and screaching full force. "I want YOU to take care of YOUR child!" she screamed at him, face flushed with fury. "NOW Dylan!" she said. Suddenly the boy quieted down, cooed and started to pee.

Fish & Chips Part 1

2005-08-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Jesus chip.
___________________________

He rolled over and looked at the digital read-out. 6:58.

It was getting dimmer outside and he felt hungry, dehydrated and a bit lost.

He groaned and slumped over the side. He felt alone. He was alone and had been so for six weeks. Since that time he had done his best Bill Murray imitation and lived in a sardonic mist of alcohol, old DVDs and the worst food he could find.

The night before it was a 5 pound bag of onion rings dipped in various decaying sauces from the fridge which was last cleaned during the Eisenhower administration. He didn't bother to bake them. He just nuked them until they were like a pile of brown seaweed. He had just slogged them in while watching The Kings of Comedy for the 40th time.

But that was yesterday and today had new challenges food wise. He knew he was getting fat and he thought it amusing. He had never been fat before. All his growing up he was the skinny kid. Had he been the fat kid, given how tall he became, he would have been a great offensive lineman...a walking wall.

But he was always skinny. Till now. He thought it very funny.

"I need chips," he said to the cat. The cat ignored him, then got up and hacked up a furball.

"I'm leaving," he said to the cat.

The cat paid him no mind once it was clear he would not step on her.

______________________________

The walk...

Fish & Chips Part 2

2005-08-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

Walking.
____________________

He swung out the door and heard the cat scamper out behind him.

Couldn't hack-off five minutes later outside right?

The sky was clouding up a bit and some nice new air was moving in as he walked downtown. He passed a smoky bar where there was much laughter and the Giants game. Another beauty shop was closing up and the woman inside was very hot.

Shit.

"She'd never go for me" he thought aloud, looking down. But he didn't care that much. HeI stopped at the Asian market and bought a pack of cigarettes.

He did not smoke.

On the way out he grabbed some matches.

He broke open the pack and smelled the fresh tobbaco. He loved that smell..like the newness of a woman and her pheremones all around him. Then the first hit off the lighted match. Perfect.

Then everything turns to shit. Darkness in your lungs, cancer cells activated, bad breath and, well, poison, pure and simple.

It seemed a fitting metaphor, though he could clearly identify the times he had been the cancer cell, the substance, and the match.

he kept walking and kept smoking.

____________________

Dead Man Walking...

Fish & Chips Part 3

2005-08-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Walking 2.
_____________________________________

He threw down and stubbed it out. He liked the black bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

The air was cooling down further which pleased him. He urged towards the Safeway ahead, smelling the fresh cooking from a Chinese restaurant nearby.

But he just wanted chips...chips and onion dip.

When he was a child he was often alone on weekends. No idea where his parents were, but they were not there. So he ate what he ate, all 6 feet and 110 pounds of what he was. So he ate fun stuff. He really liked to eat chips...big Scudder ribbed ones with onion dip all afternoon long and watch movies.

Now he was suddenly 42 and had been alone for a lot of weekends and I guess he just wanted those same chips and dip.

He entered the Safeway and was greeted by a short Chinese man. "Hellow!" he hailed. "Can I gelp you find anything?"

"Er, no." he said. Whatever they pay these folks it is not enough, he thought silently.

He grabbed a bag of chips off the end aisle, then another as they were two for one.

In the cooled aisle he found onion dip on sale.

He thought about some special catfood for the kitty...then thought about the line.

Fuck the cat.

As usual he cruised the vegetable section as if he might someday buy something.

Then he saw her.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck...
_______________

Next...

Fish & Chips Part 4

2005-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

He falls.
______________________________

He dropped the bag of two for one lettuce salad mix he had been examining.

Dark skinned, small, too small really, with short black bangs, she just looked up at him and smiled with dark brown eyes and he dropped the lettuce.

He felt a shiver reverb through his body like a small earthquake.

He smiled back, then turned away and blushed.

Fuck.

Outside he clutched his bag of chips, dip, a pack of hot dogs, and three bottles of brown ale.

She was walking and he walked behind her, a block back feeling ugly and wrong for doing so.

The argument went on in his head ...on and on...but it was never resolved. He felt clean and dirty at the very same time.

So he followed.

She turned down the darkness that is 2nd avenue and he could see the lighted bar signs reflect off the top of her hair.

Lust.

This was what this was. Not love...it was lust.

He was a natural lover, but this was lust and he wanted her.

Thoughts of kissing her and entering her and making her moan and cry out. That was what he wanted. It cried out from the center of a soul that was utterly empty.

Yes, he was empty. He was a shell clutching a bag of chips, some dip and three beers.

And he was following a woman of substance. He knew it. He felt like a vampire. He felt ridiculous. He felt like a fool. He kept following. He could not stop.
_________________________________

God spelled backwards is Dog...

Fish & Chips Part 5

2005-08-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

He was thinking about Bill Murray and Stripes as he went around the back.

He had seen her go up the stairs and, it just came into his head "Razzle-dazzle...black guys help the white guys" Then all hell broke loose.

He slammed the gate and heard the deep growl from behind.

There was a gate between him and freedom. He had entered it and the dog...some black snarkling beast who was about to lunge at his throat was not close enough..if he moved NOW.

He bolted and he, or she, or it...it's hard to be PC when your flesh is on fire..was biting hard into his left ankle and tearing at it.

"Oh God help me!" he prayed in his agnostic head.

He tore way and opened the gate and gave a mighty swing and fuck! The goddamn dog went flying out like a frisbee..end over end.

Slam!

He hunkered down and grabbed the bag and slogged the package of hot dogs over the fence and all was quiet.

Shit.

His relationship with the dog was not over. The dog was outside and he was out of hot dogs.
___________________________

Oh who knows...

Fish & Chips Part 6

2005-08-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

Yikes!
________________________

He slumped back and breathed hard for awhile. The adrenalin was pumping and he felt sore and lost.

He saw the catwalk above.

The dog howled outside the fence. God was silent.

He thought about her hair and her smile. So sweet, so lovely. He mustered up and climbed up the first walk. He past a dubious window where he thought he saw crack pipes and some grinding about that might have interested him on another night.

But not now.

Level two was a woman, an old woman motionless in front of a televangelist on an old tube. With his smoky white hair he was railing and she seemed quite content.

Level three brought him up short.

A man looked out the very window he was looking in.

The stared at each other for a moment. His face was dark olive and mexican. He grinned finally.

"You look scared" he said.

"I am"

"Wanna beer?"

"Yeah" he answered.

____________________

Beers....

Fish & Chips Part 7

2005-08-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

"you gotta name?" the Mexican asked.

"Dicky" he said.

"Nice," as he popped a Moosehead beer and handed it over to him.

"You?"

"Felix," he said calmly.

"Thanks...er, thanks for not shooting me."

"It happens all the time," he said.

"Really," he asked "because of above?"

"Yeah," he said shaking his head, "It's always about above."

Hey!!" Felix sparked up, "How did you get past the dog!?"

"Lucky...and hot dogs".

"Hehe.." he laughed. "Good. Now I don't have to feed him manana. Hehe."

"You do not wanna go up there," Felix said flatly.

Dicky sighed hard.

"I have to," he said finally.

"I know," Felix said. "hey you go to the gym in Marin?"

"Used to."

"Hey, meet me there on Monday at 7 okay?"

"Okay," he said uncommiting.

He knew. They both knew.

But Felix liked him and gave him a smile as he climbed up further into the night.

He just shook his head as he walked away. One less beer, but maybe a new friend.

______________________

Fish & Chips Part 8

2005-08-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

She was waiting. Like she knew all along. Short, compact in her chair with a glass of wine in her hand.

The dark blue light was behind her in the window and a small lamp lighted up her body as she sipped calmly.

"You shouldn't be here" she said.

"I know," he said ducking under and through the window frame.

"I saw you in the store," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Me too."

"What do you want?" she asked.

"I wanted chips and dip," he said. "Now I am not sure."

"You are older than I thought and not healthy," she said.

"You speak the truth and you are younger than I thought," he said.

"Do you want me?" she asked.

"I thought I did," he said, "but now I am not sure."

She sighed and looked away. He noted the line of her jaw and it excited him.

Then her eyes. Always the eyes.

His life was, and had been, ruled by the eyes.

So he made his way back out the window in a rush. Too much a rush...and that cost him everything...
_____________________
More in the morning....8 parts in one dau is quite enough...thanks Mitz!

Fish & Chips Part 9

2005-08-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

It wasn't as bad as this.
_______________________________________

As he went out the window his shirt caught on an iron part of the fencing and it tore hard as he tumbled off and fell. He hit the next landing hard which knocked most of the wind out of him.

He groaned repeatedly and did an inventory in his head to see if anything was broken. It wasn't.

Felix peaked his head out the window and said "Man, I told you Dude. You okay?"

"Ughhh, er...oh fuck...yeah yeah...I do this all the time...ughuffff."

Dicky could feel that blood was oozing from a gash near his left rib cage.

"Ugh...Felix?"

"Yeah Dicky?"

"I just need a few moments alone," he said. "I'll be okay. I'll see you at the Gym on Monday."

"Really?" grinning.

"Yeah..." groaning. "What time?"

"Around seven."

"Okay...seven," he said quietly. "Now I really just need a moment."

"Okay Bro," said Felix. Then he closed the window and put down the shade.

He laid there for a few minutes until he heard soft bare footsteps from above. He felt certain she was going to hit him in the head with something very large and heavy.

Instead she sat lightly on top of him and in the moonlight peeled back his shirt.

It was still bleeding some. Then he felt her warm tongue on the wound.

Later he would think about that moment over and over again and never quite be able to wrap his mind around it. What was she thinking?

Of course at the moment he was immobilized, bleeding from his side and ankle, a dog was waiting for him just outside the gate and there was a bag of chips, onion dip and brown ale down on the ground.

She opened up his shirt all the way with her hair hitting his chest. She went further down and undid his jeans. He moaned.

"Touch me," she ordered. he moved his hands around her waist, then under her small skirt. Nothing. He was surprised. She licked at his wound again, tasting his salty sweat and blood. She moved on him a few times gently as he pulled her, then he did as he was told and cupped his hand underneath, searching and then finding.

She shuddered and moved more forcefully as he touched her gently.

Felix peered momentarily out of the blinds.

"Stupid cracker," he said shaking his head, then walked away and turned on the television.

Her hand reached down to pull clothing back further and to touch the two most sensitive places again and again. Dangerously close, dangerously warm and very wet.

Then she simple sank down onto him in a moment with a small cry.

He was shocked. The dog laid down by the gate and went to sleep as she worked him quietly, kissing his wound and gently biting his ear as he came inside of her. Then she sighed as she lay down on top of him and they fell asleep.
____________________
The story continues...

Fish & Chips Part 10

2005-08-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

He woke up maybe 90 minutes later with her on top of him. The first thing he felt was a pain in his ankle and then his side.

He brushed her hair back and whispered in her ear. "Hey, let's go up."

She moaned and sturred for a moment, then rolled off and stood. She took his hand and they walked up.

He walked into the bathroom and examined his ankle. It wasn't at all good.

There were no bandaids of any kind so he simply washed out his wounds and put his sock back on.

He walked out and she was smoking a cigarette.

He came at sat down at the little red table.

"What is your name?"

"Zara," she said looking off.

The sat silently for awhile until she finished. He thought it curious that she did not ask his name. He shrugged it off.

She stubbed out her cigarette and looked at him directly. "Do you want me again?"

"Yes," he said quietly. " But I don't think it's wise to not have protection."

"Oh you are safe," she said. Then she stood up and unbuttoned her shirt. He gulped. He had not noticed her shape before, just those eyes. "Kiss me like you love me," she said and he did. The rest was a blurring of lines, smashing into bedstands, little bites to nipples, mouthing, tonguing, the dull ache of his side and him finding her. She seemed so small but she gathered him in and arched her back again and again witha hunger which wanted to devour him and his seed.

But this time she was loud. She grabbed his ass and pulled hard and screamed out loud, so much so Felix was awakened in his chair, the TV still blaring on about some new Ronco product.

"Stupid cracker," he said as he walked to the door, left it open and slunked down the stairs to the street to get the dog. "C'mere Rufus," he said and gave him a few good pats. He opened the gate and let Rufus back in then saw the bag.

As he reached it and looked in he heard the deep final groan of a man spent.

"Hell to pay," he said under his breath. "Hell to pay," as he walked back and locked the dog in the yard. and headed up to sleep.
_______________________
I have no idea where this is going...

Fish & Chips Part 11

2005-08-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Dicky woke up groggy and hollow.

He got up and used the bathroom and looked out the window. Then he showered with the water as hot as he could stand.

He toweled off carefully and re-inspected his wounds. They had closed up nicely. He felt weak and nervous. He no longer wanted to smoke. He threw down the pack and left them for the girl.

When he came out into the small kitchen she was waiting in a robe and coffee was on.

"Will you come back," she asked looking away, "or will you go?" she asked turning to him.

"Well I'd like to get to know me," he said.

"I'd say you've already done that," she said flatly.

"I mean who you are, what you like, what you think...simple stuff."

She smiled. "I felt it?"

"Felt what?" he asked.

"The baby," she said.

He wasn't sure he had heard correctly, or maybe he just was in shock.

"You have a baby?"

"NO," she laughed, "We have a baby."

He sat down and laughed it off. What the hell was she talking. She must be crazy he thought.

"Last night, around 4 a.m. when you were driving me real hard," she said directly. "Do you remember that?"

"How could I forget?"

"Well that is when I knew," she said without emotion. "I see and feel things that others miss."

"So you believe you are pregnant from last night?"

"I know I am," she said. "Hopefully she will have my eyes and your height."

He turned to her and looked hard into those eyes. They were beautiful and deep and wide. It was always in the eyes. Damn.

"I wanted it to be you," she said not unkindly.

"Why me?" he asked incredulous.

"You blushed in the store," she said. "And you made eye contact in an unusual way. I told you I see things. I saw you at my window when I was in the store. At first I was disappointed," she said flatly and looking off.

"But there is more in you than you realize," she said. "And now there is more of you in me than you realize." With this last statment she giggled a bit.

Even he had to smirk at the remark. Then he returned to his fear, which was mounting.
________________________
oh...just keep reading....

Fish & Chips Part 12

2005-08-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

He walked out a bit guarded. No dog. He thought about his chips but heard the dog behind the fence growl.

"Thanks Felix," he said under his breath.

She had hugged him at the door in a weird way. There, but not there. Then she said "You need to eat more fish."

He thought she was crazy with talk of fish and babies and the way she had sucked almost all the life out of him in one evening.

He hobbled toward home feeling skanky and thin.

When he got home the cat bolted out the door and he headed for his room and crashed like a 747 on fire.

The phone rang at 2 p.m. It rang again at 4 and 6:15.

His dreams were sporadic. He saw a woman with golden hair in one. She was naked and beautiful but as he mounted her she laughed at him. He laughed back. Then turned over into a dark-haired woman who wanted his hands and only that.

She gasped often and moaned loudly...then he was in the sea and he was swimming underwater but could breath. His only child was swimming and laughing alongside him. They were catching wild crayfish but they so often slipped away. They laughed. Her eyes lighted up.

He woke up and realized that he did not have a child. He felt sick.

He walked into the bathroom, wretched and sat down on the floor.
___________________________

Fish & Chips Part 13

2005-08-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

He slumped against the wall and started to cry. Then he climbed into the tub and turned on the steam and he actually prayed.

But he didn't feel any better after. He dried off and bandaged his ankle proper and the gash to his rib.

And he thought about the girl.

It was less than 24 hours since he had seen her. Actually it was about the same time.

He heard a small knock at the door.

When he opened it there was a small vase with flowers in it. She was sitting quietly at the stairs.

There was a small card. It said "believe in love. Z."

He was once again stunned. It seemed to him that she was always one step ahead of him.

He stepped down the stairs.

"How did you know where I live?"

"I looked in your wallet when you showered Richard," she said straight.

"No one calls me Richard," he said kindly. "I go by, well, Dicky."

"Dicky?!" she laughed.

"Yeah...I got this think for the old Allman Brothers," he said.

"Oh yeah," she said exhaling smoke. "Dickey Betts."

He sat down next to her.

"Can I have a smoke?"

She offered one in silence.

He smelled the fresh tobacco and took in the first draw then stubbed it out. Then he smelled her neck.

"How's the baby?" he asked openly.

"She is well."

"Do you dream often?" he asked.

"No. never." she answered. "I just see what I see in daylight. I do not always like it, but I liked seeing you yesterday."

"What did you like?" he asked selfishly. "I mean, you are a walking enigma."

"I'll tell you," she said drawing a deep smoke. Then she let it out and turned and looked him in the eyes. "But you first. You have more to say."

He laughed aloud. "How can you be so sure!?"

"I see what I see."

"Are you always right?"

"No. But more often than not."

"Okay, it seems you will always win," he said and she smiled off.

"You are so small I did not take notice at once. I think we passed on an aisle and you took me in. yes, I know it."

"I did do that."

"I was just trying to get chips and dip and I have this weird thing about veggies."

"You dropped the bags"

"I thought it was one."

"It was two. I loved you for that."

"You loved me for dropped dead lettuce and decided you wanted a baby with me?"

"No you decided, I only saw it ahead of you."
________________________
be careful what you look at...

Fish & Chips Part 14

2005-08-19T05:42:00.000-07:00

He looked down and only saw the pattern in the ground. Just squares and dirt. She lay her head against his shoulder and he felt her dark cool hair.

"What do you mean about my deciding?" he finally asked after a time.

"You saw me and decided to follow me home," she said. "I could feel you behind. I could almost see through your eyes as you watched me. That is why I was not afraid."

"Not even when I came in your window?" as he asked this he remembered her look and knew it was a stupid question. He had been the one who fled and had fallen.

"Okay, your turn," he said softly.

"Why did you come down?"

"I saw her and wanted her to live and you were a part of her," she said simply.

"Are you crazy?" he asked.

"No. I once was...but no more. What shall we name her?"

"You're the visonary" he said sarcastically. Then he felt bad.

"I'm tired," he said. "Come."

He led her upstairs. It was hot in the apartment. He opened the window and got her some ice tea. She looked up sorrowful and yet whole.

He started to cry, and slumped onto the bed and fell asleep alongside her small frame.
______________________

Fish & Chips Part 15

2005-08-18T23:05:00.000-07:00

He woke up much as he had the night before, She was there close and unexpected.

He rolled her off and turned on the small light.

She was a simple beauty. He looked at her belly and wondered. Her shirt was slightly hitched up and he could see the steel ring in her tanned button.

Above he saw her breasts that excited him as she slept. But he was troubled.

"Fish and chips" he muttered.

"Oh fuck!!" he thought. It was at least near seven and there he was in bed.

She roused and slumped back. "Where are you going?" she asked straight.

He sat down. He liked her weird straightness in information. It was a strange comfort to him.

"Felix asked me to meet him at the gym today," he said. "I'll be back soon." Then he kissed her on the mouth to let her know his intention and gathered up his bags and left.

She sat back and had new visions.
______________________

Felix and Dicky...

Fish & Chips Part 16

2005-08-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

He flashed his ID at the young girl behind the counter and looked for Felix

He wasn't there, so he dressed down and did some basic warmups then hit the treadmill.

He slapped on headphones and a soundtrack that energized him. But he felt tired. He did more walking than running.

Felix came up after 20 minutes.

"Sorry bro," he said.

"No problem," he said. "Just glad you are here."

Felix ginned, which made Dicky feel strangely good.

They ran alongside for awhile then quit and headed for the weight room.

"How's your back?" Felix finally asked.

"oh...hell...fine," he said. "Yeah...no it was...sheesh...look at this and this"

He showed him the gash down his ribs and then the deep marks on his ankle.

"That dog got diseases?"

"Naw...no way man" said Felix. "Besides, you deserved it Bro."

Dicky laughed. "Yeah, I did." he said. "You drink my beers?"

"Naw, I got them on ice," he said. "But I ate your chips and dip."

They finished a series of weights and hit the hot tub.

Dicky laid back and let the water foam around him.

"So what do you think?"

"You're a madman, man" Felix said.

"Yeah," he said. "Tell me what you've seen."

"Uh...men...you know...they come and go...but never stay."

"She ever talk to you?"

"She told me once my dog was sick, and he was" Felix said. "I think she is deep trouble man. Bad news...dark and wrong."
________________________
After the hot tubbing...

Fish & Chips Part 17

2005-08-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

They showered and changed and shook hands and he said to Felix, "why don't you follow me home. We'll have a beer."

"Your beer is at my place," said Felix grinning.

"Okay, let's go."

The air was soft that night even though it was near 9 p.m. He felt good.

They drove back by Felix's place and Felix made a great show of introducing Rufus to Dicky. They made their peace and later Dicky brought down Rufus' dinner for him and patted his head and ruffled his ears. They shared a brown ale and some left over chips and onion dip.

He looked up and saw the light was on.

A small part of him wanted to bolt. He still could. But he kept looking up. he thought about her. It was crazy, but it resonated within him.

He climbed up the stairs and as he hit Felix's door he saw her sitting on the stairs about half the way down.

"I was on my way up," he said evenly.

"Yes, I know," she said almost laughing.

"Give me a minute?"

"Your life," she said, stubbing out her cigarette.

"Really?" he said eyeing her carefully.

"Really."

Testosterone

2005-08-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

Mac was busy working and I was bored.

"Let's go for a drink ass," I said sweetly.

"Give me 30 minutes," he called out.

Fuck.

When he came out of his oro-fice, he looked like hell. Bushy Bill Clinton hair, unshaven, dark rings under his eyes.

"You look Fab!" I said. Let's go!

We pulled into the parking lot where they have a nice sushi bar. But we had to wait because this little blonde 25-year-old housewife was parked in the middle of the road in a Navigator the size of the Santa Maria.

I was irate.

We finally parked, but as we crossed the clearly marked intersection a small truck made a sudden move and revved up his engine like he was gonna run us over. I stopped but Mac kept walking unhindered. He actually glared.

Now I have to say that Mac was not in a good mood already. He had just taken the trash out 10 minutes before and an inkjet needle had pierced the bag as he squashed it down.

"GahFugh!!" he cried out.

"What?" I asked. I looked at his hand and black or blue ink was pouring out all over along with a lot of rich red blood.

"If you had yellow you could print stuff right here in the parking lot," I offered with my usual empathy.

"You are buying," he snarled back.

So when the guy revved his engine Mac looked back into the cabin of his truck like "what the fuck are you thinking?"

And he held eye contact until he realized (we talked about it later) he realized the guy was just high on testosterone.

I mean what else would make a man, probably 5' 8", out of shape and pudgy think he could do anything to a guy who could start on the offensive line of a semi-pro team (except that he'd have to run...not so good)?

Personally, I have seen this before. I think people pick up on his non-violent nature and do not see how stupid it might be to attack a guy 6'6" and 280 lbs. (gotta get that Ass into the gym).

Anyway, Mac just glared and held eye-contact.

I didn't.

Once the truck was stopped and he was saying something after Mac, I walked up to his door and crouched down and looked the fucker in the eyes not four inches from his face.

"My friend is a reasonable man and I suggest you not mess with him today," I said sweetly.

"Oh really?" he said. "Well fuck you and your friend!" he said then looked over at his young comrade.

"Look you have had just a bit too much testosterone in your diet," I said. "Not getting any at home? I suggest more masterbation."

"He popped the door, which was a real mistake because the inbetween of a door and a truck is like a rock and a hard place.

So, yeah, I squished him, "Gaagul..." he gasped.

Then Mac came after me.

"Forget it Maug...he's just...oh hell..I dunno," he sighed.

The man groaned and I gave him a quick slap on the left cheek...not too hard.

"Don't be stupid. It's a beautiful day and you have made it ugly," I said. "And do NOT threaten people with your truck again idiot."

We left it at that and as we walked toward the sushi bar Mac shook his head and said "men are idiots. But why did you have to slap him?"

"I dunno. Just seemed the thing to do. You gonna get the Icura Madness?"

"Naw. Not today."

Human Interest, Part 1

2005-08-13T15:21:00.000-07:00

It seems God and humanity are interested in what interests humanity.

Certainly you are. Sit down with a pad of paper and make a short list of the ten things that interest you most.

If you get stuck...just look at what you do. As an old friend said "people really do what they really wanna do". Look at what you do and you will see what you are interested in. Works every time and it cuts through the BS of what we "should" be interested in. Look at what you do and it will tell most of the story.

Some people's interests are very simple: beer, sex, wrestling on TV, porn, their vehicle, house, dog, a close friend, a gun collection and reality TV.

Others are equally simple: Box seat at the Met, a split of bordeaux, a BMW 300DL, an Armani suit with ten others in the lighted closet, ten pairs of shoes, an Andy Warhol original, marble counter tops, Kiehl's products in the bathroom, three attractive women waiting online at 11 p.m. and a plasma screen TV playing The Matrix over and over.

Other boil their ten down to like three, with one leading. We call this a "fetish" rightly or wrongly.

But it is all about interest. Interesting isn't it?
_________________________________
As always...part two coming soon...I can't help it now that I am interested.

Human Interest, Part 2

2005-08-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

I sat next to Mac at the Coffeehouse and he looked down.

"What's wrong brother ass?" I asked.

"She's dis-interested," he said.

"How can that be?" I asked. "You're a fascinating guy...god who can keep up with you?"

"Not the issue," he said sadly. "They do not pay you to be creative, intelligent, thoughtful and visionary unless major commodities result or you have an agent out selling you."

"You're broke," I said flatly.

"No, I got 8 rolls of pennies under my cutting board and $100 in SF".

"Not bad for 48 years of age," I said without cruelty. He laughed.

"Yeah, but that $100 will collect interest," he said with a Han Solo smirk.

Passion and interest is an interesting thing. One thing immediately shows up with Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. I guess Mac needs money. Gotta have money to collect interest...interest of all kinds.

"She is dis-interested" he said flatly.

"Interested in someone else?" I asked slyly (frankly I'd like to bed her).

"You are a dog Maugham," he said shaking his head.

"Sorry" I feigned, "so what next?"

"The inevitable," he said. "Slowly moving apart..hopefully peacfully and without recrimination. That is all you can hope for."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Why do you always assume it was me?"

"Well track-record. It's like the horses."

"Sigh," he moaned," okay I suppose ...yeah. I mean Maugham. you have known me since 1988...ever met a woman that can hang with me?"

"I don;t know. I've never found it that interesting a subject to be honest."

"Well, there ya go."
________________
Part 3 manana sports fans...

Human Interest, Part 3

2005-08-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay...I never spoke at this church. I called but they weren't interested in the interesting topics I had in mind. Later I called the Unitarians...not interested either. Finally, a convalescent home where I was greeted with much fanfare and a large bowl of rice pudding.

In the meantime I did go by there, meet the janitor, and when he wasn't looking I "borrowed" the lettering. I plan on doing this on a regular basis because I told him my name was Bob.

In the meantime, I didn't know how to help Mac, which he never noticed because, well I never help him. My sole interest is in picking at his wounds in a sardonic and humorous way when he least expects it. In an odd way this actually does help him, but only on the sly.

He's obviously in misery. He's such an attention whore (the whole ADHD thing) that I find it interesting to ignore him from time to time in conversation. He'll build up a big head of steam and be going full throttle and I'll gaze out the window and pretend to fixate on some other object or idea that is truly interesting as he prattles on (he was, after all, the Men's Freestyle Prattling champion in the Summer games in Barcelona).

That or I interrupt him with some wild tangent, then watch him fume.

Which is not often. As impulsive as he is, Mac has a lot of patience.

I do not and I find this line of thinking very uninteresting.

So what is interest?

Well, the word literally means "to be inbetween" but we do not usually use it so forcefully. Admittedly, when a man in deeply interested in a woman the above definition does fit.

But what of compound interest, self-interest, vested interest, shared interest, and interest groups?

And what of related categories like curiousity, attraction, entertainment, hobbies and love interests?

For example, I am listening to Sheryl Crow, whose music and lyrics interest me. I am blogging away and wondering what readers will find interesting and not. I am interested in how today will go...what I will cook, and drink and if I will make love to a woman. I am interested in my emails and whether the weather will remain cool here. I'm interested in where this whole piece is going because I really, as usual, have no idea.

That's the part that keeps me interested.
________________________________

Part four on the way...

Human Interest, Part 4

2005-08-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

Lance is interested in Sheryl, who is interested in Lance. Lots of folks were interested in Lance's bid to win his 7th straight Tour, and others are interested in Sheryl's next tour. They are an interest magnet.

The interest is obvious because I can use their first names alone amidst 6.5 billion people on Earth and you know who they are.

But only now. Later...two years from now, that interest may wane. Their own interest in each other may dissipate. Human beings are hard to keep engaged. They gain and lose interest easily and then gain new interests unless they simply give up and become irrevocably bored.

It seems often that we are on one side of interest or the other, whether it is monitary interest or personal interest.

And we spend so much time trying to gain the interest of others when, really, so much of everything is about self-interest.

"What's in it for me?" seems the dominant question.

Kissing Your Brother

2005-08-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Mac's guest spot continues. Look for my interview with him in a few days on his site where I kick his wuss-ass. -Maugham
_______________________

Okay, I promised, then forgot to tell about kissing painter Rod Swenson.

There is really not much to tell except in the way of qualifiers.

I have never been homophobic. My best friend in High School was gay, I'm not. I never thought much about it. I just enjoyed his company. He was beautiful, and frankly, so was I.

He never hit on me and I never questioned him in any way. I was a strange irony too because he was a "Christian" and I really enjoyed being an utter heathen. Later he would chuck his own faith and I had a radical conversion experience.

As Vonnegut would say "so it goes".

Still I've never changed in that regard. I have always had friends who were gay, both men and women. I use to work for Life Lobby, which lobby's heavily for both human rights and also for more AIDS research. The head of Life Lobby (a wonderful woman) use to question me quite thoroughly about my Christianity.

I understood. I really loved her and her partner. Still do.

Anyway, I can hear someone saying (fucking neo-freudians) why all the qualifiers?

Are you an idiot?

(Damn, I come on Maug's site and I start to act like him all belligerant and stuff).

Just because I see people...live people. I happen to find women devastating. That's it.

________________

So one day, my good friend and painting mentor Rod Swenson shows up at my door for a party.

There is something immediately comic about both of us. Something over-done...unmistakenly ironic. We both look out of place and are in so many ways.

yet somehow compelling. I doubt anyone who has ever met Rod will ever forget him. Probably same for me.

So, he shows up at my door, and it was a grand place...the same place in the picture.

_____________________

Next...the place...

Kissing Your Brother Part 2

2005-08-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

Part Two...
________________

Okay , this guy I'm not about to kiss though he calls me "FagDonald" and has for twenty-five years or so.

I bring up Rodan (Mike Roe) because you need to understand the lunatic fringe that swept through the San Francisco style house up on the hill in Landpark (Sacramento) in the 90's.

It wasn't just Rod Swenson, or Rodan (of the 77's)...it was a whole cacophony of incredibly talented wierdos. Hogboy, John Spritz, actor Victor Wong, visionaries like Jim Seyman and Thomas Whitney.

Then the usual drop-ins (you know who you were).

One night Rodan and I sat up on the deck after the U2 Zooropa concert at Arco. He smoked and I drank and we lamented the end of a great rock band.

Boy were we wrong. Shit.

_____________________

So the party started and we had invited poets, theologians, artists, musicians and other folk to come and share food, alcohol and their offerings. It was a cool summer night, which is not usual in Excramento.

Other arrived and then the bell rang again leading oput to our exquisite courtyard.

There stood Rod, with that utterly ridiculous half grin on his face. His eyes slightly sad, but strangely hopeful. It made me laugh. We just had a connection. So we both simultaneously kissed each other on the lips.

No tongues, no stuff. It was kinda like what St. Paul says about "greeting one another with a holy kiss". It was defintely holy. And it surprised us both and we laughed at the door...for a few minutes...but also let it be what it was.

I love this guy. Simple.

Holy.

Interview with Mac Part 1

2005-07-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

Recently Maugham Malraux sat down with Mac and interviewed him, a project he had been pestering him about for years. The following is a record of their candid conversation about spiritiuality, religion, the arts and relationships.
____________________________________

MM: Well I often call you a "wuss" in popular discourse, so I must say I am surprised you agreed to this. It's hard enough to get you out for coffee, so O reclusive one, can you tell us why you agreed to do this?

MAC: I thought it about time to address some fairly controversial things and I knew you would be hard on me, yet fair and direct.

MM: Oh great...an agenda?

MAC: Yeah sure. You know damn well I am a subversive.

MM: How did that happen, where did that come from?

MAC: I think I have always had a heart for those oppressed or used by others. When I was younger there was nothing I could do. I was one of the powerless. Later, after my conversion, I suddenly became empowered. You can see the pattern woven throughout my life. I fought cults in the 80s, worked hard in the 90's on church renewal and now am a strong critic of Consumer Christianity.

MM: I have never got the "Christian" thing with you. You seem too smart and you rail against religion every bit as much as I do, though I think you wuss out.

MAC: Well first of all the label "Christian" should be understood as an irony.

MM: An irony? You are shitting me.

MAC: "I wouldn't shit you boy. Yer my favorite turd." Name that movie.

MM: Easy, Cool Hand Luke. Now answer the fookin question.

MAC: The only time the name "Christian" is used in the Bible is in Acts as a term of derision by those who felt threatened by this new faith. The irony is that it is now still a term of derision but for the opposite reasons.

In the early days of the young church they were an anomaly in the community because they had fresh faith and they were known for their love for people, both Jews and Gentiles. Their only power was in their serving others and in their love and faith. That was a threat in the face of the dominant political and religious power structures.

Now we have a situation where the word "Christian" has become synonymous with the dominant political and religious power structures in America. So when I meet someone and they find that I am a "Christian" they assume I am a Right-Wing, Pro-War, Capitalist, Judgmental A-Hole.

MM: And yet you are none of those things except being an A-Hole.

MAC: Right. So we need a new term...maybe "iChristians"

MM: Will that play on my iPod?

MAC: Well, it would raise the question, "what the hell is an iChristian?"

MM: What the hell is an iChristian?

MAC: An ironic one numbnuts. You need more coffee?

MM: No, I'm drinking wine.

MAC: At 10 a.m. in the morning, are you crazy?

MM: I thought it would be more fun because you are so damned serious all the time.

MAC: True. Sorry.

MM: Wuss.
______________
Next...

Interview with Mac Part 2

2005-07-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

Maugham malraux on location.

Part Two.

MM: I want to pursue this thing about the church a little further. You know I am not a Christian or religious at all, so I am curious about it from the outside. What is up with the church in Amerca?

MAC: Well that is too big a question to get into any detail. Some people would look at it through the lens of a culture war. That'd be one way to look at it...but there are probably about 30 different ways to analyze the huge, almost tectonic shifts that are constantly occurring now.

MM: So of those 30 lenses, how do you see it?

MAC: Well you know I am a big Kierkegaard fan.

MM: You read that shit?

MAC: Yeah, because I can and you can't.

MM: Settle down...don't get testy or I'll have to smack you in the nose.

MAC: Kierkegaard lived in Denmark at a time when the Church was supported by the State. It was a situation very akin to where current Christian "Dominionists" would like to see America fall. The ministers of the official Church were actually paid by the State.

Now that is not what these folks want...they want even more. They want to dictate to the State. So it's potentially worse than Denmark in Kierkegaard's day.

Kierkegaard saw the inherent insanity of this and called them out. One guy...just one little guy with a brilliant mind and a small inheritance so he could publish at will.

Kierkegaard made the distinction, and we should to, between "Christendom" and "Christianity". The latter is a living faith deeply connected to God across all denominations, both inside and outside the established "Church".

"Christendom" is the hardened shell of organized religion which reflects the political and economic ambitions of those in power.

Kierkegaard saw the two as utter antithetical.

I do too.

MM: Thanks for the post-graduate lesson in Kierkegaard.

MAC: You asked. What do you want me to say...organized religion is doo-doo? Okay. There.

MM: But you were once an ordained minister.

MAC: Thanks for bringing that up. That's one reason why I do not do interviews.

MM: So weren't you a part of the establishment?

MAC: I was very lucky. I was in a sort of renegade church. Now a days they are very mainstream, which makes me sad, but back then it was very much about loving people, serving them and also loving God. In many ways they were anti-comsumer Christianity. Kids who couldn't afford to go to camp always went anyway, the senior pastor took no salary (a whole other story) and the rock concerts we did on Saturday nights were always free (and quite expensive to put on). No, people and God really came first.

So, no I can honestly say I have never been a part of the establishment. In fact, in any church I have ever been to I am usually met with some degree of suspicion.

MM: Why?

MAC: I imagine it is because I am both fully trained as a scholar/teacher and I am unrepressed and honest, come what may.

MM: Do you regret it..all those years of training?

MAC: No, not at all. In fact few people I have ever met have been exposed to all I have. Hermeneutics, exegesis, Greek and Hebrew studies and the writing of church history across all lines: the Desert Father, Athanasius, Ireneaus, The English Puritans, Pascal, Kierkegaard and then the moderns, etc... 2,000 years of great theological writings and thought.

MM: Are you bragging?

MAC: Er, maybe...I don't get out much.
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Part three on the way...

Interview with Mac Part 3

2005-07-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Part Three

MM: Do you go to a church now

MAC: No.

MM: Why not?

MAC: My girlfriend likes to watch Spongebob on Sunday mornings.

MM: And here I thought you had no sense of humor.

MAC: I'm serious.

MM: Did you do lots of hallucinogens in the 70s?

MAC: No.

MM: So whereas you use to go to church on Sunday mornings with your wife and kids, now you get up on Sundays with your girlfriend, who you live with, and watch Spongebob instead?

MAC: I find Patrick very inspiring.

MM: You're joking.

MAC: Yes, just reminding you that I still have some vestige of humor left even though I gave almost all of it to you.

MM: I think that was wise by the way, because you can be a real drag.

MAC: Thanks. Remember I could erase you at any moment.

MM: Ooooo, I'm scared. You can't fool me. You are a benevolent creator who is far too merciful, plus you love us rascals the best.

MAC: I'll cop to that. "Ask your question bridgekeeper I'm not afraid!" Name that movie.

MM: Oh do get off. Not worth my time. Er, and don't think I didn't notice you derailed us.

Sunday mornings?

MAC: Okay. You have three choices. You can go to a Baby Boomer church were you sit passively and watch the music, the little play, the announcements and the sermon. Then you have coffee (or lattes in the newer ones). Then you go home.

Or you can stay home and turn on one of the TV churches and do all the same things from your couch in utter passivity.

Or you can watch Spongebob.

MM: I see your point. Hmnnn...

MAC: I still do "Church".

MM: But you said...

MAC: I said I did not go to a church on Sunday mornings. I did not say I did not do Church.

I did Church last week meeting with Rick for coffee.

MM: You have been outside another time this week?

MAC: Yes. We meet often for a few hours. It's active, engaging and we both learn. I also email back and forth with people all over the world in an open and very spiritual way.

MM: Christians?

MAC: iChristians...just kidding. Actually they are of all persuasions, beliefs and political affiliations. I would say this, they are all spiritual in their own ways and also very honest. I see a deep connection between honesty, spirituality and even faith.

This is why I see the current juggernaut of political and religious power in America as opposing spirituality and faith. It certainly fails the "love test" that Jesus and the early writers of the New Testament preached.

America is the New Roman Empire and the only answer to the joining of political, economic, and militaristic power under the banner of religion is to be subversive.

The Gospel is inherently subversive while being trans-historical and trans-cultural.

MM: God I forget sometimes how much I hate talking with you. You are SOOOO boring! I'm having a third glass of wine because I can see you are winding up so I wanna get a little tight so I can kick your ass.

MAC: Again, you asked. I admit I am pretty humorless. It's why I became a writer, because I am so annoying in person. I admit that. I do not get how my girlfriend can stand me. Of course, my two ex-wives couldn't.

MM: Was that an attempt at humor?

MAC: Er, I suppose. Can we move on?
_________________
Next...

Interview with Mac Part 4

2005-07-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Roy batty playing chess with his maker in Bladerunner.
_______________

Part 4

MM: You used an old word "Gospel". When I think of that word I think of tent preachers threatening people with hellfire and damnation.

MAC: Well the word simply means "Good News", which is another irony because so many people make it utterly bad news.

Imagine two newspapers delivered to your door. One is pretty much like the one you get today filled with the bad news of murders, rape, incest, scancals and all manner of perversion.

MM: Wait. All manner, or just some?

MAC: Okay, some manner of perversion...the kinda that is bad news for somebody.

Then to that add threats of terrorism, both global and local. Then add to that the secret negative thoughts and judgments of all those around you...in daily print. Then a full page add on the final page, supposedly from God saying "I've been watching, you are in deep shit."

MM: I'd cancel my subscription..

MAC: Really? Do you?

That would be the Bad News newspaper and is representative of those who try and scare/terrorize people for religion's sake.

The Good News newspaper would also arrive. It would not gloss over the realities which had happened, but they would not be front page news by any means. Perhaps they would be in section H with opportunities to help and care for victims.

But the front page would be about how God loves the world and all the ways that had happened, through real people the last 24 hours. It would all be good news. But straight and sober, not saccharin.

It would also be about how people love people just as much. Maybe they do not believe in God, but they believe in love.

That is also Gospel. Good news is good news.

In the midst of hard realities it would also be a celebration of all that is good news.

The relief efforts in Africa, the success of some new medical procedure in France, growing political pressure to bring safety to those under siege in. All the births, and I mean all of them. The woman who beat breast cancer, the man who fixed his elderly neighbor's house. The cop who talked the man off the bridge, the young couple who took a homeless man out to dinner. Love letters, how many times that day people comforted each other in distress. How many times people forgave each other and made new starts.

It's hard for me to even describe Maug, because it is so contrary to what we know. But to answer your question "Gospel" just means "good news". Anything that emphasizes all that is bad is not "Gospel".

MM: Man, you can go on. So what's this trans-stuff. Is that like the margarine I'm supposed to buy at the store so I don't have a heart attack?

MAC: Yer a smart boy. I created you with enough stuff to translate that.

MM: "If only you could see what I see through your eyes..." Name that movie.

MAC: (sigh) Bladerunner...but that isn't the quote you are looking for.

MM: It isn't?

MAC: No, it's the words the replicant says to his creator just before he puts his thumbs through his eyes.

That what you got planned for me?

MM: Your optometrist did call the other day. I believe he said his name was Dr. Batty?

MAC: Very funny. Next question.
___________
Part 5...

Interview with Mac Part 5

2005-07-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

We see through a mirror dimly...

Part 5

MM: Tell me about your art. Do you see that as some divine calling by God?

MAC: No, not at all.

Is it some special assigned calling to do my dishes? I think not. It's just a part of life. I happen to be artistic by nature. The best you can say is that all of our giftedness is somehow reflective of being created in the image of God.

MM: The image of God. You think I am created in the image of God?

MAC: No, you were created in the image of Mac, and I was created in the image of God.

MM: But I am better than you. I am certainly funnier.

MAC: I'll grant you that. You certainly have a freedom I do not enjoy, and if I was an envious being, I would envy you. But I don't. I rather enjoy you. I like that you are more successful than I am. I'm proud of you.

MM: But I just said I was better than you. You aren't even going to argue?

MAC: It's not an important category to me. You want to feel better than me. Good. Feel good Maugham.

MM: Okay, now you are just pissing me off. I think I have been too easy on you in this interview.

MAC: Why?

MM: Maybe it's because you look do sad. I dunno. Are you as sad as you look?

MAC: Perhaps. I certainly thought that things would go different than they have. I suppose that makes me sad. I've known a lot of loss. But that is the price of real human freedom, which is also a gift.

MM: How come you give me so much freedom?

MAC: I respect you and trust you more than you know. It's your life to do with as you please.

MM: How am I doing?

MAC: How do you think you are doing?

MM: I hate it when you do that.

MAC: That's for you to work out. I would suggest you stop drinking and pay attention to your notes.

MM: Is that an order.

MAC: Waiter!? Another Chablis for my friend.

Can we get back to image?

MM: Sure. I'm prettier than you.

MAC: Indeed. You are a sexy beast.

MM: Why did you make me so pretty?

MAC: It's a reflection of some aspect of myself.

MM: You narcissicist!!! How dare you?

MAC: No it's not for me, it's for you, and for others. I am quite content as I am. I only want you to thrive. However I do have a suggestion for you.

MM: Yeah, what is it.

MAC: Well when God created humanity in God's own image the reflected glory or image was "male and female". You need both.

MM: I've got plenty of women.

MAC: That's my point. "Getting women" and living in a relationship with a woman that is reflective is a big swing.

MM: Are you lecturing me?

MAC: No. Just something you might wanna look at. Your choice.

MM: Why do I suddenly feel like you have turned the tables on me?

MAC: Sorry. I may have done that subconsciously. I do care about you. But you are right. This is your interview and you should be harder on me.
_______

Part 6...

Interview with Mac Part 6

2005-07-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

Paradise. Oil on Canvas. Mac

Part 6
_______________

MM: I want to get back to your art.

MAC: So would I. What time is it?

MM: It's only 11:15. Don't wuss out on me. Oh and by the way, this is what sunlight looks like.

Why do you paint?

MAC: I like the mess and physicality of it. Plus it is very hard, whereas writing now comes very easy for me.

I guess I like the challenge of creating something beautiful from nothing.

MM: But not all your paintings are beautiful.

MAC: I disagree, except for the failed ones. Funny you should say that. My father was here recently and off all my painting he by-passed the one I thought the most beautiful and loved the one least likely. Art is that way. It's intuitive. I like that as well.

With writing there is also a lot of intuition. I especially see that in your writing, but not so much in my own. The Saint has some of both.

MM: Oh you had to bring him up. Do you know how many emails I get asking about our relationship to each other. I think sometimes we should just come out and rent a big house on Crete.

MAC: Very funny. No, I need my privacy. You of all people should know that. No I will leave it to you two.

MM: Why did you create him? Wasn't I enough?

MAC: I am not given to flattery, but I must say you have far exceeding anything I could have ever hoped for. I admire your fearlessness, your humor and unique view of the world. I sometimes wish I was you.

The Saint is his own man. While also a fiction, he is smarter than both of us. He does not possess your humor or ironic sense of life, nor is he as grounded in the real world as I have to be.

Frankly we needed a philosopher, and neither you or I was really up to the task. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

MM: You bastard.

MAC: Hey, you get all the funny lines and the female attention. And you get to publish first. You'll always be my fav.

MM: (sniff)... Okay. But if he makes a philosophical mistake I'm gonna get out the rubber hoses and let the beatings begin.

MAC: Yes, well that is why I endowed you with a certain ruthlessness which I could never possess.

MM: Wuss.

MAC: Yes, you could look at it that way, or as compassion.

MM: Whatpassion?

MAC: "Compassion". It means to "come alongside".

MM: I like to look in their eyes...especially the haughty religious and then engage them until they run.

MAC: yes. When you look in my eyes what do you see?

MM: Sadness. I told you that before.

MAC: Well let's take those haughty Religionists for example, in particular those you took on a few months back at the White Chocolate Jesus site.

You seemed to find some glee in banging them like a gong, overturning their tables and commencing with the beatings until they all fled.

True?

MM: Yes. I admit it. I liked it that they took out their usual weapons of blaming and shaming and I was undaunted and simply kept to the issues.

MAC: Did you feel dirty afterward?

MM: Hell no!

MAC: Well I watched the whole thing and it made me very sad. I felt dirty for you.

MM: Why?

MAC: Religion, and its hold on people, is based in fear and anger, rather than faith, hope and love.

It's not often really about God at all. Rather it is about ego, money, fear and power. You do not need those things if you really believe in God. You may have to deal with those inclinations and issues in your own life, or in society, but you will certainly not run to embrace them first, and certainly not in God's name.

The fact is, Yahweh is very anti-religious.

MM: Yah-Who? Is that the divine search engine?

MAC: Very funny. You know darn well smartass. And isn't it funny that the Religionists would stone you for such a comment but God is proabably laughing?

MM: Okay. You caught me. But Excuse me...HELLLOOO...God is anti-religious? Isn't that all religion is, is about God?

MAC: No, faith hope and love are about God.

Religion is about power, control and scapegoating others because we have fear and anger within us.

That is why I am sad for them. I think they mean well but their lack of love and humility makes it impossible for them to not do damage to others. Their need to be "right" excludes some very core realities.

MM: Such as?

MAC: Well, someone once said that in the eyes of God we are always "wrong". All of us. We all know this on some level, that we are fucked up and need help. But those most opposed to this idea are the very ones who are so vehement about the dark side of humanity. Another deep irony.

MM: So you hold a pessimistoc view of humanity?

MAC: No, not at all. In fact, I see God everywhere I go and in everyone. People are beautiful and the love of God swirls around them whether they are aware of it or not. The Religionists are too afraid to just let God be God and let grace flow. They have to try and control it, bottle it and then sell it with their brand on it.

It doesn't work that way. Thus I feel sad whenever I see a group of them open up a new corporate chain and bottle it when they might just as well let it flow freely.

MM: You know you really aren't any fun anymore.

MAC: I was never really any fun after 1986.

MM: What happened in 1986?

MAC: No comment, except that I am now an iChristian.

MM: What does that mean again?

MAC: It means we are waiting for a new paradigm to emerge that is honest, relational, filled with faith, hope and love lived out in time and space, and perhaps, even a return to the words and life of Jesus rather than a poltical/consumer agenda of fear and dead religion.

MM: You know, you should have been a preacher.

MAC: I'd rather be a recluse and a writer.

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 1

2005-07-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Guest Appearance by me (Mac) as my friend Maugham is busy today. He was arrested last night in San Francisco for peeing on a Federal Building. He claims he could not find a bathroom for seventeen blocks after three pints of Guinness. Anyway, I'm sure they'll let him out later today. I took this picture in 1991 of Rod holding the black bean dip in the company of Mike and Nissa.
_________________

You lose contact with people all the time, but I was thinking about Rod Swenson yesterday as I was painting. He was my unofficial teacher, although the lessons consisted mostly of our painting next to each other, discussing theory and Rod going "CHRISTOPHER!!! That's WONDERFUL!"

But i got a lot of my coloration from Rod and a sense of taking chances with a series and having fun as you worked it.

Well we lived in Sacramento at the time and now he and LizAnn are in Taiwan, and I am in the Bay Area and our lives have changed a great deal.

I am not longer married, he is. They have adopted a beautiful boy (great painting to come) and that is about all I know.

But that is why Google exists (that and for Google to makes lots of dough).

So I did a Google search and this is what I found.
_____
Next...

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 2

2005-07-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

The first Rod Swenson I found taught or teaches at the University of Conneticut. His forte seems to be moving beyond Cartesian dualisms and the inherent epistimological problems inherent in such and view new models. He reminds me of The Saint, only he's not as funny and sexy.

But he does say this:

we have come to recognize more recently that in complete contrast to the 'Problem of Parmenides' the a posteriori and what may be understood as the a priori given of the epistemic act and its entailments collapse to a single set of principles. Among other things, for example, the otherwise endless and insoluble debate as to whether idealism or materialism is immediately a non-starter from this view.

A very good Rod Swenson, but not the one I am looking for. Still, I'll send his work over to the appropriate party (The Saint) as I am not smart enough to decipher this stuff, even though my degree was in Psychology.

__________
Next....

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 3

2005-07-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

Rod Swenson is not a world-famous painter, but he is well know in Northern California and in the Pacific Northwest and, in China.

There are a lot of things that Rod and I share. Faith, artistic passion, unrepressed openess (we once kissed on the mouth, but that's another story) and we are both huge. I weigh in at 6'6" and, er, as of late about 275. Rod is like 6'5" and maybe about 240.

And Rod is hard of hearing so when we would meet there would be lots of yelling and the body-slamming of giants.

The reason is Rod is thinner is he does not drive. The picture above in 1991 was a few months from his 50th birthday. I'm still two years away from that millstone (hehe) and he's probably in better shape.

Rod bikes, walks or others cart him around. Did he ever drive? I have no idea. I just remember being in the cafe and seeing him bike low and lean on one of those weird sit down-lay-back bikes, usually with a weird hat and strange contentment on his face.

"There goes Rod".

Anyway, the Rod Swenson in Connneticut is not the same Rod Swenson.

So I added artist and got the Rod Swenson who use to manage the Plasmatics, wrote lyrics with Wendy O. Williams (and also Kiss) and was a photographer (he did the shirt above).

He was also William's companion and the one who found her after she killed herself.

Apparently this Rod Swenson was a control freak and very difficult.

Not the right Rod Swenson, though I'd love to see him try and handle a chainsaw.
_______

Next...

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 4

2005-07-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

When I finally got past rock star managers and psychology profs concerned with autocatakinetics, I started to find his artwork, including some fantastic self portraits.

I am proud to own maybe 6 originals, including 4 "Bob the Dog" paintings, which are quite popular.

It is hard to find really great art that is engaging yet affordable. Rod has this utter commitment to having his artwork available to everyone. One of my favorites I bought for $80. I wouldn't sell it for $800, even if I was starving (actually it's currently on display in the little Jedi's room to inspire her).

Anyway if you go HERE, you will see how affordable these wonderful pieces are. And remember, the gallery (and it is a fine gallery by the way) probably gets 40 percent.

But then Rod and LizAnn live in Taipei. My guess is (and this is in sheer ignorance) that our shoestring budget here in Marin for a month would probably match theirs for most of a year if not the whole thing.

It's relative. So Rod charges $275 for a painting and I charge $3k . It works out abt the same.

Weird that way. Personally, I like his chances better because he comes HERE and sells the whole lot...then beats it back to China.

Smart guy that J-Rod.
____________________

Next...

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 5

2005-07-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

When I first met Rod I was seeking refuge at a "liberal" Presbyterian church in Sacramento. I had been humiluated, masticated and pooped out the far end by some Fundagelicals and yet I still retained some love for God.

I had long drak hair down my back and, well you get the overall physical picture. I had a wide berth to say the least.

Still someone found out (ah yes, I remember now who it was...) I was a long-time student and master teacher in biblical literature. After a year or two they roped me into doing a small class.

I did no promotion. I hoped no one would show.

There were four people who showed up. Great. But one was Rod.

Rejected by his girlfriend in San Francisco he, in his very late 40's had to retreat to Sacramento and live with his mother.

Someone invited him to church. He came to the class. he had twenty years of built up ammo to spray my body with.

Except that never happened.

Because I agreed with him. I laughed...we dug deeper...we explored.

He looked dizzy when we were done. But he came back the next week and every week after for a very long time.

Then he met the beautiful LizAnn, years his junior but quirky just like Rod...funny...iconoclastic...containing a certain "light" that Rod immediately saw.

He wooed her. They married and the only reason I was not there was my best friend of 30 years (who had never been married) was getting marreid the exact same day in San Diego.

Still poems were exchanged which will be posted here later.

They moved to Taiwan, then Taipei and they adopted a son there who I have never met, but seeing the painting above...omigod..so perfect.

So where are you Rod Swenson and what are you doing now?

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 6

2005-07-29T08:12:00.000-07:00

The (e)volition of Bob the Dog

There are Bob the Dog murals in Sacramento, and they should actually be in every major American city because they have a certain quality that speaks to the inner child while also being adult and realistic.

I own the one above, and it is perhaps my favorite.

But Bob has changed over the years. The new Bob is thicker...much more so, and I am curious about that. Also, he has developed teeth and a tongue (of course he still has no eyes).

His themes are the same...and the playfulness and the ironies still swing and circle around the paintings. They are kinda irrestible unless you are dead and cynical.
_____
Next...

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 7

2005-07-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a great example of how Bob has changed. Then an old favorite theme...

Searching for Rod Swenson Part 8

2005-07-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

Bob Considers a Long Term Relationship.

This is an old theme that has been deepened. Give me some comments on what you think it means. It use to be Bob and Ms. Bob in hula skirts and guitars...now it's a bit diff.

Again...here is the link to see them all.

2005-07-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

next art project...I am going to attempt to paint this this evening.

Answers Three: Literary genre

2005-07-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

Dani writes:

Dear Maugham,

What is your favorite genre?

Well, er...mine. That is why I love to write every day.

So what genre is mine?

Well Gonzo for sure after the late Good Doctor...and you must all read Fear and Loathing Las Vegas.

I like a mixture of Gonzo journalism, farce, hard-core philosophy, and humor...then I like to sex it up a bit with more relational stuff.

But humor is pretty key.

My literary mentors are an impossible grouop. Someday I should write a short book where I force them all into the same room for a night of wining, dining and debate.

Who would come?

Walker Percy (semiotics), Woody Allen (farce...and yes he would have to come alone), C.S. Lewis (theology), Anne Lamott (everything), Ernest Becker (Science and Academia), Thomas Merton (Spirituality), Thich Nyat Hanh (Wisdom), Peter Berger (Sociology), Denis DeRougemont (Love and Romance), David Sedaris (Culture), Spalding Gray (the Human Condition), and Jon Stewart (Politics).

Oh..and Bono.

Answers Two: The Political Landscape

2005-07-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

From Tabitha:

Dear Maugham,

What do you see as the positive traits of the following political parties:

libertarians
green peace
democrats
independants
republicans
socialists
constitutionalists
communists ?

Woo-hoo...well let's note she says "positive traits" so that makes this a bit more fun and not such a downer. Obviously my answers will be short. I do, howver have to confess great depths of ignorance on the details and probably most of the main points. I am not very political, but strangely activist?

libertarians- I think they are free to do as they please, within reason.

green peace- Keep up the good work, but stop getting run over by traulers.

Did you mean Green Party? They make a lot of sense.

democrats- For not being very different from republicans, they still seem to give a rat's patootie about education, the poor, health care and the environment. That and they are sexier than the republicans who think bombing and greed are more sexy. They are mistaken.

independants- Idealists who should be listened to. Gutsy and should always be considered. My 7 year daughter (the Jedi) is an Independent. She told me the other day.

republicans- I'm drawing a blank here. Education, war, terrorism, economy, deficits, honesty, moral values...hmnnn...I'll get back to you Tabs.

socialists- Are there any Socialists anymore? I'm ignorant.

constitutionalists- Well I wish them well because if they love the Consitution they are surely doomed.

communists- I have no knowledge of what remnant remains after 1989. Perhaps a noble but utterly doomed enterprise from the beginning because people do not function that way (unless at gunpoint...I admit that does get them going a bit).

Others!?

Maugham adds!!

anarchists- They are a lot of fun at parties. You just never know what they will do next (in fact, neither do they). They dance in fountains and super-glue hockey pucks to their cars. Ya gotta love that on some level.

existentialists - okay..kind of a downer group...but they have weird eyes, wear funny hats, and quote Kierkegaard a lot. Sartre said "Hell is other people". Personally I think "Well is other people."

scientologists- They could become positive if John Travolta and Kirstie Alley would just bitch-slap Tom Cruise back to reality.

Answers One: The Revenge of the Lobster

2005-07-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

This one came from Mitzzee:

Dear Maugham,

What's your favorite tourist attraction?

Well, Mitzzee, that is an easy one. I do not always do so well on the really high velocity rides, so I like something tamer, like Star Tours at Disneyland.

Unfortunately the last time I went it was only 18 hours after a dinner of lobster in Mexico and after waiting for 7.5 hours in line for Star Tours, I started to feel lower-intestinal issues, kinda like how the Sarlac must have felt three weeks later after ingesting Boba Fett.

Anyway, we got in and the Lobster struck back! Right there in my favorite attraction: Star Tours.

As the ship dipped and swerved I realized I was doomed. The Lobster had reached up and grapped my intestines with his claws and he was tearing them to pieces and creating a giant proton torpedo in my gut which he was preparing to fire with glee.

I could hear the rumblings down there as the Lobster cursed after the first shot (which I somehow blocked (I am trying hard not to be too graphic here).

"It's away!"

"Negative...it didn't go out...it just impacted on the intestinal wall"

I was sweating profusely and those strapped next to me started to look worried and like I might be some sort of wierdo. They were, of course, my own children, but they are very smart.

As our ship dipped down and went into the trench for the final attack run, the Lobster also made his last attack run. He turned off his navicomputer (I have no idea how he got that thing down there...must have been hidden in the refried beans) and grabbing what was left of my insides and shot one more time...

Again, I do not want to be too graphic. Let's just say that my seat belt snapped abruptly and I did a great imitation of an Apollo Moonshot right there in the Star Tours space shuttle.

People were screaming and as the ship rocket back and forth, the droid operating the ship closed the front shields and fled.

After stages three four and five I was sure I would die and the Lobster would have exacted his revenge.

But suddenly all became silent. I fell unconscious in a toxic fog.

Men in orange Haz-Mat suits stormed the empty shuttle and dragged me to safety before quarantining the entire area, including the gift shop.

I am now permanently barred not only from Disneyland, but also from parts of Mexico.

Next!

ASK MAUGHAM

2005-07-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

I've been writing like a fiend on speed, adrenline and dark french roast. I finished the book (The Coffeehouse Diaries). It will be uop for awhile, then down as I get a publisher. For the few of you who read this blog, I am deeply grateful for your comments and encouragement. It has been fun to write these for you.

Writng, for me, is like pitching. The more I have done it (and as many of you know I do it across about 6 blogs)...really daily, the faster the ball goes and it really becomes fun. So while I am doing the marketing part I want to keep my hand in a bit, even if I'm just keeping the arm warmed up.

SOOOOOOO...you are all very bright. Would you submit some questions?????

You can ask on any subject, but if it is about me personally you may get a smart-ass answer equal to a love pat.

It can be something that has plagued you, or pissed you off, or you are just curious about.

It'll be fun!

Can you name them?

2005-07-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

I got this idea directly from Mitzzee!

See if you can name the folks above in order.

CoffeeHouse Diary #12: The Funny Story

2005-07-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

It's not easy to write a funny story, and even harder to write one that also has any substance. It's one of the reasons I enjoy farce, because you do it simply for the laughs and laughs are their own reward.

Plus women say that it's sexy in a man, and let's face it, a lot of us guys, writers, are not gonna win any beauty contests. Look at Hemingway, or even my Uncle Andre.

Not pretty men.

Overweight, bloated from alcohol and sitting behind a typewriter for months at a time...I mean my favorite picture of Hemingway is one where he is sprawled on the bed, his huge gut jutting up in the air looking like Shamu harpooned and beached. He's snoring and is holding a Harvey Wallbanger in one hand and Monolete's left ear in his right.

Anyway, my challenge a few days ago from good friend Sex (another story) was to write some fiction because I have been on a tear lately writing true stories or philosophical pieces .

Okay, so how do you write something "funny" (of course, she wanted me to do something really "sexy"...go figure).

It's easy to write sexy scenes, especially if you are a good writer and male because you probably write about seven or eight in your head everyday anyway (it's called fantasizing).

But there is nothing easy about writing comedy or farce. At the core is a "discrepancy" that you hold together no matter how disparate. The laugh is inbetween what is expected and what happens.

So as I was writing this piece of farce something strange happened. I wrote the Great American Novel instead.

Everyone says they will one day write a great novel, when in fact, most of them can barely pen a gift card on a birthday. Everyone has their "idea" for a novel or their screenplay. But they rarely ever write more than a few journal entries, or a grocery list. Some just sign for UPS or FedX packages.

So there I was. I set out to write a simple piece of farce and 689 pages later the novel was finished. I contacted my agent, The Colonel, who is only 5 degrees of separation away from Kevin Bacon, who is only three from the King of Finland, who is 4 away from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's fictitious character Ivan Denisovich, who has not suprisingly, not returned any of my calls.

The Colonel did return my call and I told him about the book and about Hemingway laying half naked on the bed like a beached whale and how awful it was to be a writer because you had no control really. You wake up and someone challenges you to write about sex and you want to write about humor instead (this is the only part that makes any sense, because one often leads to the other, if you get my drift), then write a huge epic that Paramount has already shown interest in.

In fact, by early the next morning word had gotten out faster than Paris Hilton can say "do me" and Warren Beatty had bid on the serial rights on eBay by noon. He and Annette argued furiously over the wisdom of this in a Yahoo chatroom, then later in an AIM chatroom, then they decided to simply turn to each other and speak.

In the meantime, Warren was outbid and was only able to purchase cereal rights to the film adaptation. So now Beatty has the cereal rights but will have to lobby the milk industry if he wants anything done with my screen adaptation.

I feel no sympathy. I didn't even want to write the damned thing. It just came out...a truly original novel. I just wanted some guffaws, not accolades and potential honorary degrees.

But by 10:30 a.m. that day I had received three honorary doctorates via Federal Express. Four more came UPS. Airbourne called and said another seven had been misrouted to Memphis the night before where a furious scanning battle had taken place between the main Federal Express tarmac and the few beleaguered Airbourne couriers.

The Airborne couriers escaped by wearing 3-D glasses and putting their hands over the "blue" side, rendering the FedX folks, and their scanners powerless to scan them.

But as I said, they were in the wrong city and so the degrees were nonetheless misdelivered to a local Piggly Wiggly the next morning and were given to the first seven customers in the express line who purchased the rotisserie chicken and a bucket of slaw.

By 2 p.m. the lucky recipients of the degrees, a faculty of seven, had formed the Maugham Malraux Graduate School of Literature in Buckhead. They had secured a campus, a groundskeeper, several grants and they celebrated over it all with rotisserie chicken, buckets of slaw and washed it down with 18 six-packs of Coca-Cola.

Of course, it is a little strange because every one of the new professors is named Maugham Malraux (imagine what that would do to your head everyday), but I hear they are thinking of color-coding themselves or using white-out to make some adjustments to the documents.

*******
I just wanted to write something funny...a farcical romp. Damn. Fucking Great American Novel. I was distracted now. And I was throughout the major middle sections of the novel. I kept wanting to crack jokes or have this powerful immigrant family suddenly kidnapped by terrorists and forced to do slave labor in a Krispy Kreme shop or a Big O Tires, or join a major religion like Wal-Mart.

But the dead seriousness was compelling. I tried antidotes that would derail me enough to get me back to farce. As I wrote I slapped in Pink Panther movies, I slapped in movies about watching Pink Panther movies.

I even tried watching Fox News.

Nothing worked. The numbers were climbing as I typed away. I tried pouring chablis on my keyboard. It simply burped and a Microsoft XP sent a pop-up, "Nice try..back to work asshole".

Life can be so unfair.

At page 600 I thought I had a plan. As the deep ironies piled on from brilliant after brilliant chapter (really going back to page one, which was truly breathtaking in it's iconographic pluralism) I saw a dream sequence coming. This was my way out. I could retro-fit all this deeply comic/tragic literature by savagely reversing field at page 604...kinda like Keir Dullea in 2001 A Space Odyssey going through the warp to the baby room, only the reverse. I would go from the baby room BACK through a massive arcade (circa 1983) and land in the board room of the newly formed graduate school named after me where I could address all the other Maugham Malraux's at once and actually steer this novel into the farcical romp it was intended to be in my own brain.

But it had already been sold on eBay and was completely out of my control. Sure, by then they had sent out a check for 5.8 million dollars, which I planned to promptly cashed at the local 7-11,but it was misrouted once again through Airbourne and promptly was used to raise a new medical facility in addition to the literature wing at the new college.

Faced with financial woes and a multi-city book tour with no agent (the Colonel had left the country by this time for Belize with the royalties from my Beatty cereal rights) or money I was forced to take a defensive posture which on limited funds consisted of hiring and hiding behind former all-Pro Bubba Paris and pretending I was J.D. Salinger.

I guess the moral is simple.

Just tell a funny story.

CoffeeHouse Diary 11: Guns and More Guns 1

2005-07-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

I had dinner with Mac last night in Corte Madera. I managed to get him a little tight and was able to extract some stories out of his sordid past in Bible College.

I find it hard to see him there, but I love the stories, and some involve guns.

Back in the very late 70's this poor sap enrolled in a Fundamentalist Bible College in, of all places, San Francisco.

As you might expect it was in constant lock-down with barbed-wire-fencing to keep all the evils of the City at bay.

To hear him describe it it was like waking up every day in a Surrealist painting (How many Surrealist's does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer later).

They could not wear jeans, had to sign in and out no matter where they went, had to sign "morality papers" etc...

I can't see Mac there as anything but a caged Bengal Tiger (even if he is a wuss).

But he met two other Bengal Tigers, and apparently they kept themselves sane in unusual ways. But I'll leave that to him to describe.

My interest is in guns of all kinds.

*******

One of Mac's first gun stories was about living in the dorms. A friend had taken a picture of him standing with two shotguns and he is wearing a ridiculous sort of safari suit and sunglasses.

I feel certain the man has never fired a real gun and if he did something bad would happen.

No he can only be trusted with toy guns, which is what he had at this Bible College.

To hear him describe it, it was a slightly modified Star Trek Tracer gun, the type that shoots those little plastic disks out and a moderate velocity.

Not good enough for Mac. No, he had to modify it.

The result of repositioning the spring-loading device was that it only fired maybe one out of three shots that he pulled the trigger on. The bonus was the little disks came out like lightening when they did. Blammo!

So it was no surpise that a group of young Bible students...all men (for the dorms were strictly verboten to those of the opposite sex, and I believe Mac was the only man ever to smuggle a woman into his room, but that is another story), seeing the picture of Mac with the shotguns and the caption "Do You Feel Lucky?" decided that given their sheer numbers, and the fact that the other two Bengal Tigers were off elsewhere (they checked) he would be an easy target.

Now I should note that a Bible College can be a place of great repression and suppression. Everyone is supposed to love their neighbor, but in fact, they often hate them.

Certainly Mac had built up sufficient ill-will amongst the brethren. He had, and he admits to this now, made many an announcement about the balding R.A. of his hall, "Jared Bond" saying "Jared Bond, the world's shortest, shiniest secret agent, was killed today when King King mistook him for a Ban roll-on".

This was how the attackers got the keys to his room no doubt.

Then there was Kevin across the hall who felt a bit jealous about the attention that Mac got from the Dean of Women (another story Mac will have to tell). Then there was the usual Fundie Riff-Raff that Mac constantly cut down like fresh grass, often using their own textual passages against them.

Their names were Slider and Scorfull. And they both hated him

[And I have to say, as he now describes this he exudes a certain level of shame over his actions, for he had become far too compassionate man in my view. I would gladly thrash these folks.]
_______________

Next, a knock on the door and a terse battle...

CoffeeHouse Diary 11: Guns and More Guns 2

2005-07-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

So they were coming for him, also armed with Star Trek tracer guns and there were at least six of them.

There was a knock on the door. Mac set down his exegetical Greek commentary on the Johannine Epistles and yelled out "who is it?"

"We feel Lucky Bacdon!" the leader yelled. "And your allies are all gone!"

He slided open the draw and put on his sunglasses and made sure his modified pistol was loaded in his right hand. The normal version was in the left but would not be his area of focus. really just a distraction.

There was only maybe 6 feet from his desk, which faced the door, to what was about to come bursting through the door.

He steeled himself and then it happened.

The door swung open violently and a crowd of young men began to fire. Mac could see the disks coming in like slow motion. Most of them veared to the left or right and smecked or placked harmlessly against the back window behind him. Smeck...smeck smeck..plack...plack...plack.

But of course many of them found their way home, lodging in his hair, spinking off his vest, grazing off his shades.

But he did not pay it any mind for he had one goal...the modified tracer gun in his right hand.

And it was at that moment that he focused and fired as he saw Scorfull's gleeful face light up as moved into and fired.

Those pearly whites and the glee sharpened him as he fired. He watched a disk swing far right and smeck the wall. Then two misfires. But the next shot jumped out of the gun and drilled Scorfull just at the bottom of his front tooth, sending him reeling back through the crowd of attackers and taking half of them with him.

Mac got up, still firing and slammed his door as he heard Scorfull howling in the hallway "My tooth my TOOTH!!!! Omigod, My TOOTH!!"
_______________________

More toy guns...they are the best where humans are involved.

CoffeeHouse Diary 11: Guns and More Guns 3

2005-07-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

I have two young sons and as violent as I can be in my writing ("let the [literary] beatings begin") I am not so physically.

So I decided that my sons should not have toy guns of any kind...until one day I came out into the yard and saw Ian grab up his rubber alligator and garb the left set of legs and begin to machine gun down his brother with the aliigator/machine gun.

They are just gonna do it.

It's everywhere. Guns.

*******

When I was talking with Mac last night he told me a story. He had a tradition of taking his sons to the beach on father's Day and they would always have a waterfight with waterguns.

But this one year they were away from regular sources of water and so he had prepared (remember, this is the same guy who modified a Star Trek tracer gun and took out a guy's tooth).

So this one year he bought motorized squirt guns that had actual "clips" that you could slap into the bottom of the pistol when the others ran out.

He hid the guns and the clips in a duffle bag dark and deep. He felt he had it under control even when he saw his sons up the hill preparing to come sweeping down like banshies.

He cooly grabbed his pistols out and set them on the picnec table amid the ample food and drink. Then he looked for the clips.

GONE.

The apple had not fallen far from the tree and the lads were one step ahead of him all the way.

Then came the rebel yell as they came howling down out of the hills in full attack mode with super-soakers and all manner of a water attack.

There were only seconds to adjust. Mac knew he was screwed. Oddly, he had a brief flashback to Scorfull reeling back after the plastic disk had richocehted off his left front tooth.

He grinned, twisted the two tops quickly off of the two sport bottles and slunk the two motorized pistols into them and began to fire as the attack began in earnest.

___________________________

What happened next...

CoffeeHouse Diary 11: Guns and More Guns 4

2005-07-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

Howling out of the hills in a full attack run the two highlanders came down with a vengeance.

Their pre-attack treachery and planning had secured victory and they had superior numbers and water-power.

UNTIL...

The lids twisted off the sport bottles were suddenly replaced by the motorized pistols which now had a much larger cache of ammunition.

Mac raised the guns in each hand and began to fire...leading each of his attackers ever so much so that the spray would stray across their eyes as they came.

The older one went yelling off into the hills realizing that something had gone horribly wrong at the last moment. The young one just dropped down, dropped his super-soaker, rubbed his eyes and cried out "Daddy!! My eyes are stinging!!!"

It was then that Mac realized the juice in the sportsbottles was, in fact, lemonade.

________________________

But seriously folks...

CoffeeHouse Diary 11: Guns and More Guns 5

2005-07-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

Now as you may know by now, I have been on the receiving end of a gun or two.

I have not been shot, but I have been shot at.

It's weird because if this tiny little piece of metal makes it's way into a vulnerable part of your body, you can be dead in minutes.

If not, then you just get an adrenaline rush x 5.

It certainly is nothing like television. I was up last week with The saint and he told me how it use to be...one quick shot...no blood and no one yelled...they went quiet.

[I think he misses the old days]

Anyway, we live is a far more dangerous world. Today a man was shot in London for jumping a turnstile, yet it made sense. The NRA continues it's lobby for automatic and semi-automatic assault weapons for "hunters" (gotta spray those deer!); and we speak opening of freedom when we really mean death. Another man was drunk and waved a gun which went off through his head...death and more death.

That is why guns exist...whether for humans or animals or whatever. They deliver death, which comes anyway, but a bullet comes sooner.

I like water guns, and even disks that ricochet off teeth...because it's all in good fun on some level.

Death is not.

CoffeeHouse Diary 10: Death to all Sequels

2005-07-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

From the Diaries a few years back..obviously, but no less true today.

I hate sequels. I assume they are fun for the reunited cast and lucrative for the producers, but they are generally awful for the audience.

Just mentioning City Slickers 2 or Highlander 2: The Quickening, evokes that sickening feeling of being duped by a dreadful second production.

The problem with sequels is that there is usually no more story to tell. The original film had a beginning, a middle and a definitive end. But as quick as you can say "box office grosses," writers are being hired to resurrect dead characters and figure out ways of doing the same successful story over again...yet...um...differently.

Where will it end? Can we be saved from Gump 2: Forrest Through the Trees and Notre Dame 2: Return of the Hump?

We can.

It seems George Lucas has figured out how to give people more of what originally delighted them. We now have Star Wars: The Special Edition. Opening on January 31, this re-mastered version of the 20 year-old hit has added scenes, improved visual effects and better sound. Scenes with Jabba the Hut, Boba Fett and a more "scummy and tyrannical" Mos Eisley space port promise to greatly enhance the ground-breaking original. What fun!

We need a new cinematic saying: "What goes around comes around in the director's digital re-master with additional scenes," (DDRAS). The rule should be: If the story isn't truly over, do the sequel; but if it's over, do a DDRAS.

And who says it has to stop with just one re-mastering of the original? The Star Wars trilogy invites a host of possible "alternate versions" for re-release. Next are just a few I've come up with.

CoffeeHouse Diary 10: DDRAS

2005-07-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Renegade Droid version
Flashback scenes show that C3PO was originally a hairstylist (R2-D2 was 3PO's professional styling caddie). In the Renegade Droid Version, C3PO is publicly ridiculed for his participation in the Princess' "Horns 'O Plenty" hairstyle debacle. When no one proves able to disassemble her braided pastry-like structures, the droids are arrested and scheduled for exile to the spice mines of Kesstle. The droids escape during the confusion of Vader's attack on their ship and plan to open a beautician's school in Mos Eisley. When 3PO and R2 discover rampant droid racism amidst the scum and tyranny of the space port, they hire mysterious stranger Han Solo to bust up the locals and restore order and commerce.

At the end of the film we see R2-D2, bitter and despairing over his lot in life, drinking himself to disassembly with gallons of WD-40 in his own private version of Leaving Mos Eisley.

The Mythopoetic version
George Lucas' own studies with Joseph Campbell aided in this classical re-casting of the male myth of Iron Obi-Wan. Young Luke discovers the "hairy man" (Chewbacca) at the bottom of a Sarlac pit and enlists his help. Chewie leads him to his "male mother," Iron Obi-Wan, who reveals that Luke's father, Darth Vader, and controlling twin sister, Leia, are responsible for abandoned him on the planet Tattoinne (which means "never-ending ball of dust").

After Luke, Han and Chewie have captured Leia from her father's death star and she says, "Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way," Chewie demonstrates the "Rite of the Hairy Man" by ripping off one of Leia's horns 'o plenty. Luke follows suit, thus enacting the breaking-away ritual from his controlling twin sister. True spiritual masculinity is re-established when Iron Obi-Wan defeats Lord Vader in battle and Luke self-publishes his first chapbook of poetry, Stories my Father Never Told Me.

Next...er more foolishness...

CoffeeHouse Diary 10: Death to all Sequels 3

2005-07-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

"ah that feels better..."

The Original Face versions
Star Wars remains the same, but The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are completely re mastered with actor Mark Hamill's original "before-the-crash" face morphed onto his character's body. These versions will not only replace the "pug-faced Luke" that Hamill's plastic surgeon created after his car crash, but may answer the question, "How come Harrison Ford gets $5 million a picture while Mark Hamill is doing voice-overs for Batman cartoons?"

The Realist Version
Normal movie conventions are set aside in the Realist Version. For example, could aged Obi-wan really fight Darth Vader long enough to cause a diversion? The Realist Version goes like this:

Vader: I've been waiting for you Obi-wan

Obi-wan: You can't win Darth, If you strike me down I shall...

PAPHHHHHISSSSSSTTTTT! With a flash of Vader's lightsaber Obi-wan is disintegrated.

There is no diversion, and as Vader steps down on Obi-wan's empty cloak the rest of the rebel party are quickly arrested. Han gets shipped off to Jabba in an overnight bag, the Droids packed off to the spice mines of Kesstle, Luke joins the Dark side and leads a rout of the rebellion forces (in exchange for 18 years of back allowance his father has neglected to pay), and Chewbacca becomes a throw-rug under the Emperor's mantle.

The only problem with the Realist Version is the outcome. With no one left to fight and conquer, the Evil Empire has nothing left to do.

Vader: What is thy bidding my Master?

Emperor: I want you to wax the Shuttle.

Vader: It shall be done as you command, my Master.

Two days later.

Vader: I have finished waxing the Shuttle. What is thy bidding, my Master?

Emperor: I want you to clean all the windows of the Death Star!

Vader: You are indeed evil, my Master.

In the final scenes we find Darth in his boxer shorts, popping Hoth-filtered Tuscan Pale Ale, and channel-surfing through the 37,000 channels on the Death Star's satellite array while muttering about the good old days of the Clone Wars.

While some of these DDRAS versions may be questionable, every one of them is better than a typical sequel. And if you still doubt me, rent Highlander 2: The Quickening, and watch it (and Christopher Lambert and his new and immortal extra 30 pounds) alongside the new 10th Anniversary DDRAS of the original Highlander.

I don't know. You tell me.

James Bondage Part 1

2005-07-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

The reason for this picture will become clear shortly.
_________________________________________

Recently, I was sitting at the cafe thinking about Wittgenstein, language and the matrix of questions which surround being human. Let's face it, for all of our cultural diversity, we share some pretty common issues: the meaning of life, the nature of relationships, the fear of death, the desire for love, the pangs of lust and the inevitability of taxes.

Well I was really on a roll that morning...something big. My mind was cutting the peripheral issues like a hot razor through custard (as opposed to the usual wooden spatula through a honey-baked ham). Most unusual was the new way how I was thinking.

I have a very "Greek" mind. I tend to look at things as a yes-no, left-right, on-off, 1-2 situation with varying degrees in between. . But that morning, sipping on a double white-mocha and with the espresso kicking in I began to see things differently and a new model began to emerge - a multi-faceted model - a web of interconnected relationships between scientific disciplines (see below) that would by-pass the overly rationalistic, stiff and competitive model the modern university uses. I began to see complete inter-relationships and my mind was now racing at top speed.

At that moment, I reached down to take a swig of my mocha and BAAAM! My brain was suddenly turned into guacamole.

I swear, all I did was look up from my notepad. Had I known she was there, I would never have looked up. But I did and my eyes met hers and was returned unaverting. The moment stood a little outside of time until she smiled, and I smiled and we both blushed. Then she turned and walked away.

I returned to my notebook but it was futile, my brainpan filled with a quivering pile of mush.

I had been reaching for Einstein's shoelaces and now was a stricken adolescent whose body was in complete hormonal imbalance without possibility of recovery.

Life can be so cruel.

Not mysteriously, suddenly I cared less about Wittgenstein and the meaning of life. All I wanted to do was find her, walk with her, joke and laugh, smell her light perfume, wrap my arm around her waist and feel her soft lips.

Game over, at least that day.

_____________________
Part two: James Bond makes us espresso

James Bondage Part 2

2005-07-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

When I saw my first espresso machine I was enchanted. It was a large brass monster with a high-handled plunger which a man approached and brought down extracting a small cup of delicious nectar. Then the man steamed some milk and combined the two, placing a silver spoon onto the saucer before handing it to M who asked, "Is that all it does?"

This man knew how to do things right, and was, of course, Bond, James Bond.

I was sitting in the theater with four friends watching Live and Let Die, Roger Moore's first attempt to fill Sean Connery's not-so-saintly shoes.

And we were taking notes on everything because our fathers were basically slobs who wouldn't know espresso from Sanka, an Austin Martin from an Opel GT, or a Guiness Stout from a Coors Light.

No, we were taking notes because Bond women were hot, and Bond was our only teacher.

But there was more than that.

________________________

I think it is widely understood that Sean Connery was the quintessential Bond, and as such has been a dominant definition of masculinity over the last forty years (no matter what Barbara Walters says).

But what is the meaning of James Bond? What is the essence?

________________________

Load torpedo bay three.

James Bondage Part 3

2005-07-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

Ruggedly handsome, well equipped (in all senses apparently); buxom women are drawn immediately to his charisma; and he can fight (see above) underwater without head gear and still look handsome.

He is also licensed to kill, travel at will to exotic locations, boink whomever he pleases, eat and drink as he sees fit and, er...save the world in the meantime.

Then he has all those wonderful toys. Cars that spray oil slicks, dive underwater as subs, have submachine guns or just turn invisible.

Watches that explode, deflect bullets, track bad-guys and still tell time. Jet-packs, Little Nellie, high-powered scuba gear, boats with missiles, etc...surely this is also the appeal.

Nope.

It helps...they all enhance the persona, the Bond Ethos. But that isn't it. It's deeper if you can believe that anything is deep in a Bond film besides regular penetration of women or the bad guys secret lair.

_____________________
Next Bond:The Unalienated Man.

James Bondage Part 4

2005-07-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

International politics, the most seductive women, deadly enemies both male and female, death and split-second decisions at every turn 24/7.

Yet Bond moves with a self-confidence and wholeness that is unshakeable. Everyone responds to Bond, enemies, femme fatales and lovers alike. In fact, it's the villains that seems most hard-pressed to impress this man.

So whether Bond is at the roulette wheel, playing baccarat, holding a dangerous woman, or behind the wheel of a Lotus underwater, it really does not matter.

He does what he pleases in the moment like a savvy Zen Master (with a raised eyebrow) because the universe seems to bend to his style and will.

And what is more appealing than that?

__________________________

Which brings me back to the beauty who made such obvious contact not 20 minutes ago.

She lingers outside at a table. When I look over she is not looking, but I feel her doing the same.

It's a game, a slightly ticklish dance that can go either way. It could end abruptly by one withdrawing, or it could be lightly played, or I could go and just be funny and see what happens.

But Bond would know just what to do. Me? I'm not so sure.

See I am 35 and I have been in love many times. I have been married twice to very beautiful and smart women. So one thing I know is that the universe does not bend to our every whim and desire for comfort and completeness. If it did, mosquitoes would not exist, or if so, at least not most of the Republican party.

And if I an honest about my own abilities to sustain a relationship with a woman I would have to rate myself up there with the captain of the Titanic and his ability with icebergs.

No. If the world we lived in was not heavily alienated there would not be terrorists, mosquitoes, meter-maids, gas-powered blowers, 6,000 pieces of spam in your email box, pop-ups, the Dallas Cowboys, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
_______________________
Part Five: Women

James Bondage Part 5

2005-07-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

My grandmother took me one the bus to my first Bond film. I;m not sure she knew what she was getting into, but she never let on.

Loved that woman.

So I felt the first stirrings as a young boy of what it looked like for a man to seduce a woman, and for a woman to seduce a man.

It seemed beautiful to me at the time. Almost holy. Maybe it really is.

But we all know Bond, with the rare exception of Tracy (his only wife) really only uses women as it suits him. Some part of his heart is dead and has been all along.

He describes some as like "caviar" to be tasted, others he ruthlesslessly fucks then uses them for advantge. A few he cares a bit about. He is slightly sad when they die. But let's face it, with the exception of Tracy (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) he never allows himsefl to fall in love, not to mention actually learning how to love and care.

No, in this regard, many an average Joe is a lot more man than James Bond could ever be. He is a beautiful shimmering pool 18 feet wide and 300 feet long, but still a baby pool at best.

The deep end is only 27 inches deep.
___________
Conclusion...

James Bondage Part finale

2005-07-19T00:43:00.000-07:00

We are so shaped by movies and the expectation they shape, or the hopes they give us.

Sometimes they workout, because it is a dual deception. They are viewing you like a film as you are doing the same.

Later the re-runs get boring and you find out other films may be more interesting.

Anyway, I had given up on my immediate desire to re-orient/re-structure the modern university in a way that would be coherent and helpful rather than asinine and competitive.

The guacomole sliding around in my brianpan had not yet begun to leak out my ears, so I was safe for a bit.

She was still outside. It was cool and I had the long dark cashmere coat, which is an advantage when you are tall and lean as I am.

I wondered what Bond would do. He would know exactly what to say and do. But then he is just a fiction.

I immediately reminded myself that I am just a fiction as well.

Which really helped me get my courage up.

I wrapped up my leather journal and stuffed it into the down inside pocket of the long coat.

(I admit, in the coat I look a bit menacing, especially with my long flowing hair down the collars.)

I walked out in the smoky air knowing she was watching me.

So I came straight over with my head slightly down. Then looked up as she studied her book.

"You left something inside" I said.

"Excuse me?" she said looking mock-surprised.

"You left your blush," I said, "which I picked up alongside mine." I smiled.

"My blush?"

"Yes, they both dropped to the floor at the same moment and they scampered off together...didn't you see that?"

"no I must have missed that" she smiled widely.

"Well they did...they ran off together and are partying at Old Ironsides right now."

"Hmnnn."

"Care to go for a walk?"

"With you? It's late how do I know I can trust you?"

"ER, my Blush is off with yours," I said looking off.

"I mean they are the ones who have to be protected...we are just guardians, right?"

She laughed and her eyes crinkled up like a kinda of long-wanted release.

"Okay..where do you wanna walk?"

"The capitol? It's a nice night?"

"I have a better idea," she said. "Follow me".

______________________

So I did. I mean I was bigger than her so I was only slightly afraid (hell I am bigger than everyone who is not in football or basketball).

So we walked and talked and laughed a lot. And both our blushings caught up with us after a few blocks and they started to do a dance around us and even make fun.

At this point I parted company with Bond. Confidence and intelligence are one thing, but it is not reality. No. I am better than Bond, even if I am a fiction.

We did not make love that night, nor did we fuck. We listened to old LPs and lighted candles and found some disgusting old chinese food in the freezer. I smelled her raven-colored hair and felt the bone-curve with my hand...that exquisite place that every woman has between her ribcage and her hips.

And I woke up with my head clear and looked at the hair across her face and saw the line of her jaw and her eyebrows and I felt a joy James Bond will never know.

Just one fiction to another. Get a life dude.

Weird Science Part One

2005-07-18T11:07:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been sitting around when suddenly your mind always a little time capsule to bubble up to the surface and you a remember a whole "time" that you had essentially forgotten about?

That what happened this morning as I sat in the Chez Malraux courtyard sipping a spicy cup of Dark French Roast (DFR) with the spirit of Hemingway upon me, saying, "It is good to sit in the courtyard of a villa with the woman you love, drinking strong coffee in the cool of the morning."

I almost said "sipping" but Hemingways never sip.

I had just finished looking at the current edition of The Psychic Reader, and I was wondering why they bother printing the thing out. Why not just, you know, just psychically project it out into the ether?

Oh yeah, the ads. Gotta make bank somehow.

Anyway, as I put the magazine down a sudden detailed memory or series of memories came over me in a sudden Proustian rush as the DFR did that nice bittersweet thing at the back of my palate.

I remembered the old Weatherstone cafe which, at the time, was the only place you could get a cup of DFR in downtown Sacramento. I had been spoiled in San Francisco where cafes have always existed. There were no Java's City's, Starbucks, Cup O'Joes etc... anywhere in the city (if at that time you could call it that. Downtown back then looked like deserted movie set).

Remembering the old dark and dusty Weatherstone, and learning the science of brewing the perfect cup of DFR, I suddenly remembered what had brought me to Sacramento in the first place. I came to study psychology.

The more I sat there the more memories led to other memories and I suddenly began to remember why I had repressed the whole mess.

But I had the morning off so I started to jot them all down and I'll share them with you now
____________________
Part Two is coming.

Weird Science Part Two: Lab Rats

2005-07-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

I entered the field of psychology with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for only the few, the proud, and the truly naive. Four years later I would realize and describe the earning of my degree in psychology as less like science and more like reading Wilhelm Reich while being torn to pieces by wolverines.

I charged into my first psychology class with my tape recorder, fresh binder, paper, three different fine-line pens all ordered in front of me.

My professor, a grey-haired woman in her forties leapt into an impassioned lecture.

"Zee amount of fatty tissue which has been found around zee frontal lobes of many laboratory animals has direct linkage to traumatic infant psychosis."

Did I say leapt? It was more like slept, or the movement of a lab rat recovering from brain surgery.

In my next class, Psychotherapy in a Post Freudian World, the professor had no use for rats, fat, or infants; and ended the class by telling us "Of course we all know that we are living in a Post-Freudian age. The Behaviorists act as if they do not know this, but deep down inside they do. The Existentialists choose to disbelieve it as well." he said.

"And as for Freud!" he said dramatically, "It is now commonly accepted that he is just not Freudian enough."

As I was leaving some students had clustered around him and he was pointing at diagrams of several behavioral models and giggling.

_________________
Part three on the way.

Weird Science Part Two: Col. Kurtz

2005-07-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

The late Marlon Brando as Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
_________________________________

I entered my next class, Basic Principles of Behavior Modification hoping for something more down to earth. As class begun a wild-eyed Veteran tore into the room replete with combat pants and a USMC t-shirt. Before we could alert building security he informed us he was the instructor.

He had a crazed look that brought Col. Kurtz immediately to mind. He showed up every class time with a juice bottled filled with some dark, thick Agent Orange-like substance which he would swig before spewing fresh curses at whoever had the audacity to ask him a question.

And yes, I checked it out later...he had tenure.

One day he entered into intellectual combat with a young Creationist, which is generally pretty entertaining to watch. The professor had just finished showing a movie about moths in England. The white moths survived at first because of the proliferation of white elm trees in the area, rendering them invisible to predators. But when a factory was built and the soot from the factory started to turn the white elms a dark charcoal shade the birds swept down and ate the white moths like candy. At that point the naturally darker moths became the dominant moths of Hampstead heath as they were now camoflaged.

This was conclusive proof of the proces of Natural Selection, a major tenent of Evolutionary theory.

After the film the conversation went something like this:

Creationist: Professor?
Kurtz: Yeah WHAT!?
C: I understand what happened in the film and have no qualms about Natural Selection...
Kurtz: (rolling eyes in the back of his head and taking a swig)
C: ...that seems easily demonstratible within each species, but what evidence do you have for one species evolving into a whol enew one? Should we have millions of intermediary fossils?
Kurtz: Didn't you watch the fucking movie!!?
C: Yeah, I saw the movie and I agree that Natural Selection occurs. But you didn;t answer my question. Another one is how does emotion, self-consciousness, personality and reason evolve from primal slime?
Kurtz: (taking a hefty swig) What are you fucking blind!!? The MOTHS! The MOTHS! WHADDABOUT THE GODDAMN MUTHA_FUCKING MOTHS!!?

_________________
Part Four next.

Weird Science Part Four: Play us a song

2005-07-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

From Col. Kurtz's class I walked, somewhat stunned to my car to retrieve my cheap vinyl yoga mat for my next psychology class where I was quickly introduced in the ecstasy that is Hindu meditation. or if not Hindu meditation, at least, the latest flowery, bastardized American reincarnation of it.

Years later I now wish that it had been a serious version of Yoga so that I too could look 15 years younger, be limber enough to put my underwear on in the morning without falling over, and have an hour-long Tantric orgasm like Sting routinely has.

So if when I left I was not ecstatic with universal bliss, I was, at least grateful that it was the second easiest class I ever had since I did not have to take notes or doing anything but sit in the Lotus position.

From there I aumed my way in to my upper division psychology class where I was greeted by a professor who looked so aged, scholarly, and wise that I knew I had finally arrived at a real psychology class.

He started his articulate opening remarks, then stooped over and retrieved an accordion, which he proceeded to strap on, He started to sing an old fraternity song - a song which roughly mirrored the old polka tune I Don't Want Her, You Can Have Her, She's too Fat for Me...which left me slumping in my chair.

I wanted a degree in psychology to help me understand what it means to be human and to explore that with others. Instead I suddenly seemed doomed to become a singing neurologist, toting a copy of Jung's Interpretation of Dreams under one arm, a cheap yoga map under the other, and the deep desire to drink during my classes.

_______________________
Conclusion on the way...

.

Weird Science Part Finale: Final Grades

2005-07-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

Psychic Jean Grey being, er...not being torn apart by Wolverine.
________________________________

So over 100 years after its birth, modern psychology had lapsed into a state of dismemberment. Each "school" of psychology approached human nature from a divisive and myopic angle, applying only it's own hermeneutic, diagnostics and treatments. Since each school's perspective was universal, there was no need to give place to other theories or practices. Lacking any unifying core, the various schools of psychology became increasingly obsessed with the trivial.

In short, as Kierkegaard once said of Hegel, "You have answered all the questions except what it means to be born, live, and die as a human being."

It's deeply ironic that while these psychology programs were growing they lacked one thing: a head.

********

Now it is 1996 and things are better, at least in theory. It seems there is more diversity and a growing cross pollenation of ideas.

Which makes me wonder what it would have been like to study just ten years later. Maybe I would never have given up and become a writer. It makes me wonder what happened to the Fatty-Rat-Brain Lady, the Accordion Guy, and most of all the Agent-Orange Behaviorist who use to abuse his students.

They are probably all on Prozac.

So what was the easiest class I ever took there?

That's easy. It was my Psychic class. My professor tried to give me an F because she said I never showed up to a single class (which is true).

"I was there every class period," I told her. "I was there psychically."

I got an A.

CoffeeHouse Diary #6 Maughamus Interruptus

2005-07-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

I've been interrupted for the last damned time today!

But before I tell you why I am so frustrated I have to interrupt myself and give you some personal information as background.

Some people have dogs, other cats, hamsters, rats, mice, iguana's that never move, and fish.

I have a goldfish, a crayfish and a parakeet named Nichaolas Birdayyev. The crayfish also has a name. When my sons cought him at the park pond I asked what they wanted to name him.

"Mr. Go-Go Head" ws the immediate reply, so Mr. Go-Go Head it was.

He lived in peace in our flat until 4:15 a.m. this morning when my sound sleep was interrupted by a high-pitched whine. The whine came from my fish tank filter because it was not longer able to reach down into the water. I could not longer reach down into the water because the water level had dropped dramatically by at least ten inches.

Any guesses as to where the water went?

I spent the next two hours trying to save my goldfish who I had raised from tiny "feeder fish" to near trout-like proportions. My living room was a marsh and at one point I looked over just in time to see Mr. Go-Go Head about to engage Mr. Birdyayev in moratl combat. The parakeet was trying to shout down the crustacean with a series of threats involving him flying into the kitchen and preparing a ramikin of butter suace, but Mr. Go-Go Head was not impressed and continued his laborious assault to get his claw around Mr. Birdyayev's beak.

______________________

To be continued.

CoffeeHouse Diary #6 Maughamus Interruptus 2

2005-07-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

Part two
_______________

I turned off the boiling water (how did the bird do that?) and locked him in the cupboard with only a flashlight and a worn copy of Gulliver's Travels.

Next I scooped up Mr. Go-Go Head who tried to pinch me. Idiot.

I put my finger out to his half dehydrated body..."go ahead asshole, you wanna pinch me or get back in the water?"

"Water" he gasped.

"Okay, but next time you molt I'm gonna grab your little yellow ass by mistake and leave your husk on display."

(He cursed me under his mantles).

Twenty minutes later I feel back to sleep but was once again interrupted by one of those high-powered gas leaf-blowers outside my bedroom window; then the phone started to ring (about five times way before 7:30 a.m. which is the opening time for calls) and my neighbor knocked on my door wanting to borrow tools, and at 5:13 every morning the "Cheap Bird" wakes up and makes the most loud and obnoxious bird calls ever heard just outside my window.

"Cheap...Cheap...CHEAP!!"

Fuck. I am gonna get one of those wide Tennis rackets and go out there some morning at 5:13 a.m...no 5:10 a.m. so I can warm up and get limber. And when that damned bird comes swooping by screaming "Cheap" I am gonna hit him into the cheap seats in deep right center.

*******

CoffeeHouse Diary #6 Maughamus Interruptus 3

2005-07-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

Part Three.

_________________

I unplugged the phone, turned up the stereo, grabbed the newspaper and settled in for a relaxing Saturday morning.

SPLAT!! SPEW! SPLASH!

"The HAND" burst through the mail slot and shot a huge wad of bills, ads, junk mail and magazines across the floor in three full waves of postal spew.

Unnerved by the events of the last ten hours (towels still on the floor, the bird screeching profanities from inside the cupboard, Mr. Go-Go Head pacing and snapping at the fish that use to be able to hover way above him) I decide that it is useless to resist.

*******

CoffeeHouse Diary #6 Maughamus Interruptus 4

2005-07-17T15:10:00.000-07:00

Part Four
__________________

T.S. Eliot wrote a poem called Choruses From the Rock, where he suggests that history itself was interrupted, or "bi-sected" as he would say, buy God.

Other famous interruptions include presidents and dignitaries being interrupted by assassins, countries interrupting other countries, coitus interruptus to avoid freedom interruptus, and news reports interrupting prime time televison.

Beyond that, we are all constantly interrupting each other in conversation or other ways. Chances you will not finish this article without being interrupted by the phone, a family member, a knock on the door or an Instant Message.

*******

CoffeeHouse Diary #6 Maughamus Interruptus 5

2005-07-17T14:56:00.000-07:00

Part Five
_________________

Now back to today. My girlfriend is in Las Vegas on a well-deserved company junket.

There, losing your money slowly is occasionally interrupted by a win or two which, in turn, encourages you to bet more and lose more. Your few moments of winning are a brief interruption in the Casino's taking all your money.

They are very patient. They do not mind an interruption or two.

While she is gone I have been reading Hemingway's Men Without Women, since that is what I am. It is a collection of short stories and I am reading the last one entitled, Now I lay Me, which is about a man who has trouble sleeping at night, so he thinks about fishing or he prays for everyone he has ever known.

I do the latter, most every insomniac night. If that doesn't work I think about women.

I had just gotten to the part of the story where he is having trouble remembering the Lord's Prayer. All he can remember is "On Earth as it is in Heaven."

Suddenly, as I read I was interrupted by an argument between an aging matador and his picador.

Something is very wrong.

I look at the bottom of the page and see that it is numbered 17 where it should naturally say 225.

The book has been misbound and mangled. So the conversation I am reading would normally occur on pages 17-18 of The Undefeated, which it does, except that in my misbound copy these two pages are now nestled between pages 224 and 227 instead of their natural nesting place.

CoffeeHouse Diary #6 Maughamus Interruptus 6

2005-07-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Part Six
________________________

Of course, you could guess my next move. I went back to The Undefeated and sure enough, there were pages 225-226 of Now I Lay Me inbetween pages 16 and 19 of The Undefeated.

Just Mis-bound.

But the thing that kinda disturbs me most about this latest interruption is that I read The Undefeated yesterday and I found the matador's meditiation on the Lord's Prayer to be the best part of the whole story. In fact, I interrupted my friend Bob's watching of the Giants/Red game (which was interrupting some Reality Show) to tell him how much I enjoyed that particular part of The Undefeated where the aging matador, faced with the possibility of one bullfight too many, thinks about the Lord's prayer and about praying for all those he has known in the past by name.

I do not pray very often, but when I do it's pretty naked and honest.

In this case here is my prayer:

"God. I should very much like to be with you, so long as it is not at all in Heaven as it is here on Earth.. Amen."

Hopefully no one will interrupt me as I try and pray this.

The Art of Kissing

2005-07-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sitting at the bar of Il Fornaio waiting for a double Americano, my date suddenly leans over and kisses me softly. I whisper "I like that very much," my lips just inches from hers, "don't stop."

I have always enjoyed kissing with one exception, the Grandma kisses I got as a child. They were so wet and obligatory. In fact, if you watch the old Malraux family super 8 movies you will see these kisses and then me squeegeeing my face off after every one of them.

Not that I did not love my Grandma. I would have been crushed had she not kissed me, but geez, they were so wet and slimy.

*******
Do you remember you first romantic kiss?

Mine was, like most people I suspect, a complete disaster. I was 14, and a sweet babe named Sharon had a crush on me. We ended up in a tree fort in the semi-dark. I put my arm around her and began to shake. She asked why I was shaking, I said I was cold even though, of course, it was probably 80 degrees in that tree. I really didn't know why I was shaking, just that my body was making me look stupid.

I thought, "I had better kiss her fast before it gets worse and I have a seizure."

But I didn't know how. How do you kiss a girl?

Well I watched a lot of movies and noted that they always tilted their heads (so as to not bloody their noses I supposed) and that as they kissed their cheeks went sorta "hollow".

How do you do that? I figured you had to somehow inhale a bit while you kissed.

Well I did finally kiss her. And I sucked, literally. I sucked. I was not enjoying it as much as I thought I might and thought, "this sucks", when, in fact, It was only I who sucked.

For Sharon it must have been like putting her soft lips to the live end of a shop-vac.

********
Two years later I got to kiss another girl at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. We were running around the dunes and drinking cheap disgusting sangria and laughing when she fell into my arms laughing and we were suddenly all over each other kissing.

This was a lot more fun for a bit until the sand became invasive. The "mouthing and the tonguing" as William Everson would say, became rather raw and crunchy.

And I was still a lousy kisser. How do I know? She broke up with me the next day.

I never blamed her.

*******

Later I learned, or was "schooled" in kissing by a young beauty queen who had an amazing mouth and no inhibitions at all. Better, she understood the drama of kissing and how to tease with the tongue. How did she get so good?

I have a theory. She was some kinda "Christian" and as such was "saving herself" much to my chagrin (she placed third in the Miss California contest that year). But as a result, she had mastered almost every type of kissing and petting on the planet by the time she was 20. So where some people at that age rush right to banging away, this girl could kiss and touch for hours.

Sheer delirium. Like a three hour orgasm...really.

And ever since then I have noted that there are many women who have no idea how to kiss. They immediately jam their stiff tongues down your throat until they are massaging your adams apple from the backside.

It's not very sexy or romantic.

I think it's because that is what they got from men early on. No drama, no nuance, no teasing, no softness that grows slowly in intensity. Just the quick bang.

Of the multitudes of women I have dated I have only met maybe seven that really knew how to kiss. Okay, nine. The other 47 sucked almost as bad as I did back at Ocean Beach, only sans the sand.

*******

There are so many other kisses though that are just as significant as the passionate kiss. The light kisses to your lover's temples when they are troubled, the breathy plush kisses on her eyebrows after lovemaking, and the short kisses to the nape of her neck as she does the dishes.

I am also thinking about other types of kissing and how healing it can be.

My youngest son Ian does it just right and at the right times.

A nervous habit causes me to pick my thumbs until I hit a major vein. Then I notice. It is usually stress induced like when my editor is working me harder than a one-lipped woman in a kissing booth. Once Ian, when he was three. noticed this and asked, "You have a-a-owie?"

"Yes," I said, hoping he would not ask why I indulge in self-mutilation.

The little boy took my thumb and gently kissed it.

"Make-a-feel-beddor," he said with big kind eyes. And it's true, it did feel better to be touched by the little lips of such innocent love.

We hear musicians and read poets who tell us that love is the most powerful force on Earth, and that it will prevail over greed, politics, prestige and even marriage.

That day, for a moment, I saw what they meant. No amount of money, power or prestige can buy or obtain the grace and healing that comes from the kiss of a child who wants you to "feel beddor".

Like love, it's just a gift.

Anonymous Blogging Part One

2005-07-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Driving into Anonymity. Black and White print, C. MacDonald, 1992.

This article is dedicated to Anonymous Midwest Girl .

Anonymity Part One

Three things converged and when that happens I generally act, or at least write.

The first was a request from fellow blogger Anonymous Midwest Girl to write a story for her after she had read my piece of fiction below. Unfortunately, though I am one, I do not feel in the mood to write one this week.

But I did want to honor her request (who can resist those dimples?) so that was the first prodding.

The second came from reading anonymous postings at a popular site. We have all seen these cowards before...the rail and rant and accuse and smear and never leave their names so there is no possibility of response or responsibility.

Idiots and cowards.

Third was an email from someone who would want to remain anonymous about the dangers of blogging. She sent me this article, which is worth reading. In fact, upon reading it I immediately separated my professional sites from my various blogs because, frankly, too much information is not what potential employers want.

In fact, they want to make sure all you think about is them...not relationships, meaning, God, spirituality, sex, fucking, drinking, epistemologies, politics or simply pouring out in blog form what is truly on your mind.

Her email simply said "Beware" and it's good advice...to a point.

The above photo kinda captures it for me. Major connections and transport across a grand divide, but much is shrouded in fog...incognito from the shore.

*********
Let's start with "beware". Blogging is journaling in public space. When you were a kid you might break into your sister's room and try and get at her diary...to get some edge. Reading the personal thoughts of others can be dangerous both ways, but mostly for the one writing.

It's how I found out my Ex (then) wife was in love with our therapist.

So, the solution for most bloggers is three-fold.

Some simply do not write about anything that could ever be used against them. They just love to write clever shit and work it.

Others, maintain a deep level of incognito...no pictures, no location...not their real name. The let fly. I find a lot of these folk are natural introverts who finally get to air it out. That's good. Very good. Their blogs are often, by far, the best.

Then there are those who create new personas where they kinda get to do both. or, perhaps, they get to try new ideas on without agreeing with them at all.

Let me give you some examples from a few I read daily.

Every morning I get up and like getting the paper (though it is far better) I go to my daily read. Here is how they shake out anonymity-wise.

Immoderation Girls: Not much anonymity here at all. We Know a great deal about Lindsey and she wants us to. She is smart, funny, pretty (to say the least) and wants to be a star. I feel sure she will be.

Friction Friction: We know his name is Greg, and a general local. We also know (from other bloggers) that he is a sexy beast and is wicked smart. But no pictures. He has the middle ground. We know alot about him but could never spot him in a crowd at a Blogger convention (though I might suspect).

Sex Scenes at Starbucks: Smart woman. No picture because she is probably a sexy beast. She is careful to remain anonymous. We have corresponded for months and we never broach that subject. Good friends, but I do not need a picture or details.

By the way she sees pictures of me and my family all the time. It is different for men and women. Of course I am utterly trustworthy, but many men on the Internet are not. Thus I relish our conversations but do not need anything beyond that. Some of that is also my respect for her husband, a man I am sure I would greatly enjoy as I do her.

Waving or Drowning: Mike Todd seeks no anonymity at all. Open-ended exploration of spiritual and political issues no holds-barred, yet with grace and care.

A Canadian site went down. I cannot find her site because she took it all down after he went into a bar in canada and someone recognized her...which brings up the whole issue of women posting photos.

It's not exactly the same for men. I doubt any woman has downloaded my picture and is, er, well pleasing herself with it in view (I kinda need to be there personally, or so I am told).

Simply Complicated: Yong Mimi is a literary phenom. She is funny, unrepressed and I could get her a book contract. But she wants to remain anonymous. I respect and admire this. She'll be a phenomenal author in ten years when she decides to not be anonymous (and yes I still wanna be her agent...I saw her first!)

All these writers and so many more write full on and honest to some degree. The degree is sometimes synonymous to their level of anonymity (except Lindsey and Mike).

Which really makes sense in a repressed culture like ours (which itself is such an irony).

Anonymous Blogging Part Two: Hanging Ducks

2005-07-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

When I read some of the "anonymous" comments on a favorite website today (which is also fairly anonymous) I realized we need a new term.

Because those who blog anonymously still fling their life and thoughts and feelings out there. And they respond to comments and discuss. They just do not want to be censored (funny in a 1st Amendment, "land of the free" scenario).

But these anonymous commentators are always the most nasty. In my view they are worse than live chickens squawking around the yard. A live chicken can be cornered and put in the pen. These folk who hit and run are not better than chinese braised ducks hanging from a window.

They gave up the ghost long ago.

If I was down at Crissy Field I'd feed the live ducks and watch them waddle. Some are beautiful, some are beat up...but they are alive inside and out.

When I pass by the glass windows and see the ducks on a hook, I think "poor bastards".

Taal Tarzans & The New Aparthied

2005-07-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

Live 8 in London.

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I 'm sitting at Cafe Espresso in the Anchorage Building in San Francisco. The cafe mochas here are first rate. They serve them in a bolo glass with fresh whipped cream and they have just the right amount of Ghirardelli chocolate and the correct amount and strength of espresso all for four bucks. That may sound a little steep but remember you are in the heart of Fishermans Wharf.

Although the coffee here is excellent; the name of this establishment is not. Naming your cafe "Cafe Espresso" is like naming a grocery store, "Store Grocery." Perhaps the owner spent too much time thinking about his menu what type of glass to serve his drinks in. I imagine that he has a wife that he refers to as "wife," and a son, whom he and his wife call either "son" or "boy," which kind of reminds me of those old Tarzan movies.

Tarzan used the same system for naming; "Come here boy!" he would yell, and Boy would come. There are still a few Tarzans around.

* * * * * * * *

I have sired two boys. After last week's Live 8 Concerts they had lots of questions about Africa. We talked about the current situation Africa and how over 9,000 Africans die daily from starvation, malaria and AIDS.

The older one proudly displays his White "One" Band and even tried to get some to distribute at his school. A white band is not much, unless you are informed.

As an aspiring musician he wondered why Bono, a rock star, would be so concerned about Africa.

I told him it was a story at least 20 years old. We talked then I slapped in U2's film Rattle and Hum into the VCR and played him a couple of relevant songs from 1988.

Later he wanted me to explain Aparthied to him. It's a tough one to explain.

Two days later, I observed Conner, the elder, slashing away on his new Les Paul and inciting his younger brother Ian to play the crowd.

"Ian, you be the crowd," he said. "When I say APART - TIDES I want you to start yelling and go crazy, okay?"

"Okay," agreed the humble one.

Conner hit pretty close to the three-chord formula, paused, and then yelled "APART -TIDES!"

And of course, young Ian went crazy, yelling his fool head off. (Don't laugh. You did the same damn thing at the last concert you went to.)

It's hard ro comprehend or explain how insane the doctrine and practice of apartheid was.

The lesson is clear; every time we hear any word that supports or upholds racism, we should - all of us - yell, scream and go crazy until the damn thing stops and we can fall silent in thanks to God and man for its abolition.

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first in a five part series