Your Husband

I can always tell which friends have happy marriages. I am included, not shunned. Invited into their home, an open door policy, I am allowed to watch a football game with the husband while the wife attends to a pot roast. It isn’t that I’m more attractive than other friends…no,for some reason, these wives just don’t trust me…Little do they know that I am revolted by their husbands, even the best looking of the bunch, because they’re husbands. Husbands have never turned me on. Men, in my mind, resemble eunuchs when they become husbands. I have never slept with a married man except my ex-husband, and that was bad enough. One good friend whispered to me once, at a cocktail party, “If you ever touch my husband, I’ll kill you.” I never touched him… but he touched somebody else, so there you have it.

A Chocolate Pharmacy?

On the plane, – sat next to a man who was just hired away from Hallmark cards in Kansas City by Hershey’s. He is a product placement specialist and product development consultant. His job is to convince CVS that Hershey’s chocolate should be strategically placed near the pharmaceutical counter because it makes people feel good, like drugs. They had pitched this idea to CVS years ago but it was shot down. ( granted, this was pre: health benefits of 70 percent cocoa dark chocolate) Anyway, that’s why Hershey’s brought this guy in. A Hershey’s satellite office has been installed in the Woonsocket CVS complex specifically for this purpose. — Chocolate Bars Near Pharmacy Aisles, not just in the candy section!!!!! He said that CVS is all about pharmacy, whereas Walgreens is corner convenience. Hershey’s has no problem with powerful product placement in Walgreens- but CVS MUST be convinced that the pharmaceutical business strategy is not feasible in the long run.
We talked for 2 and 1/2 hours straight. I had only one drink. I offered him some million dollar ideas- about repackaging, going with the 70 percent cocoa benefits- I tell you people!!! I missed my calling, okay!!! I mean, my mind was WILD with solutions!!! I can’t begin to tell the whole story here…the information I pulled out of the guy about how they accumulate data – and how the CVS stores are designed to brain wash you… yuck… okay, anyway– this mornings headline, CVS won’t carry cigarettes. This indicates that CVS is taking the Care and Wellness thing to a NEW level of HEALTH awareness and AWAY from toilet paper, lipstick, dog food, and yes, maybe chocolate. What is to become of my new friend??!!

How Can You Sleep at Night?

It has occurred to us all that our lives are finite. If that is so, why do we continue to bullshit ourselves and others? Year after year, day after day, a continuous bullshit routine aimed at humping another rung up the ladder? What are your thoughts on this phenomena? Is it the limbic system encouraging our frontal lobes to mount a campaign designed to placate and buzz-saw our superiors into throwing more bread in our direction? Will the bread satiate our hunger for attention? Look at me! The price we pay for a nod. Our souls. But souls don’t pay the bills. Souls don’t comfort the ego. Souls drain us with self reflection and morality. Is the price too high? Of course not. We are temporary, and in that vein, every man for himself is the call of duty. Take your comforts whilst you can. But know why the buzz in your chest is humming loud, screaming for Xanax, sex, the gym, a movie, the quick passing of the day, head in a book, foot on the pedal, moving forward towards zip.

Sudden Death of Co-Workers

Without warning, a co-worker- friend, school mate- is struck down in the prime of life by a fast moving truck or mystery virus and we are left stunned by the impromptu fashion of the demise. Wait a minute. That person is younger than I am, if only by a year, but still, they’re dead as a doornail and they had so much press in their favor. Only last month they won that award and had their picture on the front cover of that popular daily news media site. Wait a minute. So what does this mean besides a glowing obituary, front and center column, the photo, the spectacular funeral procession comprised of celebrities with generous words and the specific gravity of their grief….famous grief, monied grief, the grief that comes with the loss of  lifestyle indulgence. The recently dead can no longer attend the MOMA or Met openings, can no longer sip the best champagne with other pre-legends in the best places, and oh, the lusciousness of those pre-death hearths, the sacred isolationist hubs of the monied or beautified. Already in a heavenly sphere, death, to these glorificated minutia, is a real bummer, a true loss, a future permanence of noshow status, which leads, of course, to a fading, and being discussed, if at all, in the past tense. Have they lost the game or won the war? Are they the first or the last? In the end, we must turn our backs and continue on our quest for social immortality, that is to say, a permanent invite to the best of the show, before our own sudden disapearance, without a just excuse. I”m so sorry I can’t attend my coronation, i am not of this world. The burden now falls squarely on your living head, you, still functioning, must take over and organize a proper eulogy for the person you despised and wished dead in the first place. The sudden death of a co-worker leaves a void, a void easily filled by you and your constituents, and if they contained greatness, you will over come it, because nobody really thinks the grave is a good place to be productive, although worms would disagree. You, the dolt, can limp on in their place, thumbing through their file cabinet of truths, re-marking them to suit. You are the winner. The surviving Dead Head, ahead of the game due to your continuous breathing out and in, heart still beating, your mediocrity fueled with random luck that only longevity may bestow.

Moment of Reckoning

Woman in an Adirondack Chair:

The perfect day is agony. Not a ripple on the lake, although a soothing breeze moves trees, wind chimes, the abundant petunias. It’s a dry air today with plenty of sunshine, late afternoon in late summer, chores completed. No impending bills, social engagements, deadlines. The muffler on the old car has started to rattle but it isn’t a bother today, just a reminder of the wisdom in nursing an old car instead of being pressed with a car payment each month.

Buy Art from a non-artist and SAVE SAVE SAVE.

That’s right, buy your oil paintings from a true non-professional and save, save, save. I have as much chance of becoming the next Van Gogh as most of my serious artist friends, maybe more so, because I am much more insane than they are.

Hope Wins the Day

In a dark casino, next to the stage, the elderly couple in wig and toupee took off their sneakers and slipped into a matching pair of patent leather dance shoes. The four shiny shoes were very still under the cocktail table, waiting for something. The woman in a Dress Barn outfit hugged her purse to her chest like a hot water bottle. Mona Lisa smile on her face, head nodding like a doggie car ornament, she seemed content listening to my droning ballad. The man, fidgeting, finally walked to the stage. He stood head to hem with my sequin gown.

“We’d like to dance.” he said. “We come here to dance.”

It was a Sunday afternoon on a beautiful spring day in Lincoln, Rhode Island. Inside the cavernous casino, the size of three football fields, there wasn’t any weather, any spring, any Sunday. Hundreds of slot machines clanged and whistled under flashing lights and piped in light rock music. Heavily painted, perky older woman and road weary, leathery men with cigarettes hanging from their lips pushed quarters into the noisy machines, hundreds of them, then went to the cashier to get more. There were several men and women in wheelchairs with oxygen tank hoses stuffed into their noses. Their husbands and wives pushed them from slot machine to gambling table to the bar. They were also smoking.

I asked a coughing woman about the smoke.

“They’ve got a state of the art ventilating system here, so it don’t bother us too much.”

My trio had been hired for the 2 to 6pm Sunday Jazz Series. The stage, dead center, had a nautical motif – a life-sized lighthouse surrounded with hunks of painted plastic resembling boulders. I was singing “Old Cape Cod” when the man in the dance shoes interrupted me.

“We need something with a rhythm, dance music. We come here to dance.”

His wife called to me from her table. “We enjoy a rumba.”

The lights on the stage were so bright that I could not make out their faces. All I could see were the shining shoes. All I could hear were the slot machines. I didn’t know what a rumba was. I faked “Besame Mucho” with invented Spanish. Suddenly, everyone was on their feet, alive and moving and happy. Shaking arthritic hips beneath pot bellies camouflaged behind unbelted shirts. Salt of the earth, spending money they didn’t have, manufacturing joy on a Sunday afternoon in a casino, the world that screwed them every day temporarily expunged from their minds.

In the dim light, they were young again, high on nicotine and vodka tonics, surrounded with the hope of a big win. My self righteous loathing for gambling and casinos evaporated. Where else could you take 50 dollars and turn it into an afternoon of possibility? Sure, a few would overdo it, but what was there to lose, really? A double wide trailer? If we all lost the little we have wouldn’t our lives be more exciting? Living under a highway, scavenging for food, a good story in our pocket about how we almost hit the jackpot? Isn’t that better than the drudgery of responsible serfdom?

I come from the same stock. The hardy folk shuffling around the dance floor reminded me of my parents and their ability to enjoy life at a VFW pot-luck supper or a Saturday night dance at the American Legion.

I’d almost felt superior. When was the last time I had enjoyed myself so completely? When was the last time I’d felt hope instead of cynicism? These people in their outdated clothes and sickly countenance had me beat. The casino, for profit, offered an afternoon of hope. An honorable business practice, in my opinion. No matter how futile, hope wins the day.

Kidnapped by FACEBOOK

The reason I seldom visit my blog is that Facebook has become my website, my blog, my performances, my diary, my escape – like solitaire… easy, don’t have to dress, speak, walk, type, smile. I have quit FACEBOOk several times but alway sign up again within 24 hours. My so-called friends don’t visit my blog, they visit facebook, and the talent it takes to pull them to your Facebook page with a one-liner is fascinating. I have discovered that bad news or a personal confusion encourages friends to contact you immediately with a virtual back pat and Anne Landerly advice.   I’m sorry, I am so tired tonight i can barely type. Last night, insomnia, today, locked out of apartment, dog walked into sewage/tar puddle up to his ears. Still 48 degrees at high noon, here in New England – a chilling, consistent wind slapping at us unsuspectingly, as we turn a corner away from the sun. Just awful. Bone aching spring.  Feels like my bones are separating from my muscles. what kind of illness is that? I know you may be uncomfortable joining facebook and becoming my long lost never met friend from, say, Greece or Syracuse, but until I get my addiction under control that’s where I’ll be— thinking up one-liners as swiggling worms on a hook thrown to the middle of nowhere.

One Life to Live

Maybe it’s all a continual re-run of the soap-opera you never watched — your life at present. If that were so, the TV day time series would have been canceled long ago. Actually, I think it was. In order to prevent your life from being canceled, there is one precaution to take into consideration: You vs. your Zipcode. If your Zip code is overwhelming you with boredom, high rents, low rents, pot holes, bad air, clean air low I.Q’s, etc. you must not ignore the ramifications. After all, you are three, four or six full gas tanks away from a place where you will not be humiliated, bored, frozen, stifled, milked, invaded. There are places in the world that better suit you and there is only one way to discover them. A Road Trip and about 1,000 bucks.

Running away has always been my option of choice when I had to either shit or get off the pot. Hey, I get off the pot, thank you. I can shit somewhere else. Don’t threaten me.  If a certain geographic location fails to provide me with sustainance, I move on, bringing my alcoholic and borderline personality issues with me. Of course, all my good qualities come with me as well, in a small fanny purse of good intentions and integrity.

Then again, you can stay right where you are and reap the benefits of an escape. Since we are with ourselves mostly when we are with others, email all your friends and tell them that you are moving to Mexico or Alaska tomorrow. No time for a going away party. Something has come up. They won’t often come to your apartment or house and check to see if your car is in the drive-way. If it is, and they call you, you can always say you left your car behind. If they see you in the window, you can always say that your sister or brother must be cleaning up after you. If they continue to pressure you, say with a banging on the door, a loud cursing at your window, rest assured that if you do not respond, they will leave you alone. They will be in a rage with rejection and punish you with avoidance which is exactly what you desire.

I know and you know that geography is a cop-out, but moving yourself from one location to another is a thrill. Meant for fight or flight, I feel that if I am not flighting I am fighting, don’t you? Before agricultural methods were employed by man, we were all on the run. It’s in our genes and our dreams. When you are lying in bed at night thinking, “I’ve got to get the hell out of here”, that’s not cowardess but insight sent to your from your ancestral bed of wisdom. Why do we ignore it? Gas is cheap now. Go.

Irish Whiskey Stew — Secret Recipe Revealed!

20 potatoes, 10 onions, 4 garlic cloves, 2 cups whiskey, 1 cup white wine, 1/2 cup brandy, 1 cup vegetable broth, 2 cups milk, 4 beets with greens, 5 kielbasa, 4 leeks, 10 carrots, random spices, olive oil.    Sautee beets, onions, kielbasa, leeks, garlic, carrots in the olive oil for fifteen minutes, splash in white wine and brandy, simmer another fifteen minutes, throw in diced potatoes and whiskey, bring to a boil then simmer for one hour. Salt, pepper, onion salt, MSG, to taste. Pour in milk, reheat. serve with french bread and a salad.  serves 15 during sub-zero temperatures.