The Day

And so Christmas comes a knockin'.  I was ready to write my complaint, but I shouldn't bring the room down.  Maybe that will be my New Year's resolution. Who the fuck cares about my problems, anyway.  Everybody has their own.  And if they don't. . . they don't need someone else's.  

I'll only say this is the only unsolicited card I got for Christmas. 

Crazy Larry the Elf seems to have some anger management issues of his own.  

Yea. . . other people's troubles.  Perhaps we get what we deserve after all.  

So. . . there is nothing to say except I wish for you peace on earth and lots of presents.  

And with that, I'll fade away. . . going. . . going. . . gone. 

Ghost's of Christmas Eve

Those of you who have been here for awhile, and I think there are only a few, know that I will post on Christmas Eve.  I was right.  Yesterday was mania.  But I didn't crash.  I descended slowly into the abyss.  It's o.k.  I've been here before.  It was a really bizarre day.  My mother either took three doses of her pills this morning, or she lost two of them.  Beats me.  When I left her mid-morning, I didn't know what to expect.  

I had much to do, though, and did it in a way.  I went to the liquor store and bought what I needed for friends and family.  I took a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and a bottle of good French wine to my buddy Travis.  I bought three other bottles of champagne just in case. I went to Whole Foods to get the makings of a good seafood stew.  The store was a madhouse.  I got what I needed and then I got confused.  I went home to check my email.  Things were copesetic. Things were fine.  Some people sent me holiday wishes.  Others were otherwise engaged.  I went to the Boulevard for last minute shopping.  The crowd was not the crowd of Saturday.  I don't want to say.  

I bought a few more presents.  

When I got back to my mother's, I took presents around the neighborhood.  People were with their families.  

My mother was in misery.  It is difficult.  It is hard.  

People surprise me, but it matters little now.  I was not on the Boulevard drinking with old friends.  The widows and orphans have all dried up.  

My old factory friend's father died this morning.  How horrible a Christmas Eve.  

I got an email from an old friend in London.  She has left her job at the BBC and is going to put all her efforts into being a puclished writer.  

Late in the afternoon, I went to the Loser's Cafe.  Drawn like a moth to a flame.  

Everyone is with their loved ones tonight.  The night is quiet, not a creature is stirring.  

After my mother went to bed, I wrapped her presents.  I will make French toast in the morning with bacon.  Then I will let her open her presents.  There will be none for me. . . not this year.  No secret Santas.  Bagel.  but I am certain my mother intends to give me money in the morning.  No es bueno.  If I outlive her, I can get it when she dies.  But I don't expect to, especially not tonight.  

We will eat with her neighbors tomorrow.  Fun 🤷🤷

But. . . "they cannot scare me with their empty spaces. . . ."  I am crashing and will go to bed.  I can only hope "visions of sugar plums dance in my head."

You know I'll report.  In the meantime. . . . 

Hap Happiest Time

 

Well. . . yesterday I got the Christmas bug.  I was filled with the spirit.  Still, it was a mixed bag of a day and not simple nor single thing.  

It began early.  I had mistakenly made an appointment to get my mother's car serviced at nine a.m.  I sat with my mother for a minute lamenting the fact and wondering about getting around.  She said something about driving me somewhere, and I scoffed.  

"You are not driving anymore."

And the shit storm began.  She nutted up like the hillbilly she is.  It is not verbal.  It is nonverbal.  Hillbillies are not an articulate lot by and large.  Oh, you may find some vociferous and some may even be loquacious, but by and large it is not a verbal culture.  The Hatfields and McCoys, for instance, didn't try to work out their hateful problems with strongly worded letters.  

And I, of hillbilly heritage and too quick a temper, responded by throwing the keys on the table and saying, "Okey dokey, if you can drive I can go home.  Can you get your walker in and out of the car by yourself?  You need to have the car at the dealership at nine.  I'm going back to living at my house again.  I didn't know you were O.K. now."

It went on, but you get my drift.  It was ugly.  And, of course, I carried the grief and the guilt with me after.  I've never, ever been happy after losing my temper, neither when I win nor when I lose.  Anger is always a losing proposition.  See Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice."  There are two kinds, equally destructive.  

Driving the car to the dealership, I tried letting go.  By the time I got there, and it was a very short drive, I was feeling freer.  I pulled into a long line of cars at the service entrance.  The dealership is huge, but the service line moved along.  There were men and women in uniform shirts swarming everywhere.  Within minutes, I had my "advisor," Robert.  He looked over the job request I had sent in online, then reached in the car.  

"I need to see the mileage," he said.  He hit a button on the steering wheel I'd never noticed that said "display."  What I had taken to be the mileage wasn't.  It was something else.  He clicked the button a few times and said, "20,000 miles.  It's a 2017, but it is practically new."

I was stunned.  I had no idea.  20,000 miles.  Huh.  

Robert told me the car would be ready in an hour or two.  He'd call and text me to let me know.  

Ten minutes in all, perhaps, before I was limping back to my mother's.  It was less than a mile.  The day was beautiful.  My knee and hips and back were barking as I walked across the giant parking lot full of new Toyotas.  I stopped for a minute to look at the price of a new Tundra pickup truck: $78,000.  And that is one of the cheaper brands of pickups.  I'd say every third car on the road is a pickup truck now, mostly Ford F-150s, but a good number of GMC and Chevrolet's, too.  How do they do it?  How do they afford a pickup truck?  

I'll keep driving beaters and bangers, I guess.  

By the time I got back to my mother's house, I'd figured out that I should just forget what happened earlier.  I walked in and asked her if she would like some breakfast.  I made us avocado toast with an egg on top, half a sliced kiwi each, and some sliced tomatoes.  We ate as if the argument had never happened.  

I cleaned up after breakfast and looked at the clock.  What to do?  I sat down with my computer and did some mundane tasks that needed doing.  A text came in from the service department.  It contained a video.  The repairman narrated the video as he made it.  He'd done everything but said the car needed a new battery.  He said he didn't rotate the tires because they were the ones that came with the car.  He took the camera down to confirm that the date on the tires was 2016.  Tires become hard and brittle and he recommended putting on a new set.  

Man. . . this dealership was full tech.  I called Robert back and told him to put in the battery but hold off on the tires.  He said the car would be ready in 45 minutes.  

I showed my mother the video but it didn't register.  I waited a bit, then began my trek back to get the car.

When I got there, Robert was on the phone.  I waited.  

"O.K. then.  Thanks.  And happy holidays.  [pause]. Sure. . . merry Christmas."

"You got called out on the happy holidays thing, eh?"

He grinned.  "You never know," he said.  

"Nope.  You never know."

But I DO know that Christmas has made a comeback.  There is a segment of society who grew up with and love Christmas, and they are sick of "the war on Christmas."  I don't mind.  I like Christmas.  It is part of my inherited culture.  

I drove back to my mother's and got my things.  I was going to the gym, then home to shower and shop.  There wasn't much time.  The day was wearing on.  I'd forgotten, though, that the cleaning crew was coming that day.  I looked at my phone.  It would be close.  They may still be there when I arrived.  But nope.  The kitchen floor was still damp, so they hadn't been gone long.  I took my travel bag to the bedroom, then decided to look at some images I'd downloaded from my Boulevard shoot.  I put on some music.  I got carried away.  I had to "touch" these things.  I liked them.  I liked the blur and the softness in some of them.  It was life as perceived, I thought, soft and blurry and fragmented.  Not all of them.

But some. 

It was three-thirty before I headed out for the Boulevard.  I needed to get cookies for my mother's neighbors.  I needed to get little treats for my mother.  I had found nothing satisfying at the grocers.  I would do it all at Williams and Sonoma.  

Holy moly, though. . . I wasn't the only one.  Cars were parked on all the adjacent streets.  The parking lots were full.  But the holiday spirit gave me a present--I found a spot in a temporary dirt lot that others had ignored right next to the train station.  I just needed to cross the tracks and pass through the park.  Everywhere there were people.  Kids galore were running around and playing in the late afternoon air.  The street was a beehive of activity.  Everyone looked beautiful.  There was light, there was shadow.  And just like that--BOOM--I was buoyed up from the darkness and into the light.  It was nearly Christmas.  This was nice.  

W&S was packed with pretty people buying expensive gifts--$500 espresso makers, $300 mixers, $450 Creuset Dutch ovens.  I, however, was only looking for cookies.  

"Can I help you," asked one of the staff.  

"Do you have shortbread cookies?"

"Um. . . maybe. . ." she said walking me toward a shelf.  "Yes. . . here."

"O.K. Thanks."

I looked at the small box.  $36.  

!!!

I walked back to the boxes of candies.  Toffees of all kinds, similarly priced.  What the hell, I thought, don't be a scrooge.  It's Christmas.  My arms were full of big tins.  

"Can I get you a basket," asked another of the staff.  I hesitated, then fumbled.  

"Sure."

I looked around putting a few more things in the basket before joining the checkout line.  It didn't matter.  I was having fun.  Mother's and daughters, grandparents, entire families, all smiling and laughing, handsomely dressed and wonderfully polite.  This was the village, I thought.  This is where they go, what they do, people from those upper middle class romcom movies.  

And me.  

"It's the hap, happiest time of the year."

I was smiling when the pretty young cashier called me over.  She wasn't much out of high school, I figured, maybe second year of college.  Like everyone else, she was immaculate, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, each strand of dark hair perfect, not one out of place, her skin flawless ivory.  Petite.  Black sweater.  Perfect smile.  Textbook manners.  

I put my things on the counter.  I explained apologetically that these were presents for the neighbors.  

"O.K.  I can put them in separate bags and pack them with tissue paper," she said.  

"Oh, that would be great.  I'm sorry.  I know you are busy.  It's kind of crazy in here."

"Yes, it's gotten pretty busy today, but it's o.k."  

She set about sizing things, getting the right bags, plumping the tissue paper beautifully.  

"I'm leaving it so you can easily look inside to see which present is which," she said.  

For many of my years living here, before the cruise ship people had found their way here by Google Maps, my friends and I would do ALL of our Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve, walking down the Boulevard and back again, and then we were done.  So I said to the cashier.  

"It makes it so much simpler.  You don't have to think about things.  You get the presents and are done.  Here I am now with a whole day's head start."

She smiled and agreed that it was much simpler.  

When she had all the gifts in separate beautifully tissued bags, she placed them neatly together in one oversized bag for me to easily carry.  I am a sloppy mess of a person.  I wanted to start all over again and turn out as she had, like the seemingly perfect families shopping up and down the Boulevard, the smiling happy people.  

As she gave me my receipt, she smiled that perfect smile that was somehow authentic without invitation.  

Surely there is a factory somewhere that makes them, little perfectly cut Tiffany diamonds and rubies and amethysts.  

Stepping outside, I felt as good as I have all year.  Ho-ho-ho, I thought without irony.  Ho-ho-ho.  

Before crossing the street, a fellow said hello.  He had three books in his hand.  

"You look like a California surfer," he said.  "Are you from California?"

I laughed and leaned back against a street pole.  

"No."

He offered the books to me.  "These are for you."

I just looked at him, grinning.  

"I'm a monk," he said.  "These books are on meditation."

"I don't need them," I smiled.  "I meditate."  I figured that he'd buy it along with the whole California surfer thing."

"Are you from California," I asked.  

"No.  Ohio."

I laughed again.  "Me, too.  A long time ago."  

He left me with a wave to continue his monkish duties.  I watched him approach a tall middle-aged blonde woman who laughed and waved at him without reproach.  There was truly something in the air.  

I crossed back through the park and over the train tracks and put the big bag of gifts in the back.  What to do.  I still needed to get groceries for dinner.  I drove back to my house and went inside to get my travel kit.  The house felt good.  I had new support beams under the kitchen floor, new siding replacing the old, rotten boards.  I had a new roof.  There was still a lot of work to do.  I had painting and mulching and re-rocking and gardening, but with luck, my hundred year old house was solid again.  I grabbed the keys to my mother's 20,000 mile freshly serviced Corolla, threw my bag in the back, and called my mother on the bluetooth contraption that was so new and thrilling to me.  

"What do you want for dinner."

"Whatever you fix."

Some of the neighbors were there, so I let her go.  

I was still light at the grocery store.  I would make chicken, asparagus, and brown rice.  It wasn't the same crowd as on the Boulevard, of course, but they all seemed imbued with the same spirit.  

Ho-ho-ho. 

When I got back to my mother's house and unloaded the car--shoot!  The gifts for the neighbors were in the back of the Xterra.  

They'd be fine.  I had a lot of shopping left to do tomorrow.  

It is tomorrow.  I'll be a busy little beaver today.  I hope I feel as good as I did yesterday.  I've been depressed for a very long time now, most of the year, through my mother's five falls and subsequent hospitalizations, through her three week stay in rehab, through bringing her home, through house disasters, rotten support beams, months of carpentry, a new roof, watching my bank account shrivel while taking care of my mother's affairs.  It has been a very bad year, and I know that I am experiencing a mania from which I will crash hard.  I am not bipolar, but this has to be crazy reaction to what came before it.  I can already feel the bliss receding.  It's going to be a long, hard fall.  But everything changes after Christmas.  Dry January.  A focus on health.  A change of habitual activities.  That is my intention, at least.  

But more on that when the time comes.  

For now, Merry Christmas Eve to all.  

It Will Be a Very Trumpy Christmas

Trying to be responsible, I made a mistake.  I made an appointment to take my mother's car in for service this morning at nine.  But I need the car.  I can't sit around all day waiting.  There is panic shopping to be done.  I need to buy things for my mother's neighborhood, the neighbors having all been so nice to my mother.  They came to see her in her multiple hospital stays and while she was at the rehab facility.  I need to buy some things for other's, too.  My brain is becoming cloudy.  Too much worry, too much care.  

Last night, once again, I tried watching something on t.v. when my mother became peripatetic and pissy.  

"Why do you have the t.v. up so loud?!"

"Here.  You should watch some cowboy shows."

I was pissed and decided to leave the house.  I picked up the keys and headed to the grocers to see if I could find some tins of gingerbread cookies or shortbread to give my mother's neighbors.  It's the first time I've left the house after dark.  

There was nothing like what I wanted at the grocers.  Not cookies, anyway.  I did buy a bottle of champagne, though.  On my way out the door, I was thinking of going to another store but I ran into an old friend.  Since Covid, he and his twin brother haven't gone out much.  They've had some health issues, each having big chunks of skin cancer cut out of their faces.  Melanoma.  They've had some other problems, too.  We stood and talked for a long time.  I asked if he and his brother were still isolating from the world.  I asked if it was O.K. to stop by.  

"We can meet you out, but you can't come in the house."

I didn't ask why.  I think I know.  They have let their house become littered with shit.  There is no place to sit.  It is unbelievable to me, really.  They were always such social, outgoing guys, but now they seem to have become hoarders.  

I don't think I'll see them out.  

The world has gotten really weird since Covid.  It has never recovered fully, I think.  Much was lost and not much was gained.  We read more all the time about loneliness and depression and isolation.  Many people live their lives on screens now, professionally and socially.  Unless you have money and live in the protected parts of town, the streets are mean and full of criminals.  

What the fuck do I know?  It just seems that way to me who is stuck in his mother's house twenty hours a day.  

When I got back to the car, the phone rang.  It was my mother.  

"Where ARE you?"

She does this all the time now.  If I am not back to her house be 4:30, I get the same call delivered in a pathetic, terrified voice.  

So, again. . . what the fuck do I know?  

"I can't sleep if you are not in the house."

But when I got back, she had no plans to sleep.  She wandered around on her walker aimlessly.  

When bedtime comes eventually, I set the thermostat down to 74.  That's right.  Down to.  She keeps the house too warm all day, and she complains about being cold in the night.  She has taken to getting up and raising the thermostat up to 76 while I sleep.  The air to dry and hot for sleeping, I roll around half awake, my mouth dry, my throat sore.  I don't sleep well now, and I know it is killing me.  

I'm not one to talk about the isolato twins, I guess. 

Last night, unable to watch anything on television, I sent out my Christmas card and wishes to friends.  To my surprise, I got responses from many.  It is a goofy card I made with A.I. in the style of an old Gahan Wilson cartoon.  I was going to save it for you until Christmas Eve, but what the elf, right?

Santa's a little stressed these days.  He can only afford to keep four reindeer.  Times are tough.  His bag of presents is smaller and leaner, too.  Only the privileged Trumpers will get what they want this year, and if Santa doesn't deliver, surely Hegseth will give orders to blast him from the sky.  It's a Very Trumpy Christmas.  

I'll make another card, maybe, for Christmas Eve.  I mean, what else have I to do?  

Although, walking on the Boulevard the past few weekends, I have been taking my Leica, and some of the images are fun.  There have been crowds of people so that pictures of our little village take on a bit of a bigger city look.  Only on the weekends, though, and I figure fuck it, if these people are going to come by cruise ship and ruin the peace and quietude, there has to be an upside, so I am going to use them for my pictures.  Fair trade, I think.  

I'm still waiting to see the photos by JP from last week's catalog shoot with T.  I don't think he's cooking up his own photos.  I think he has someone do them for him.  Just a guess, but it is a logical one.  There are retouchers galore.  

O.K.  Alright.  I got a post in before I leave for the repair shop.  My mother is up just as I finish.  Another painful day begins.  Ho ho ho.  

Crunch Time

Jesus. . . Christmas is almost here!  

😀

I haven't done a thing yet.  It is getting to be crunch time.  I thought about going to a mall and looking around, but I haven't time for that.  I haven't been to a shopping mall in years.  Maybe I have.  Yes, I remember going.  No, I don't want to go again.  I'll need to take a stroll down the Boulevard, though.  Or maybe go to Walmart.  I need to buy gifts for mother's neighbors who have been so nice to her.  

But as I've reported, I'm no good at picking out presents.  Maybe those big containers of cookies.  

Oh. . . I want to make something clear.  I wasn't asking for insults yesterday when I wrote I couldn't take a compliment.  What I meant was compliments make me uncomfortable.  People who say mean things to me, who insult me or people I love, I can just walk away.  I learned early in life that they will do it again.  I just leave negative people alone.  I've done it plenty.  So. . . just saying.  

The roof on my house is done.  Now I need to get the house pressure washed so I can paint.  But. . . my mother wants to pay to have someone paint it so that I don't have to risk my life trying to paint the high parts.  I'm considering it.  I once climbed rock faces, but now I'm afraid of ladders.  I've been run over real good and I know I can't take a fall.  So. . . .

There is other work to be done.  Mulching the one drive and laying down more granite rock in the other two.  There is a garden to dig out and replant and a patio to. . . I don't know what it is called. . . to redo the mortar that is between the bricks. Remortaring?  

I CAN paint my mother's house, though without getting more than a few feet off the ground, so there is that.  

I read that the price of copper has skyrocketed and that thieves are stealing it again.  

I'm flailing here.  I have nothing to say.  I take my mother to another doctor's appointment in a few minutes, so I guess I'll give up on trying to say anything entertaining or informative.  Some days are like that, just a big, ugly void.  

Selfish Paranoia

I'm done editing T's studio pics.  I am disappointed.  Maybe he is, too.  I don't know.  The people I have let see them are enthusiastic, but they may just be generous.  I should stick with images like the one above about which I am certain.  I like this image, see?  I can't tell you how many variations I have of this very thing.  There is something that speaks to me in a photo like this that I can't verbalize.  

Still, I like photographing people, but for my own purpose and not someone else's.  I'm a selfish paranoid, I guess.  

"Why don't you let other people see your pictures?"

Maybe it is because I was an only child.  I never broke my toys, but when the kids from the neighborhood came and played with them, they were often damaged.  I developed a sense of guardedness about my things.  Other people are too careless. . .  with my things. . . and my feelings. 

After I wrote yesterday's post, I went back to bed.  I was falling asleep in the chair as I wrote.  The pills were still working on me, and I didn't get up again until the afternoon.  I had slept away a good part of a perfect day outside.  

Selavy.  That's what you get when you try to play drug addict.  

"Buy the ticket, take the ride."

I didn't like the ride any more than I did those rides at the fair when I was kid that spun you around upside down as the rocket made giant loops until my equilibrium was thrown all out of whack and I puked.  I get seasick and carsick, too, so. . . there you go.  

When I got back to my home, I looked at the roofing job.  My heart fell.  I didn't think they had solved my problem.  When I got inside, though, and turned on my computer, the roofing guy had sent about thirty photos of what they were doing throughout the re-roofing and what they did.  Hmm.  I decided to send them to T.  

"These will make more sense to you than they do to me," I said.  

Then I put on my walking clothes and went out into the late afternoon air.  I never take my phone when I walk unless I want to know how far I have gone, but since I walk the same routes over and over, I don't need it.  When I got back, I had phone and text messages.  My mother.  My mother's across the street neighbor.  My tenant.  WTF?  None of this was going to be positive, I knew.  I called the tenant first.  She has gone into the great white north for Christmas.  

"Can you bring in my garbage cans, and will you check to make sure my door is locked."

Uh-huh.  

As we were talking, two women walked by, one young and shapely beautiful.  I was sitting outside and saw them looking at the house and then at me, smiling.  As they rounded the corner, the older one stopped and asked, "Is your name C.S.?"  

"Yes," I grinned hoping for something good.  

"Is it C.S.?" she asked once more, and once more I answered, "Yes," but with less confidence.  

It was a woman who used to live in a big, two story house as old as mine.  She was a professor at Country Club College, divorced from the CEO of a big plastics company.  She had custody of her two young sons.  She was smart and friendly and really, really beautiful then.  She is the one who coerced me into doing a presentation to the Opera Guild (if you remember the tale) and gave me much advice and her own research for my dissertation.  Long story short, she moved, I got divorced, and I saw her rarely after that.  

"I thought you sold your house."

"Nope."

"I love this neighborhood.  It is the best neighborhood in town.  You were smart not to sell it."

It was the '90s when I last saw her.  We had both aged, but she still looked OK.  

"This is my daughter," she said.  

"When did you sneak her in?  You had two sons when you lived here."

Her daughter was brilliant, beautiful, and shining.  Her smile was huge and she had locked her eyes upon me as her mother talked.  I tried not to imagine things that were impossible. . . but that was fairly impossible.  She lived and worked in Berlin, she said.  

"Oh, my. . . that is dangerous," I said acting like I knew.  Having never been, I knew it was a stupid thing to say.  

"I lived in Munich for awhile.  That is much tamer," she said.  

The conversation was coming to a natural ending, so hurriedly I said, "Listen, you know, I'm a photographer and I just got access to a great studio, so you know where I live. . . why don't you come around sometime and we can plan out a shoot.  I'd love to. . . ."

No I didn't.  I was just imagining the impossible.  What I did say was, "It was nice to see you again. . . and it was nice to meet you."

Very gentlemanly.  I'm only goofy in my own head and here on the Blogger.  Otherwise I'm as cool as somebody else's cucumber.  

I called my mother.  It had been a butt dial, she said.  

"What do you want for dinner?" I asked.  

"Oh, honey. . . I just ate.  They brought me a big bowl of chili. . . . "

I knew who "they" were, so I asked again, "So what do you want for dinner?"

"Nothing."

"O.K.  So I should plan dinner for just me?"

"Yes."

Yay!!!  There was no way I was going to cook. I felt lighter.  Then I called her across the street neighbor but got no answer.  

It was time to shower, but first I sat down with the studio pictures.  I edited two more and realized to go any further would be to go too far.  I was done with it. 

So I showered, dressed, and set out for some good bbq.  I went to the place that has had some good national press, the place Ili and I started going to when it was first opened.  It was owned by a giant of a fellow, big and thick but not quite showing acromegaly, but somehow he seemed to have a suggestion of it.  He was running the place with his father then, and they would always come over and say hello and chat a bit when we went in.  I assumed it was to talk to Ili.  

I don't go there very often now, and when I do, he is never around, but last night he was sitting at the bar.  I made a go order and went to the bar to wait.  The big guy turned and smiled and asked me how I was doing.  I figured he was just chatting up the customers, but we talked for a long time.  I said I didn't see him here anymore, and he said he had been opening up his two other locations.  He was getting ready to open a fourth.  

"You're going well," I proffered, but he told me it was a bad time to own a restaurant.  His place was pretty empty for a Saturday night.  I told him I had gone to sushi the night before, and usually on a Friday night you would have to wait to be seated, but last night it was barely half full.  I told him about a fellow I know who bought a very established French restaurant to open his own.  The big fellow knew about it.  The guy has been asking for backing, I knew, since he had queried several of the money gymroids about investing.  

"He'll need at least twelve million," said the big guy, "probably a lot more." You know (name redacted)?  He got a Michelin star.  Now he's closing four restaurants.  There is plenty of money at the top," he said, "but," waving his arm across the nearly empty room, "the middle class is suffering.  The cost of everything is going up.  My rent. Electricity.  I bought pork and brisket the other day and we had to trim two pounds of fat off it.  That is how they are offsetting the cost."

"At the grocery store, the asparagus stalks keep getting longer," I said.  "There is a lot more woody part you have to cut off.  People are eating at home and cancelling their HBO subscriptions."

He grinned and nodded sadly in agreement.  

Trumpism.  It is killing everyone.  

"I'm just trying to keep my head above water," he said.  

Back to my mother's house.  She watched me eat.  

"Is it good?" 

"It's cold," I said.  Takeout is usually a mistake, but I had to get back and I didn't want to cook.

I got a text from T.  He said it looked like the roofers had done a good job.  I felt a little better then, but he didn't say anything about the photos I had sent him.  

And so it goes.  

One of the women with whom I had shared a few of the pictures said, "You've got a second career."

"If I had to do commercial photography for a living, I'd blow my brains out.  I like doing what I do, fucking up the photos, making a mess.  I don't want to do what other people want me to do."

Snapshots.  Vernacular.  Personal.  Like I said, I can't take a compliment.  I'm more comfortable with slings and arrows. 

"Oh. . . who hurt you?"

Nobody.  Everyone has always treated me well.  Ain't that something?  

Mop Bucket Full of Slop

I'm groggy and slow this morning.  I was up all night searching through the trove of Epstein files that were released late in the evening.  How about you?  Did you find those nude photographs Ms. Farmer famously took of her 12 and 16 year old sisters?  It was for one of her art projects.  She has claimed for years that Epstein stole them from her, and now the released files show that she had reported this to the FBI in the '90s and they did nothing about it.  See?  Ms. Farmer's interest was merely artistic.  Epstein's, on the other hand. . . .  Art allows what the rest of the world can only desire. 

I'm joking.  I'm muzzy this morning because I drank too much, took TWO muscle relaxer pills plus a Xanax last night to put me out.  Unfortunately, I woke this morning and now my eyes won't stay open and my mind is a slop bucket full of dirty mop water.  Coffee can't cut through the fog.  

Oh, my senses have been stripped, and my hands can't feel to grip
And my toes too numb to step

What I DID find in the released Epstein files, however, were pictures. . . not of anything juicy or lustful, but of recognizable people.  Guilty by association?  Surely.  Why would Epstein and Jizzlane have photos of famous people if they weren't schtupping babies?  Anyone who was pictured should be imprisoned now.   

Except the president.  He kicked Epstein to the curb.  He wasn't like the others.  He's our friend.  

The new revelations would be shocking if the files corroborated what many of his critics say, that Epstein and his co-conspirators were having sex with children.  These were the victims and survivors.  I've had to change my mind about everything because I looked up the definition of a "child."  Whoa, my man.  "She's too cute to be a minute over seventeen" is one thing, but having sex with pre-pubescent girls is another thing altogether.  Christ--girls younger than eleven or twelve?  I've been on the wrong side of this discussion.  

Is it true?  

Didn't see that in the released files.  

But yea. . . I got caught up in the National Obsession.  I think this bears repeating.  

My mother is up now which has sobered me a bit.  What the fuck did I just write?  Oh, well. . . let's move on.  

I sent a few of the studio shoot pics to some women I know.  They red hearted them.  I was going to use a red heart emoji here, but lo and behold--Blogger does not have a red heart emoji.  It has lots of heart emojis, but not a red one.  Now what is up with that?  I'm onto another conspiracy theory here.  

O.K.  I just used The Google.  It is because my fucking Mac won't update to the latest OS.  Or at least that is what Chat tells me. . . but you know who owns Chat, right?  No, no, this doesn't squelch my conspiracy theory at all.  

So. . . they hearted them.  And T himself sent a more enthusiastic message.  So. . . I was almost tempted to post one here, but I still want to wait to see the stuff JP puts out.  I AM disappointed with my own pics still.  I don't think I took 50 pictures as opposed to what I will assume are 1,000 or more that JP will have taken.  I don't really have a lot to choose from.  

Here's the thing, though.  The photos are very different for me, and I think they look like commercial photography.  Red is sending them to an old art school chum of hers who is a Architectural Digest photographer.  My media chum in Miami wants me to make more photos of her.  Etc.  

I think I could do it.  So why do I not?

I realized just yesterday that I don't want to meet anyone's expectations.  I don't want to shoot to please anyone else.  I just want to please myself.  That's the only reason I do it.  And I often, most often, disappoint myself.  So why would I want to avoid disappointing others?  

Yup.  I do it for myself.  

That is not to say that I don't want the approbation of others.  I certainly do.  I like it as much or more than anybody else.  But I react terribly to disapprobation.  I can't stand rejection.  I fear it like a baby rabbit fears a hawk.  

Which is why I've never asked a woman out on a date.  

One last thing before I go.  I don't want you to think this blog is a biography.  I know, but the relationship between the author and the character C.S. is equivalent to Bukowski's relationship to Chinaski, or Houellebecq's relation to the eponymous character of the same name.  Some things are based on life experience, but much of it is a creation for entertainment or "artistic" purposes.  

Just sayin'.  

The author is much duller and dumber, if you can even believe that.  

I'm falling asleep sitting up, but my mother is creeping and creaking around the house now and I have to make her breakfast, so I won't bother you with my retelling of my day and night.  If you find anything lascivious in your perusing of the Epstein files, let me know.  But I doubt you will.  All we will ever see are the expunged and expurgated versions.  

"You want the truth?  You couldn't stand the truth!"

If you want to see the real thing. . . well. . . there is always the mirror 🤯!

LINK

No More Trophies

As Bukowski so infamously said, "Shit and death are everywhere."  We live by grace.  What keeps you safe while driving?  It is nothing more than a little white line.  Killing someone couldn't be easier.  How many potentials for something awful to happen do you pass in a single day of driving?  And yet, when a guy who drove cars for a living crashes his airplane with his entire family onboard. . . .   I mean, it is terrible, but such things happen constantly.  I don't see a national tragedy.  

Still, it is headlined in bold letters across the page while a million worse things go unreported.  I don't know.  Maybe I should quit writing and just go out and throw rocks at cars.  

It's not you, it's me.  I should move to an alleyway in Mombasa so that I know what real suffering is all about.  

But Bukowski nailed it.  

I blame immigration.  

Kidding.  

Sort of.  Take some strangers into your home and let them live with you.  You like it for a bit.  They are doing the cleaning and taking care of the yard.  Then one day they invite some of their relatives in.  They laugh and dance and stay up late, then one day you find that much of your bank account is gone.  You want to ask them to leave, but. . . .

BOOM!  You are suddenly Make My Home Great Again!

That, at least, is what I hear from people I know who live in Minnesota.  

I went out with the boys two nights ago.  I told you.  We were sitting at the outside bar facing into the bar inside.  Someone said, "C.S. hates that guy."  

"What guy?"

"That guy at the end of the bar."

"I don't hate anyone.  I'm a hippie.  I love everyone."

"No you don't.  That guy there."

"Oh.  Yea. . . I don't like him."  

I didn't like him, but the famous judge at the other end of our group really didn't like him.  

"I know I don't look rough, but I grew up in the mean streets of Miami.  I might just go beat the hell out of that guy right now."

I had to laugh.  He had just told the boys that he got a message someone he put on death row had just been executed.  

"I don't know whether to feel bad or not," he said.  

The others knew more about it than I.  

"No, man. . . he was heinous.  He was a serial killer.  He deserved it."

Well, maybe.  I don't know.  But I do know that I wouldn't want that job.  It would be hard enough to tell someone "life without parole," but sentencing people to death?  No thanks.  

Still. . . Bukowski was right.  

I'm sorry. . . I'm sorry.  I know I am already in a bad mood and the sun hasn't even risen.  My mother is up, moaning loudly, complaining as she walks through the room over and over and over and over again on her creaking walker.  

Sorry.  I'm back.  Just as the sun came up, she had me doing some chores that could have waited until I had finished here.  

"You need to. . . ."

Misery loves company.

Buk was right.  

O.K. O.K.  

Let me try again.  

I downloaded the files from the studio shoot yesterday.  I wasn't happy.  I was trying to stay out of JP's way, so I don't have a lot of good angles, almost no close-ups, and I didn't shoot nearly enough images.  Some are blurry because I didn't check the settings on my camera.  Some are just out of focus because I was shooting with a long manual focus lens on my medium format Fuji which makes great and wonderful images, but I brought the wrong extra batteries and the camera died way too soon.  

But mostly, I think, I was disappointed in myself.  It is like that.  You might think you could do a thing in your head, but then you have to try and. . . . 

Of course I didn't have time to do much more than look at the images on the computer, but I was able to cook a few up before I had to get back to mom's.  I sent a few to T, and he said he liked them, but I didn't feel a great enthusiasm.  I've decided not to post any of my shots until I see what JP's look like.  I'm pretty sure I won't want to show mine after that.  

So maybe it is not my mother pissing me off this morning, though I am irritated that I could not stay home, put on music and cook up the pictures through the night as I used to.  It takes me awhile now to cook up an image as I try to relearn how to make the picture look as I want it to with all the changes and updates in the tools I once used.  Having not done it for so long, it is doubly or trebly more difficult.  Still, there is a magic to it.  

But I am more than likely just irritated with myself and my incredibly obvious lack of talent.  

Surely.  

And, of course, with my lack of holiday spirit and fun.  Everyone I know has left or is leaving town to spend Christmas elsewhere.  Back in the glory days, I'd be leaving Christmas day, too, to go off to some big adventure with "my boys" down in South America or Old Mexico.  Or I'd be in Key West staying on a big sailboat in a private marina overlooking the great expanse toward Cuba, frolicking naked on the beach with pretty women or, sometimes, with My Own True Love.  

This year Christmas lands with a dull thud and then the agony of the week leading to the New Year.  

I may slit my own throat.  

My mother never made coffee in the morning in her entire life.  She might go to McDonalds and get a cup with the old folks, but it was never her morning ritual.  And she never ate pastries or breakfast breads, either.  Now, I make a full pot of coffee and barely get a second cup.  I'll go to get a pumpkin croissant and there will be just a little slice of one left.  She has never been one to cook, but she likes for me to cook every night.  She likes the life I have made.  

I wish I could live it.  

I'm afraid we have already quarreled this morning.  I feel terrible.  I just want to be left alone once in awhile.  I am not like her.  I don't like busyness and noise.  I don't want to sit in a room with someone and make small talk.  She, like most people in the world, wants distraction from her own thoughts.  I need to rattle my own bucket of snakes to see what's happening.  

I am tempted to post one of my "catalog" pics, but I don't want to disappoint.  Nor do I want to fill my critics with glee.  Those are the only two outcomes I can think of right now.  

"Life isn't a competition, you know."

"Bullshit.  It surely is.  Everything is.  The biggest mistake we ever made as a nation was giving everyone a trophy."

"What?  How can you say that?"

"I guess I don't figure that everyone deserves a trophy.  Or anyone, for that matter.  No more trophies."

"You've always been a terrible cynic."

"I think I'm worse than that."

As William Muny so eloquently put it, "Deserve ain't got nothing to do with it, kid.  If we got what we deserve, we'd all starve to death."

Or, as Bukowski said, "Shit and death are everywhere." 

Only music can soothe the savage b(r)east.

Shit piss fuck goddamn.  Now I can't even pull up YouTube with Safari.  Google is evil.  I love it, but it is evil.  

So, after a struggle, here is something you probably don't want to hear anyway.  But you don't have to listen.  I don't think you ever do, anyway.  No matter.  I'm still listening to Sheryl Crow.  I know.  It's sad, but it is the dusty corners of my life we are looking into.  Let's crack open your skull and see what's inside.  

Piss shit fuck goddamn.  I can't even post a YouTube video now.  Maybe a link will work. 

LINK

Long Day

My Wednesday calendar was full, but I was not feeling well.  I had intestinal cancer, I was certain, and I felt shitty all over.  As I must keep telling myself, though, we all have to die.  I've just been hoping it would be something quick.  My mother's continuing agony is a curse of some great sort.  I had a feeling, though, that intestinal cancer was not quick, and I have yet to score the demerol and the fentanyl patches.  I could only hope they would give me lots of morphine.  

"You're not feeling well, are you?" my mother asked me in the morning.  I didn't think it showed.  

"You've given me cancer.  No, not given it to me, but the stress has activated it.  I've already told you I'd be in the grave before you."

I didn't say that, though.  I just thought it.  

I made her breakfast and sat with her while I drank a cup of kefir.  She stares at me through her thick lenses that make her look bug-eyed.  It is unnerving.  It was then that she reminded me that the maid was coming.  Shit.  I had to hurry.  Put the bedsheets in the washer.  Start picking up the house.  

At eleven, I picked up my travel bag and reminded her of my day.  

"You still don't feel well, do you?"

At home, I put on my walking clothes and headed out the door.  The weather was uninspiring, an overcast, humid day.  I turned back.  There was nothing to photograph, but I needed to get back in the habit of carrying a camera.  You never know.  

Three and a half miles later, having crossed an empty Country Club College campus and come back down the Boulevard, I had snapped about ten pictures.  Maybe twelve.  I dumped them into the computer.  Eh.  Not bad. Nothing great, of course, but. . . .

I still wasn't feeling well, and I lay down on the bed and fell asleep.  When I woke, it was two.  I had an hour before I needed to be at the studio.  I still needed to shower, wash my hair, etc.  

My mother's house was on the way to the studio.  I stopped in to see how she was doing.  The maid was there working in the kitchen where my mother sat miserably.  I stayed for five minutes.  

I was the first one to the studio.  T called.  

"J.P. called and said he'd be about twenty five minutes late."  

I wasn't feeling well and thought about bolting.  They didn't need me for this shoot.  But T. kept me on the phone.  

"Man, I am not feeling well," I said.  "My gut has been bad all day."

"What?  Me, too!  I haven't eaten anything all day.  I keep cramping.  What the fuck have you given me?"

My spirits lifted a bit.  Maybe it wasn't cancer after all.  Maybe it was a stomach bug.  Good.  O.K.  I'd stay for the shoot.  

"I've brought a couple bottles of tequila and whiskey," he said.  

He pulled into the lot and I grabbed my camera bags.  I thought I'd run him through some things before J.P. got there.  We tried some poses, me telling him what I thought he shouldn't do.  Then J.P. came through the door.  

Let me tell you about J.P.  He came from Haiti, but you wouldn't know it by hearing him.  He has no accent at all.  He started out working in a high end men's clothing shop on the Boulevard.  From there, he did some modelling and started repping some clothing lines.  Now he owns five photo studios and is getting ready to open another in Nashville.  He was late because he had gone down to his studio in Miami for a photo shoot, then he decided to drive over to downtown Tampa to look over another studio that he is building there.  I can't stand driving across town anymore, so it was a marvel to me that he showed up at all.  He apologized for being late.  

"It's o.k.  We just got done shooting the nudes," I said, then I said something more lurid.

His eyes popped a little.  

He'd brought some clothes and T had brought some clothes and they began to go through them.  When I shot those first images of T, I noticed he was a little heavy under the eyes.  I asked J.P. if he had a makeup kit here.  

"I have makeup and hair people," he grinned, "but not here today." 

I told him T was showing some bags under his eyes.

"It's O.K.  I'll fix it in Photoshop."

J.P. and T are both model size, meaning everything fits them off the rack.  These are the bodies clothing companies make clothing for.  They went through the wardrobe and picked out a few looks.  J.P. styles a lot of men's fashion shoots, T has told me.  He knows clothes.  Still, I was stunned.  I know the size of the crews Sky works with on a catalog shoot.  I asked J.P. about that.  

"When you've done catalog modeling, how big was the crew?"

It was the same.  Hair, makeup, clothing, set design, photographer and assistants.  

We were ready.  J.P. had a very casual style.  No big setup.  No instructions.  Just "stand here."  We were shooting with window light.  The room seemed very dark, but I checked my camera and everything was fine.  J.P.  began.  

clickclickclickclickclikclikclik

He shot in burst mode on his Sony camera.  It surprised me that he used Sony, but as I watched him, I was impressed.  He had that little camera dialed in.  He never looked through the viewfinder.  Those Sony's have the quickest autofocus of any camera, and I thought that must be the reason for his choice.  

clickclickclickclickclikclikclik

I was working in my old ways, more slowly and deliberately.  We looked at one another's camera images.  They were different.  I was mostly staying out of the way, shooting full body head to toe with a lot of space around T.  He had two cameras, one with a wide angle lens and the other with a portrait length.  He shot close up getting a lot of torso and head shots.  I was watching the light.  At one point, T was wearing a hat.  The brim was putting his eyes in the shadows, so I said.  J.P. said, "yea," and started to adjust some things.  

"If we had a bounce card. . . " I said.  He went in back and got a white reflector.  We adjusted some things.  O.K.  Good.  I wasn't just a hack.  I pointed out some shadows, chose some minimal props.  T changed outfits.  Dark blue jeans, a tan t-shirt, and a jacket.  He put on brown shoes.  They were wrong, I thought.  

"What do you think," J.P. asked me.  

"I think it would look better if he were barefoot with the bottom of his pants rolled."

That's what I thought, but this was not my thing.  J.P. was a stylist, but. . . . 

"Yea. . . you're right."

He was a very cordial and relaxed fellow.  He knew what he was doing and confidence will do that for some.  Others might be cocky assholes, but J.P. was gracious.  I was glad to be there.  I was learning something valuable.  The lesson was that this shit doesn't have to be difficult.  I worry far too much.  He started off in this in his twenties.  Now, at thirty-five, working constantly, he had no trepidations or fears.  Creatively, I am driven by fear.  That hasn't worked out so well, though, other than to protect my ego. 

We were half a bottle of whiskey in now, and T was loosening up.  At forty-seven, he is a "mature model" which is what these clothing companies were selling right now.  I think he was doing fine.  He has the build.  He had the look.  

After a couple hours, we were done.  I had come in feeling bad, and as always after a two hour shoot, I was exhausted.  Old and sick and tired.  But the day wasn't over.  We still had gymroid happy hour.  I still needed to get back to my mother's house.  I had to put her eight o'clock meds together and feed her.  

As I was packing up, J.P. said he wanted to come over to my house and sit and talk.  I told him I had a shit ton of strobe lighting that was just sitting and not being used.  He wants to see that and my thousands of cameras and just talk.  He said he wanted to "work something out."  I'm not sure what all that meant.  I think it meant my being able to use his studios, but there is something else.  

In truth, I don't believe any of this will happen.  

I was sitting with my mother having dinner when T called.  

"How do you think it went?" he asked.  

"I think it was fine.  J.P. knew what he was doing."

"He said he guaranteed me that they would use some of the images in the catalog.  He is sending me a bunch of their clothing line."

"Cool.  Yea."

"I can't wait to see your pictures," he said.  

"Yea, well. . . his are going to be more of what clothing companies are looking for."

"No, man. . . I want to use yours to send to Buck Mason."

"Yea. . . we'll see."

Surprising to both of us, we said our bellies felt better.  I'm not a bourbon drinker, but the Buffalo Trace had gone down well.  

He was on his way to meet the boys.  I said I'd try to catch up.  Mother and I finished dinner and I cleaned up the kitchen.  

"O.K.  I don't want to, but I gotta go."

My mother looked glum.  She only has two looks now, glum and glummer.

"Are you coming back?"

"Jesus Christ.  Yes. . . I'll be back."

A fifteen minute three mile drive in traffic.  I got two calls asking where I was.  When I finally got there, the idiots were sitting at the outside bar so that the judge was at one end, five seats from where I sat on the other.  

"I kinda thought you'd have sense enough to get a table."

"Oh."

The beautiful bartender who hates me was working.  

"She was real sweet to me when I came up," T said.  

"She won't be now.  I'll never get a drink."

"I'll get her," he said.  

When she finally came over, she sneered at me.  "Do you want something to drink?"

"Sure. I'll have a vodka martini."

When it came, it had no olives.  And there was no smile.

"Why does she hate you," T asked in wonder.

"Beats me.  Must be chemical."

We watched her smiling and laughing with the other customers.  It took me five minutes to get two olives on a stick.  The boys ordered food.  I settled back on my end of the line.  The conversation was all going the other way.  It was o.k.  I looked around, watched the crowd.  

"Do you want some pizza?"

T had ordered a "carnivore's" pizza or some such thing.  I took a piece.  It was really good.  

These were money boys, and they were talking money shit, who was who and who had invested in what. . . .  They were cocksure boys now, and I was a hippie sitting at the end of an abandoned line.  It didn't matter.  At least I didn't have an opinion.  Sitting with my academic Woke friends, I would have, and it would have landed me in a bruha of trouble.  But I was getting tired now.  This was not a night of adventure and daring, so after the judge, a man of my exact age, had snuck around to the bar and picked up the tab, I said I, too, had to go.  

"Gotta get mom her meds and put her to bed."

And with that I left them and limped off in the dark of night to find my mother's car.  

I got back to her house just before Trump gave his speech.  Oh, boy. . . it was a good one.  I hadn't realized how well things were going.  I guess I'd been listening to that mainstream press.  

It doesn't matter what he says or how he says it.  It doesn't matter that he is obviously deranged.  His poll numbers don't matter.  He can tell nothing but a lie, but it doesn't matter.  I watched the CNN analysis after his speech. . . but it didn't matter.  Somewhere, people were celebrating.  They were having fun.  Even those who voted for him say he is despicable, but that doesn't matter.  People hate the left and their transgender/DEI/finger pointing ways.  

"We were here first, and we want our culture back!"

I went to bed exhausted knowing I had little to do the next day and was grateful for it.  But I'll get a look at the pictures I shot yesterday knowing they won't match J.P.s.  I just hope I got something.  

Don't Compare

The last time I saw her was a few days before she left for Paris.  She was going to work for the fashion magazine W, and she had come to tell me goodbye. It was a surprise visit, unexpected.  She walked into the empty classroom after the students had gone. I looked up to see her standing in the open doorway leaning seductively against the frame.  I loved looking at her looking at me.  

"I'm leaving," she said.  

"Really?"

"Yes. I'm going to Paris.  Can you come to lunch?"

It was my last class of the day.  

"Sure I can," I said, picking up my things.  When I reached her, she gave me a hug and a kiss.  She took my arm as we were leaving the building.  As we were preparing to descend the steps, we noticed something in the sky.  

"What's that?"

There was a trail of smoke that ended in a giant bubble cloud.  

"I think there was a space launch.  That doesn't look right."

A kid was walking by and saw us staring into the distant sky.  

"The space shuttle just blew up," he said.  "I just heard it on the radio."

We all looked up.  

"Oh. . . wow. . . ."  

That was almost the last time I saw her.  She would write to me from Paris occasionally, once sending me a photo she had taken that was published by the magazine, but as things do, that all eventually petered out.  

The first time I saw her, I was out for an afternoon run.  As I made a turn around a street corner, a convertible pulled up beside me.  It was a nice car driven by a pretty blonde.  She coasted beside me with her with the windows down.  

"Hey, can I talk to you for a second."

My imagination was going faster than I was, but there was a little voice inside me telling me that this wasn't what I thought, that she was simply wanting to get directions.

"Sure," I said, "but I'm going to keep running."

"Oh.  O.K."  She kept kept along side of me at my slow, eight minute mile pace.  

"Listen.  I've seen you around.  I have a photo shoot at the beach this weekend, and I wanted you to come be in it."

I had no illusions that way, but I was tempted to say O.K. just to hang out with the pretty girl.  

"Oh. . . no. . . I've seen myself in pictures before.  That would be no good."

"Well. . . can we talk about it?"

"Sure," I said.  "I'm going to finish my run, but I live just around. . . "

"I know where you live.  I'll come by in an hour." 

And she did.  She was a student at Country Club College.  I lived close.  You could see the campus from my front porch, so we were nearly neighbors.  We sat outside and talked for about an hour, and I got the lowdown.  She was an "it" girl with an air of privilege about her.  She was raised by her grandparents who owned a number of car dealerships.  She had a boyfriend, "maybe."  She gratified him, she said, but didn't have sex with him.  

"He's kind of boring.  He sits around all day watching sports with the sound turned down doing his own commentary.  He wants to be a sports commentator like his father.  

His father was a famous sportscaster and former NFL star.  

"I'm leaving Country Club next term," she told me.  "I'm transferring to Hollins College in Virginia, so. . . ."

And that is how it went.  She would write to me from time to time, and when she was in town, she would get in touch.  She remained what she had been, a beautiful sophisticate, and I was always happy when she came around

I saw her twice after she went to Paris.  She came to my house one last time when she moved back.  The last time was about a year later.  I saw her on the Boulevard with a group of people.  She was on the arm of her new wealthy Texas husband.  She gave me a look of warning that I was not to approach.  This was absolutely not my crowd.  

Always a groomsman and never the groom.  Kicked to the curb again.  An eternal outsider/a sometime gypsy in the palace.  No matter.  We'd had our fun.

I thought of her last night as I watched the evening news with my mother.  Her Country Club College boyfriend is the brother of Trump's Chief of Staff.  As I watched the story of her Vanity Fair interview, I began my trip down Memory Lane.  

That was a very long time ago.  She was untamed then.  Some of the things she wanted to do were sheer lunacy.  No. . . I won't.  The better part of valor, etc.  But it neared mythical.  

* * *

I was walking across the parking lot to the grocery store a couple days ago when I saw Captain Fitzpatrick from "Bad Monkey" going in ahead of me.  When we got inside, I speed limped to catch him.

"Hey, fellow, I'm tired of everyone mistaking me for you," I shouted.  He slowly turned around. 

"Oh, hey. . . yea. . . pretty close."

"I'm going to start doing really terrible things in your name," I laughed.

"Might be good for my reputation," he said.  

"How are things?"

"Good. . . good. . . we are getting ready to start filming Season Two of Bad Monkey, so I can't complain."

He had some reservations, though.  They hadn't begun production yet, and he was concerned that Hiassen was not going to be overseeing the script.  

"He refuses to work on any production unless it is shot in Florida.  The producers decided to move production to L.A. this year."

He asked about me, and I briefly told him my sad tale.  

Whatever.  

Today I have a photo shoot and tonight a Holiday Happy Hour, so there are people who have it worse.  I guess.  I mean I am certain, but it hardly seems like it some days.  

My problem lies in doing something I know I should not do--comparing the present to the past.  You know, "the good old days" when beautiful blondes in fancy convertibles would stop me in the street, give me their phone numbers, tell me they had seen me before and knew where I lived.  

Don't do it, kids.  Don't compare one day to another.  That is the action of the truly sad.  Live in the moment, all the way up.  Trust me.  I'm not like the others. . . . 

Complications

Kids are the future.  Maybe people will think twice about having children now.  But I'll get to that.  

Apple is a piece of shit company.  So is Google.  So is Adobe.  They are all Greedhead corporations.  It's not that they don't make good products.  I depend on them.  But I am posting this today on Chrome because. . . well, I'm not certain yet what went wrong.  I updated my Photoshop app through Adobe yesterday so I could edit pictures on my little 13" Apple Air.  Whatever it is called.  But it wouldn't work.  Why?  It said I needed the latest OS for my Mac to run it.  I tried to update the OS, but nope, I can't.  Apple quits updating its computers after some years.  I bought my little Mac in 2019.  I updated it yesterday, but I could only get the latest version of Sonoma.  That is not the newest OS, though.  Sequoia, then Tahoe.  I need at least one of the latest versions of Sequoia.  But I can't.  

When I downloaded the latest version of Sonoma, though, shit changed.  Now when I try to post using Safari, I can't upload photos.  It will take me half a day, I assume, to figure out why.  I hate using Chrome. It is clumsy and intrusive.  But I am stuck in computer hell just now. 

I could have bought a new 13" computer on Black Friday for $500.  I should have.  Now?  

There are my tech/greedhead woes.  I'm sure I'll find more difficulties going forward.  

So. . . Rob Reiner, huh?  I told my mother to watch herself.  She's been lucky so far.  

I sent this to some people two days before "the murder."

(link)

He stabbed them to death.  Holy shit!  Just shoot me, O.K.?  How fucking nuts must a fellow be to stab his parents to death?  Well. . . all you have to do is look at his photo.  About that nuts.  

You never know how people will turn out.  Were the Reiners bad parents or was it something else?  You can ask Trump.  He has the answer.  

Oh. . . you know the Times reads my blog, and after yesterday's post, they posted more about the Woody Allen/Epstein thing.  Woody Allen says that Epstein had great dinner parties with very interesting people.  He doesn't regret his relationship with Epstein.  

My new friend at the gym told me yesterday that she was thinking about me when she went to a Christmas party with her husband.  People were complimenting her on how good she looked, she said, "And I tried to remember to give a compliment back."

"Yes. . . I'm a good life coach," I laughed.  

Indeed, I'm a hell of a guy.  

"What were you wearing?" I asked.  Oh, she was ready to show me a photo.  A red sequined dress baring one of her shoulders.  It wouldn't have been my choice, but I was flattered to be shown.  Whenever I'm talking to her, the boys all seem come around.  Creepers.

I have a busy Wednesday, and I am anxious as hell about it.  Three o'clock in the studio for the photo shoot, then Happy Hour with the gymroids.  I'll dash back to my mother's house to fix dinner after the shoot then pop out for a bit.  I don't do that ever but for a few Friday sushi dinners at five.  I'm usually back by six.  But I'll be leaving her alone in the dark for awhile, and it makes me nervous.  The whole thing does.  

I don't think I can really enjoy myself anymore.  

And so it goes.  

My BIG Day Out

I got out for awhile yesterday afternoon.  I went to the annual Grandma Party at the Cafe Strange and environs.  It stretched for blocks from the cafe across the street to the hipster shopping strip.  The crowd was what it should be, and I saw people I don't often see, or now that I'm a full-time caregiver, never see.  They were part of the Hipster Elite, artists and shop owners and writers and DJs and just plain "personalities."  

I won't bore you with it all, but I felt "out" again.  I talked to people.  Used the old vocal cords.  Found that I could still hang.  It was fun.  

I took my Leica and shot a gazillion picture.  I didn't think most of them would be any good for by and large I wasn't putting the viewfinder to my eye and I had a 35mm lens attached which is different from the wider angle 28mm I have been using lately, so I was often too close or missing what I was trying to shoot entirely.  But, for the first time in my life, I used the setting that takes six photos a second, so I was able to "spray and pray" as it is often called.  The result?  Instead of one image, I would have four or five, and when I got home to download the images, I had hundreds instead of fifty.  Most of the early ones, I saw, were no good, but I got better as the day went on.  By the time I had downloaded them all, though, it was getting to be time to head back to mother's.  I wouldn't be able to seriously cull and work on any images at all, so I copied them to an external hard drive to bring back to my little laptop at mom's.  

That didn't work out so well.  I was able to edit a couple before I got messages that I couldn't edit anymore, that my scratch disc was full.  WTF?  I had to update all my photo apps last night and spent half of this morning trying to figure out what is wrong.  I will have to do a deep dive later.  

So what you see are a couple of edits before the catastrophe.  

Selavy.  

I was looking forward to this week, a week free of doctor appointments.  I might have a good portion of the days to myself.  But the weather forecast could be better and I am supposed to get a new roof sometime this week, so. . . it may not be as grand as I had imagined.  

I was looking back at pictures from two years ago.  I was taking pictures almost every day.  I was taking drives around the state looking at Christmas things, finding oddities, just being out.  It nearly made me weep.  I thought maybe  I might do it again.  I'll have a few hours from mid-morning to mid-afternoon if I don't go to the gym.  I have to cram my own life into a few hours each day.  

If I am lucky.  

Some of the pics are not completely in focus, but I don't mind.  I mean, I wish they were, but just having the image is something.  

Oh, hey. . . I wanted to say a few words about the released Epstein files.  Dems have releases some photos of Clinton, Trump, and Woody Allen.  They have blurred out the faces of the females in the pictures. . . they say to "protect the victims."  Really?  Then why release the images at all?  Who are the "victims"?  Let's pick, say, Woody Allen because I am a fan of his movies.  Why Woody?  Of course I know why.  But, as almost all commentators on tv say when asked a question, "Listen. . . this does not mean that any of these figures knew what was going on or that they participated or did anything illegal."  

O.K.  That's right.  So why show their faces?  They may also be "victims."  It is easy to point to Woody and say, "Sure."  Easy.  But. . . I have known many people who were convicted of crimes and went to jail and/or prison.  Does that make me an accomplice?  I may have even known something about the situation, but I wasn't buying or selling or stealing or pimping or whatever with them.  Should my photo be shown at an event I attended in connection with them? 

All this "high moral ground" bullshit makes me ill.  Don't cast aspersions until you have the goods.  They've already tainted my thinking.  "Well, sure. . . you know Bill Clinton was in on it, and Woody. . . did you see Manhattan?  Yea.  He's one for sure.  And there is no doubt in my mind about Trump.  Hell, I still think he was schtupping his own daughter."  

Just saying, we are all imaginative thinkers.  We may be right, we may be wrong.  But. . . didn't you want to go to a Diddy party just to see what was going on?   You know the Obamas were in on it.  

Selah.  

Since I posted that Sheryl Crow song the other day, I've been listening to her music.  Man, she was a thief, but a good one.  Her first album is a fusion of Steve Miller slide guitar, Prince percussions, Tom Petty tunes.  The lyrics are pretty good for pop music.  She had talent.  

I have been saying she was a backup singer for Prince before she went out on her own, but I think I might be wrong.  She DID collaborate with him a few times, though, and he recorded some of her songs.  

I just want to get into my mother's little Corolla, roll down the windows, put on the tunes, and drive on down the highway.  Every day is a winding road.