Cathouse Out Back

Over a year ago we inherited some feral cats, who were hanging around our place. My wife, Sally, contacted No More Homeless Pets, who put us onto a plan to trap the cats, and have them neutered by a veterinarian at the low price of $10 each. The catch is that after the neutering we then had some cats we were caretaking; not really as pets, just as guests.

Sally and I built a shelter for the two black feral boys we called Black and Decker. We took two Sterilite storage containers, one smaller than the other, cut a hole in the end of both of them, insulated the spaces between the smaller and larger containers with newspapers and styrofoam, and put a pad inside our little cathouse.

They both used the house, came by our back porch twice a day to be fed, until just before Christmas when the larger of the two cats was killed by a car. I renamed the smaller cat Little Brother, and he was by himself for quite a time.

Since then he's acquired a couple of buddies. One may be his mother, who we saw when he and his brother were kittens, and the other may be a stepbrother we have named Whitepaws. They all show up in the morning and evening for their meals.

Sally and I went under the porch in the backyard on Sunday to clean out the cathouse, and found it to be in really good condition. The outside was dirty from the weather, but the inside was nice and cozy.

Because of the nice weather, Little Brother (the black cat), and Whitepaws (the Siamese cross) have been sleeping on a padded wicker chair on my back porch. I got this picture the other night while they were bumming around, waiting to get fed. Sometimes Sally slips them a treat after dinner. She's pretty softhearted when it comes to animals and grandbabies, spoiling both of them.

You can see if you look closely that both cats have the tips of their right ears cut off. The veterinarian does that so if the cats are ever trapped again and taken to the vet they'll know they've already had the sterilizing procedure. We had Little Brother neutered, but have no idea who trapped Whitepaws and had him fixed.

Despite the fact that these cats are still very skittish and won't come to us, they are very endearing. Whitepaws likes to run around the kitchen if we leave the sliding glass door open while we're fixing his dinner. There may come a time when Whitepaws can be tamed, if only slightly.

My last pet cat died in January, 2000 and it was a heartbreaking thing to watch her die. I said I'd never have another pet. My wife pet sits other people's dogs and cats, and there are things about pet owning I don't miss--like cleaning up a litter box, for instance--but I miss the animals themselves.

A friend told me I'll get "brownie points in heaven" for taking care of these ferals, but that's not my motive. There's just a lot of suffering in the world. Maybe it's my way of alleviating an infinitesimal part of that. Or trying to build up a little good karma.

******

As a school district employee who visits 29 schools a day, including five high schools, I find stories like the Bailey, Colorado tragedy hitting close to home. I'm sure our administration and school district police department do too.

The fact is you don't know who is walking into a school. They are public places. The doors are open. I have seen parents who are much stranger looking than the guy who held the girls hostage in Bailey. Nowadays people can look as slobby as they want and you don't know if they are parents or some transients walking in off the street. It can be in any part of town, affluent or low income.

I've often wondered what I'd do if I ran into a situation where someone was shooting in a school. I just don't know. I hope it never happens in any of our schools, but we have had lockdowns when suspicious characters are in the buildings, until they can be located and ejected. Our police take away several weapons a day from the kids, but so far they've had no indications of any Columbine-type plots.

On the one hand you have to make schools accessible, but on the other hand you are sometimes letting in people you definitely wouldn't want anywhere near your children. The scary thing is that sometimes those undesirable-looking folks could be the parents of your child's classmate.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Postcard From The Edge Of Sanity

I was going through a drawer in my basement studio and came across an envelope full of old pictures, postcards and birthday cards. One postcard immediately popped out at me. I bought it some years ago at an antique store because it made me laugh. A sardonic laugh, though. It's a penny postcard, probably from the 1930s, of the Utah State Mental Hospital in Provo.

Who the hell would send a postcard of a state mental hospital?! What would you say on the back, "Having a wonderful time (receiving electroshock therapy daily)…wish you were here."

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s the name "Provo" meant mental hospital. We'd say, "You need to go to Provo," if someone was acting strange. Nowadays Provo means Brigham Young University, but the state mental hospital is still there. I read a news article the other day saying that the state kicked in some money for an additional 20 to 30 beds at the state hospital, but that there is a shortage of psychiatrists. My advice is, if you're a psychiatrist needing a job, they need you.

Before you get an idea I'm just another insensitive clod who makes fun of people who are mentally ill, I'll tell you that my mother was mentally ill for years before she got Alzheimer's. We never had to send her to Provo, or to any other facility, either, because her mental illnesses were mostly paranoia and delusional, and we thought she was bizarre, but not mentally ill. She had exhibited symptoms all of my life, but the illnesses only took over her life in the few years before she was put in the Alzheimer's care center.

As my own therapist put it, 10 years ago, after hearing stories about my mother, "Growing up with a mentally ill parent is one of the hardest things to do." It can't help but have an effect, emotionally, and maybe someday after Mom has died I'll be able to tell people what it was like, but for now let's just say that while I don't have all of Mom's problems, I can see that I have a few of them. Genes will tell.

Like a lot of uneducated people, I thought of mental illness not as a brain problem but something else. Who knows what I thought? People thought "crazy people" were crazy because it was their own fault, maybe their parents drove them crazy, or maybe they were being punished by God. We have so many derogatory terms to describe mental illness, and we are still superstitious, fearing the disorder rather than trying to understand it.

I think it was what kept my mother from asking for help. Mental illness was so stigmatized that to be admitted to a state mental hospital was tantamount to being convicted of murder. At least it was in Mom's eyes, and she passed that prejudice along to me. My brother and I finally got her to see a doctor about two years before she finally had to be put into the care center. One of the last lucid things I remember her asking me was, "Is he going to tell me I'm insane?"

NAMI is an organization devoted to education about mental illness, and is in its tenth year. Right now after a lifetime with Mom, of battles with brain disorders and quirky personality traits, I'm a lot more sympathetic with people who have those problems, either with themselves or a family member.

Alzheimer's is a destructive disease which has robbed my mother of what quality of life she had left, even with mental illness. But the mental illness took my mother away from the joys of life many, many years ago.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Gay Bashing, 1950s Style

Recently two friends of my wife went to Vancouver, BC, Canada, to get married. It was mostly symbolic, because when they returned the the U.S. the marriage wasn't recognized, since they were both women.

The fact that a country would recognize a union between two people of the same sex is a major step forward for gay people. My wife and I aren't gay (as Seinfeld says, "Not that there's anything wrong with being gay!") but we know a lot of gay people. Everyone does. They just might not realize they do, because a lot of gay people are still in the closet.

It was especially true in past generations, when gay-bashing was kind of a national sport, like telling racist jokes, perpetuating stereotypes about all people who weren't the "typical" heterosexual white American. If you were able to hide your true identity to avoid such prejudice, wouldn't you?

I was going through one of my old paperbacks, Washington Confidential, when I came across this chapter, Garden Of Pansies, which might be the most anti-gay material I've read in a mainstream book. I've scanned it and am reproducing it so you can see for yourself how easy it was to publish such a screed in 1951.

I doubt that today any mainstream publisher would publish something that includes every gay pejorative known to the English language: fairy, faggot, swish, queer, used in a totally derogatory way. The authors even admit that their experiences with homosexuals were with people in entertainment, and that was OK with them. It was just all of those damn homosexuals in the government with whom they had problems…

Authors Lait and Mortimer published two or three other books in the popular "Confidential" series, including New York Confidential and Chicago Confidential. The titles probably inspired the popular magazine, Confidential, which, along with its other scurrilous gossip, liked to "out" gay entertainers. In a metaphorical sense, it was like hunting foxes, flushing them out of the brush and then killing them. It could mean the end of a career.

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40 Years Of Star Trek

Good lord. Can it really have been 40 years since Star Trek first came on the air?

A local movie critic just wrote in his weekly column that the 40^th anniversary of the first episode of Star Trek was a week ago. Can that be possible that those characters we've lived with for so long have been around for, well, so long?

Guess so. It's all part of the general feeling I have that my life is being spent in a starship going at warp factor 9.

Forty years ago this month I was in bed, sicker than I've ever been, either before or since. I'd picked up a nasty strain of infectious mononucleosis coupled with tonsillitis. I had to quit my job (no sick leave), I couldn't eat (only a diet drink called Metracal, and is that still being sold?) and my girlfriend dumped me. I was sick in bed for about a month, but after a couple of days she got bored waiting for me to get better.

I was a science fiction fan, so I may have watched those early episodes of Star Trek, or maybe not. I don't remember. In those days I was usually out doing something. I hung out at a local club and listened to music; I had friends, and I had dates. I didn't spend a lot of time in the 1960s watching TV. The only reason I might have seen them on their first run is because I was too sick to do anything else.

When I did watch Star Trek, which was in reruns after my discharge from the Army, I just didn't care much for it. I know its original fans point to it with great affection, but despite the ground it did break--racial diversity in the cast members, for one thing--it was still, as creator Gene Roddenberry had said when selling the concept to network executives, "Wagon Train in space."

Science fiction often leaves out the "science" part of its name, but Star Trek was especially bad at that. The Enterprise's "warp drive" notwithstanding, things in space are very, very far apart, which is probably why we're not zipping over to other star systems right now. I found the Enterprise's ability to hop from galaxy to galaxy really hard to accept.

People who love Star Trek don't worry about that, though, not letting reality intrude on a good fantasy.

It's really been forty years, though, since Star Trek and my bout with mono? Good lord a'mercy. Beam me the hell outta here, Scotty.

*******

Reality TV is one thing, but really good realistic fictional TV is hard to find. HBO's The Wire is that show for me. It's in its fourth season now, and I've followed it since the first episode of the first season. I find it as challenging to follow as any novel, which it's been likened to.

The characters live in a dystopian version of the city of Baltimore, which can't make the real mayor and citizens, and especially the Visitors Bureau, very happy. The show is about inner city crime, drugs, despair, politics, more despair…

Jacob Weisberg of Slate Magazine has written a review of the series which really puts to shame anything I could write about it. Read this, because he has put into words what I want to say.

http://www.slate.com/id/2149566

********

I went to a union picnic Saturday. As my union is wont to do, they planned it weeks ago and the date happened to land on the coldest Saturday since last winter. Dark, threatening clouds filled the sky. The picnic was inside a pavilion which acted like a wind tunnel, funneling the cold air right over our barbecued hamburgers, giving the refrigerator effect, instant chilling.

I'm sure the weather dampened everyone's spirits. Not too many people showed up. My coworker, who is our union rep, was the MC, working the microphone, giving away door prizes. Someone commented about him, "Somebody take that hambone's mike away," but no one could have wrestled it out of his fingers.

I looked around at the several dozen people (out of a potential several hundred members plus families) who did show up, and except for my buddy on the loudspeaker, not one of them was anyone I knew. I've been with the school district for 30 years, and don't know most of the people I work with. It's the problem of working for an organization with thousands of employees, teaching and non-teaching alike.

The cold and not winning a door prize finally drove me out. I'm sure the goal of the picnic was to sign up new members and I hope they were able to do that. In today's world a working person needs all of the help he/she can get. Plus, they need hamburgers that haven't gone cold by the time you slap the condiments on them.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Bunker Hunker

Is it safe to come out yet? I've been hunkered in my bunker the past week or so, waiting for another 9/11-styled terror attack. In trying to get past my paranoid fears, the one thing that has kept me going has been my faith and trust in our wonderful President, George W. Bush. He is standing tall atop the ramparts of freedom, staring down those crazy Islamofascists.

If I was one of those Islamofascists*, I'd be shaking in my pointy-toed shoes and burnoose to know that the United States has a leader like George W., who is ready, willing and able to send the best of the country's young men and women to fight and die, get blown up or shot, horribly maimed, have their lives and their families' lives ruined, all for that ideal of freedom for all humankind.

That makes me sit down in my basement bunker feeling pretty secure, lemme tellya.

I also like the way our leader has no qualms about invoking the images and remembrance of 9/11 to further political advances for his political party. I mean, here's a man who, despite liberal dissing, is a conservationist, because he knows when to combine topics. He can tie two things together, saving his voice, and ultimately global warming from his oral exhalations, by bringing up the fact that the Muslim world hates us and wants us to die--horribly--and that if Democrats are elected our enemies will be streaming across the border like the entire Latin populations of Mexico, Central and South America are now doing!

Needless to say, during this past solemn occasion of the 9/11 anniversary, it is not necessary for our great leader to mention also that our economy is in ruins, the rich are getting filthily richer, millions of Americans have no health care, we're spending a billion a day on a war that can't be won, illegals are flooding our country and overwhelming our social systems, and most of us are counting the days until January 21, 2009, when he's out of office…

…he's there now, daring those enemies of freedom and truth. Using other people to do his fighting, mind you, but that's what great leaders do, isn't it?

God bless George W. Bush, and God bless the United States of America.

*******

*Islamofascist sounds more like a medical condition, like plantar fasciitis.

*******

While in my bunker I had a chance to look at some old magazines. (Amazing how the topics in my blog can jump around, isn't it?) A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were in a mall, and noticed the windows of The Gap. There was Audrey Hepburn, jumping up and down in a couple of great old photos. Both Sally and I agree, they just don't make stars like Audrey anymore. With all respect to Scarlett Johanssen, who I love, in the days that Audrey Hepburn was a major star, the stars had real fabulous faces: I'm thinking of Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, as well as Audrey.

I found this old Town and Country magazine from 2003. Even years after her death, Audrey could still be counted on to sell some magazines. Is that a face, I ask you. Is that a face?!

Ciao for now, El Postino

Drama Trauma

I hate cell phones. I carry one, but hate it. Those phones have become a major distraction in our lives. There is also a matter of common courtesy, which a lot of people don't observe, and that is not talking in public on a cell phone so the world can hear your business.

I was pretty annoyed the other day to be in a thrift store looking for books to resell, when I heard the familiar yakking of someone talking loudly on a cell phone, as if the rest of the world didn't exist. However, this call was intriguing. I looked around the bookcase to see a woman on a phone, saying, "You'd better pull over! Does the hospital know you're coming? I'll call the paramedics! I'll stay on the line with you, keep talking."

Another woman, a bystander, handed the first woman her own cell phone and she called 911 to report that her husband was on Riverdale Road heading for the emergency room, and he was feeling faint and she was afraid he'd pass out while driving. In the meantime she would go back to her own phone saying, "Don't drive! Pull over! Let the paramedics find you!"

The guy apparently decided to go his own way, faintness or not. I noticed a crowd starting to gather around the woman, and she saw them too. At that point she became the star of a play, a movie or TV show. She started making big flourishes with her hands, her voice took on an added sense of urgency. She lost contact with her husband and called her son, telling him in her most dramatic tones, "Your dad is on the road and I want you to trace his route to the hospital to find out if he's crashed!"

The crowd moved in a little bit closer. Oboy. This was like a movie, huh? And it didn't even cost anything for admission! To save you from suspense I'll cut to the bottom line…the man made it to the hospital and was admitted, the son made it to the hospital to be with his dad, the woman handed back the phone to the lady who had volunteered it, and as a crowd we all went back to our business. It was the kind of extraordinary thing that a cell phone does; it puts bystanders into someone else's life, even if only for a few moments. You get one part of a conversation, and our minds provide the rest of the story.

It's still ruder than hell, though, to talk like that in public. I still hate cell phones for just that reason.

Rocky Rolls

Thanks to Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson for not kowtowing to the Bush juggernaut that blew into Utah on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. He gave a magnificent speech during an anti-Bush rally which drew about 4000, in comparison to the 300 that showed up for the pro-Bush rally. Among other things, Rocky proclaimed the Bush administration to be the worst presidency in the history of our country.

A lot of Utahns are outraged by Rocky; not just because of his politics, but as an environmentalist, and as a major proponent of gay rights.

Personally, I think it's refreshing to have a guy in this reddest of the red states who doesn't bend to the will of the majority. It makes for a lot of redfaced Republicans, that's for sure. Seeing them all spitting, coughing and strangling on their own vitriol was worth a lot to me.

The Bush forces have gone the extra mile to defuse criticism by basically smothering babies in their cribs, before they get a chance to do their own thinking. This latest talk of Islam as "fascist," or anyone who disagrees with our rotten foreign policy as "fascists," would be more laughable if it wasn't so dangerous. As I recall, among their other sins, fascists were enemies of a free press, or a freethinking populace.

The Bush people have started this fascism theme just recently. All four of the major players, Rummy, Cheney, Rice and Bush, have used the term in one form or another in their most recent speeches. I imagine them standing around in the Oval Office doing a four-part harmony as they rehearse their use of the word "fascist."

The old tactic of accusing anti-war people of being anti-troops is getting old. Recently I heard a gold star mother, whose Marine son was recently killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad say, "If we don't stay the course in Iraq then my son will have died in vain."

I really feel bad that her son died. And I believe I can be antiwar and still pro troops, because I think if you don't want her son to have died in vain, then why put more soldiers and Marines in harm's way so they can be killed? There comes a time when things just have to stop before more people get killed. It's called cutting our losses, and it's a viable alternative to throwing soldiers at potentially deadly situations so that some other soldier will not have died in vain.

Cindy Sheehan's son also died in Iraq. All she wanted was for George Bush to sit down with her and assure her that her family's sacrifice was not in vain. He wouldn't do that, preferring to speak only to people who agree with him beforehand, like the aforementioned mother of the dead Marine.

What people forget about G. Dubya Bush is that he was a CEO in private business for many years before following his dad into politics. CEO's don’t take kindly to criticism. They want sycophants and yes-people around them. So does our president.

The other thing that has gotten my ire raised about this week and the response of the right to Rocky Anderson's speechifying is the harsh criticism that, unlike other mayors around the country, he doesn't show deference to the president. The president, no matter how much you disagree with him personally, is still the president and deserves respect, say those critics.

Bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! What everyone keeps forgetting is that George W. Bush is not our CEO, he's our president. HE WORKS FOR US, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!

If you think I have to respect the president when you can rip the mayor, then I have to ask you where you put your X when you voted, and whether you are aware that a president, like a mayor, is a public official, voted in.

Finally, yesterday the Salt Lake Tribune had an article about Bush's hotel stay while in town. He stayed at the luxury Grand America Hotel in a $4,500 a night presidential suite. How the hell can any hotel room cost $4,500?! Did we pay for this luxury room? The article also stated he ordered four cigars. I remember how much trouble Bill Clinton got into over one cigar.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Good Vibrations!

©2006 The Pyramid Collection
Click on picture for larger image.

I was thumbing through a catalogue my wife got on Saturday. It's from The Pyramid Collection, subtitled "A Catalog Of Personal Growth & Exploration."

Hey, explore this! A nifty little set of battery-operated fingertip vibrators for only $19.95. Could the person who translated the name of this item from the original Japanese (if it was translated) been amused or aware of how the name Fukuoku looks to American eyes? It's a perfect name for what it is.

Personally, I'd also like to explore the spider web dress and thigh-highs on just the right black widow.

They've even got a video of nude aerobics from the pornmeister, Ron Harris. I'm sure that'll be a big seller from those interested in self-exploration.

Considering the innocuous cover of this catalogue, there are quite a few little surprises inside.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Ring, Ring Goes The Bell...

School starts on Monday. Even without a calendar I'd always be able to tell when school is starting because the kids start hanging around the school and playground. They ride their bikes in the parking lots, kind of circling around, like they're reacquainting or re-acclimating themselves. Maybe they're telling themselves what I told myself many, many years ago: this year I'll do better. This year I'll do my assignments the night they're assigned and not the morning they are due. This year I'll be quieter in class, less of a class clown (maybe most kids don't need to remind themselves of that, since there is usually only one class clown per classroom). This year I'll be popular, this year I'll get a girlfriend, this year I'll write a book, this year I'll fly into outer space, this year I'll become a secret agent, a popular cartoonist, a star of my own TV sitcom, a superhero like Batman, or a rich person like Uncle Scrooge with a money bin full of ca$h.

Or not.

I'll be anything this school year but I won't plan for what I'll end up being, a guy who drives a truck for the school district and is reminded constantly that lives often don't go as we wish them to go.

*******

I checked in with another blog I read occasionally, Bored Housewife. Lisa is a young woman with a successful husband and twin boys. She is a vivid writer, but sometimes her blogs can get more stream-of-consciousness than I like. Still, I enjoy most of her jottings and skip past the prattling to get to the sexy parts. Lisa's blog led me to a blog I also enjoy, Rachel Stephens Photography. Rachel takes pictures of women in all of their sumptuous and gorgeous glory. I think women take better pictures of women than men do. Women know the inner woman, the real sensuous being inside a woman better than men do. Men project their fantasies to the outside of a woman, women project from the inside. Something like that, anyway. Check out this blog, because Rachel takes some really nice pictures.

*******

In my secret identity as an eBay seller I occasionally get a nice letter from a satisfied customer. Last week I got a note from a former Playboy Bunny thanking me for selling her a couple of 1979 issues of Playboy, because a friend of hers, now deceased, was in one of the issues. So now I can say, I satisfied a Playboy Bunny!

Ciao for now, El Postino

Prison Break Is Broken

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

I gave the Fox show Prison Break one more chance, watching the second season opener tonight. My AD/HD was really apparent during the show. I couldn't sit still, jumping up several times to go check my e-mail, downstairs to throw a load of wash into the dryer, into the bathroom to count my gray hairs.

My wife noticed, "You can't sit still during the show, but you're watching the commercials. Isn't that the opposite of what everyone else does?"

I answered, "At least the commercials make sense."

I'd been hoping that Prison Break would start making sense to me, or that I could start to care about the characters. I watched five or six episodes of the show last season and gave up. There wasn't much about it that I thought was good. The premise is completely silly, the acting is wooden, the characters aren't interesting or likable. Are you getting the drift of where I'm going with this?

I thought maybe once they actually made the break of the title that maybe the lead guy, Michael, played by Wentworth Miller, might smile. But no. I've seen more expressions on cigar store Indians. That guy has what you call chiseled features…chiseled into one look which covers everything: anger, joy, love…

But the one thing that absolutely sank the show for me, the reason I'll never watch it again is, they killed off the character played by Robin Tunney. Guys, in Robin you had a beautiful woman who can act, even though it's apparently not necessary to act to be in a Fox Network program. So, bah, I hope you all go back to prison. Can't be soon enough for me.

Oh yeah, I heard some lines somewhere in the story about them heading for the "desert of Utah" to look for something. Ha-ha. Utah has a lot of desert. I mean, a lot. Where would you like to start?

*******

Here's a picture of my granddaughter, Gabby, with the popular Vietnamese singer, Bao Han, who appeared at the Vietnamese Fair here on Sunday. Bao is one beautiful woman, and she sings pretty good, too. You can check out this video with another popular singer, Loan Chau. It's very traditional in style, very beautiful and elegant.

Ciao for now, El Postino

A.D.D.ing It Up...

I was talking with a Special Ed teacher I've known for many years, explaining to her about my coworker, who I'm sure has Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. I talked to him about it two years ago and said he'd probably be in less trouble with our boss if he did something about it. He never has and he's still in constant trouble.

The teacher friend looked at me and said, "Have you considered that you might also have AD/HD?" She said it in her own gentle way, but she could have sucker-punched my kidney and it would have been less of a blow.

I again looked up AD/HD online and read about it. Two years ago I saw my coworker as the person with the disorder, now I see myself. Sometimes it takes a third party to make you see yourself as you really are. My symptoms are not as bad as my coworker's, so it hasn't taken over my life, but I see that I have definitely had Attention Deficit Disorder during the course of my life. It made a lot of things about me click into place and suddenly make sense.

Will I do anything about it? I'll talk to my doc about it when I see her for my yearly this fall and see what she says.

*******

In my last blog I showed an ad for a photography studio that poses your kids with Jesus. I found some other things online, all of them that a devoutly religious Christian would find upsetting at Archie McPhee. A Jesus nodder? The only thing missing from the bunch are Jesus and Mary salt-and-pepper shakers.

People in the Muslim world rioted over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, but while some Christian religious people would find these Jesus caricatures offensive, this is still America where we're all allowed to be offensive.

*******

I went to a family reunion for my wife's family yesterday. It was a luau, pool party, lots of food, talking to people I only see at functions like this--or at funerals. Three of my wife's cousins and I were standing poolside chatting when my wife's cousin, Cindy, came over to us, looked at four middle-aged guys with white beards and Hawaiian shirts and said, "You guys look like the Beach Boys."

It was a lot different when we met 40 years ago in high school, when we were all trying to look like The Beatles.

*******

Finally, I'm not listening to The Beatles or Beach Boys this week, but to another old-timer, John Fogerty. After decades of lawsuits and countersuits over the rights to his songs, he has resolved that and is back with Fantasy Records. This record is a compilation of hits by Creedence Clearwater Revival and some of John's more recent work, mixing in live and classic tracks. It's wonderful to hear Fogerty in such strong voice, still rockin' out at age 61.

It's also interesting to hear great songs like "Who'll Stop The Rain?" and "Fortunate Son," both antiwar songs of their day, become relevant again, 35 years on. Timeless stuff like this will always be relevant.

For all that, the song on the album I find most affecting is "Centerfield." That song is poignant to me and it makes me smile; it is a very optimistic song, using baseball and a guy who is "ready to play, today," as a metaphor for starting over. Fogerty wrote it years ago, but I hope it means something different to him now.

Have Your Picture Taken With Jesus

Click on picture for full-size image.

I'm not religious, but I find this ad from a local ad flyer over the top, even for an area mostly populated by Mormons. Have your kids' picture taken with Jesus? I thought the department store Santa Claus at Christmas was going too far--promoting the idea that there is a man somewhere wanting to know what you want, and willing to give it to you--and now we have pictures of your children with "the Savior."

Lord save us all.

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I haven't written in a few days. It's because of the dog days of summer. I ain't just a'woofin', but I feel the heat and all I want to do is lie down in the shade and pant.

The days start out hot, then in the afternoon clouds boil up from the south. We get some lightning, some thunder, occasionally some rain or hail, but mostly it just makes the hot air muggy. In the desert where we live people like to say, "But at least it's a dry heat." Ah, so what. Hot's hot.

*******

Along the lines of the Jesus ad above, here's a picture of Homeland Security Director, Michael Chertoff, from Saturday, August 12. "St. Michael, deliver us from the terrorists that come from the sky." A very apt picture, don't you think?

Ciao for now, El Postino

Funny Dick

Click on picture for full-size image.

See funny Dick.

Dick is a joker. See Dick at work.

See him put Vaseline on doorknobs. See him put salt in the sugar bowl on the lunchroom table.

Funny, funny Dick!

Dick bought a fake hand grenade. He got it from an ad.

See Dick do what the ad says. He threw it when his coworkers were standing around having break.

See Dick now standing around in the unemployment line.

Funny, funny, jobless Dick!

See Dick at the airport.

Dick tried to sneak the hand grenade on a plane as a joke.

Naughty, naughty Dick! See Homeland Security see Dick!

See Dick in Guantanamo.

Sad, sad, funny Dick.

Busted!

Oops. Been caught, huh?

What I want to know is, if there was all this publicity about Lance Armstrong being accused of doping before his first win at Tour de France, if there is common knowledge that testing is done after the race, after the win, then why the hell would a guy risk it? Is the win worth the public humiliation afterwards?

Some folks apparently don't know shit from this stuff.
Ciao for now, El Postino

Cool Cash

You couldn't grow up in America in the past 45 years without hearing Johnny Cash on radio or TV. He had a persona that transcended his early rockabilly or country image. However, I never paid a lot of attention to Cash because he was just there, just like Ray Charles was just there, or the Kinks or The Who were "just there."

It wasn't until I read some reviews of Cash's album American Music IV: The Man Comes Around that I started to pay attention. When I listened to it for the first time I was deeply moved by both the choice of material and by Cash's sense of his own mortality.

So I was pleasantly surprised this summer by the release of American Music V: A Hundred Highways. I didn't know there was more material that Cash had recorded before his death. I understand there's even enough for a sixth CD next year.

That's good news for both of us: those of you who have been lifelong Johnny Cash fans, and those of us, like me, slow to appreciate him.

Cash's voice varies in quality from track to track on American Music V (as was the case with IV), and the best songs are those where he is in a voice closer to the one familiar to all of us from the songs "I Walk The Line" or "Folsom Prison Blues." Producer Rick Rubin should take a lot of credit, because the arrangements and interpretations of each song spotlights Cash's strong points, even when his voice isn't at full strength.

I bought American Music V a few weeks ago and it's been in more or less permanent rotation in my car CD player ever since. My favorite songs are his own song, "Like The 309," and Don Gibson's "A Legend In My Time." I don't dislike any of the songs on the CD, and coming up a close second as favorites are "Love's Been Good To Me," which I was shocked to see was written by the old schmaltzmeister Rod McKuen. "Four Strong Winds" by Ian Tyson (was the original by Ian and Sylvia? I've forgotten) is also a great cover.

Sometimes I've heard a song hundreds of times and I've stopped listening, if you know what I mean. That would describe "If You Could Read My Mind," Cash's cover of the old Gordon Lightfoot song. I liked it by Lightfoot, but Cash's version, quavering voice and all, has made me really hear it for the first time in years. That's the beauty of a great cover version. You have something very familiar reinterpreted, and made new.

In my local newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, music critic Dan Nailen, who also reviews punk rock, rap, hard rock and music I don't even try to describe, gave this CD an outstanding review. Paraphrasing him, he mentioned that there would be another CD next year and said if the material was as strong as this CD then Johnny Cash went out pretty close to the top of his game. Because of his background in rock the reviewer reminded me that there are really no genres for an artist like Johnny Cash; it's just American music.

What it's done for me is make me appreciate and listen to a very important artist, but one I'd been mostly ignoring for decades. My loss, but I'm trying to catch up!

Ciao for now, El Postino

Cool Will Rule

The heat wave that has been hanging around the Western U.S. for a couple of weeks has moved East. Sorry, Midwesterners and Easterners and Southerners, Mr and Mrs North and South America and all the ships at sea…now you'll see what we've been going through for most of July. It's been 100º or better for quite a while, a couple of days hitting around the 105º or 107º range. I know that doesn't seem like much to you folks in Tucson or Phoenix, Arizona, where you put on your winter coats if it gets under 95º, but to me, descendent of Northern Europeans who spent thousands of years in their frigid climes freezing their asses, 100º is just too damn hot.

*******

Monday was my mom's 85th birthday. She's in an Alzheimer's care center, where she's lived the past two years. Despite the fact that Mom sometimes knows us and sometimes doesn't, despite her not being able to walk since breaking her hip in April, 2004, despite the fact she mistakes me for my dad with whom she had major issues, she seems to be doing very well.

She's well medicated. She's on an anti-psychotic for her paranoid delusions, she's on the antidepressant, Zoloft, she's on Ambien so she can sleep at night (insomnia has always plagued Mom, and unfortunately, I inherited that tendency), she's on three Lortabs a day to manage her pain, and Aricept to slow down the process of her disease. Mom likes to sit in the hallway and watch the world go by. She has the proverbial three hots and a cot, like we used to say in the army. She has no responsibilities, she can participate in activities or not, she has my brother visiting her every day. Her daily life is not empty, as we tend to think life in a nursing home would be.

We visited her on Sunday, taking our 19-month-old granddaughter, Bella. Bella is a big hit in the nursing home, but all of the people making over her scare her. She's a good sport to put up with it for a while, but after that she wants to get out of there.

Today one of the secretaries I work with told me her husband has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I feel very sorry for her; it's a long road to travel, and always comes out a dead end.

Despite all of that, Happy Birthday, Mom! I know you won't be reading this, and even if someone reads it to you it won't mean anything, but I hope you had a happy day.

*******

I found this VIP cartoon which with a few pen lines and pithy one-line caption perfectly captures my paranoid boss.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Five Degrees Of Separation

Yesterday was a day full of connections, reminding me of the old saying that there are only six degrees of separation between any of us. Reading my newspaper in the morning I saw an obituary for Denny M., who was a high school classmate of mine from the class of '65. I didn't hang with Denny; he was buddies with a crowd of rowdies including my wife's cousin, Steve. I haven't seen Denny for over 40 years, but Steve has talked occasionally of Denny's stint in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam conflict. Denny's obit mentions that he earned the Bronze Star in Vietnam for "exhibiting uncommon courage and fierce determination." Yep, that was Denny, all right. When we were in high school together he used a lot of that fierce determination to get himself into trouble.

Later in the morning I was at the Post Office, going back to my car when I saw a pretty woman power-walking up the sidewalk. When she got closer she waved at me. It was my sister-in-law, Nancy.

After Nancy breezed on by--she didn't stop; exercise walking, y'know--I visited a local thrift store looking for books. I found a couple of good ones, but on my way to the checkstand caught a glimpse of a magazine I've looked for for several years: Salt Lake Magazine from March-April, 1999 with cover model Brittney Lewis, who has been seen around here in print ads and television commercials since she was just a tot. Besides being a beauty, Brittney is a shirttail relative.

How is someone a shirttail relative? Well, I've prepared a chart:

1. Sally is married to El Postino.

2. Randy is brother of Sally, married to El Postino.

3. Cyndy is married to Randy, brother of Sally, married to El Postino.

4. Nancy is sister of Cyndy, married to Randy, brother of Sally, married to El Postino.

5. Brittney is daughter of Nancy, sister of Cyndy, married to Randy, brother of Sally, married to El Postino.

See? That's only five degrees of separation, and that's how you make a shirttail relative.

Adding to all of this connectedness is my brother-in-law, Dave, who is married to Nancy, making him Brittney's stepdad. My connection is Dave is married to Nancy, sister of Cyndy, married to Randy, brother of Sally, married to El Postino.

Dave and Randy are brothers. Nancy and Cyndy are sisters. Two brothers, two sisters, which makes them their own brothers and sisters-in-law.

And what does it make me? Well, somehow connected.

I had a hard time getting a decent picture of Brittney's cover of Salt Lake Magazine, but here's the best of several digital photos I took. From the cover you can see why Brittney gets noticed when she is in the room.

Ciao for now, El Postino

How I Went Mad In The 1950s

As a kid I never kicked and fussed when Mom took me to the grocery store, because it gave me a chance to stand near the magazine rack and paperback book spinner, ogling the sexy covers.

On one occasion in 1955 or thereabouts I spotted a book I'd never seen before. It was The Mad Reader. I opened it up to the first panel of Wally Wood's "Superduperman" story, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The problem is, as much as I wanted this book, and I wanted it really, really bad, Mom wouldn't buy it for me. Mom was aware of stories in the press about evil comic books turning children into juvenile delinquents, and while she let me read comic books she approved of (Uncle Scrooge, Little Lulu, etc.), she wasn't about to go over the line to something like Mad.

I went home disappointed, but then my obsessive-compulsive disorder kicked in. When I wanted something as bad as I wanted this book I usually kept up a whining, obnoxious pleading until my parents caved in. Since Mom had said no, I went to my dad. Dad was usually more easygoing when it came to things like this. Of course, listening to me bellow, snivel and whine for about an hour was all it took. He got into his 1955 Ford company car and went to the store to find the book for me.

It's said that Mad, in its original comic book incarnation was a flop saleswise until issue #4, which had the aforementioned "Superduperman" story. From that time on Mad became a cult favorite. Even my future brother-in-law, who was in in high school in the early '50s, bought Mad, as did his buddies. I didn't know any of that, though. I just knew that I recognized who Superman was, I knew who the Lone Ranger was, I knew the comic book character, Archie, and I was absolutely fascinated by the grotesque and funny artwork of Wally Wood, Bill Elder and Jack Davis, which took all of those characters and turned them inside out and upside down. It turned them into jokes! All of it was new to me at the time, though. From that book I went on to seek out other Mad paperbacks, like Mad Strikes Back, Inside Mad, and Utterly Mad. From the time I first held these books in my trembling junior-size paws I was totally hooked, a junkie to the drug of Mad-ness.

Mom's problem with Mad was the effect the drawings had on her, which was the exact opposite of the effect they had on me. She claimed they "made her head spin." They did that to me, too, but in a good way.

Take Bill Elder's version of Archie, called "Starchie." The art is very close to the original. The people who produce the Archie comic books like to tout their comics as being "wholesome," but there was no doubt that the whole subtext of their comic books was some sort of triangular sexual thing going on between Archie, Betty and Veronica. The author and editor of Mad, Harvey Kurtzman, always went for the most obvious satirical elements of what it was he was lampooning, and that is the crux of this story, behind its more obvious elements of Starchie and gang being juvenile delinquents.
The Lone Ranger was a guy who traveled around with a Native American companion and wore a mask. As in this Mad version called "The Lone Stranger," he steered clear of womenfolk. One might ask why…? And did he and Tonto share body heat around the campfire? Anyway, when I saw this Jack Davis panel of the Lone Stranger being chased by the ugly "girl," I laughed my guts out. Yes, the lady chasing the Lone Stranger is actually a man in drag. Hmmm. I was a big fan of Mad in the 1950s, but the two entities, the Mad paperback books and the regular Mad Magazines being published every couple of months were entirely different things. I wondered why, but didn't know what made them different until a few years later when I found out about the stories of the two editors, first Kurtzman, then Al Feldstein, about the Comics Code, about the color comic book after 23 issues becoming a 25¢ black and white periodical. Much to my mom's chagrin, and despite a lot of yelling, public burnings of my magazine collections, and even outright theft of mail-ordered copies of early Mad comic books, I didn't give up on Mad until I was ready to, which was sometime in the early '60s.

Whatever happened with The Mad Reader, though, I'm sure happened with a lot of people in my generation, aspiring cartoonists, comedians, actors, whomever. It was an epiphany for me to know that such brilliance could exist in parody and satire and looking back on that book today I still see the sort of genius I saw many years ago the first time I pulled it off the paperback rack.

Ciao for now, El Postino

*The copy of Mad Reader at the header of this article is not my original Mad Reader, which was destroyed at some point by my mother in the mid-to-late 1950s. This is a copy of a first printing I picked up in California 20 years ago.

World Of The Wars

Tonight Sally and I watched Spielberg's version of War Of The Worlds. I saw it last year during its theatrical release and was impressed enough to watch it again because I like the storytelling in this film. At the root of any good story you've got to have characters the audience cares about and identifies with. I'm also glad that the special effects, as impressive as they are, weren't allowed to completely take over the movie.

In that sense Spielberg is lightyears ahead of filmmakers who make dopey films like Van Helsing and The Brothers Grimm, both of which I suffered through on On Demand recently. Why is it, when a filmmaker has millions of dollars with which to make a movie, he often forgets the most simple thing of all, that there has to be a story? I don't want the kitchen sink thrown at me with every special effect the computer boys can muster onto the screen. All the special effects in the world can't save a bad story, but a good story will save a movie with no special effects.

War of the Worlds has been one of my favorite H. G. Wells stories since I was a kid. Sometime about 1955 or '56 I was in a drugstore and saw the Classics Illustrated version on a shelf. A young teenage girl, at least a half head taller than me and twice as wide, had just put it back and turned to talk to her friend. I snatched it away just as it came to rest on the shelf. "Hey!" she said. "I was looking at that!"

"Tuff titty!" said I, mustering up a rusty-sounding squeak from my 9-year-old throat, knowing the girl could have punched my lights out. She looked that big to me. Luckily she just shrugged and walked away.

Anyway, the picture you see of the cover of that Classics Illustrated is the very copy I snatched away from that teenager in 1956. I still have it, and still look at it and re-read it every decade or so. I have also re-read the original Wells novel a couple of times since the 1950s.

One thing has always bothered me about the story, though, and seemed more obvious in this latest movie version. If the Martians (unidentified as to origin in Spielberg movie) were brought down by common bacteria, why not send home to the Martian Pharmacy for some antibiotics, or just wear spacesuits next time they plan an attack? Hey, they figured out how to get to earth, and they're obviously pretty clever with their weaponry. I'm sure it'd only be temporary before they could solve the problem of earth bacteria. So watch the skies…they might just be back.

*******

I wonder…is the movie War Of The Worlds in any way a reverse reflection of our invasion of Iraq? Naw, couldn't be, could it? I mean, we all know that an enemy invasion of someone else's country often doesn't work because of insurgencies, and troops bogged down trying to fight an enemy on his own turf. Or at least I thought we all knew that until we got the Bush gang in office. Apparently they don't know any rules but the ones they've made up in their own heads. They obviously missed out on the lessons learned in Vietnam, but wait, of course they did! Five-Deferment Cheney and Mr. My-Daddy-Got-Me-In-The-Air-National-Guard President were just too busy living their lives while our soldiers sacrificed theirs. They didn't learn one damn thing from that debacle because they didn't have to go through it. And as for actually listening to generals or military men who would know, well, Bush already has showed he only listens to those who just say "yes" to him.

Ciao for now, El Postino

Daze of '47

Today was a Utah state holiday, Pioneer Day, or as we know it around these here parts, the Days of '47. It commemorates the day in 1847 when the Mormon pioneers topped the mountains, looked down at the Great Salt Lake valley, and Brigham Young said, "This isn't the place, drive on to San Diego." No, I'm lying. That's what I wish he'd said. I could have been born in Southern California. As it was, he's reported to have said, "This is the place," and my ancestors ended up in landlocked Utah.

Pioneer Day kicks off the hottest two weeks of the summer, although it's hard to imagine how it could get any hotter than it has been. Yesterday in my hometown of Sandy it was 107º. Today officially it was 99º. Hey, we’re not setting any records, so we gotta try harder! Let's get that temperature up a few degrees. In this election year we can get our local Republicans running for re-election to Senate and Congress to kick start their usual campaigning, enlarging the ozone layer, melting glaciers in the Arctic with the hot, fetid air and poisonous, gaseous emissions from their mouths. That ought to get the temperature up to around 125º or higher. I'll keel over dead from heat exhaustion, and I won't have to put up with either the heat or re-election bullshit.

*******

I have already mentioned my granddaughter's baptism yesterday, but failed to mention that when we left the church we headed for breakfast at Village Inn and passed a sign outside a local Baptist church that said GOD LESS AMERICA. I wasn't sure if that was a missing "B" or an editorial comment.

*******

And speaking of babies, our son's childhood friend, Elizabeth, had her first baby girl just one hour after our son's wife had their second baby girl. We got a chance to visit with Elizabeth, her mom and dad, and the baby, Alexana, on Saturday.

Elizabeth's Alexana, top; our Gabby, bottom.

Elizabeth's dad, Carl, was there. Carl is quite a character. He's a man in his early 60s who just can't hold a job. He's a nice enough guy, but I think his religious devotion may hold him back. He's a truck driver who can't work around other guys that are, in his word, "vulgar." In other words, all the other truck drivers in the world. Carl got a new job a week or so ago driving deliveries for a pallet manufacturing business. Carl is one of these guys who always has ideas. He was complaining about his footgear, steel-toed safety shoes, being too hot in this excessive heat we've been experiencing. He showed us the shoes. He had taken a razor blade and cut out 1" sections of the shoes along the sides so they resembled sandals, except the steel toes were intact.

I looked at the shoes with amazement, while Elizabeth and her mom rolled their eyes. Who knows? The guy might just have something there, and maybe he should take out a patent. I didn't mention to him, though, my first thought: sure, it's hot now, but what about December and January?

Knowing Carl, though, he probably won't be working for the pallet company come December and January. Someone will make a dirty joke in his presence and he'll quit. People, no matter how religious they are, have just gotta lighten up. It's a big old sexy world out there, and other people can't be bothered by those who take easy offense to what is said.

You know the old saying, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Ciao for now, El Postino