Reality bites...hard

A quick visit to the grocery store for a couple of necessities required standing in a long checkout line, looking at magazines with stories about Jon and Kate. Their reality show, Jon & Kate Plus Eight, about their life with one set of twins and one of sextuplets, is a big hit on cable TV. But putting a spotlight on Jon and Kate has led to some discussion about their marital fidelity. It goes against their wholesome family image, but I'm sure their ratings are boosted by all of the tabloid scandal.

In spite of their high profile and need for attention they seem to thrive on this sort of negative publicity, while protesting that none of it is true. Uh-huh. Like there aren't groupies out there ready to pounce on attractive people who star on TV. Maybe being around all those kids is so stressful they need to let off a little steam, heh-heh.


A more bizarre couple is Dog the Bounty Hunter and his corpulent mate, Beth. I watched this show a few times some years ago and watched it again the other night. It's in its sixth season. Dog, who is in reality Duane Chapman, has a leathery face that looks like a road map, and a long mullet hairstyle. He's a tough guy who goes after bail jumpers. The thing that mitigates the hardass image is the prayer he gives before going out to hunt down the bail jumpers. When he and his posse catch them they give lectures about walking a straight and narrow path. Huggy-time follows, when they send the malefactors off to jail after a big squeeze. Puh-lease, people. Talk about a need for attention.

Beth acts sexy and has major cleavage. With those humongous boobs, the cleavage is like looking into the Grand Canyon. She wears high heels, and you wonder how she balances on them with those heavy jugs pointing into the next block. Beth talks like a hick. The show I saw the other night had her clearing her kiddies out of the driveway, and her instructions to take the puppies so they wouldn't get "runned over." She also "seen" a guy. Dog talks better, but the whole group looks like a biker gang.

I don't make a habit of watching reality TV shows. I don't think they're anything near reality because that would only be true if people didn't know there was a camera on them all the time. I'd like to see Dog when the camera isn't rolling, and what he says or does to the bail jumpers then. I'll bet rather than hugs, more than a few of them have had his pointy-toed cowboy boots deeply embedded in their rectums.


The only reality show I ever liked with any regularity was Cops, which has been around since the 1980s. It's seen a whole generation of stupid people get busted and allow their faces to be shown on TV. See, that's the thing. People will do anything to get on TV. I saw a man on Cops once who was busted getting oral sex from a skanky, toothless prostitute. To look at her methamphetamine-face, all scabby and drawn tight over her skull, was to make you want to heave. Both of them signed the release forms that allowed the producers of Cops to broadcast their faces. That show aired originally over a decade ago but is still in reruns, so anytime the guy walks down the street someone can come up to him and say, "Hey, I saw you on Cops with that ugly ho. What's up with that, man?" But of course, protecting one's dignity, even in the midst of even the most egregious acts, doesn't seem to occur to Jon and Kate, Dog the Bounty Hunter, or the dumbasses on Cops who get busted on camera.

Paranoid killer

A quiet night. Wife is gone taking care of her brother's pets, I'm home channel surfing, hoping that no matter the evidence to the contrary, there is something worth watching on television. I am struck by the synopsis of an episode of Nash Bridges on Universal HD, which describes a "paranoid man" who kills people talking on cell phones. That sounds intriguing!

I'm also aware of the tone of this now defunct show, even though I don't think I've ever watched an episode. It's a Don Johnson show, after all. It doesn't challenge anyone's intellect. In this episode the "paranoid" is spotted clearly. He's the guy in the watch cap, holding his hands over his ears as people talk on their phones. He takes out his gun, pow, he kills a man for talking.


We see him later in his basement apartment. He has completely covered it with aluminum foil, floor, walls, ceiling; the cell phone he took off his victim is wrapped in foil. He puts the phone in a foil-covered box and throws it in the water by the bay.

The problem with a program like this is how mentally ill people are treated by the writers. They're either played for laughs or held in disgust. In shows like this all mentally ill people are dangerous, capable of killing. They perpetuate a stereotype that organizations like NAMI (National Association for the Mentally Ill) have spent years trying to change. As we find out, the killer has a brain tumor. A surgeon removed most of it, but it's still growing, and the paranoid man won't take his medications.

Paranoia is something I've lived around it all my life. I can be as paranoid as anyone when the circumstances warrant, but none of the paranoids I've lived with, worked with or known have ever taken a gun and killed anyone. It has happened with others, but it's fairly rare, and not with anyone I know. The stereotype is, of course, that anyone with mental illness is dangerous, capable of killing. Nash Bridges, doing his best Jack Lord Hawaii 5-0 imitation, wants someone to check out all released mental patients from the past six months. Hey, good luck on that, Nash. But, this is a TV show where commands like that can be acted upon immediately. One of his assistants tells him, "Nothing showing up on the crazy radar."

Nash and his buddy go to the paranoid tinfoil tumor-man's doctor and in violation of doctor-patient privilege he spills the beans on everything wrong with the guy, which helps them run him down. Of course at the end Nash saves the day by disarming the paranoid man.

During the Vietnam War there was a stereotype of a returning soldier who has snapped, and has come home a walking time bomb, a homicidal psycho. The fictitious image was so potent some people believed all soldiers returning from the war were like that. I'm sure it didn't help any of these men who did have mental problems, like post traumatic stress disorder, to know that people were thinking they were apt to go out on a killing spree.

Some time ago I found this public service ad in a comic book, vintage 1951. (Click on it to make it bigger.)

It seems so far advanced for its time, when mental health was still in something of a voodoo stage, an era psychiatrists thought homosexuality, for instance, was mental illness. In those days having a person in your family who was mentally ill was a stigma; the sick were hidden away. It was possible for family members to have grandma or mom committed to a mental institution just on their say-so. The image of the illness came mostly from pop culture, movies of drooling "crazy people" in padded cells.

I'm surprised by this decades-old PSA, and its message of accepting of mental illness as just that, an illness. Apparently its call for empathy and understanding probably didn't do much good, because nearly 60 years after it was originally published the same old ugly stereotypes still accompany mental illness.

Breaking Baddest

Walt White gets himself into the worst messes. So far he's been able to extricate himself with a combination of lying and dumb luck. The messes don't come about because he's not smart, far from it. Walt is a high school chemistry teacher, and he knows his business.

Walt has a nice family: a wife, Skyler, a 15-year-old son, Walt Jr., who has cerebral palsy, and a newborn baby girl.

Walt also has lung cancer and has about 18 months to live. Fortunately, Walt has been undergoing treatment and the tumor has shrunk considerably, but the treatments are costing a lot of money. Walt is paying the bills in cash. Did I mention that Walt cooks methamphetamine, and uses the alias "Heisenberg"? His family doesn't know that Walt is manufacturing drugs and selling them with a young dope entrepreneur, a former student of Walt's named Jesse. And that's where Walt seems to get into the messes.

For instance, Walt and Jesse were doing business with Tuco, a Mexican drug dealer who orders up huge quantities of their meth. But Tuco is psycho. He kills one of his own crew in front of Walt and Jesse. Later Tuco kidnaps both Walt and Jesse and holds them in his uncle's house in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Due to blind luck and an intersession by a DEA agent, who kills Tuco, Walt and Jesse are able to slip away and escape.

Did I also mention that the DEA agent is Walt's brother-in-law, Hank, who is looking for "Heisenberg"?

Then there's the matter of the lying. Walt's wife suspects he has another cell phone (he does) and he keeps denying it. Eventually she's had enough of the lies, takes her baby and leaves him.

Before that Jesse takes up with his young landlady, Jane, a junkie who overdoses and dies in Jesse's bed. Her father, an air traffic controller, is so distraught that his distraction causes two airplanes to collide in mid-air, over Walt's house.

This is the AMCtv show, Breaking Bad, with Bryan Cranston as the anti-hero Walt "Heisenberg" White. Walt's reason for cooking the meth is that he's trying to earn money for his family, so when he dies they'll have something. The problem is that he has to lie to those closest to him, and he has to depend on unreliable people like Jesse.

Walt is amoral, which makes for a conflicted hero. On the one hand Walt wouldn't have an extramarital affair--something his wife suspects, else why would be need another cell phone?--but despite being a faithful husband, he doesn't lift a finger to help Jane, the young junkie, who chokes on her own vomit and dies.

That act of omission by Walt leads to the airplanes colliding in air as Walt watches. He doesn't realize, but indirectly he bears responsibility for many people dying in that crash.

The show doesn't spare anyone in its depiction of meth junkies as scabby-faced, toothless zombies.

Did I mention that Walt is set up with a crooked lawyer who is now laundering Walt's money?

The show presents several dilemmas for the viewer, not the least of which is that they find themselves rooting for the criminals, Walt and Jesse, to get out of their messes and to eventually win. The other is that the viewer really likes Skyler and Walt Jr., and wants them to win, too.

Unfortunately, with Breaking Bad, there don't seem to be any clear winners. Just conflict and an ever deepening hole that Walt finds himself in. We wouldn't care so much if the story wasn't compelling and the acting topnotch.

My new kittytail

Poor Whitepaws. He gets snarls and tangles in his fur and he can't stand them.

Whitepaws is a feral cat we've taken responsibility for. Whitepaw's mama, appropriately called Mamacat, and another cat we suspect may be a brother, Ramses, show up twice a day for meals and we dutifully feed them. We provide a little house for them under our deck, where they can sleep on cold winter nights. It's during winter that Whitepaws gets knots in his fur. This time of year he starts to go after them, pulling and tugging until he's pulled the fur away from his body.

This morning a big section of his coat was hanging off, so Sally took scissors and cut it off. That's not a wound on his side, it's just cat skin under the fur.


Here's the chunk of fur that she cut off.


Here I am wearing the fur.

Not bad, eh? I could tint my hair to match it and be one of those older guys who insist on wearing ponytails. I guess there's nothing wrong with that...if you don't have to go to all the trouble to grow it, that is.

No more pencils, no more books...

It's hard to believe it's the last day of school. Again.

I had 12 years of last days when I went to public school, and then 32 of them when I worked for the school district. I never got used to that day because it was always so hectic. I don't know who was happier for the kids to go home, the kids or the teachers. I suspect the latter.

Kids have an idea that it's going to be a real fun summer, full of swimming, biking, games, activities, even a summer vacation with mom and dad. Yippee. I used to think that, too. I probably got it from watching "Spin and Marty" on The Mickey Mouse Club. Those boys were at a summer camp where they rode horses and did fun things, even solved mysteries. What usually happened was that my friends would go out of town or they'd live too far away to play with them, so I'd end up sitting in the house watching TV or reading comic books like Little Lulu and Tubby At Summer Camp, and live my life vicariously with imaginary friends. It's been ever thus.

I dreaded the last week of school because the kids were so hyper. The little kids can be distracted by field trips and activities, but the junior high kids are full of mischief. I had to watch out I didn't get bombed by shaving cream on the last day. The high school kids are dangerous. They're driving, talking or texting on their cell phones, and generally not paying attention.

Even the faculty can be out of control. One year I drove into the parking lot of a school and the principal, who was standing by the entrance to the lot, shot me in the face with a high pressure water pistol. Right in the face. I came this close--picture my thumb and index finger about 1/8" apart--to turning him in but I got talked out of it. I'm still pissed off about it, though, even ten years later.

The school secretaries will be in the buildings for a couple more weeks closing out the books.

One of my teacher friends is heading out with her family tomorrow morning. If you went to our airport tomorrow half the people there would be kids or educators heading out of town.

This is the first year since 1976 I've missed a last day of school. I had a notion to drop in at one of the schools on my former route just to relive some of the experience, but naw...I've already been there, done that.

What your teacher would like you to think about this summer:

I don't remember what I didn't see

The famous drug reference quote by Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane is, "If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there." Looking at a 1965 book, Interior Decoration A-Z by Betty Pepis made me realize I don't remember some things about the sixties and it had nothing to do with drugs. In that era I didn't pay any attention to my surroundings. I walked into a house and didn't notice anything but people. I never looked at furniture or floor coverings or wall decorations or...say, isn't that just like a guy?

So I looked at this book with some curiosity, and some memories came back but they are almost false memories; I recognize some of these things because you can still find them in thrift stores and antique shops. The sixties are now part of a bygone era, gone long enough that what came out of it is cool again. In that respect I appreciate what I didn't see at the time.

What I remember about furniture in my parents' house is that we were shabby chic long before shabby chic was hip. A couch developed a deep rip in a cushion and the stuffing came out, so Mom had us move it into the basement TV room. That was our version of recycling. Mom seldom threw anything away. We lived with our avocado green sofa from the early sixties until 2004 when Mom went into the nursing home, and the couch was donated to a thrift store.

Mom and Dad bought a 1950 RCA television and it was our only set until 1962 when Dad got a deal on an RCA color TV, which lasted until Mom sold the house in '72. I don't see TVs in any of these pictures, but I see an interesting stereo/radio built into a coffee table.

I also like the built-in bookshelves. I don't think people have those anymore. What would they do with them? Does anyone have books anymore? Kindle, anyone?

Something my wife does now is buy sixties clothes in consignment stores. Personally, most of what she tells me is from the sixties I don't recognize. So I just nod and say, "hey, very cool!" I remember her in the sixties. She was a really cute girl no matter what she wore; still is.

Good cop, bad cop

Ken Hammond, hero, 2007

Former police officer Kenneth Hammond has seen the highest highs: being honored as a hero for helping prevent further killings as a killer stalked Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, killing five people and injuring four. Hammond was off-duty, having dinner with his wife, when he heard shots. When the Salt Lake Police swat team arrived Hammond shouted at them he was an off-duty officer. Even though the shooter was killed by a sergeant of the Salt Lake Police, Hammond, a member of the nearby Ogden Police Department, was touted as a hero, paraded before the media, given honors.

Hammond also knows the lows. Because of the publicity a woman came forward and said that when she was 17 she had had oral sex with him. According to a story in the June 1, 2009 Salt Lake Tribune, he had met her two years before the Trolley Square shootings while he investigated a noise complaint. He had asked for her phone number, called her and returned later that night. She was with an 18-year-old woman, and while he fondled the 18-year-old the 17-year-old performed oral sex. According to the report he had also stopped the younger woman a couple of times on the road, once while she was drinking, but he let her go. When she saw him on the news she made her complaint.

Good cops, bad cops. At the time Hammond committed the alleged offense of having sex with an underage person he was 32, and had taken an oath to protect the public, not take advantage. Across the country some police have used their power and status for sexual purposes. Sometimes like Hammond they're caught and discharged, sometimes they're never caught.

What must've run through Hammond's mind when he succumbed to temptation? I'm guessing he never thought he'd be paying for it by going to jail for 90 days, losing his job, and having the media remind the public that this once-hero is now just another horny guy taking advantage of a situation so he could get sex.

Ken Hammond, prisoner, 2009

What a sad story all the way around. Young married father loses job because of his own behavior. His wife, who works as a dispatcher for the same police department, must be going through hell. And what to tell their kid when he's old enough, that his dad threw away his career in law enforcement for a blow job?

Good cop, bad cop=same cop.

Resistance is futile!

I watched New World Order on Independent Film Channel. It's a fascinating--and somewhat disturbing--documentary look at groups of people who believe in massive conspiracies. Among other things they believe that 9/11, and the collapse of the Twin Towers, was a plot by our own government. They also believe that a group called the Bilderbergers runs the world. The Bilderbergers include folks like Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, and their goal is world domination.

You can't convince the conspiracy believers them they're wrong because they've got all the evidence they need--or manipulate until it fits their theory--to support their ideas. They write books about it, they make DVDs. They stand on the streets of places like Ground Zero in New York and give away free DVDs that "explain" the plot.

It's paranoia, of course, on a grand and global scale. If you believe there are cabals who rule the world it's not a stretch to think that our own government could pull off the events of 9/11 for their own nefarious purposes.

The film followed three men, but the one I was impressed with was Alex Jones, who has a radio program, has written several books, and is spooked by things like hotel fire alarms which he sees as a plot against him.

My mother was like that, but her paranoia was centered on neighbors she was convinced were persecuting her. The rest of these folks whose actions remind me of my mother think on a grander scale, like shadow governments or conspiratorial types in the highest levels of the U.S. who order the killings of its own citizens.

I'm not saying that such things aren't possible. Stalin killed millions of his own citizens, Hitler and his cronies wiped out millions in an audacious plot against minorities, and you go back in history to find that governments are not always the friends of their own citizens. The groundwork is laid for projecting events of history onto the current administration and the people who hold the power, who often aren't working for the government but who can help direct it. Think Karl Rove.

The folks who propagate these conspiracy stories have the zeal of missionaries out to convert the heathen, if only they could just show them the light. Some of the documentary showed these paranoid missionaries in verbal altercations with people who disagree. I'm sure that when they meet up against such adversity they think of those doubters as brainwashed by the government.

In the first place, as to how people feel about their government, there are a great many people in this country and around the world who don't give a damn. As long as they can go about their own business they're OK, they don't want to rock the boat. If their government herds people into death camps well, as long as its not them, then they really don't want to know about it. If you quizzed Americans at least half couldn't tell you the three branches of government, who the mayor of their town is, who their congressperson or senator is. They really don't care. Bilderbergers? Aren't those the short order cooks who make hamburgers?

Then there's the other thing about keeping secrets. Nobody can. One of the worst kept secrets in history was the lie that went into starting the Iraq war in 2003. Despite the lie being told in the highest levels of government it was no time before the truth got out. The more people who know a secret the more chances there are it won't remain a secret. The old Mafia stuff about omerta (silence) doesn't work, not for long anyway. There's always someone to spill it. There are probably a lot of secrets the U.S. has been able to keep because the people keeping the secrets are kept by loyal Americans: military or intelligence secrets for instance. But sinister plots like bringing down the Twin Towers with explosives would involve too many people, and unless they were all killed someone would talk. (And I'm sure I'll get a note telling me that all of the workers involved in surreptiously planting dynamite in the World Trade Center have all been killed. As if someone could prove it one way or another.)

The other thing feeding the paranoia is government action against citizens like the Waco raid on the Branch Davidians or the Ruby Ridge killings. I personally feel it was idiocy more than conspiracy that dictated those hamfisted actions.

Paranoia grows. Paranoia is infectious and it's catching. You hang around with paranoid people and you start to think like them. You let someone give you a good story and it's entertaining like The X-Files and many people are going to suck in to the paranoia.

If you want to check some of this stuff out there are hundreds if not thousands of web sites ruled by paranoia. This morning I was entertained looking at Alex Jones' site. He'll sell you all kinds of stuff to convince you.

And what about my conspiracy theory? That if government wanted to actually commit these crimes against their citizens they could get people like Alex Jones and Jack McLamb to help them by shouting about it from the rooftops. They're perceived by people like me as at least little boys crying wolf, or at most as raving paranoics. So if I hear them ranting I automatically dismiss them as lacking credibility. Because of their bug-eyed histrionics I disbelieve them, and disbelieve their message, even if by some stretch the message is true.

A gal with a gallon

My wife led me to this article from a London newspaper about a woman obsessed with breast enhancement:

THIS is Sheyla Hershey, the proud owner of the biggest boob job on the planet. Her bra-size is 38KKK.

Yes, that was three K's.

The 28-year-old American has paid £40,000 for nine painful boob operations to look like this. Sheyla, whose breasts now contain a GALLON of silicone, says she is delighted with her impressive assets.


Now doctors have warned Sheyla Hershey that her breasts are in danger of exploding. Surgeons in Texas refused to operate when Sheyla reached 34FFF, so she returned to her native Brazil where there is no limit on implant size.

She said: "I don't think I have anything to worry about. To me big is beautiful."

Hershey's mission to be the proud owner of the biggest breasts in the world started when her British boyfriend paid for her first boob job. But when she became addicted to possessing huge breasts and obsessed with boob job procedures he walked out on her.

She said: "I loved him very much but I had to leave him to follow my dream."

Copyright © 2009 thelondonpaper.com

OK, "follow my dream." Hmmm. So having boobs bigger than your head is your dream? Wow, you need to take some better sleep aids.


I have met women who are more obsessed than men with boobs. Guys like boobs, but if other men are the same as me they accept them for their different sizes and shapes. What we usually see are breasts propped up by underwiring and push-ups. When set loose they present a different picture. Err, check that. That is unless they're full of a gallon of silicone.


When I looked around I found all sorts of pictures of women with fakes, proud of their boobs that are rock solid, that don't move when taken from the protective and shaping cover of a bra. That's probably what bothers me the most, the unreality of enhanced breasts. I'd rather see a woman with small natural breasts than one with fake Double D's.

I think the enhancements should be done if a woman has had a mastectomy or has a deformity. Like the tattoos that some young women sport, this sort of freakish breast enhancement is a vanity that escapes my logical mind.

####

The old neighborhood

From age 12 to 19 I lived in a part of Salt Lake County called East Millcreek. We had a junior high school just across the street, and a high school three blocks east of us. We were able to look out our window and see beautiful Mt. Olympus.

The street directly east of me had some really different types. Mrs. Alvin, for instance, lived with her son, Gary. We never saw Mrs. Alvin. There didn't appear to be a Mr. Alvin, and Gary was her lifeline to the outside. In retrospect she might have been agoraphobic, wouldn't leave the house. She was totally paranoid, that's for sure. She called the cops nearly every day. She turned in the neighbors across her fence for having nude swimming parties. They were a Mormon family with 10 kids; the dad wore a bowtie even when he was mowing the lawn. The cops got to the point where they wouldn't respond to her calls. Lord knows what would have come of it if something really bad happened to her. I walked my dog every day, in the summer twice a day. I was walking Kim and went by the Alvin house, which was all shut up as usual. A hot summer day and she had all her windows closed, drapes drawn. It got up to 100 degrees sometimes and I don't know how anyone stood it in those days without air conditioning. I saw a playing card on the ground in the gutter in front of her house, so I picked it up, noticed it was the ten of diamonds and stuck it in my pocket. I was 13 years old, and 13 year old kids do stuff like that. I was halfway up the street by the high school when a motorbike pulled up alongside me. "Hey, kid," said Gary Alvin, "what did you pick up in front of my house?" I reached in my pocket and pulled out the playing card. He studied it for a few seconds and without saying anything threw it on the street and took off on his motorbike. When I had looked at the house I saw the drapes drawn, but apparently Mrs. Alvin had some sort of way of looking out so you couldn't see her. I guess it was too much for her and she had to send her boy to see what I'd found in her gutter.

Directly behind me lived a family, the Checkmans, who had three kids of varying degrees of homeliness and a mom and dad who didn't drive. To live in suburban Salt Lake in the early 1960s and not drive a car was thought to be completely strange. Everyone had a car. Everyone had two cars! Only total oddballs didn't have a car. The father, Victor, walked several blocks to a bus stop to go to his job. The mom worked as a school secretary and the principal would pick her up for work and deliver her home. When they went shopping they had a shopping cart in their otherwise unused carport and they would push it up a steep hill and walk several blocks to a grocery store. Later in life what I once thought odd I realized was probably the healthiest thing anyone could do. They walked a lot and they both lived to be very old. When the youngest child got driving age she got a driver's license and bought a car. She became the designated driver for the family.

There was a house with a couple whose names I didn't know. The man looked like he tipped the scales at 250 pounds. He was very fat. He drove a small Ford Falcon and sometimes he struggled to get in and out of the car. His wife, on the other hand, was a beautiful woman, tall and shapely. Those were the days of tight skirts, high heels, garters and nylons. What seems exotic now was once everyday wear. When the lady came home from work one day my buddy Paul and I were riding our bicycles in circles, a couple of horny teenagers waiting to catch a glimpse of her.

She got out of her car and her skirt rode up to her thighs, exposing her stocking tops and garters. Paul let out a loud wolf whistle. She got out of the car, pulling down her skirt. "Well, I guess," she laughed.

A few doors down from her was the lady who was the biggest scandal of the neighborhood. She was a beautiful woman who looked to be about 30, and she lived with her mother. The daughter, Linda, drove a brand new 1962 Thunderbird, aqua in color, with a white top. She didn't appear to work and the buzz on the block was she was a high-priced hooker. Sometimes Paul and I would ride our bikes by her place and she'd wave at us as she got into her car. Wherever she went, it was always after dinner time.

Sometimes we'd see cop cars; police officers on shift would stop at her house. Once we saw her greeting a cop in a friendly fashion while he stepped through her front door. The rumor was that she was entertaining the cops, that they were dropping in to get a piece, probably what she paid to stay out of jail. There was all sorts of talk about her but no one had any proof of anything. In 1970 a friend of mine came to town and stayed in an upscale downtown hotel. My wife and I visited him. We were talking at 1:00 in the morning when there was a knock on the door. He opened it and I saw Linda standing in the doorway. "Did you call for a girl?" she said. Tom was flabbergasted and stood with his mouth open. Linda looked over and saw me with Sally, sitting on the bed. Linda instantly recognized me. "My mistake," she said, and walked off. I told Tom, "Well, that solves a mystery for me," and explained it to him. "Gee," he said. "I don't know what I would have done if you and Sally hadn't been here. I might have invited her in."

Nowadays a friend of mine lives on that street, and I often wonder if anyone half as interesting as my old neighbors live there now.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, good white people go to heaven..."

Sleestak, at Lady, That's My Skull, a blog not unlike this one but more comics oriented, has a grouping of fascinating illustrations from a book called Bible Readings For the Home. It's one of those mass-produced books from the 1950s, attempting to show the Bible's relevance to "modern" society.

In the 1950s we weren't used to seeing pictures of other races on TV, in textbooks or most other literature, for that matter. Only Northern Europeans need apply for heaven, according to the not-so-subtle message of Bible Readings. It must've been popular in Ku Klux Klan homes.

The question I ask is, what did Jesus look like? We have these sort of sanitized Caucasian versions of a man who would have had origins in the middle East, and probably looked a lot like the people around him, not like someone out of Central Casting.

So if you get to heaven and you want to look up Jesus (if he's available, that is, and not presiding over his posse of all-white angels) then he better be wearing a name tag, because if you're looking for the popular version you might not recognize him.

I've written about this a couple of times. a crass attempt to commercialize some peoples' idea of Jesus, and other references to the popular image of Jesus.

Heaven seems to be a place that has different meaning for different people. The version in Bible Readings For the Home seems to be the popular version. Beautiful, placid, white buildings, white people in white robes. Everything sparkling in its whiteness! No global warming, no bad weather--so where'd that rainbow come from?--no crabgrass in the lawn. That'd be heaven to some.

Me, I'd have to have a library with every book I've ever wanted to read. It'd have every movie I've ever wanted to see, or at least all my old favorites, on DVD, which means I'd have to have a DVD player. What about transportation? Are you we stuck in that white city with its gleaming buildings without a bus system, subway, or taxis? And how do we pay for such conveyances, or will we need to have a (gag, choke) job?

Are there homeless people in heaven, or do we all get an apartment?

Whew. So many questions, so few answers.

Dad and Aunt Jemima

My father died in 1967 at age 47. Over time memories tend to dissipate like the smoke from his ever-present cigarettes. I've spent the last couple of days thinking of him, reconstituting some memories.

From 1949 to 1956 Dad was a salesman for the Quaker Oats Company, which at the time also owned the brands Ken-L Ration dog food and Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix. Dad's territory included all of the Intermountain states, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, a huge area but sparsely populated.

And it was also racially homogeneous. Not a lot of African-Americans lived in this area, maybe 1/10 of 1% of the population. So it was a surprise when the company hooked Dad up with a black lady who portrayed Aunt Jemima. I never learned her real name. She wore the Mammy dress and the kerchief on top, just like in the Aunt Jemima picture on the package. One day I went to my second grade class and we had a special assembly. Dad had set up a performance for us kids. Aunt Jemima sang to us. She had a clear voice, and she sang a cappella. The song I can remember her singing is, "When the red-red robin goes bob-bob-bobbin' along..."

Dad took Aunt Jemima to various functions, like the Fourth of July breakfast in a nearby park, where they made pancakes for anyone who showed up. It was always a big deal. It probably killed him to be seen with a black person. Dad was as racist as any white guy in the 1950s. Utah had hardly any black population, but it didn't make people less prejudiced. Maybe more so. Dad was as much a bigot as the times afforded, a product of that era. In the 1960s he was puzzled by the Civil Rights movement. "What do those people want?" he used to ask, rhetorically, because he didn't care what they wanted. I wish I'd had the presence of mind or enough knowledge of the situation to tell him, "They want what you want."

Dad in front of his own office, circa 1966 or 1967.

Dad died in a bad year for Civil Rights, 1967, with riots in several cities. It might have fed his bigotry, but I've always thought that had he lived another 30 years or more he would have seen that his prejudices no longer fit. His racism, like the image of Aunt Jemima in the 1950s, was no longer viable in a diverse and changing population.

More hubba-hubba

In yesterday's post I said that "hubba-hubba" wasn't being used any more. A guy would give a wolf whistle when a pretty chick walked by, or he'd say, "Hubba-hubba!" Man, sexual harassment laws sure took care of that sort of male behavior! But I don't care. Here are some females I believe deserve a "hubba-hubba!"

Hubba-hubba to delightful Debbie Reynolds, who'll have you swinging through trees...


Hubba-hubba to the blonde with the bullet and the bag of tricks...


Hubba-hubba to the Harlem Table Eater's girlfriend...


Hubba-hubba to Miss Exotica 1962...


Hubba-hubba to Miss Eyeful, the high-heeled honey...


Hubba-hubba to the girl with the shiny nose who wants to be flattered...


Hubba-hubba to the flower girls whose mom disapproves of coarse masculine displays, like guys yelling "Hubba-hubba!" at her daughters...


Hubba-hubba to the sexy girl in the next apartment...


Hubba-hubba to Heidi Klum and her painted swimsuit...

More hubba-hubbas some other time.

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