Strawbzilla

Will you just look at this behemouth! (Not me, the strawberry.) It had been knocking over my
garbage cans at night and making the dogs go crazy and I got tired of that shit and took action! I set up a box-trap, baited it with breathmints and waited on the roof with binoculars for two nights. Finally here it came, sniffing around and TUG/PLOP it was ours! I sent in the kids - with baseball bats to finish it off.

This just in...

I have received word that the weather-wienies meeting for tonight has been cancelled due to a forecast of rain.

Ava saves the day!

Sometimes the Good Lord will allow a poor man to lose his mule so he gets the happiness of finding it again.

This morning I woke up about five o'clock, rumbling thunder, thick sheets of rain. Wet, wet weather. Still dark. Couldn't go back to sleep - what was that blap-blap-blap sound?

Big fat drips. Oh, hello. Not a leaky roof. Not now. Geeyad, this is gonna cost. Shingles. Damn it all ta hell. Tired.

I hid under the covers. Life can be such a bitch sometimes. Mop. Carry wet stuff to the curb. Call the home improvement place. Shingles. Shit. Climb up on roof. Put tarp on for now. Lightning?

Then I noticed that this was not a blap-blap-blap-blap kind of sound. Water falling from a cieling would be more determined and inhumane, metronomic. No, this was more of a flup, flup, flup... and it was of a decidedly leisurely nature. There were pauses.

I poked my head out from under the covers.

Why, it was Ava (Ava is my dog Felix's dog-wife). And she was licking her monkey! Flup, flup, flup! She looked up, innocent as could be, smiled, wagged her tail, then fell to again, comforting herself in the aforementioned manner. She was certainly going to town on that . If she started doing that when there was company over, I'd tell her to stop.

So: The Roof Wasn't Leaking! Ava saved me probably the entirety of my economic stimulus package! Hooray for Ava! My new personal hero!

I got up and had a decidedly happy day. Rain and all.

Barbi Hair Implant Disasters

On Turkey Day, my nephew Joey told me that there was a mixup at a toy factory in China one time. Somebody got the voice-boxes mixed up. They stuck some Talking Barbi parts in some Talking G.I. Joes, and vice versa. Imagine the horror when so many little boys opened up their G.I.Joes, gave them a squeeze and heard:

"I have a date with Ken tonight!"

And the disgust of so many little girls when their Barbis barked out:

""A" Squad! Take that hill!"

I laughed and laughed about that.

Some years ago I read about (and saw pictures of!) some Barbis that somehow made it all the way to the toy-store shelves. The Hair Sticker-inner at the factory must have been manned by some real sleepy-head. A number of Barbis had long locks of hair seemingly growing from their foreheads, cheeks and chins! Strangely enough, these weren't returned but were snatched up by collectors who prize them above all others!

Helpfull Holiday Hints - 1 (The Great Bone Sled)

If you are thawing turkey giblets, that is, hearts and gizzards, don't do it in a microwave.

They explode. Loud. There is an air pocket inside them, I guess. Hell of a mess to clean up too.
You practically need a paint scraper.

If you don't have access to a blender, but you have the beater (the thing you stick in a blender and it spins), a power drill works fine. People get freaked out at the sight of it though. Well, it works!

And it mixes fast. Mash the potatoes first, then add the milk and butter or you will get some serious splatter. Better still, make a cardboard or plastic shield, to protect yourself and your property.

My Aunt Lucille used to boil the turkey carcass clean, and spray-paint it silver. She then made it into a little sleigh, and set a little Santa Claus figurine in the cock-pit, and some little reindeers in front. See, then you put your Xmas cards in the back. Pretty cool, eh?

I remember playing with such a sleigh- I'd swoosh it and swoop it and sing "Santa! Santa!
He is FLYING to your town! Santa! Santa! Flying to your town!" singin' out loud in an atonal daydream.

This attracted the attention of my Dad, who said "Gawdammit Matt you're FORTY YEARS OLD, put that THING DOWN!"

I am just kidding. I was probably four.

I had to do something. My aunt and grandma had a TV set, but somehow, some way, Lawrence Welk was always on it - as if there was a channel with 24 hours' 0' Welk.

The cool thing about my aunt's TV was this: without warning, the voices of truck drivers talking on their CB radios would burst from the speaker.

I wish I could find the schematic for how that Bone Sleigh was put together. Clever. I mean, it really looked like a sled! Mrs. Claus would be fooled! "Hi Santa, how did the.. HEY, that is not my Santa Claus husband, it is a turkey carcass cleaned and spray-painted silver, with a little plastic man!" I dug it.

It (making sleighs of turkey bones) is a farm-gal thang. I suspect that the instructions for this project probably appeared in the paper or the Farm Journal. I mean, a number of people have told me that they had relatives who made Bone Sleds, or have heard of people who made them. It caught on.

As it should have. And will again.


I will be saving the bones to this year's turkey. I will be up early tomorrow ere the dawn and bake that bad boy till he is buttered and biteable.

Soon afterward, the great bone sled will fly again.

Maybe I will take pictures of it and put them on here.

You know you want to see it.

COMING SOON: XMAS DOs and DON'Ts.

The Man In The Tree

Not long ago my son, who is now twelve, found a ring on the ground in a cornfield over by Raymond, Ne. He and his friends were playing there.

It really is a sight to see. It is silver, and the inner turret rotates around the middle. It is all covered with moons and stars .

It doesn't fit him yet. So: he gave it to me to wear until it does.

So far so good, eh? Well, one night his sister drank his bottle of chocolate yoo-hoo. He had stashed it in the back of the fridge. He had been waiting for it to get good and cold.

The next morning all hell broke loose. It was awfull. "Look" I said, "I'll buy you a whole six-pack of yoo-hoo. Just get in the car!"

"How would you like it..." he says, almost sobbing with rage "If someone took something of yours!"

"Just get in the car. We can't be late again."

"Let's see how you like it! Give me my ring back."

"FINE." and I toss it to him. "Now get in the car."


We had ten minutes to be at school. Very tense. Usually we have a
fairly good time- we sing goofy-ass songs, play "Spot The Sleepy-Head", have trivia contests. Not today.

Child one off first. Gets out and SLAMS the door.

Child two off second. Gets out and SLAMS the door.

This is prologue for the day. One by one, so very many nut-wings rose from their basement apartments, homed in on my brain-wave emissions and found their way to the place where I work. Where then they would make like the brazen brats with the pea-shooters popping the zoo elephant in his cage. Remember - you have to be nice to them. That's part of the job. No job, no health insurance, no house - you are not even a human-fucking-being if you don't have health insurance.

Five o'clock and I couldn't get a cigarette in my mouth fast enough.
Chewed up and shat out, that's how I felt.

Hey, the job has health insurance. At least I have health insurance.

Traffic, lots of traffic. Geeeyawd. Look at all these people in their cars staring straight ahead with eyes like a dog chained up in a yard.

I pull up beside the school to pick up child 2 and get out. I remember when they used to RUN up to me, arms open. It's allright, I think, if they are still doing that when they are adults, that would be a cause of concern. Cool is okay.


No, it sucks. How did they get so jaded so young? The divorce and of course Fox TV could be likely culprits. Or maybe it is just me. Maybe people don't, can't , shouldn't run to each other with delight, except maybe at airports.

As I walk onto the playground I notice: quiet. And sad faces. Why so sad? Another look and I see: all their kick-soccer balls are stuck up in the tree. Incredible. Only kids could do this. They actually got one stuck, and proceeded to throw the other balls at it to dislodge it and one by one got them all stuck. They almost look like some absurdly huge rubbery berries up in that tree.

So: I think about it a second. And I look at the college students who are probably getting paid minimum wage to ride herd on these kids: climbing trees isn't in the job description. Besides they look sleepy - I'll just bet they have been out all night drinkin and fuckin! I look at them lolling on a picnic table and think -I don't even know what color the sky is in their world.

And that morning I read in the paper that my boyhood hero, Keith Richards had been taken to a hospital after falling from a cocoanut tree. They were going to drill a hole in his head to relieve pressure from the concussion.

Maybe, I think, these children won't remember me as another sorry, dissapointed adult with chain-dog eyes, if I do the impossible here. No - Let them remember me as the Man in the Tree. I will be The Man In The Tree.

I grab the trunk, start shimmying up like a big fat-assed old bear. It works- I still got it, I used to live in trees as a child, the enterprise is at once familiar and foreign as I scrunch-slide-scrunch-slide and then swing onto the lowest branch, which is about 15 feet in the air.

And the worst is over. Now it is all gravy. Gravy! Later tonight my road-rashy arms and legs will bring me back to reality and neosporin, but I don't know that yet.

Suddenly I remember from when I was a kid, purposely dropping my plastic Johnny West action figure from high branches like this. "NO JOHNNY, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"then winding up the twine I had tied to his ankle. Poor Johnny had a rough life. He died every summer day.

On the playground, All Eyes Are On Me, and one pair of them belong to a nice-looking single mom! Coolness!

This is no time to screw up. The image of falling - the thud, the sound of a bone breaking like a stick wrapped in a wet towell, the groan - the picture in the paper - the gibes of my co-workers - all are awfull possibilities. But it isn't going to happen- not today. I walk down the branch, bracing myself with one hand, slugging a ball loose with the other, moving my way down the branch. As each one falls, the kids roar "ONE! TWOOOOO! THREEEEE! FOURRRR!..." and then: "GO ROXY'S DAD. GO ROXY'S DAD."

This is great. I feel like, I don't know, Julius Caesar. Or Tarzan. This is triumph. I take my time, and finally the count of FOURTEEN is chorused.

My work finshed, I swung down and down, dropped the last eight feet or so, flat on my feet, safe and sound. And my daughter jumped on me and I carried her over to the picnic table and signed her out on the clipboard, awash in cheers.

We pick up the boy at his school and drive home and on the way she excitedly relates my tale of tree-climbing. Everybody has forgotten about the Yoo-hoo incident. For now anyway.

We go through a relatively quiet evening. Homework done? Lemme see it. Where's your name and the date? Hold it, we go through these spelling words first. I assure you I could care less if ;That 70s Show' is on. Don't make me unplug the set. I mean it. You wanna re-program the VCR again? Think about it, smart guy.

Never, ever, when I was a bohemian dandy and arch-underachiever did I foresee that such words would ever come out of my mouth. "Think about it, smart guy."

Later. I am lying in bed in the basement. Some nights I don't get to sleep for awhile, just lie there and listen. I can hear the sounds of bats eating bugs. I can hear snippets of music from a passing car radio down on 17th. I can hear cats having excrutiating sex in Irvingdale park. A dither of moths pummeling the porch lightbulb.

Speaking of Caesar, I read that whenever one of the Roman generals or dignitaries rode in a parade of triumph through Rome, there would be some manservant assigned to ride with him in the chariot. It was this servant's duty to whisper this in his ear, again and again: You are mortal.

Hey, I think, I have those too. They're called scabs and of course by this time I have a couple of really gorgeous ones on the insides of my knees. A vivid batch of bruises have stopped by, too - purple, bluish and even one that is a hideous shade of yellow.

Hold it, somebody's outta bed. I hear elfin footsteps moving overhead. My son appears at the top of the stairs. He creeps down. My eyes are adjusted to the dark. He doesn't know I am awake. I act like I am asleep.

He approaches, tip-toeing, is at my bedside. He sets something on my chest, creeps away.

It is the ring, the silver ring with moons and stars. I put it back on. Now I can go to sleep.

Cherry Blossum Blizzard

Hello folks, sorry I haven't written much lately. I have a slew of bloggery waiting-in-the-wings, but I need to get access to a computer at a house to put the accompanying images on.

Yes, images. Yes, eye-furniture.

It is like having crates of bananas on the docks and not shipping because each nanner does not have little blue sticker! Frustrational.

So please, be patient. I know, I know, you've been pounding on the virtual door, booing and baying for more blog!

Actually, I get the meter count from this blog in my email once a month. And, since January, to all one of you who have visited here I say: Thank You.

Today I will tell all one of you about Julius, my pet tornado. He is not the Hurty Kind! Not dangerous at all. In fact, by meteorological standards, Julius is just a pup! Not even a pup! A pip!

My job is a busy place, and I get a lot of customers in, all of them asking me questions, wanting to know where things are. Standing with their clip boards, with pleading eyes. Sometimes it is like a McDonalds on a football Saturday.

So, like twice a day I go out on the loading dock for a minute, look at the sky, watch people go by and so forth.

The loading dock is set on the west side of the building, in a kind of canyon of buildings. Whenever the barometer says so, Big Air comes to town! That is where Julius comes in. He is not always there. Sometimes the air is static, fat and slow.

But every once in awhile I go out and there is Julius, usually playing with a plastic bag or
a flock of leaves, spinning them around, setting them down, stirring them up again. A capricious beast, this Julius.

I suppose on one of the security cameras , me saying "Hey, Julius. What's up." He thinks that over, then spins some more like a perky pooch wagging it's tail. "Say 'woosh' for papa. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?" I sure like that lil 'nader.

But the other day Julius was going bat-shit crazy! And, get this, he had collected like a bushel basket of petals from cherry blossums, which were fluttering off the trees like snow that day. It was like a hectic little storm of petals, snaking across the parking lot, setting them down.

It was at that point I decided to go stand in the funnel-cloud of white petals. They swirled around me and made my hair go straight up!

And then - BUSTED! Two Japanese girls, students, came walking by carrying their books. They smiled and giggled. I said something like "Wasn't that refreshing." and went back inside.