My mom won a spelling bee when she was a young grl. Her reward was a lb. tub of cottage cheese. In those days of the Depression, that must have been a good prize. Not sure that would work today. Ipods, trips to 6 Flags, and a date with Justin Bieber might inspire young girls today.
I'm a good speller-must be in the genes. But thank goodness for spell check.
Not for sure cos it was so many years ago, but methinks my sister, who now goes by the name of Raven Shams, gave me this lp for Christmas, circa 1967. It has "I Am the Walrus" my first or second favorite Beatles tune. She also turned me on to Procul Harum via "Shine on Brightly."
MMT also sits to right of Golden Pond-can't miss it.
Anyway some disturbed dolt ranks it as the 10th worst album cover of all time. Me on the other hand would rank it in the top 5. But I'm biased, of course.
10) The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour: Sentimentality makes it hard to realize just how terrible this album cover is. It appeals to small children, but weren't the Beatles trying to get away from the teeny-bopper crowd? The U.S. version adds "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" to an album that already had "I Am The Walrus." No need to turn it into a joke. The film is terrible but the album isn't. But you don't know that by looking at it.
At least he said nice things about the songs.
P.S. I just remembered me and Raven listened to "Walrus" a few times on our magical mystery tour. The ending is up to interpretation. What were they saying? "Everybody got one?" What do you think?
I mentioned "The Case of the Treacherous Toupee" last week, which starred Robert Redford. Here's a few from the vault: "The Case of the Drowning Duck"; "The Case of the Runaway Corpse"; and "The Case of the Negligent Nymph" to name a few. Leave it to yours truly to come up with a few of my own.
1) "The Case of the Arrogant Assistant Camp Attendant"
Perry Mason defends a fifth degree wizard, when Lisa, the asst. camp counselor, is murdered on a camping trail.
2) "The Case of Murder on the China Express"
Perry defends an ex nurse, Agatha Christie, who's accused of murdering the owner of a Chinese restaurant Motive: While dining, she asks the owner for more black bean sauce for her scallops dish but is denied.
3) "The Case of the I Know Where's the Beef Tacos"
Perry defends a budding hypnotherapist.
The Defendant: I didn't kill him, Perry. The tacos were horrible. Just shredded beef, tiny tomatoes, and no lettuce and cheese. But I didn't kill him!
Perry: I believe you!
4) "The Case of the Terrified Shopper"
Perry defends an older man ( late 50's ) for ineptitude He's being sued by his mother, who believes her son's shopping skills are not up to par. It all starts when he returns home with a 2lb. 6 oz. chicken-not the 2 lb. 9 oz which was requested; the wrong brand of canned tomatoes; and the one inch center cut pork chops as opposed to the two inch thick ones.
5) "The Case of the Prissy Vegan"
Mason defends a man who is married to a vegan. But after years of bean sprouts, tofu, and every thing organic the poor dolt loses it. And is accused of her murder.
Dolt: I wanted a Big Mac and fries and a large coke. I couldn't take it anymore. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Mason has his hands full in this exciting episode.
6) "The Case of the Annoying Photographer"
While Mason is vacationing in California, he comes across an empowerment group. The members-ten strong- enlist his aid in finding the murderer of an annoying photographer. All have motives. A tough case for Mason.
7) "The Case of the Thing from Outer Space"
Mason decides, although reluctantly, to defend an alien carrot from outer space. Della Street and Paul Drake believe the carrot is guilty, but Mason doesn't agree. James Arness guest stars as the carrot.
8) "The Case of the Blogged-Down Writer"
Middle aged man is accused of writing forays into the infantile. Once again, Perry has his hands full.
Read the comments for "Oops. A zombie ate this page."
The short story: Rock, my longtime compatriot, wondered what happened to Ronnie and Azam Exec's and ex's of Piccadilly Cafeteria.
I googled Azam Malik Piccadilly Cafeteria and the first entry was from Golden Pond.
I didn't know whether to feel elated or depressed. The result:
GOLDEN POND
vietnamcatfish.blogspot.com/Cached - Similar
You +1'd this publicly. Undo
Sep 14, 2011 – Have you ever spent time in a cafeteria, son? ... If Malik told his men that BBQ wasn't to be ... Azam ordered the code red, didn't he? ..... I wrote a foray into the infantile a few years ago when I worked for Piccadilly Cafeteria. ...
You've visited this page 12 times. Last visit: 9/27/11
Number 1 on Google. A star is born. Yeah right! Wonder if Azam ever googled the same? He would be shocked, eh?
P.S. In the comments I mentioned tryna get my mojo back. If I never hear "Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann on the radio, I will be happy. "Wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night." Ditto for "Sister Goldenhair" by America. While we're at it, "Sweet Home Alabama" too!
Someone in Dekalb Illinois looked at a post of mine from 2005. It was "The Thing From Another World," about an alien carrot from outer space. Starred James Arness as the Carrot. This movie has been mentioned on these pages many times. One of my all time favorites.
My post also gave a link to TCM. When I clicked on the link it took me to the TCM web page, but "The Thing" was gone, vamoose. Instead the message was: "Oops. Zombies ate this page."
Clever!
P.S. Rock, how's the job search going? Did you get the job you wanted.
It just ain't the same for me since Bobby Cox retired last year. At least he was honored by the Braves for all of his work in Atlanta. His career in the city too busy to hate spanned 2 decades plus. After 30 years working at Hell Whole, I was unceremoniously dumped. At least Bobby went out with fanfare.
It just ain't the same without old Bobby sitting in the dugout rooting on his team. Freddi Gonzalez is an adequate replacement, but he ain't got the charisma of Bobby.
The Braves are swooning again this year and may or may not make the playoffs. Their magic number is down to two, so we're holding our breaths. Me and the city that is.
Tomorrow we trot out Derrick Lowe, who hasn't been the same pitcher since he was arrested for a dui early in the summer. And the Phillies counter with Roy Oswalt.
Bobby always caught hell from the Monday morning quarterbacks, and, yes, I admit to second guessing him as well. But the Braves won their division 14 years in a row. So we only had one World Series victory. Being in the playoffs was great all those years. Ask Kansas City, Seattle, and San Diego if they would like to trade.
Two games to go for a wild card berth. And no Bobby this time. The most ejected manager in major league baseball history. It just ain't the same!
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IT IS OFFICIAL. IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON, IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY!!
I think I will sign up for the gold member status.
Whew! I'm glad it was on tv. Now I know it's for real!
Maybe Facebook knows what happened to Waldo and what happened on the grassy knoll.
P.S. Please bring in Woodward and Bernstein to clear up this matter.
Great show. And ended with Dr. Kimble being exonnerated. Seems the one-arm man was for real. The movie was excellent. And the train crash was worth the price of admission.
My l'il sister and her family came to the Pond in 1993, and like good hosts, we took them to see the movie.
"Wow. That [ train wreck ] was worth the price of admission," I said to my family just minutes into the film.
From Wikipedia: The series was conceived by Roy Huggins and produced by Quinn Martin. It is popularly believed that the series was based in part on the real-life story of Sam Sheppard, an Ohio doctor accused of murdering his wife. Although convicted and imprisoned, Sheppard claimed that his wife had been murdered by a "bushy-haired man". Huggins denied basing the series on Sheppard, though the show's film editor, Ken Wilhoit, was married to Susan Hayes, who had had an intimate relationship with Sheppard prior to the murder and testified during the first trial in 1954.
P.S. David Janssen later played the title role as "Harry O." Now that's a good name.
Jerry Leiber, one of the most important songwriters in the history of rock & roll – whose 60-year partnership with Mike Stoller produced "Stand By Me," "Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock," "Young Blood," "On Broadway," "Yakety-Yak" and countless other classics – has died of cardiopulmonary failure. He was 78.
"When Jerry and I started to write, we were writing to amuse ourselves," Stoller told Rolling Stone in 1990. "It was done out of a love of doing it. We got very lucky in the sense that at some point what we wrote also amused a lot of other people."
Leiber met Stoller in Los Angeles in 1950 when he was still a senior in high school. They had a mutual love of R&B, blues and pop, and began writing music together almost instantly, with Stoller mostly handling the music and Leiber mostly handling the lyrics. "Jerry was an idea machine," Stoller says in their 2009 memoir Hound Dog. "For every situation, Jerry had 20 ideas. As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices. When Jerry sang, he sounded black, so that gave us an advantage . . . His verbal vocabulary was all over the place – black, Jewish, theatrical, comical. He would paint pictures with words."
In the early days, they pulled 12-hour days writing on an upright piano in Stoller's house. "We're a unit," Leiber told Rolling Stone in 1990. "The instincts are very closely aligned. I could write, 'Take out the papers and the trash,' and he'll come up with 'Or you don't get no spending cash.'"
Within three years of meeting each other, Leiber and Stoller were the hottest songwriters in the business –writing hits for the Drifters, Coasters and the Robins and many other R&B groups of the era. In 1956, their career went to a higher level when Elvis Presley took "Hound Dog" – which they wrote for Big Mama Thornton four years earlier – and turned it into a gigantic hit.
Leiber was extremely irritated by the changes that Presley made to the original lyrics. "To this day I have no idea what that rabbit business is about," he said in 2009. "The song is not about a dog; it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo. Elvis' version makes no sense to me, and, even more irritatingly, it is not the song that Mike and I wrote. Of course, the fact that it sold more than seven million copies took the sting out of what seemed to be a capricious change of lyrics."
Despite their success with Presley, most of the acts that Leiber and Stoller worked with were black. "I felt black," Leiber told Rolling Stone in 1990. "I was as far as I was concerned. And I wanted to be black for lots of reasons. They were better musicians, they were better athletes, they were not uptight about sex, and they knew how to enjoy life better than most people."
Not all of their songs were as innocent as they seemed. "Pure and simple, 'Poison Ivy' [a 1959 hit they wrote for The Coasters] is a metaphor for a sexually transmitted disease – or the clap – hardly a topic for a song that hit the Top Ten in the Spring of 1959," Leiber said in 2009. "But the more we wrote, the less we understood why the public bought what it bought."
The hits continued into the early 1960s with such classics as "Stand By Me" and "Spanish Harlem," but when the Beatles broke in America in early 1964, the music industry changed very quickly. The duo never stopped working together, and in 1972 they produced "Stuck In The Middle With You," which was recorded by Stealers Wheel. In 1995, their catalog of hits was turned into the Broadway musical Smokey Joe's Cafe, and this past May, American Idol devoted an entire evening to their music.
I remember we had this song in our 45 collection. And "Hound Dog" on a 78. 78's were very brittle. I remember stepping on Nelson Eddy's "Robin Hood" and putting a hairline crack on it. It was hard coping with that as a young boy listening to "tick" 78 times per minute.
My favorite tv show of all time. Of all time. Sure, I've enjoyed "Hill Street Blues;" "Dynasty;" and "Zorro;" but none have done it for me like the King: Perry Mason.
Yes, I've espoused my love for this show in the past. But the good news: Perry Mason reruns are available on channel 248 ( comcast ) every weekday night from 11:30 to 12:30, and 10-11 a.m. M-F.
I am in hog heaven. The shows at night are from 1960. A few episodes ago, a very young Robert Redford played the stepson of a rich guy, who shows up unexpectedly at a board meeting sfter disappearing for a couple of years.
What intrigue. What savoir faire. 1960's L.A. in all its splendor. And every episode a new whodunit.
Last night it was Dabs Greer as the janitor who kills his boss.
"He was gonna tell the police that I stole the secret formulas to the lavender lipstick. I couldn't have that. So I killed him!"
Conservative group One Million Moms finds the new flavor offensive and is calling for a boycott.
“The vulgar new flavor has turned something as innocent as ice cream into something repulsive,” the group, an offshoot of American Family Association, stated on its website. “Not exactly what you want a child asking for at the supermarket.”
The limited-batch ice cream flavor released recently was inspired by a “Saturday Night Live” skit of the same name.
The skit stars Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon as hosts of the “Delicious Dish,” a parody of a National Public Radio program. Alec Baldwin portrays a hilarious Pete Schweddy, the fictional owner of Season’s Eatings Bakery, who explains poker-faced to the show hosts that he has a variety of “Schweddy balls” — popcorn balls, cheese balls, rum balls suited for every taste among his special holiday offerings
Ben & Jerry’s spokesperson Sean Greenwood told ABCNews.com that in the last three days, he’s only heard from about 600 moms — not a million — complaining about the new flavor. At the same time, the company has received hundreds more e-mails that say things like, “We get the joke” and “We love you guys.”
“This is just about silly fun,” Greenwood said. “We didn’t name it for shock value. We did it because it’s a funny skit.”
“Schweddy Balls” isn’t the first time Ben & Jerry’s has spun a fun mixture of flavor and pop culture. Apparently, One Million Moms wasn’t amused when the company released a special edition of Chubby Hubby called Hubby Hubby last year to celebrate gay marriage.
“It seems that offending customers has become an annual tradition for Ben & Jerry’s,” the group said on its website.
As to that charge, Greenwood said, “We stick up for what we believe in.”
The company has plenty of fans. Alec Baldwin, who will be hosting the 37th season premiere of Saturday Night Live on September 24, had this to say about the ice cream homage.
“For a long time, I thought that ‘Here Lies Pete Schweddy’ would end up on my tombstone,” said the legendary comedian and “30 Rock” actor in a Ben & Jerry’s press release. “Now, thanks to Ben & Jerry’s, the goodness of the Schweddy family recipe won’t go with me to the great beyond. It is immortalized here, right now, and it’s an ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s and Schweddy. Two great names in American dessert, together at last.”
Amazon.com did not create the notion of buying things online, but it has done more than any other retailer to move the experience into the mainstream. It has exceeded its customers' expectations so often it must constantly struggle to top itself. "At first people were incredulous that the mouse on their computer was connected to their doorbell," the Amazon executive Russell Grandinetti said recently. "Now they say: 'It's been 12 hours. Where's my stuff?' "
All that stuff doesn't magically fly to your house, even if the goal is to have it seem that way. The Morning Call, a daily newspaper in Allentown, Pa., delivered a grim picture last weekend about what it is like to work in the local Amazon warehouse, sorting material for delivery to millions of eager customers. In eastern Pennsylvania, like just about everywhere else, jobs are lacking, and Amazon is one of the few places that is hiring. Many workers are brought on by a staffing company as temporary workers ("Are you interested in working in a fun, fast-paced atmosphere earning up to $12.25 per hour?" the ad asks.) This transient status gives them little incentive to complain, even as the heat boiled upward over the summer. The result was an environment that, one employee told the paper, resembled "working in a convection oven while blow-drying your hair."
In a lengthy and heavily reported article, The Call said a warehouse employee contacted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on June 2 to report that the heat index in the warehouse had reached 102 degrees, and that 15 workers had collapsed. The employee also said workers who were sent home because of the heat received disciplinary points....
There's more in the article. The replies from people are sometimes hilarious.
The result? Dave's Hot 'N Juicy, named after late Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. The burger — with extra cheese, a thicker beef patty, a buttered bun, and hold the mustard, among other changes — will be served in restaurants starting Monday.
For Wendy's Co., based in Dublin, Ohio, reinvention is critical. That's why executives at the 6,600-restaurant chain spent the past two and a half years going over burger minutiae during an undertaking they call Project Gold Hamburger. That included deciding whether to switch from white onions on its burgers to red (they did), to change the fat/lean ratio of the meat (they didn't), or to go with plain or crinkled pickles (they picked crinkled.)
Wendy's also faces strong competition from McDonald's, which has snatched customers from rivals by remaking itself into a hip, healthy place to eat, with smoothies, Wi-Fi and coffee drinks. Last year, McDonald's had 49.5 percent of the fast-food burger market in the U.S, up from 41.6 percent in 2002, according to research firm Technomic. During the same period, Wendy's share fell to 12.8 percent from 14 percent. Burger King's fell to 13.3 percent from 17 percent.
P.S. Instead of changing the burger, I would insure that fries and nuggets are hot and fresh. Two and a half years of testing....
Golden Pond goes off center here with a tune from Das Racist. You know me. Like those food biz themes.
From Rolling Stone Magazine:And to think it all started with "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell." The hip-hop jokers in Das Racist have grown into acerbic satire hustlers - they sound like Cheech and Chong, if those guys were into rhymes like, "No trustem whitefaceman like Geronimo/Tried to go to Amsterdam, they threw us in Guantánamo." The trio's first official (i.e., for profit) LP has one-liners over beats from Diplo and El-P. Their political humor is, as they say, "dark like the rainbow in a Ronnie James Dio joint." But they also love dumb wordplay ("Don King playing Donkey Kong"), video games and girls whose hair smells like Newports.
I am so relieved to know the Fab 4 weren't racist. It took only 47 years to find out. Thank goodness. Whew!
From the article: The mid-1960s were both a tumultuous time for race relations in the U.S. (Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963 and was assassinated five years later) and a landmark period for English rock & roll invading American shores (the Beatles arrived with their famous Ed Sullivan Show performance in 1964). The Guardian reminded us how those two cultural forces often intersected today by bringing our attention to a Fab Four tour rider that is currently on the auction block -- a document that specifies John, Paul, George, and Ringo would not play to a "segregated audience."
In addition to indicating the Beatles refused to perform to a crowd in which black and white fans were kept apart, the documents detail the fee the band collected for the gig ($40,000), the number of police officers required to keep order at the show (at least 150 uniformed), and the size of the platform needed for Ringo Starr's drum kit (10' by 6' and 4' high). Ticket prices for the show ranged from $4.50 to $6.50, including tax.
P.S. Tonight's song is from the "White Album." Perhaps my most favorite Beatles album. An eclectic mix of tunes. And a double lp to boot.
From wikipedia: I had been doing poetry readings. I had been doing some in the last year or so because I've got a poetry book out called "Blackbird Singing", and when I would read Blackbird, I would always try and think of some explanation to tell the people, 'cause there's not a lot you can do except just read the poem, you know, you read 10 poems that takes about 10 minutes, almost. It's like, you've got to, just, do a bit more than that. So, I was doing explanations, and I actually just remembered why I'd written Blackbird, you know, that I'd been, I was in Scotland playing on my guitar, and I remembered this whole idea of "you were only waiting for this moment to arise" was about, you know, the black people's struggle in the southern states, and I was using the symbolism of a blackbird. It's not really about a blackbird whose wings are broken, you know, it's a bit more symbolic.
— Paul McCartney, Interview with KCRW's Chris Douridas, May 25, 2002 episode of New Ground (17:50 - 19:00)
The Apple scruffs were a loosely-knit group of hardcore Beatles fans who were known for congregating outside the Apple Corps building and at the gates of Abbey Road Studios in London during the waning days of Beatlemania in hopes of seeing or interacting with the band members.
In February 1968 during the recording of "Across the Universe", two Apple scruffs (Lizzie Bravo and Gayleen Pease) who were standing outside the Abbey Road Studios were invited in on the spur of the moment by Paul McCartney to perform backing vocals on the track.[1]
The Beatles' song "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" (Abbey Road, 1969) refers to the day that some of the Apple scruffs climbed into Paul McCartney's house through an upstairs bathroom window and raided his wardrobe for a pair of trousers which they took turns wearing. They also stole a framed photograph, which they later returned at McCartney's request.[2]
Following the break-up of the Beatles, George Harrison wrote a song titled "Apple Scruffs" which appeared on his solo album All Things Must Pass.
In 1985, one of the Apple scruffs, Carol Bedford, published a memoir of her experiences as a fan, Waiting for the Beatles: An Apple Scruff's Story.[3]
[edit] References
Tonight's trivia quiz deals with the above photo. Who is this strapping young fella?
a) Linebacker for the Washington Redskins
b) Tony Romo's dad who will never forgive his son for blowing a 14 point lead-the first time ever in Dallas history.
c) One of the new contestants on "The Biggest Loser."
d) An ex manager in the food biz who often wonders: "What's It All About, Alfie?"
e) Raven Shams brother who pitched a tent on Mt. Shasta and had many adventures. f) The new model for Calvin Klein undershirts-the husky division.
I love me some cornbread. I could eat it at every meal. The sweet cornbread is not my cup of tea, but yours truly will never refuse any cornbread. Picky is not my modus operandi. Maybe from working in the food biz all those years.
My Aunt Mad loved to eat her cornbread in a tall glass of buttermilk.
At my first job venue, we used to sell cornbread by the carloads. Mexican and corn sticks. Don't get behind on cornbread or rolls on a busy Sunday, or you'll never ketchup. Plus, the guests would howl for your scalp. Oh, yeah. And fried or baked chicken-not a good idea to ever run out.
So here's a good cornbread recipe for those who don't like it sweet.
2 cups Martha White self-rising cornbread.
2 eggs lightly beaten
dash salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 8 oz. can cream corn
Easy, eh?
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Heavily oil the inside of a black cast iron skillet. Heat the skillet in the oven for at least 5 minutes, while you mix the batter.
In a mixing bowl combine the meal, eggs, salt5, buttermilk and oil until well mixed. Stir in the corn and pour the batter into a hot skillet.
Bake about 30 minutes until golden brown.
P.S. If you want to make your own buttermilk, buy a large milk can from the dairy.
Pour 8 gallons of water ( 70-72 degrees ) into the milk can.
Add 8 lbs. of powdered milk.
Mix. Then add one quart of store bought buttermilk to the water and powdered milk. Allow to sit out over night. The next day it's ready.
Share with your friends and neighbors, because we're talking about a lot of buttermilk.
P.S. Be sure your water is 70-72 degrees. You may need a Taylor thermometer to check the temp. Bon appetit.
This is another picture of me and Raven. I am stylishly dressed in my white undershirt. The next Calvin Klein, eh? I remembered to hold in my stomach in this picture. perhaps, that is why I'm smiling. I had seen the other pics where my gut was very relaxed. I didn't want anyone to confuse me with Shamu.
My flight touched down at 7:30 p.m. Thursday night. Back to the South. Goodbye l'il sister, goodbye organic foods, goodbye 3 story apartment buildings, goodbye Alchemy, and goodbye Norma Jean. Farewell and adieu to Alcatraz, Mt. Shasta, the Black Bear Diner, and Fisherman's Wharf. It's back to the grind.
Because I'm suffering from jet lag and ketchuping up on things, tonight's foray is an encore presentation from 04.
"Code Red"
Like the < rod > serlingesque commentaries penned by hoots, did anyone see the updated "A Few Good Men" the other night on the Sci-fi channel. It was really good, as usual, but different from the original. Seems they were showing the director's cut. The ending, of course, is the hi lite of the flick. The red herrings are exposed while building to a thrilling climax. For those of you who didn't see it....We pick it up where Kaffee, lead counsel for the defense is questioning Ronnie about a possible Code Red that Ronnie may have ordered.
KAFFEE
When Azam spoke to the team and
ordered them not to fire bbq, any
chance they ignored him?
Ronnie
Have you ever spent time in a cafeteria,
son?
KAFFEE
No sir.
RONNIE
Ever served as a maintenance mechanic?
KAFFEE
No sir.
RONNIE
Ever put your wife, er, knife in another man's hands,
ask him to put his wife, er, knife in yours?
KAFFEE
No sir.
RONNIE
We follow orders, son. We follow orders
or people fry/don't fry. Pun unintended It's that simple. Are we
clear?
KAFFEE
Yes sir.
RONNIE
Are we clear?
KAFFEE
Crystal.
If Malik told his men that BBQ
wasn't to be touched, then why did he have
to be terminated?
Azam ordered the code red, didn't he?
Because that's what you told Azam to
do.
And when it went bad, you cut this guy
loose.
KAFFEE
I'll ask for the fourth time. You ordered--
RONNIE
You want answers?
KAFFEE
I think I'm entitled to them.
RONNIE
You want answers?!
KAFFEE
I want the truth.
RONNIE
You can't handle the truth! (continuing)
Son, we live in a world that has malls.
And those malls have to be served by men
who sell buns. Among other things. Who's gonna do it? You? You,
Lt. Whineberg? I have a greater
responsibility than you can possibly
fathom. You weep for BBQ and you
curse the ceo's in the ivory towers. You have that luxury.
You have the luxury of not knowing what I
know: That BBQ's termination, while tragic,
probably saved jobs-we didn't have to fire more people at the time. And my existence,
while grotesque and incomprehensible to
you, saves jobs. For the likes of AAAA Repair, the Federal Bureaucracy, the workers at the unemployment offices, etc.
I have neither the time nor the
inclination to explain myself to a man who
rises and sleeps under the blanket of the
very freedom I provide, then questions the
manner in which I provide it. I'd prefer
you just said thank you and went on your
way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a
serving spoon and stand a post. Either way, I
don't give a damn what you think you're
entitled to.
KAFFEE
(quietly)
Did you order the code red?
RONNIE
(pause)
You're goddamn right I did.
About that time I dozed off, but do remember hearing a voice that eerily sounded like Rod's, who pronounced: submitted for your approval and perusal.
Our house is a two story one. There are ten of us, eleven with David. A correction is in order: David is a 5th degree wizard as opposed to sorcerer, which was erroneously mentioned in my previous foray. Raven seemed to think the two are interchangeable, so it will be left as is.
The group of folks attending are a mixed bag, including one hillbilly from Georgia. SO far no one in the town or our group has commented on my southern accent. Thank goodness for that! Maybe California has expanded its consciousness. Aho!
I have my own bed, a queen size one at that. Thank you, Great Creator, a term that is bandied about quite a bit amongst my fellow attendees.
The spirit is high; the people are really nice. They have accepted the hillbilly as one of the group. I am appreciative of that.
We have been having superb food, and most of it has been prepared by _________. Her name is not disclosed due to the anonymity required here. Fresh fruit, whole wheat toast, whole wheat sour dough, eggs scrambled, sunny side up, and over easy to name a few. Plus yogurt, cottage cheese, and cereal. The residents prior to us left Cherrios, Cocoa Puffs, and Fruit Loops, which were unanimously derided as not being worthy of consumption.
Lunch has been sandwiches and salads. And some are very careful about what goes into their tummies.
"I'm picky about what I eat," is the modus operandi here.
I told them all how I love me some seafood. A slight twist on the seafood diet cliche. When I mention how I love seafood, it's normally met with "me too"; or "too much mercury for me"; or "I am a vegan-sorry." That leaves more seafood for me, so I'm a happy camper. Pun UNINTENDED! ( See "Checking In" foray! )
I have never been around so much organic food. And we have eaten vast quantities of salads. With cucumbers, tomatoes, purple onions, faded purple olives, walnuts, and more.
Last night we cheated somewhat and Raven along with _______ prepared a vegetarian chili and a ground beef one, with organic kydney beans, onions,tomatoes and bell peppers. And mexican cornbread-with an organic jalapeno pepper-except the mix was sweet, so an oxymoron at best.
I should have taken notes as to what we ate each day, as my memory is a little hazy, but you get my drift. Plus, with all the hiking and the session work, it has been quite easy to lose a few pounds here. I signed an oath in blood-just kidding-to preserve the anonymity of the people attending and their work, but I can disclose my own sessions, which will follow in later forays.
All this exercise and alchemy tutelage has left me tired and well, sleepy. So it's gimme shelter time, as I look forward to french toast on fancy shmantzy bread-no Kroger white bread here-for tomorrow's breakfast. With yogurt, cottage cheese, bean sprouts, soy milk, fresh garlic, ginger....- sleepy, very sleepy.
P.S. I will be reporting on some session work in my next foray. Did I fire my mom and get a new one? Did I retire her with an obligatory gold watch? OR did I keep her? Ditto for Dad.
I am in the beautiful mountains of Mount Shasta. What a journey it has been.
Raven Shahms, aka Olga-aka Darlene, my little sister, has been a terrific host.
Monday we made the trek from San Fran to Mt. Shasta. We talked along the way catching up on things, and we listened to music. We have some similar tastes-she is a Beatles fan, but nothing on the scale of my adulation. We listened to the Supremes and Cat Stephens. Where do the children play, eh? But we listened more to the Fab 4 and John Lennon
Our trip, the Magical Mystery Tour, was just beginning.
Monday night we stopped at the Black Bear diner for dinner/supper. The food was average at best-I had a hamburger and fries and cole slaw. I requested medium well but received a meat patty slightly burned on one side. Hey, I can relate; it's the food biz. The service was average too. But the place was quaint and homey, and I liked that.
After our somewhat less than par dinner we headed up the mountain, a 23 mile jaunt by car, and it was getting dark. Raven began to pitch the tent when the camp gestapo appeared in the
darkness.
"Can I help you?" she said.
"Oh, hi. We're camping here," said Raven, not exactly knowing to whom she was speaking.
"I'm Lisa, the camp gestapo, er, camp host, and you can't pitch your tent here."
"Can we stay here tonight? It's awfully dark."
"No, but I'll show you where you can."
Lisa was young-20's maybe-with long brown hair down to her waist. She showed us where we could spend the evening, a few feet away from our original location.
I'm a city boy and like all the comforts of home. There would be none here. No computer, tv, shower, etc. We were roughing it. We did have one convenience-an outhouse. As women tend to say these days: ewwwwww!
Because we were on sacred Indian ground, we had to be respectful. We could not litter the landscape, and we had to stay on the paths. For example, no cremations or ashes were allowed. Seems there's bones in the cremations-ewwwww-not to speak of possible toxins. But, mainly, no litter. And I had to keep my ashes and butts in a bowl, my ashtray, if you will. Raven was adamant about preserving the grounds. It's an old cliche, but we weren't in Kansas anymore.
The stars were magnificent the first night. Thousands, maybe millions, lined the sky. It looked as if you could touch them. I have never seen such a sight.
Our tent was adequate. But I had a difficult time sleeping. Trying to relax on an inch-thick mat, sleeping bag, and cold weather-40 degrees-is tough on a city boy.
The next morning was greatly received by myself. I could get up and move around. Breakfast was again at the Black Bear Diner. I had an omelette and stringy hashbrowns-coffee, of course, heavy on the caffeine, which helped clear the cobwebs. The service, once again, was lacking. What's up with the waitstaff when they depend on tips?
After breakfast we ascended the mountain. More hiking and waiting on David, Raven's new boyfriend, who is heavy into Alchemy and hypnotherapy. He's also a 5th degree sorcerer. He would join us at 6. I have never met him, but knew a lot about him via Raven. And had only talked to him once on the phone.
He-David-is the reason for my trip! I'm to participate in his empowerment therapy-along with 10 others. And, my l'il sister, who is heavily involved and is training herself, thought it would be great for me.
As I write this on her Apple computer, we are now staying in a house-thank God! Most of the students have an Alchemy background and are alchemists themselves, and David is the teacher. We have been through a few sessions all ready. Roll up for the mystery tour!
