Day 666:  Wednesday, August 11, 2010:  You leaned on a telephone pole, and the domino effect brought down another dozen.

Time to call it quits, but I’ll be haunting your comments and having some fun from time to time.  The reasons are many, from a new career oppurtunity (fingers crossed) to creepy stalkers from my old job, who fire-off cryptic e-mails and vanish (for good reason — they’re on the net at a company handing out pink slips).  Some things are best left in the dust.  Highly radioactive dust.     

CLT already posted a farewell that had me nodding in agreement over and over, even though I’m still a green rookie compared to the great lion tamer.  It couldn’t have been written any better.  FJ presented a photo display that also said things pretty well, but his photos always say a lot.  It’s time to refocus my energy, and so the Insult Diet is over. 

CLT and FJ are a great  inspiration.  Following is a list of comments and good-byes to the usual suspects on my Blogroll:

Bschooled.  The gateway to this realm.  I laughed at your placement in “America’s Funniest Humor” and followed the link to a crazy chia and laughed some more.  I know your work will be around search engines and sites for quite some time, if not out in hard copy on the shelves some day.  Anyone who can be one of the funniest people in America – and yet be Canadian – is the highest order of literary ninja.  You are omnipresent.  

I have no idea what that means.

Scott, you brilliant oversea-er.  Part of the reason I’m bolting is to really amp-up the edits on that book, and we’re talking hundreds of pages.  That and finding a damn career.  I took a close look at what defines a literary agent, and it’s someone who works their way up through the publishing business and has established contacts, so I figure since you’re a pro in the ad biz, the title should be “Editor”.  It also has a lot more class to it, since you never hear writers bash a “sleazy editor”, and your keen eye for humor, flow, etc., is what really counts.  I will keep in touch, haunt your comments, and let you know how this thing goes.  I really hope that some day we meet and laugh about this entire journey, and if we don’t . . . I’ll haunt you anyway.  But not in a scary boo way.

Nurse Myra, you put together such an amazing blog, I don’t even know where to start.  It really displays how there’s nothing new under the sun.  So many people were nuts and devious back in the day, and they still are.  I was going to do this entire post about a guy who lived in town over a hundred years ago named Lucas Douglass.  Wait!  [Drum roll] – Everyone thought he was a drunk pauper until the day he died, drunk and frozen in the road, on a winter night.  His will revealed that he was a millionaire, and the shrine above his grave was built and shipped from Italy:

The ship sank coming over, but the monument was insured (!), and another one arrived, to be delivered in a custom-built train car.  People lined the tracks for miles as it traveled to Ashford.  My daughter used to think it was a castle when she was tiny, and that reminds me of something else about Douglass; he left his only daughter 10 dollars.  Truly a Nurse Myra story.

Lucas Douglass died in 1895, at the age of 72.  His money still pays for upkeep, and that’s a concrete wall with huge urns at each corner.  What a drunken bastard.  I bet he looked like a vanilla Popsicle when they found him.

My daughter insisted on playing there one day – before she even knew what a cemetery was about – and I almost cried at the tragic, lonely little town we chose to live in, nestled here in the wooded hills, criss-crossed with stone walls from colonial days.  My daughter’s playground was a desolate New England cemetery.  Luckily it was only like, a half-hour.  Now we play at a toxic Superfund Site.

Dave Hambidge had the most enlightening and personable posts going, and presented a great series of chapters that were impossible to stop reading.  I owe you a song, and one night I finally sat down to play “Romance in E Minor” on a Fender Strat to present on YouTube, but the sound was absolutely horrible when I checked the video – kind of cheap and tin-sounding – so there are sound issues with my Handy cam to be worked out, or I’ll try an acoustic with chord renderings instead of single strings.  Thanks for showing me that haunting song.  Funny how some things hit like a ton of bricks.  Your good-bye also had me nodding in agreement, and real life often intervenes to make us reconsider time for this or that.  I’m afraid this has to go, while I take care of that.  We are still connected, and it means much more than a post here and there.

Donald Mills . . . there is no way you’re over forty.  Maybe fifty, but you’re way too sharp for the old man you portray, so stop it.  You’re CLT, aren’t you?  Another alter ego?  Okay, so maybe you’re old, but you’re old like those guys in “Cocoon”, who really run the show but act like they don’t.  I hope to hell that I retain even a quarter of your wit and wisdom when I reach your age, and if you’re not the second coming of Mark Twain, then you’re the first coming of a new Mark Twain, if that makes any sense at all.  And the young people?  I hope they never stop feeding you material . . . 

Which they never will, so I look forward to many more years of “The Problem With . . . them.”  Especially since you’re like, a twenty-something comedy writer in NYC or L.A.  And for real?  I hope you caught some damn fish!

Kansas Mediocrity is a pleasure trip of politics, music, history, and everything in-between.  Damn intelligent writing, and always educational.  Could spend all day in a coffee shop talking – or better yet – an outside cafe.  The Native American articles are fantastic.

Tom at The American Writer is an inspiration to all aspiring writers, and a working Renaissance Man.  He was kind enough to publish my short story “Reveal”, and I’ll be sending him more things once I get them in order.  You won’t find anyone more dedicated to the craft of writing, and his work is already out on the shelves.  He is a remarkable talent, and mentor to many. 

Bearman.  Da Bear.  Great cartoons and funny as hell.  Writes from the heart, and drops into comments with a live grenade.  When I need a quick laugh, I’ll be tapping over to the Bear site.

Friggin Loon is a posting machine who is hard to keep up with, but it doesn’t matter.  To visit her site is too see a current, unfolding edition of Nurse Myra’s more extensive study of the human condition.  The weird and funny news is always a blast.

The Shaking Tree has disappeared for now . . . wait, let me check.  No!  Shelli is back and has been back, with a great article on how to follow friends on the net, Facebook, etc.  Guess I’m one less to follow, but now I won’t have to keep worrying what happened, and will read back to catch-up, and see that she’s alright.  Nice!

Tony’s Cyberspace Place has taken a break, but Tony comments and is a soul brother in many ways, with family and pets and a funny way of looking at the world, and great comedy gigs like “Flat Tony”.  I’m glad you’re still around, Tony.  Not the flat one.  The real one.

Trippin’ with Rip is great, great fun and full of surprise from sunny Florida.  Lynn pops up everywhere and keeps things going, like when a party starts to fade a little and bang!  She shows up laughing and mixing exotic drinks with little umbrellas.  Fantastic.

J.Love Monroe is a new discovery, and one of the most outstanding writing talents I’ve seen on the web.  Brilliant is not an understatement, or spare like a room full of Ikea furniture.  Just brilliant. 

Vodka and Ground Beef is also a new discovery, and her story about smuggling Grey Goose on a plane still has me laughing.  If Hunter S. Thompson came back to life in the (sexy) body of a hysterical, cutting-edge woman, it would be Vodka and Ground Beef.  Yes, Bear.  I wrote “sexy” damn you.  This does not mean I expect to ever see this young woman out in California, or try to cheat on my sexy wife, or leave my sexy dogs.  Oops.  Did I go there?  Damn.  The dogs again.  They told me it would come out some day . . . 

Blunt Delivery, TheNDM, Gruffguano’s Weblog, and Laugh with Doraz are all sites I found and thought, “These are fantastic!” . . . and then never had time to visit again, and that is part of the problem.

Time.

Cue the Pink Floyd song, and good-bye from the dark side, quickly getting darker if I don’t spend less time on this thing.  I’ll be around in the comments, very sporadically and so forth, but still around . . . good-bye and good-luck.    

 Day 214:  Friday, August 6, 2010: Your cereal bowl doubles as a swimming pool.

Several months ago I published choice excerpts of idiocy from a the editorial pages of a local paper called The Reminder.  Here’s my favorite from the recent July 27th edition:

“In response to “DESERVING PLAYERS?” Soccer is extremely boring, that is why Americans don’t like it.  Americans have good taste, and keeping soccer out of the forefront of our national sports queue was a fantastic idea.  Football, baseball, basketball – sports that were invented here are what we should play.  How much time did you waste researching those salary facts?  That time could have been better spent learning how to play one of the big three American sports, rather than the European sport of soccer.”

I won’t insult your intelligence by ripping this idiotic reply a new one, since I’m sure you were amazed after the first few sentences.  Yet . . . I’m very proud to come from a country that has such damn good taste.  This editorial is a prime example of good taste and carefully researched facts.  For instance . . . who knew there was a national sports queue?  Go figure.  And I always thought football and baseball burrowed HEAVILY from the European sports of cricket, rugby, and soccer.   Stupid, stupid me.  

But wait!  There’s more!

“In response to “DESERVE BETTER?” Don’t blame the people for the un-watered grass at the veteran’s cemetery.  Blame the grass!  That grass needs to take care of itself and stop relying on others to take care of it!” 

Keep in mind; these are unedited by me and word-for-word, including punctuation.  Again; the “swelling with pride” thing . . .

We are so doomed.

 Day 213:  Tuesday, August 3, 2010: You tried chocolate ants once, and exterminators lost business.

Cups of Vodka Stashed Over Heart

After my first stunning and insightful posted tarot reading, faithful readers were sending so many requests that it overloaded several MSN servers, accidentally erasing a massive flood of passionate nut jobs querents.

Yet one lucky person survived, and after extensive background checks and increased security, I’ve learned that she not only passes in flying colors, but posts some damn funny pieces on a blog named after her two greatest passions:

 Vodka and Ground Beef (see Blogroll).

“What card comes up when you think of me?” she implored (see comments), and indeed, after a long period of intense shuffling, incense burning, dog grooming, and proper lawn maintenance, the Ten of Cups literally JUMPED out of the deck.

And for good reason.  My intoxicated head fell forward pretty hard after a long night of . . .

. . . whoa pony.  Since this card is part of the Minor Arcana (don’t ask), it’s usually not a real heavy playa, but since it actually JUMPED out at me, causing a major beer spill on tacky kitchen tiles, there was something very important begging to communicate from the other side (besides my wife screaming to “Stop wasting my good years and find a moving boxcar.”  Ha-ha!  What a kidder)!

Ahhh-hem.

So my dear querent, you can see several cups filled to the brim with Grey Goose encircling your heart.  This obviously symbolizes smuggling liquid spirits through customs with plastic baggies stuffed into bra cups (heart area).

It’s been a fun little movable feast, and by the way Cupid’s arrow is firmly embedded, there’s a whole lotta love there.  X (or ten) marks the spot.

But wait . . . there’s more!

After reshuffling the deck and including only powerful Major Arcana cards (don’t ask), this little beauty reared her spiky head: Oh yeah.

Now We're Jiggy Widdit

Again with vodka across the breasts thing, and this time there’s no stealth or secrecy involved, as the plane has obviously landed.

You can relax now.  That beautiful young man in the window seat you shared the booby booty with is fading quickly into your past/his short future filled with alcohol poisoning and ineffective heart defibrillators, and baby, it’s time to party like it’s 99.99 percent alcohol.

And yet it’s the “Temperance” card.

The hair and rainbow flow of booze says different, and the temperence you display in public is actually very clever cover for a wild, uninhibited side.  Those blue angel wings be sportin’ racing decals, and that hair be flying skyward from another blast of the Goose.

Time to ground yourself with a little more beef.  “Grounding beef”.  Get it?  See, the grounding part is actually, uh . . . right.

There is also a much more subtle message being displayed here, and perhaps it should not be presented for public viewing, as it reveals your most secret desires and personal dreams.  I would NEVER shatter that holy platform of sensitive trust that is so essential between a querent and myself.     

But what the hell:  The star on your forehead symbolizes a very strong urge to become Wonder Woman.

I know, I know.  Frightening in the way I can go deep into your heart like a gold miner.  What a great idea for a song!  We’ll call it “Heart of Gold.”

I have to go now, the muse is finally shaking off another hangover.

You’re welcome! 

 Day 212:  Sunday, August 1, 2010:  You gave up on zippers and buttons.  Now it’s just velcro.

Welcome to the very first edition of “THE TRUTHFUL TAROT”, whereas I proceed to pull a rabbit out of my hat, but not like that priest back in Boston who meant something completely different, and is now being shuffled about from one parish to another like high cards in a marked deck.

The wicked sick bastid.

Neigh, neigh, my friends.  I only work TRUE Tarot magic, explaining a drawn card  (in this case The Fool), and what it reveals to you concerning the near past, present, future, and reverse flux capacitor in overdrive, covering all of next week and part of Sunday, depending on track conditions and the final over/under.

Like many tarot cards, this particular gem holds hidden meanings and is easily misinterpreted.   Most people think the fool in this picture is that gay tranny trouncing about toward the edge of disaster, but the real fool is actually trying to bite his ridiculous ass and not catch a little STD for his troubles.

Needless to say, things do not bode well . . .

So you have experimented in your past?

Very well.  I am merely a sounding  board for the cards, and will never judge querents based on what is revealed by a cosmic lumicant or any other dot com conglomerate.  I am a seasoned (and fermented) professional, treating all queerants – er – querents, based solely on how they behave in the presence of powerful tarot spirits or stunning floral patterns.  It all depends.  On . . . something.

The prancing tranny shows how you eagerly embraced a transsexual cross-dressing club scene in Claire Rouge de la Marcou, and the tiny dog represents how often it comes back hard to bite you in the ass, after a prolonged period of unemployment forced you to apply for that Federal job as a weapons cleaner, and extensive background checks revealed colorful, maddening  behavior.

Naughty little she-male.  So sad when your domineering mother opened the confidential letter and announced results to family and friends.

They’re giggling in the pharmacy now, so learn how to use a CVS drive thru when picking-up prescriptions that help prevent your body from rejecting foreign transplants, like genitalia.

Oh!  Please help yourself to those tissues, and that will be fifty bucks.

Thank-you, and there’s so much more.

Yes . . . I take MasterCard, and if I could just see your driver’s license?  Post operation?

Now where was I?  The present!  That would be you sitting in front of me with a body totally waxed below the neck and a shaved “landing strip” pube patch, sniveling into wads of Kleenex.  A hobo stick on The Fool’s shoulder sports all you have left in this cruel and unusual world, bundled into a dirty rag holding little more than crushed dignity and a small, cracked PEZ dispenser.  Ouch.

And the cliff you’re about to prance off?  That would be a rapid descent starting right about last year.

Uh . . . my little computer says your credit sucks.

The cards are wicked pissed.

 Day 211:  Thursday, July 29, 2010:  You wanted to be a vegetarian, but farmers couldn’t keep up.

I hope this link works.  It shows a fews seconds of music from Bakerwoods (one word; not Baker Woods like I thought):

Bakerwoods

Here it is on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cM8xvJMq0E

It’s really one of the many hidden teasures in this quiet hill town, and there was maybe a couple dozen people listening to the “The Old Time Country Band”.  They considered this a very good crowd, and there was room for everyone to sit at the picnic tables and benches, while hay bales remained unclaimed.

You can check out more of Bakerwoods on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Ashford-CT/Bakerwoods/116918214988297?ref=ts&__a=11&ajaxpipe=1

I know this is a short post, but the net was out last night when I wanted to work on it, and today I’m Daddy Daycare.  I have to go check on the kids, and see if the poor mice have survived another “experiment”, while the dogs have to be released of certain clothing items.  The Jack Russell does not really care for dresses . . .

Day 210:  Sunday, July 25, 2010:  There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, in a refrigerator.

ADDS WRITING 101:

Saturday was a fast mix of good and bad after cutting back my coffee intake and finally realizing that it’s fruitless and even harmful, like those addicted settlers in Dune who are forever tied to a distant planet with very serious spice addiction.

I caved and had that extra cup going in to work, grabbing a box of 25 munchkins for the other postal workers and sucking down java like a sick little junkie, and it was GREAT!!!  IT WAS ROCKET FUEL OF THE GODS!!!  IT CARRIED ME LATE INTO THE NIGHT WHEN I CRANKED THE CLASSIC BRITISH AMP STACK DOWNSTAIRS, WARNED MY FAMILY, PASSED OUT EAR PROTECTION, AND PLAYED VAN HALEN TILL MY DAMN HANDS CRAMPED FROM STRING-TAPS AND HIGH SPEED ARPEGGIOS!!!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRGH!!!!!!!

Whew.  My wife is just getting over it, and there are fresh cracks in the foundation . . . I’m banned from guitar until the next solar eclipse. 

Look!  A beetle contemplating life on a porcelain bird!

Beetle in Repose

So I was breaking speed records “casing” and “pulling down” mail at the post office despite a very heavy load of packages and several accountables, hunting people down to sign for certified letters.  There was even an express delivery, which means it HAS to be delivered by noon, or I kneel before the customer and commit seppuku (切腹) with a very dull butter knife – or sharp hangnail – I forget which.

Express deliveries often mean breaking from my route to shoot miles ahead and make the drop, which could easily add a half-hour or more to my 9 hour and 20 minute standard day.  No sweat!  Oh wait . . . it was over 100 degrees F with the heat index, and the humidity was stifling.  Sweat wasn’t a problem, as it was “free sauna day” for all!

The express package was for a Boy Scout Camp which I had not experenced yet, since it hasn’t been in use this summer during my delivery days . . . until now.

I go to the first building with a sign declaring it an official “Ranger Station”, but there’s no ranger to be found, so I follow more signs along a dirt road that indicate a “Main Office” is somewhere up ahead, and keep going and going and going, past empty encampments in an old growth forest of towering pines, until finally up around a bend, there it is!

The office!

With a sign on the door that says “Closed”.

So now it’s back, back, back over roots and rocks like a bucking bronco to the main road and quick quick quick filling out a slip indicating the package will be available Monday after 8 am at the post office, and I’m off and running again, driving like Mario Andretti (shhhhh) and delivering to the good folks of Ashford.

Look!  Frat Boys destroying a rental van at the University of Rhode Island!  The leasing company saw this picture in the Great Swamp Gazette and a law suit was filed against the fraternity.  Oops!

Homecoming ‘94 – University of Rhode Island

Ahem.  My favorite moment came late in the day (yesterday), with big black thunderstorm clouds closing in and roiling like waves overhead, racing between crops that reeked of fresh manure.

An old farmer stood next to the road patiently waiting for his renewed auto registration, which was among the few envelopes addressed to his house.

“Did it all on the internet,” he told me.  

The times they are a-changin’.

No wait!  There was an even more favorite time, blasting north on Pumpkin Hill Road and doing some quick math, which is quite a great accomplishment for me, thinking about the cool little ice cream stand where Pumpkin Hill meets Ashford Center Road, which is also a turn-around spot for the jeep.

I knew that if there were no lines at the counters, I would have just enough time to score a small soft-serve vanilla cone with those two bucks burning a hole in my pocket, and sure enough . . . yes -yes-yes!

I scarfed that cone and threatened a brain freeze, using about eight minutes of time before heading back south on Pumpkin Hill to put the pedal down (shhhh).  Vroom! 

The storm came in fast and hit hard with a torrential downpour that soaked my arm as I stuffed mail boxes, and fogged the big windshield until I rotated a squeaky little cooling fan.

Lightening crashed and small streams ran down the hill town roads, which was a very good thing since my wife left the hose on all day to fill Gwen’s kiddy pool (and the yard), actually draining the well.

And so it goes.  I had a million great short story ideas while racing around in the little postal jeep, but ended-up wanking on the guitar like a heavy metal head without any patience at all, doing endless solos in a style Jimmy Page once referred to as “cute circus tricks.” 

So very true, Sir Page.  So very true.

Today was far more reserved, walking around Baker Woods Farm as an elderly gentlemen played classic country songs and popular hits like “Blue Bayou” in a huge barn:

Baker Woods Farm Hootinanny

I’ll write more about this great visit for Wednesday’s post.  I have a quick video of the barn and some of his singing, if I can figure out that technical display.  He sounded a lot like Willie Nelson, and the barn was very nice, although the stuffed animals really disturbed Gwenny.

I understand completely.  Their vacant stares are the pleading look of coffee addicts in remission.

Day 209:  Wednesday, July 21, 2010:  Some people grind teeth while sleeping; you actually chew food.

The Looking Glass

The scene visible through a glass sphere is the old Coast Guard House towers, which provide a nice archway over Ocean Road in Narragansett, Rhode Island.  It was taken and arranged by two very talented artists named Sylven Medyesy and Kristen Cyr.  Sylven roared away on a motorcycle after graduation, and Kristen scored a scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute.

You can see Sylven aiming a massive zoom lense at the glass sphere.  This is one of my favorite issues, with an outstanding group of dedicated and colorful editors.  Those were the days.

The Coast Guard House has been there since 1945, and though it started out as a beach life-saving station, it eventually became one of the finest seafood restaurants in Rhode Island.

When we visited Narragansett on the Fourth of July, my little car was purring along Ocean Road heading for the Coast Guard House, and I snapped this picture, which reminded me of the sphere and compliments it nicely:

Another View of the Arch

Some things are absolutely timeless and never seem to change.  This old Coast Guard House was such a familiar sight for so many years, when we used to  bring two black greyhounds down to the beach every evening and watch them race each other in the surf, sending rooster tales of water skyward.

I really believe it’s a magical place that Gwen will come to know forever, and perhaps a kind of comforting benchmark as we continue taking trips down to the good old days.

And now for something completely different.

A talented editor and budding documentary film maker named Dave Bettencourt had the opportunity to interview a new artist named Beck who was playing in Providence one weekend.

Not Glenn Beck.  Anyone who remembers the immortal song lines, “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?” will know who I mean.  Not to mention my own personal favorite, “Two turn tables and a microphone”.

So I’ll leave you with this brief interview, and bid you ado for now.   The Great Swamp Gazette lasted for twenty years and finally folded the year after I graduated.  Readers included the late Dennis Hopper and Hunter S. Thompson.  An editor before me spent his Spring Break fighting the Russians in Afghanistan and writing about it.  He submitted an expense report that included a rocket launcher.  The last time we shared a drink he was fishing the Grand Banks, after being fired from a local news station.

I guess the ocean has a very strong pull.    

Day 208:  Sunday, July 18, 2010:  If your back was hairy, it would be a great harvest for wig companies.

We recently revisited Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island for the beach and Fourth of July firework displays.  It was an interesting day to say the least, but the important thing is that my daughter had a great time and is having these opportunities to enjoy the ocean surf and surrounding environment.  Here she is building a replica of the Chevasque de la Rougelet Castle in Southern France.  I totally made that word up . . . it sounded very cool in my head, and this morning I saw that France has more McDonald’s than every other country except America.  There’s a huge Micky D’s full of Rubens paintings in the Louvre, and I am not making this up.  So this morning I’m speaking faux French and thinking of a Big Mac.  Che blah la blah!     

Here’s a sand castle!

Another Happy Land Developer

So we go down to this glorious beach, and we’re all romping in the gentle surf with the boogy boards and so forth, and I return to our blanket and beach toys where two young women point out that someone stole Gwen’s plastic pail.

They point to this large group of people yelling to each other in Spanish, and wouldn’t you know?  One of them has Gwen’s little red pail.

“That teenager just walked up, looked around and picked-out the bucket,” one of the young women said. “He ran back and they didn’t even care.  Maybe they’ll bring it back?”

I watched the large group moving further south, and now the bucket was handed off to a large woman.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.  “It was just so brazen.  I hope it didn’t trouble you.”

I laughed and thanked her and said I was glad that they didn’t go through our bag and snatch the digital camera, then finished toweling-off and went after my little girl’s bucket because . . . it’s my little girl’s bucket.  It cost less than a dollar, but it was such a blatant act of theft in a place with a very strong unwritten rule about such bullshit.  You can pretty much bring anything to the beach and leave it on a towel because there’s a thousand eyes – like these two young women – and everyone kind of watches out for everyone else.  Also; did I mention it was my little girl’s bucket? 

Apparently they had a gang mentality, but you can’t pack heat in a pair of swim trunks, and if things turned ugly the life guards were out in force.  They could flex and smear the entire gang with coconut oil.  Plus . . . I’m an aggressive smiling crazy blonde surfer dude who has no problem approaching people who give me good reason, and they pretty much signed a contract to meet me immediately, hand over the bucket, and drop the damn gypsy lifestyle . . . if only for five seconds.

I closed the gap quickly and happily shouted, “Excuse me!  Hello there!”

The large woman kept walking, but the gang stopped and turned to watch as I reached her side.

“Excuse me.  The bucket?”

She silently held it out with the most disdainful look I’ve ever seen, and I took it.

“Thank-you very much!” I said cheerfully.  “Hope you enjoyed it!”

She walked slowly toward the gang, and it was over.

I talked to the two women about it and thanked them and took a quick digital of Jane and Gwen in the surf.  When they got back I told them all about my grand interaction and some friends joined our beach neighbors and we all chatted and swam until dusk, when they informed us that the fireworks were cancelled, because the town didn’t apply for a permit in time.  Yikes.

We went for an ice cream and suddenly found ourselves walking through the gang, now gathered at one of the beach exits.  The woman and several men glared at me, but I smiled and laughed and shook my head.  It was not their time or place to do anything.

“The beach has changed,” Jane said. “Those people were frightening.”

We drove along the old stone sea wall and encountered massive crowds, including this Uncle Sam dude riding a stationary bike that waved two American flags on high poles:

The Poles They Were A-Wavin'

It was pretty cool except for the maniacal grin pasted on his face.  We’re talking crazy skull.

It appeared that the message about fireworks being canceled was either false or didn’t get out in time, so we returned to the beach and met a nice family down from Providence with a very loud and funny chihuahua, who took to Gwen and started planting little doggy kisses all over her tanned, laughing face.

The guy sounded exactly like Humphrey Bogart, and as night fell we finally realized that the fireworks were cancelled . . . for Narragansett.

But . . . other displays were all around us, and damn if it wasn’t a lot of fun to see them in the far-off distance, in Newport and the beautiful little seaside town of Wakefield, where we used to live while attending the University of Rhode Island.

Wakefield Celebration

It was a very enjoyable journey full of fun and surprise and even a little bit of danger.

And there was something else  strange and beautiful and very artsy, which I will share in the next post.

I really hope you enjoyed this seaside adventure, and promise to return before Wednesday.

I want to give a very special shout and dedicate this post to Dave and Hazel, who I know have also enjoyed the Atlantic waters.  I wish you could have seen the distant fireworks with us that night, and leave you with this closing picture, lighting upturned faces in a beautiful place named for Wakefield in West Yorkshire.  My best to you both, from across that glorious and turbulent pond.  

Day 207:  Wednesday, July 14, 2010:  You know some foreign words, like “diet,” and “exercise”.

I’ve been cleaning the house lately and finding a lot of ancient history.

Back in 1994 I was running a cartoon in the Great Swamp Gazette at the University of Rhode Island.  Here’s a poster that was included in one of the issues.  I remember drawing and painting late into the night, before it was printed and inserted into the “Special Homecoming Issue”.  The bottom is cut off because it was too big for my scanner, but you get the gist of it.  The missing portion showed twinkling lights spreading out for miles.

Not the Hunchback

The cartoon was simply called “Frat Boy”.

Here’s a strip from that issue, with Frat Boy descending into one of many underground “steam grates” that dotted the university. 

Nobody knew why these steaming grates were everywhere, so I had Frat Boy go down to meet his worst nightmare: A professor with tenure.

Actually, a tenured professor was my worst nightmare, too.  They could do whatever the hell they wanted without fear of repercussion.

I remember seeing one of them sitting in his pickup truck drinking from a flask before his morning class.

I made some kind of snarky comment and he said, “This is my last year, Danny.  Screw the little bastards.”

Money for education well spent?  I could write a hundred posts about wasted tuition.  Another professor was insulted by the cartoon and called me out in front of the class.  I told him it was a great honor to know that he read the Great Swamp Gazette, and followed my cartoon.

He stared at me with tinted Lennon glasses for a few beats before conducting another useless, rambling lecture that is long forgotten.  Rumors circulated that he often dropped acid before the first class of the year, and after experiencing his take on poets like Yeats and T.S. Eliot, I can believe it.  The man was a mumbling psycho.  And tenured.

So I have a very fond memory of Frat Boy.  He would conduct panty raids, weird induction ceremonies, and idiotic drinking games that ultimately backfired.  One real live frat boy wrote a scathing editorial in the university’s newspaper (The Good 5 cent Cigar), but wrote an apology the next day when he was mocked by fellow frat brothers.

So the house cleaning continues, and memories are saying “Hello, Dan!  We’re coming back to bite your ass!”

Day 206:  Thursday, July 10, 2010:  Always check the weight limit on an elevator, just in case.

I always like to say “it finds me,” because, well . . . it always does.  This time it jumped right out of the freakin’ telly, nerdy and bud-eyed with a weird grin that made me cringe the first time I ever met the creepy bastard . . .

I was just about to turn off the evening news when my doctor’s face was looking at me from a mug shot while the anchorman explained how the little turd  was caught with child pornography in an undercover sting.  LOTS of child pornography.

Well that’s just great.

He works with the Boy Scouts, and the last time I saw him to get prednisone for poison ivy, he was telling me about this tick on a little boy’s penis, in way too much detail.

Fucking terrific.

I came home and told my wife about it, and decided he was just a fast-talking, quirky little guy who wasn’t really messed-up, because I can be naive that way.  I’m always pulling for the wedgy surviver from high school who couldn’t bench press a goddamn dust mite, and this guy was an obvious victim who went to med school and showed ‘em all.  He was just like Rick Moranis, but smaller with bigger eyes.

The motherfucker.

I switched to his office because the doctor before him was a woman that easily tipped the scales at 400, telling me to lose a few pounds and the usual healthy crap, while she had some teenager from the university observe how to screw me over by making me come in for . . . prednisone, because I get poison ivy just thinking about it.  She wouldn’t call in a prescription, because I hadn’t seen her in “a while.” 

Isn’t that my choice?  Apparently not.  She didn’t even give me a damn physical, but checked out a mild rash behind my ear and wrote a prescription for a tiny tube of cream that cost 60 bucks, so I told the pharmacist to keep it and walked the fuck out. 

See, they make you come in so they can charge the insurance company hundreds of dollars, and we’re paying over 1,000 bucks a month to be covered, for myself, my wife, and my daughter.

Welcome to health care in America, and this swell COBRA extension “deal” runs out in less than a week.  We’re gonna cover our daughter and that’s it, hoping I get a job with health insurance soon.  The post office job is “temporary part-time” for years.

How often do I swear on this post?  I like to reserve profanity for those SPECIAL moments, like when my doctor is staring at me from the telly because he collects pictures of naked children.  One wedgie too many must have put him over the edge. 

Son of a Bitch.

Guess I’m shopping for a new doctor next week.  Oh wait!  Can’t afford one, but at least my daughter’s covered.

I’m running a background check on her pediatrician . . .