Artist talks art

Artist talks art

Artist talks art

Leave drunk driving to the experts

I think the best advice my father ever gave me was, if you must drive drunk, make sure you have done it before. That said, my father was a stoic man who did not offer much in the way of smart advice.

Then again, over the years, I have learned the hard way, especially on New Years Eve, that the most dangerous drivers are not the drunks, it’s the inexperienced drunks out driving public roads without the skills that a chronic drunk brings to the highways and byways on a nightly basis. 

Police and morticians will tell you, drinking and driving make for a dangerous mix, which is generally true, except for my dear friend, Alcoholic Bob. Bob started drinking when he was a teenager and has never really slowed down, starting with his gateway drink of choice, cheap beer and moving on to harder drinking as he got older, finally working his way up to the hard stuff while in college. All that time, Alcoholic Bob would drink to extremes and then get into his beater car and drive back to his dump of an apartment. 

In all the years I have known Alcoholic Bob, he has never once been involved in any sort of traffic accent, nor has he been pulled over for any sort of driving infraction. Me, on the other hand, a person who can not drink because of some sort of genetic flaw, has received more than my fair share of tickets, accidents and near fatal car crashes. 

So, what I know for a fact is this, if you must drink on New Years Eve and you find yourself in need a ride somewhere, find the most severely alcoholic friend you know and make sure they are driving you wherever you need to go, because a true alcoholic knows how to drive drunk, it’s the inexperienced and inebriated that are the real danger. 

Stupid people reading the news, best of 2013

Sexy lady

Sister Hanky continues to teach

When I was in fourth grade the nun who taught our class was nicknamed Sister Hanky, because as she made her was between the rows of students, in one hand she carried an 18 inch rubber flexible ruler that she would bring down upon the gentle and flawless hands of the fourth graders who she deemed worthy of her scorn, and in the other hand, always present, was a small handkerchief.

On an almost daily basis Sister Hanky would saunter towards my unkept desk, see me drawing fabulous pictures of ostriches and dinosaurs and making jokes about dirty sea captains and dangerous bird poop and she would swoop in upon me, using that rubbery ruler with a guile usually reserved for the likes of James Bond, smashing my hand with a force hard enough to break a diamond, or at least that’s how it felt. I would scream out in pain, but only once, because Sister Hanky would be glaring at me, reminding me that a punishment from her was to be met with a strictly enforced code of complete silence. I would whimper and then bite my lip, sometimes a tear would form from my eye, but I would quickly wipe it and begin to do my homework.

This was our daily routine my entire fourth grade year in the class of Sister Hanky. One day in November, as my classmates were leaving for recess, Sister Hanky took me aside and asked if I enjoyed the daily beatings from her ruler. “Of course not,” I said, almost shocked that she would ask such a ridiculous question. 

“You know, you have the power to make them stop,” she said, in that authoritarian way she said everything. I stammered then and just said, meekly, “I can’t.”

“Then you must enjoy the pain, good day,” and she held the door open and I walked out into the sunny day and enjoyed another mirthless recess. 

While I didn’t actually enjoy the pain, I guess I did learn to anticipate it and accept it as the trade off I got for taking the time to be silly, entertain my friends and act out in a fashion that I found fun. Sister Hanky would never break my spirit. I did know that Sister Hanky did teach me one of those lessons that has been kind of handy, it’s never the pain that will bring you down, it’s the process of earning the pain that makes accepting the pain a little easier. 

I learned in fourth grade that if you do the things that bring you a little bit of joy, but in turn may bring you a little bit of discomfort, the trade off is probably worth it. 

Terrible techno music saved by naked motorcycle rider

The must read book for any new e-device

So you got some sort of e-book reader for xmas and all you can think of, what can I download and read right this second? Worry no more click right here lay back and enjoy.
Merry Christmas y'all.

The power of Zach

Call me, maybe

Unlike any other Xmas before

When I was a young boy growing up as part of the only Jewish family in rural Colorado I always wondered what the fuss was with all the decorating and lighting and present buying my friends would go through every December. My brothers and I would laugh at the greed of our fellow school students, because we had already cashed in, as it were, because our parents were mightily cheap, even by cheap people standards and when it came time for Hanukkah gifts we could expect one night dedicated to socks and another for underwear and the next for gloves, another for umbrellas and maybe another for a new coat and the next was always a hat on day five, day six was something edible and sweet and finally day seven was the big finish, the big surprise and always (always!) the big letdown, pants or a dress shirt. That was it.
So when my friends from school would show up in early January with holiday tales of new bikes or personal audio devices or some other super expensive and trendy gift, I would look on in shock and surprise. I was kind of jealous I guess, but also sort of happy that my parents made no attempt to even try to impress us children with any sort of trendy superficial gift.
My father was almost willfully unable to be hip. I still have no idea if he was belligerently unable to connect to the world around him, or if he was just locked into the tradition of gifting items that were useful and practical, if not fun and teenage intoxicating.
The funny thing was that I was totally jealous of my friends in school, who would wake up on a cold day in December and find a living room filled with colorful boxes filled with toys and games. I never experienced such surprises. That is, until this year. For this first time in my life, we have a tree in our living room and there are presents underneath, some with my name on them, and the excitement I have is unfathomable. I have been shaking those colorful boxes, eying them with suspicion and in one case, taking it to the emergency room and having a technician MRI the box to make sure the ticking sound I could hear did not mean my husband was finally finished with my foolishness. I did notice one strangely wrapped package in a far corner of our living room, with two round wheels like structures and some sort of bar that looked strangely like a handle bar. I could swear it looked like what I might imagine a bike would look like if it were covered in wrapping paper. One can only hope.
So, this year, my 28th on this planet, I will finally join all those others who wake on the 25th, with no knowledge of what to expect, except to crawl out of my bed, run downstairs and tear into each and every package whether my name is on it or not, because I am hungry for the mystery and the release and the need to know. Sure, it may just be socks and gloves, but this time, I will get it all in one big burst of expectation and glory, I won’t have to wait over the torture of an entire week to get warm weather gear and a new beanie. 

Please smoke

Awkward holiday bone

Holiday charm

Holiday charm

There is power in a union

The magic of young girls is they can wheel themselves to the front of a stage and charm a fathers rock idol and a long time ago my young daughters did just that, standing just inches from the stage in Seattle where a young and handsome Billy Bragg stood, playing his guitar and singing his political songs. At one point he looked out, saw these little beautiful wonders and asked if they had a favorite song they would like to hear.
Now, my daughters were subjected to hours and hours of sing-a-longs to Billy Bragg's music and one would think that a million song titles would fall right out of their mouths, but instead, they stood there, motionless, wordless and silent. He waited, I waited, they waited.
For us, as a family, I always thought Power in a Union was a song for us, although it really was not, but I liked it. On that day in Seattle Billy Bragg went about his concert, unable to cajole a song out of my daughters, but if they had bothered to come up with a single song that would have been a choice for them, for us, it should have been this one.
So, today seems like the perfect day to remember that there is power in a union.

Strange headline of the day

Tiny Bone Reveals Shocking Truth About Neanderthal Sex

The dance of love, or something like that

Crack and twinkies

Mitts makes a great loser

Hark, the angels sing

It was quite a few years ago that I had to make one of those life changing decisions. I had already started a family, of sorts, and I had to choose, did I want to be one of those hands on fathers who was always helicoptering over my young children’s every growth spurt, or did I want to continue my own career as a mid-level ballet dancer, breaking my ass in small and dirty midwestern towns, barely making enough to pay the rent, much less pay for diapers for 17 ever growing children, at the time the choice seemed obvious.

So, here I remain in Honey Bucket Louisiana, in some terrible motel with no HBO, waiting for the kids to gather around the computer at their new-dads wonderful house in some great place in a gated community I have grown quite jealous of, stretching to perform tonights ballet version of what is basically a 20 minute Doctor Pepper commercial, or it may as well be for these yokels who will be as mildly entertained as they are most nights by their own farting. Oh sure, I get paid about 35 cents per pirouette. Of course, the joy I do get when at parties I am the lone ballet dancer, I do have mild bragging rights, I am but a freak, a middle aged ballet dancer in a world filled with technology millionaires and texting nimrods who seem to control the universe. 

Sure I could have stayed and done the whole hands on father thing, but dancing has always been my passion and if there is one thing Rush Limbaugh has taught me it is follow your passion. I think that was what Rush Limbaugh taught me, because about the same time Rush was working through his Oxy addiction, I was rehabbing from my first full knee and hip replacement surgery. By the time I was able to focus and begin my dancing career with bionic parts, I believe Rush had moved on to complete hate for anything not obese and white, while I on the other hand had moved to the lowest tier of the dance circuit, shaking my elder money maker for the likes of the Duck Dynasty types, filling folding audience chairs and toothlessly smiling and applauding the scantily clad female dancers and screaming “faggot” at me for just stepping on the stage with a codpiece and a smile.

So, while I was Skyping my children this morning, my youngest son little Pontious (the most obnoxious one and in my family there is a devastating competition for that particular prize) asked me, “daddy, why do you always Skype wearing a pink lady dress?”

Oh, how the young never seem to have an edit button. Sure I wanted to tell the little twerp that this was my work clothes, just like his wealthy step-dad wore thousand dollar suits to his luxurious office every day, I wore this tutu as my official uniform and even though we were close to fifteen hundred miles apart, I could see his and every other one of my children roll their eyes in unison, as if a middle aged man in a pink tutu was unheard of in their gated community. Actually, a middle aged man is illegal in their gated community, which I found out the hard way last Christmas, when I made an unscheduled visit to the kids and was immediately arrested by the Mayberry police for “trespassing with intent to shake money maker in gay attire.” Which was not very Christmassy at all, when you think about it. 

The Portland breakfast

I was in Portland a few hours ago and my husband and I sat down for breakfast at one of those popular and trendy breakfast restaurants and almost immediately felt that dread that can ruin any meal, a single parent with three kids. 

I was once a single parent with three children, so I know the glare that adults give to single parents and now that I am an adult who travels without children, I have mastered the glare that adults give to other adults who happen into restaurants with their out of control children. 

See, adults don’t want to share meals with children, especially meals we are paying for. Sure, if you invite me over to your toy cluttered house and offer me some luke warm pizza and a beer and your out of control children are running around and screaming, I love it. On the other hand, if I am paying for a fine meal and a decent bottle of wine (yes I drink wine at breakfast, I’m an adult) I do not want your screaming children walking up to my table and pointing at my blueberry pancakes and pointing and saying “whats that?”

So, there we were, reading over the beautiful and trendy menu of the sophisticated and well designed boutique eatery and within seconds a father sat at the table across from us, with his three young sons and I rolled my eyes in such a dramatic way that my ankle was immediately kicked by my ever polite husband. “What?” I said in some sort of shocked way, as if three young boys and a sleep deprived father was an obvious ticket to torture of our cultured and quiet meal time. 

We ordered and for the first five minutes I waited for these young boys to explode or act out or so something that would ruin my meal. Because the restaurant was busy, it took a little longer for the plates to show at our table, but when they did, I had begun to notice that the table closest  to ours, the one with the three boys had remained under control, and noticeably quiet. 

As our plates were settled in front of us I glanced at the table and all three young boys were reading books, their father working his way through the editorial pages of the Sunday paper and sipping a coffee. It was quiet and peaceful. They as a table could care less about us. 

So, while I was all prepared to complain and cry because parents today are terrible and their children are out of control, irresponsible mongrels with no sense of decorum, there I sat, mere inches away from a table of well mannered and sophisticated young men and a father who cared and role modeled behavior that his sons appreciated. 

When we were leaving I thanked the father for having children who could be in public without being obnoxious. He looked at me like I might be insane. 

Drunk Santa brawl-holiday spirit lives

Thanks for the gross headline

Ex-Senate Chief Of Staff Seeks Release After Child Porn Charges

The cards you get dealt

Car riding fun times

Bike rider love

Seattle drag

Get More: 

RuPaul's Drag Race Full Episodes, RuPaul, Logo TV

Seattle drag

Get More: 

RuPaul's Drag Race Full Episodes, RuPaul, Logo TV

Up and up

Stop and kiss seems to be working

The words of wisdom

Football is fun

If you're like me, and thank the good lord Sweet jesus you are not, but even if you are just kind of like me, you are completely overdosed on turkey  sandwiches and prescription pain medications, laid out on an uncomfortable couch and barely able to make out the blurs on the big screen which is apparently about a half mile away on a far off wall, with the best college football game in the nation playing this very second. If that is the case and you are slowly fading in and out of consciousness you may be awakened by the supreme play of Alabama super player HaHa Clinton-Dix.
I was just laying there on the couch and every so often the languid vocals of the drunken announcer would say, "that's Haha Clinton-Dix again," or something like that and I would all of a sudden wake up, sort of.
It's not every single day of your life that you hear the words Haha Clinton-Dix all strung together like that.
Then again, if you think about it, a college football player is probably somewhere between the age of eighteen to twenty one. So, if my math is even close to accurate, Mr. Clinton-Dix was born somewhere in the early 90's. So even I, a person with only decent Google abilities could figure out which famous president was in the Oval office at the time of Haha's birth.
I'm just going to go out of my way here and thank the parents of this spectacular football player for thinking so far into the future during the early days of the turbulent presidency of one William Jefferson Clinton. How could they have ever known how ironic and fun their superstar sons name would be just a few years later.
"Haha Clinton-Dix slams another Auburn player to the ground."

Shop small on Saturday

So, you avoided WalMart and all those other monster type shopping prisons and now you want to help out smaller stores and businesses that survive selling interesting and eclectic goods to normal and healthy people.
American Express is offering a 10 dollar rebate for every 10 dollars spent using an American Express card when purchasing goods from approved stores on Saturday, December 30th.
Lucky for you, Mergatroid Books collection of fun and funny books is part of this deal. So click on over to Amazon and maybe buy yourself the latest Branson novel and sit back and enjoy for a variety of reasons, no lines, no crazy tantrums and most of all, you get your money back from AmEx when you buy the book tomorrow. Here is the link to Branson, but there are others in the Mergatroid orbit and feel free to buy one or two of those too.

The Friday of blackness

I have never done a "Black Friday" zombie sort of experience thing. I don't like lines, I don't like dumb people and I don't really get the entire concept of lemming behavior, but since I am always on the prowl of a new experience, I put on some blackface make-up and woke up early this morning and drove to our local WalMart super shopping big box crapfest shopping experience.
Imagine my surprise to be the only person to be wearing blackface makeup for Black Friday. Did no one else get the memo? How could I be the only one who thought about dressing up for this major American event?
Lucky for me, I happen to be in Mississippi and most of the people in line at WalMart just sort of laughed uncomfortably and a few took my picture.
So what did I learn from the masses of people massing at a store filled with junk made by slave labor children in a far off country? I learned nothing. People are strange, strange for waking up very early for deals on stuff they probably don't need.
When I was a kid we were so poor that I used to get a pair of socks as a holiday gift. A single sock if things were not going well. The concept of running off to a store at some ungodly hour to buy terribly made stuff just to wrap in ugly paper to give to people I may not even respect is just insane to me.
That said, I did buy 4 large flat screen TV's and 14 video game control systems, because I just got caught up in the whole shopping experience. That and I knew that once I left the safe confines of WalMart, those angry people in the parking lot were going to beat the living daylights out of me for my awful choice of makeup techniques.

Unsure of brilliance

Artist life

Thanksgiving gypsy circus

When I was growing up my family never celebrated thanksgiving in the traditional way people celebrate thanksgiving. For us, it was just another day to set up our Gypsy Circus road show. 

Early on every Thanksgiving morning my father would unpack an old Underwood typewriter with a well worn handwritten sign on a terribly broken down poker table that read “will write a short story for 3 dollars” and people would come up, give him 3 dollars and tell him the names of their children and off he would go, creating these vivid and fantastic tales of danger and woe all based about some crazy concept he would drunkenly throw together inside his mind. Oh, did I mention he was shit faced drunk when he did this? He was.

The problem with my fathers Thanksgiving Day gypsy writing scam was obvious, it would take him hours to write a 2-3 page story and after a paragraph or two, it was completely incoherent. Sure, it might start with, “Johnny and Jimmy had the day off, so they left the castle atop their favorite dragon, flying over the lush green forest that they considered the prime playground.” But within just the span of another paragraph or two, the alcohol and bitterness had taken over and the kid story had turned into, “sure, the castle was a cold place, who can afford to heat such a large and uncomfortable home? It’s not as if the witch of a queen bothered, she was busy with her social life, performing lurid dances for the knights and trolls who would wander in from living under the various bridges that made up the unfortunate kingdom.”

At some point, parents would throw a few dollars at my fathers typewriter and walk away, holding maybe a page and a half of blathering silliness from his beautiful antique typewriter.

At the same time that my father was barely entertaining patsies with his writing scam, my mother, high as a kite on prescription pain medication and something she called “happy juice’ would also set up a shanty town table and a small tent, with a crayon sign that read “fortunes reader hear” (sic) and she would sit, zombie like, until some idiot would sit across from her on a chair barely designed to hold the weight of an infant. She would awaken to find someone in the chair opposite her and she would shuffle her cards. Now, get this, these were not tarot cards, or even Pokemon cards, no these were playing cards that she had stolen from Caesars Palace in Lake Tahoe on one of her gambling binges. She would shuffle them in her Oxy-drugged haze and thrown down a couple of disrupted random cards, look at them, “oh a seven of diamonds and a two of spades. Are you a prostitute? Do you work in construction?” she would ask, and often times, the woman sitting in the guest seat would look at her in disbelief and just stand up, sometimes asking for her money back, sometimes just violently walking out, my mother palming the cash and putting it in her over filled bra.

We had a large family. My oldest brother, who shall remain nameless, mostly because my parents were too lazy to name him, did his own gypsy circus tricks to make the family money. As a young and handsome boy, he was able to cobble together enough of a story to entrance other kids to gather around, and before long, all the kids would dig deep into their “britches” and pull out any coins or cash they had on them. They would willingly hand them to my charismatic brother, who would then tell them to follow my incredibly sleek and fast other brother, dressed for this part in a silk-like fabric racing outfit. My oldest brother would offer the cash prize to the “strongest and fastest amongst you who can take down this scamp here (pointing to my ostensibly pajama clad brother) and bring him back to me” Off my middle brother would sprint, followed by a herd of young and uncoordinated children. Not once in the many years of scamming did anyone catch my super fast brother, actually I stand corrected. One Thanksgiving, a young girl rom Tupelo corralled him, took him down like a young steer and held him to the ground and yelled for my older brother to pay up. “I can’t hear you,” he screamed at her, “you must bring him to me to collect your winnings.” That was the screw right there, because my middle brother had spent a lifetime being tormented by his older brother, being held down on a variety of surfaces and tickled or worse by a much stronger older brother and had learned how to escape. So when this young Tupelo girl looked at my older brother in disgust, my middle brother turned a hip, slipped a foot forward, got a knee under himself and was up and running again, the young girl laying on her back screaming in pain. I believe they made five dollars that day.

I was old enough to actually be preparing to leave for Circus College when I finally had the nerve to ask my parents why we never took the day off and celebrated Thanksgiving like so many other Americans. They both looked at me dumbfounded, like I had crossed a logic line that I never knew existed. “Why would you even ask such a stupid question?” My out of her mind mother asked, followed by my father giving me such a serious glare I was sure part of my scalp would soon catch fire and then a slap on the back of my head that was designed to knock some sense into my already empty head. 

“I was just wondering,” I said, as explanation.

“Well, wonder how you are going to catch a rabbit for your sisters magic trick this afternoon,” my dad said, as he set up his story table on a nondescript street corner, across from my mothers Fortune Reader tent.

Years later I would have my own family and as much as I wanted to incorporate new traditions, like celebrating thanksgiving in all the traditional ways, all I really knew how to celebrate this unique  American holiday was to set up flimsy tables and find a way to remove the cash from gullible peoples wallets. Which is how, about a decade ago, my children and I developed the entire concept of “black Friday” an evil plan that involves not just me and my small and unsuspecting children, but employees and terribly run globally owned slave labor stores, that would buy into my evil plan, by forcing their low paid employees to actually do what my parents made their lonely children do so many years before, engage in embarrassing and circus like work on Thanksgiving for pennies, doing something loathsome meaningless and obligatory for low wages, just because they could and in the end, ruining both the holiday and the meaning of the holiday, all in one swift move. 

This year, I am without any of my own children for the first time in decades and the love of my life and I are onto some new and better ideas for Thanksgiving. Instead of Gypsy Circus’s or Black Friday scams, we are planning to saunter over to one of the many local casinos and eat life wild forest pigs at an all-you-can salvage buffet. Nothing says Traditional American Thanksgiving like stuffing your mouth with food made by people who should be home spending quality time with their family.

Buy the new Branson 3 Here.

Travel days

E-book reminder

The vast majority of everyone in the entire universe will be traveling soon. I am making that up, but if you listen to a radio or happen to own one of those TV things, you will hear a story in the next few minutes about the nightmare of holiday travel.
I am at the airport as I write this. There was NO ONE in line for security. No one. Not a single person. I was alone.
That said, I have been sitting here posting little boring posts about why people should be reading Branson 3, and it did dawn on me, it’s a good book for plane travel. It is, that part is true. So is the part about not a single person being in line for security.
Branson three is a fast and furious read. It’s digital, it’s linked right here and I am about to download it myself and read it on my way to Atlanta. You should too.

Bible says:

Hosea 3:1-3
Once again the Lord spoke to me. And this time he said, “Hosea, fall in love with an unfaithful woman who has a lover. Do this to show that I love the people of Israel, even though they worship idols and enjoy the offering cakes made with fruit.”

So I paid fifteen pieces of silver and about ten bushels of grain for such a woman. Then I said, “Now you are mine! You will have to remain faithful to me, though it will be a long time before we sleep together.”

Why now

The clouds have spoken

with the slightest movement 

they just danced a little bit

and then it began to rain

Stupid people that fly

Until about a decade ago you never really knew if the person standing next to you on a public street was nice, naughty, smart, friendly, mean, intelligent or even spoke english. You just sort of smiled, waited for the light to change and walked on as if the bird in the far off tree was the most important thing you would ever see, thus was the sort of communication people engaged in before cellphones.

Then dumb people got smartphones.

Until the advent of portable phones no one knew I was a babbling idiot. I kept it a secret. I could hide all my personal drama, all to myself. Sure, when I got home I would call my friend LoShonda and I would just rant and rave about my latest craziness and we would scream and yell about this or that in almost obscene amounts of details, but since it was just me and LaShonda sharing, no one knew about me and my shallow existence, except LaShonda, she seemed more than willing to keep my secrets.

Then I bought me one of those cellphones and so did every other imbecile this side of a Chinese slave labor camp and now you can not stand on any street corner in any street in this world anymore without hearing the dirtiest of very dirty laundry from some of the stupidest of the most incredibly stupid people who inhabit this world. For decades we walked the highways and byways of this country without questioning that our fellow travelers were at least bright eyed and somewhat intelligent, until they started to share their most intimate details of their dates, their hookups and their most private lives, everywhere, from subways to fast food lines. 

I was at a doctors waiting room this last week and the diabetic extra large woman sitting across from me was wheezing into her phone about her rotten children in a voice loud enough to guide ships into a fog shrouded coastal community. I heard everything from her pot smoking teenage daughter to her bully prone son who hates autistic children with a neanderthal passion. Of course there was not much this out of touch mom could do but shovel in another donut and wonder where the no longer interested father went wrong. 

I should not know anything about her life, but I know way to much, because she has a cellphone and no sense of pride. I am only bringing this up because my last vestige of privacy from these  monsters of over-sharing may have finally found me. Apparently airlines are about to allow these loud and proud idiots to use their phones on airplanes. The one place left on the planet where I could sit quietly and read, an airplane in flight, will probably no longer exist. Within months, airlines will allow people to make phone calls while in flight. 

I’ll be honest with you, lately I fly solely for the quiet privacy. I fly from here to there and back again just to be around people not talking on cellphones. I like to be around adults who read or talk or even play games on electronic devices without babbling incoherently into electronic devices about nothing at all in a language so unintelligent it has to make Shakespeare spin wildly in his grave.

So, soon enough anyone on a plane will be met with the same super sized people I recently sat near in that doctors waiting room, over sharing personal information with the world at large, except on a plane, they will be yelling to be heard. When you add in the ambient noise that planes make, you only have to imagine those banal morons yelling into their phones, “no honey, I’m on a plane, so anyway, last night was amazing, a foursome, I swear…”

Breaking stupid

Wake an break

Dance music

Without saying

Should go without saying, but some people never know somethings (Toronto Mayor Rob Ford joke goes here).
New Branson book remains selling on Amazon and this is the first weekend it is super available. Click here. 

Ikea is boring

Little of this

A fathers lament

As most everyone knows I grew up in a slum in Brooklyn, which is now a very hip and prosperous area, but when I grew up there, it was a slum, a terrible slum. My family was poor, but not as poor as the unorthodox Jews who lived above us in Apartment 7. They were so poor they had a sheep that lived with them, that sheep was named Max and he gave them his fur so they could make clothes with it. That’s how poor they were. “Poor unorthodox Jews” my brother Shlomo and I would say to each other, and then smirk with a sense of superiority.

Then I would eat some of the warm raisins Shlomo would hand me almost daily that he would get from the doorway of Apartment 7. He did not like raisins, but he would get me a handful and smile as he gave them to me, my brother Shlomo was a jokester his whole life. 

My older brother, the handsome one, his name is Marcus, although he is now Marlene and as a woman, he is not so handsome, in fact, Marlene is kind of an acquired taste for a woman. As a man, Marcus was handsome, Marlene, not so much.

My family no longer lives in Brooklyn, but I returned there this weekend for my fathers funeral. I walked past the old apartment building where my father used to sit on the stoop and smoke these terrible cigars just to upset the unorthodox Jews, who could have cloven farm animals pooping on their door step, but could not allow neighbors a peaceful evening smoke, even if the neighbor did not even like smoking, such was the dysfunctional nuance of that particular neighborhood dynamic. 

I read the New York Times online edition sometimes, just to see if I recognize names or faces, I usually don’t, but for whatever reason, it felt good to be back in the old neighborhood. Apparently it was my fathers last wish to have his services in the Temple Berle, no relation to Milton, although the neighborhood shunned the place because of the suspected affiliation. So an unadorned urn was sitting on a simple and small table when I opened the frail and weathered doors of the old temple and I could see my tall and statuesque brothers feminine figure in the distance, he turned, or she turned as it was, I still get confused. A wave and a smile and we walked toward one another and embraced. It was an embrace of brothers who come together to mourn, the oldest brother/sister holding the youngest brother. This is what families do, we hold one another when we lose our father. My brother/sister Marcus/Merlene held me and I enjoyed the moment of being held by one of the people in this world who just loves me because we are both genetically linked. 

He was old, we both said, sort of quietly, as if to excuse his passing, as if age is somehow a justification for his disappearance from this ceremony. The ashes did not do him justice. My father was about five foot four inches without any sort heals on his work boots, but he was never without those boots, although when necessary, a boot was thrown in battle and with three teen aged boys in a small slum of an apartment, my father was in daily battle. For a long time he may have just as well had a peg leg, such was his use of a boot as a means of controlling his unruly sons. 

Later in life, upon reflection of his parenting skills, my father took great pride in telling the world that he was superior in his parenting because not once did he ever stoop to the unorthodox Jews savage use of spanking or other techniques of terrible parenting to control or discipline their children. We all would sort of sideways smile, remembering the flinging work boots coming from any number of directions, at astronomical speeds, dangerously close to causing severe bodily damage, at a time when parents were never charged with anything short of murder. Of course, in his memory, my father could claim that since no hand of his ever touched the skin of his beloved sons flesh, he therefore was the superior parent. In someways, I guess he was, but to this day, two of his sons can still not bring themselves to wear work boots for any occasion and one wears strictly high heals for all occasions, so maybe his long lasting legacy was sparing the rod, but spoiling his children's choices in comfortable shoes. 

Shlomo stumbled in a few minutes after Marlene and I had started to feel awkward, he wearing his traditional stinky t-shirt, his jeans rolled up past his thin ankles, dirty Converse high tops and a smug look of self satisfaction on his ruggedly handsome face. He hugged Marlene first, a long and warm embrace, a soft kiss on the cheek and then me, an intense and loving hug that felt genuine and left me both energized and languid. We all sat, silently, looking at our father in his simple wooden urn. Brothers not far removed from ashes. 

The magic is in the Keggo

These are the Keggo Boxes for sale on Etsy. They are the sort of thing every family needs for saving for some sort of special day, at least that's what worked for our family. Some are below, here is the link for the Etsy available Keggo and some of the history.

Vines are kind of stupid, right?

Election results

Last week, like what I presume is the experience of the vast majority of Americans, I went to my local polling place and voted. Today I checked on the local results and was shocked to see that once again my dog was not elected as city treasurer.
So, you snobs from around the country who think that a dog should not be a city treasurer, I assure you, my dog is more than qualified to be city treasurer of our ghetto than the majority of walking, talking, math knowing humans. First, she is wildly incompetent and second, she is completely corrupt and finally, she is usually way too busy grooming herself to care at all about anyone else’s business. Perfect for the job.
So, you must be asking yourself, how could my dog NOT get elected? I asked the same question, but first a sentence of history. Last week, no one was running for city treasurer, so I wrote her name in. How could she fail? That was my thinking. I actually lobbied for her. When my long term lover went to vote I offered up some top quality hot loving if a little ballot write in could be traded in for the city treasurer position. That apparently was not worth it.
I asked my neighbor if he would vote for my dog and he looked at me like I might be insane, which is a look he has given me more than I care to recall.
That’s when I realized that a campaign for ghetto city treasurer should not be started the afternoon of actual voting.
I did call the county registrar office this morning and found that they did have a tabulation of votes and was just a little surprised that my dog received four votes for city treasurer. So, while not that not enough to actually win the race, it was far more than I ever expected and a little shocking, which has left me wondering, who the hell actually took the time and wrote my dogs name in on the ballot and voted for my dog?

Without Malice

My native American friend Bobby Without Malice has been spending the last month with us, which is kind of nice, because since he moved in, he has been sleeping in a tee-pee in the back yard, kind of quaint. Except of course, in the traditional Native American way, or at least according to Bobby Without Malice, he also has to poop outside too, or “make in nature” as Bobby Without Malice calls it. While I am all for tradition, Bobby Without Malice is kind of competing with my dog, Beth Libitard and between the two of them, it’s no longer safe to walk in the backyard without some sort of knee high boot.

That’s not the sole problem though. Bobby Without Malice likes to get all philosophical at mealtime. Just yesterday we were having breakfast, hot coffee and luke warm blueberry pancakes and as I was chewing a glorious bike and pankcake, Bobby asked me if I had my affairs in order and I smiled and said, “as long as all my affairs don’t know about one another, then they are in order,” and smiled one of those knowing smiles and Bobby Without Malice looked at me quizzically. He picked up my cellphone and started dialing. “Who you calling?” I asked. “My brother in law, Sidney Who Answers Quizzically,” he said.

“Sid, it’s Bobby.”

The conversation continued for a few minutes, but I continued finishing my pancakes and wondering how my house is always the one that people feel it’s OK to come visit, set up temporary housing in the backyard and make wherever they want. How can that always be the case? I was going to confront Bobby Without Malice, but he is one of those guys who is so grounded and happy and just so peaceful that you find yourself ready to confront and he sits across from you and looks right into your soul with those puppy dog brown eyes and says something like, “bro” and you lose your train of thought and just want to go see a movie and buy him some chocolate Zeffers and have a great afternoon.

I guess what really has me more upset with Bobby Without Malice than the last few house guess s is this whole movement, this “make it nature” thing that really has run its course. I don’t get it, but then again, there is much I don’t really understand. In our house we have three full bathrooms and we actually only use one. The downstairs bathroom has a tub filled with herbs for the winter, so when you are in there it smells kind of glorious. Why anyone would not want to make in that bathroom is beyond me. It’s almost like “making” in the wild, only without the possibility of having an angry neighbor watching from their back porch.

A couple of days ago Bobby Without Malice and I were having tuna sandwiches for lunch and he asked me if I had ever been arrested or served time in jail, out of the blue he asked me such a personal question. I told him the truth and he leaned in close, so he and I were the only ones who could possibly hear one another, which was a silly move, since he and I were the only ones left in the house at the time, except for my lesbian dog, who is a known gossip, so maybe is was a smart move on his part. He began to ask if I had ever robbed a bank. I told him no, I had not. He asked if I had thought about it, I said yes, but only online banks. He sat back and smiled and said, “thank makes no sense, brah.”

“I ain’t your brah, bro.”

“I ain’t your bro, brah.”
“You planning to rob a bank Bobby?”

“I am and I need a driver, you up for that?”

“I don’t have a drivers license.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I don’t.”

“So you saying you could not drive our getaway car cause it would be breaking the law?”

“Yeah, cause what if we got away and were like 10 miles away and got pulled over, and the cop asked for my license and registration? Giant red flag, bro.”

“Not your bro, dip stick.”

“Still.”

And so it was. I could have been Bobby Without Malice’s get away driver.

Now, skip ahead about a week later. I had spent the day before, wearing gloves and boots up to my knee, picking up poo the size of my fist, throwing them over the fence, into the yard of the neighbor that I don’t like so much and listening to Pussy Riot on my ear buds. It took about 3 hours, between what my lesion dog had been leaving behind and what Bobby Without Malice has been creating over a 2 month stay. He had been gone for a week or so and I was prepping our backyard for winter.

Then, this morning, I was siting in our nook, reading the morning news on my iPad Air (that plug right there was paid for my the Apple Corporation) and I clicked on a link for a failed bank robbery attempt at a nearby bank. As I was forking some of the best blue berries cooked lovingly into gluten free pancakes. of course, I read how a small band of incompetent robbers had made it in and out of a local bank with over 100 thousand dollars, drove 7 miles in a small Fiat 500 car and were arrested when police pulled them over because the car did not have up to date state registration tags on the license plate. I took a sip of hot coffee and sort of smiled,  without malice.

Magic for sale

When I was but a wee little boy, I would often ask my eccentric keeper, I would say, "Sir Parker Kay Smith, would it be alright if I were to take the motor car into the city and purchase a human to ride around the garden today?"
Almost always I was told to check the Keggo Box and see if there was any money for such an expense and almost all the time there was none. The concept behind the Keggo was that every time Sir Parker, or a parent for that matter, entered the room, they would drop whatever excess cash they had into the Keggo and forget about it. That way, in time, the Keggo would grow a sum of savings that could be used to pay for all sorts of fun stuff.
The Keggo Box was our sole source of income, at least as far as I was concerned and so it was until I would leave for college. I thought all families had a Keggo Box and I was sure that was how they paid for everything from clothing to hookers.
Imagine my surprise when I joined a fraternity in college and when it came time to pony up for some beer and my frat brother, and Native American Rodney Who Shows No Malice, asked me if I had 20 bucks and I told him I didn't even bring a Keggo with me to college and he looked at me like I might be crazy. It was that night that Rodney Who Shows No Malice explained to me that not every tribe has a Keggo Box.
So, for a while I would live without a Keggo Box holding money I would save and use when needed. Then at some point, I have some children of my own and I found it necessary to have savings for unplanned events, so I had to start my own Keggo Box. In time, our Keggo Box has paid for trips, cars and flights to China. In one instance, funds from our Keggo Box paid to repair a broken leg of a damaged deer that had been hit by a Fiat 500.
By happenstance, almost everyone can now have their own Magic Keggo.
See, you and almost everyone in the world could buy a Keggo Box of your own, put it somewhere obvious and begin pouring money into it and then when a time comes, somewhere down the road, sometime in the far off future, maybe somewhere in a time far far off, that Keggo money will be needed and you can pull the top off and be astounded by the cash you have accumulated.
So click here, check out the sort of amazing Keggo opportunities and then realize, a Keggo in your house is better than two Keggos in some fancy museum in Istanbul.

Sad clown

Hallow weenie

For the first time in two decades I do not have any of my two dozen or so children around for Halloween this year to torment or disown or do whatever I usually do for Halloween so I guess I will just practice on strangers tonight when I answer the door.
"Hello slightly overweight child, you do realize that eating another piece of candy will almost certainly push you right into diabetic overload, right?"
"Good day Zombie girl, what a cute costume, did you say trick or treat? Well, for you I have quite the treat. You get my cat. His name is Raltraz and he has a bladder infection. Good day. I said Good Day young lady, now leave."
"Oh hello small child. Here is some candy. Your costume makes you look like a doctor, can you tell me what these bumps mean?"
"Trick or treat? What in the hell does that mean anyway?"
"Candy? I'm all out of candy, but you have a bag of candy right there hanging off your arm and I'll damn well take what I want."
"No, I am not wearing a costume, what sort of terrible parent do you have that would teach you to talk like that?"
"Wait a second, I gave you that cat, you can't give me my own cat back, that's not how Halloween works."

Children

Super holiday fun time

Sometimes I sell paintings. Right now I have been using some recent paintings as the art for some marketing stickers that should be illegal, but with congress busy arguing about defunding Halloween, I seem to be able to get away with almost anything.
So, I am selling a couple of the gems. If history has been a teacher of anything, it’s this, men with hairy backs should never wear strapless dresses. That said, here is a link to the paintings for sale. There are only 3 and they will last, well, about 13 minutes.

Apple watch

I am not the fan-boy type who gives a hoot what Apple does with new products or anything else for that matter, they are a tech company, so no matter what else, they are kind of boring. That said, I clicked on the Apple website a few minutes ago to buy yet another overpriced and unnecessary product and was linked to the Apple Product Marketing Ploy this morning and while waiting for a white guy in a turtleneck to tell me what I need today, I was pleasantly surprised at the really great music they play while the lemmings line up for slop.

So, if Apple gets one thing right, they play good music before their non-event announcements.

Branson 3 continues

The new Branson detective novel continues to sell digitally only on Amazon. Why is that? There is some sort of technical reason, but mostly it's about money. If you only list on Amazon it opens up some sort of finance deal.
So, go ahead and check out the new book. It's here. Plus, there is a new sticker contest, check the new one out, order some and you might win a new iPad.

The good life

Special

Last week I got a letter from my most frequent airline informing me that I was now a member of their super elite status something or other. Since I was flying last week, it was immediately obvious the changes in class I was now experiencing. Gone were the days of waiting in lines with the smelly and the idiotic. No longer would I have to beg for choice seats, or seats at all for that matter, because now I could pick any other passenger and sit on them. This new elite status afforded me endangered species menu items (I highly recommend the spotted lion chocolate chip cookies) and I am now allowed to drink as much as the pilots.

As with all mail from this airline it began with “Dr so and so..” because I am, of course a doctor, on a variety of levels. First, I did get me one of them doctor degrees in madacine which was quite the accomplishment and has allowed me to have a long and distinguished career in the madical field, as they say. Having one doctor degree wasn’t enough for me, because I am nothing if not a go-getter, so while I was busy operating and delivering thousands of babies, I also earned an evening degree in pshyoanalyticalreverseosmocanolopotry. Which is, obviously, some sort of study of the human brain and it’s varied interactions with both porn and sugar. 

Moving on, as they say, I was lucky enough to also have won another pHd on a midcentury TV talk show. My late grandfather was the guest, he had invented a battery operated hand held vibrating device that was designed to relax tension in a working man’s muscles. I was in the audience, seat 36, and at an odd moment in the show, the host, a pedophile named Harris something announced that the University of California was giving away a degree in divinity to some lucky audience member. I was that member, I still am and at almost any religious function, except the ones where they cut off the tip of a penis, I am a doctor of some sort of religious studies. 

What all this high class education has meant is that at parties I am always the one who laughs at the jokes that no one else seems to get, Last week, while I was in France on business, I happened upon a late night fig and cheese party and someone said something to the effect, “zat Obama, he is a waskilly wabbit, eh?” I laughed like there was no tomorrow. The joy of super intelligence is that when a foreign language is in play, those of us with multi-lingual tongues often get first crack at the humor and the hummus.

Speaking of rarified treatment, I did not know hospitals also have a frequent user program. My oldest brother, a rich industrialist, has surgery every other tuesday for something that those of use in less rarified bank accounts might call useless procedures, but the super wealthy prefer to call these sorts of things fun times. So while I was visiting him recently he got a call from his local hospital concierge who offered to schedule him for a complete nostril replacement, along with a toe sanitization. Seriously, for one hundred thousand taxpayer dollars he had his left nostril completely replaced, with that of someone who apparently had no use for his. Upon learning of this exclusive service of unnecessary medical care I was obviously jealous and in need of signing up, but he assured me I was not only too poor, but also too healthy. The rich, he reminded me, are afforded years of abusive lifestyle choices, which inevitably leads to massive amounts of seemingly useless surgeries to repair telltale signs of years of abuse. See how that works? Oh the rich, they really are different than us plain old doctors and frequent fliers. 

So I will stick to my new elite lifestyle, because mostly I just find myself in first class sections of low class jet planes, talking to white men who feel superior for no particular reason, entitled in the most banal of ways, and I eat cookie after cookie and wonder how the most powerful animal in the wild kingdom tastes so damn good with just a little chocolate. 

Powerful and sexy stickers available, free of course

It's always true, stickers available, like the one below, for nothing. Follow this link to order some and sit back and wait.
Click here for your stickers.

While cycling this propelled me

Branson book available at Amazon

It's true, everything they have been saying. Branson.3, Pray for you today is now available as a download at Amazon.
Anyone who knows anything will download this today, because lord knows, the price will just continue to increase.

Get back

Life lessons

Lesbians, TV and chili

As many of you know, I have won “Best Blueberry Pancake” of the year for the last 5 years in a row, so it’s not a big deal that once again, Beth Libitard (famous mob attorney and Harvard Law graduate, out and proud lesbian lawyer and overweight former super model) complies a list of her top edible foods. This year, I finally broke the top 5 in homemade chili.

What is shocking is I have only made chili once in my entire lifetime and that was yesterday. I guess making the Libitard List of Eats is not as pristine as I always imagined, but that is neither here nor there. What’s impressive is that Beth Libitard recently optioned some of her life story to CBS Productions, which has plans to do a 15 episode series. 

From what I have heard, Beth’s story is a mix of Mad Men (she loves old suits) to Seinfeld (she loves many Jews) and Breaking Bad (she has a little trouble with the meth). I have not heard much more, except that Alex Balwin has already committed to “not doing shit.”

This morning I got a call from an effeminate sounding woman calling to ask how much it would cost to hire me as a consultant to “Beth, a life of drama and heavy petting.” Of course I hung up the phone, I have important things to do, like cook chili, I can’t be bothered by some Hollywood liberal telling me what to do.

Soon enough, someone like Bruce Wills rang me up, now keep in mind, I am making chili, award winning chili. I have a long history with Willis, having once shared a bed and some chocolate. I did not answer because I was listening to Forever Young in a cleaver version by Audra Mae and the Forest Rangers. My phone was again buzzing and the return number was the White House and I learned a long time ago, never take a call from anyone at the White House when cooking (thanks Dick, Nixon.)

Bottom line, quite possibly the best chili ever made is slow cooking, my lesbian lawyer is on the verge of selling a couple weeks of her life story for 17 million dollars and just yesterday I found our suicidal fish had finally found a way to end it. So, all in all, this has been just a regular, sort of normal, day.

May you stay

Best parenting tips ever

The worst news of the century

Piggly Wiggly Carolina To Sell 29 Stores To Bi-Lo Holdings

The Costco shuffle

My best friend Kami Sutra called me this morning and upon learning I would be near a Costco later today she asked if I could pick some things up for her. I dread Costco like a proctologist dreads obese people with polyps.

There was a time when I was raising three young children, all under the age of 5. I would go to Costco almost weekly, because it made economic sense to buy 55 gallon drums of milk and cheap clothing made by Chinese children under the age of 5, for American children also under the age of 5. Those days, thank the good lord sweet Jesus, are long gone. So I never go to Costco anymore because I learned a valuable lesson. Whenever you go to Costco you will always spend at least 100 dollars, no matter what you do or what you purchase.

Which makes this mornings call from Kami Sutra all the more unfortunate. She knew I would be a mere 3 blocks from a local Costco and she needed some stuff. “What sort of stuff,” I asked, because the last time a friend asked me to pick up stuff at a Costco, I filled my car with over 500 pounds of bananas and a ten gallon vat of sex lube.

“I need some baking stuff,” Kami said. She texted me a list of this baking stuff and I looked it over. Diapers, baby formula, a breast pumping machine and some adorable baby jumpers.

Now, I am far from the brightest bulb at the tulip festival, but even I was able to see that the majority of Kami’s shopping list was not baking materials. I called her back immediately and questioned how someone could cook with all these toxic baby related items. She assured me that the baby clothes and diapers were for a baby to wear, not eat and that’s when I discovered that avowed baby hating Kami Sutra had somehow manufactured a baby.

So, my plan is now to do my scheduled thing this morning and then waddle through an overstocked Costco, in search of baby clothes, baby food and baby diapers. Which is to say, Kami Sutra should have practiced what she has been preaching for 20 something years, “babies are best viewed at zoos.”

The Costco shuffle

My best friend Kami Sutra called me this morning and upon learning I would be near a Costco later today she asked if I could pick some things up for her. I dread Costco like a proctologist dreads obese people with polyps.

There was a time when I was raising three young children, all under the age of 5. I would go to Costco almost weekly, because it made economic sense to buy 55 gallon drums of milk and cheap clothing made by Chinese children under the age of 5, for American children also under the age of 5. Those days, thank the good lord sweet Jesus, are long gone. So I never go to Costco anymore because I learned a valuable lesson. Whenever you go to Costco you will always spend at least 100 dollars, no matter what you do or what you purchase.

Which makes this mornings call from Kami Sutra all the more unfortunate. She knew I would be a mere 3 blocks from a local Costco and she needed some stuff. “What sort of stuff,” I asked, because the last time a friend asked me to pick up stuff at a Costco, I filled my car with over 500 pounds of bananas and a ten gallon vat of sex lube.

“I need some baking stuff,” Kami said. She texted me a list of this baking stuff and I looked it over. Diapers, baby formula, a breast pumping machine and some adorable baby jumpers.

Now, I am far from the brightest bulb at the tulip festival, but even I was able to see that the majority of Kami’s shopping list was not baking materials. I called her back immediately and questioned how someone could cook with all these toxic baby related items. She assured me that the baby clothes and diapers were for a baby to wear, not eat and that’s when I discovered that avowed baby hating Kami Sutra had somehow manufactured a baby.

So, my plan is now to do my scheduled thing this morning and then waddle through an overstocked Costco, in search of baby clothes, baby food and baby diapers. Which is to say, Kami Sutra should have practiced what she has been preaching for 20 something years, “babies are best viewed at zoos.”

What does the fox say

Like riding a bicycle

Sadly, I grew up in Southern California, back when it was still cool to say that, where the temperature was always 73 degrees. In the heat of the summer, it was 73 degrees. In the icy months of winter, it was 73 degrees. Weather when I grew up was boring.
When I first moved to the East Coast, I was shocked that there was snow. I had seen it on TV, but it never seemed real to me. What was more shocking was that in the summer it got up to close to a million degrees outside, in both the daytime and the evening. Where I grew up it was 73 degrees at midnight and 73 at noon, every day of the year.
Today I learned that basketball is not at all like riding a bike. People always say that doing this or that is like riding a bicycle, once you know how to balance and peddle, you can grab any bike in the world and ride it. That is basically true, but then people often say, fill in the blank is like riding a bicycle. That part is not true.
I picked up a leather basketball this afternoon, in a non-southern California environment, meaning it was hotter here than it is in hell, and I wanted to shoot some hoops. First thing I learned is basketball is nothing like riding a bike and the second thing I learned is that trying to shoot a basket while the sweat is pouring out of you at a rate only met in nature by Niagara Falls is damn close to impossible.
When I was but a child in California, I could shoot basketballs any time I wanted, such was the welcoming weather. In Mississippi, it is so hot that while I was wasting time shooting hoops, a koi fish accidentally jumped out of the nearby pond and by the time I was able to rescue it, I was confronted with a well done dinner.
I am a cyclist by nature, I have been riding bikes since I was but a wee little lad in the undeveloped fields of California and I continue to ride to this day. I no longer play basketball for any reason than to sweat and that's what I was doing when I realized that playing basketball is not at all bike related.
Over the years, smart friends of mine have told me things like, "dating is like riding a bicycle" or "cooking blueberry pancakes is like riding a bicycle" or "getting married is like riding a bicycle" and every time I heard that familiar phrase I kind of thought how lucky I was to have such wise friends.
Then today, after finding out the truth about basketball and bicycle riding, two sports that could not be further apart, I started to think about my so-called wise friends.
When I started dating after a fairly silly marriage, I found it painful and embarrassing to be pretending to be interested in life stories of other people that were often painful and embarrassing. It was profoundly not like riding a bicycle. The same was found to be true about blueberry pancakes, which in making them properly relies nothing on bicycle riding skills.
As I again prepare for married life, I am finding it both invigorating, wildly magic and life affirming, which is exactly like riding a bicycle.

Now is the time for some free Branson

It's true, no matter what you may have mis-read, you can download a completely free copy of Branson, For Love or Money all weekend. Then, once you are done reading it, you can lend that digital book to your millions of friends. Or not, but it would be swell if you did.

Either way, it's free.

Then, in a week or two, Branson Three will arrive and you can download that too, since you will have purchased Branson 2 by then and will be waiting, patiently, if not on edge, for another Branson thriller.

I did mention how Branson One is free all weekend, right?  Here is a link.

Google douche

While speeding on a Pennsylvania highway yesterday, I was tailgated by a Google Maps dick head. It's one thing to be an aggressive driving, entitled goofball, but it takes a certain amount of idiocy to pass the person you tailgate while driving an ugly car emblazoned with your corporate owners logo.

Branson for free

This weekend you can download a copy of Branson, For Love or Money, the first book in the Branson detective series. You can, as always, download and share it with as many people as you want, it's an Amazon gift to both reader and writers, so take advantage of that.

Branson two remains available and the good news, Branson.3 will be digitally available in September.

Pop some tags

Best blog someday

It's not often I tell people what to do. Wait, that right there is a big giant lie. I love telling people what to do. So, since you are all ready to follow any stupid advice or direction I give you, check this out.

Blurring lines

NYC subway fun

CollegeHumor's Favorite Funny Videos

The best movie of the summer comes out in October

Good Night Mother

I have been following the last few days of NPR's Scott Simons twitter posts because they seemed remarkable. If you have not, his ailing mother has been in a Chicago hospital, dying. These are some of his posts.

"I see dawn coming in sky and want to hold it back to keep my mother from what's ahead--to keep my mother, period."
"A thought tonight for all who are in pain. We must be stronger than our fears."
"If we only truly realized how little time we have..."
"By request, my ICU bed. Hermes orange, my mother notes. Note functional nightstand, too: pic.twitter.com/dDMQcOwbJW"
"Derek, mother's kind & wise nurse, says "Get some sleep. Mothers like to see sons sleep." But I hold her hand while I can."
"When my mother woke briefly I sang her My Best Girl. She replied w/ You Are the Sunshine of My Life. Broadway in the ICU."
"ICU seems to be staffed by good, smart young docs who think they know everything, and wise RN's who really do."
"I just realized: she once had to let me go into the big wide world. Now I have to let her go the same way."
"City is cool, bright, & lovely this morning. My mother touches a splash of sunlight w/ her fingers. "Hello, Chicago!"
"Just spent 45 mins looking for mother' favorite dental floss. Waste of time? Act of faith."
"I am not sure my mother understands Twitter or why I tell her millions of people love her--but she says she's very touched."
"I think she wants me to pass along a couple of pieces of advice, ASAP. One: reach out to someone who seems lonely today. And: listen to people in their 80's. They have looked across the street at death for a decade. They know what's vital."
"Oh, and: Oh earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you. It goes too quickly."
"Journos who say they're hard-boiled cause they see so much should know ICU nurses see more in a week. And come out kind."
"My mother now wakes only to be gracious. "Is Reggie or Don on-duty? They're both such exquisite gentlemen." (and they are)"
"Mother groans w/ pleasure--over flossing. "When they mention great little things in life, they usually forget flossing.""
"Breathing hard now. She sleeps, opens eyes a minute, sleeps. I sing, "I'll always be there, as frightened as you," to her."
"My family has landed! ICU nurse works on mother's hair, using makeup mirror. Almost falls. Mother: "Don't let that break!"
"-you med people keep it down?") Tell my mother I'll see my wife downstairs, back in 10. Mother says, "Have a quickie!"
"I love holding my mother's hand. Haven't held it like this since I was 9. Why did I stop? I thought it unmanly? What crap."
"Thought that my mother won't get another glimpse of the city she loves is unbearable. My wife, from France, points out--"
""She is seeing Chicago in the faces of the loving, tough, & kind souls working so hard for her in the ICU." She's right."
"Wish clever minds that invented the Space Shuttle or Roomba could devise an oxygen mask that doesn't slip every 20 mins."
"In middle of nights like this, my knees shake as if there's an earthquake. I hold my mother's arm for strength--still."
"Mother cries Help Me at 2;30. Been holding her like a baby since. She's asleep now. All I can do is hold on to her."
"Can't hold my mother like a baby indefinitely--have to use the bathroom. My wife coming over w/ my mother's husband."
"Her passing might come any moment, or in an hour, or not for a day. Nurses saying hearing is last sense to go so I sing & joke."
"When she asked for my help last night, we locked eyes. She calmed down. A look of love that surpasses understanding."
"Listening to Nat & Natalie sing Unforgettable. Mother & I sang it just two nights ago. Coles have better voices for sure."
"I know end might be near as this is only day of my adulthood I've seen my mother and she hasn't asked, "Why that shirt?"
"I think I can safely reveal now that last night we snuck a dram of "grape juice" to my mother. Nurses shocked, shocked!"
"Heart rate dropping. Heart dropping."
"The heavens over Chicago have opened and Patricia Lyons Simon Newman has stepped onstage."
"She will make the face of heaven shine so fine that all the world will be in love with night."

Sexting weiner

I once lived in a city where a dandy candidate for some public office could not be bothered to keep his pants on, or much else, but this was long before the internet and sexting and people proud to call themselves teabaggers. It was a simpler time, a time where a man could cheat on his wife and it would literally take weeks before she found out about it. Now, you send a picture of your George Bush to some stranger and before TMZ has time to update the latest Amanda Bynes craziness, you and your wife are in couples counseling, except for those moments where you excuse yourself to use the restroom, take a picture of your Bill Clinton and send it to all your twatter followers.

I bring this up because my good friend, the Mayor of Crazytown, just this morning sent me a close up picture of either his thumb and forefinger, or his butt, I could not tell. I immediately send a scathing instant message back to the Mayor of Crazytown reminding him that being mayor usually means you can not send out pictures that do not make sense. Quickly after, I got a picture of the Mayor of Crazytowns middle finger, point made.

Which brings me back to the original point. We elect imperfect morons to lead our cities, our counties, our states and our federal government because the smart people, the people who accomplish things, the deep thinkers and the job creators, have better things to do with their lives that run campaigns, beg strangers for money and have sex in airport bathrooms. We leave that sort of tedious behavior to the moronic among us, be they republican, democrat or Rand Paul or his beautiful illegal wife, Marco Rubio.