Category Archives: General

Lend me your ear

    I’m not often sentimental like this, but you have to see this ear reconstruction for a little girl.  These pictures almost made me blubber.  I’d like to think there’s far more of this in the world than there is evil and danger and lions and tigers and bears, oh my.  I’m no pollyanna, so there are times when I need a little correction on that end to balance out my cynicism and angst.  I hope this little girl grows up gorgeous.  I hope she’s inspired to greatness in whatever field she tries.  For me, it’s just a good thing to have hope, much less such grand ones.

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13 September 2007

Dateline: Sauced!

9:51 p.m. CDT

This is Laocoon Blogblah!!! reporting live from Sauced!, Milky Way, Earth, North America, United States, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Paseo District.

I had hoped to slip unnoticed into this environment so that my observations weren’t skewed, but despite the fact that i’ve worn all the Earthling clothing in the computer for my year and location and occupation, I was noticed.  I think Earthlings know whether they are being watched.

I can’t understand it, really.  I drove into the parking lot of the convenience store nearby, parking in the back near the Dempster Dumpster where my car could be the closest to the object of my attention.  Perhaps the Pavarotti blaring from the CD player was a giveaway.  I’m sure it’s not my attire.  I’m wearing a reporter’s fedora duly tagged with a sign that says “Press!”  I’m wearing tortoise-shell round eye-glasses, a starched shirt and tie, slacks and a trench coat, tweed.  I’m quite sure I’ve well researched this wardrobe.  Still, no one else here is dressed anything like this and I believed they noticed.  The Zippo Lighter?  I had to have a cigaret dangling from my lips to go with the cup and saucer of coffee I was served for two pieces of green paper.

The fact that I’ve been caught out has a great deal of evidence behind it.  Lynn the Printer and her companion Dan recognized me right off.  Part of the cost of galactic fame, I suppose.  All of us intrepid reporters are accustomed to the adoring fans and… well, anyway, Kaitlin the gorgeous waitress, Mikey, Flip’s bartender Ian and his everpresent Sherrie the Roller Derby queen, they all seemed to know me immediately.

This just in at 10:05 p.m.:

Gary Yazzie, Navaho artist who has shown at Cowboy Hall of Fame and Indian Market in Santa Fe and other places, is selling alot of his artwork so that he can relocate to Colorado Friday 5-9 and Saturday 1-6.  He’s also shown at Red Earth.  All at Los Milagros Studio at NW 16th and Villa.  This is taken verbatim from aforesaid Lynn.

Back to the main thing, which is ME, of course, since this is my blog.

At 10:09 p.m.:

I rather conceived of this as performance art, costume and all, but there don’t seem to be many Laurie Anderson fans around.  Not even a Spalding Gray?  It seemed like the right thing to do after being blown off for dinner by a young blonde and stood up by an older brunette with a sad story about a sick mother for a long-anticipated booty call.  What else is a 60 year old batchelor supposed to do?  I suppose I could hang out and look good at Nova or Flip’s, but to what purpose among all those children under 35?  So, I came here to where the average age is even younger, but they are so jaded that not even an old guy like me draws a turned head.

There were about 5 or 6 musicians out in front of Galileo’s north of here for open mic night and later, Isis will be a blast when the Foreign Legionnaires return from seeing Village People at the fairgrounds and there were a couple of couples and a waitress at Paseo Grill, but Sauced! is the place with the wi-fi available, so this is the location from which I report.

More Later.

There are only three tables of people here tonight, but all three tables are actually islands of tables put together for much larger crowds.  One island has about 5 people, another about 8 a third has maybe 15 and then there’s the “balcony” table I can’t see from my vantage.  The weather’s delicious at upper 70s and very little wind.  Well, there WAS very little wind, but another couple of acquaintences arrived and they are so full of hot air, the wind may soon kick up.

Several bikes are parked to my immediate left and the girl with the dreadlocks who sometimes sings and plays the guitar just walked by, drawing my attention.  She seems to be drawing on something off in another corner away from me a short distance.  The table of five closest to me is four guys and a girl with short red hair and a short patterned skirt/dress.  One of the four guys is explaining his slight Irish accent  In the background is a beep beep beep of a car alarm and a helicopter slashes the air overhead a short distance away.  I can even hear the Broadway Extension traffic and maybe a train going by, although I didn’t notice the train whistle so it could be the HVAC from the grocery.  Sitting on the concrete bench near the metal chaise lounges in front of the place is a large man with very very very long hair in a pony tail leading a very small white dog on a leash.  Now to my left beyond the bikes is a plump girl with a small white dog growling at a black trash bag.  The dog appears to be a Scottie by its cut and size.  It’s a different small white dog than the one with the large man in the burgandy short sleeved shirt, shorts and sandals.  His dog looks a good bit more like Petey from the Little Rascals than most other dogs I’ve seen in a good while.  The plump girl was joined by a slightly less plump girl in green with a babuska-looking hairdo and the dog successfully evacuated.  This seems to be singular obsession of Earthlings, but not one I’ve studied as much as other Earthling behavior.  I recommend the science acadamy fund a grant for such a study, preferably by an attractive female with a fetish for older men.  Moroccan Ben behind me compliments my hat “bon chapeau,” he said.  I’ve asked him to help me with my French, and I knew the word for hat and replied “merci, beaucoup” just as is polite.  Good for me.  Progress.

Dropped by to see Mom today and she’d been to the dentist and still has a cough from trying to spread chemicals at one of the apartments.  I can’t seem to get her to actually let that stuff go.  I think it lets her feel busy and successful and helpful and all. 

Oh, the big man with the small dog and the long hair also has a very long beard — so long as to be tied in knots — and he seems to be walking bent over with a pronounced limp on one lifted heel.

The Hoffman bikers are appearing as are some babes in short skirts and tight shirts.  Young, but lovely.

Ed the Engineer is nearby in blue jeans and a thick green shirt, huffing a smoke and nursing a bottle of beer.  He waved.  Another Earthling who recognized me.  Damn.  He’s swtaying away, I suppose because he can see it’s a performance.  Or, maybe I just don’t interest him at all.  Either way.

It’s 11 p.m. and the train is going through, honking as it goes.  I recall listening to that train so many nights from my bedroom on the north side of my parent’s home on 21st just south of here.  It was time to drift off to sleep then, and that’s the way I feel tonight.

Oddly, there will be no applause for this performance.  Just as well.  My ego couldn’t handle the pressure.

Reporting from Sauced! Thursday night.

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The Iceman Cometh

But he’s not here yet.

On Friday, maybe, if At&T gets around to it and my check clears and the government people come to actually help me and no one actually comes inside me despite all their promises and then still loves me in the morning, maybe, just maybe, God Willing and the Creek don’t rise, I’ll have DSL at home and will be able to get back to blogging regularly and maybe even conquer some of the nuances like uploading photos and video and such.  I ain’t holding my breath.

One really big event for me yesterday was going to Rococo’s around 9 p.m. to hear some of the weekly jazz jam.  It was very good last night, although I didn’t know any of the players since it wasn’t Shy Oren and Issei, the regulars who I’ve come to really like.  It’s a nice venue and the crowd is mostly OCU music grad students who are playing and listening.  Very laid back and friendly.  I recommend it to you sometime if you’re out or lonely on a Monday night.

The big event for me today is that Daria cut my hair just after noon and it’s quite a bit different and much much much shorter than when you saw me yesterday.  I’m glad it’s done.  The really long hair was making me a bit nutz and was hard to care for and hard to explain.  The Oz says he’s through with his film, the lovely Juliet is out of the modeling game and therefore all my original reasons for longer hair are gone.  Since I’m in a new work harder and longer mode, the shorter hair makes much more sense for going to court and such.

The Petraeus report to Congress, the long awaited September report on the progress of the “surge” in Iraq, turned out to be more theatrical than informative. 

We’ve known all along that our choices were: 1, institute a draft to beef up the armed forces, or 2, pull back some of the “shock troops” we sent in.  The General thinks we should withdraw some troops from Iraq next year, about 30,000.  In other words, the 30,000 he had no choice but to pull out since their tours of duty are up and have already been extended. 

As to actually taking action to withdraw American forces from that poor, failed state, there’s no plan for that for at least five years and maybe 10 years. 

Clearly, nothing will be done with this Congress and this president.  Only the next election can solve the Iraq problem for the American people because our leaders just don’t seem to “get it.”  By “get it”, I mean that they don’t seem to understand that the length of time it took America to defeat both the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists in World War II has not been enough time for these fuckups to be successful at defeating a nation about the size of Texas, not withstanding the fact that Texas has far more gun owners than Iraq did when we got started.  What they don’t “get” is that after six years, we are at the bottom of the stack of trusted countries in the world, we are worse off with respect to the Middle East than we have ever been and Osama bin Laudin is not only still alive, but we’ve created a recruitment bonanza for him.  When you add Katrina, Homeland Security, Education, Health care and the nation’s economy to the list of failures in foreign policy, this must be the most incompetent administration to ever sully the nation’s capital and trash out our White House.

As to my romantic life, I have nothing to report.  As to my business life, I’m improving radically as of recent days and I hope that “one day at a time” application of effort will continue to improve the practice of law. 

I miss my little sis something fierce.  I’m glad she’s back to blogging and as soon as I’m back online on a semi-permanent basis, I’ll change the blogroll here to include MindoverMary.  She’s the best and it makes me so proud and happy that I get asked about her on a frequent basis by all the guys she met and befriended while here.

On a related note, Mom appears to be cancer free, will not have to do radio or chemo therapies, and seems much better than before in the sense that she is letting go of some of her more onerous daily duties at the rental properties and elsewhere.  i want desperately for her to enjoy herself from here on out.

I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out and there are other things I’d like to write about more precisely and at greater length, but the battery on the laptop is running out of steam.  Laptops do run on steam, don’t they?  Nevermind.  Whatever.  I’ve got to shut down soon in all events.

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Back to blogging

I’m at Sauced, blogging here since I can’t blog at home anymore.  I don’t have dialup with the new and improved and sucks a big one MS Vista operating system and DSL won’t get installed for a couple of days.

I’ve given my old laptop to my son Jack, who gave me a very sad story about his motherboard blowing up.  I’ve now got a new Toshiba, 15.4-inch Satellite laptop, which I bought on a manager’s sale for a total price of under $650, including tax.  I was razor close to switching to Mac, but it just didn’t happen in large part because of some compatibility issues with my work computers.

I don’t really have much to say but I have to have an entry because MindoverMary promised to come back to Oklahoma and kick my aging, wrinkled, white ass if I didn’t.  Something about being tired of reading the same post over and over, but … “whatever” … I do what she says.

 Last night’s “First Friday” was pretty good on the Paseo, although the evening contained a mystery I still haven’t solved.  The PAA gallery had the best food and, for my taste, the best work on the street was by a guy named “jeff” at the gallery on the NW corner of 29th and Paseo — a manipulated photo of fireflies, coated in a kind of raikku lacquer.  Denice Duong at JRB is at the top of her game, but I’m getting a little bored with the style and series she’s been doing for a couple of years now and I’m ready for her considerable talents to mature.  A gang of us went to see Don Narcomi’s show at Untitled and I ran into the newly married Privacy Shattered Sharon, who looked amazingly good in a new “do”.  From there, about six of us had a mediocre meal at Trattorio downtown followed by an interesting coffee and dessert at Sauced until about midnight.

Then there was the mystery.  I dropped by the GSpot on my way home from Sauced and Matt Walsh was absolutely rocking the house down to a crowd of ONLY TWO PEOPLE.  Where the hell was everybody?  Really good roots R&B band, Friday night and the street had been full, yet by midnight, nothing going.  Did everyone go home early to get up for the early OU game?  Was there something else going on that I missed?  Just random chance?  I’ll readily admit I can not figure it out.

I also got to spend some time last night with the lovely Juliet, who met us at Untitled and stayed out with the grownups until late into the night at Sauced before going home with her roommate Christina to — wait for it — WORK !?!  Who knew people worked on Friday night?  Another mystery, at least as far as I’m concerned.  I went home and soon thereafter to bed.

Speaking of the OU game, the home town boys beat Miami 51-13.

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Full Moon and Empty Arms

3:27 a.m. and I’ve got the jitters under the silvery moon (catch the eclipse anyone?).

My friend Rush returns to LA from his class reunion trip to OKC tomorrow morning and he and I had dinner last night with my son, Jack, up from New Orleans for a couple of days.  Of course, Aunt Marty and her friend, Frieda, are still here from Mississippi and still caring for Mom, who had colon cancer surgery.  Did I mention that my daughter’s birthday was the 27th and that we just said “adieu” to my sister MindOverMary?

So, I was trying to practice law today and do some of Mom’s errands and maybe I had too much coffee or something, you think?

I tried to watch the video of Sen. Craig explaining how unhappy he is — I don’t know how many times he repeated he was “not gay” without ever telling us if he was a homosexual — but I faced an insurmountable obstacle.  In the video I tried to watch, he walks onscreen, stands behind a podium and says:  “First, I want to thank you all for coming out … “.  I screamed with laughter and missed the next two-three minutes.  Ended up having to read the transcript.

Might as well have Chertoff as the next Attorney General.  Look at what a good job he did with Katrina.  It’s my understanding that ‘Fredo was forced to resign as just not being quite incompetent enough for this administration.  Who would have guessed that anyone could make John Ashcroft look reasonable and make me miss Richard Nixon and his crew?

I see the Democratic Party National Committee has stripped the state of Florida of its delegates and refused to allow candidates to campaign in their primary because the DNC doesn’t like Florida’s early timing.  Why the hell not?  It’s clear that as long as Diebold sells vote machines, Dems are unlikely to win there.

In a post below, I’m quibbling about gender roles and trying to bait the Debster to defend her “too much testosterone” theory.  I wonder if she’ll admit the Dems seem to need MORE not less of the stuff.  I’m really thinking of just bagging politics and America both at the same time.  Just get the hell out.  My dream election in ’08 would be Kucinich vs. Ron Paul.  Wouldn’t that be fun? 

to bed to bed said sleepyhead …

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Devolution

I used to believe in the theory of evolution but now I’ve found out some bad and crazy men also believed in the theory of evolution so the theory of evolution must be bad and crazy.  Right?  Maybe not so much, but that doesn’t stop Ann Coulter and her sponsor, Coral Ridge Ministries, led by the imminent Pat Robertson.

It seems that Ann’s education never clued her into the deal.  You see, Adolph Hitler was trying to kill the Jews because he believed in Darwin and was trying to breed a better human.  She’s shocked, shocked to discover gambling in Rick’s Americain.  They think the theory should, therefore, be tossed on the dustbin of history as the bad idea it always was, now that we know it’s responsible for all the atrocities of World War II and all the millions of deaths, oh my.  Kids, you have to read this.  It’s so bad it’s funny.  It’s just so stupid you can’t believe they can publish this with a straight face.

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Betty Bowers

If you don’t know who Betty Bowers is, you should.  Right, Suz?

Anyways, I think I’ve found my Christmas list stocking stuffers bonanza and it’s on my list of I-really-really-want-this.

If you order one of these for yourself, let me know so I can take you off my list.

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