2013: The Never-Ending Search for the Never-Ending Search

There’s no rule that says you have to get introspective at the close of a year. When I was young and single living in San Francisco, working at KPIX-TV, the end of the year just meant I could work all of the holiday eves and holidays for triple pay, get a big fat check in mid-January, and then bounce down to Disneyland in February. As you can imagine, the Magic Kingdom was pretty deserted in February. All the kids were in school, and most vacationers were on a beach somewhere under a tropical sun. College kids were maybe planning on heading Walt’s way for spring break, but that wouldn’t be until April. So that meant that I and whoever I could convince to go with me, had the parks practically to ourselves.

Introspection didn’t come along until, really, just a few years ago. I had scraped through a couple of serious health-related issues, and I started to think “Fudge-if I’m gonna do this I better do it now!” I had seen quite clearly that I did not have a lock on another New Year’s day. An ambulance ride from one hospital to a second hospital will open your mind to that possibility. I wouldn’t say I felt a sense of urgency, but more a narrowing of focus. Places to go, things to do, new skills to learn, things I wanted to accomplish began to swim more clearly into focus. Some stuff dropped off the table. I guess those things were not really important. 

I have seen some dreams come true by either accident or intent. 

I have seen my little infant children grow into responsible, thoughtful adults. 

I've been married to the same wonderful, patient woman for 27 years.

My parents have passed on to the next dimension of existence secure in the knowledge that I am not incarcerated, insane, or an insufferable asshole. At least I wasn’t around them. 

I have attended eight Formula 1 Grands Prixs. As someone who until 2002 had only seen Formula 1 on television, this is pretty fudgin’ cool to me. I used to have repetitive dreams where I was walking through a dreamscape forest with crowds of people and getting ready  to watch a Formula 1 race somewhere on some dreamscape European road course. This last summer, Gail and I walked through real forests in the Eiffel mountains, with crowds of people, to watch the real German Grand Prix at the real Nurburgring. 

I finally got to walk from Vauxhall to Lambeth Bridge along the south bank of the Thames, and I can honestly say now that London is my favorite city in the world. 

Many years prior to this, I owned and raced a G production Triumph Spitfire in S.C.C.A. races. I still think racing is the most fun you can have out of bed. Too bad I wrecked it. The car, not the bed.

I once fell down some stairs at KTVU in Oakland, smacked my head on a wall, and two weeks later bought an Aston Martin DB4. (serial #DB4901R)

I smooth-talked my way backstage to meet Chuck Berry, and concurrently had my first taste of escargot. 

I won an Emmy award.

I’ve shaken hands with Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and been within six feet of Barack Obama on three different occasions without getting arrested. 

I saw The Who for $4.00 and the Dead for $3.00. I also saw Billy Preston. I've finally seen Living Colour.

I threw marshmallows at Strom Thurmond and played “Dixie” on a kazoo when he appeared at CMU back in the day.

I saw Jimi Hendrix at an anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C.

I saw James Brown (Mr. Dynamite!!) twice before he died. 

And there’s a bunch of other stuff I shouldn’t  talk about that still puts a twinkle in my eye. 

"We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it."

So the denouement of 2013 brings with it my retirement from the daily grind of the work world. December 31st, 2013 is my last day of work. As of January 1st 2014, my alarm will not go off before 6AM unless I am flying, driving, walking, biking or getting picked up to go somewhere far away. 

Retirement  was never a gauzy dream that I had, but I knew one day that it would come. I never thought about it a lot, even though Gail and I have been saving up for it for thirty years.  Checks will come in the mail. When I meet strangers and they inevitably ask me what I do, my sentences will start with “I used to…” or “I was a…” or “I get to…” I already feel stress melting away like that last icicle hanging from the eaves in late March. I take deeper breaths, drink more tea, and read more of the paper. At the same time, more options are opening to me. Should I volunteer at the local food bank, nursing home, or public access TV channel? Should I dust off the Stratocaster in the corner of my office and really learn how to play? Should I blow a couple of grand fixing up the old Jaguar? Can I somehow take the horrific faith-shattering experience of owning a coin laundry and write a brilliant novel to purge the poison from my wounded soul? Well? Huh? Should I?

Standby. I’m about to find out.

One of the things I learned fairly early in life is that you can either have time or money, but rarely can you have both. I know I’m not going to live forever, and not many people duck when I swing my wallet around my head on a string. But if I’ve got a little time, and enough money, and that’ll do pig, that’ll do.

Speaking of Music…

My favorite album of the year is “Electric Lady” by Janelle Monae. The best I can do to describe it: the soulful, psychedelic symphonic soundtrack to a rerun of an old  science fiction film that’s playing in a dream. The main character is a rebellious android (an alpha platinum 9000) named Cyndi Mayweather. The songs range from guitar-driven rock, to traditional sambas and ballads, to Motown, and old school soul, interspersed with clips from an urban android radio talk show (DJ Crash Crash) and a pops orchestral suite straight from a spacey 60s era Italian comedy. Yet, it is very…musical. Whoever produced the album is a firkin genius, using real instruments-not cheap synthesizers, weaving elaborate melodic themes and vocals into a mind-blowing yet humorous coherency. Yes, I do dig me some female vocalists. Janelle Monae has an amazing voice-at times powerful at other times very sweet, dynamic, and with a soaring range. And the backing vocals, whether by her or other vocalists harmonize the way God and Leonard Bernstein intended. I listen to “Electric Lady” about twice a day. The songs are stuck in my head and I like it.

I also revised my Top 3 Best Ever Concerts list:

1-Billy Preston

2-Iggy Pop

3-Living Colour

Living Colour played at the Park West in Chicago in April. It was the 25th anniversary of the release of their first album "Vivid." They played the entire album plus a couple of songs from a new album to be released in 2014. It was such a good show that I almost went to see them in Las Vegas, and again when they played in Evanston in November. However, the stars would not align. Damn you universe!!

Have a great, wonderful, magnificent, engaging, productive, glittering, spectacular, satisfying, rewarding, eye-opening, laugh-filled, forehead-smackin', power-packin'  booty-shakin', memory-makin' twenty-fourteeeeen y'all!  

Everybody say: "Bayyyy-bay!!"*

(*DJ Crash Crash)

                                                                             The Urn

This is my urn. It is made of copper, and the handles, I assume, are brass or bronze. I have had the urn for my entire life. I don’t know who made the urn or why, but fate has conspired to put the urn and me together. Whoever you are, wherever you are, for as long as you have known me, know that I have owned the urn.

Most people think of an urn as a receptacle for the ashes of the dead. But the dictionary also uses this definition: “vaselike receptacle or vessel, esp a large bulbous one with a foot” I did not make that up. My urn is vaselike, large and bulbous, and has a foot. See for yourself.

The urn used to live on the floor in the living room of my parent’s house in Pittsburgh. It was tucked away (or probably hidden by my mother) in a corner, behind the overstuffed green chair where my father would sit nightly, smoke his unfiltered Pall Malls and read the Pittsburgh “Post Gazette.” I guess no one really liked the urn except me and my dad.

I once asked my mother where the urn came from. She told me that a woman friend of theirs, working as a maid, had been given the urn by her employer, a wealthy Pittsburgh family. This woman friend did not want the urn, so she in turn gave it to my father. Then my mother hid the urn behind a chair. That’s three levels of “don’t want” before the urn got to me.

When I heard that the urn came from a wealthy Pittsburgh family, I imagined the conversation between the husband and wife which resulted in the urn being gifted to the maid.

Wife: “Edgar, what is that horrid urn?”
Edgar: “Well, dear, it’s an…urn! Isn’t it wonderful?”
Wife: “Edgar, it’s...bulbous. And those creatures on the handles will give young Edgar Jr. nightmares.”
Edgar (crestfallen): “If Junior isn’t having nightmares about the state of the stock market or German rearmament, I doubt that this urn will trouble his sleep.”
Wife: “Oh Edgar! It’s horrible!  it’s a globular abomination! I want it out of here this instant.”
Edgar: “But lovey, it’s Art Nouveau!”
Wife: “I don’t care if it was Napolean’s high school metal shop project. It has to go!”

So, reluctantly, Edgar heads off to find the maid, urn in hand.

Edgar: “Mamie, I have something for you. Here. It’s an urn.”
Mamie: “You’re giving this to me? No Mr. Edgar, I can’t accept that urn.”
Edgar: “Yes you can Mamie, and you will. Here, it’s your urn now.”
Mamie gingerly accepts the urn: “Oh, Mr. Edgar, I got no room at my little place to display a fine urn like this.”
Edgar: “You can find a place Mamie. Any room where you display that urn will be, um, transformed. Now get it out of here before my wife puts an Edgar-shaped dent in the side of the urn.”
Mamie: “Yes sir. Thank you sir.”

So from here, the maid passed it on to my father. My father and mother no doubt had their own discussion concerning the urn, and as a result it went on to occupy the dark corner behind the green chair, awaiting it’s discovery by young Tom.

I discovered the urn on the floor as a young carpet-crawler. I didn’t know what to do with the urn. Really, what can you do with an urn? Urns have specific purposes, which is what separates them from the purely decorative vase. I got a few pennies, and I began to toss the pennies at the urn. The urn has a small opening in the top, and a penny would make a satisfying “clang-a-lang” when I managed to arc one through the opening. This activity occupied me for hours and hours through the long nights of western Pennsylvania winters. Next to sliding our corgi “Atom” backwards down our long linoleum hallway, tossing pennies at the urn was my favorite thing to do.

The urn looks pretty and shiny now, but ‘twas not always thus.
   
After I had moved out of the house and my father died, my mother retired the urn to the basement, and according to the dents the urn acquired, none too gently.  It now sat in a dark dusty corner for years. I moved to California and completely forgot about the urn. Then, one spring, I happened to return to Pittsburgh for a visit. As I approached my mother’s house, I saw the urn perched on top of a pile of junk outside of the house. You see, every spring, the city of Pittsburgh would pick up any junk you no longer wanted. You just left it in front of your house and the garbageman would haul it away. This was the fate that awaited the urn. But the cosmic life force did not want the urn hauled off to the landfill. I just happened along before the junk was picked up. I spied the urn and immediately brought it inside the house. I then got into a wrestling/shouting match with my mother over the urn. She was determined to get it out of her house once and for all. I had to promise to take the urn with me, back to California. Since I couldn’t get the urn in my luggage, I had it shipped to myself via parcel post.

It was in sad shape. The copper had corroded to a dull brown. From its time crowning the junk pile outside, there was a green-ringed blob of bird droppings  in a spot. I scraped this off (sort of) and placed the urn on a shelf in our living room in our house in Mill Valley. My wife Gail was more accepting of the urn than anyone else so far. She really didn’t give the urn a second glance, as long as it made me happy.

So there it sat, year after year. Our children were born and grew in the shadow of the urn. At one point, I took the urn to a taping of “Antiques Roadshow” in San Francisco. My son Aaron and I stood in line for a couple of hours, waiting for some expert to tell us about my urn. As we waited in line, various people came up to us and remarked: “Boy, that’s some kind of urn you got there.” I fancied that some art historian was going to take one look at the urn, gasp, and explain it’s origin in a fevered tone of awe and reverence. But no such luck. The guy who looked at it said: “Yup. It’s an urn. Definitely an urn.” We left and returned the urn to its’ place on the shelf in our living room.

We decided to move from Mill Valley back to Gail’s home of Chicago. The urn was packed away for another cross country trip. But then Gail surprised me. For my birthday one year, she took the urn to a metalsmith, who gently pried out the dents . And he polished the copper, which removed all remnants of bird doo-doo and restored its handsome, uh, copper color. I know you’re supposed to let antiques have their “patina,” but come on. I don’t think the art world accepts avian fecal matter in any definition of patina, and I certainly didn’t need any desiccated pigeon poop on display in my living room.

So the years fly past. Occasionally I take the urn down off of it’s shelf and chuck a few pennies at it for old times sake, That makes me think about my parent’s house, the corgi and and the hallway, and the light from the table lamp while my dad read the paper. I sigh. I turn the urn over in my hands, admire the mythical amphibians and look inside. What else can you do with an urn? I wonder what other scenes the urn has witnessed, on whose shelves it has sat in its’ time here on Earth. Then I put it back on the shelf, with the rest of my memories and come back to the world of the present. It’s my urn. I am its caretaker for this lifetime and in a peculiar way it gives me comfort. I rest assured: no matter where I am, no matter what I’m doing, I know that my urn abides.

We Speak Your Name...

I have become fascinated by Barkevious Mingo. “Keke” as he is called, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the just completed 2013 NFL Draft. I’m not all that interested in his stats or the “speed he’ll bring to the Browns defense.” It’s his name. Barkevious Mingo...it sounds like a name Elmore Leonard might make up. But frankly, it is so far out there, so unimpeachably unorthodox, so faintly illuminated by the light of the distant sun, that no one, no matter how brilliant, could make up this name. The best names I could make up were “Gunther Littlechurch,”  “Tilman Hopkirk” and “Desire Slaughter.” I like the name Desire.

And Barkevious Mingo is not the only unusual name in the NFL. The previous title holder was D’Brickashaw Ferguson, of the New York Jets. D’Brickashaw? Barkevious? What in the  name of mild sanctification is going on? What brute could look at their sweet, innocent little newborn and decide that "D’Brickashaw" was a good name? Or "Barkevious?" And their wives actually went along with this? On the night Barkevious was born, did the neighbor’s dog keep everyone up and the Mingos took this as a message from the spirit world  what to name the baby? How did the nurses who filled out these birth certificates keep a straight face?

I once heard that basketball player Anfernee Hardaway was supposed to be named Anthony, but his mother spelled it “A-n-f-e-r-n-e-e.” Anfernee it is then...

To top this all off, I stumbled upon nameoftheyear.blogspot.com, where they were tallying votes for the Name of the Year. It was a throwdown between Barkevious Mingo, and a young woman named Iris Macadangdang. 

Barkevious Mingo won, 54% to 46%.

More Moniker Madness

If you can believe what you read on the internet, there are 750,000 people in this country named Thomas Davis. That's a whole slew of us Thomas Davises. There was a Congressman from Virginia named Thomas Davis. There is a linebacker for the Carolina Panthers named Thomas Davis who besides playing football, recently designed and debuted a submarine sandwich called the "Big Hit." In Dublin Ireland there is a statue of Thomas Davis. I recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon looking at online mug shots from all over the country of people named Thomas Davis.  I was surprised; not a lot of big time crime. Most of the Thomas Davises had been busted for being drunk, drugged up, or for unseemly comportment with women.

Tom, Tom, Tom Tom, Tom Tom Tom...really?

Well, I’m here to tell all 750,000 of you Thomas Davises that there are two towns in West Virginia named Thomas and Davis that are so close together that you see “Thomas Davis” on the map. Look in the northeast, near where western Maryland hooks over the W. Va. panhandle. Odds are some of you 750,000 Thomas Davises already know about this but your writings on the subject have not come to my attention.

Many of you readers might already be aware that in 2011, I rode my motorcycle 1400 miles total from Chicago into the mountains of West Virginia to visit Thomas and Davis.  But you probably don’t know that  this trip was the culmination of a lifelong quest. 

I have known about Thomas and Davis since I was eleven years old, attending Belmar Elementary School in Pittsburgh. My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Daley told me about them. Mrs. Daley was best known for bouts of red-faced, high-volume apoplexia directed at anyone unfortunate enough to have gotten her pissed off. Her tirades were often followed by merciless ear pulling, and vigorous swatting of the buttocks with a long wooden paddle. And yet I have quite fond memories of her spasmodic version of the ”Twist,” accompanied by the lyrics: “Do it!!...Do it!!...Do...your...homework!!!”-all delivered when appropriate, at ear-splitting levels, a deranged smile on her face, elbows flying, accompanied by the swish of her flowing 1960‘s-era skirt. She cared a lot about her students and she was willing to whack some booty as well as shake her groove thing to get us to do well in school.

I was quite surprised one day while exiting her classroom, to have Mrs. Daley stop me and tell me that she had been thinking about me all weekend because she had spent the weekend in between two little towns in West Virginia named Thomas and Davis. I was shaken. Mrs. Daley hardly ever paid attention to me except to loudly express her disapproval of my bird call skills. After I got over the initial shock of not being yelled at, mangled, or beaten, when I got home I looked at a map of West Virginia and sure enough, there they were: Thomas and Davis.

After I moved on to middle school, I never heard anything more of Mrs. Daley. I have to assume that at some point, she got down with the “Twist” one last time, straightened her skirt and walked out of Belmar Elementary for good. Maybe she spent her final years living near Thomas or Davis.

For the next forty years, this knowledge of Thomas and Davis became something to joke about, or something to impress drunk girls in bars. It was insider knowledge that my name was on the map. It made me feel special. I took this feeling with me from Pittsburgh to San Francisco. While working at KPIX in the eighties, I even remember seeing on a CBS network sports feed, murky videotape of a motorcycle enduro race that had taken place in Thomas or Davis. There was a guy in a crowd in one shot who fixed his eyes on a point in space, jerked his head out and snapped his teeth together as if he was snatching a fly out of the air with his mouth. 

I don’t remember when I decided to actually go to Thomas and Davis, but this journey became something of an obsession. For years and years I would get out our huge world atlas, crack it open to the map of West Virginia, and gaze longingly at  Thomas and Davis. When we moved from San Francisco to Chicago, the obsession deepened because now I was closer. When could I take the time to go? How would I get there? Who would I go with? What would I find there? Would some backwoods meth cook kill me for trespassing and bury my corpse in a shallow grave in some remote defile? What if I fell in love with a vegan hippie chick that sold crystals out of a small shop and I spent the rest of my life making dreamcatchers? I had to know.

So in May of 2011 I packed up the motorcycle and I rode there. First I went to Covington, Virginia to visit my aunt Evelyn Spurlock in the little town where my mother grew up. I had not been there since I was about fifteen years old. I also visited Joe, Marsha and Jordan Kristoff in Grottoes, Virginia. But Thomas and Davis were ultimately my goal. And I was quite pleasantly surprised by what I found there.

Evelyn Spurlock

Thomas and Davis are located high in the mountains amidst state and national forests. Surrounded by pristine land, the area is a summer haven for kayakers, mountain bikers, motorcyclists, hikers, hunters, fishermen, and, with 200” per year of snow, a winter destination spot for skiers. Both towns featured ample lodging, good places to eat and drink, and little boutique craft shops. Instead of pickups with gunracks, the place was infested by Volvos and Subarus with Washington D.C. license plates and canoes lashed to the roof.

See? There's a Volvo!

Thomas, West Virginia

Then came God’s little inside joke.

I have had quite a few close encounters with the health care system over the last few years. Lately, not so many. One of the things that has consistently bugged me is this.

When you go to a new doctor, they have you fill out a form. They ask for your last name, then your first name, etc. You fill out the form, turn it in to the receptionist and wait. After a few minutes, someone else will call you for your examination. But repeatedly, they would call “Mr. Thomas? Davis Thomas?”  This happened all the time. I mean come on! These are your forms! Don’t you read them before you give them to people? Davis Thomas!?!? Don’t you think that sounds weird?  Wouldn’t you figure this out after, like, the second form you read? I complained about this long and loud to anyone who would listen.

The radiation clinic got my name wrong. The office where I got chemo got my name wrong. The surgical units got it wrong. The robots that leave voicemail messages reminding me about appointments got it wrong. I got so exasperated that I thought about changing my name to Davis Thomas. Then they might get it right. But I have since calmed down. It would be a lot of work to officially get everything in my life changed to Davis Thomas.

So, while touring these eponymously named little towns, I went by the local middle school. And what was the school called? “Davis Thomas Middle School.” Oh, I thought, this is rich! I was suddenly overcome with a sense of elation. A smile spread over my face and I took lots of pictures of the sign. I couldn’t explain it, but was this what I had come to find? I felt like I  I had found my own personal treasure trove of irony, hidden away in the piney woods of West Virginia. Thomas Davis had obsessed over Thomas and Davis, seethed over being called "Davis Thomas" and had finally come to Thomas and Davis only to find another "Davis Thomas." I had to laugh out loud. Good one God! 

And at that moment I knew that somewhere, ghostly Mrs. Daley was looking down, smiling her deranged smile, dancing her spasmodic “Twist”,  elbows out and her diaphonous skirt swirling around her ankles, yelling "Do it!!...Do it!!!..."

Mozi the Tiger

                                         Mozi the Tiger 

     

I have been fortunate to work in the television and news business all of my adult life. From San Francisco to Stockholm, to Soddy Daisy, Tennessee, I have lugged, leapt, yanked, climbed, slept on the floor, hunched, been ordered away, ducked, fallen, crawled, been warned, cranked, glued, grabbed, been accused, laughed at, sweated, frozen, pulled, run, been hit on the head with a fly ball, and held my pee longer than I ever thought possible, in order to bring the news to the public. The ‘88 Earthquake, the Oakland Hills Fire, floods, droughts, landslides, the White Night riots, the Zodiac killer, politics, Jonestown, Oaktown, the Hells Angels, the Guardian Angels, crack, smack, hookers, onlookers, the SFPD, the OPD, the DNC, the FBI, the Bash Brothers, the Pope, Gorbachev, the Sex Pistols, the Super Bowl, the World Series, a sweat-soaked rabbit’s foot, and a talking T-bone steak, I have vivid memories of them all. But none of these stories and events are as strange and strangely memorable as Mozi the Tiger.

I was assigned to videotape Mozi for a show on my channel called “Your Courthouse At Work.” It featured segments about various aspects of the 19th Judicial Circuit in Illinois. It was produced by the judges themselves. You wouldn’t  think it, but the judges are the biggest cast of characters in the government. They are fashion conscious hale fellows well met, and generally a happy, life-loving crew. Their show features cooking segments, history segments, horseback riding, mock trials, and a segment on animal law, which is why we were going to visit Mozi the tiger. 

Judge John Phillips was our animal law guy. Working with him, I had videotaped racoons, dogs, ducks and geese, and now a baby tiger. This particular segment was about exotic pets: how it is generally not a good idea to have them, and how you are responsible for any havoc they create. The ongoing hunt for Burmese Pythons in the Florida Everglades is just one example of exotic pets gone wild to deleterious effect. The Xanax junkie chimpanzee in Connecticut who ripped off a woman’s face is another example. You’ve got to figure there’s a good reason why dogs and cats have come down through the ages as the most reasonable pets.

Judge Phillips was friends with Juergen and Judit Nurgles who had just come into possession of a baby tiger: Mozi. The Nurgles  have a “lion tamer” act with Juergen as the lion tamer, adorned in a  skin tight sequined body suit,cracking the whip in a cage full of big cats, while Judit prances around as eye candy. Juergen and Judit somehow escaped from East Germany back when it was the western bulwark of the Soviet empire. Juergen chain-smoked while quietly staring off into some distant future. Judit was a rail-thin blond who seemingly had adapted better to living in the moment. 

Just a word of caution here. Do not Google “Nurgles.” This is NSFW (Not Safe For Work) It will bring up a porn site called “Nurgle’s Nymphs” that features a bunch of big-lipped porn stars that wear a little too much makeup and will have future back problems, if you get my drift. There’s a bunch of other really, really weird stuff. Now, in my life, I have seen some weird stuff but as we all know, when it comes to really weird stuff, the internet has no equal.  I sacrificed and thoroughly checked this out so that you all don’t have to. You’re welcome.

The Nurgles lived in a trailer on a run-down old circus animal compound in Richmond Illinois. Outside the trailer a yellow Corvette roadster was parked on the grass. Their compound was smack in the middle of a recently developed housing subdivision. You drive past all of these new mini-mansions, that are surrounded by infant trees. But then, as you approach the compound, the scenery changes drastically. You see a huge stand of old-growth trees, surrounded by a thirty foot high chain link fence that is topped by razor wire, designed to keep curiosity seekers out, as much much as to keep something else inside. The property resembles nothing so much as a massive mohawk thatch on the crew cut landscape. 

I turned into the driveway and was stopped by a locked gate on which there is a sign that read: “Extreme Danger!! Do not enter unless accompanied by staff. If you have no business here, it’s best that you turn around and get the fuck out.” Or something to that effect.  I rang a buzzer that was mounted on a pole and spoke to someone on an intercom. They were expecting me. Juergen rode up on a bicycle after a few moments, unlocked the gate, and immediately locked it once my car was inside. He then motioned for me to follow him.

We drove across a field and past an enclosure that looked like the t-rex cage from “Jurassic Park:” rusty, telephone-pole sized bars enclosing a large open space adjacent to a dilapidated barn. I later learned that this was an old unused elephant enclosure. There were no elephants in sight, but I could hear the roar of big cats.

We stopped outside of a cluster of more dilapidated structures. I asked Juergen to use a restroom, and he directed me to a room at the end of a long hallway through a deserted building.

This building was really dark and creepy. Room after deserted room, full of broken furniture, peeling paint, shadows and  broken windows, all overlaid with the not-so-distant roar of big cats. The building would be the perfect setting for a zombie movie. I half expected to be jumped by a goalie-mask wearing assailant wielding a bloody axe. I kept a wary eye over my shoulder while I relieved myself in a filthy urinal.

Back out in the sunshine, we were introduced to Mozi. She was inside a small wire enclosure, eviscerating a poor stuffed teddy bear.  Her modus operandi was to stalk, seize the bear by the neck and chomp down, while raking teddy’s guts out with her rear claws. She was about the size of a German shepherd and just as cute as she could be. Poor teddy was looking much the worse for wear. She had also recently mangled and chewed up a folding aluminum lawn chair.

Someone had actually thought that it was a good idea to try to have Mozi as a pet. After all, I bet all the girls in the park would run up and coo about how cute she was and want to scratch her head. But I guess when your cute little tiger starts to teethe on your  furniture and playtime is spent practicing how to kill you, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea any more.

Judit put Mozi on a leash and took her out of the enclosure. Mozi lunged after a house cat that was hanging around the trailer. The house cat got big eyes and split. That was the last we saw of the house cat for the day. I miked up Judit and Judge Phillips and we went off into the grass to do the interview. Mozi now took an interest in me. She fixed me with that deadly cute stare, crouched down in the grass, then lunged in my general direction. Judit was doing her best to keep up a conversation with Judge Phillips, but when Mozi lunged, Judit was nearly yanked off her feet, like her coat had gotten caught in a departing taxi’s door. After one or two of these lunges I started to have doubts whether Judit’s shoulder could take much more, and I mentally prepared an escape route back to the safety of my car. Forget the camera. I can get another camera. A neck free of fang marks and an intact abdominal cavity are much preferred over any videography gear.

As the interview ended, Juergen emerged from the trailer, cigarette dangling from his lips, and inquired if we would like to see him work out the big cats. We readily agreed, and decamped to a barn-like structure with a huge cage built inside. There were millions of flies in this building; more flies than I had ever seen in my life to that point, and more than I’ve ever seen since. It could have been the motherland of all flies. The buzzing was incredible. There were buckets of raw meat, cut into cubes, sitting on a table by the door.

I set up my camera close to  the cage, where I could get a clear shot with no bars in the way. Juergen casually warned me to back off.  Sure there were bars, but the cats could reach through the bars and grab me so It would be best to be out of the reach of the cats, he explained. Seemed prudent.

At this point, Juergen entered the cage, armed with a whip, a long pole with a hook on the end, and wore a bucket of meat attached to his belt. He motioned for his helpers to release one of the cats.

A male lion shuffled into the cage, nonchalant and unconcerned. Juergen cracked the whip yelled “Caesar!!” and made a quick snapping motion.Caesar, all 600 pounds of him, easily  hopped up onto a platform that was about six feet off the ground, just like your kitty hopping up onto your sofa at home. I immediately felt a weakness in the knees. A human being, bereft of weapons, wouldn’t stand a chance against one of these in the wild. Welcome to the lower links of the food chain.

Juergen then motioned for more cats to be let into the ring. One, two, three, four, they just kept coming until there were ten tigers and Caesar inside the ring. Juergen ran them through their paces. At Juergen’s command, they stood on their hind legs,hopped and begged. They laid on the ground in a row while one of them leapt over the other’s backs. They leapt through flaming hoops hung from a structure ten feet off he ground. They vomited (hey, they’re cats, right?)  They wove their bodies through an elevated obstacle course. Each completed task was rewarded by a chunk of meat stuck on the hooked pole and given to the tiger. I guess Juergen may have been crazy enough to get in a cage with these things, but he wasn’t dumb enough to stick a hand in the big cat’s faces while holding a meat snack. The tiger might not recognize where the snack ended and Juergen began.

I was fascinated by the cats. But I guess I do have a survival instinct built into my brain and it was yelling: “Out...NOW!!”. My red alert alarm klaxon was going off big time.  My heart was pounding in my chest the whole time. I was ten feet away from a 400 pound meat eating predator that was doing tricks for a cube of raw meat. 

Plus, there was no way that I could use this footage that I’d shot. The interview was fine. But what possible connection, however tenuous, could justify airing a rehearsal for a lion tamer act on a government channel?

As I drove home I thought about what I’d just seen. I realized that watching a group of 400 pound tigers prancing around made me feel like I feel when I look at the starry sky at night: immensely irrelevant and small. What could my outrage at a parking ticket mean when a mountain-sized asteroid gets bumped out orbit between Mars and Jupiter, and heads for Earth? Against the backdrop of the Milky Way, my problems do not even register in any infinitesimal manner. Stars go supernova and do not materially affect the clockwork of galactic rotation. Being so close to these beautifully striped agents of my demise made me realize how irrelevant my life could become in an instant. The tiger would not care if I was depressed about going bald, worried about my kids, pissed off at my stupid neighbor who constantly parks his car in front of my house, or still sad because Jimi Hendrix died before he reached his true potential. Nope. To the tiger, I would be just one more meal, one that didn’t have sufficiently acute senses to warn me of the tiger’s presence, was too slow too run away, and was unable to do anything to defend itself once the tiger got ahold of me. Even the tiger’s infant offspring could strangle me and filet me like a trout. 

I often make jokes about how I am glad that I was born in 1951 instead of 1851 because I would have a lot of trouble living in a world without automobiles, indoor plumbing and underarm deodorant. To that I have to add that I am glad that I wasn’t born anywhere that big cats roam around at will.

R.I.P. Achilles

Around 10:40 AM on Saturday April 20th, Achilles the Cat went through the cosmic cat door, never to return again. He had been getting sicker and sicker, going from a robust 20 pounds down to a skeletal 6 pounds. The veterinarian thought he might have hyperthyroidism. We gave him anti-nausea medicine, and another medicine to regulate his thyroid. But nothing seemed to help him get better. He could not keep food down, and it was extremely painful watching him gag and drool.

He was not a lap cat. Neither of our cats are all that cuddly. But it was Achilles who would greet you at the door, and then feign that feline indifference to your presence. He always wanted to be with us, whether we were cooking, watching a movie, catching a nap in the recliner, or entertaining company. There he was, keeping an eye on the humans.

He had a rather extensive cat vocabulary. You could talk to him for minutes at a time, and he hardly made the same sound twice. For a while, I thought I could teach him how to say “ham” and he worked at it really hard.  But he never got it right. I guess you need lips to say “ham.”

Friday night, we all watched him suffering. We knew he was not getting better and it was time to face reality. The next morning, I called the vet and said we needed to put him to sleep. As I spoke to her, the words suddenly caught in my throat, and I couldn’t say it, “put him to sleep.” But I finally did. We held him and talked to him while he slipped away. Then we drove home in silence.

Back at the house, I washed out his bowl from his last meal. Then I went downstairs to put away his cat carrier. There is his empty bed at the top of the stairs. I still feel sad when I think about him. He was a good friend. It makes me want to believe that maybe we’ll be together again someday.  

So I’ll just say “See you soon pal!”

ROFACOM 1

R.O.F.A.C.O.M*

(*Random Observations From A Cranky Old Man)

(Sure Sign That The End Is Nigh: When you have to sit down to put your pants on, life as you know it is nearly over. I’m not there yet, but the thought occurred to me that this would be much easier than my current standing-balanced-on-one-foot method. Sitting means you could put your pants on both legs at the same time, then your boots, and only have to stand up once to zip up  and buckle. This would be more efficient than standing up and sitting down as required while pantsing and bootsing. Look, we Americans are the most productive people on Earth, and it is innovation in seemingly small areas like this that pays off on the bottom line. But sitting while getting dressed is something an old person would do.

I am trying to figure out which would be sexier to a woman who was observing my dressing ritual while she laid in bed, sheets pulled up to her chin in a belated attempt at modesty: standing and hopping around on one leg like a fluteless Ian Anderson, or sitting in a dressing chair with trousers puddled around my calves, redolent with the aura of dotard surrender. 

These are the thoughts that occupy my waking moments of consciousness.

Why It Sucks To Be Black Sometimes: I was sitting and waiting at a local takeout food joint one evening after dropping 50 bucks on a fried chicken dinner (Yeah, keep your jokes to yourself.), while texting the rest of the family with my ETA. A Skokie police officer entered and walked right up to me. “Hey what’s up?” he asked me rather loudly. I looked up from my phone and said: “Just waiting for my order to come up.” Just then someone from behind the counter shouted out: “No-it’s that guy back there!” The cop wheeled away in the direction indicated, and said loudly “Hey-they asked you to leave a while ago! Why are you still here?”

Nothing like being the instant suspect...

The Bubble Boy: I went to a drugstore one night last week with Hannah and wandered the aisles while she picked up, uh...”girl stuff.” I saw a giant bag of bubble gum in the candy aisle and thought ”What the hell...” so I bought it. Then I saw a massive jug of Mr. Bubble bubble bath on sale for $2.99. I hadn’t used that stuff since I was about six. So I bought that too. The next night, I popped a couple of pieces of gum, filled the tub with barely-tolerable hot water, added some Mr. Bubble, and soaked away the evening in steamy chewy splendor. 

Look, my credit’s good, I get my teeth cleaned every six months, and I hold doors open for people. So yeah- I got my bubbles on. Any questions?

Turn It Down Just A Hair: I love music. I love LOUD music. My favorite bands are Living Colour (going to see them April 11th!!) The Grip Weeds, the Andersen Council, Procol Harum, Apples In Stereo-I could go on. After years of editing film and video, and hanging out at the old Mabuhay Gardens in S.F. listening to the Dead Kennedys and Flipper, it’s amazing that I can still hear anything. The other day I was listening to an “urban” album when I thought I heard a buzzing sound coming from one of the loudspeakers. 

I pried the grille off and here is what I found:

Both woofers were like this.

I guess I need some new speakers.

And no, I will not turn it down.

Why Why Why Why Why?

While spending a night in a Holiday Inn in lovely Clinton, Iowa, we came across this wall lamp in our 3rd floor penthouse suite. 

A lamp is a lamp, what? But then I noticed this:

Why was this necessary? What was the decision-making process behind screwing a lamp to the wall, then blanking off access to AC power so you couldn’t use the lamp? I mulled this over. I suspect this was done after some form of outrageous behavior involving the lamp had taken place in the room. Possibly alcohol or drugs were involved. 

You know I’m right.

Life Is Simple for Some, for Me, Not So Much:

My old Ray-Ban “Python” sunglasses are worn out. I’ve had them for ten years, and the coating on the lenses is wearing off. So I purchased a pair of “Wayfarers” online Feb. 9th from an “official Ray-Ban vendor.” I waited and waited-no sunglasses. Finally, I tracked the package with the shipper. The point of origin was Shanghai, China. Shanghai? For real? Isn’t there a loose pair of “Wayfarers” somewhere in the f**king western hemisphere? 

3/4/13 Update: I did some snooping around on the internet and discovered that the site where I purchased my “Wayfarers,” the “RayBan Sun Store,” is notorious for sending out fakes or just not delivering merchandise at all. I called my credit card company, disputed the purchase, and got my payment, which, no lie, had been converted into Malaysian ringgits, credited back to my account. Sure enough (irony is so predictable), the next day the “Wayfarers” arrived. I used a 6-point checklist from eHow.com to determine whether they were fake or real. Fake!!. I have to take them to an authorized RayBan retailer and get them to also determine that these are fake. I will do so tomorrow.

3/5/13 Update: According to the young woman at Sunglasses Hut, they’re fakes! I did buy some genuine “Wayfarers” directly from RayBan, so all is as it should be, and if I say so myself, I look like James Dean if he was black, bald, didn’t smoke, and he was 61.

Overheard Cell Phone Conversation At My Gym:

“Hello...hello Len? It’s John. Yeah. I’m at the gym. I’m fin’to work out.”

(Pause)

“Yeah. I’m at the gym. I’m fin’to work out.”

(Pause)

“I said I’m at the gym. I’m fin’ to work out....the gym, yeah. I’m fin’to work out”

(Pause)

(Laughter)

“Yeah, I’m at the gym. I’m fin’to work out.”

“I’m at the gym...”

I don’t know how the conversation ended, because at this point my limited attention span expired. But this conversation was still going on in this vein as I exited the locker room.

BTW, “fin’to’” is mushmouth for “fixin’ to” which means “getting ready to.” Had to clear that up...

Walking Home In A Dream:

I haven’t physically been to Pittsburgh in about three years. But I find I often travel there at night. I wander through a dreamscape of fiery steel mills beside the river. I climb improbably wide cobblestone streets lined by dense greenery, past silent, empty-eyed row houses, illuminated by the light of a setting sun. Sometimes I find myself in the basement of the house where I grew up, looking through cupboards filled with dusty crystal punchbowls, and metal boxes full of cutlery and tools. The hell if I know what I’m looking for, but I keep looking.

Last night, I walked home from middle school.

I went to Sterrett School, located in the Point Breeze neighborhood. When the weather was good, I’d walk home, in order to save the fifteen cent bus fare, which I could then spend on penny candy to eat while I watched the 3 Stooges on TV. It was always a good walk in the autumn-not too hot, the lawns in the parks littered with shiny buckeyes. I would pass by the firehouse at Lang and Penn Ave., through Westinghouse Park, across a pedestrian bridge over some railroad tracks, past a looming Westinghouse plant, which was across the street from Westinghouse Pool. This pool had a sign that read:

                 ”We don’t swim in your toilet, please don’t pee in our pool.” 

At the bottom of a hill was a Carnegie library where my mother took me to a puppet show when I was...? I do remember the puppet show, sitting on her lap. I used to take out books about sports cars and airplanes from that library.

It was a pretty good time in my life, middle school. Yes, there was the whole Cuban Missile Crisis, and then Kennedy was assassinated. But skirts were very short and I liked looking at the girls. There was this new band from England called the Beatles. I learned about the world from magazines: “Time,” “Life,” “Road & Track” and “Mad” were my favorites. There were beatniks in East Liberty and Shadyside. I wanted to be an aircraft mechanic and drive a Triumph TR-4A.  Every night I listened to Chuck Brinkman’s “Hitline” on KQV, on a tiny transistor radio secreted under my pillow. My brother John was off in Vietnam.

When I woke up this morning, I wondered when was the last time I walked out the door at Sterrett School, the last time I crossed Penn Ave. on Lang, the last time I crossed over that bridge, past the plant and the pool, the last time I was in that library. Did I know it was going to be the last time I would ever walk by those places? What do they look like now? And what about people? When you say “Later!” to some waiter, or a passing acquaintance on the train, how do you know it’s not the last time you’re ever going to see that person? What happens to them?You never know. I look at people today and wonder will I ever see them again? 

These are the thoughts that occupy my waking moments of consciousness.

The Tiny Black Hole of Screws

Greetings fellow Earthlings! I use our universal planetary salutation as a way to introduce the topic of dangerous “cosmic elementals,” as Riley Martin puts it. Within the last week we have been buzzed by near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14, had 200,000 square feet of glass in Chelyabinsk shattered by the shockwave from the exploding Chebarkul meteorite, and been galvanized by reports of fireballs over San Francisco, Florida, and Cuba. The one over S.F. might have been an incomplete Colin Kaepernick pass returning to earth.

It seems as if we are living in some kind of galactic shooting gallery. But I have observed another far more sinister form of cosmic elemental at work: The Tiny Black Hole of Screws.

Here’s how I discovered this anomaly.

I was replacing a tail light bulb on my wonderful SAAB Sport Combi on a beautiful Saturday afternoon several weeks ago. This is a simple task: remove two Torx fasteners, remove the plastic tail lamp housing, swap old bulb for new, replace the plastic tail lamp housing, retighten the Torx fasteners. Even a ham-handed interloper like myself should be able to do this. All went according to plan ( well, I did pulverize one of the bulbs...) until I dropped one of the Torx fasteners and just like that...it vanished.

Gone, disappeared, evanesced, evaporated, dematerialized...

I looked everywhere, inside the car, on the ground, in the grass.

It just...went...poof! I looked for a half an hour and found nothing. Needless to say, my search was punctuated by colorful muttered curses, and unanswered pleas to God for mercy. 

I went to the SAAB dealer in the hope that they would be able to sell me a replacement, and the guy at the parts counter was able to do so ($5.50!!!) all the while keeping a straight face. But I was still as amazed as I was annoyed. The Torx fastener had fallen all of six inches and just ceased to exist in the corner of our totality occupied by myself.

And why did SAAB insist on using Torx fasteners to begin with? SAAB’s slogan used to be “Built in Trollhatton by Trolls.” Are Trolls incapable of using a Phillips screwdriver? Every screw on the SAAB is a Torx fastener. Even the license plates are screwed on by Torx fasteners. No matter how elaborate your toolkit, you will be reduced to sobs of impotence unless you buy a set of drivers to fettle these devilish inventions.



I know it looks kind of like a Star of David but let’s not get distracted.

Last night I had another mysterious fastener disappearance.

I was setting up my camera on my tripod. I was trying to screw the tripod shoe onto the bottom of the camera. Once attached, this is what secures the camera to the tripod. I was fumbling away when again...I dropped the screw.

But this time was different!! I saw the flash!! It was the Tiny Black Hole of Screws!!

It was just a tiny flash as the screw was pulled across the event horizon and was being torn apart by the massive gravitational forces at work inside the  Tiny Black Hole of Screws. Once I worked out what had just happened, I instantly knew what had happened to my long lost Torx fastener. It too had been ripped from this part of space time by the Tiny Black Hole of Screws. It had traveled through the worm hole, and probably materialized on some alien world, perhaps OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, just discovered in orbit around red dwarf star OGLE-2005-BLG-390L, just 21,500 ± 3,300 light years from our solar system. 

What if the Tiny Black Hole of Screws was sucking up dropped fasteners from all over the Earth? Can you imagine the hail of screws just from India and China raining down on some metagalactic plane?

I then began to worry. I used to watch Star Trek “Deep Space Nine” and knew that a possibly murderous alien society might inhabit the part of the space time continuum at the other end of the worm hole and they might be pissed to a fare thee well about all these fasteners just showering down on their dimension. They might be able to use the Tiny Black Hole of Screws to invade our sector of the cosmos and get all up in our grille. They would probably be pretty small though.

Then-there was another tiny flash, and I saw my tripod screw lying on the carpet about six feet away. I had looked there before, with a flashlight, and there was no screw there five minutes earlier!! Thank Jupiter I found it though, because these tripod screws are as rare as snake bunions, and I would have been royally screwed without it: no screw, no camera on tripod, a difficult day ahead.

So I have learned that I have to take better care of my screws. There is no telling when the Tiny Black Hole of Screws will open and again suck a fastener off to some void. Riley Martin says that the Biavians have promised to protect us from large scale random planetary threats like asteroids, but we are otherwise on our own. 

Adrift in my own ocean of emptiness,

Tom