Robin Williams

          I was saddened to hear of Robin William's death. Late-night television will never be the same. People are compelled to tell stories about him in his memory and many of the stories are far more important than mine. But it's my Robin Williams story, and the time to tell it is now.
          I was at a men's clothing shop on Melrose avenue in the mid-eighties. I was trying on a sports jacket. That's what we did back then. I was aware of a man standing next to me. He came into the store after me and was trying on jackets as well. I paid him no mind. But at some point I looked over and realized it was Robin Williams. We both had jackets on and simultaneously turned toward each other. He asked, "how does this look?" The jacket he was wearing was a pond-scum green color. "I'm not sure it's your color," I said.
          "That jacket looks great on you, but it's a little wide around the shoulders," he said to me.
          I looked at myself in the mirror. He was right. We both took off our jackets and hung them back on the rack. Neither of us were interested in buying one. We stared at the jackets on the rack one last time before stepping away as if to leave. I nodded my head to Robin and said, "have a good day," he nodded his head to me and said, "you too."

Big Trees

          I've taken to saying outlandish things to strangers in bars. The other night I told a man that I liked hunting moose. When he pressed me for details about the type of gun I used, I replied "I use a musket, old school." I've learned that if you speak with conviction humans are apt to believe it.
          This part is true. I spent three days on a forty-nine acre ranch near Sequoia. The ranch had three springs that emptied into a swimming pond. There was a herd of goats with long menacing horns on their heads. The goats scared easily. Maybe they knew I was thinking of them as bowls of soup. There was a dog named Roxanne from the great Pyrenees mountains. She escorted us to our cabin at night to protect us from mountain lions and bears. We hiked near the ranch and came upon giant trees. Some of the trees were over three thousand years old. Fire couldn't kill them. Lightning had tried and failed. Loggers brought some of them down, but the trees were too big for them to move, so they lost money.
          There were Indian spirits, but talking about Indian spirits makes you sound like a lunatic so I didn't say a word. And if you yelled into the distance, the distance yelled back. 
          

The Metric Imperials

          When I was a teenager, if you bought a bag of weed it was called a lid. Generally speaking, there were two finger lids and three finger lids. I've heard of four finger lids, but I think it's an urban myth. The unit of measurement was the height of two or three fingers put together. The weed was sold in a plastic baggy and you'd hold your fingers up to the baggy and call it even at some point. It was the hippie system of measurement.
          Things changed when I was in high school. The grass industry became more sophisticated. It employed the metric system as a form of measurement. Pot was measured in grams. A small bag of weed was a gram. It seemed like a gyp, but the weed was better so it evened out. The next step up from that was an eighth. An eighth of what was unclear. I always thought it was an eighth of an ounce, but that wouldn't make sense, if it was the metric system. Or was it the British Imperial System? You can buy a gram or an ounce, a pound or a kilo. It's still like that. It's higgledy-piggledy. 

The Information Age

           I had a realization the other day that I'm not cut out for the Information Age. First off, I don't have a smart phone, I have a burner. It's a throw-away flip phone that I use in case of an emergency. On occasion, I'll receive a text from a friend and most times I'm surprised by it. And sometimes I'll receive a phone call, but it's my policy never to answer unless it's really important. I find that if I get more than one text consecutively, I get worked up as if somehow my privacy is being invaded. I caught myself the other day getting angered by a singular text message, and I had to ask myself, "what the hell is wrong with you Anthony?" To which I concluded that I'm not made for the Information Age, (I didn't want to pry too deeply into it).
           There are some whom I refer to as fancy texters, who will text five or six messages consecutively. That style of texting is the most egregious to me. I find myself yelling "stop!" when that happens. If you're a close friend I'll pull you aside and have talk with you at some point, "You know that texting style you have? It drives me loony, can you formulate a complete thought and send it all at once?" Most times people are a tinge insulted, as if I'm telling them to shut up. But I'm not telling them to shut up. I'm telling them to talk more at once, which is the complete opposite of shut up. How many times have you heard that- talk more at once? Probably never.

A Bad Year For Corn

         It's been a bad year for corn. I planted two different varieties and both have performed unsatisfactorily. It looks like the two varieties became one and in their confusion they forgot to make corn. The corn that is there looks ill formed and incomplete. I've never seen anything like it in all my corn-growing days.
         Last year's crop was spectacular. I had so much corn I didn't know what to do with it. I planted one variety last year, and I made sure that the weeds were cleared. I was more meticulous. This year, I let the weeds grow in. I had a notion that the insects would stay in the weeds and leave the corn alone. But I think the weeds sucked all the nutrients from the soil and the poor corn suffered for it.    
         Who knows, really. I'm just glad I'm not a farmer. My family would starve. 

The Wizard

        There's a guitar player in the neighborhood who plays a fuzz-tone guitar. I call him the Wizard. He usually plays on weekends. I'll hear him playing in the distance, rock classics mostly. Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, War Pigs, a bit of Creedence. It soothes me to hear him play. It's his tone that makes me smile. It's positively cliche, and that's brilliant to me.
        There's no telling when the Wizard's going to play next. He tends to play in the afternoon, or just before sundown. I heard him play at eight-thirty in the morning once. He wasn't shy about the volume either. No matter, he's the Wizard. He can play as loud as he wants, whenever he wants. Nobody's going to complain. No one ever complains. It's a Mexican neighborhood. 
       
     
        

Adam's Rib

           I went to a rib joint and had a singular rib for dinner. I thought I was getting ribs, but no, it was just one rib. Albeit it was a big rib from a big steer with as much meat as three or four ribs, but it just wasn't the same. Having a rib for dinner changes everything.
          "Honey let's have a rib tonight!" 
          It's hard to get excited about a rib.