The Ghetto Hug

I needed to buy some software at a reasonable price. I found someday online on Craigslist. I emailed him and he emailed me, and after going back and forth a few times, we took the next step and I gave him my phone number. He called me. We talked. I told him what I needed. He said he had it, and that he could deliver it in an hour. I said great! Meet me at the corner of. He said he’d call me when he was in the neighborhood. An hour later true to his word he called me to say he was nearby. I could tell by his voice that he was a young black man in his late twenties, early thirties. Sure enough a black man in a brand new silver Jaguar pulled up. His girlfriend was asleep in the passenger seat. It looked like she had it rough, but she didn’t, she had it easy. She had her forearm over her eyes, and looked very unhappy.

He was friendly from the get go. He got out of his car and opened his trunk. Hey man I said. We were instant buddies, friends, pals. We shook each others hand and give a ghetto hug and preceded to business. He handed me a cracked copy of what I needed and gave me quick instructions on how to load it. Do you have music software? I asked, while handing him the money. Yeah I have bling bam boom. I said great. I can sell to for ten bucks. What else do you have? I have bang boom blah, and zing zang maa. Cool I said. We were in Hancock Park at the corner of with the trunk open talking about software, not weed, or crack like in the old days, but software. Technology. We gave each other another ghetto hug, shook each other’s hand and went our separate ways. I had the product and he drove away with the sleeping beauty with the headache.

The Mural

I was at a dinner party the other night and I got too talking with a woman. She seemed nice enough. She was the kind of woman I normally wouldn’t talk to unless I was at a dinner party.

During the course of our conversation she mentioned that she once lived in San Francisco.

“So did I,” I said, “where'd you live?”

“North Beach.”

“I lived there too.’

“I went to the art institute,” she said.

“The school with the Diego River mural?

“I don’t remember a mural.”

I had to check myself for a moment.

“The school on the hill, built in a Spanish style?” I asked her.

“That’s the one,” she said.

I was beginning to have my doubts about the lady. I thought everybody knew about the Diego Rivera mural that was in the main gallery. This woman must be absent I thought.

“It’s a famous mural, Diego’s on a scaffold with his buttocks sticking out.”

She was confused. I didn’t belabor the point, but I found it odd that she didn’t know about the mural.

Then the woman told me a story about how she use to man handle her dog when he was a poppy. She looked stone cold crazy while she told the story.

Sometime later the woman got up to leave the party. She looked at me with a scow as she walked out. She looked mean, as if she wanted to kill me. What did I do?

I waved to her and said bye, but I had a bad feeling about her.

On my way home it occurred to me that woman was lying about attending the art institute. She had to be lying. There is no way you can attend that school and not know about the Rivera painting. Why would she lie about something like that? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had.

The Jam

The best music jams are never heard. I witnessed one of the all time great jams the other night and when I turned around to see who was watching, or better yet, listening, there was three of us, and one guy was the soundman. The rest of the party had gone inside, or left altogether. The jam was a party killer.

Try to imagine four ugly guys, one not so ugly guy and one guy who was handsome, but well into his fifties jamming on Europa by Santana. Granted I had had a significant amount of booze by this time, but it didn’t matter, great musicianship is great musicianship despite the state of the intoxicated.

There were three guitar players, bass, drums and a harmonica and I didn’t hear one bad note from anybody. The complexity of the solos made musicians on late night talk shows look and feel sub par. The bass and drums didn’t miss a beat. The harmonica player played maracas when he wasn’t blowing. It was beautiful. It was the confluence of nature being transmitted through the hearts and minds and fingers of six men who never played together before. But none of that mattered. The language of music is the simplest of all forms of communication. A nod here, a look in the eyes there, a lifting of the hand, and it all comes together. Of course these musicians were seasoned. They had put in years and years of practice. They weren’t playing for money. They weren’t even playing for an audience. They were playing for the love of music, and the love of life.

Serge

My friend, lets call him Serge, was telling me a story about his experience with the blue pill.

Serge took in a younger woman, a roommate of sorts. She fell right into his lap. His boss approached him one day and asked if he'd be willing to take in the bookkeeper. The bookkeeper was new in town and she needed a place to stay. Serge agreed.

The bookkeeper was a in her forties and Serge in his sixties. Serge had it in mind to have sex with her one day, but he wasn’t holding his breath. Their relationship from the beginning was friendly and honest. The bookkeeper was to pay Serge rent each month and everything was to be on the up and up.

The end of the month came and went and the bookkeeper didn’t pay her rent. An old bookkeeping trick I presume. A week later she gave Serge half the rent and said she’d have to work off the rest, she said this with a wink and smile. Serge was no fool and he immediately understood what she was saying.

“I’ll be right back!” Serge said.

He went to the bathroom and reached into the medicine cabinet. There he found what he was looking for. The blue pill. He sliced it in half with a razor blade. He turned on the water to the bathroom sink, put half of the pill in his mouth, and swallowed it.

They went at it for the next hour and half. At first they were in the bedroom, then they were in the living room, then the kitchen, soon they were out of rooms altogether and Serge was still going strong, he was overtaken by the blue pill. He no longer had control of himself. He said he could feel his heart racing, pumping, but there was nothing he could do to slow himself down. The pill had worked miracles. It was a wonder he didn’t have himself a heart attack.

“Did your hips hurt in the morning?” I asked.

“Hell yeah.”

Hare Krishna

Where’ve all the Hare Krishna’s gone? When I was a kid they were everywhere, on street corners, at airports, at sporting events, at concerts. You couldn’t go anywhere without being harassed by a Hare Krishna. They’d dance and sing and bang on their drums in their loose fitting robes, their hair shaved to the skin with ponytails sticking out from the back of the heads. But today they’re gone. Vanished. I miss the spectacle. I miss their antiquated attire. Enrollment must have slipped. Maybe they won a big law suit and don’t need the money anymore. It’s strange, they’ve just plum disappeared.

The Death of Emil

I just finished reading O Pioneers by Willa Cather, which I enjoyed immensely. The third person was refreshing. I’m reading The Plague by Albert Camus now. The Plague started off slowly. I almost gave up on it. The first chapter was driving me nuts. Then Camus’ writing style changed suddenly and his writing became clearer, and less pretentious. O Pioneers was will written, but at times kind of girlie. I knew what was going to happen before it happened, except for the death of Emil. That took me by surprise. It was well written and entertaining, so the fact that I knew what was going to happen didn’t bother me as much. I also started the first chapter of Moby Dick. That started off with a thud too. I’m going hang in there with The Plague and Moby and hope for the best.

There is so much to read. I tend to break down good writing to its simplest form. The book of fiction is in my view for the purpose of entertainment. Why else do we sit down to read. We read to be entertained. Many writers lose sight of this, and academics are in another world all together when comes to the qualities of good writing. They tend to think command of the language and plot is more important. Henry Miller more then any other writer I’ve read had command of the English language, but he was a bad story-teller. He was more interested in the word than the story, and as a result he tended to meander. His brilliant mind for words sacrificed the essence of the story. His genius was lost in micro content. He basked in his own mind and lost track of the purpose of writing, which is to entertain. You can disagree with me if you like, that’s all well and good, but if a book is not entertaining chances are it won’t be read.

Leaf Blowers

On windy days like today, leaf blowers are rendered useless.