Frequently Surprised

I'm not ignorant but I'm not smart either.

Someone will say, "Well, you know about those dudes, they're not too bright."

And really, I usually don't know that. I don't recognize imbecility unless you've missed your mouth and smooshed your ice cream cone into your forehead.

I don't expect stupidity and I don't look for it (except on some internet message boards, I guess, where it's malignant and then hilarious when some wise guy points it out).

Going out on a limb, I’ve always figured most people are of average intelligence.

A dull speechlessness and an apparent lack of interest in the world? I strike that up to depression or mental illness usually.

When my family had this Video/Pizza place in Sherwood Forest Shopping Centre, the pizzeria was run by its owner's younger brother, Chuck.

Chuck was my favorite of the pizzeria family. We worked together, watched movies (and ate pizza) on summer weekday afternoons while waiting for customers. (Thinking about this now, I'm about to change the subject of this little essay to "Rough Justice". I was working for free because I'd dropped out of college for the third time.)

Chuck would skip out somewhere and I'd watch after his side of the store.

I'd make frequent slips over to the bar next door, where I was somehow throwing 20 bulls-eyes in a row on their dart-board. (Zen miracle. I think I was having sex those days, had a girlfriend somehow). Chuck didn’t mind my absences. He was engrossed in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

My folks upset me, talking about Chuck. They'd had some dealings with him while first opening the business, I guess, and something prompted them one evening to exclaim to me, Oh John, that Chuck is a little slow. The way he talks, when he talks, you can tell.

I went "huh? You mean Chuck? Chuck, Chuck?”

“Chuck, you mean? You don’t mean Chuck."

He's nice, they said, very nice, but he can't run things very well.

Dad said something about him not being able to sell insurance. That remark probably crossed my eyes a bit. Insurance... isn’t that complicated?

I started to argue but then blushed. If I couldn’t tell that Chuck was a mooncalf, a nit twit, a moron, this would mean I was slow too! Right? And I didn't want them to have to acknowledge that to themselves. Not after all these years of me being such a bright boy.

Then I thought, wait. They know me better than anyone, what’s the…

HEY!!

I smarted for about a decade.

Good old Chuck. He laughed at the right times during our movie marathons. Come to think of it though, he wanted to watch Ferris Bueller over and OVER.

But he seemed to get all the jokes! Not the Marx bros. movies, maybe. But I mean what more? Maybe he was into golf more than books, but that's not dumb, that's fun.

He was a nice guy!

And I bet he objected when his brothers all moved the pizzeria in the dead of night and left our struggling business stranded!

Oh.

This all comes to mind now because of something my new friend Doofus said this week, at work. Upper management had held a meeting about our concerns but they didn't invite us, or any of the principals apparently, and then they issued a memo that not only contradicted itself, but made our troubles worse.

Doof was philosophical about it, and even amused. (So was I, I guess, since I'm only playing a game anyway, trying to get less work for more pay, and more respect for less work.) (Yeah...Recovery.)

"You got to remember, John, look, these people here, they're not too bright are they. Now I just overheard your boxx talking to you, and ..."

I interrupted, "Yeah, what was he saying anyway? I couldn't get it together fast enough to understand. I was busy processing that he was actually speaking to me."

"He was saying that you're a bindery employee... in charge of returns. Not to forget that he's your boss, but don't bother him about returns. And don't take any action without telling him first."

"Oh."

"See?"

"OH !"

"Catching on?" Doofus laughed.

Actually, I wasn't. I need to take some things home and think.

"Don't make trouble drawing attention to problems. And what do you care anyway, right?"

"Well...I care when I'm here. Nothing else to care about..."

"Ha, ha. You remind me of myself two years ago. Actually, it was fun putting them on the spot but I got tired of it after awhile. Now I just make sure I get to spend at least 60% of my time out of the office."

I'm still disbelieving.

I don't know who's dumb, especially in a damn factory or a business.

I want to say "meh", but since I'm around some people who mystify and anger me, I'm not able to.

But if these people are "dumb"---if that’s the “answer”--- I still don't know how to deal, you know? Because how do you anticipate an imbecile?

Am I being flummoxed by knuckleheads? Maybe this is how parents come to their wits end with their kids.

And you know what? I’ve won chess games this way. My genius opponent will say “hm!” and think he’s got a challenger. My random, senseless moves are frightening. Dumbfounding. "What's next!! I withdraw!"

That's always funny. It's one of my favorite things I do.

"He's Lying. He's Pulling The Company Leg. "

insert speed and color

That's one of those slippery glossy newspaper inserts in a blur there, what Lileks calls the fish guts of your Wednesday edition. I'm surprised with this phone camera pic. Of course I know what to recognize. Everythings clear, up close, including the lazer eye (which is meant to set off sirens if your pocket jams or runs out, not if someone sticks their hand in there. It's not a safety feature, I mean. Not that I'm complaining, just was told the other day that other factories have these electric eyes for the purpose of safety, not simple efficiency.


Summer afternoon, our carriers and haulers waiting for the afternoon paper to come out on the outside conveyer belt.

I think that's the first time I've dared point my camera at these folks. Anyway, the picture (and camera) can't do justice. Behind me you'd see a line of cars going half a block.

All is well. Except I'm in trouble with the big Boxx since I keep squirmy-worming my way out of watching this hour long video on hearing loss after my shift ends.

Wish they'd have a matinee during my assembly line hours. That's what I'm waiting for of course.

H.R. is on the hunt and I am one of three they haven't got yet (out of a hundred, I'm in the 97th percentile there!) Today I put an extravagent promise in writing, hey, I'll be here at 6 a.m. Sunday morning if you want! Just not this afternoon, is all!
Dropped it on the communal table they have in that office.

"as always, yr mst ob. srvt. J/returns / bindery dept. (HI MARVA!)"

Surface

In 1972 when Dad worked for Bishman Manufacturing Company he hauled around a sample Tire Changer, model 880, on a trailer. It was big and odd and beautiful.

In the covered pickup itself there were all sorts of wonderful new, invariably sky blue machines for service stations, with dials like these.

I played submarine from Friday early evening, when he got home, until Sunday when he left for another week of traveling salesmanship. I'd come out all sweaty, craving fresh fruit and vegetables.

It was always just one battle, I never won the war, probably due to my vanishing imagination around age 11.

Next, Dad became a C.B. radio wholesale representative. Whoa! Our car now had a two-way radio. I'd sit in the car from Friday until Sunday. Locals in Okapalaka fooled me that they were calling from Alaska. My handle was "Zonker", after the Doonsbury character.

Then the company he worked for expanded into consumer electronics in general, in 1976 I believe (around the time we moved to Capital City). So we all got stereos for birthdays or Christmas. But I liked to blast my music and was embarrassed how often I played certain songs over and over, so I sat in the car and played the stereo in it.

Then the company began to sell video games wholesale. And finally, VHS movies. We didn't think that would work, people buying movies. They'd rent them, sure. So for awhile the customers were all those budding Mom and Pop video stores. (We even started one ourselves, combined with a pizzeria. A disaster. Pa Kettle has a video interview with me somewhere, during this time. He'd keep panning over to where the fly by night pizzeria USED to be, as I talked and smoked a doobie.)

Sometime in this time line I managed to read books. Not sure how. And it's strange I never got into the video games, except for one three month period where I crippled my thumb to the point I couldn't open a car door. I think we're in the '80s now. Well, yes, certainly. And how much am I leaving out.

Focus here on something...

Then Dad went to work for Thorn/EMI, as a factory rep., and his job was to travel the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada showing movies to wholesalers. "First Blood" and "Amadeus" payed for my first years pretending to go to college. (AH! That's when I read, when I was supposed to be in class! I read and I drank and took a lot of drugs.) Thorn/EMI was then bought out by HBO.
_____
Man I don't know how I got started here...OH. That photo above. The dials. Just like the Bishman 800 Tire Changer.

I miss my submarine, that's all.

And, oh yeah, Dad too.

Geez, he had it going, really apace with the 70's and 80's especially. The next step was obviously home computers and the internet but he died in 1991. (He must have seen it all coming though, attending the annual Consumer Electronics Convention in Las Vegas every year.)

I don't know how I feel suddenly.

Prized Possession (New!)

Twenty years ago I found a copy of "Artist's Bedroom" within a large portfolio of posters, published in 1937.

The damnedest thing, this two foot by one and a half foot spiral book with six Van Gogh pictures, perforated for removal and framing. Some were already removed, and missing, others were still attached.

This one was loose enough. In 1985 I put it on the wall over my bed (I believe I was playing Jeeves in the Zigfield and Frannie Show).

I've kept it all these years, thumb-tacked to the wall where ever I've lived. Every move I've made, it's gained an emotional patina while fading from exposure to smoke and the elements. It was faded to begin with, of course, but I have always loved it and even modeled some of my bedrooms after it.

Well, today I recieved a gift. A slightly different version of the painting (it's his bedroom in an asylum, so apparently he painted it more than once). This is from the woman "who's comb I stole" at the long term residential treatment center where we lived last summer.

It is smaller and beautifully framed behind GLASS, gosh! I mean this is no dorm room poster!! And the color just leaps. This above doesn't do it justice at all (in fact I'm tempted to use Paint to make it look as I see it).

Anyway, I haven't had a new prized possession in years probably. This really means something, and it's special not only because it's from Her (ferlinghetti 'Her') but it's still associated with my life before.

Indescribable. How can I explain this is two sentences? 1937 print of an 1889 masterpiece, bought at a 1980 flea market, now replaced but not actually replaced you see...Enhanced is the word.

Anyway if you are a fellow recovering drunk, you'll understand my reaction, which is, "What is this feeling?"


my 1937 poster


my present today

An interesting story about the paintings is here. There were three versions.

Peacing out

window shopping with Flora

The temps were down in the early 70's today, like Good Times or Happy Days or Alice, and someone said it felt like Fall and I thought , no, that's alarmist, that's enemy propaganda or something there, and a prime time line-up from hell, to boot.

Then when I got home from work and into my cell, an old desire returned to me, one I haven't had in my new life forever.

Hermitage.
Old movies.
Not a chance of a knock on the door.
Shades drawn.
Anonymity.

The Keg.

Six months since that shadow has passed over my thoughts. It wasn't a true desire, or blind impulse, thank goodness. And it wasn't an irritant either.

But I have to admit a forlorn feeling welled up, almost like nostalgia. (Nostalgia: about as complex an emotion I'm capable of having still, and I don't like it. Never did! really. Nostalgia makes me want to sit in a tub of hot water until I let out the drain and then I don't get up until I'm just sitting there naked and cold. )

My old desire to drink has been so completely absent, I don't even include the subject in my prayers. Never "lord, help me not drink today". But this 'disease' is tricky and I do have to be wary. I consider today a slip, actually. I'd have rushed to a meeting but I go to meetings everyday anyway, sometimes two or even three. Maybe should have called my sponsor, he'd have been thrilled.

My work place was like a busy little city today. Strangers in the forklift roads, palates presenting a brand new city street plan with odd byways and dead-ends. Earlier this week it was like an empty stadium. I'd look around and spot someone a hundred yards away, disappearing.

Good! We are busy. The company, unlike most daily papers, is growing , after changing into a major publishing business. There's a new contract for these Electric CO-OP magazines, from out of state now. Here, in our home state, each county has it's own edition, or cover anyway. I wonder how many counties New Mexico has.

I started to think, 'say'.

say, say...

Maybe I arrived here on the ground floor just as the company itself is on the ground floor. I mean, maybe this is home and I turn old and gray here and rich enough never to worry.

That lead to the stanger thought that work ain't so bad. It gets you out of the house. You like to get out, work with people, meet characters like the opera singer we have who loads trucks. (He sings gloriously and not just to himself but to entertain all the people who line up in their cars and wait for the afternoon editions. I should say, sometimes he sings. Usually on Friday afternoons. I guess when he's happy!)

Work is good. There's the intrigue still with the circulation department and returns (me). I have settled one of three major issues with CIRC so far, with the help of my great new friend Doofus, who spies for me. Doofus is also smart, and it's funny because I'll suddenly realize, hey, this wasn't my idea it was Doofus who put me up to this. My latest "idea", I caught him whispering to me. It's to announce to all carriers that there will be one day (announced to them well in advance) I will count ALL returns, and reconcile everything with their manifests and the accountants' books. After that, I'll allow the obvious truth that I can only spot check usually, BUT, you never know, after this day, when I might have ANOTHER special inspection day.

Doofus may have it in for me, I don't know. He acted a bit amazed at our first accomplishment, kind of like and older kid who'd egged (edged?) me on to play a prank or something.

But it's a good idea, even when you factor in my bad alcoholic motivations, which are numerous and Machavelian. Good for the paper, good for the advertisers.

Good for the good guys who play it straight.

wrapping this up. Time vanishes at the keyboard and I'm up early tomorrow (NYTimes to Topeka Day). No re-reading or editing this so pardon the clumsy.

Season change, nostalgia, a brief relapse to hermitage, a renewed interest in the public sphere, you might say. All good. And I will start to include the obvious in my prayers. God please don't ever let me drink again.

"thanks, I've had enough".

From Cherry Street

That is the house where I had my 'media crib'. I moved to town and was drunk for 13 months. I stayed 'til a judge sent someone to collect me on the flimsy grounds of being on flimsy grounds. (Was he right, and just in time too, I was fixin' to die.)

Next door is our town's best resturant, and that is the Methodist Church where I attend some AA meetings.

I knew that church was nearby when I was drinking. But it seemed like it would be an incredible distance.

Behind all of that is one of downtown's most popular streets, for bars, coffee shops, bookstores, veggie/fruit juice joints, vintage clothing, and pleasent baby-buggy strolling.

My brother had a dream about me.

my oakapalloka friends and I were visiting you in western Minnesota and were snubbed as bigots by Dick Van Dyke and the tall moustached white guy that used to be on Benson. You were shipping out to Syria.

Then he goes on to say he's about to leave for Branson, which, my god, has to be worse than Syria by now.

Natch, I know exactly what he means. He worries I'm north rather than south, and that I'm a prisoner rather than free. Also, he frets about his own doubts, since his visit here. He doesn't want to be a bigot, but he knows how often and how cheaply that charge is made and how seldom it sticks in modern-day America.

I don't care anymore what the popular perception is of AA.

There is a popular tv commercial running now, where an eight year old stands up in an AA meeting and says "Hi, I'm Josh and in ten years I'll be an alcoholic."

The setting of the commercial is misleading to the extreme. The adult alcoholics are in shadow, most with their heads bowed in shame. There seems to be a clock ticking, or some cinematic effect which tells you an AA meeting might as well be like a sentence in hell.

Unintended message: to be an alcoholic in AA is as bad as, well, being an alcoholic.
It's where you surrender, so ...makes sense! They got you!

But no meeting is like that. People on their first, desperate visit are often in complete despair, of course, but they are in a room full of cheerful, laughing back-slappers and braggarts, glad to see one another. And it doesn't take long for the newcomer to realize an AA meeting is not a pious confessional.

Never minding all that.

I think I am having the best summer ever, and I'm remembering just how incredibly fun last summer was too, when I was in my long term residential treatment.

This makes me want to take pictures of people. Especially, as I was telling Ma Kettle, of people. Ok, women first, but I meant my friends, my barber, the cop on the beat...And what I want, typically, is pictures of these people with ME! Because I am proud and happy to be alive and this mostly has to do with people in general.

I need finesse, though. I won't take pictures of people unawares, but I'm not sure how to ask them if they mind. Or if they mind taking a picture of me with, say, my cabbie. Or, like, a group shot of me and everyone on a bus. (Damn camera is odd to explain, too.)

Here is one of my ideas. I have my picture taken with a cop while we're both giving each other rabbit ears. Or, he's giving me rabbit ears and I appear to be reaching for his service revolver. You know, a joke picture (yikes, yeah!) Where is my mind going , sometimes?

Best summer so far, and not nearly finished, just started! I'm finally off the internal Child Clock, waiting for those damn 'Back To School' sales. I arrived at Daybreak exactly a year ago today, and it was a longggg summer. Like a summer lifetime, but not because it was slow or boring.

I knew so many people, and our relationships evolved so much in four months, I hardly noticed when the cold weather finally arrived, sometime in October.

Best summer. Wherever I go, whatever I do, chances are I'm going to have a laugh at least. I've even agreed (on automatic, actually have my doubts) to go on a two day float trip.

So far I regret that I haven't started swimming yet. Haven't returned to the fencing class with $200 in gear and a $20 fee.

Need a face tan at least.

Having a G.F. is sort of nice. It's not love, but it's something healthy I think.

Also, I'm considering running for some office in our Oxford House Chapter, since this lease controversy. I think I'd look forward to all those shout matches.

Not too late! Summer is just beginning, don't you know...

have a good weekend, thanks for visiting!

Interview with a B-aficionado

My college chum/ former hellmate in the programming world, Exclamation Mark, who keeps an excellent and active B-Movie review scroll, is interviewed here.

BELLA: What kind of person is the likeliest reader of your blog? What would you hope they get out of reading you?

MARK: Fans of old local TV “creature features” are my most likely readers. A lot of kids who enjoyed those programs grew up to find themselves nostalgic for the old horror show hosts and the films they introduced. We tend to be a sentimental lot.

There was something exciting about staying up late on weekends (in my case, usually with my little brother, Tom, and my best friend, Tony) to watch those old, cheesy sci-fi/horror flicks. I hope, with my reviews, to recapture some of the awe and innocence of those days. Of course, I have an adult perspective now, and I like to add informational touches as well.

Many of my readers are just looking for information on a particular movie, and may not be regular visitors (which is fine). Because of my subject matter, I tend to attract an older crowd (I’m 44 years old myself), and I’ll get the occasional Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan, too.

He also talks about blogging in general, with a few cautionary tales about the long and winding road.

To this day I've never followed his best advice and example. It just goes to show, it doesn't pay to ignore exclamations.*

*actually, he is not really an exclaimer...He is an exacting aesthetic, and speaks softly, waiting for the laughter to die down.

Vacation Kitchen Cabinet

President Booze meets with 'Widely Credited' during 'Jackie Locket Lease Scandal'.

P: OK., just postpone (scratching noises) (unintelligible) just say (unintelligible) very bad to have this fellow sabatage your meeting. You know by the way on that recording he doesn't say 'duty' he says 'booty', like that's ...

Me: Yep. That's the basis, either way. We couldn't vote this weekend. I'll just leave it at that, Mr. President.

P: People chase girls. And the point is, it's a hell of a lot better for them to get drunk than to take drugs. It's better to chase girls than boys. Now that's my position and let's stop this crap, understand?"

Me: Yep.

P: I don't know if he'll get any ideas for doing it again because our concern political (unintelligible). We're going to look bad but we always look bad to the (unintelligible) and I say (expletive deleted).

Me: Leaving a message on the machine that he's got booty or duty calls.

P: Prostitute you think?

Me: Oh no. Some metal head. A damn socialist with a blind spot for communists. I checked out her myspace file.

P: How much do you suppose he spent on her? Take her out on a date?

Me: You can ask him.

P: I'm asking you.

Me: Well, sir, I'm not going to do that. My resignation papers are in your desk, second drawer down, they're still there whenever you...

P: No, "Bob". It's all from last December's argument, you weren't here...Whether he'd ever pay for sex.

Me: I doubt if he bought popcorn, he usually hunts around for an empty bucket in the trash and gets a 'refill'.

P: I would just say, lookit, we're signing the damn thing this week, this month, whether he's on board or not.