"AZTEC SECRET — THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL FACIAL — CAN BE USED BY THE WHOLE FAMILY"

Mabel Callahan/Special correspondent

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Rye ruv it!

NOT JUST ANOTHER PRETTY FACE

By Boy George Z/Special correspondent

"All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

LAWRENCE, Kan. — You may have noticed, I usually am the one working behind the scenes. When I was briefly in theater, I was backstage or up in the booth; in journalism, I wasn't just in newspapers, but on the design desk. Well, as the saying goes, a face for radio and a voice for newspapers.

But NO MORE!!!

Last week you saw kc's post on the wonders of the Aztec Secret — what the native California desert dwellers affectionately call "calcium bentonite clay."

Let me give my testimonial now: This stuff works! A couple scoops of dust — er, I mean specially formulated facial healing solution — with some raw apple cider vinegar will make you clean and sparkly, and a little red in the face for about 20 minutes, but then watch out!

Yes, this wonder product will make you the apple of another person's eye, as well as nose! When you mix the two ingredients together it gets all fizzy and smells good enough to lick off your face (which, come to think of it, kc's dog Mabel might have licked some residue by my ear later; she was gassy all night — Mabel, not kc). This treatment will make you as American as apple pie, just like Cleopatra.

And the natural fizziness is good on the face, but given that this is a full testimonial, I'll concur with kc in that it is not good on the moneyshot. Yes, we gooped up a little extra so I could try that, too. (Did I say a little extra? I meant a LOT EXTRA!)

However, I think my trial will give just a bit more effort. No, it's not good on the moneyshot, but what about on your moneymaker? It's something I'll have to try. Me and kc couldn't because she didn't have enough Aztec Secret for that. Heck, I'll have to buy two jars just to cover my posterior, but I figure it'll be worth it. I mean, what guy couldn't use a little Deep Pore Cleansing on his ass?

Now I just have to figure out where to buy it. The jar kc bought she said she got at the Quirk or the Lurk, and I couldn't find those damn hippie stores; I think I might check the Merc, though.

In the meantime, I'm ready to make my debut as a Lawrence anchorgirl. I know the head honcho at the News Center; once I use up those two jars of calcium bentonite clay, he'll be ready to kiss my Asstech Secret.

NOT JUST A PRETTY FACE

Gals are always asking me for beauty tips. And naturally I have little to say. Either you’re born with it or not, n’est-ce pas?

I mean, I was overhearing some lady broadcasters recently, and they seemed to be of the same opinion. It’s all about bone structure and pore size and being tiny and having a fresh smile and whatnot. The rest is just maintenance — the lip creams and hip creams and cuticle conditioners and hair gels and all that. If you don’t have a good foundation, no amount of product is going to turn your lemons into lemonade. And Lord knows you gotta have some sweet lemonade to read the news on TV.

Seriously. If you are anchoring a program on television, even a cable one, and at least 80 percent of your male audience doesn’t want to masturbate while you’re doing it — this is called a “Nielsen Rating” or something — then you lack what we in the journalism industry call Credibility. And without Credibility you have nothing.

Case in point. The other day I was at the hair salon, and on the other side of the partition I heard this familiar voice. I couldn’t place it until the gal beautician (mine is the guy beautician, but he’s not a homo) asked the voice, “So are we going to get a lot of storms this summer?” And the voice, which had been talking about a trip she took with her boyfriend, said something like, “Well that’s really hard to predict this time of year” and babbled on about barometric pressure and warm fronts and whatnot, and I knew right away it was the girl meteorologist who works in the same building as me. So I tuned into their conversation and let my own beautician, who was talking about the various joys of fatherhood, fend for himself. Anyway, the meteorologist was lamenting to her beautician how some commercial she just made was a big fi-ASS-co because the people doing it did the lighting test on her indoors but filmed outdoors and somehow this caused her face, which had a lot of TV makeup on it, to not match the rest of her body, which, of course, totally ruined her Credibility. I mean, you see someone in a situation like that, looking like an idiot more or less, and are you going to believe that girl next time she says the high temperature is going to be 87 with winds out of the southwest? I think not.

So beauty is important, and like I said already, it’s not really something you can buy. And the lady professionals in the broadcasting community agree.

But one thing these gal journalists have overlooked is a product you can get at this hippie place for like $8. This store is called The Smirk or The Jerk or The Turk or something like that. It really irks me that I can’t think of the name, but, you know, it’s all organic, like oatmeal deodorant and whole-wheat tampons and such. Whatever. Anyway, these TV gals were talking about the $40 and $50 face creams they special order. And one girl was like, “I’ve been using high-dollar cream since I was 16. And I’m like 26 now. Do you see a single line on my face? Or anywhere? No, not a single one.” This gal always answers her own questions before anyone else can, which makes her a good journalist, but she was right; there wasn’t a single line on her face or on her body either. Well, I didn’t check out her whole body, naturally — I’m no lesbo — but I’d be willing to bet the skin on her tushy is just as firm and line-free as the skin on her face. Well, not counting that one big line in the middle of her tushy. Ha! Just between me and you, it’d take a lot of cream to fill that ravine. Ha! So then another gal in the group said, “Well, I don’t know if I want to spend that much on cream,” and the gal with perfect skin said, “Look, what do you want? Do you want to spend $50 a week on cream or do you want stretch marks and aging lines criss-crossing your body like railroad tracks?” Well, how can you argue with that logic? Then she turned to this gal who works for the newspaper, which means she hardly even brushes her teeth or combs her hair let alone moisturizes (because Credibility is less important in print journalism, to be frank), and said, “You. Do you use face cream?” And this print gal looked confused and said, “No.” And the broadcast gal said, “Yeah, I can tell.” And that was some more logic you couldn’t argue with. I mean, it sort of hurt the print gal’s feelings or whatever, the way she acted, but that’s kind of too bad. I mean, nothing is more important — if you read your Keats or Yeats or whoever — than Truth and Beauty. And speaking Truth about someone else’s lack of Beauty is like the highest calling there is. Like that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know or whatever.

So anyway, I was fixing to order some of this high-tech skin care when I stumbled on this hippie store and, on a lark, bought a tub of this stuff called calcium bentonite clay, the scientific name for which is “Aztec Secret.”

And what a secret it is! I’m not even going to tell the TV gals about it yet. That way, they can keep spending their $50 and you less gorgeous gals, for whom I’ve always had a lot of sympathy, can get a jump on improving your faces. I mean, don’t use this stuff if you’re not already pretty darn good looking, because like I said before, that would be a waste. But if you’ve basically got it going on, this can help you keep it going on.

Here’s what you need:

• Two tablespoons of Aztec Secret
• Two tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar

Mix the two ingredients together, slather it on your face, let it dry 20 minutes or so (you gals with greasy complexions will have to wait longer), wash it off, and voila, you’re beautiful, just like Cleopatra, who is mentioned on the label as one of the main spokesmodels for this product, along with some other Aztec beauties.

Be ready for a tingle! When you toss in the apple cider vinegar it fizzes up like a gin ricky. It feels pretty good on your mugshot, but I would not advise — tempting as it is! — using it on the moneyshot, if you know what I’m saying — especially, trust me, if you are due for a waxing.

Another thing, when you use this product you cannot smile AT ALL or the clay will crack and its tightening properties will be diminished! When I was taking that picture of myself above, I almost cracked a smile and ruined my facial. So when you put on your Aztec mask, make sure there is nothing humorous going on, like “Dancing With the Stars” or old “Cosby” reruns, which are always sending these fun-loving gal journalists into peals of laughter.

I’m out of time now, but another product you not so gorgeous gals can use to prop up your looks is a wild flower body cream called “Boss Lady.” It not only enhances the softness and loveliness of your skin, but it smells terrific and, as the name implies, it boosts your self-confidence as well. I guarantee it will make you feel very bossy and Credible indeed. This is a highly exclusive product, however. To the best of my knowledge, it can only be purchased in the gift shop of the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. I have a lot of connections, though, so I’ll see what I can do.

A PUFF PIECE ON FAMILY VALUES

In a departure from my usual healthy eating, I have been subsisting the past couple of days on a box of Hy-Vee-brand Frosted Wheat Puffs, which has 9 essential vitamins. Plus iron. Plus a year’s supply of sugar.

I didn’t realize until today, though, that it has something more. In addition to the nutrition, there are also recipes to die for, such as “Puffs and Stuff,” which contains Wheat Puffs and miniature marshmallows. (I’ll send you the recipe, Christy.) AND, MOREOVER, on the back of the box, there's this: “The Gift of Gab: Fun questions to spark great family discussions.”

It reads: “At the dinner table, on the go or just hanging out, these questions will turn you into a family of chatterboxes. You’re in for some laughs, surprises, friendly disagreements and good family fun.”

I pondered all the questions over my stand-up lunch at my kitchen counter. I answered them by myself, because my family doesn’t live here, but I was imagining the good times we’d have if they did. I’m sharing the questions here in case your family is starving for meaningful interaction and you don’t have a Hy-Vee near you.

1. If you were invisible, what’s the first thing you would do?

Who would answer this in front of their family? Honestly.

2. Which superhero power would you like to have?

Being invisible.

3. If you could travel back in time, when and where would you go?

Ancient Greece. (My dad would say the Wild Wild West!)

4. If you went back in time, how would you prove that you were from the future?

(I like this, It’s a follow-up question for the family with more advanced members.) The Brad Pitt movie "Troy."

5. What five things would your family put in a time capsule to show the kind of family you are?

*

6. What would you do if you inherited a billion dollars?

I’d realize I was adopted.

7. What if you didn’t need sleep?

I'd have four more hours a day to waste.

8. What if the sun stayed out all day?

That rockin' Bob Seger song “Night Moves” would lose all meaning.

9. If you could change sexes for a day, would you?

Not a whole day. Maybe for an hour. And only if my insurance paid for the surgery.

10. If you could relive a day of your life, which day would it be?

Last Christmas. (This is one of those answers that would "surprise" my family ... who don't understand how sentimental I am.)

11. What if you received too much change back from a cashier?

Meaning?

12. What if you had the power to know every time someone told you a lie?

I'd be alienated from my entire family.

13. If your house was on fire and you could save just two things, what would they be?

Mabel and Rupert!

14. Is it harder to be the little sister/brother or big sister/brother?

Little. Hands down. (This is one of the questions intended to spark "friendly disagreement.")

15. If you could be really smart or really athletic, which would you choose?

Duh. Athletic.

16. Would you rather be the tallest or shortest person on earth?

A choice between two kinds of freak. I need more than one mealtime to contemplate this.

17. Would it be good if you got everything you wished for?

Yes!

18. How would the world work if there were no such thing as money?

This is a trick question to see if you’re a burgeoning communist. Inside the cereal box, there’s a guide for parents whose kids answer “Just great!”

19. Describe yourself with one word.

Sexybitch.

20. Name one thing you wish you weren’t afraid of.

Getting decapitated in a car wreck. (I'm sure Mom would encourage me to flesh out my gory thoughts at the breakfast table.)

21. Make up a nickname for yourself.

Mrs. Large-Butt Callahan (LBC for short)

22. Name the one family rule you would most like to see abolished.

*

23. If you could name the kind of dream you’ll have tonight, what will it be?

Who would answer this in front of their family? Honestly. But couldn’t you see your dad telling some huge, fat lie like “I would dream that we were all together enjoying a family vacation — all healthy and happy.” And your mom, glaring at your dad, saying “ditto.”

24. If you were offered a ride on the space shuttle, would you go?

No way!

25. If you could communicate with one kind of animal, what would it be?

Men. (I think my mom would also give this answer.)

26. What if your best friend wanted to cheat off your schoolwork?

I would let her. But I’d assure my parents that this would never happen because my best friend is way smarter than I am.

27. What would the perfect family day be?

*

28. What if everything you wrote came true?

Then I would write down "World peace, except for al-Qaida and whistlers."

29. If you were your parents’ parent for a day, what would you do?

Make them use birth control. (This is one of the questions intended to spark "laughter.")

*I really drew a blank on Questions 5, 22 and 27. I'll have to think on those over my stand-up dinner.

A SURPRISE VISITOR!

My friend Rick is always harping on me to add a "Recent Comments" link to my blog's main page. He says no one looks at old posts; once a new one goes up, the previous one dies and decomposes with all the others in the morgue that is politely called "Archives." So if someone does come along with a stray comment for an old post, no one will ever see it.

I see his point. But it seemed largely theoretical. Is there really a danger that someone will be reading old posts and making fabulous comments that go unread? Plus, I'm lazy AND busy AND a technophobe; he's lucky I know how to turn on the computer, let alone figure out how to make a "Recent Comments" link. (If you recall, he's also the one, when I started this blog, who essentially said the presentation was boring, that I needed to customize it and add some pictures, etc.)

An aside: I think the "Dummy" and "Idiot" how-to guides are marketed all wrong. Instead of "Computers for Dummies" or "Car Stereos for Idiots," they should be called something like "Computers for People who are Profoundly Indifferent to Computers" or "Car Stereos for People who Want Technology but who are also Bored to Tears by it." Because I think a lot of times it's not "dumb" that's the issue; it's deep apathy. If I were a cavewoman and my neighbor lady came over and showed me her fire and her round things — what are they called? wheels? — I'd just be like, "Thanks, but I'm perfectly happy eating my woolly mammoth raw and dragging stuff around on animal skins."

It would take a major event for me to see the value of fire. And it took a major event for me to see the value of Rick's "Recent Comments" suggestions.

The major event — which also doubles as the nicest thing that's happened to me in recent memory — is this: On Saturday, my second-grade teacher left a comment on a post I wrote about her two months ago. My second-grade teacher. You know, from like 32 years ago. She lives on the West Coast now. She's 70. She found my posts (April 15, April 26) about her and had her son post this magnificent letter to me:

Dear KC,

I have asked my son, Craig, to post a reply to your blog. My son is Craig Cyr who has a blogspot account. And I was your second grade teacher - Hildred Cyr. Thank goodness for the world wide web that we now have this connection.

I was so surprised to find my name on a blog. Thank you for your kind words about me. I was interested to hear about your comparison between me and Lili St. Cyr. I had never seen a picture of her although I did know about her.

You are right....I was a "women's libber" then and I would call my self a "feminist" now. I've always been a social activist and will die one. Girls back then did get a "raw deal" as you said, particularly ones in rural areas in conservative states.

Teaching in Wellsville was very challenging due to the small town mentality that pervaded Wellsville. I was liberal and the town was conservative. And yet, I know that many parents wanted their children in my class....and there were many that didn't want their children in my class.

Wellsville was very insular....the only way to get there was to drive. There were no buses, trains, or planes that brought people to the town. The school district was very small. And yet, the students in the classrooms were generally eager to learn and I rose to the challenge to the best of my ability. As did the other teachers including the two that you mentioned - Miss Justus and Mrs. Hylton. They were my best friends at the school.

You mentioned Hanukkah. We studied this holiday each year because just before my first year of teaching started, a Jehovah's Witness mother stormed into my room and notified me that her daughter could not participate in any Christmas activities. We agreed that because Jesus was a Jew, and certainly celebrated Hanukkah as a boy, that that would be acceptable. And because of this encounter, a tradition was born in my classroom. We celebrated all 8 days of this holiday each year. I was a Unitarian Universalist then and am still one now (there is a UU church in Lawrence, Kansas). Christmas dominated Kansas. It was time for kids to know that there were other holidays that were celebrated.

You were in my 1974-1975 2nd grade class. I was 38 years old that year. Wow....I was young. I turned 70 years old this past January.

I am relieved to know that you and your classmates almost certainly have never parked in a handicapped space. :-) It is interesting to note that I currently have a disabled parking pass due to compression fractures in my back (I use a walker).

Now, about my hair: I wore a wig then because I didn't make enough money to go to the hair salon each week. The white streak that you saw in front, however, was my own hair. All of my hair is now white....no more wigs.

Thanks again KC for your kind remarks. If you should like to correspond with me directly, you'll have to haul out a pencil and paper and send a note to me at 2480 N. Crestview Place, Oak Harbor, WA 98277-2002.

Fondly,
Your 2nd Grade Teacher - Hildred Cyr

Amazing. I didn't expect to get any surprise visitors on my blog, except maybe my boss, if you know what I mean. But this is amazing. Thank goodness for the world wide web that we now have this connection. Thank goodness indeed.

And my apologies to Mrs. Cyr, to whom I am writing a more detailed letter in my best cursive, for getting a few things wrong, like the spelling of her best friends' names and assuming she was Jewish. I think a lot of people assumed she was Jewish because of the Hanukkah celebration. It was beyond people at that place and time that someone might do something not out of self-interest but for the sake of diversity.

It has occurred to me also to feel bad about some bad language and naughtiness in my other posts, in case she read those, too. But the more I think about it, the more I think she would appreciate that I have a big, sassy mouth — that of all the things she taught me, being "ladylike" was not one of them.

Another thing that amazes me, because I don't have the accomplishment to show for it, is that I am older now than she was in my second-grade picture. But never mind that.

Wow, Mrs. Cyr, we are both still young.

DEATH BE NOT DEBASED

I went to a funeral yesterday, and I don't know what to make of this. The minister, like a slightly shady salesman or a PR rep for the Grim Reaper, was trying to make a case that the event was a "celebration." He talked for a long time, in a way that seemed too rehearsed — how many times had he made this spiel? — about how when he first started preaching, the term for events like this — you know, events where a loved one stops living and lies in a flower-strewn box in a sob-filled room waiting to be put in the ground forever — used to be called "funerals." And then sometime later in his career the word became "memorial," and now it's "celebration." He seemed quite taken with this notion — he was even grinning — like he had found the perfect spin to put on this catastrophe. He even made the outrageous claim that the deceased wasn't "victimized" by death but was a "victor" because now he was with the Lord. Gee, I wonder when my uncle was dying in his hospice bed whether his wife cheered him on every time he took a turn for the worse: "Honey, you're winning! You're in the lead! Keep it up! Victory is within reach!"

Poppycock.

If Mr. Feelgood wanted to celebrate Fay's passing, he wouldn't have filled the funeral parlor with psychobabble and tried to get everyone to smile. He would have said: Death is terrible. It is pain. It is loss. It is crushing sadness. There is nothing in your life that will feel worse. And it's fitting and proper to feel grief.

Grief is the loved one's due.

I'm not advocating years of mourning and black dresses and debilitating suffering. But can't people just feel terribly sad when something terribly sad happens? Isn't that a better, more honest, coping mechanism in the long run than telling yourself lies about how it's really a positive thing and you should just turn that frown upside down!

And instead of the cheap self-help lingo he was polluting the event with, if he wanted to celebrate this sunny occasion, he could have spent a little time actually talking about Fay instead of making analogies about sheep and the Lord being our shepherd and — I kid you not — how he had worked with actual sheep one summer and knew firsthand how they needed guidance. He could have talked about the three Bronze Stars Fay won in World War II after he was shipped off to the Pacific at age 19. He was just a kid from Mountain Grove, Mo., who knew nothing about the world and — Jesus! —found himself in Japan shooting guns and making history. And about how he loved ham radios and playing the fiddle and harmonica. How he made his own root beer and whittled on the front porch and laughed all the time and slapped his knees at off-color jokes. That's what people want to hear, so why is that such a small part of the "celebration"? Because, unlike a belabored metaphor about Jesus' footprints, it will actually touch people, it will make them cry, it will make them grieve?

Grief is his due.

If this minister wanted to truly "celebrate" Fay, he could have tossed the canned feel-good oration and gotten some material from people who knew him. People I saw at the funeral like:

• The World War II veterans. These men have stories. Working at a newspaper, I read obituaries all the time of men from this generation, many of whose whole identities were poignantly wrapped up in being a soldier. These were humble, working-class men who belonged to only one club their whole lives: the VFW. Let them talk.

• The long-bearded fiddlers and pickers in plaid shirts who made music with him.

• The townspeople who knew him as the carpet layer from the hardware store.

• The Missouri relatives whose best clothing for the occasion was starched blue jeans and polished cowboy boots.

• The friend who let him, and others in their tiny community, be buried on his land for free.

• My aging Aunt Louise, his sister-in-law who played cards with him every week, who, when someone at the funeral expressed condolences, said too loudly (but gloriously), "Well, we're all getting close." (Now that's something that genuinely made people feel better about the situation).

• His wife, for pete's sake, of 57 years.

When my grandpa died, his funeral was a Catholic Mass. And the priest, who was new to the parish, didn't know him very well, but made an authentic effort to celebrate his life by talking to people who did. He found out things about my grandpa that even I didn't know. And the Mass itself, though ritualistic and impersonal in nature, at least was an honest-to-God funeral, a somber observance of someone's death.

And it's not a matter of denomination; it's a matter of dignity.

Here's my promise to those of you I may outlive: I will be sad at your funeral. I won't put a sunny spin on it. I will give you the grief that is your due, instead of trying to make myself feel better with a bunch of psychobabble. And if someone who hardly knew you tries to celebrate your life by talking about Jesus for an hour — mentioning you only occasionally — I will make it right.

(OK, that's off my chest, so if you want to read something fun, check out Ricky's new hippie post below).

HIPPIE HOMAGE

Wakarusa Festival just wrapped up. So the hippie-bashing by 20-something know-nothings (and others) is in full gear. I hate hippie-bashing. I mean, honestly, how can anyone hate a hippie? What's there to hate? I can see being slightly annoyed with some aspects of hippie culture — I won't list them, lest I undermine my point here — but hate? Come on. There's this 20-something at work who knows nothing about American culture or politics or history or social movements or civil rights or religion or literature or anything, really, except computers and action movies and beer specials, and he came up to me over the weekend and started angrily bagging on hippies. If a contingent of Nazis had marched down Massachusetts Street, he couldn't have been more offended. I kid you not. Whence this rage? He was carrying on as if the thousands of Wak Fest hippies — who really are just fun-loving kids, when you get down to it — were a plague of locusts on our fair town. I finally cut him off by saying, "I don't like hippie-bashing." He gave me a startled look and said, "What?" I coldly repeated myself, and he slinked away.

But my affinity for hippies is only spiritual. Rick's is real. I asked him about his experiences seeing musical festivals around the country, and this is how he responded:

When KC told me that she was starting a blog, she said that she didn’t want it to just be a diary with forced and boring entries: “Breakfast this morning was two eggs over easy with burnt toast. The dogs continue to chew up the left foot shoes while ignoring the right.” I had no fear that it would go as badly as all that. And indeed, she has created appealing essays that are based on personal experience that fill out larger themes. So while there is no bemoaning chips in the new china, there is also a refreshing lack of abstract policy statements and political rants that fill much of the blogosphere.

No surprise then that the subjects KC has proposed to me seem to call for responses in a similar personal style. Not easy though. What out of the messy sprawl of experience are the illuminating tidbits? When you have spent years doing something, what is there to say? We will soon see how all that goes. But all I know at the moment is here is where I must start:

9 August 1995

Climbing and the Grateful Dead have long been linked in my mind and in my road trips. On this hot day I am stuck in an hours long traffic jam on Interstate 80 in western Wyoming. We will soon learn that it was caused when a double trailer semi truck clipped a road work truck, jackknifed, spun, took out a couple of cars, and then set the whole scene on fire. It was still a grim sight when we finally drove past hours after the fire was out. But while we were sitting in the jam, I had my leg up on the window trying to keep it elevated to minimize swelling because a couple of days earlier I had taken a long lead fall climbing and crushed my heel bone. My brother was driving me back to KC. As we sat there, I was washing ibuprofen down with some good homebrew beer—it is painful to crush your heel. Then the announcer for the NPR news started in like this: “Jerry Garcia, founding member of the Grateful Dead....” That was the end of the Dead. 9 August 1995 was not one of my favorite days.


The first time I saw the Dead was 3 August 1982 at Starlight in Kansas City. I don’t know that I really remember the show, but I know that the date is right and that they opened the show with “Mississippi Half-Step." The Dead was never about the albums but always about the live performance. From very early on people were noting the playlists and passing around reviews of the shows. It is now all on the Internet. So while I saw four or five shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, during the '80s, I do know that it was the 13th of June 1984 show that had the big lightning storm. The Grateful Dead are the most thoroughly documented and annotated cultural experience from before the age of the Internet. Or maybe ever.

I didn’t do much climbing, or see many Dead shows until I went to California in the early '90s. I found there were several kinds of climbers and several kinds of Deadheads and a wonderful kind who were both at once. I tried to avoid climbing too much with the computer programmers; the medical types were a mixed bag—doctors were iffy, nurses were great; my favorite partners were the Deadheads.

Most people can imagine the somewhat spaced-out, New Age spiritualist Deadhead. But the variety of fauna at a show went well beyond that. For instance, there were also the redneck, libertarian minded fans. They chose to be Deadheads instead of Bikers because they preferred pot to beer, and they preferred dancing to bar fighting. But otherwise they were the same. “U.S. Blues” was a song for them:

I’m Uncle Sam/that’s who I am
Been hidin’ out/in a rock-and-roll band
Shake the hand/that shook the hand
Of P.T. Barnum/and Charlie Chan

Shine your shoes/light your fuse
Can you use/ them ol’U.S. Blues?
I’ll drink your health/share your wealth
Run your life/steal your wife

Wave that flag
Wave it wide and high
Summertime done
Come and gone
My, oh my

Some of the Deadheads were geeks. The Grateful Dead not only allowed fans to tape their shows, they encouraged it. There were special tickets sold to the tapers, and they got the space right behind the soundboard. The view of the stage wasn’t any good, but nobody would yell or scream in the tapers’ section. And most important of all, they didn’t dance. Everywhere else there were arms and legs flying, but the tapers would never do more than a bit of slow swaying, mindful as they were of their mics and cords. And like any self-respecting geek, they always had the best gear. There were several years where the tapes might be marked “Betty." That meant the original recording was made with a modified Betamax videotape recorder. Cutting edge. A lot of the Deadhead climbers were tapers or at least heavy into trading recordings. They built their own worldwide precursor to online trading by mailing around flyers.

On the 19th of October in 1995, with my foot still in a cast, I went to my first Phish show at Municipal in Kansas City. They opened with “Cars, Trucks, Buses.” Probably having learned from the Deadheads, the Phish fans were writing it all down and recording everything. It is now all out there on the Internet. That fall the band was playing a running chess game with the audience—there was huge chessboard up along side the stage. Between sets when the band made their move, they talked some shit about how the game was going. After the show, there was a knot of earnest chess geeks gathered to plot the fans' next move. Want to know who won the game? It is still on the Internet.

It didn’t take me long to discover that Phish were better musicians than the Dead. The Dead, of course, had the bigger cultural footprint, starting as they did in the San Francisco of the '60s instead of the Vermont of the '80s. But while the Dead were sometimes dodgy in their playing, they did have a perfect fit with the lyricist Robert Hunter. Almost all the best Dead songs were Garcia songs, and almost all the best Garcia songs had lyrics by Hunter. He was the hidden soul of the band. He wrote the poetry that told what the Deadheads were all about.

From “Eyes of the World”:

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own
sometimes we visit your country and live in your home
sometimes we ride on your horses/sometimes we walk alone
sometime the songs that we hear are just songs of our own

Or from “He’s Gone”:

Nine-mile skid
on a ten-mile ride
hot as a pistol
but cool inside
Cat on a tin roof
dogs in a pile
nothing left to do but
smile, smile, smile

I’m less of a fan of the songs that Bob Weir sang. But he did do two or three of my favorites. During a show you would often find people who, from the music, from the chemical assists, or from both, had just found nirvana or some place passably close. A few of these enlightened ones were going to tell you all about it. They would insist that they tell you all about it. They knew you wanted to hear all about it. Bob noticed them.

Here’s his song, “Estimated Prophet”:


California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine.

You've all been asleep, you would not believe me
Them voices tellin' me, you will soon receive me
Standin' on the beach, the sea will part before me
Fire wheel burning in the air!

You will follow me and we will ride to glory
way up, the middle of the air

Phish did a lot of songs where the lyrics were silly or maybe little more than nonsense to fuel the kickass jam that the song was really about. They could, perhaps, have used a Robert Hunter. But they had their gems, too.

From my favorite of the love songs, “Waste”:

Don’t want to be an actor pretending on the stage
Don’t want to be a writer with my thoughts out on the page
Don’t want to be a painter cause everyone comes to look
Don’t want to be anything where my life’s an open book

A dream it’s true
But I’d see it through
If I could be
Wasting my time with you


So if I’m inside your head
Don’t believe what you might have read
You’ll see what I might have said
To hear it

Come waste your time with me
Come waste your time with me

And one of the most cool things they did was for their Halloween shows. Instead of covering a song, they would cover an entire album. I think the best they did was for the ’96 show where they performed Talking Heads' “Remain in the Light." This was an inspired interpretation of the best album from the '80s. They stretched the 40-minute original out to just over an hour and did a classic Phish style jam on “Crosseyed and Painless” that went for ten minutes:

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to

This song so fits the ethos of Phish, maybe David Byrne should have been a lyricist for them.

I never saw an indoor Dead show, but I saw Phish inside a few times. The Fillmore in San Francisco was good. But my favorite place was at the Gorge Amphitheatre near George in the state of Washington. This is an even better venue than Red Rocks because it is out in the middle of the desert in central Washington. The stage balances on the edge of a steep cliff, and far below is the drowned and bloated remains of the once mighty Columbia river now enslaved to the barge traffic. But it is a beautiful setting nevertheless. Phish would always play two nights there with the shows starting just as the sun was setting in the clear cloudless desert sky. The Gorge is a long way from the cities, so only the most enthusiastic fans would buy tickets, which means a high energy crowd that knows all the songs. You would drive in the day of the first show and camp two nights. Nobody was driving out at night after a show, so there was little police presence. Just a couple of days of hippies getting sunburnt in the hot sun, capped with amazing nights of live music.

PARDON ME A MOMENT

This is a letter to all the jackasses in the world who inflict their whistling on the rest of humanity.

Dear Jackasses:

Perhaps no one has mentioned this, or perhaps you're too much of a jackass to care, but no one enjoys those shrill sounds you make by forcing air through your puckered lips. You are not adding brightness or joy to the world. You are being annoying. You are not filling our shared space with the sound of music, like the lovely Julie Andrews; you are filling it with noisy distraction, like your annoying self.

Why do you think it's OK to whistle wherever you go? You wouldn't walk into some quiet place and break into a show tune or start jabbering loudly, would you? So why do you think it's all right to form your mouth into a sphincter and make like a bird? Is it just a habit you can't shake, like spitting on the sidewalk or eating your boogers, which I'm sure you also do. Or is it just to fill your empty head with sound? Or is it to announce your presence in case some poor soul hasn't noticed you?

How about this? Try entering a room without whistling your arrival to everyone. Like most human beings, you occupy several square feet of space and move around and breathe and speak and whatnot. You are visible. We will notice you. You don't need to sing like a canary. If you want to make sure your presence doesn't go unnoticed, a simple "hello" will do.

And you especially — the cocky son of a bitch at the university who can't walk through the building without whistling — you're about to get your motherfucking throat ripped out. We'll see how chirpy you feel after I wrestle you to the ground and strangle you with your Goddamn windpipe. You think I'm being extreme. You think the situation can be handled with politeness and civility. But you people don't understand politeness and civility; that's why you whistle in public! Because you don't recognize the right of other people to peaceful coexistence. You are so cocooned in your own chirpy self-regard and vanity that it's impossible to get through to you by any means short of abusive threats or actual physical violence. If I were to politely say to you, "Hey, would you mind? I'm trying to concentrate here," you'd act like I was a killjoy trying to deprive the world of music. You'd go around the corner and say, "What's up her ass?"

I'll tell you what's up my ass, music man. The other day I was sitting in the reading room about 7 a.m., writing a memo, enjoying a very quiet, scholarly atmosphere when you strut in like a banty rooster and figure it'd be a good time to whistle "Oklahoma!" I think it was "Oklahoma!" You weren't that good, though, so I couldn't be sure. You're the same jackass who walks down the hall whistling while my class is in session. Everyone has to turn toward the hall and look. That's annoying enough, but at least it's in passing. The other morning, though, you just endlessly puttered around the room whistling louder and louder as if I weren't 10 feet from you trying to focus. This is the reading room, jackass. The whistling room is somewhere else, like maybe at your house. Try that.

Honestly. Are you totally oblivious? Does it not occur to you that someone hovering over a keyboard in a reading room might be trying to string two thoughts together, might be trying to apply her mind to something for which musical accompaniment is not only unnecessary but is downright unwelcome? Has that never occurred to you?

And that was not an isolated incident. Every time I see you, you're whistling. I can hear you in the hall, coming up the stairs, all throughout the building. In my dreams at night.

And you're not the only one. There is at least one whistler everywhere I am compelled to be. There's no escape.

And part of the reason there's no escape is that you whistlers tend to be old "distinguished" types and not just some kid I can tell to shut the hell up.

I have noticed that most whistlers are men of a certain age — men who grew up in a world where men did whatever they wanted, where they were the head and center of the family, where they made all the decisions, where they got the biggest pork chop at dinner, where their wives greeted them at the end of the working day like they were fucking royalty, where sex ended with their orgasm, where they thrust their presence onto everything, without much regard for the existence of other people, where they bossed everyone around, where every room was just a stage for their whistling performances. (I could go on, but I'll stop before I overgeneralize.)

Indeed, there would be consequences for telling you to shut up. So I won't risk it in person.

But if you happen to read this, jackass, unless you can blow as well as the four dudes below, and maybe even then, do the world a favor and shut the fuck up.

Sincerely,
KC

LIVING LIKE WHITE PEOPLE

I live in a really old house. Not by East Coast standards, certainly. But by Kansas standards, it's damn ancient: 1860s. This town was only a few years old when Col. John Wakefield baked a few tons of clay bricks in my backyard and threw together this humble pile.

The colonel will get his own post some day. The old Indian killer. He was a renaissance man without benefit of a renaissance. He was a military spy, an author, a surgeon, a judge, a tavern owner, a framer of this state's constitution, a state treasurer, a friend of Abe Lincoln's, with whom he served in the Illinois Legislature. And a whole bunch of other stuff. By all accounts, he was a Free-Stater, but not an abolitionist, which means he didn't object to enslaving black people so much as he objected to interference with "state's rights." (Sound familiar?)

But I didn't know any of that when I bought this place. All I knew was that of the houses I looked at and could afford, this was the only one — crappy as it was — that was bigger than a matchbook and that was in a relatively decent neighborhood. Historic interest played no role. I got this house because no one else wanted it. I was the lone bidder — OK, idiot — in an otherwise booming real estate market.

But four years later, it's my home. It's gone from a filthy, bat-infested hovel with barely any running water to a comfy little abode with modern amenities. I live in the whole house now, not just one tiny room while the others are under construction. When my friend Rick saw it a few years ago, he said it would be a great place to make a movie about drug addicts. He was trying to put a positive spin on the squalor I was living in, bless his heart. I don't think he'd make the heroin flophouse reference now, unless his script included some better-heeled junkies.

Anyway, the transformation of the house deserves a post of its own — no, a blog of its own. But for now I was just pondering the place and its past because of a major purchase I made Monday: a central air-conditioning unit. I have made many modernizing improvements to the house, but this, the AC, seems like the most significant.

The new water lines were good, to be sure. And the new underground electricity. And the rebuilt window sashes. The new walls were a plus, as was the actual indoor bathroom. And a working washer and dryer. And the kitchen appliances; I'm gaga over my Bosch gas range. But an air conditioner! That is something Col. Wakefield could not have fathomed. That is something that changes your whole way of life.

I didn't get one sooner because I thought of it as a luxury, something I could do without as long as there were other necessities to buy. But this summer I became officially spoiled.

Check out my new unit here. It's worth every one of the 358,000 pennies I spent on it. I can live in the whole house now, not just the room with the noisy, tiny window unit. I can turn on the oven without the temperature soaring to 100 degrees. I can have friends over and feel confident that they're comfortable. I can bathe and not break into a sweat five minutes later. I can watch the dogs doze, cool as cucumbers on the kitchen floor. It's Kansas, for pete's sake. Air conditioning is not a luxury.

According to his obit in the local paper and his online biography, Wakefield died in this house on June 18, 1873. It must have been a hot fuckin' day to die. I picture him suffering in a sweat in what is now my dining room until he finally expired of "gravel," or what we call kidney stones. Can you even imagine? I'm sure a light bulb would have struck him as nifty and a dishwasher would have tickled his fancy. But central air? That would really impress a man dying in excruciating pain on a summer day.

My dad, who I like to think would have been a Wakefield in his day — a bumbling old racist with a core of decency and a lust for life — has always been dubious about my home-restoration project. He couldn't see the charm, just the inconvenience. Just the moldy plaster and the ancient plumbing and the Dumpsters full of debris. He's come around a little, but his occasional greeting used to be, "When are you going to start living like white people?" which became a running joke between me and my girlfriend, who was gracious enough to see through the veneer of his bigotry.

I've learned how the thermostat works now, but the other day I had it so cold in here that I found myself wishing the house had one of its original fireplaces. Then I could crank the AC in summer and light a fire just for atmosphere, just like doddering old Nixon did in the White House while the country fell apart.

God help me, I've arrived!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY!

Aaaghh! It's Erin and Ben's anniversary. Or at least I think it is. It seems like we had a conversation last winter about the date, and June 6 — D-Day, for all you World War II buffs! — sticks out in my mind. It's also 06/06/06 for all you Satan buffs.

(If I'm wrong about the date, I'll just quietly delete this and re-post on July 6 or Aug. 6 or whatever the correct date is.)

By the way, Aug. 6 was my wedding anniversary. The date we dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan. Hiroshima, mon amour!

Anyhow, Erin and Ben met in high school and shared their first kiss over a riveting game of spin the bottle. Their first seven kisses, I think. For all of you fans of Erin's tremendous blog, stick around and you will get a firsthand account of this fateful evening. Then followed a tempestuous romance, which included — can you believe it? — making out on the first date. I actually saw the exact location of this historic, if awkward, encounter on a McDaniel-guided tour of Newton. Then followed some gushy poetry writing and college-aged tomfoolery as they both went off to KU. Then a lovely wedding despite an absent bridesmaid and balloons that didn't work, plus, I believe, an announcement by Erin's proud mom about Erin's entitlement to wear white. OK, Joyce.

And now it's — what, eight years? — later and look at them now. Erin is co-piloting vintage airplanes with sexy aviators and Ben has dropped his stuffy legal career in favor of something a tad more rewarding. Wish them luck.

MOJAVE

Rick is itinerant, as you know, so I'm letting him crash at my blog. He might get his own space someday, but I'll believe that when I see it. He might get a 9-to-5, too. Yeah. And cut his hair. Pigs might fly out of my butt. Anyway, I have no tolerance for freeloaders, so I'm making him contribute to our humble bloghold. This contribution stems from a comment he made on one of my posts about Las Vegas being "a cancer on the beautiful desert." I share that feeling. I became intrigued with the desert — I should say deserts; there are four in the U.S., and they are all very different — after reading a book by Jean Baudrillard called "America," in which he very memorably describes Salt Lake City and Las Vegas as the virgin and the whore fighting for dominance in America's great wasteland.

Las Vegas was my first experience of the desert. My dad took me there for my college graduation. Had I been a boy, he probably would have treated me to a prostitute at some rural hooker-ranch. My dad's like that. Instead, our only venture outside the air-conditioned casinos was a day trip to Hoover Dam. And the Mojave Desert scenery blew me away. There is something about being in a beautiful, hostile environment that makes you feel very tiny and very alive and very blessed to be alive. (My friend George has confided in me his desire occasionally to escape his life and go live in the desert, in a little trailer with a dog, to just disappear into the elements. I told him to get a doublewide, for me).

In the last few years, with my friend Beth, I got to explore the other three deserts, the dry wilds of America, and they are all breathtaking. When I'm 90, even if I get to see the whole world by then, I know that one of the best memories of my life will be a January campfire we shared in Death Valley.

Anyway, here's what Rick has to say, illustrated with a few pictures from my own desert trips. (Notice how tiny and alive I am in all the photos).

MOJAVE

Until surprisingly recently, mountains and deserts have inspired dread in all people. Or at least all normal people: The few who inhabited these domains were famous for their fierce independence and ferocious determination to live on land that was, to a quick look, unlivable. In a word, they were crazy. We have romantic visions of some of these tribes: Bedouin, Apache. But fear of mountains and deserts went beyond the disturbing inhabitants. In these places, the land itself would kill you. The prospects were many and could be capricious; you might be spared dying of thirst and sunstroke only by drowning in a flash flood.

It is remarkable — and to my mind rather horrid — that millions are now moving blithely into these arid lands. But perhaps they do it because they don’t even think they live in a desert. Instead, they still live in Ohio just with hotter, drier air. They have girded their new three (or four) bedroom houses with bluegrass, coleus, and all types of fragile shallow rooted trees. For in the desert these days, water flows like magic out of the end of the hose, re-creating their old homes and cities to perfection, minus only the snow shovels and decayed urban cores.

While it is true that water flows uphill towards money, I doubt they will ever make it wet enough to convert the whole Southwest into an ersatz Midwest. Still, the attempt to do so is prodigious: These people, at heart, do not like the desert they now live on. There are a few of us though — often nomadic as is appropriate — who do truly enjoy what the desert itself has to offer.

Perhaps the most famous desert in the U.S. is the Sonora, a vast tract extending from Southern California across Southern Arizona and well down into Mexico. It is very diverse in terrain and ecology and, in places, is well-wooded. Ask a 5-year-old to draw a cactus, and she will draw a saguaro from the Sonora. But my favorite two deserts are the rather tiny Mojave, and the rugged highlands of the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau, having nothing in common with the Mojave beyond dryness, more than deserves its own post. So here is the Mojave. A small desert that I fell in love with long before I visited it just because it has a magic name.

The thing about being out in the open in the Mojave is that you always know just where you are. And most people would say Nowhere, Nowhere At All. And you can see that they are right at a glance, for the Mojave is a land of sprawling valleys that don’t drain out but in — a small salt flat marks the center of each one. In all directions, ten, twenty, fifty miles away, mountains rise out of the plain. Neither high nor steep, these mountains are extraordinarily rugged heaps of fractured rock seemingly without vegetation. Their bare and sunburnt flanks make the valley floors feel verdant in comparison. The iconic plant of the Mojave is neither a cactus nor tree, but a yucca — the Joshua tree [see Kim resting on trunk for scale]. I’ve always thought that Dr. Seuss, who long lived in La Jolla, must have spent time in the Mojave and modeled his distinctive trees on the Joshua tree. Although the J tree is large and inviting, I think that my favorite plants of the Mojave are the chollas, particularly the Diamond and the Teddy Bear. These cacti grow in long chains of linked segments that branch again and again at odd angles, and the whole is thickly covered with fierce spines and needles. The defense is so formidable that they are a favorite nesting site for wrens seeking protection from predators attacking either from ground or air. And then, briefly in the spring, these rugged cacti put out large, bright, but surprisingly fragile flowers.

The largest animal you can expect to see in this desert is a coyote. But I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that maybe the antelope jackrabbit was bigger. For truly big there were, and still just barely are, desert Big Horn sheep. But you need to go to a lot of bother to have any hopes of seeing one. Mostly the mammals are small. I once made the mistake of setting a bag of groceries on the ground for a few minutes one evening and then spent two days trying to find and evict a kangaroo rat from my truck. I don’t care to listen to them eating my tortilla chips all night, but kangaroo rats can be cool. Under a full moon, you can watch them bound through your campsite, darting out from the shadows and then back in with an enchanting mix of boldness and timidity driven equally by hunger and fear of predators. The mammals have the night, but lizards rule the day. At least by numbers. They do zip about ever fearful of the birds. There are all kinds and sizes of lizards. Most of them are small and dark, and very fast. One will pause on a hot rock doing its funny little pushups and then dash out of sight. But my favorite is a very large lizard, the chuckwalla. This is a kind of squashed looking chubby creature with lots of loose skin. It is not very fast, but has the clever trick of being able to balloon itself up. So if threatened, it retreats into a rock cleft or hole and then inflates to wedge itself tight enough that the predator cannot pull it out. Who could help but like an animal named a chuckwalla?

The Mojave’s problem is that it is an accessible desert. It is being chewed away from the west by the inland sprawl of coastal Southern California. And it has an indigenous city that has exploded from a small dusty outpost into a huge water hungry monster. Not allowed what it wants from the nearby Colorado River, Las Vegas has been mining fossil water put down in the last ice age. The most famous place in all the Mojave, Death Valley, is not yet dead — it even has fish — because it is fed by springs from the same ancient water. But Death Valley will soon die as it is sucked dry by the lawns, golf courses, and fountains of Vegas.

And the flat open expanses of the Mojave can be driven. So they have been, and still are. There are roads and tracts all through the desert that have opened it to all kinds of abuse. On the largest scale is the military. Soldiers plowed tanks through the friable soils while training for war in North Africa, and, a half century later, for more war in the Gulf. There are artillery ranges and bombing ranges and huge Air Force and Marine bases. And there is even the mysterious Area 51. Mining has scarred the land on scales from mountains that have been blown up and turned inside out, down to random small holes dug by speculating prospectors. Those who found something would then dig a bigger pit and haul off a few truckloads — maybe even legally. Most astonishing are the land scams where settlers were set up with 640 acres under the Homestead Act. You can see grids of dilapidated huts — about the size of a one-car garage — marking out the edges of these small waterless “farms.” I always wonder what the poor saps thought when they were first shown their new homes on land with no prospect for a livelihood whatsoever.

Anything you can imagine hauled out into the desert is there. And there is even more stuff that you could not imagine. Nothing rots or rusts. Nothing sinks out of sight in the mud, or gets covered in vines. It all just sits there fading in the sun. Paint blisters and fabric tatters, and maybe the odd bit of something will break and fall off. But mostly it all just sits there in mute testimony of human comings and goings, just hinting at the hopes and despairs, insane plans and spectacular failures, of generation after generation. Small for a desert, the Mojave must be our largest, most amazing junkyard.

Sadly though, one icon that should have slowly moldered away forever is gone — the Mojave Phone Booth. You have seen the booth since it appeared in many movies. Even more famous than Dr. Who’s red box, the Mojave Phone Booth was a destination for many a world traveler eager to make a call home from the middle of nowhere.

MY FRONT PORCH

Boy George and I had a heart-to-heart Tuesday over a bumper of brandy on my front porch, and this is what we came up with: We must start saving for a zany day.

It's time. We are both in our 30s — me on the backside, he just through the gate. We have been shirking our duty to have fun for our whole adult lives. Excluding the occasional lap dance and topless drive through Montana (who did which I'll leave to you), we have spent our adulthood in a relatively funless state. And I don't mean Kansas. I mean the state of sitting around and doing damn little, when you think about it, besides working and paying bills and daydreaming and procrastinating.

We decided that we'll never go to all the places we want to go to and do all the things we want to do if we don't just go to them and do them. We're not going to inherit scads of money or win the lottery or have a hefty retirement plan, so we have to do what we can with what we've got. And what we've got now is this: a travel fund wherein we save a modest amount each month until we meet our goal.

Goal No. 1 is London in January or March.

Sounds simple. But it will take some discipline. The big hurdle will be letting ourselves see fun as a necessity, a priority, when there are so many other demands on our incomes and time. But fun will win, right, George? Before you left, I meant to stick a Post-It note on your dashboard with these lines from Ezra Pound: "What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross," which is a fancy way of saying that in the end the only thing that matters is your passion.

And from the same canto this: "Here error is all in the not done/all in the diffidence that faltered," which I know is damn relevant to our circumstance, even though I can't quite put my finger on the diffidence that faltered. I think the gist of it is this: Curb your resignation!

•••••

I was on the porch again today, in my boxer shorts, indulging a vice or two and contemplating the empty space in my neighbor Ed's yard where his Virgin Mary statue used to be — the three-foot high one that Eddie always pees on. Eddie's a dog who lives two houses down. Did Ed tire of the poor little virgin, as men inevitably do, or did she get blown away in the microburst? Or did she get taken by thieves? As I was mulling this mystery, Ed pulls up in his shiny black Hyundai. He and his girlfriend have new matching Hyundais. Ed fancies himself a poet, and maybe he is. I guess poet is as poet does. This, I thought, was especially poetic: Ed kills his engine and sits in the car, windows down, with Journey at top volume. It's so loud his car is vibrating. And Ed — don't ask me why he's always home in the middle of the day — sits there in his cool-dude shades and drums on his steering wheel and sways his crew-cut head, which I think would be a lot cooler looking if he still had his peroxided dreadlock thingies.

"You make me weep and wanna die/Just when you said we'd try/ Lovin', touchin', squeezin' each other."

Normally if something like this happens, I save a guy some embarrassment and slink away before he notices he's being observed.

"When I'm alone all by myself/You're out/You're with somebody else/You're lovin', touchin', squeezin' each other."

But I think Ed might enjoy being looked at. So I stand my ground. And sure enough, he inadvertently throws his head my way in sync with the music — and spots me. He pauses for the tiniest second, then yells "Journey" to me over the music. Like the word "Journey" is the universal shorthand for "Hey neighbor, don't mind my foolishness."

I salute him with my coffee cup.

"You're tearin' me apart/Every day, every day/You're tearin' me apart/Oh girl what can I say?"

Once I heard some of Ed's poetry. It was at a Valentine's Day reading at the Bourgeois Pig. It was not good. Not quite right. Close at times, but never actually there. One poem I remember had a belabored metaphor of trains pulling out of a station, which later in the poem he tried to liken to "pulling out" of his girlfriend. Whatever dude. It left me with a mental image of Ed on the verge of climax with some nymph too dumb to know she had an alleged poet inside her.

"It won't be long, yes till you're alone/When your lover, oh, he hasn't come home/Cause he's lovin' oo, he's touchin' her,
He's squeezin' another."

Just as Ed kills his stereo, the little girl who lives across the street makes her way around the corner. She has been outside for the last half hour taking pictures with a digital camera. I don't know her name, but she's about 10, I'd say. Homeschooled. Red-haired. I should know her name. When I moved in, she came over to greet me: "You're not Owen's mom," she observed, referring to the little boy who had lived in my house. "No, I'm not," I said, to which she replied: "Whose mom are you?"

She is meticulously photographing leaves and rocks and bugs. As soon as Ed gets half way to his house she stoops down and photographs the smoldering cigarette he dropped by his car. She is very, very serious about this picture.

You're tearing me apart.

As Ed opens his front door it occurs to me that he might have some insight into "the diffidence that faltered." I should call him over, have him explain Ezra Pound's Canto LXXXI. What good is having a poet for a neighbor otherwise? Listen, Ed, "Could you mow your weeds once in awhile, keep the '80s rock to a minimum and explicate a few lines of Modernist verse for me?"

Just then I hear a familiar flap flap flap flap. It's my Marine. Jogging down the street. Jarhead with perfect posture — and perfect passion — wearing nothing but skimpy shorts, sweat clinging to his ripped torso.

You make me weep and wanna die.

Now that it's warm, he comes by almost every day, running smack down the middle of the street — flap flap flap flap. Straight ahead. I don't know that he's a Marine, but I like to imagine that he is, fighting a good fight, if those still exist, never faltering, never diffident.

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