Roads, Mills, Laps

Earlier today About three weeks ago, I found myself down here. I browsed the booths. Squids are all the rage these days; squid pictures drawn on thin, witty tee shirts with sarcastic sayings. Birds are cool too (silhouettes of birds); so too are owls as well as black and white drawings of leafless birch trees. Oh, and rebellious dolls–ugly dolls with one tooth and one eye–they are ‘in’ as well.

I was only good for about 30 minutes of that and ended up on the outskirts of the grand Independent festival of Capitalism–out looking at the wide expanse that is the Delaware River on some sort of promenade where a bearded drunken man with red fingers and dried cuticles swatted at invisible flies in the sky. I stared at the river and caught sight of a little rubber dinghy; it was making circles about 40 yards out. Three men wearing blue dungarees were in it; they looked like kids. I shielded my eyes from the sun. What were they carrying? Machine guns?

Indeed.

The drunk man swatted his way closer to me, but I paid no attention to him.

The boat circled out of my field of vision. I walked closer to the river to see where it was going. It zoomed up alongside a hulk of a ship: a naval vessel, painted Battleship gray with large chains spewing out of it. It resembled a marionette. The kids in the dinghy waved to another kid who was up on the ship’s forecastle. That kid was sitting behind twin .50 caliber machine guns, manning them diligently like Doris “Dorie” Miller did on December 7th, 1941.

“Hi Chuck!”

“Heya Mike!”

They yelled that kind of stuff.

Turns out, the ship, a frigate, the USS Taylor, was docked in Philadelphia for the weekend. The crew was giving free tours. I decided to become independent of the Independent Craft Bazaar and so I decided to check it out. A disinterested Jamaican-American Seaman stood outside a hastily constructed metal detector. He played with a confiscated Buck knife in his hands while he leaned against a card table with a delaminated top.

“Ya can’t pass thru here till, um, till, an escort shows up; we only got three escorts today.”

A crowd of tourists formed behind the Jamaican-American Seaman.

We were in the front. The Seaman tried to make small talk with me about the Phillies and the Marlins; about Utley and McGonigle and Shrebek and Gerney and the save and the out at third and the extra inning where the bases were loaded and Coach Halston walked to the mound and can you believe that? Me being a bit out of the loop when it comes to following franchise sports teams, I agreed: “Um, I can’t!”

One of the tourists behind me wore a red and gold Semper Fi Marines hat. He had a Bluetooth stuck in his ear and was talking to someone while he waited. It looked as if he was talking to himself.

A few sailors returning from their leave with pressed laundry slung over their shoulders walked past us and up, onto their ship. They slapped a baseball cap on a little kid as they walked by. The cap was a USS Taylor cap with scrambled eggs on the bill and an embroidered picture of the very ship in front of me.

“Here ya go, kid.” one of the sailors said, sounding John Wayne-esque.

“I don’t want one!”

The sailor walked off surprised at the kid’s reaction. The kid’s mother insisted that the kid wear the hat for patriotic purposes.

“I don’t want one!” it repeated, pulling at the hat.

After about 30 minutes, an officer arrived. Compared to the lowly Jamaican-American seaman, he was royalty. He was a dandy; he was the bourgeoise of the ship. He wore all white; even his shoes were white. He reminded me of Richard Crenna’s character in that epic film The Sand Pebbles

“I’m Ensign Johnson,” he said crisply. It was Sunday; I was amazed how happy he seemed–giving us civilians tours on his day off.

He led us up onto the ship. He started the tour by telling us that the keel for the USS Taylor was laid at the Bath Iron Works in 1983: during the Reagan years, when we flexed our muscle and fought the red tide; sending whence it came–all the way back to the dollar store, into the outstretched arms of the Russian mafia and the Gazprom oil speculators.

“This way, sir,” Ensign Johnson said to me. For some reason, I was in the lead of the group. We went out to the Taylor’s bow first. The frigate’s missile system had been disabled; its cap was welded shut.

“Why?” I asked.

“We are on a purely defensive mission now–no Red Navy to fight these days. No: we only search ships and interdict drugs.”

Then we passed through the crew’s cabins. A few sailors were sitting on a bench outside their cabins. One chunky man read an anime magazine; another looked over his shoulder. It was tight in there; I felt like I was intruding on their space–a tourist where I didn’t belong.

“This way, sir.”

We jumped through portholes.

We then went up a welded ladder onto the bridge. A sailor was watching the radar scope. The little dinghy patrolling in front of the frigate made a small green blip on it; an even smaller blip was the pack of jet skis that appeared suddenly. The dinghy made a beeline to the jetskis, intercepting them immediately. The kids holding AR-14s flexed their muscles. We could see the drama unfold up there on the bridge. I could see the kids mouthing to the drunk guys on the jetskis to back off–that these waters were off limits. The jetskis obliged and zoomed off, making angry rooster tails behind them.

Ensign Johnson led us next to the aft part of the ship. “These ladies and gentlemen are twin mounted .50 caliber machine guns,” he said slapping his hands on them possessively.

“Ma deuce,” I said.

“Ma deuce,” Ensign Johnson echoed.

“That round will rip a man’s arm clean off,” the man with the Semper Fi hat and bluetooth said slapping his hands together as if he’d squashed a bug.

“Right sir. The Geneva Convention prohibits us from firing these at a human body,” said the Ensign.

‘Right,’ I thought.

“This ladies and gentlemen is the Phalanx,” Ensign Johnson said pointing up at a large, conical weapon.

“Wow,” a stary-eyed kid; a boy scout; an idealist mumbled under his breath.

“It’s essentially a 20mm M61 Vulcan Gatling Gun; it fires 4500 rounds a minute.”

“Wow”

“That thing will rip a man in two”

“In two? It’ll shred a man”

“We don’t fire it at people, sir,” the Ensign assured us again. “It’s purely a defensive weapon; we have removed all offensive weapons off this vessel; we only search and do drug interdictions. Our mission has changed, you see.”

“What do you search for on the ships?”

Ensign Johnson: “We don’t really search outright; we just board the vessels and then ask if we can search; we err on the side of being friendly; it helps to be friendly when you are boarding ships–especially in the Persian Gulf.”

“I see.”

“This way, folks.”

He led us to the aft of the aft. A helicopter bay was there; it had been turned into a gym. A large black sailor held a 45-pound plate in his hands and squatted–grasping and lifting it over his head as if he were Hercules strangling Hera’s two snakes.

“This bay can hold one SH-60, but we’ve turned it into a gym.”

“What about the other bay? What do you use that for?”

“It’s vacant.”

“Can it hold an SH-60?”

“Yes, but we don’t get them that often.”

“What happens if two SH-60s have to land at the same time?”

“We move the gym.”

“Where?”

“This way, folks.”

The black sailor grunted and placed the heavy plate down. Another sailor did jumping jacks; a third did crunches.

Ensign Johnson looked at his watch. “That folks concludes the tour of the USS Taylor,” he said, motioning us off the ship by extending a rigid, knife blade-like hand in front of us.

We followed orders and promptly disembarked, thanking him for his service.

We passed the disinterested Jamaican Seaman at the metal detector (He waved lazily at us using that confiscated Buck knife.) and reentered the Indie craft festival with the squids and the birds and the like-minded people with the earlobe spacers and the tribal tattoos.

I think I spent the rest of the afternoon bellied up at this really cool place.
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I was in the dollar store yesterday a long time ago.

I bought a lock for my bike and a book light (LED). The latter pops open when you push a plastic button–pretty nifty.

I checked out the book section. You can get the former Attorney General’s book Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice.

$1; it’s all yours.
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This past weekend, I was in Jim Thorpe, PA for a bachelor party (not mine). It was all about whitewater rafting, drinking, and other simian behavior exhibited by a flange of males away from feminine influence. I stayed at a place called Jim Thorpe Camping Resort. A resort camp: that place was hardly either. No, it was pretty much a giant mess. We were there during the Pocono 500, so you can imagine what the hell awaited us when we turned left off the divided highway.

We had lots of sleeveless tee-shirted men with their flabby arm fat and their American eagle tattoos; we had their dirty, mumbling offspring, out wandering around at all hours of the day and night, wielding whittled sticks and spitting green lugies that hung from the branches of innocent birch trees. We had rowdy campfires; we heard tall tales about fast cars–babes n’ big boobs; American beer and meat. Bin Laden was hung in effigy. After a suckling a five cases of piss beer, the barbarians channeled the spirit of Dale Earnhardt; he appeared above their fires–walking hand-in-hand with Jesus who happened to be wearing red and white striped pants and an Uncle Sam top hat. That’s right: Jesus is an American, damnit.

Toby Keith serenaded us from the stereos of big trucks. He crooned about our great land of plenty–reminding us that we must never forget; telling us about the American soldiers over there; telling us what it means to sacrifice things in the name of freedom; making us dream about large supermarket aisles, green grass, and sit down mowers.

The two shitters were overflowing: there was enough excreted Walmart in those paint-peeled cubicles of death to trowel every brick in the Great Wall of China.

The showers were nothing but repositories for pubic hair and hastily blown, meteor-sized clumps of nasal material. The water was cold on Saturday and lukewarm on Sunday. Shower shoes were a must. The physical act of showering meant closing one’s eyes and plugging one’s nose–keeping hands off the walls. Nothing was to touch anything without protective covering (which I’ve since burned upon my return to Bohemia).

Burgers and venison sizzled; smoke billowed over the campground; big laughs bellowed, echoing across the campsite until the chipmunks rose from their nests at dawn and began their Jim Thorpe morning ritual of scavenging the littered forest for half-digested, Planters-brand wasabi peanuts.

Beer bottles (Coors, Bud, Miller) were scattered everywhere. Little yellow bees flew into tipped over 40-ouncers and got drunk on the proud men’s backwash; sinister crows descended from tall pine trees and gorged on their vomit.

There were some video games in the camp HQ. You could shoot baskets for 30 seconds or drive a pixelated race car through a virtual Las Vegas. After that, you could pick up an advertisement for a Bible show in Strasburg (a double feature: Noah’s Ark and the Creation story!) or take part in a paintball war at Skirmish, USA. Chips and jerky were for sale in the general store–so too were American flag bandannas, NASCAR flasks, and 10-packs of tightie whities.

The cabins turned out to be hastily-erected shed kits–the kind you see for sale on the sides of the road throughout central PA. One window looked through a few unfortunate trees into the unzipped opening of a domed tent chock full of hairy asscrack. (Can you imagine being a tree and having the misfortune of being planted in THAT place–one sad mile away from tens of thousands of acres of pristine national forest?)

But the town of Jim Thorpe is another thing: a refreshing sight.

I ran through it on Sunday morning: about 10-11 miles. Let me clarify something though: You don’t run through Jim Thorpe; you either run up it or down it. The entire town sits on a steep slant. It’s a neat town; it’s an old town that’s been left alone, pretty much. Its inhabitants spend their life smoking while seated on plastic lawn chairs that stand on 3′ x 3′ faded Astroturf porches; they sit there and watch the tourists from Philadelphia or New Jersey walk by and spend their disposable income on old porcelain dolls and musty barn relics.

I turned left and ran along the Lehigh River for a bit and then turned around, because the dew point was approaching Mombasian levels. It was a pleasant and peaceful run; good for the soul–reminding me that all isn’t Jesus billboards* and burgers. The amount of trash on the sides of the the road in Jim Thorpe–the old Bob Seger cds; the discarded wrappers; the pillow cushions–wasn’t much to catalog here. No one honked at me from behind (to watch me jump); no one thumped their manhood from their car like a Congolese silverback; no one called me a ‘faggot’.

No.

The road was pretty much made up of leathery bikers, GenXYZ ecotourists, and old people hunched over the steering wheels of their Bismarck-sized RVs. The rednecks left me alone out there, so I left them alone when I got back to the Jim Thorpe Camping Resort. I packed up my stuff and got out of there as soon as I could.

I don’t think I’m ever going camping there again.

But I might go back to Jim Thorpe; it’s a cool town.
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*Well I did see one: Exposed stigmatized hands were visible; “Have you nailed down your date yet?” it read.

Last night I drove down to Atlantic City by myself. I mingled with a crowd of hoodlums (who had arrived at the Trump Plaza to see some fight between a Puerto Rican and a Cuban: both had no body fat); I elbowed my way up to a $15 craps table and tossed my chips on the hardways. I threw the dice twice and failed miserably; a few numbers, no hardways, seven came soon. The hoodlums snapped their fingers and cursed. The stickman passed the dice clockwise–nearly as fast as the seconds hand of the clock itself. It was a bad night. The casino’s special, rip-off dice were out. The mafia men wanted to milk us suckas for our shirts.

Other things were out–other variegated creatures. The flanges of bride baboons traipsed about wearing their uniforms: tight-fitting miniskirts and fuck-me boots. They text-messaged and giggled while they sipped expensive martinis while they dreamed about coveys of jockos circling them like remorra. Of course the hoodlums were out too. And other specimens: I saw a man with a shag-carpet toupee. His wife, a Jerseyite with large gold glasses and a aquiline nose held his elbow while he summoned Jesus and patted his fat hands on the table before throwing the red cubes. His dice went wild–up and over the table. The hoodlums snapped; the rest of us cursed and bent down to reach for our free plastic Heinekens and our gratis rum n’ Cokes. New dice were offered to him in a wooden bowl that looked as if it came from the palace of none other than Pontius Pilate. The man with the shag toupee reached for the dice and mumbled words of prayer.

“Jesus give me a six!”

The dice went wild again–banging against the foam padding at the end of the table where me and a quiet white man who had lost all his money stood–arms crossed; silent as cold ducks on a pond.

“Seven out–line away,” called out the stickman. The money was scooped over to the boxman (a tired-looking woman with crows feet and nicotine-stained hands) who caught the red chips that rolled like wayward tires with her open palms.

The dealers slapped their hands and shook their heads. One of them asked another what she was doing after their shift got over.

“Dunno,” she said shrugging her atrophied shoulders.

We all cursed and pounded at the table. Our chips were mixed and piled up into towers.

Dunno was the word for the night. Dunno so perfectly characterized it all. It was a big, lost, empty night spent, sadly, with a group of ‘merica’s scum. I was in and out of that oceanic shithole in less than an hour.

The best part of the night was the drive home. Miraculously, I caught David Dye’s interview on the World Cafe with Trent Reznor.

The reason that I am writing this and writing more here I owe to the motivation that I got from hearing Mr. Reznor speak at 14:53 onward..

“Cathartic means….not fitting in….was my journal….power to it….authenticity…isn’t to be famous…isn’t to be successful…try to outdo..try to compete…shouldn’t be the focus.”

That was at the end of the night: That’s why I keep writing–expression first and foremost. Damn the rest of it all.

Somehow tonight (the road hitherto, too complex, too boring, too manipulated to detail here), I ended up in the top section of some movieplex’s stadium seating in the middle of suburbia. I got to sit there and stew–watching pairs of moms and daughters (their hands full of $15.00 tubs of popcorn and $6.00 cylinders of fountain drinks) file in two-by-two, Ark-like and plop themselves down to see the latest Walmart-sponsored piece of cinematic shit to hit the theaters: Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour.

The majority of moms–good Catholics to the core–had ashes sprinkled on their heads; for it was time to go from one church to the other. It was time for, SAY IT AGAIN, worshippppuh!

There was an electric density in the air–the ozone-heavy feeling you get before a thunderstorm that causes the calcified fissures of your broken bones to tingle (or the feeling you are artificially given as you see the drama unfold in the old World War 1 movie when the protagonist predicts his demise the day before the major push; bullet between the eyes and all that)

We were given glasses to don; the lights faded, the Disney logo appeared, and then everything became 3 dimensional–an eclectic world of mass consumerism.

Wait!

We got a Walmart commercial first

Wait again!

We got previews: 3-dimensional ones!

Wait! Did I catch that? A preview for the spirit of the marathon movie.

Wait! Was that a split screen shot of Deena Kastor running in Chicago! Wait, wait, wait!

Who are those Kenyans?

What are those Penguins?

Is it over? It is!

Then it came: the shitball movie. We sat for 80 minutes–stuck in our sticky seats–watching vapid song after dopey vapid song unfold; all too close; all oozing out of the screen like the contents of a dyspeptic, bulbous blister lanced precisely at the time when its noxious contents had fermented like the finest of Falernian wines.

There she is coming up from the stage; there she is descending down from the heavens!

Hail Hosanna Montana in the highest!

Her fawning parents, (the rube, Queer-Eye-for-the-Straight-Guy made over father with a pubic-esque soul patch; the high cheekboned ueber controlling mother who reminds Hannah about cheerleading camp when she’s scared to fall into the arms of an emaciated, Justin Timberlake look-alike), they make cameos unfortunately.

Worse, some band called the Jonas Brothers wedge their pubescent elbows in at about the movie’s, slowly-reached mid point. We get to watch them strut around in skin-tight Levis that are reminsicent of Johnny Rotten; one little boy has sideburns that would make General Burnside jealous; the other little boy sings so hard, so out of tune, he takes on a Tiny Tim appearance (cheeks rosy; eyes little pencil dots; entire expression seeking maximum sympathy like that of an organ grinder monkey); the third brother hammers away on a Baldwin piano (his hands never visible)–his curly mophead shaking to his incessant yammering.

Near the end, we get a bit of comedic relief. Ah, the zany fathers of all those screaming girls! Ah, see what they will do to get Hosanna Montana tickets–oh look at the lows they will go; they don their sackcloth and ashes: ladies clothes. They humble themselves for the prize; they cast away their nets and go fishing for the prize.

The run.

They run?

Yes: There’s a scene where the dads race (in high heels) for backstage passes.

A race?

My interest was peaked; I pushed the plastic Walmart-supplied glasses closer to my once worm-ridden temples.

A race?

Indeed a race!

Sadly, it was an instant gratification race: a Marion Jones-on-steroids race; a race reserved for the large audiences on the various high school tracks around the fruited (gimmie-gimmie-now!) plain: a 100-meter sprint.

Yuck.

‘Not a race,’ I thought: a flash in the pan. It was a million heats. In the final, some ripped man wins the prize.

Where’s the marathon?

Too boring–too much tape required for that.

The movie ended rather abruptly. Hosanna Montana first sings on stage with a guitar: her supposedly self-written magnum
opus insipidly entitled, “I Miss You,”; then a racy bit dedicated to the women’s liberation movement (called G.N.O: Girls Night Out); then the Grand Finale, the peroratorical: Best of Both Worlds

No.

The lights came on and we left; the women’s ashes had been wiped off; lardball popcorn boxes were empty; profligate soda pop cylinders rolled across the theater’s cement floor; retarded cleaning men hired at $6.25 an hour (drooling and mumbling in the dark corners with wrists shaking and bent at 90-degree angles) waited for us to leave.

The last of the credits flickered by; the lights came on.

Cars (enormous SUVs) rolled out of the parking lot; all the little spoiled girls fell asleep with visions of blond sugardumbs in their dreams.

Good news!

No razor!

Finnish YMCA! (Is this George A. Custer’s karmic next life?)

The past two days, I’ve been playing Command and Colors: Ancients using the Vassal game engine against my brother.

I got the game, spent several days affixing stickers, 40-Year-Old-Virgin-like on little wooden blocks, and now am fighting the battle of Akragas taking on the heavy mantle of the Carthaginian general Himilco (who is hopelessly outnumbered) against his opponent, that conniving Syracusan Daphnaeus.

I’ve launched two heavy chariot charges against the Syracusan light infantry and calvary on the outer flanks; I’ve dispatched bowmen upon bowmen in the center: all with no success.

And I’ve done little running.

But I give you this!

Good News!

A free razor!

Since I can’t run (patellar tendonitis made worse after a post-Pandeylandaventure 15-mile slog up and down Mounts Misery and Joy(less) on Wednesday) I challenged myself to something Herculean yesterday: write a short story (6000 words) in 2:29 or 2:32:31 to enter into this contest.

I did it–mailed today in the manner that all my college essays were done: at the last minute.

Wish me luck.
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In two days, the following three things happened in my house:

1. While I was “cooking” (heating water for pasta), my circa 1950 stove shorted out. The breaker didn’t trip. The burner flared up; the house dimmed; and a hole the size of a quarter was burned through the bottom of my copper cooking (water heating) pot.

2. My kitchen sink clogged; the galvanized steel vent pipe dating back to the term of the 2nd-worst president, Herbert Hoover, broke, causing tens of gallons of water full of corn and miscellaneous molded leftover detritus to spew out onto the floor of my basement.

3. My washing machine broke: a $17-dollar part that cost $170 to repair.
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This was updated recently.
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I’m pretty good at sighting African-American celebrities.

Two summers ago, in Sammy Hagar’s bar, Cabo Wabo, in South Lake Tahoe, I shook Cedric the Entertainer’s bejeweled hand (hand extended and somewhat limp; a papal-like show–white fedora, his miter; cane with ivory handle, his staff; white Zoot suit, his chasuble and stole; opposite hand raised indicating he was done with me, his anointing). Then I saw Charles Barkley and before I could approach closer, he threw out his net of bodyguards Japanese trawler-like. Some guy had made it through the net and kept trying to talk to Messr. Barkley. Barkley stared straight ahead and pretended that the man didn’t exist. The man talked; Barkley stared ahead. The man tried moving to the other side of Barkley and talk to him from a different angle (maybe he was deaf in that ear?); the fan’s perseverance yielded to the celebrity’s stoicism and the man finally left, looking off into space just like his lofty hero.

Today, I was in NYC and saw Angela Bassett. She was in some store buying a ton of things. The obsequious attendants waited on her; they held things that hung on their arms (from hand to clavicle!) that she took off the rack and rushed them to the counter to be wanded, dinged, and charged. As I waited, I put my head in my hands and ran my fingers along the sides of my temples–feeling for the last traces of worms that had risen to the surface 5000 miles ago. I haven’t been running much since the race and I wanted to check the gauges.
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The city has a uniform–what was once Ugs(TM) is now big black boots tucked into jeans. I saw some women wearing bug shades in the gloaming so that might be part of it too.
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Saw Memento again; forgot what it was about originally; at the end, had to Google it to confirm my suspicions: I was right.
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Went to the Strand in the Village. Their WW1 section is godawful. The place is too crowded. If you want to find a book, you have to mine for it. Mining for it entails turning your shoulders to the side, saying excuse me as you wedge past the B.O.-smelling silverback, and then searching for it with your nose one inch away from shelves of books three stories high.
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Finally saw The Darjeeling Limited. Part One was horrid. Part Two was wunderbar. It was much better than Tenenbaums; it equaled Aquatic and Bottlerocket and was not as good as Rushmore.

I applied some of my India expertise and came to five conclusions:

1. The beginning scene with Murray in the cab is realistic.

2. The quaint village where the dead boy’s family resides is too clean.

3. The airport bathroom is too clean (and the squatter/urinal should have been replaced with a hole in the ground)

4. The third-class cabin aboard the Darjeeling Limited wasn’t third class–too Hollywood, similar to those “working-class Manhattan” apartments in those dopey Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks lovefestivals that are 3000-square feet with hardwood floors and furnished with all things Pottery Barn; all things neat, prim, proper, quaint, and ideal.

5. The kids’ mom’s convent is not located in the Himalayas: That place in the movie looked arid as hell.
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Went to Dumbo.

If you want something to do in Brooklyn one day, go there.

Here are some pictures: (I like how they turned out; I tried to be an artsy photographer.)

A random piece of art on a brick wall:

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If you want to eat at a fantastic, cheap, hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant in the Village then this is it. Go there. My pasta was made by hand and my meal was under $20 (including a glass of house wine and an antipasti). Service was excellent. Waiter was Italian.
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The limits of my tabloidesque, populist, wherewithal:

Owen Wilson’s recent suicide attempt made me think about Baumer Tenenbaum’s suicide attempt–played by Owen’s brother, Luke–that occurs in Wes Anderson’s epic The Royal Tenenbaums, while Elliot Smith’s Needle in the Hay plays. Elliot Smith went on to kill himself, suspiciously, by stabbing a knife into his heart.

I like that Elliot Smith song.

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