Bob Coskrey's blog

Toiletiquette

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:35:00 +0000

Banks A Helluva Lot

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 00:16:00 +0000

Banks A Helluva Lot
By Bob Coskrey

Banks, they’re all over the damn place. I counted 30 of them, including savings and loans and credit unions, in the Greater Charleston Area phone book, some of which have as many as 10 branches, and there are new ones springing up on a seemingly daily basis. My God, the competition must be ferocious, assuming they still want to make loans to us high risk, over-mortgaged, Joneses-envying material boys and girls.
I imagine their advertising budgets are quite impressive, though ironically, their efforts are blatantly lacking in creativity. So many of the names sound very much the same, and this is not a recent problem. They will either try to appeal to your city, state, or country loyalty, although state fealty seems to predominate here, with inspiring appellations such as National Bank of S.C., S.C. State credit Union, or Carolina First Bank, but with this state having supplanted Illinois in the area of embarrassing publicity recently, you would think the banks might want to disavow any relationship, or better yet, just incorporate the name of a state whose governor doesn’t require a governor for his “little Governor, whose lieutenant governor doesn’t think giving poor school children free lunches is akin to giving aphrodisiac laced feed to livestock, and where tea parties haven’t become Confederate Flag day celebrations, with middle aged, angry, white guys waxing nostalgic for the “50’s,” the “1850’s,”that is, instead of a social event for little girls.
And why is it that banks all over the country have continued the inane practice of referring to themselves as “first.”: First Citizens, First federal, First national, First Trust, Community First, etc. In the first place ( sorry ), how can all these institutions be first? Well, I guess a bank could possibly claim that it was the first in a specific category, such as the first to offer free candy to customers, the first to install security cameras, or the first to stay open during lunch hours, but this would be hard to confirm, not that anyone would care enough to check them out.
However, banks could take the initiative to establish new and imaginative categories of firsts, such as the first bank to employ a security guard under the age of 75, the first to discontinue the somewhat tedious groundbreaking ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new banks and replace it with an umbilical cord-cutting procedure, medically supervised, of course, for the first proud customer to give birth, or being the first to acknowledge John Dillinger’s birthday by having the tellers wear ski masks ( millinerily incorrect, certainly, but banks are not likely to spring for snap-brim fedoras ) and installing brown paper bag dispensers beneath their windows.
On the other hand, why not take the honesty track and admit your rank by calling yourself 132nd Federal or 27th national, for example, but perhaps, I am asking too much.
Then there are the weird names that make you question the message they are conveying. Such as Wachovia, which sounds like one of those make believe countries in an old Disney film. I’m surprised their security guards are not resplendent in colorful braided uniforms with epaulets, a plumed shako, and packing a sabre.
Then there’s BB&T, a name that might indicate they are in the witness protection program, and who knows whether it could actually stand for Bankruptcy and Breach of Trust.
Then there’s State Farm Bank. Just what does that mean? If I went there to open an account, would there be people dressed in overalls dragging in 300pound pigs for loan payments and tractors lined up at the drive-in windows?
And what’s the story with Carolina Federal Saving?. Are customers there greeted by visored, humorless federal bureaucrats or “Carolina Girl” tellers shagging in a lobby bedecked with sand drifts and swaying palmetto trees?
I guess all I’m really saying is that if you bank people want to stick around, you need to do more than use the stimulus money for your personal aggrandizement or seeing how many banks you can fit into a city block. You also need to put more thought into naming yourselves. Be a little more imaginative, truthful, and less ambivalent. And to show I’m not just here to kick you when your deposits are down, here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Self-deprecating:
Another Damned Bank
The Money Pit
Last National Bank of S.C.
Bank of No Returns
Mountebank
Boastful:
Itz Money In The Bank
Sufficient Funds Are Us
Bucks A Million
Good Credit Union
Big Bucks S&L
Take It To The Bank

TV/Nostalgic:
Bob EuBank
The Loan Ranger
Movies/Nostalgic:
George Bailey S&L
I Vant To Be A Loan Company
Political:
Special Interest Bank
Trust Us
Francophile:
Left Bank
Right Bank
Cubs Friendly:
Ernie Banks And trust
Tar Heel State friendly:
The Outer Banks, Inc.
And I’ll throw in a few slogans to further substantiate my magnanimity:
We turned down the stimulus package. We’re not a sperm bank!
Show us you don’t need a loan and we’ll give you one.
Need a loan? No problem. We’ve got more money than vice presidents.
Goldman Sucks. Invest locally.
Pssst, got a second? Mortgage, that is.
Our talkers can’t stop talking about our excellent interest rates. That’s why we don’t call them tellers any more.
In closing, it seems quite apparent to me that if you are going to be serious about not just renaming, but repackaging yourselves, that I am obviously the one to lead you out of your creative quagmire. So, I invite you to contact me while this offer lasts. However, you should be aware that I only conduct business between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00AM, since I don’t observe bankers’ hours.

Banks A Helluva Lot
By Bob Coskrey

Banks, they’re all over the damn place. I counted 30 of them, including savings and loans and credit unions, in the Greater Charleston Area phone book, some of which have as many as 10 branches, and there are new ones springing up on a seemingly daily basis. My God, the competition must be ferocious, assuming they still want to make loans to us high risk, over-mortgaged, Joneses-envying material boys and girls.
I imagine their advertising budgets are quite impressive, though ironically, their efforts are blatantly lacking in creativity. So many of the names sound very much the same, and this is not a recent problem. They will either try to appeal to your city, state, or country loyalty, although state fealty seems to predominate here, with inspiring appellations such as National Bank of S.C., S.C. State credit Union, or Carolina First Bank, but with this state having supplanted Illinois in the area of embarrassing publicity recently, you would think the banks might want to disavow any relationship, or better yet, just incorporate the name of a state whose governor doesn’t require a governor for his “little Governor, whose lieutenant governor doesn’t think giving poor school children free lunches is akin to giving aphrodisiac laced feed to livestock, and where tea parties haven’t become Confederate Flag day celebrations, with middle aged, angry, white guys waxing nostalgic for the “50’s,” the “1850’s,”that is, instead of a social event for little girls.
And why is it that banks all over the country have continued the inane practice of referring to themselves as “first.”: First Citizens, First federal, First national, First Trust, Community First, etc. In the first place ( sorry ), how can all these institutions be first? Well, I guess a bank could possibly claim that it was the first in a specific category, such as the first to offer free candy to customers, the first to install security cameras, or the first to stay open during lunch hours, but this would be hard to confirm, not that anyone would care enough to check them out.
However, banks could take the initiative to establish new and imaginative categories of firsts, such as the first bank to employ a security guard under the age of 75, the first to discontinue the somewhat tedious groundbreaking ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new banks and replace it with an umbilical cord-cutting procedure, medically supervised, of course, for the first proud customer to give birth, or being the first to acknowledge John Dillinger’s birthday by having the tellers wear ski masks ( millinerily incorrect, certainly, but banks are not likely to spring for snap-brim fedoras ) and installing brown paper bag dispensers beneath their windows.
On the other hand, why not take the honesty track and admit your rank by calling yourself 132nd Federal or 27th national, for example, but perhaps, I am asking too much.
Then there are the weird names that make you question the message they are conveying. Such as Wachovia, which sounds like one of those make believe countries in an old Disney film. I’m surprised their security guards are not resplendent in colorful braided uniforms with epaulets, a plumed shako, and packing a sabre.
Then there’s BB&T, a name that might indicate they are in the witness protection program, and who knows whether it could actually stand for Bankruptcy and Breach of Trust.
Then there’s State Farm Bank. Just what does that mean? If I went there to open an account, would there be people dressed in overalls dragging in 300pound pigs for loan payments and tractors lined up at the drive-in windows?
And what’s the story with Carolina Federal Saving?. Are customers there greeted by visored, humorless federal bureaucrats or “Carolina Girl” tellers shagging in a lobby bedecked with sand drifts and swaying palmetto trees?
I guess all I’m really saying is that if you bank people want to stick around, you need to do more than use the stimulus money for your personal aggrandizement or seeing how many banks you can fit into a city block. You also need to put more thought into naming yourselves. Be a little more imaginative, truthful, and less ambivalent. And to show I’m not just here to kick you when your deposits are down, here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Self-deprecating:
Another Damned Bank
The Money Pit
Last National Bank of S.C.
Bank of No Returns
Mountebank
Boastful:
Itz Money In The Bank
Sufficient Funds Are Us
Bucks A Million
Good Credit Union
Big Bucks S&L
Take It To The Bank

TV/Nostalgic:
Bob EuBank
The Loan Ranger
Movies/Nostalgic:
George Bailey S&L
I Vant To Be A Loan Company
Political:
Special Interest Bank
Trust Us
Francophile:
Left Bank
Right Bank
Cubs Friendly:
Ernie Banks And trust
Tar Heel State friendly:
The Outer Banks, Inc.
And I’ll throw in a few slogans to further substantiate my magnanimity:
We turned down the stimulus package. We’re not a sperm bank!
Show us you don’t need a loan and we’ll give you one.
Need a loan? No problem. We’ve got more money than vice presidents.
Goldman Sucks. Invest locally.
Pssst, got a second? Mortgage, that is.
Our talkers can’t stop talking about our excellent interest rates. That’s why we don’t call them tellers any more.
In closing, it seems quite apparent to me that if you are going to be serious about not just renaming, but repackaging yourselves, that I am obviously the one to lead you out of your creative quagmire. So, I invite you to contact me while this offer lasts. However, you should be aware that I only conduct business between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00AM, since I don’t observe bankers’ hours.

Christmas Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:41:00 +0000

The cinnamon scent of sand-tarts wafted from the kitchen, drifted up the stairs and swirled into my bedroom, rousing my olfactory sensors, and triggering a flashflood of Yuletide adrenalin. Being an 8-year-old trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve was a difficult enough task in itself without the unprovoked excitation of my sensory and hormonal systems.

Before putting me to bed at 8 pm—with no resistance (I figured the sooner I got to bed the fast I could go to sleep, then wake up on Christmas)—my mother had told me not to get up because Santa Claus might be here at any time, and "he expected all good little boys to be in bed." If I had been more nimble witted, I would have seized this opportunity to retort, "Well, Mama, if it's his policy that only 'good little boys must be in bed,' then obviously that does not apply to someone like myself, whose pyromaniacal feats of the past two years almost resulted in the loss of two homes (ours and a friend's). Therefore, I should be able to stay up." But it's just as well that I hadn't said that, since my older cousin Jimmy certainly would have added, "Sure, Bobby, you can stay up as long as you want. With your record, it's not very likely he'll be paying this house a visit anyway—especially if he doesn't have fire insurance on his sleigh."

But none of that was ever said, and I struggled vainly to try to go to sleep while at the same time, listen for hooves on the roof (reindeers', not Satan's as Jimmy would have wise-cracked), a rustling in the chimney, or any other unusual sound that naturally would be a sign that he was here. I think I finally dozed off around 5 am or so, then awoke around 7 to the sunlight streaming in my window. It was OK to get out of bed at last. It was Christmas!

Of course, I had to wake up my mother and she, in turn, would rouse the other adults (my grandmother and my aunt) and my cousin, Jimmy, who was about 18. This was and is the grown-ups eternal Christmas rule—that no child should even see, much less touch his presents, until all the adults in the house are present. Ostensibly, this restriction was instituted so that the grown-ups could see the expression of joy on our cherubic faces, as we opened the presents. In reality, this restriction is to prevent Christmas Combustion, a seasonal phenomenon in which flames sometimes erupt from wrapping paper, as small fingers rip at it with such speed that friction-generated heat evolves. I once had an entire cardboard fort go up in a flash, and would have lost a Lincoln Log set, had I not received an already filled watergun in my stocking.

I managed to control myself by wolfing down a plate of sandtarts while the disheveled grown-ups snailed their way toward the bountiful living room. Once unleashed into the room, my eyes first lit upon a castle I had written Santa to bring me from the F.A.O. Schwartz catalog. Jimmy had thoughtfully explained to me the impracticality of Santa's elves making toys for all the kids in the world, and that he had worked out some sort of a deal like free advertising endorsements with the department stores. There were also several sets of metal soldiers, British Grenadier Guards, Black Watch, Gordon Highlanders and Greek Evzones. This was mostly what I was interested in in those days, so I was quite happy.

My stocking was, I gradually learned, as much a tribute to family tradition as it was a cornucopia of thoughtful gifts. Many items were the same every year, such as a can of pick-up sticks, jackstones, a bit-bat, a box of Brach's chocolate covered cherries, a top, assorted pieces of fruit (fillers, perhaps?), and always at the toe there were nuts, always the same nuts: a walnut, a pecan, a Brazil nut, an almond and a filbert.

The adults, too, were victims of the annual stocking gifts tradition. Victims, as well as perpetrators. My mother and her sister, for example, filled each other's stocking each year and they both always received, along with the variables, a box of Ex-Lax, a package of emery boards, a box of Dr. Scholl's corn and bunion pads, a bottle of Jergen's lotion and a jar of Pond's skin cream. They, of course, also received chocolate-covered cherries and the fruits and nuts.

From the laughter that always accompanied the revealing of these repetitious stocking stuffers each year, I soon learned that this was an example of family humor. Although every Christmas I grudgingly sniggered at these atypical presents, which I naturally felt were simply occupying valuable sock space, I believe that if the tradition had ever ceased, I would have been seriously concerned.

I had a red stocking and my cousin Jimmy had a green one. My mother's and her sister's were actual long cotton stockings both white with different colored dots. My grandmother, however, had as her stocking a large—probably 20-pound or so capacity—ham bag. Although we all laughed about it, as did my grandmother, it was always a great paradox to me that this sweet, refined and gentle old lady, whom we were all taught to revere, love and treat as a queen, would have as her Christmas stocking, a huge, coarse fabric ham bag from the meat department of the White House Grocery Store on King Street. A brocaded or tapestry patterned one with a ring of ermine around the top would have seemed more fitting. It became, however, less of a paradox four years later when my grandmother further shocked me by becoming an avid fan of TV wrestling. Now she never smashed her knitting bad against the wall and yelled, "Kill the lousy scum!" Her only emotional display was to exclaim, "Oooo, oooo" in a moderate tone whenever her favorite good guy got "hurt." I tried to explain to her that nobody got hurt. It was acting. But she didn't believe me.

Our tree was always bedecked with blue lights and a lot of ornaments that are not made anymore, like small snow-covered houses, manger animals on wheeled stands, delicately-made sheep with cotton that resembled wool, fruit and cornucopias. Some of these items I have managed to save through the years and they reappear on my family's Christmas tree every year. I still have a small wooden puppet from Germany whose limbs flail whenever a sub-torso string is yanked. Nowadays, a similarly-operated Peewee Herman doll might sell in vast quantities.

My favorite ornament, however, is a small, probably 75 to 100 year-old Santa Claus whose upper body appears to be made of some sort of ceramic substance. The end of his nose is nicked off. He has bulbous eyes, and his face is a pinkish red hue, making him look like a heavy drinker. He became sort of a family joke, and every year as he was carefully unwrapped and hung on the tree someone would make the remark that he looked like he had had a stroke. My son never found him, not any of the old worn-out ornaments, amusing. He would always redistribute them to the back of the tree, or sometimes even hide them.

As a child, I was always given the responsibility of putting the tinsel on the tree, and inevitably I was praised—unreservedly, I'm sure—for my contribution. "Ohhh, Bobby, the tree looks so much better now that you have put on the tinsel." I probably did a fair job up to a certain height. After that I had to throw it on, which only created little clumps of silver matter on the upper branches. In fact, I actually continued to think I was doing a great job with the tinsel well into my adult life until my wife finally made me aware of my decorating deficiency:

Barbara: "You're putting the tinsel on in clumps and it's not hanging down, Bob."

Me: "What? This is an outrage. I have been acclaimed as a tinsel artiste by my family since I was 4 years old."

Eventually, after observing some correctly tinseled trees and comparing them with mine, I realized, at age 26, that my credentials were obviously spurious. God only knows what other fake foundations of competence my well-meaning mother and grandmother laid for me.

Me (to Barbara): "What do you mean shoes are supposed to be tied in bows, not knots?"

Anyway, after our first Christmas together, we never used tinsel again.

For Christmas dinner, Uncle Harry, Aunt Lorene and their five children were invited over. We always referred to them as "the thundering herd" because of the noise their 14 feet made on the steps from the street to the porch. There were four boys and a girl. David, the youngest, was my age, then there was Nancy, 9; Frederick, 11; Sandy, 12; and Harry, 14. Of course, Jimmy, my other cousin, was already there. We always had a great time. My grandmother was very diplomatic about giving us presents, meaning sometimes we all got the same things, expect in Nancy's case, of course, or when a large age difference necessitated otherwise.

That year, we (the boys) all got flannel shirts. (Theirs were red, while Jimmy's and mine were Kelly green.) I don't think there was any significance to the assignation of colors, in retrospect. Certainly none of us paid it any attention at the time. In fact, since it was clothing, we gave it little thought at all, preferring to concentrate on the toys. Sandy, Frederick, David and I all received wind-up tanks from our grandmother, the kind with rubber treads and a flint inside the turret cannon that spewed out sparks. We rolled them back and forth all day long, only ceasing when we over-wound the springs.

We had the typical Christmas dinner with turkey, cranberry sauce, etc., expect that the pastries and desserts were always German, since that was my grandmother's heritage. There were strudels, something called Wieckelkucken, and other whose names are no longer retrievable. Of course, there was always the omnipresent fruitcake that some insidious distant relative would make for my grandmother. She was usually the only one who ate it, and perhaps she merely did it out of politeness. In fact, I'm sure that was the case. Its incomprehensible to me that anyone so discriminating in every other quality could enjoy a cake made of mutated fruit and grocery store sweepings.

We also invited a family friend to dinner every year, an elderly lady of French descent, Miss Inez Chapeau. She used to live in the old St. Johns Hotel (now the Mills House). She was a very nice lady, but she had established an apparently well-deserved reputation as a cheapskate, which she, despite having more than adequate funds, glorified by purchasing her wardrobe from a shop called "The Thrifty Lady" or the Salvation Army Store and her Christmas presents from any of the dime stores. I mainly remember her mustachioed, mole-decorated countenance scraping across my cheek or lips after obeying my mother's command, "Give Miss Inez a big kiss, Bobby."

In 1948, it was a special Christmas. We all got to see our "special" aunt, Adele. Aunt Adele was my mother's sister, who was single and lived with her female roommate in Washington, DC. Adele was at the time, in her early 40s. She was about 4'10" and weighed probably under 85 pounds. She had her hair cut very short, wore mannish looking suits and orthopedically-styled low-heeled shoes or blue or white tennis shoes (or easy walkers, as they were called then). She was also—if you have not guessed by now—a lesbian, though none of us kids, nor many of the adults for that matter, knew that term then. We just thought she was a very odd looking and acting person whom we tried to prevent our friends from seeing.

Adele also had a very volatile temper. In fact, all the other grown-ups in the family referred to her as "the Atomic Bomb" because she was always exploding. And she always exploded at a different person each trip home. To make things even more interesting, she also would choose a favorite new nephew or niece (there was only Nancy) every time she came down.

So there was always this almost intangible air of suspense among us with Aunt Adele's arrival. I had once been her favorite when we visited her in Washington one year, but the next two years I had been the victim of her wrath. She always gave us money for a present, I guess because she really didn't have a handle on what kinds of things kids liked.

Actually her explosions were often quite comical, mainly because they were very predictable. As soon as she started drinking—which apparently was while she was on the train—her face gradually grew a deeper crimson and the veins in her forehead got blue. So after she'd been in the kitchen tossing down "shooters" for an hour or so, we knew the blast was imminent. We just didn't know who she'd be aiming at. Even though the other adults would be upset at her tirades, we kids never took them very seriously. She was simply part of our family Christmas pageant, a sort of strident, Grinch-like counterbalance to the occasional Yuletide tendency toward ultra-sentimentality, mawkishness and syrupy over-indulgence.

After dinner, we'd all go over to Uncle Harry's and Aunt Lorene's house. I was always ready for this because I wanted to see what toys they had gotten. And without exception, I would always find at least one thing they got that I didn't and that I—at that moment—wanted really bad. This year, it was a little metal sailor that David had gotten in his stocking. What a covetous little brat I was. It was a fun time at their house, an environment quite different from the more controlled and peaceful ambience of my grandmother's. I was a sort of action-packed Never-Never Land, where I could venture out onto their dock and exercise my childhood right to fall headfirst into the pluff mud (which I did), where I could watch Nancy being pulled up the uncarpeted steps by her ankles, where Uncle Harry's voice occasionally interrupted with a mild complaint, "David, are you and Bobby playing with the ripsaw again?"

Later that night, we'd all pile into the Pontiac and head back across town to my grandmother's. Sometimes Adele would stay at Uncle Harry's, a decision which always pleased me immensely, since I would have friends coming over tomorrow. Aunt Adele always took a lot of explaining.

All the way home and about an hour after I got into bed that night, I thought about that little metal sailor David got. Thank goodness, I had a birthday coming up in two months.

Drive to Work

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:34:00 +0000

I’m backing down the driveway. It’s 7:37AM. I look back, not wanting to run over one of the multitude of dogs in our neighborhood, although that giant lab next door, who scares the crap out of me each day as I walk by the fence, roaring like the “Hound of the Baskervilles,” maybe if I just brushed his tail, he would respect me. My God, I don’t mean that, I love dogs, or maybe I just love dogs who love me, and may be that goes for people too. Shut up! Too much introspection for this time of day.

My breakfast of shredded wheat, walnuts, blueberries, bananas, cinnamon, and honey in skim milk, which I naively hope will add a year or two onto my life, probably spent in some Nurse Ratchet run nursing home, is entering digestion mode, as I perfunctorily wave to a neighbor, with whom we no longer associate due to a string of unpleasant experiences. She drives by in one of a fleet of SUV’s on our cul-de-sac. She waves. At this distance, it could be a single digit. Who cares? It would just be a crude exclamation point at the end of our relationship. I wave back.

Before backing out onto the street, I stop to tune in to the “Bob and Tom Show.” I like humor to pervade my life. It seems to make things flow a lot smoother, and I’m a fervent believer that humor exists in everything. Oh, it may not be appropriate always, but it’s there. They’re on break, so I tune in to ESPN to see if the Yankees won. I’m disappointed about 32% of the time. I doubt if Washington National fans are inclined to do this..

I reach the stop sign at the main street in our subdivision and, of course, stop, unlike the person to my right, who simply rolls through. I have noted over the years that about 90% of people think you only have to stop for a stop sign if there is an officer of the law in sight. I don’t know why I felt I had to specify officer of “the law,” as if someone might think I’m referring to an officer of the 81st Airborne, Salvation Army, or the Loyal Order of the Moose. But, as for stop signs, why even waste money on them. Simply have a small one directing cars at all 4 intersections to stop that would pop up on the roof of the police car whenever it came to an intersection. In the absence of the police car, it would be every man for himself, pretty much like it is now.

I arrive at the entrance to the main business thoroughfare that runs in front of our subdivision, where there is a stop light. I get in the right hand lane, since I am turning right onto the thoroughfare. It’s a turn right on red light, but I can’t see what’s coming from my left because the A-Hole in the lane beside me in the aircraft carrier-sized Humvee has pulled out so far, he’s almost under the light itself. This gives him no advantage, since he can’t go till the light turns green anyway. I try to pull out more, but have to stop or risk getting whacked by the endless river of vehicles. While waiting for the light to change, I dream of having one of those giant Sikorsky transport helicopters so I could swoop down and snatch up one of these inconsiderate bastards and set him down in the middle of a Taliban encampment in Afghanistan with Lee Greenwood’s CD, “I’m Proud to be an American,” blaring at maximum volume so he can play out his fantasy in real time.

My dream fades out, as I am finally able to enter the traffic flow. I merge into the far right lane, so when I get on the bridge, I will be in the lane to I-26 West. Seconds later, a car in front of me makes a sudden right turn while simultaneously engaging his turn signal, causing me to brake suddenly and the moron who was following too closely behind me to come to a screeching halt and glare menacingly at me in the rear view mirror. I have observed that around 75% of drivers make these kinds of turns, if they even use their turn signals at all. I’ve wondered if may be they don’t actually realize it’s a safety function, but instead, believe it’s just a way of showing off to people that you’re making a real fancy turn: “ Hey, everybody! Look at me.Yeehaw!”

Today, I seem to be catching practically every red light, and many are caused by people going ten to twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. I have a theory that most of these road slugs simply don’t want to get to their destinations, whether it’s a horrible job, an angry spouse, a funeral, a baby shower, or a Yanni / John Tesh Duet concert. And although these people can certainly be aggravating, they don’t come close to the most egregious of all these motorized malefactors, the red light runners, those Camaro-driving, spoiler- sporting cylinder-heads who simply refuse to stop for a red light. I have a morbid intuition that one of these Darwinian cast-offs will do me in one day. Why? Because I am one of their unfortunate and ill-fated opposites, that small band of drivers who actually stop when the light turns red. It will be my destiny some day that when I stop, one of these people will be right behind me, expecting that I, of course, will run the light too. That is why I always look into the rear view mirror whenever I stop for a red light, hoping, in vain, I can maneuver out of the way, or at least, watch the driver swallow his dangling fuzzy dice or Play Boy key upon impact.

Having avoided or, perhaps, only postponed Death by Camaro, I finally make it to I-26 West and a few minutes later, the South Cosgrove exit, where I prepare to do battle with a long line of vehicles, who are there to challenge my right to exit the highway. It seems that in their world, a person entering a major highway not only has the right-of-way over those trying to exit the highway, but should initiate a game of Chicken till the lesser man backs down and the other is honored later on in some elaborate ceremony at the Summerville Speedway.

I’m onto South Cosgrove now, and I notice the guy in front of me in the 72 Mercury ( often it’s a pick-up) has his bare arm hanging shoulder-length out of the driver’s side window. Only guys do this, so it probably is some kind of macho showboating demonstration, since only guys with “guns’ do it. I have noticed others who drape their right arms over the passenger seat as they drive. I figure they probably have less presentable guns, which resulted in a lack of confidence with females, and finally the sad manifestation of this stressor, pretending they have a date in the seat next to them. In addition, both of these kinds of drivers share an attribute, a penchant for looking more out of the side windows than they do out of the windshield, but not randomly, these are testosterone fueled observations, since I have discerned that they only focus on things such as various kinds of machinery and equipment, e.g., a construction site, road work, a disabled vehicle, a field being plowed, and possibly even spontaneous gunplay, the latter with more avid interest, should they happen to have a gun rack.

I do not pass these Manly Motorists, since I have have discovered that to do so is to issue a challenge to their STP leaking manhoods, which will only lead to trouble and possibly personal head trauma, vehicular or otherwise..

Alas and at last, I am in the final stretch down Magwood Boulevard, and as I approach the turn-off onto my employer’s street I am aware of a car whose driver, at the last second, decides he wants to cut in front of me. He does not have his turn signal on, so he does not meet one of my criteria for letting someone in. Neither does he not meet the other criterion, which is stopping and politely waiting to be let in. I vindictively speed up just enough to not give this transgressor enough room to cut in, and I never make eye contact, sort of like in some books, when a character who kills someone, he never wants to look him in the eye, but I sadistically watch in my rear view mirror, hoping to see his defeated face, though I can’t, as car after car refuses him a place in line. I arrive at work, feeling triumphant, yet mildly self-conscious of my inordinate level of glee. “Whatever!” I had endured the the daily vicissitudes of another drive to work and had managed to squeeze in a minor victory at the end. That hardly ever happens.

Then I notice the car that had been the well-deserved recipient of my rightful revenge pulling into the employee parking lot. I recognize the driver instantly. My supervisor.

Instantly, I have an idea for my next article: “Drive To The Unemployment Office.”

Fred Sanford and Mark Sanford: Compare/Contrast

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:54:00 +0000

1. Fred Sanford, star of the 70’s sitcom, “Sanford and Son,” was played by the black actor-comedian, Redd Foxx. Mark Sanford’s SLED code name is Phil Anderer.

2. Fred would feign heart attacks, calling out to his deceased wife, “I’m coming to join you, Elizabeth.” Mark actually gave several of his staffers heart attacks, when they discovered an email to his mistress proclaiming, “Fathers’ Day, Schmathers’ day, I’m coming to join you, Maria.”

3. Fred kept his junk in his yard. Mark kept his junk in his pants except during visits to Argentina.

4. Redd Foxx was known for his x-rated joke albums in the 50’s. Mark (“El Grande Marco”) became infamous for airing his ribald e. mails in the 21st century’s first decade.

5. Fred’s nemesis, “the evil and ugly” Aunt Esther, often made his life a living Hell, trying to keep him in line. Mark has Jennie.

6. Fred’s business could have benefitted from a stimulus package. Mark’s obviously overactive package didn’t need stimulating, it was later revealed.

7. Fred stayed at home. Mark discovered a new route from the Appalachian Trail to Argentina.

8. Fred was the show’s biggest alcohol drinker. Mark’s devoted followers were heavy imbibers of his homemade cool-ade.

9. Fred could often be a first class jerk. Mark is a jerk who always goes first class.

10. Fred had “soul,” but no mate. Mark has a soul mate, but no soul.

Heat-Seeking Cabbies: A Walk in New Yawk

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:54:00 +0000

I had seen this backdrop in thousands of movies and TV shows over a lifetime, and here I was right in the middle of it—live! My mild anxiety that I would somehow lose my equilibrium, not to mention significance, from the immensity of this greatest of all the megalopolises was immediately displaced with awe and excitement. My God, here I was at 55th Street and 7th Avenue, or just “55th and 7th” as they say it in the scripts. It sounded good to hear myself say it. I sounded like a New Yorker. Well, except for the accent, maybe.

My wife and I began to walk away from out hotel, The Wellington. It was one of those old ones, built in the ‘20s, with lots of musty charm and ancient radiator pipes that expanded in the cold December nights and made loud clanging sounds like frenzied “steel-drivin’ men” were whacking them with 20-pound sledgehammers.

As we continued our walk, I looked upward toward the enveloping concrete, steel, and glass monoliths occasionally interrupted by “NYPD Blue” sky and adjusted gradually to my agoraphobic ant status.

Panning earthward once more, I saw unrelenting hordes of people marching from one sidewalk to another, melding into one another like out of uniform drill teams. They all seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, except for the ones, like myself, who gawked at the skyscrapers, and as they passed by, I sometimes detected smatterings of other languages. And although these people were not in uniform, I did slowly begin to realize that most all of them did wear black coats of one sort or another, which my wife finally informed me was the Color de Rigueur for New Yorkers in the winter.

The noise of the crowds is non-stop, but it’s frequently overwhelmed by what you could refer to as the “NY Soundtrack”: car horns, every now and then interrupted by a siren, twenty-four hours a day. And New York traffic is not at all similar to Charleston’s—or anywhere else for that matter—it’s 85% cabs, nearly filling the streets with yellow, with the remaining 15% being made up of white or black, block-long limousines, buses, trucks, emergency vehicles and an occasional regular car.

The horn-blowing goes on and on, and even though some people might be annoyed by it, most New Yorkers seem to just ignore it. But beyond thinking his was all funny as hell, I actually enjoyed being an extra in this stereotypical NYC movie scene.

Everybody’s in a hurry, especially the cabbies, and if one car takes too long, the exasperated one blasts him with his horn. Since there is perpetual traffic, we have, in essence, the horns of infinity.

Which reminds me that if I were a New York cabbie, I would nickname my cab “Captain Hornatio.”

Strangely, however, in my many visits to New York, I have never witnessed an incidence of driver violence. It’s my theory that the New York driver’s violent impulse is channeled into the non-violent outlet of horn-blowing. Therefore, instead of yelling, flipping off, or slinging lead at a person who displays faulty drivership, you just bear down on your horn and pretend it’s a machine gun, or that you’re releasing two jerk-seeking missiles from just under your headlights.

If I may digress briefly, I think an item that would really sell, not just there (though, actually, if you can sell it there, you can sell it anywhere), would be one of those triggered joysticks that you used to see in planes in old war movies, complete with the taped sound effects: “Die you stop-sign running Honda jockey, brat-tat-tat-tat!”

Despite New York’s size and its traffic, its streets are terrific places to walk. Most all of them (in Manhattan) are numbered, so even directionally retarded people, like myself, can’t get lost, and even if I still manage to, there’s always a cab or a bus.

You won’t ever get to know a city unless you walk it, and in the “Big Apple,” walking is an intensely emotional experience—at least for me—for as I walk and observe, my mind is full of images: Tennessee Williams typing away in his Chelsea hotel room, Jack Kerouac stumbling out of Birdland with Charlie Parker’s horn still wailing in his ears, John and Yoko emerging hand-in-hand from The Dakota.

I still have an as-yet-unfulfilled urge to walk through Central Park, carrying my thirty-year-old Scrabble set, meeting up with Tony Randall or Dick Cavett and challenging either to a game, with the loser having to treat the winner to a three-year drinking tour of New York bars (I’ve been practicing for three months—not scrabble, drinking).

I’d also like to bump into Woody Allen, who actually responded by letter to a story I sent him in 1968 (“Your story was very interesting and long”), hard enough to knock him onto the third rail for causing me the anguish of having to decide whether to continue to idolize him as a cinematic and literary genius or condemn him as a moral moron.

Unfortunately, I can only afford this Gotham ambulation about once a year, so in the meanwhile I will have to amuse myself with some downtown Charleston after hours strolling and perhaps, if I should bump into Jeff Schwaner, careening out of the Music Farm, I could challenge him to a game of Trivial Pursuit at Jack the Ripper’s. I understand that as a bona-fide senior citizen, I will be permitted to bring reference books.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:35:00 +0000

I have been trying to think of something to write about, but I am afraid I may have run (no pun intended) out of humorous things to say about running. Some of you are probably saying, “He ran out about six articles ago. It’s about time the old fool realized it.”

Perhaps the weather has something to do with it, since as it gets closer to summer, even though I continue to run, I lose my enthusiasm for it. And judging by the temperatures of the last three weeks, summer arrived in mid-May. I sort of feel inclined to write about running in the heat, but I know I did that last summer. On the other hand, no one probably read it anyway, except Cedric, and he has to, so why should I worry?

Therefore, I will start by avowing that while summer is a fun time for most everyone else, for runners it is somewhere between a four-month-long peer-influenced trial of perseverance and sportomasochism.

I even feel self-conscious at times when I run past a normal walking or stationary person. I feel they are thinking, “Look at that crazy jackass running in this heat. Look at him, will you? He’s completely soaked with sweat, his face is a mask of pain, and breathing like William Perry on the first day of training camp. He’s obviously expressing suicidal ideation through exercise.”

Which brings to mind a suggestion for a summer race, “The Death Wish 10k.” It would be held every year in late August at 1pm, at the Northwoods Mall parking lot. The course would circumscribe the mall and would probably necessitate rounding it about a half-dozen times. Participants would have to wear those air-tight, silvery looking sweatsuits you see advertised on TV and black woolen stretch socks. There would be salt water available at one mile splits and hot soup, chili and coffee at the finish. The age group winners would get a two week pass to the Parris Island Marine Boot Camp. The overall winners would receive free tickets to the Ill Will Games to be held in Libya next year.

Perhaps a way to prolong the racing season through the hot months would be to have some night races. We could begin with the “Spirit of Spoleto—Let’s Do Lunch 5k Invitational.” Qualifications: 1) Proff of attendance at the last five Spoleto events (Piccolo, being free, of course does not count); 2) A picture of yourself with a group of people at a Spoleto event, at least two of whom are of indiscernible gender. The race would be at 9pm in the downtown area. The participants will wear what one usually wears for Spoleto evening events—anything that can be defined by a fellow Spoletan as being “divine,” “superb,” or “fun.” Labels will be closely checked. Running shoes are optional.

The overall winners will get to “do lunch” with a major Spoleto artiste. Age group winners will receive Spoleto Patron, Zina (“Zee Nee”) Paolozzi-Rockefeller-Middleton’s tape—“Give me Spoleto or Give me Death.” The tape instructs aspiring Spoletans in such things as: 1) How to wear your glasses on the top of your head; 2) How to know when not to clap at a ballet, and 3) How to meet and appear to converse intelligently with artsy people, despite being artistically illiterate.

An evening race at the opposite end of the social spectrum would be a night version of the Cooper River Bridge Run, with the only other major difference being that the participants must run the race sans shorts, but strategically covered with luminous silver paint. It would be called the Great Moon River Run.

An interesting touch would be that there would be no prizes or trophies awarded. However, the warm-up shorts which would be taken up just prior to the race would only be given back to the overall and age group winners.

Maybe there is hope for hot weather running after all. Probably more than there is for my rapidly dwindling store of humorous ideas for this column. If any LCR readers have subjects or ideas for articles, please let me or Cedric know.

And yes, before I receive hundreds of queries, tail-gaiting at the “Great Moon River Race” will result in immediate disqualification.

(Originally published July 1986)

The Attack of the Free-Foodies

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:51:00 +0000

It always amazes and, at some level, disgusts me, that people become so culinarily orgasmic over free food. I’ve seen it in my workplace whenever a pharmaceutical rep. has a luncheon or just brings in containers of doughnuts, juice, and coffee, where formally, or better, formerly, educated people suddenly act like starving Darfurians. No, I retract that, I’m sure the Darfurians would maintain a semblance of dignity, even with the ubiquitous clouds of flies, whereas these over-stuffed greedy-guts might actually suck down a fly or two in the throes of their food frenzies.

I’m tempted, but always resist screaming at them, as they rip apart the defenseless pastries like lions at a Chihuahua convention: “Have you never seen a doughnut before? They’re quite commonplace, you know, in the worldwide menu of available sustenance. Do the names Krispy Kreme or Duncan make clanging sounds in your vacuous belfries?”

Also, at my workplace, where we are divided into teams housed in separate offices in the same building, a thoughtful person on my team will occasionally bring in some breakfast goodies, such as brownies, cupcakes, or the omnipresent doughnuts, which, if there were a contest to name a national pastry, would win in a sucroseslide. Naturally, whatever the sweet thing—it could be chocolate-covered liverbits—it is scoffed down piranha style in a matter of nanoseconds, but occasionally, when the donor is excessively generous, there are leftovers, and within minutes people from the other offices, who have apparently developed super efficient olfactory sensors, are in our office drooling over the calorie-laden remains. If one of us is in there, they will semi-politely ask, as their hands are three quarters of the way into the bag, “Okay if I have one?” If none of us is there, then they adhere to the pastry purloiner’s motto, “Don’t ask, just take.”

I’ve always wanted to put something like a miniature bear trap or a black mamba in the bag, though they’d probably eat the latter, mongoose-like, without bothering to look.

One day at work, they announced over the P.A. system, just before 12:00, that there would be a drug rep. sponsored luncheon in our break area, , and the noise of the people stampeding toward that destination would have caused someone from an earthquake prone area to have a panic attack.

Another place that seems to attract “Free-Foodies” in never-ending streams is the supermarket, when they are giving out samples of food products. Some of them, instead of taking a morsel and moving on, stake their claims to gormandizing rights there on that spot and only disengage their incisors when the harassed attendant is forced to explain that his job is to allow people to sample and hopefully buy the product, not to satisfy someone’s eternal pangs of hunger.

Lastly, a new venue for the “Free-Foodie” is a popular restaurant that often has a lot of customers waiting to be seated, patiently or otherwise, and this establishment, in a thoughtful marketing gesture, starts its wait staff walking amongst the throngs giving out free samples of their wares.

All of a sudden, it’s feeding time at the monkey exhibit, as ravenous patrons snatch items, such as chicken marsala and calamari and jam them into rapidly masticating mouths, excited further by the overwhelming thought—or, perhaps, it’s a reflex now—that may be they can put away an entire meal this way and it won’t cost a penny. Regarding the simian reference, I have wondered whether these same people in the restaurant’s restroom, could be easily startled into slinging excrement at one another.

Attending a two year old’s birthday recently may have shed some light on the etiology of this behavior, as I observed the birthday boy stuffing a large piece of cake into his already caked with cake mouth, being certain to extend his whole hand into the mini-cavern of his mouth to ensure he didn’t lose any of its delectable 1500 calories. May be some traumatic event fixated him at that moment of his life, such as, just prior to getting his piece of cake “and eating it too,” his father, seizing the opportunity to participate in any kind of “par-tee,” getting crap-faced and passing out, face-first, into the cake, much to the horror of family, friends, and, of course, the birthday boy. Hence, now that little boy, grown to adulthood, eats a piece of birthday cake—anybody’s—brownie, doughnut, luncheon spread, supermarket or restaurant sample as soon and as fast as possible, so he can avoid the recurrence of that long ago trauma or its memory.

I’m afraid I don’t have a psychological theory for the “Free-Foodie’s obsession with any food that is free. I think it may simply be that most people are just “Cheap-Ass Bastards.”

I will end this piece with this plea to the “Free-Foodies:” “Try to remember that unless you are truly starving, that the next time you are confronted with food being doled out gratis, behave yourselves. For God’s sake, sirs/madams, have you no decency. The whole world is watching. Especially the Darfurians.”

Blame It On My Muse

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:31:00 +0000

While being parked outside a hospital, I observed a man entering it with what looked like one of those coolers that they transport organs in. I also noticed that his head had been shaven in a way that looked like he had had intracranial surgery of some kind, and my muse, who leads a rather idle life, offered these thoughts: 1) Times are really tough when someone needing a brain transplant has to bring it to the hospital because his insurance doesn’t cover transportation or 2) This guy had to actually go out and find his own brain, because the donor search program is so inefficient, and 3) if he’s operating solo, where did he get it? Were laws broken? People killed? Has Costco got some shady deals going on and he got a case of them to improve his chances?

One of my favorite pastimes is hurling epithets at the drivers of other cars, for example, animal-human billingsgate such as capybara-face, mandrill-buttocks, and horse gonad-head, with the aid of my muse, of course, but yesterday, she made me aware of my apparently unconscious habit of always adding the prefix, “little,” when I curse out someone in a small car. So it seems I have either deduced that only little people drive little cars or that the cars, themselves are responsible for their reckless actions, which means I am tossing verbal invective upon inanimate objects. I have been doing this for such a long time that I’m not sure I can stop, although my muse, whose name, by the way, is Plaigia Rizem, has suggested that I just continue my harangue against the little cars, but just spice it up a bit by actually getting out of my vehicle and yelling in the driver’s window, and that inevitably, some big guy or woman would emerge, face crimson-faced with rage, and smash me to a brew-spewing pulp ( Do I drink and drive? Certainly not, Plaigia simply wanted me to use “brew-spewing pulp.”). After concluding that my muse may have a chronic and severe mental illness. I came up with a less lethal cure: I downloaded a picture of Andre the Giant driving a Mini-Cooper, which I now have clipped to my sun visor. It works perfectly, and, in fact, I’ve even doubled my curse word per vehicle output, with nary a thought about size.

Today, I was almost sideswiped by a red pick-up truck with a Confederate flag decal, and Plaigia whispered in my ear, “Red truck, red neck, red state, read ( past tense) nothing.”

Lastly, before retiring to her muse mews she inspired me to write a sentence representing the awesomEST state of the English language in America: “The formAlly laXadaisical realAtor showed her mischievIOUS side by giving her clients jewelEry made from nucUlar waste.”

Top 15 Rejected Spoleto Event Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:48:00 +0000

1. Overeaters Anonymous Ballet Company presents: "Swine Lake"
2. Gentlemen's Club's G-string Quartet
3. John Graham Altman's All WASP adaptation of Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess": "Poopsie and Biff"
4. City of North Charleston presents: A Taste of Spruill Avenue
5. The Howard Stern Topless Lesbian Dance Company presents: The Nutcracker (dedicated to Rush Limbaugh)
6. Jeffrey Dahmer Finger Painting Exhibition (done mostly with other guy's fingers)
7. The original version of the "Irish River Dancers": "The Irish Cirrhotic Liver Dancers"
8. A performance by the Citadel's crack haze team, "The Moultrie Street Maulers" (city firefighters will be on hand)
9. Day of the Night Heron (at Washington Park): Jalapeno bloated avian park residents strafe a 30x30 fast canvas at point-blank range, with artistic results
10. Children's Spoleto Event: the combined horse carriage companies of Charleston present: "Bobbing for Roadapples"
11. College of Charleston fraternities present at the Stern Center: "A Barf College Display"
12. The Meeting Street Knife and Gun Corps: Off-duty muggers entertain with precision marching during daylight hours. No evening performances due to prior commitments.
13. Charleston Bartenders' Association presents: "The Whiz." Each bar sponsors its most prodigious beer guzzler in a urination for distance competition at Johnson Haygood Stadium. Multi-colored food colorings provide special effects.
14. Homophobes International presents: "An evening with Jesse Helms." The NC Senator discusses his cause and effect theory on males with ponytails and homosexuality.
15. The Prostitutes Association of America, under the direction of its President, Tanya Joyce ("T.J.") Hooker, presents: "Hooking is a F***ing Art." Similar in concept to the AIDS quilt, a vast display of mattresses are "laid out" at the North Charleston Coliseum.

Top 15 Most Frequently Overheard Tourist Comments About Charleston

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:02:00 +0000

1. “Unless you’ve got couple of hours to spare, don’t mention ‘Hugo’ to any of these people.”
2. “We want to tour the Citadel campus. Should we arm ourselves?”
3. “The first thing I want to see is that finishing school for Transsexuals, Gordon Langley Hall.”
4. “‘Most Polite City in America,’ my ass! Some 80-year-old Scarlett O’Horror just told me I’d soon be needing some emergency proctological surgery if I took one more picture of her cupola.”
5. “Sure I’ve heard of the Spoleto Festival. When do they start blooming? And how many does it take to make an average float?”
6. “I hear if you give a Charlestonian a word association test, the term ‘booze-hound’ 90% of the time elicits the response, ‘Episcopalian’.”
7. “This is a city completely devoid of rats. I understand the roaches chased them away.”
8. Tourist #1: “Some sections of it remind me of Sweden.”
Tourist #2: “A liberal attitude toward sex?”
9. “I heard that inbreeding was once so bad among some of the old Charleston families that when a kid was teasingly called ‘four-eyes’ by his peers, he may not necessarily have been wearing glasses.”
10. “Did you know that some of these old building are pre-Strom Thurmond?”
11. “I heard they had to postpone the repair work on the old Cooper River Bridge for a week, when a shipment of Crazy Glue was lost.”
12. “A mixed marriage here is when a Charlestonian marries someone from North Charleston.”
13. “We’re just staying one day. My parking meter expense loan was denied.”
14. “I don’t care how great they say it is, I’m not eating any of that she-crab soup.”
15. “I know it sounds crazy, but every once in a while, I get an urge to just sort of wander down the middle of the street like I was in Disney World or something.”

Big Apple Broadway Food Fest

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:26:00 +0000

I’m certainly not a professional food critic, but I can eat and write, sometimes simultaneously; therefore, I am as qualified as the next guy to give a personal assessment of the food and restaurants I have experienced. And nowhere, except maybe Paris, have I dined better than in New York. Like Paris, there are thousands of restaurants, from world famous ones to cozy neighborhood eateries, but up or low scale, most all of them have one common characteristic—terrific food.

I’ve only eaten in a couple of the famous ones in New York and the food was great, but without a doubt, my favorite New York restaurant is Carmine’s, a spacious Italian eating place on 44th Street near 7th Avenue, right in the middle of the theater district. “Phantom” is playing directly across the street and that ancient après theater watering hole, Sardi’s, is a few doors down. We go to Carmine’s every time we go to New York. It’s always something my wife and I look forward to as much as anything else—and there is lots of “anything else’s” in New York. Why do we return to this particular establishment every year like half famished grizzlies to their favorite stream? Why are Carmine memories causing me to keep replacing my saliva spotted writing paper? Baked clams, simply the best thing I have ever tasted. Succulent morsels smothered in olive oil, garlic, Italian seasoning, parmesan cheese, bread crumbs and I don’t know what else—they won’t tell, and why should they? We always get a dozen each for an appetizer. One time, though, I’d like to just eat clams all night, just stuff myself with them ‘til I weighed as much as Chris Farley, but not fat—solid clams, so many that I couldn’t even drink another Peroni (though that’s hard to imagine), so many that like in the cartoons, you could look into my eyes and see the clam level. Well, I don’t think my wife would put up with that, but you get my drift: the clams are fantastic.

And even though the clams are to Carmine’s what “Seinfeld” is to NBC, there are a cast of other “stars” such as the entrees, which are served in “family style” helpings (enough for four people with normal appetites to eat). Everything is good. The last time we had lasagna, the pasta had an almost silk smooth texture that I had never before experienced. You could actually make a meal of the huge Italian bread basket assortment that is never allowed to become empty. Included in the assortment are the most delicious, fresh baked dark and white breads and rolls, pizza bread with Italian sauce and romano cheese, breads with nuts, and my favorite, a short fat sesame seed encrusted breadstick which leaves you with a wonderful toasted sesame aftertaste.

If you’re looking for a quiet and romantic repast with your paramour, go somewhere else. Carmine’s is lusty, bustling, noisy and energetic. People are eating, drinking and enjoying life. There are large families, assorted tourists, business men and theatrical types. The restaurant, in fact, has sort of encapsulated the spirit of Manhattan itself, as if they picked up the shell of the building and lowered it down on 44th Street, ensnaring hundreds of willing victims.

The wooden floors, despite the flinging of marinara and bread crumbs, are spotless and there are white clothed tables stretching from the front windows to the rear. A long bar is on the right and there is another room upstairs. The walls are covered with pictures of earlier generations of New York Italians, some anonymous to me, some more recognizable personages like Fiorello La Guardia, and Mario Lanza. Occasionally behind clinking glasses and silverware, you can detect faint melodies of familiar operas.

We’ve not yet seen any celebrities in Carmine’s, but Madonna frequent it when in New York, and I’ve noticed that David Letterman is awarding free dinners to Carmine’s to audience members who play his goofy games. I’m starting to sound like one of those tabloid writers, specifically Michael Musto of the “Village Voice,” so I’m excusing myself from further show biz chat.

We did, of course, eat at other Italian restaurants in New York and they were all great, but not one of them had clams comparable to Carmine’s. And I haven’t found any Italian food here in Charleston that even comes close. In fact, if by some sort of papal intervention, a Carmine’s would end up here (maybe it could be called “Carmine’s Slightly South of 44th Street”) the locals would be delirious with “clam fever” and I would not only achieve my Chris Farley look-alike goal, but probably end up like the late John Candy as well.

An unlikely scenario, so in the blandly flavored interim, I can only whisper in the ears of the local Italian restaurant community like that self important businessman sharing his sacred mantra with Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” “Baked Clams.”

(Originally published July 1997)

Runner's Revenge

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:02:00 +0000

The most annoying denizens in the runner's world, apart from cretins who yell out "Hot enough for ya?" and think they're being terribly clever, are dogs. Not big dogs, mind you, who either ignore me or lick me, which can actually be quite refreshing on a scorching day, but those nasty little ones—the yapping, nipping curs who look like rats with collars.

I usually handle these encounters by screaming, "Go home, you little son-of-a-b*tch," an insult that I, of course, realize loses its desired effect in the canine world…though unconsciously. I'm sure it's aimed at their masters anyway. However, I've devised a much better strategy for dealing with the Rat Dogs' feral attacks. The next time I go running I plan to take two things with me:

1. A tranquilizer-laced piece of meat, and,
2. A white squirrel skin

As soon as the little Gremlin (that's what they remind me of, those little creatures from that sci-fi movie that were all teeth) approaches, I hand him the Meat-Mickey, which knocks him out immediately. Then I stuff him in the squirrel suit, working as fast as Jim Fowler might with an anesthetized lion, realizing that any second the creature could awaken and wreak bloody havoc. Once the beast comes out of its coma, we now have a non-climbing, barking, squirrel those owners will recognize it as their psychotic FiFi only after the neighborhood cats have had their way with it.

A bit heavy-handed, you say? Obviously, you're not a runner. So let me close by saying this to my running brethren: I pledge to rid us of these yipping, yapping Rat-faced Devil Dogs, street by street, subdivision by subdivision, city by city. By the way, just so you won't think I'm totally demented, I'm not killing the squirrels, I'll be utilizing the omnipresent roadkill. So it's not animal cruelty, it's community service.

(Originally published May 2002)

Scream of Consciousness # 8

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Sat, 02 May 2009 01:58:00 +0000

1. Family Outing: A gay time was had by all
2. Joe Cocker Spaniel: Rare breed of dog that has foreleg spasticity and an inability to bark high notes
3. Sand Bag: Especially unattractive harem member usually banished to the desert
4. Artiefacts: Debris associated with Howard Stern’s comedic sidekick, such as empty Jack Daniels bottles, pizza boxes, cup cake wrappers, race cards, etc
5. Lox Populi: New favorite at Katz’ Deli in NYC
6. Oddvark: a weird looking aardvark
7. Pyromania: burning desire
8. “You’ve got class”: A possible compliment, depending on the level implied
9. “High” School: Willie Nelson’s alma mater
10. Total Recall: gas conservation strategy for SUV’s
11. “Citizen Kane Mutiny”: The greatest movie of all time
12. Woodpecker: What got Pinnochio into more trouble than his nose
13. “More bang For Your Buck”: Bunny Ranch slogan
14. Sex Cymbals: potentially dangerous marital aid
15. Auntie Bellum: Auntie Mame’s pugilistic sister
16. Sponge Bob No Pants: A tipsy beloved children’s icon shocks his audience
17. Dinner tube: That roll of waist fat eventually acquired by immoderate eaters
18. Flying Wedgie: Dreaded football offensive formation thought to introduce traumatic hemorrhoids
19. Boulevard of the Concubines: Proposed new name for Remount Road in North Charleston included in the city’s Image Improvement Plan
20. “Members Only”: Name of a Greenwich Village male homosexual club
21. Yellow Stain National Park: Winter nickname for one of America’s natural wonders thought to be a reference to a lack of port-a-lets during the snow season
22. Personal hang time: Increases with age, eventually becomes permanent, cured ironically by rigor mortis
23. Internal Relations: Incest
24. White Trash House: 2012 and a victorious Sarah Palin moves into the presidential mansion
25. Dead Wood: place and reason Miss Kitty dumped Matt Dillon
26. “Blow the man down!”: gay pirate threat
27. Bejeweled: Opposite of castrated
28. Bulgarity” Bulgarian epithet
29. Think Tank Top: What Sarah Palin wore to the Heritage Foundation meeting
30. “Whoriffic”: Most frequently used adjective to describe Pam Anderson

Personally Yours

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Recently, I spent some time—brief, of course—reading the personal ads in New York magazine. I always enjoy reading the “personals” in various publications, but the ones in New York are very distinctive. I’ll give you a couple of typical examples:

1. “Diplomat? Journalist? Academic? Beautiful writer/lecturer, extremely accomplished, sensual and cerebral, lyrical and analytical (5’8”, size 8) seeks similar man (to 45, 5’10” plus), equally accomplished, very educated, self-knowing, resonantly humane. Describe background.”
2. “Sensitive and romantic male, Ivy educated and very successful, but would always put the right person first. Outgoing, energetic, and fun, excellent appearance. Loves all sports, but also enjoys quiet evenings at home. Enjoys right- and left-brain activities. Seeking a female, mid 20’s – 80’s. Photo/note.”

Believe me, they all have this same smug, self-idolizing format. An immediate question that probably occurs to anyone reading these ads is, “If you are such an all around superior person, why are you taking the degradingly desperate measure of advertising in the back pages of a magazine—even if it is New York? And since you are, no doubt, seeking an equally superhuman partner, why would you think he or she would also be resorting to this same humiliating and pathetic means of communication?” Four possible answers to these questions might be:

1. These people are all members of the cultural/cognitive elite, who simply cannot find anyone to measure up to their lofty standards using the normal channels of socialization.
2. They—the placers of the ads and the responders—are all outright liars, simply recreating themselves with Walter Mittyish fervor.
3. They are holding back some significant information, e.g., a man who has all these excellent qualities, but he has only one tooth—and it is in the middle of his forehead, or a woman who is a truly extraordinary individual, but is so uncontrollably flatulent that a clause in her lease bans her from using the elevator in her own apartment building. Or lastly,
4. They are purposely misleading. For example, a statement by a man such as, “I’m often told I’ve got that ‘Newman sort of look,’ may actually be referring to “Alfred P.”

If I were asked to choose one of the above answers, I could not. More than likely the placer of these atrocious advertisements has a combined profile of answers 2 through 4—a liar who leaves out relevant facts and attempts to allure though deception, but there is also a possible, unifying quasi-stalker mentality.

As I began to consider which of the various people I have encountered over the years who may, at some Grand Canyonesque level of loneliness, have succumbed to this last ditch grasp at human contact, it also occurred to me that since the chances are slim that any of you who have toughed it out this far in the article knew any of these people, it might be more entertaining (and it is always my intention to entertain rather than instruct) to imagine what kind of “personals” some of our well-known celebrities might be driven to write, since as we all know from our secretive glances at headlines during out checkout line waits, everything is not always coming up roses for the rich and famous.

Despite a sickening feeling that I may have taken on the aura of those clichéd comedians of 20 years ago who always began their acts, “So if (fill in the star) were a service station attendant, he would sound something like this…” I will courageously continue with this premise, even though now that I have planted this bad seed, you are surely already imagining me quickly turning away from the audience, then spinning back around “in character” with some identifying prop or facial expression.

Nevertheless:

1. “Reborn again male Christian, who learned in prison that love is a ‘give and take’ proposition, is looking for that special, big and burly someone. Large hands, which indicate more than an ability to carry 3 or 4 collection plates at once, a must.” – J.B.
2. “Recently divorced, follicle-challenged actor seeks a broad with a high threshold for drunken tirades, old Smokey and the Bandit re-runs, and Dom DeLuise sleepovers.” – B.R.
3. “High intelligent, liberal, married (to a ‘dufus’) female, with above average futures market prognostic skills, seeks trim and faithful lover, who does not eat cheeseburgers in bed.” – H.R.C.
4. “Separated male, ultra-preppy type, 40’s who sometime enjoys dressing up as a giant sanitary napkin, seeks matronly, Waspish female. Warning: Can be a royal pain in the arse.” – P. of W.
5. “Formerly black, marginally male pop singer desires purely platonic relationship with early adolescent male; must love animals and enjoy bath-time games such as ‘scrub the snake’.” – M.J.
6. “Ironically surnames, retired Senator needs immediate inspiration for steamy, dew diary entries.” – B.P.
7. “Gap-toothed comedian/talk-show host seeks free-spirited female, early 20’s, prone to bare-breasted desktop dancing. Comedy-writing skills a plus. Those who have previously broken into my home need not respond.” – D.L.
8. “Rotund, right-wing radio talk-show host, worn down by aerobics instructor wife, seeks equally conservative, white female who is anti-exercise and not too stuck-up to substitute a food trough for a dining room table.” – R.L., EIB (Egomaniac in broadcasting) Network.
9. “Shaved-head, married, ultra-right-wing, ex-con radio host, willing to discount family values for one night with a morally corrupt, liberal, commie/pinko sex kitten. I will literally blast you into ideological submission with my 160mm crotch cannon!” – G.G.L.
10. “Married former drummer with legendary rock group and president of Identity-Seekers Anonymous, seeks relationships (ASAP) with an attorney of either sex, at any cost, who can get me out of 30 years plus pact with the Devil.” – R.S.

Fortunately, reason has finally triumphed over stream of consciousness, and I have ended, although it occurs to me that I still may not have rendered a plausible answer as to why these people placed their ads in New York magazine, but as I mentioned earlier, I write to amuse, not to edify.

However, I will leave you with an idea that my chronically unemployed muse splattered upon my legal pad (the legal pad being the only think Pat Conroy and I have in common), more to awaken me than to stimulate my creativity:

A new idea for a daytime TV talk show: The placers of personal classified ads—all publications, not just New York—get to meet their responders. No more predictable confrontations between serial-killer former nerds who take revenge on society as a result of high school locker room towel stinging episodes. Instead, every day we will have stalker-fringe, lying, misleading self- and other deceiving writers of fantasy encountering their similarly flawed responders. It would be done like the dating game, with the “placer” choosing his/her favorite. Of course, what we will have essentially is myth meeting myth; instead of “spy vs. spy,” lie vs. lie. Revelation, exposure, drama, agony, hostility, rapture (not hardly ecstasy—of course not) but flesh-rending humiliation and pathos? Yes! And not insignificantly, we will finally know who these people are. Give the people what they want, I always say.

Perhaps, I’m being a little smug—or self-deceiving—myself, but I feel that although I have resolutely stood by my vow never to instruct my readers, with the contribution of this media revolutionizing idea and its social and moral ramifications, I may have inadvertently provided a public service, perhaps even laying an infinitesimal cornerstone in the TV wasteland.

(Originally published December 1995)

May I Speak With God, Please?

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:44:00 +0000

Mike Tyson, Jim Bakker, Charles Colson, and lots of less famous people have all met him—God, that is. In a church, mosque, or synagogue? While communing with nature? At the scene of some holocaustic disaster? During an operating room out-of-body experience? Of course not. They met God while serving time for willful, malicious crimes against society.

Sounds logical, of course. Just about every human being since the beginning of recorded history has shared the single, archetypal goal of obtaining an audience with the Divine One, so out of all these scantillions of lurching, stumbling, George Romerian souls, which ones are awarded the eternal—not to mention pre-terminal—grand prize? Criminals?

We who have struggled bravely in an unincarcerated condition—and I include myself, since holding cells don’t count—to maintain virtuous, unselfish lives, can only hope to meet our maker after our life-sapped bodies have collapsed and our frantic spirits await their summoning. But there’s no guarantee. We may end up toiling next to Richard Nixon in a subterranean tape restoration lab or seated behind a dozing Jack Kennedy at an infernally eternal lecture on marital infidelity.

And these fiery scenarios give painful rise to the question of why these people are being contacted by God rather than by the Evil One? And, furthermore, if jailed malefactors are conversing with the Heavenly Father, does this mean that those who aspire to magnanimity can expect to be schmoozing with Satan? Will a leering Lucifer start accompanying Mother Teresa on her leper colony tours? Will there be a Black Knight riding in the Billy Graham crusade? And most unthinkable of all, will the name B. Elzebub show up on a mailbox in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood? Could this pattern of spiritual intervention for the iniquitous simply be a celestially sponsored part of the prison rehabilitation process? And does this imply that God is, indeed, a Liberal? I mean, he is reputed to be extremely tolerant and very heavily into saving people from themselves. Then, of course, there are the long hair, beard and sandals. So what does this make the Conservatives? Children of a lesser God? And Newt, the anti-Christ (literary suspension of disbelief optional here)?

And if there is accuracy in my assertion, is it fair to continue to reward these terrorizing transgressors with this consecrated treatment? Is there no limit to the depths of disgusting human seepage who would merit this theistic therapy? Is Charlie Manson a good candidate? Had he been caught and locked away, would Hitler have qualified? Dr. Mengele? Well, then, to raise the stakes of turpitude a litter higher, how about Nazi mimes? Child-molesting used car salesmen? Puppy-pummeling attorneys? Leona Helmsley? Axe-murdering cloggers? Don King? Accordion-playing rapists? Kathie Lee Gifford? And Cody? Where will it all end?

Perhaps, the most disturbing premonitive thought that I have is that since more and more politicians are serving time, that they will now be eligible for these heavenly encounters, resulting in the eventual release upon a helpless populace of individuals with an even more exaggerated sense of megalomania than they had before.

Campaign commercial: “George Graft for Senator—the Chosen One. What more do you need to know?”

And on a more grass-roots level, will ordinary citizens now start committing crimes because incarceration is possibly the only guarantee of salvation? Will lawyers immediately capitalize—as they are generally predisposed to do—by offering advice on which crimes will assure the greatest likelihood of Godly interdiction with the least punishment?

Will O.J. deliver a bombshell when he reveals that he was visited by God in jail? His claim that God is a soft-spoken, 300-pound black man will result in Mark Fuhrman’s attempted suicide. Geraldo Rivera will counter that in O.J.’s obviously confused state, he mistook former football player turned minister, Rosie Greer, for the Holy One.

Larry King will announce he will have both God and O.J. on the show together. Both will later be bumped for Tom Hanks, although Johnny Cochran will insist he was going to cancel the interview anyway because God’s P.R. people wouldn’t give him a list of questions he might pose to his client.

It’s quite obvious that we have not only a very inequitable situation on our hands, but one that may portend the direst consequences. It’s also painfully obvious that we cannot prevent God from communing with people of this ilk. No doubt, he has some long range ideas that he doesn’t plan to share with us. Banking on the “lick ‘em, join ‘em” theory, our only option is to do whatever we can to enhance our odds of communicating with him ourselves.

I am, therefore, asking you, law-abiding readers of Charleston’s Free Time to join me in demanding the legalization of all hallucinogenic drugs for religious purposes (the Indians knew what they were doing). And in the meantime, all they can do is arrest us and put us in jail—we can’t lose! Let us inhale.

(Originally published October 1995)

Stereotypical Deliverance

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:24:00 +0000

Recently on the “Tonight Show” Jay Leno had on an entire family of hog callers, each of whom, in turn, demonstrated their widely unenvied prowess to the mocking delight of the roaring audience. Incredibly, it was easily noticeable that these people were peacock proud that their wading level gene pool had produced these show-stopping results, and they were all totally oblivious to the fact that they had not only replaced “Jay Walkers” (Jay’s on-the-street quizzing of our spectacularly ignorant populace), but that they had also attained an even lower level of media loserdum, “DFTSC” (Destined for a “Talk Soup” Clip).

But the worst thing about this whole episode was that these people were South Carolinians. Thought by now you would think I would have become inured to this continuous airing of our not necessarily dirty laundry, but let’s just say it’s all tank tops, “Daisy Dukes,” overalls, and Dale Earnhardt jackets. In addition, there have been other awful emissaries from our state, such as turkey-callers, a tree-climbing dog named “Flatnose,” and some guy who artistically fashioned jewelry out of pigeon poop, all shoved right out there in front of millions of TV viewers.

“Lookie here, America! See what we can do. Yeehaw! And don’t you forget now. We’re from good old South Carolina, the birthplace of such legislative luminaries as Arthur Ravenel, Fritz Hollings and Strom Thurmond.”

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with these agrarian artistes, although I don’t know why a person has to call a hog anyway. Aren’t they penned up in a sty so you can just walk up to them? They’re not going anywhere. And turkeys. Aren’t they supposed to be the world’s stupidest animals? They probably can’t even recognize a turkey call. You can just walk up to them, axe in hand. I’m assuming that’s the only reason they’re called in the first place, and the poor hogs, too, for that matter.

As for “Flatnose,” dogs don’t belong in trees. That’s trifling with Mother Nature, not to mention their imminent peril from squirrels during nut gathering season. Lastly, the pigeon pooh sculptor certainly could find a more aesthetically and sanitary pleasing medium, for example, some of our state’s naturally occurring by-products such as peanut shells, toothpicks, beer cans or hub caps.

But, the point is, we don’t need these kinds of images of S.C. constantly propagated by the electronic media, which simply reinforce our mortifying national stereotype. Why can’t we have a researcher who’s discovered a cure for cancer on Leno? A Pulitzer Prize winner on Charlie Rose? Or a Broadway star on Letterman? Actually, there was a young high school student from Goose Creek who made national headlines by conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra. He could play a dozen instruments, won a prestigious music scholarship and is obviously going to make a name for himself nationally. My God! If Goose Creek, a city whose typical resident is routinely rejected by the “Jerry Springer Show” for fear of besmirching the show’s reputation, can produce someone like this, why can’t the rest of the state?

We have to face it. Most of America thinks our entire population is nothing more than a macrocosm of the Clampett Family Reunion.

I, in fact, am personally affected by this indelible stigma, at least on an annual basis, whenever I take in a comedy club on my trip to New York. Although enjoying professional comedy is always the apex of all my Big Apple activities, I am still forced to pay the fiendish fiddler because my laughter is constrained by shudders of start terror, as with each wisecracking performer, I anticipate that dreaded contact of eyes followed by the inevitable:

Comedian: And where are you from, sir?

Me: Uh, Wisconsin.

I’ve even gone to the extent of rending “Fargo” and studying the dialogue, but I don’t think I could fool anybody. Luckily, I have a flat Charleston accent, which is certainly not typically Southern, so perhaps I could get by claiming to be from somewhere else, but I would still be fearful that somehow the comedian would know the truth, and then, of course, it would be even worse. Or the black desk clerk from my hotel would stand up at her table and shout while pointing accusingly in my direction.

“That boy ain’t from Wisconsin. He’s from SOUTH CAROLINA! And I think we know what that means, mmm hmmm.”

Then the comedian would be on me like the stain on that notorious blue dress:

“Well, that explains why your hair’s messed up. You drew the short straw (and it was a real straw) and had to ride in the back of the pick-up tonight. Is that your wife or your sister with you? Actually, in your case, I guess she could be both. Look, don’t think I’m not sympathetic. I know it’s a big adjustment for you here in the biggest of big cities, but actually it won’t be that bad, really, once you get used to wearing shoes.”

My only reasonable option would be simply to sit there and take it, although it would definitely be tempting to get up and make a mad dash out of the place, if I didn’t think it might resemble that scene in “Marathon Man” when Lawrence Olivier (Dr. Mengele) was recognized by his Jewish holocaust victims and chased through the streets of this very city.

Thankfully, none of this has happened to me yet, but only because I have taken the somewhat extreme, but obviously effective measure of sitting way in the back of the room, never looking in the comedian’s direction, and scotch taping the outside corner of my eyes back in order to appear Asian.

Actually, the time has almost passed for us to correct this absurd perception of our citizens so, in desperation, I have taken matters into my own hands. I have already been selected to be on “Millionaire,” where I plan to proudly announce that I am a South Carolinian. With the national expectations for South Carolinians having success of any kind being extremely low, I figure if I just get the $100 question right, I will have done more for my state in that ephemeral moment than Strom, Arthur or Fritz could do by retiring.

Regis: Well, Bob, you’ve told us that you’re a freelance writer and Mensa member, whose interests are nuclear physics, Post Jacobean Cinema Verite, Chinese Mandarin crossword puzzles, classical music, pre-Columbian Abstract Expressionism, electrical engineering, and poisonous lawn darts au naturale. But are you ready to play the game?

Me: Bring it on, as they say (ha ha ha).

Regis: Okay, Bob, here goes. What is a Pig Pickin’? A) A Rosie O’Donnell look-alike contest; B) Something a pig does to his nose to make it look that way; C) A Southern barbecue cook-off/outdoor dinner; D) Pre-abbattoir porcine selection day.

And, thus, my Catch-22 dilemma would be revealed in all its irritating irony. Of course, giving the correct answer (C) would move me on to the $200 question, however in so doing, I would simultaneously reinforce the Southern Billy Bob stereotype. Answer it wrong, and while I don’t advance, at least, I drop an oblique hint that all those lies I told Regis about myself may actually be true.

Well, readers, I’m not going to ruin the quasi-suspense by telling you how I would answer such a question, should I be so unfortunate to get it. I can only assure you that I will do my very best to rectify our state’s horrendously embarrassing image. So, check your local listing and prepare to be Palmetto Proud!

Beer Truth

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:31:00 +0000

I haven’t written for Charleston’s Free Time in quite a while, so I had to ask Eddie who reads his paper. His answer was the same as before. “People who like music and beer.” What a great demographic, I thought. My kind of people. When I think back over my life, especially my teens and young adult years, those were two constants, beer—occasionally supplanted and/or augmented by liquor—and music. Frankly, beer was the predominant factor, starting from the age of 16. Music, as in a movie, a grade C one in this case, was significant as a mood setter, important, but relegated to the background.

My first taste of beer was in 1956 at the Charleston Yacht Club, which, at the time, was located where the MUSC Family Medicine Center is now on Calhoun and Barre Streets. This was not to be confused with the more exclusive Carolina Yacht Club on East Bay Street, where lineage was not only a requirement for membership, but just to set foot on the property, and most of the people there had last names the same as the streets they lived on. The Charleston Yacht Club was more of a workingman’s organization, and although most of the members had one thing in common, boats, all them had another thing in common, drinking.

But what was really great about the place was that you didn’t have to be a member as long as you knew one who was willing to let you be his guest, a task easily accomplished, since these were the days when Charleston was a much smaller place and everybody knew everybody. And what was even greater was that you could buy a pitcher of Bud draught for $1.25. They also had a juke box, so putting those two elements together, the Charleston Yacht Club was the cheapest place you could take a date in Charleston.

For that matter, if you had even a borderline attractive date, you would get in without knowing a member, since the membership was 100% male and the officers, who were generally older, were 150% horny. It became a very satisfactory symbiotic relationship. Young, impecunious dudes like myself could take their dates to a place where they could both get blasted and dance all night for $5, and the lecherous old dudes could sit at the bar and leer, trying to jump-start their booze-soaked libidos.

As a side bar, I always thought it was interesting that the head officer of a yacht club was called the commodore, and I wondered that if a Russian submarine had been detected off the battery in the late 50s, if the commodores of the Charleston and Carolina Yacht clubs had been pressed into rallying their flotsam-bound flotillas to defend the city, would they still have been battle-ready, after first negotiating their heavy seas of alcohol. Actually, since there was no such thing as SUI (sailing under the influence) in those days, these guys were pretty adept at boozing and boating simultaneously, so maybe the citizenry would have been safe, maybe even more than we are now.

Of course there were more times that I hung out at the yacht club without female companionship than the opposite, at times almost becoming an involuntary member of the leering bar perchers society, pruriently evaluating other guy’s dates, who sometimes reminded me of antelope on the Serengeti, as they nervously twitched under the gazes of the starving, ravenous lions. Usually, it was three or four of my friends and myself sitting around a table swilling pitcher after pitcher, listening to Sam Cook, Lloyd Price, Ray Charles, The Platters, and so on, laughing at whomever got crocked the quickest.

My most memorable evening at the yacht club was when four of the give guys at the table decided to deal out our beer induced perception of justice to the fifth guy, who we all agreed was a sleaze bag. Over the years this guy had done thing such as steal money from his ailing grandfather, siphon gas out of cars, and most recently, take money out of a girl’s pocketbook at a house party. Even though during his last caper, he had fallen off a porch, caught his foot in the railing, and was left to hang there for hours by sadistic onlookers, including us, we did not feel sufficient punishment had been rendered.

This was not premeditated by any of us as far as I know, but as soon as this guy, who I’ll call Ronnie to avoid legal action, left the table to go to the men’s room, one of us—it may have been me; I’m not sure it was sort of “Lord of the Flies” environment—said, “Let’s whiz in his beer.” That statement was greeted with an instantaneous and resounding, “All right!” No debate. It was like Bush deciding to attack Iraq. And so, we passed the third filled pitcher around beneath the table, pausing briefly when Larry suggested not to get carried away, since we wanted to make sure it still tasted like beer. A couple of us poured in some from our glasses just in case. Since Ronnie would usually try to drink more of his share of a pitcher anyway, there would be no problem of his insisting that everybody have another glass.

Ronnie came back to the table, drank the rest of the pitcher, while we all sat there nonchalantly, trying not to explode or look at each other. He never said a word, never noticed. Actually, Walker joked that we had discovered a way to drink beer perpetually, if anybody ever got that desperate. Before exacting our grisly penalty, we had all vowed not to ever tell Ronnie. Why? Because we all feared his terrible retribution. We laughed about it later that night, and on through the years, though now, I never see those guys anymore. Ronnie died ten or twelve years ago, unrelated to what we did, I feel sure. I hope. I’ve been thinking about calling Larry, Harold, and Walker, and seeing if they’d like to have some sort of special reunion. Or is this something that’s better left within the walls of the now Family Medicine Center. If only it were e Department of Urology, the story would have an almost perfect ending.

Anybody want to go in on a pitcher?

(Originally published June 2004)

Measuring my life in beer sips

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:37:00 +0000

I have not committed a lot of poetry to memory, but for some reason, the phrase “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” a line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” has always stuck in my mind, which, incidentally, I have begun to envision as a rapidly shrinking object with brain cells flaking off like gray dandruff. However, if I apply Prufrock’s line to my life, I would have to change the line to “I have measured out my life in beer sips,” for it to have any personal significance. In the goal-less, hedonistic days of my late teens to mid-twenties, which I admit is an embarrassing stretch of time to devote purely to pleasure-seeking, especially since I seldom found it. Beer drinking, I guess because it required little effort, became an important goal in itself.

In high school, my weekends were always awash in suds. There was never any social event where beer (occasionally displaced by or enhanced by liquor) was not a powerful catalyst for a more enjoyable experience. And a cheap experience at that, since, in the beginning, I could go to the Seaside (later, called the Old Side), a bar on the Isle of Palms, and get an all night buzz on with three beers for about $3.00. This was back in the late 50s. In a few years, my capacity increased, as did my waistline, but having a beer gut was something to be proud of according to the non-familial values of my social circle, and I developed a reputation of being someone who could really “pack away the Pabst,” “fill it with Falstaff,” or “bloat up with Black Label,” as we used to say.

Then came my father’s most foolhardy financial investment, paying for my college education at The Citadel, a sting which not only stalemated my ever expanding beer-drinking prowess, but my conscientiously acquired beer gut. The endless tour-walking, shortening of my God-given weekend beer-drinking time, and having upper-classmen yell in my ear every Friday and Saturday night as I abortively tried to wend my way inconspicuously back to my room. “You been drinking again, dumbhead?” set me back a whole year (fortunately for my father, I flunked out in that amount of time, ending our collective agony). I like to compare this period in my beer career to Ted Williams having his accomplishment curtailed by spending those years in the Marines.

I recovered almost immediately, however, got my “beerings,” and sallied forth on what was to be a wish—I could say—unconscious non-stop seven year quest for beer-swilling immortality. I got a job in 1959 at a small industrial supply company owned by a friend’s father. I was nineteen years old, and still living at home, which enabled me to devote my entire $37/week salary to preparing myself for the inevitable enshrinement in the Brewski Hall of Fame. This also was the beginning of a life-long relationship with Big John’s Tavern on East Bay Street where, over the next seven years, I probably ate 75% of my meals, consisting entirely of roast beef sandwiches and boiled shrimp, a diest, or rather diet deficiency, that resulted in tan splotches all over my torso and arms and the endearing name among friends of “Pinto Boy.” Happily, I was able to remedy this simply by adding some vegetables to my menu. Had the doctor told me it was an allergic reaction to beer, I would still today be answering to something like “Old Man Pinto.”

The beer, in retrospect, seemed much colder in those days, even the pitchers, which were around $2.00, allowing me to stretch my $37 a long way, even with the sandwiches and shrimp, which were around $1.50, I believe. I really looked forward to the weekends, since I didn’t have enough money to go out on weeknights. I hated Sundays, because the Blue Laws were in effect then and you couldn’t buy beer. Even now, Sundays are kind of dolorous to me, despite the fact that anybody with a retail license sells the stuff now. It’s like I never got over the beerless Sundays and have some sort of vestigial depression, or maybe it’s a mild case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, or more specifically, PTBS (no, I’m not going to say it). There were occasional victories such as when I would win a case of beer at The Seaside or Harry Raben’s for having the week’s highest electronic bowling score. Then suddenly Sunday simply became a glorious extension of Saturday. You young whippersnappers don’t realize how lucky you are that you can march right into any supermarket or pharmacy on Sunday and buy all the beer you want. Try doing that in Teheran on any day. God Bless America!

I only won a case of beer on maybe three occasions but, without a doubt, the most serendipitous experience in my “Days of Beer and Pretzels” was in the late 60s when a sales rep came into bar where my two buddies and I were drinking to introduce a new beer, Old Milwaukee. My God, I’m older than Old Milwaukee. He was giving it away, going from bar to bar, so having no pride in matters of this kind, we just followed him around all night. Even though, by that time, I think I must have been pulling down at least 50 big ones a week, free beer all night was a big deal.

I think the most beer I ever drank was 36 cans, but as with many seemingly impressive records, there sometimes is an asterisk, and in this case, it would be followed by “in a 20 hour period of time.” It occurred when a friend and I went on our yearly camping trip to the Huger campgrounds. We’d take a bunch of sausage, bread, and cheese and a couple of cases of Bud. We’d sit around talking about girls we had known till our horn-o-meter reading reached the danger level, and we’d decide to drive 30 miles to the Sea Side just so we could see a female, then realize it was a half hour after closing time. So, we’d talk ourselves down by discussing asexual subjects such as politics or old school teachers or re-channel our libidos into whittling or carving witty statements such as “B. Coskrey killed a beer—6/12/63” into the log cabin wall. The inscription was still there when we returned a few years ago. It’s to the right of the fireplace at about five feet, if you want to check it out, but I pray that your life is not that empty.

At one point during my peak years, I actually started keeping a log of my beer consumption, and during the 65-66 season, I was averaging a little over 10 beers per day, of course factoring in spillage and the very rare occurrence of barfing in midstream, but continuing to paddle, so to speak.

During a brief but dire economic phase of my life, I experimented with homemade beer, getting the recipe out of the back of some magazine, probably a “Hustler” or a “Gent,” and making the concoction in a huge metal milk can. It was pretty horrible, with a strong metallic taste, a sign, no doubt, that the loathsome liquid was interacting with the can itself, which could, incidentally, explain my occasional blackouts and inability to name all of the starting New York Yankee shortstops from 1927 to the present.

Soon after marrying in 1966, my wife pulled the emergency brake on my runaway freight train to perdition, when she explained that maybe I should consider goals more conducive to the welfare of our relationship, more acceptable ones such as college/loans, a car/payments, a home/mortgages, and a job/responsibilities. This did not mean, certainly, that I gave up drinking beer. I still love it, but I only consume about a six-pack a week, unless there’s a special occasion such as a weekend. Just kidding, but I feel I must always have at least a six-pack in the fridge, you know, in case the terrorists blow up all the breweries. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, my beers per day average is probably down to a pitiful .0027.

Look, even Michael Jordan had to retire—a few times. Hey that’s it, I, Bob Coskrey, the Michael Jordan of beer drinkers, is making a comeback, and you read it here in Charleston’s Free Time. Sip, sip.

(originally published July 2004)

Scream of Consciousness #7

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:47:00 +0000

#1 Imminent physician: Dr. Kervorkian
#2 Vanity Fair: Annual Hollywood event with one attraction, the House of Mirrors
#3 Periodic Table: Gynecological Flow Chart
#4 Massah Race: Jefferson Davis’ Dream
#5 A Man’s Man: Sean Connery or Elton John
#6 Conservative Values Stamps: W’s no longer redeemable capital
#7 “One for all and all for one:” Musketeers’ pre-three-way rallying cry
#8 Truss Fund: Mandatory health insurance for weight lifters
#9 Vlad the Inhaler: 14th century Rumanian Count noted for his Cocaine habit
#10“Heels over Head “ in love: Porn version of that emotion
#11 Lap Dance computer: Log on while getting off
#12 Murray, Queen of Skirts: Early Catskills circuit Jewish Trannssexual comic
#13 “Easy Rider:” Professional athletes’ nickname for Madonna
#14 “Erin Go Braless: What Erin do after a few Guinnesses
#15 Non-profit organization. Practically any US bank
#16 Immoral Support: Cheney helping Bush
#17 “Oral Fisher:” Amy’s prison name
#18 Cacaphony: Town in New Jersey noted for its horrendous traffic din
#19 Valley of the Doles: Indiana gated, geriatric community noted for its frighteningly botched facelifts and Viagra-crazed male residents
#20 “You’ve got class:” A possible compliment, depending on the level implied
#21 “I’m working for the American people:” Frequently used politician’s phrase that if given as an answer during a lie detector test always causes the machine to explode
#22 Rhetoricometer: Feared device used to measure the emptiness of political speeches
#23 “Plastered of Paris:” “City of Lights” drinking club
#24 Car pool Tunnel Syndrome: Unhealthy proclivity among some car pool drivers to drive through tunnels unnecessarily
#25 Odd Couple: Ghengis and Madelyn Kahn

Brainstorming with Bob

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:54:00 +0000

After reading Charlie Swansea's article on brainstorming in March's OMNIBUS, I was able to come up with give additional things to do with a brick (in a mere one hour and 49 minutes):

1. It can be used to build the substantial out-buildings to which we frequently compare the figures of voluptuous women.
2. It can be used to make denigrating remarks about someone's intelligence, e.g., "Dan Quayle had the IQ of a brick (or if we are to give Gary Trudeau a degree of credence, somewhere between a feather and brick)."
3. It can be a literally useful substitute for denigration for those less skillful in hurtling invectives: e.g., "Frustrated at his inability to verbalize his scorn for the South American ambassador, Mr. Quayle picked up the brick to which his intelligence had been compared and…"
4. It can be used to describe a particularly woeful basketball shot, or what the Big Bad Wolf did after eating through the little pigs' brick home in the new wave version of the fairytale: "He threw up a brick."
5. After a miraculous transmogrification, it becomes black and smaller and an indispensible incendiary ingredient of Americana: The Briquette (not to be confused with a brickette, a member of the sturdily built, yet melodious female singing group from the 50s.)

My mind now continuing to brainstorm unilaterally (I could find no one in my family to engage in this endeavour with me: "How can we brainstorm and watch TV simultaneously?"), and I began to think that this mental exercise might also be helpful in resolving some long term problems of a more practical nature. For instance: How many things can you think of to do with some of those awful 70s artifacts you have in your attic?

Except for the BeeGees disco tapes, which could be sold to the Army to help drive Castro out of hiding, should we ever decide to invade Cuba, most everything else from that decade of tackiness—from double-knit suits, white belts, and polyester shirts to lava lamps and gold chains (I recently had a leisure suit rejected by a lady at the Salvation Army: "Just because they're homeless doesn't mean they have no pride.") is completely useless. Although I will concede that I do occasionally unfurl my Herb Tarlek poster just to remind myself that it could happen again if we do not remain vigilant.

Obviously, then, brainstorming, at least at my level, has its limits and is potentially incapable of creating time warps.

Unbowed, I returned to less demanding but still significant tasks, such as, for instance, how many things can one do with a leaf blower. To begin with, let's acknowledge that the leaf blower is certainly one of the most inane yard tools yet invented. All it does is blow leaves from one part of your yard to the other, or perhaps, if they're not at home, to the neighbor's. Hey, wait a minute, isn't that what the wind does? So let's put this device to some more meaningful uses:

1. A multi-person hair dryer.
2. To help sail a boat during calm.
3. To extinguish the lighters of obnoxious smokers lighting up in restaurants.
4. To blow out the candles on George Burns's next birthday cake.
5. To help speed readers turn pages.
6. For emphasis, when you tell someone to "Blow it out your ear."
7. To create an occasional Marilyn Monroe ambience at sidewalk gratings.

There you have it. Through brainstorming, I was able to turn a formerly borderline
useful item into "The Amazing Blowmaster."

I also discovered, through the brainstorming process, an article whose ostensible use belies its real importance. The cellular telephone, so it seems, is rarely used for communication purposes, but mainly as:

1. A P.P. (Prestige Pumper); it enables the user to feel supremely important and superior to those not having one.
2. A C.I. (Class Inflamer); user is able to arouse feelings of class envy in cellular-less drivers of non-luxury cars.
3. An A.C.S.D. (Auto-Communicating Subterfuge Device); it enables the user to feign discourse and talk to himself without appearing foolish.

Of course, I continued by solo brainstorming until the sudden realization of what I was doing became apparent. I was in effect, asking, "How many things can one do with brainstorming?"

I was out of control. I switched on Mr. Rogers, as I always do when I feel an anxiety attack brewing (I also have a video tape "Fred Rogers at the Apollo, Live"). I find his clam, gentle manner very relaxing. There he was in his cardigan and tennis shoes, with his nerdily beatific grin: "Boys and girls, how many things can we do with a crayon?"

Scream of Consciousness # 6

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:53:00 +0000

1. Eye ipecac: Opposite of eye candy
2. Womb mates: Twins
3. Mai Tai Chi: Alcohol-aided Eastern exercise
4. The Pursuit of Crappiness: Fox Network buzz phrase for fall 2008
5. Pre-enactors: Participants in a Neocon game who act out battles of planned future wars
6. Cornlessucopia: Food shortage affected Thanksgiving 2008 table decoration
7. “No Holes Barred”: Name of “Bunny Ranch’s newest competitor
8. Zip ah dee doo dah: What can happen to your doo dah, if you don’t watch what you’re doing
9. Same ( old ) sex marriage: What gays in California are about to find out the hard way
10. Rhinestone Cowboys: Retro description of the two main characters in “Broke Back Mountain”
11. Cargo pants: How Tommie Lee boastfully refers to all of his pants
12. Idiot Savant-savant= Bush
13. McAbel: McCain’s brother
14. “Yes, soon, partially”: Jeffrey Dahmer’s enigmatically prophetic reply to a jealous lover’s question, “What am I, chopped liver?”
15. “Out of these cold, dead hands…”: Reference to recently enacted compromise between gun control activists and the former leader of the NRA
16. Condi Rice: The only kind, so far, not affected by inflation
17. American idle: Somewhat homonymic reason for “American Idol”
18. Grilled Possum: West Virginia road kill specialty usually followed by ceremonial car wash.
19. Ben Stiller Hair Gel: Comedic actor’s hair care product not likely to sell to viewers of “Whatever Happened to Mary?”
20. :”As bad as Andrew Zimmern’s breath”: Foodie metaphor for a horrific culinary odor
21. “Fallopian Tube”: All OB-GYN network
22. “He’s a long drink of water”: Old definition: Description of a very tall man. New definition: Description of a man being water boarded ( hopefully, the user of the phrase )
23. Collide-oscope: “Jackass” invention that allows one to see an object a split second before it hits you in the face
24. Camilla Bowls: Queen Elizabeth’s specially designed food vessels used by both her corgis and her oldest daughter-in-law
25. Stud: Latently homoerotic male sports term
26. Vowel movement: Aproximately 25% of Vanna White’s job description
27. Moe-mentum: precipitator of Curly and Larry’s chronic headaches
28. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can really piss me off”: the more realistic version of that aphorism
29. Serendipity doo dah: A 13 year old boy’s euphoric discovery of a secondary use for his doo dah
30. Arlen Spectre: Persistent NFL haunter
31. One of our greatest presidents, pants down!: You know.
32. Jerry Atrick: Secret Service code name for John McCain

Socio-Automotive Retardation – How Long Can We Ignore It?

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:13:00 +0000

All American males have life-long affairs with cars (so-called auto-eroticism), starting usually in their early teens. Many even transcend the foreplay of driving on to the ecstasy of getting under the hood and seeing how a car really works. It seems to be an established ritual of male evolvement, this affair d'auto, and those few who somehow miss out on it often suffer from a most painfully humiliating condition that might best be described as a sort of socio-automotive retardation.

I, having been raised by a mother and grandmother, neither of whom could drive, am a salient example of a socio-automotive retardate. I didn't learn to drive until I was 19 and didn't get a driver's license till I was 26. This condition never affected my overall social development that much, since most all of my friends had cars, but my relationship to one of the American male's most powerful symbols of virility was scarred permanently. Other than realizing the practicality of having one, and aesthetically preferring Jaguars to Hyundais, to this day I have very little interest in cars.

During my days as a double-dating demon, I was frequently forced to feign interest to avoid the geek label by interjecting a timely "really," when a guy told me he had "two four-barrel carburetors" or "four on the floor." And I was no doubt dangerously close to a state hospital scholarship when I pretended to take long studied looks at other cars we drove. I had noticed that "normal guys" would crane their necks to gawk at certain cars as they were driving. I pitifully never knew the criteria for this long distance scrutinizing, so I had to wait for somebody else's move to cue on. In retrospect, I wonder if any or—Oh, God—all of them were on to me: "Hey, I faked that goofball Bob into starting at a Henry J. today." "That's nothing, I told him I had '15 on the floor' and he said you know what." The group, loudly, "Really!" (Singgering and horse-like guffaws.)

I never did learn to relate to other guys on a socio-automotive level, and fortunately, though, while all my friends were more automotively knowledgeable than I, their interests did not extend to the mechanical level. In fact, we used to make fun of those whom we thought possessed a somewhat excessive interest in this aspect of cars, and I reveled in this ridicule, as it tended to rebuild my crumbling self-esteem. Our favorite form of automotive parody was to drive to a local drive-in restaurant, which was frequented by hot rodder types, pull into a parking space while revving the engine, then jump out of the car, sleeves rolled shoulder-high, sometimes covering a pack of Luckies, open the hood, and commence staring and pointing under it, while making loud exclamations such as, "Oh yeah, she'd loaded!", "Man, this baby can really move!" Naturally, the grand finale of this performance would have been a curiosity inspired visit by some of the car freaks, but fortunately for us this never occurred (perhaps, we smugly thought, because they were too dull-witted to recognize a skillfully acted lampoon when they saw one; but, in retrospect, considering our "drag monster" was a Ford Country Squire station wagon, we were probably the unknown object of a reverse snub.)

My most horrendous socio-automotive trauma—possibly a punishment for the above—was a brief summer (briefer than summer) job as a service station attendant when I was about 17 or 18. When I wasn't stumbling through my menial pumping-gas-checking-under-the-hood-windshield-cleaning duties, I was lunching with my automotive superiors—journeymen mechanics, mechanic's helpers, and professional service station attendants. I may as well have been an Albanian immigrant. The only words I occasionally deciphered were prepositions. The only subject they discussed ("disgust" might be better) other than cars was sex, and specifically, boasting about the most intimate details of their relationships with their wives and girlfriends: "Boy, when I get home tonight, I'm gonna crack some ceiling plaster!" These people gave S&M a bad name. Until then, I hadn't realized that I was a bit retarded in this area too, but that's a whole other article, perhaps even a book.

That was a very confusing and unhappy six weeks for me, and, although I did become quite proficient with a dipstick (Hey, maybe that's why the station owner called me that), my more innate ability of unconsciously collecting people's gas caps leg me to my ultimate dismissal. In the clarity of hindsight, I view this moment in my life as a blown opportunity to achieve socio-automotive normalcy, despite the probable side effect of sexual aberrance.

I have paid emotionally (I experience no orgasmic tingling at the thought of a stock car race or even a 1950 Ford with a Confederate Flag decal) and literally (I am personally responsible for the extraordinary financial success of a number of automotive mechanics and the college education of their offspring) for this developmental flaw. I am, in fact, permanently damaged and beyond rehabilitation; however, it is my unselfish hope that this public admission will give others the courage to come out of the closet, when they see that they are not alone.

With my luck, though, I am probably the only male in America with this problem, and the sole response to my confession will be a hate letter from Peewee Herman, calling me an insufferable wimp and a disgrace to all self-respecting real American nerds.

Nevertheless, I will not be stopped. My draconian years of socio-automotive deprivation have only tempered my resolve to see that other males enjoy the inalienable American rites of auto-eroticism and the secondary benefits thereof.

What is needed, I feel, is a leader, a high profile role model. Someone who can do what Robert Redford is doing for the environment, what Cliff Robertson does for AT&T, what Jim Bakker did to confirm the accuracy of P.T. Barnum's most famous adage. We need someone associated with cars, someone who can get the message across to the fathers of young boys all across this great nation that drives more cars and builds more highways than all the rest of the world combined that while a boy who knows women is a lover, a boy who knows cars is a man.

Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, all you guys from The Dukes of Hazard, there's the gauntlet.

Music is my life

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:39:00 +0000

If a sort of musical "Omnibus" came rolling down King Street one day with quadruple loudspeakers blaring, it would certainly be inappropriate for anyone else other than Worth Waring to be the mobile DJ. However, now that I have paid proper fealty to the expert, perhaps, deference could be made to me on this one occasion, at least on the basis of age. And so it is with this semi-apologetic explanatory prologue that I begin my article on the subject of music from a purely personal and absolutely nonprofessional perspective.

Not unlike most people, I guess, certain songs trigger specific memories for me—most of them good. Whether it emanated from an ancient Victrola, a record player, a jukebox, a radio, a stereo system, a band, a movie, a TV set or a cassette recorder, I seem to have acted out a great portion of my life to the accompaniment of background music.

My earliest memories of it are when I was about 4, and my mother and her sister taught me "Shoo Fly Pie and "I've Got Spurs That Jingle, Jangle, Jingle." They would coax me to recite these tunes in front of their friends, who would feign laughter and remark "how cute," while sneaking me serious money if I promised to pretend I'd forgotten the words. Undaunted, I continued my serenades until a couple of weeks ago when my wife Barbara, noting a direct linkage between these performances and a shrinking circle of friends, asked me to cease.

Obviously, my mother had very devoted and tolerant friends.

During this period, the 40s, there were many grown-up parties where my mother, aunts, uncles and friends sang song such as "Now is the Hour," "What'll I do?" and "You are my Sunshine." Then my mother, one of her sisters and her sister-in-law would attempt to sing Andrews Sisters hits such as "Rum and Coca-Cola" and the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." My mother also had a large record collection, which would no doubt be valuable now. In addition to the Andrews Sisters, it included other favorites such as Nat King Cole, Vaughn Monroe, Sammy Kaye, The Ink Spots, and her all-time idol, Bing Crosby.

While my mother and her friend sand and danced to the pop tunes of the day, my grandmother, who was of direct German lineage listened to and hummed German classical music—Brahms, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, etc. She would sit in her rocking chair crocheting miles of bedspreads, tablecloths, and doilies while listening to the Bell Telephone Hour, while I lay on the floor and absorbed the sounds through aural osmosis, as I leafed through piles of comic books. It wasn't long before I started humming and whistling things like "The Blue Danube" and "Lieberstrom," and finally marches such as "The Washington Post March, which fit nicely into my developing interest in toy soldiers.

My mother took me to a movie about the life of Rimsky Korsakov when I was about 8. Because there was a little sword-fighting in the movie and the composer's character had a swashbuckling heroic demeanor, I pretended to be the dashing Russian for a week or so thereafter, which was a little confusing to my friends.

Johnny: "Okay, I'm Blackbeard the Pirate, Marshall is Francis Marion and who in the hell are you again, Bobby? Romanski Carkoff, a Russian composer?"

Looking at Marshall with mock fear in his eyes, Johnny said, "Oooo, we better watch out, he might run us through with his big conductor's stick. Get back, Francis."
With his auspicious beginning, one might have speculated I would become some sort of musical prodigy, presuming that I possessed the necessary talent, of course. But that theory was never tested. Despite persistent offering of music lessons from my grandmother, I opted for the more mundane types of "playing."

My next significant musical moment came in 1952, when I went to West Point to see my cousin graduate. It was a very exciting experience for a 12-year-old boy, as the entire academy corps marched by, and I spotted my cousin's distinctive profile. The band was playing the "Colonel Boogie March," which is the same tune that the British Troops whistled in "Bridge Over the River Kwai." Even now, when I hear that tune I get goose bumps.

As a river of testosterone swept me moaning and screaming into my teens, I advanced from the Africa section of National Geographic to females in songs like Della Reese's "The Big Hurt," Gogie Grant's "A Wayward Wind," and Johnny Ray's "Cry."

Also around that time, in what I call my "Confused European Period," many songs I found catchy all seemed to sound alike: "The Theme from the Moulin Rouge," "The Poor People of Portugal," "April in Paris and "Blue Tango." I fantasized about being Joseph Cotton, but only with the stipulation that I could wear a Cary Grant wig, wince Mr. Cotton's hair always reminded me of sheep's wool.

"Sixty Minute Man" and Chuck Berry's personal rock 'n' roll explosion launched me into beer-aided, initial shag attempts at the St. Philip's Church Activity Center. My shagging improved to barely mediocre along with my increased beer consumption.

By the late 50s, a typical weekend afternoon consisted of hanging out in groups at the home of a couple of girls and playing Johnny Mathis hits such as "Chances Are," "The Twelfth of Never," and "Misty," ad nauseam. Some of the guys were gutsy enough to slow dance or even shag while they were sober. I waited till later that night at The Sands, one of the few local nightclubs in those days, where we sloshed down Viking-sized pitchers of Budweiser and cavorted wildly to bands led by black guys named Calvin and Lance, who blasted out Lloyd Price, "Where Were You on Our Wedding Day?," Jackie Wilson, "Lonely Teardrops" and Richie Valens, "La Bamba."

There were the sock hops where the principal hovered at the entrance to the gym looking for signs of glassy stares and "Bud Breath," where just outside the school building, hordes of teenagers, chewed Wrigley's Spearmint gum and sucked desperately on mint life-savers. Once inside, those fortunate enough to have dates slid around the highly-burnished court to Platters' numbers such as "The Great Pretender" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," until ineluctably, some creep with a ducktail threatened the student DJ into playing some awful Elvis creation like "You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog" or "Heartbreak Hotel."

I was seduced by jazz one night at a dark and smoky bar (Where else do they play jazz?) in Savannah, when I heard George Shearing play "Honeysuckle Rose." I won't say that I became an immediate jazz aficionado and went out and bought dozens of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald and Dave Brubeck records. Actually, I never bought any records until after I got married about six years later, but I really did make an instant emotional connection with jazz.

I think I liked jazz so much because it seemed to be more spontaneously creative than other kinds of music. Its artists appeared to live in worlds of their own. I have always appreciated natural nonconformity, and these people with their special variety of soul-conceived music all seemed to almost exist in another dimension, especially Miles Davis, who may have been operating one dimension beyond the others.

In those days, the early 60s, you could sit at The Cove, a nightclub where the East Bay Grandy's is now, and play the jazz-sated jukebox all night, or you could meander over to the Owl Club on Market and listen to Willie Cheek play the piano.

I had a friend, Sam, who played guitar. He could pretty much play anything. He, a couple of other friends and I would buy a few cases of beer and go sit on one of my friend's boats or on the dock, at the old Charleston Yacht Basin, where we would sing songs all night—anything from Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly to the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte. Sam would always run out of beer and cigarettes first because he bought less than everyone else, but we all kept him supplied so he would continue playing. The songfest would eventually end in the early hours of the morning with Sam still sitting slumped over his guitar, asleep, his lit Lucky Strike stuck between the strings and the finger board, grunting inaudibly at our abortive attempts to shake him awake for one last rendition of "Scotch and Soda."

This time also marked a somewhat limited interest in folk music, not limited in fervor but in scope, since the only singers I really enjoyed were the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; and Belafonte. I mean, I don't have any Arlo Guthrie or Buffie St. Marie records.

Oh, sometimes on long, solo car trips, I may still occasionally lapse into a spirited "Zombie Jamboree" or yes, even a "Puff the Magic Dragon" in between my renditions of "Johnny Be Good" and "Runaway" but honestly, that's all there is to it.

Any playing of Ray Charles' "Georgia" or Louis Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" redeposits me on a bar stool at Big John's Tavern, where I must have heard those songs a thousand times, while I washed down 2-inch-thick roast beef sandwiches with Pabst on draft.

As for the performances of the late 60s and 70s—Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, The Who, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix—I have no emotional nexus with them, perhaps because my musical umbilical cord was still attached to the previous two decades. I liked the Beatles and, later on, McCartney and Lennon by themselves. I love their music and have a vast volume of it stored within my rapidly diminishing brain cells, but none of it is tied to any particular memorable life experience.

During this time, I developed an interest in Dionne Warwick who sand Burt Bacharach compositions, not to mention Herb Alpert, and Edie Gormet. In fact, they may have been the first records I ever purchased. I also bought a Doc Severinsen album, an act which shocked even my wife. But I am not ashamed. The guy plays a great horn.

Fortunately, I had no emotional linkings to disco and even if I did, I wouldn't admit it, not even at a disco devotee's anonymous meeting. I will say that I thought Donna Sommer had a good voice—just a bad agent.

I have come full-circle in the 80s and 90s. I like the "oldies," and by that I don't mean just the 50s and 60s stuff. I'm referring to the 30s and 40s as well, the same music that my mother and her friends liked. Perhaps this is no more explicitly illustrated than in my choice of Harry Connick, Jr. as my favorite new artist. My grandmother would also be happy to hear that I have started listening to classical music on National Public Radio despite the noisome prating of their self-important narrators.

Maybe I prefer to full my todays with melodies I already have developed poignant associations with, rather than risk the possibility of experiencing a noteworthy life event while listening to Sinead O'Connor. Of course, I'm still vulnerable to a twangy, tacky Tanya Tucker tune and the chance soul-searing event while innocently strolling through K-Mart.

But whenever I can control my musical environment, I will. Since I have become a sort of walking Wurlitzer of musical memories, I want to be sure I have a good selection to choose from before the plug is pulled.

(Originally published Feb. 1992)

Dime Store Blues

noreply@blogger.com (Bob) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:17:00 +0000

I sometimes wonder when they're going to go—the ten cent stores. There are only two left on King Street now. Sometimes, on riding down King, I almost cringe, anticipating reality's stinging blow: a For Sale sign in one or both of their windows. It has already happened once, as Silvers—my very favorite—was transmogrified into a trendy clothing store, only to close several years later. Let that be a lesson to those who would tamper with the natural order of things. Let the deviant developers and anarchistic architect think twice before they line up Kress or Woolworth between the crosshairs of their sinister sextants.

It was always very clear to me that the Silver's building was a five-and-dime store, and that any attempt to coerce it into being something else was preordained for calamity. I visited the new clothing store a number of times, but never purchased a single item. It was not that their racks and tables were devoid of quality, nor that their prices were exorbitant. Neither were their sales people unprofessional or unfriendly. But it was not their floor. It was still Silver's, a creaky old wooden floor, that was not meant to carry preppy looking store clerks fawning over browsing patricians or cash emburdened tourists, but instead, plainly dressed middle-aged ladies, presiding over endless racks of $5 dresses and $10 suits. And not a highly burnished floor, but a bumpy, dust-imbedded one that sagged under the weight of aquariums filled with goldfish and turtles with names on their shells, canned goods, and magnificently cluttered toy counters. A floor that still preserved between its polyurethaned planks dirt from the soles of black U.S. Ked easywalkers and my mother's brown and white spectator pumps. A walks on this floor jarred out flashbacks of ecstatic moments when I located a toy soldier I didn't have or one of those new celluloid boats to add to my all wooden fleet, or when my mother bought me a bad of cashews, which at that time had a per pound price much less than New York strip.

Being encapsulated in my own personal time warp, it's no wonder I never made a purchase at this clothing establishment. I'm sure I became a topic of conversation/object of derision among the store staff:

Clerk 1: "Yeah, he never buys a damn thing, just walks around like he's in a trance or some kind, occasionally glancing at the floor. I finally stopped offering to help him when he asked me where the wind-up army tanks were, and then he got agitated when I told him we didn't have any."

Clerk 2: "That's nothing. I caught him scraping out dirt from between the floor planks and putting it in a vial. Gives me the creeps. I'm glad we're closing. Maybe he'll spend more time at his halfway house now."

And if there are other middle-aged people out there with the same nostalgia affliction, it's not difficult to understand why the business closed.

I think it is also incumbent upon me to appeal to these same people to unite to conserve our last remaining vestiges of dime store heritage. Therefore, I ask that anyone wishing to join this worthy cause write OMNIBUS in care of the Coalition Resolved to Enshrine the Economic Emporiums of the Past, Soon (CREEPS).

Unless we act soon, it will only be a matter of time before businessman in Atlanta with a first name like Lanier or De Treville has an orgasmic night frenzy about a chic emporium or haute monde restaurant in the place of Kress or Woolworth.

"Oh, Megan, it just came to me. Chaaaaarleston doesn't have a Bulgarian Bistro restaurant or a shop specializing in coats of arms flags for houses and cars. You remember those two tacky looking old ten cent stores on King Street. Power to the people, Megsie! Rich people, that is."

Of course, Kress and Woolworth are a little tacky. They're dime stores, they're supposed to be. But it's a good kind of tackiness. It has character, tradition and originality. And it's disappearing quickly from American culture. Where else can you go see row after row of gaudy lingerie, velvet artwork, oriental rugs made in Spartanburg, aisle after aisle of inexpensive knick-knacks displayed nowhere else, and that big orange-colored peanut shaped candy, that's made out of special marshmallow-styrofoam formula. I think I ate one in 1946 and immediately spit it out. I don't believe any kid in America eats them, much less in Charleston. Children-hating people give them out at Halloween, and I believe it was brought out in the Nuremburg trials that the Nazis force-fed them to GI POWs to make them talk. We should be very grateful to Kress and Woolworth for not selling them to Saddam Hussein. The war may have turned out quite differently. Nevertheless, if for some humanly incomprehensible reason, you should ever need this loathsome candy, you will only find it in a ten cent store.

Oh sure, K-Mart, Wal-Mart and the other marts have some of the same items as Kress and Woolworth, but there's no comparison really. They're too high-tech, too glitzy, too antiseptic, too unoriginal, and they were not the first; too Nouveau tacky! And, most importantly, they don't have display windows. So what, you say, all the shops in King Street have beautifully decorated display windows. You're quite right, certainly, but none of them have display windows like Kress and Woolworth. While the vendors of chicness dole out hundreds or thousands to window artists for lavish displays, the dime stores have a totally different approach:

Intercom: "Hey, Louie, when you finish unloading that truck, how about putting some more stuff in the windows."

The result is primitive, unaffected, yet absolutely effective display art that only Kress and Woolworth can create. Nowhere else will you see boxes of Borax, shoe polish, and mops and brooms commingled with unmanekined dresses and t-shirts, toys, and an unopened case of hairspray or motor oil. These may be stockmen, but they have the soul of Andy Warhol. They have not tried to overpower or beguile the prospective customer, they have simply told us:

"This is Kress (or Woolworth). This is what we have. This is what we are."

They have shown us the essence of the dime store.

We had better pay attention.