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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Elana: Pain and Presence

Elana was a blind ol' tree,
brief in movement she was,
saying much frankly
as a venerable person has and does.

She searched around with eyes in slits,
could find some things very well
but she couldn't find half  her tits
and much else in her hell.

She hired her great nephew
to narrate for eight bucks a pop
He was very literate but with much ado.
She bade him sit and stop,
"Read everything in recording - what say you?"

He read much in solitude
and hated earthly matters,
Searching for his beatitude,
 with his clothes all in tatters.

Hark! His Great Aunt needed him much,
And he her,
Many pages to touch,
Together they found their cure.

Behold! Bill Bellamy Experience 1.

 Well, things were dull and any kind of passion was sapped by the second nature drudgery that swells and festers in the workplace. It was around four-thirty pm when Master Chocolate deigned to join us working folk, those of us not working in the entertainment business that is. As for myself I'm trying to salvage a writing career and most of my work has gone to amateurs playing entrepreneurs. Who should blame them? When I first started I didn't know what I was doing either, but some times we grow sensibility faster than we want.
   Bill Bellamy and his reputation occupied Three Little Pigs, a restauarant down from Dbronx in CrownCenter, KC. I didn't hear the whole story but quickly inferred that he had business some where in Kansas City. Whenever somebody remotely famous, a televison personaliy - or in this new age an internet personality - decides to join our world we are quickly preoccupied and the place is all atwitter with, "look who's here," "that's him," "that's her," and, "is that?" That's atwitter - not your trifling Twitter account. I digress. Bellamy is perambulating in Three Little Pigs to get barbecue and the adulation is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Punkin aka Ed, a chocolate brotha, was talking to blithe ol' Bill, asking him, "Hey, man, heeyyyyyy, what's it like," or words to that effect.
   Now who's Bill Bellamy? For those of you who don't know and who are graciously pardoned, Bill Bellamy is a comedian and socialite who stars on MTV's URL, played in Brothers, and Criminal Minds. He's tall, dark, and handsome to the ladies and a man's man to the gentleman. The ladies do swoon and coo and the men want to be like him. Still don't know who Bill Bellamy is? It's okay. That is a perfectly innocent position to have knowingly or inadvertently. As for myself, I fondly recalled giving Wee Man from MTV's beholden Jackass a piggy-back ride all over the store, watching Courtney Sickman make him a NewYork style hotdog - damn fine grub - and watching that tip jar brim with green. As for myself? I honesty do not give a damn if a person is famous or not, even if I harbor secretive admiration and self abation that wants to come out of the closet. Fame isn't a means to an end.
   At five o'clock pm.  Bill Bellamy is starting to gather a following. At this boiling point - in the depths of my claustrophobia - I've gotten a tad stir-crazy and made appeals to leave the confines of the store. Lisa, a suga momma, employed by the CrownCenter custodial staff, is leaning on a trash can with her nose turned up giggling like a damn fool. Well, hell, I think, she's a chocolate sista, so the she must know about the chocolate brotha gathering a following of other chocolate brothas. I have a lot of love for Lisa. She works hard, is sprightly, and, no, she isn't paid enough.
    "Hey, Lisa, what the hell's goin' on?" I say smiling my big wonderful smile.
    "Sheeit, Chris, there's some one ova yonda every body likes. Ya see him, fool?"
    "No, not yet," I was excited but seasoned with apathy.
    "You wanna tell 'him," she asks a fellow custodial member standing abreast of her. Those two gossip hounds were skin deep in their fantasies before I chimed in.
   "Ahhhh, sheeit, it's Bill Bellamy," uttered the custodial member.
    "No waaay, right on right on. Where's he at?"
   "He's in Three Little Pigs," Lisa pointed with her sore finger.
   Easily given to impetuity preceeded by big feet, I charge ahead and peer in the doorway of Three Little Pigs. Behold! There he was trading gang signs and the argot with Punkin aka Ed. I didn't make conversation; I had a Camel cigarette tucked in my ear that needed the luxury of my famous vacuum-cleaner lungs. I sauntered along akimbo to the docks, willing to put the matter out of my mind entirely. I came back refreshed and ready to rejoin my pathological claustrophobia in that insignificant little kitchen with the odor of pizza and gourmet subs, and that really bad yellow paint that looks like butter on really old bread.
   I had my elbows half deep in drudgery when Ronnie Hernandez, a fellow lover, debouched from the office doing payroll and Godknowswhat. I laughed when I saw him. He started to laugh back. "What the hell're you laughin' at, Chris."
     "Your face, Ron, and your bubblin' lips."
    "Hahahaha! Just tell me, man." I love imploration. It makes my heart break with laughter.
    "Hmmm, I dunno know," answering coyly.
    "Hahahahaha! C'mon, Brotha, what the hell's goin' on?"
    "It's Bill Bellamy!"
     "You fuckin' lying."
     "No, Ron, I lie to you like smoke and my lies are aplenty, but at this particular juncture, I'm telling the truth, man!"
       "Buulllsheeit, where's he at?"
       "He's standing over there, damn it!"
       "Where?"
       "Fuck, nevermind, come with me. Let's go meet him."
We strut out of the place martching toward the blithe blathering Bill. He's engrossed in a trivial conversation, feeding off the admiration, which is due to him, accompanied by some chocolate brothas exuding tacit blandishment and who were prepared to wash his feet if he asked nicely. "Bill Bellamy, Sir" I say," I don't want your damn autograph, but this guy doesn't believe you're you." Ron and Bill shake hands. "Wuz up, brotha," says genteel Bill. I leave them to their bromance and strut back into certain claustrophobia into the lodging of the modern-day trustee.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Grandfather's Mouse: The Devil's Elbow

    Two brothers gathered around an object it had taken some doing to procure. They procured it with everything but that of prostrate imploration. It was their grandfather's little ford town car he inherited from a deceased member of the family.  The deceased was a raisiny, ripe great grandmother of about ninety, who was fondly remembered in good times and who kept in her arthritic grip an old doddering  Ford, painted a lackluster white with much body work needed. It could carry four midgets comfortably but for taller creatures it left much to be desired.
     The interior too was white, but that was twenty years ago when the vehicle was in its prime. It coughed and hiccuped its way all over township but would never see the fruition of its dreams blazing a trail of steam on the Autobon.  The two brothers agreed on this even fantasizing as far with empty words ideas on how to modify it for such high - stake's territory. They felt sorry, though, when picturing a moribund woman of ninetey speeding to certain death. She too would have to be boosted with nitrous oxide not just the vehicle its self. Just modifying the vehicle seemed selfish, reckless, and a gross example of bad engineering.
   The grandmother smoked since she could maturely inhale and exhale. She preferred Marlboros in bad times and good, and smoked that car up for days on end. Whatever artificial aroma the car originally possessed fresh off the lot was replaced with a frowsy couplet of Marlboro-mothball and formaldehyde. It was venerable and well preserved.
   As soon as their grandfather became the new and certified owner, he generously lent it to his grandsons, who expected something with some muscle. They didn't repine its inadequacy but remained humorous and outwardly grateful. "Now, boys, you can drive it. Just clean it out and spray it down when yer done." The brothers looked at eachother sheepishly but any fear was assuaged with the acceptance of a man who could say anything with neutrality. He was old but new the game and remembered his youthful enjoyment of it with enduring fondness. After all, what did he care? "Do what ever the hell you want with it. If you have to crash the damn thing do it some where important and noticeable,'' he continued his sermon of passivity.
   They understood well enough and did the exact opposite. How could they crash it? They didn't even know the maximum speed if it could reach the semblance of speed at all. They surreptitiously took it off his lot in one of those serene Missouri nights in a rural and barren locale where the heavens could be viewed unobstructed by city lights. 
    They bickered and dickered upon the perfect whereabouts to test it's vehicular gumption on the  beckoning asphalt. Between them was a sweaty lump of cash and a ziplock bag full of  emerald green kind bud. They counted the booty and engineered a hearty joint with spit, herbs, and paper. One brother in objectionable forgetfulness blurted out, "Dude, did you remember the spray?" The other stared apathetically then barely ejecting his answer of reassurance. "Dude, it's right here - Febreeze, all-purpse and orange scented."
 "Well, keep it where I can see it, damn it," stressed brother number one.
"Maybe you need to chill out. The old man's just that, ooooold," stressed brother number two."
 They finished rendering their revivement and light it up firmly remembering the spray. They debated on where to take the car. What better place than Devil's Elbow. There is one every town. They are just named differently. Their eyes are beginning to grow bleary and questionable, the windows were conveniently rolled down, the breeze was lovely, and the silence suspenseful. They drove out on that starryt night to the edge of their hunting ground.
  "You ready," said brother number one.
  "Does a bear shit in the woods, does the pope have a balcony, does a" -
 brother number two was interrupted.
  "Dude, I just asked you a simple question. Are ready for this?"
 "Mhmm."
 The driver gave the pedal the led foot and aimed for the eblow, a curving, fell, black snake in the night. The old woman coughed and gagged on his foot issuing smoke from her dry exhaust pipe. "C'mon, give it some stack." The car was gaining it's way to twenty miles an hour, hopeful but hardly critical. They aimed high gaining twenty-five and a determined thirty. It was proving a mulish, recalcitrant endeavor. The enfeebled car choked and collapsed less than a third of the way. "How fast did the old man say it would go?" They reluctantly kept in mind that this car came from a jolly retired professor, who in his endless spiflications, drove a golf cart out in his front yard when his spirits were up. It came from a man who would hold an Amberbach bottle-neck in one hand and a steering wheel in the other driving foolhardily over treacherous knolls that didn't occupy a golf course. He'd shout at the passersby his jocund and hearty ravings whilst his ailing, senescent wife lay abed in the increasingly dilapidated estate, vegetative and slack-jawed. Their affections grew thereupon and they shared a decent moment. "This damn thing cuts at forty-five! Hahahaha!"
  They sat, shared cultured tokes, and listened to the Missouri night song, the Ozark jumble of crickets playing their washboard legs, and all manner of creatures present in the nocturne.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Anchovies: Kitchen Anecdote

   Two cooks were bent over a worn butcher block. The block over the years had developed some character. It had accumulated blood, perspiration, and assorted ingredients so much so that it could and ought by rights be called a familial relation. The lunch rush was encroaching. The line between solitude and chaos was rapidly fading. This transpires every time the hour and the minute hand strike twelve o'clock on a hot and lucrative day in a kitchen.
   The restaurant was soon inundated with expectant customers. One after the other jostled through a door no wider than five feet. Espon printers, those universal and ubiquitous to these parts,
began to spit out unwieldy sheets of tickets, marked in red ink, so long they could
be rapped around one's head like a bandanna before a war cry. The cooks, who were poised and focused before the rritating clamor of the machines, were feverish and bolstered into overdrive.
   The counter was beginning to pile up with all-purpose flour, superlative flour, and all the contents of third pans, shallow third pans, hotel pans, and whathaveyou. Pizza was the order of the day. Not hard, but not particularly easy when accommodating tickets marked 295, 395, and 400 in an inclement procession of famished bodies in what could easily be considered  at the least a three-thousand-to-four-thousand dollar lunch hour. This is considered good business in the kitchen firmament.
   The focus on the two cooks came into play. They are not friends. They are a team where shouting in such environs is considered synonymous with talking. It is their own song, their own dance, their own conversation unique unto themselves. It's a trivial cant similar to that of sailors. They stare at the crowd intermittently,sizing up many ilks of persons standing impatiently, twitching, waiting for their orders with the physiognomy of where-is-my-food and I-want-give-me-now.
   There were lawyers - not so good -bankers, clerks, other cooks, and all manner of people standing in line. Eye candy is always good for morale. The conversation explodes into "Damn, easy", "Sheeit, Sista girl", "Damn, he's hot", "I'd tare that up," and so on and so on. Beautiful people inspire brisk business. Then there are the dregs, the sticklers, the whiners, the exhibitionists, the undesirables who always manage to paralyze the better part of the employee's psyche, rapidly deconstructing first-standard customer service. The two cooks are fine. They felt enlivened and puissant with the stirring and gesturing of female eye candy. Danger, they called him, stood on one end of the butcher block, a large and impressive fellow, a brick wall not crushed immediately upon impact. Frenchie the Frog, a dainty dandy, was on the other, trying desperately to keep a lid on his mouth which ran away with him to the dismay of Danger.
   After all the beautiful bodies are accounted for by the affections of male observers, disconcertedly a female of strange proportions accosted the expo. She was an ebony mess, pouring out of herself in a sleazy purple dress with straps covering her elongated tribal orbs with the greater part of them hanging out in horrid display. Everything but the tit as it were. To Frog Danger is seemingly placid but liable to change like a weight hanging from a tenuous thread. Danger took a whif of the sneaky malodor obviated by the expanding ebony disaster from whom it was emanating throughout the entire restaurant. It registered quickly to all occupants. Danger gasped  crying out, "Oh-oh....oh my god, what's that sssmeeell?!" Frog looked up at Danger expecting the worst, but he notices the stench, much like that of a crack-smoking session with her ebonic-yours-truly in a bad part of town. She must've poured a vat of patchouli over herself before making appearances. The stench of her vice was no better, but exacerbated like sweetened crap. Danger disarmed Frog with, "Hey, Frog, I think Barnie wants to hug you." Frog tried to diminish a disruptive guffaw but was failing. Incontrovertibly a few or more people could distinguish his cackling. Every body was suffocating, the whole place astir with apprehended quips, gibes, and laughter that was bound to reveal its self sooner rather than later.
  Another character came into play. Jose, a shit-talking, easily-excitable Puerto Rican, was beginning to choke and collapse on the smell. Frog having affections for Jose could scarcely contain his glee. Danger was eyeing Frog askance, smiling in semi approval. Frog gave in, laughing like a child to a fart joke. He ran to the back in an attempt to salvage courtesy.
   Danger, now laughing himself, shouted, "Frah-Frooog, hehehehe, cah...come back -hahahaha!" Frog stumbled back clutching his gut. "Cuh-could, hahahaha - coud you hand me that ticket?'' Everything stopped aprubtly in a time spasm. The guise of business shifted to the circus when every one surrendered to the goings-on, the unstoppable hilarity. However, the ebony disaster some how maintained fortitude throughout. Resolute trash - something to be said for it really.
   "No,"danger blurted out. "Reach under the line and hand me the anchovies." Frog did so rising to a tentative occasion that was gaining clarity by the second. He threw the anchovies on the butcher block. Danger, pausing to look at Jose, grinning from ear to ear, realized the unanimity from all his peerage. He pulled the lid off and dove into the pungent, salty grease with his pinky. He smeared it under his nose with an exhale of relief. Frog made his way to the back again, but was quickly summoned by Danger who concluded with, "Hmmmm, ahhhh - anything smells better than that bitch."