goofballs

I wouldn’t say that I was actively pursuing Keite Davis, but I certainly had been interested in her since we had become friends on a proto-social media site called Friendster. I think the first thing really caught my attention was her butt. I doubt that it was a random profile view that prompted me to befriend her years before October 1st, 2009. We probably had friends in common. Her Friendster profile was a photo of her posterior in a well fitted pair of blue lace panties. Her face was also lovely. She was a pixie blonde. Blue eyes and an elven face. Sometime around 2000 or 2001 we got to chatting, and we continued chatting for years. I had lovers and girlfriends, she had boyfriends, we would bounce our fears and insecurities off one another. In late summer 2009 she broke up with a boyfriend she had been with for a couple of years and moved to San Francisco. We talked about getting together to meet in person. On Thursday, the first of October 2009, I was drunk, she was flirt...

Mise en scene. This is where the writer, or director, establishes the setting of a scene. Here is where the action will unfold, the story will be told. Myself, Rold Gold, Spig (real name Ken), and a blue haired girl named Sadie were huddled in a structure that was part of the playground of Coventry Elementary School smoking weed. I was maybe 17 or possibly 18 at the time. We were listening to Alice In Chains on a Sony Walkman with the headphones rigged to a styrofoam cup. The corner of Euclid Heights Boulevard and Coventry Road was christened "Harvey Pekar Park" in 2015 but I can't recall ever encountering the famous writer there. I recall brief sightings of Trent Reznor and his band mates. Nine Inch Nails guitarist Frank Cavanaugh's little sister Catherine, who had beautiful blue eyes, was a frequent presence. I met Jon Bon Jovi on the concrete steps, and I didn't even recognize him until our local den mother and schizophrenic caretaker, Nebraxis Rock Sta...

by most adult standards, little kids are complete shits. they want what they want, and they want it NOW. when told to wait, or that they can't have gummi worms for breakfast, they sulk or they throw a tantrum. the coolest thing i saw today when babysitting my god daughter was when i took her to the playground and she shared her toys with some other girl she had just met, and they played together. three and a half years old, and she's learning compassion. now if she can just learn to say please when she wants something or to look at me and tell me with words what she wants when she's upset, then we'll be cooking with gas. kids. *shrug*

thought i had something to say. turns out i'm nothing.

I love my grandmother, my father's mother, who died more than two decades ago. She had a file of cards on which she wrote so many terrifying recipes involving awful post-Depression and World War II era processed foods, which my step mother lovingly transcribed posthumously in a binder entitled "Meals With Mildred." Her first husband, a contrite former strike breaker cum labor activist, was murdered. Her second husband, my grandfather, a trucker cum shipping executive, was active in the labor movement as well. She loathed Ronald Reagan almost as much as she loathed Satan himself. She was a Southern gal, and she had many "black friends." And I do believe she did. Her home in Akron was one of the first test markets for a service we called "cable" (prior to what we now call it, "broadband"). My first exposure to MTV was on her green couch in her modest Akron living room with it's brown carpet. Brown and green and orange, the swatch ...

Anniversary. The first time I saw her, after nearly 16 or 17 years had elapsed, she was noticeably thinner than she was in high school. But she was also stylish, in a way I didn't recall her being as a teenager. There was an anxious confidence in her. She talked in stuccato, gesticulating sharply.  We dined on bacon and eggs and talked about LA and TV and the Scientologists across the street, in their color coded collared short sleeves filing out of their Scientology busses as the Scientology private police force circled the big blue building on bicycles. We walked to her house, passing a vitamin store (a Scientology front, but I was just as fascinated to hear the dirt as she was to dish it). She offered, smiling, "did you know my maid is a Scientologist?" We passed a Spanish-Mexican church. This was unglamorous West Hollywood, where staff writers and upstarts scrape by. Of course Emily was also on SSI, for her problems. I browsed her selection of books - novelized fictio...