A NIGHT IN QUEENS

I just left a Jamaican restaurant in Queens where I don't believe a white boy has been...ever

I had googled Jamaican food and found a place called The Smokehouse, and set out for supper.

Man, it was deep in the hood. Trying to find a place to park and in the company truck, I ended up on a very narrow street. Cars lined each side, and the driveways were small. Suddenly in the darkness I see the DEAD END sign. Turning around would be a real trick, so I continued further in, hoping for a good spot. But the street narrowed, the dark got darker, the houses even closer together. 400 yards later and no good spot I came to the end and I was forced to back out in reverse.

The advice from my friend Nina rang in my ears:

"Be careful and always be aware of your surroundings"

No shit, but it was way too late.

I was looking like a real cracker.

I made the block and found a place to park right in front of the local NAACP Chapter. It looks quite different at night, and right next door is a Voodoo supply house where you can buy all sorts of candles, wooden bowls, live chickens, serrated edge knives with mother of pearl handles, and JuJu sticks.

I had planned to get a table, but there were only three tables. The place was full, but no one was sitting, and no one was looking at me either. If you had asked me last week I would have said there isn't much racial divide in this country anymore, just a lot of loose talk from people with latent racism. 

And that might be true, but in line at The Smokehouse tonight, I felt very out of place.
I decided to do like everyone else, and get my stuff to go, and get my white ass back to the hotel. I couldn't see sitting there eating and no one watching me at all. That would have been worse than everyone watching me, and what if the collard greens were under cooked? What would I do then?
  So I waited for my food like everyone else, and hoped while I avoided making eye contact with anyone, that someone might at least try to make eye contact with me.
It didnt happen.

I got back to my room with the jerked chicken, the red beans and rice (I think they call it "Peas and Rice"), the collards -- which were the best-- and some plaintains. It was very good.
Like I said I don't believe a white boy has been there...ever.

But I might go back tomorrow!

LOCK HER UP

"So here we are, bilious and consternated, and in three weeks, it all comes to an end. Apparently, Mr. Trump will not call up Hillary on election night and offer her congratulations. He may file a lawsuit instead. His followers will be encouraged to believe that the election was rigged by Wall Street hedge fund managers in cahoots with the vaccine industry, followers of Saul Alinsky, and aliens living in Roswell, New Mexico, but whatever — it will be over. The shouting will die down. The "Lock her up" T-shirts will go into the bottom drawer. Families will gather for Thanksgiving and bite their tongues and avoid eye contact. There will be Christmas. The inauguration will take place, and Barack and Michelle and the girls will go to their new home and get out the Scrabble board and pop a kettle of popcorn. And next spring the 2020 campaign will begin.

I worry about Donald Trump. What is he going to do? He has damaged his brand. The steaks, ties, home furnishings, fragrances, whiskey, resorts, condos, golf club memberships — when you associate yourself with white supremacy, male chauvinism and invincible ignorance, this is not smart marketing. He can't go back to the Tower. Manhattan is about 83 percent Democratic. Why live among people who don't appreciate you and ride around in a black limo with smoked-glass windows through crowds of pedestrians giving you the finger? It's no way to live.

Does the man have friends? Or only associates? This is the big question. Is Sean really and truly his friend? Or Howard? Or Rudy? Do they go out for lunch and tell jokes about the two blondes who went to the drive-in theater in February to see "Closed For The Season"? I doubt this.

He should pick up his traps and move to Nebraska. He is leading in Nebraska, about 2-to-1. There are wonderful warmhearted people there who love and admire him, so he would fit right in. Look at Broken Bow, a town of 4,000 on Highway 2 in Custer County. He could get a nice 3BR there for $150K. There's a municipal airport, a hospital. The restaurants are good if you like beef. You can play golf from May through September and after that you can use a fluorescent orange ball and play in the snow. He'd be far away from The New York Times. He could make Broken Bow great, put marble floors and walls in the public school, put up a marble statue of George Armstrong Custer. He could attend a good evangelical church every Sunday and go to Bible reading Wednesday night where maybe he can learn more about those two Corinthians. He'd need to be careful about touching women suddenly without permission though because many of them are armed. If he grabbed one down there, she might cut him a new buttonhole. Even if she were a Christian."
~~~~~~By Garrison Keilor~~~~~~~More here... http://www.sltrib.com/…/garrison-keillor-when-its-over-maybe

THE CHINA CABINET

The Ex-Mrs. Bulletholes called this morning.

We’ve been divorced, man, almost 20 years now.
Still get along pretty good, we do.

“I’m keeping your Grandmothers china cabinet here" she says.

‘Yes, I know, thank you” says I.

“With the kids both gone, it doesn’t mean as much to me, but I’m keeping it for them” she says.

“If I had room for it I’d take it off your hands” says I.

“Oh no, its no problem, I can keep it.” she says.

So there is a pause and she says “I’ve sold 26 houses this year” (she sells real estate)

“Wow, that’s a lot of houses!" I said.
She giggles "Yes, it is!"
"That’s a lot of money isn’t it?” I says.

She giggles. “Yes it’s a whole lot of money!” says she.

Again a pause, and I go ahead and say it, remorsefully:

“I really messed up, didn’t I?”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard her laugh that hard.

WIKILEAKS

Sometimes the most you can say about someone is that they are “unremarkable”.
The same holds true for the latest batch of Wikileaks. I hope they have more than what they have shown so far, or I’m going back to sleep.

YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH

No evidence?
There is a tape of him describing his MO. He just kisses them and grabs their pussy because "Hey, I'm Donald Trump".
Really, its not locker room talk, its a confession.
So now you got 6, 8, 10, women coming forward saying "Yep, thats what he did to me".
Should we be surprised?
Anything he says can be used in court. His defense thus far has been "She's not pretty enough for me to assault". Do you not think this will come up?
A prosecutor will ask Trump 20 questions about this and there is no telling what he might say.

In my mind I can envision, as you must be doing now, Trump on the stand going full on Col. Nathan Jessop in "A Few Good Men"...
"Did I try to fuck her? Damn right I tried to fuck her. You would too if you were Donald Trump."

HOW TO RUIN YOUR LIFE

I remember the first time they found my pot.
“Youre going to ruin your life” my mom would say in her high pitched voice.
“We thought you knew better” dad said gruffly.
Then I got busted.
“Youre going to ruin your life” my mom said in her high pitched voice, wringing her hands.
“We thought you knew better” dad said gruffly.
So we had to go to counseling, where I lied my ass off.
This was back before NA was around, or I’m sure they would have sent me there.
I never did give up the pot, not until a few years later when I figured out I couldn’t work very good or fish very good when I was stoned.
That’s when I found speed. I could work and fish on that stuff.
But I should have known better, and that stuff DID ruin my life.

LAKE CHARLES

When I was in the 9th grade I went on a Lay Witness Mission to Lake Charles. That was back when I was a much more evangelical version of myself. It was a weekend of praising Jesus, and visiting with the church youth, singing “Michael Row The Boat Ashore” and “Let It Shine” and we even got to sing that Buffalo Springfield song about smiling on your brother, which most of the church elders looked down upon, but seemed really Jesus-ee to us in a kind of Hippie/Jesus freak kinda way. We all prayed together, ate and sang together, and the girls would all give lots of hugs, there was one named Jenny I kinda latched on to, and I guess I spent most of the weekend in Lake Charles walking around with a big ol’ hard on.

DANCING WITH ASPARAGUS

I dreamed last night I was dancing in the produce aisle. Oranges, bananas, mushrooms and rutabagas, we were all boogieing down.
Then there was the asparagus, their lean bodies rockin', and little faces smiling, getting loose, because you can't dance and stay uptight. Even the green leafy veges know this.
Anyway, we were dancing away when a woman came up to me and said "You shouldnt dance in the grocery store"
I stopped dancing.
"Why not ?" I asked.
"Because its obnoxious, immature and embarrassing to me" she said.

So I stopped dancing.
All the vegetables looked so sad. They hung their heads, and went back to their display cases to chill.
I left in a car with the woman.
But we didn't make it out of the parking lot.
I said "You know, if I want to dance in the grocery store, and be friendly and loud and cut up, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
And I turned around and went back into the store.

It wasnt just a dream. I really let it happen this year.
Fuck that.
I'll dance with the asparagus if I want to.

THE LAND OF THE FREE

I went to a Marching Band competition Saturday night.
I was trying to send my daughter some pics I had taken when they started with the anthem, so I came in a little late. I might not have come in at all except for all the recent controversy. I thought about taking a knee for about 6 milliseconds, decided my balls aren’t that big, and put my hand over my heart.
That’s when I noticed about half the crowd was either filming the choir on the field or texting. The man three seats down, he had his hand over his heart, but was texting away one handed. 

Pretty impressive.

THE DEBATE AS A POORLY FORMED FORMULA

“If Donald Trump had said all the things that you said he said in the way you said he said them, he still wouldn't have a fraction of the insults that Hillary Clinton leveled when she said that half of of our supporters were a basket of deplorable's.”
VP Candidate Pence

Or to put it mathematically:

If 

(T Said) = (Y said) + (Way they were said)
then
(H Said) x (H+T) < or = .5 x(insults) + (Supporters) / Basket of Deplorables

I wanted to laugh, but it wasn't funny yet. Lets let them finish slugging it out:

Kaine: I cannot believe that Governor Pence will defend the insult-driven campaign that Donald Trump has run.

Pence: That's small potato compared to Hillary Clinton calling half of Donald Trump's supporters a basket of deplorables.
Kaine: Hillary Clinton said something on the campaign trail and the very next day she said, you know what? I shouldn't have said that.
Pence: She said she shouldn't have said half.
Kaine: Yeah, that’s right, so now we're even. Look for Donald Trump apologizing to John McCain for saying he isn’t a hero. Did Donald Trump apologize for calling women slobs, pigs, dogs, disgusting?
Pence: She apologized for saying half.

A MOMENT OF ZEN

I live 2 miles from my workplace. People don’t believe me, but I miss having a longer drive to work. I wouldn’t want to go back to that one hour commute I used to have, but there are some days when I stagger out of the house and into the car, and find myself 6 minutes later planted in front of the damn idiot box here, still bleary eyed, and I wish I had a little longer drive. Just enough time to even catch a story on NPR. The abruptness and shock of arriving at work so quickly some days cannot be measured.

Now that I recall, I used to stop for a coffee at the local gas station. That broke it up a little. But I stopped going in order to save the 10 bucks a week.

One morning there was a smiling woman that seemed to be flirting with me, touching my arm and laughing. But when I got to work I discovered there was a sock stuffed up my shirt where my bicep should been been.
Or the three laborers, in dusty boots and workingmans clothes, standing in front of the coffee bar, smiling and eyes wide, pointing to the different flavors for the coffee like kids in a candy shop. They did not speak English, but their intent was unmistakable. Hazelnut, or French VanilIa? Or were they Pumpkin Spice and whipped cream kind of guys? I smiled all the way back to the car that day.
Then there was a pretty girl I used to see in there. I always wanted to say hello, but never got in proximity to do so. Then one day I found myself in line behind her. I was ready to give her my best “Good Morning” when I noticed her bra tag was hanging out the back of her blouse.
34B
I froze like stone. What to do?
Maybe I should start stopping in for a small coffee again.
And a moment of Zen.