KITCHEN PORN

You don’t see them too often in kitchens, the duck press, but if you have a couple of mallards to cook for your girl, then after roasting the bird and making the stock you will want to introduce the remaining carcass to this utensil, and extract the last drop of all the wonderful juices the bird has to offer, adding it to your stock to reduce further with a few currants. The bird should be roasted quickly, fast enough to brown and crisp the skin, yet leave the wonderful breast rare and rosy inside. Wild rice will go nicely, and after such a rich dinner your eyes may glaze a bit as you recline on the lounge, wishing and hoping she will put her tits in your face.

ON THE CORNER OF FOURTH AND WALNUT

Every year I start looking for a Christmas story. Some years they just fall in your lap. Some years they don’t form up until after the New Year. Last year, I didn’t have one at all. I’m going to force it a little this year.

I was at Luby’s last week. There was a couple sitting by the window. They sat across from each other, but it seemed like they were holding feet. Their feet were touching, they were laughing smiling, genuinely enjoying each others company. I went into one of my day dreams. What are they talking about? Certainly Christmas, as it is upon us. Where to hang the lights, how nice the tree looked, going to visit her parents next week, what to get the kids, its such a busy season with relatives coming, what to buy for her brother who is so hard to shop for, the funny guy at the office party, and where did all the money go? All these things crossed my mind inside of ten seconds.

I thought how easy it is to fall in love with people.
That seems to have been the theme this year.
How connected we all are, in spite of our differences.
Someday darlings, everything we know will go to
dust. All we will have left is the joy and smiles we brought to each other.
The enchantment we allowed ourselves to feel. How fabulous it is to put someone in front of yourself.
I don’t know how many times my heart swelled from the simplest gestures I made to the world.
A smile. A thank you. A nod.
To give and give until the giving feels like receiving.

Funny. I had all my shopping done. But I went
again yesterday. Just to be a part of the world.
There was an itsy bitsy girl the big ear muffs with little kitty ears.
A shiny gold jacket with boots to match, and a fabulous glittery purse. I looked down.
“I love your ear muffs “ I said.
She looked so pleased.
It reminded me of the older lady at the Subway, when I commented on her brooch.
“Its lovely” I said.
She smiled and touched it lightly. A gift from her late husband.
It was like she waited all day for someone to say something, and I was so pleased that it could be me.
Now I asked little kitty ears if she was ready for Christmas. “Santa is bringing me lots of presents!” she said.
A true believer.
Being a part of this world. I could do it all day. I was missing for so long.
Of course it doesn’t seem as big today, trying to write it down for you. I can only
hope you already know.

I keep a Thomas Merton in my mind. He does it better.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race … there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all of the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…”

~ Thomas Merton from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

WE DO RECOVER

Oh yes, The Nostalgia of moving day. I ran across old pictures, an electric bill from 2007, The cool Rock I found at Toledo Bend lake in 1969, the rear view mirror off my 84 Toyota van, a greeting card with a Guy Clark lyric from Tim Burns, my sister's Bedford Junior High yearbook from 1970, a 1983 phone book for HEB, a single dried red rose (I can't remember its origin, but I've saved it, tenderly, and I'm sure it will come to me one day), my dad's four sets of cufflinks, half of a snickerdoodle cookie, the letter from my mother to my aunt describing how I stood in the corner for 5 hours before apologizing to my mother for having spit in her face, and this, pictured, my first payment towards probation. I should have it framed.
We do recover.

ITS NOT ANYTHING CHILDREN SHOULD SEE

Here in Texas a lot of people have taken to putting out inflatable decorations. Santa, and a sled, and reindeer and elves, made like big balloons with lights in them flying across the front yards, and an extension cord trailing into the garage that supplies electricity to a pump that presumably keeps air going into the inflatables and lights the lights inside Santa and his compadres'.

The thing is, these things must be on a timer, because the festive scene you passed by the night before, the next morning looks like a crime scene. Santa, his reindeer and elves, and the big green letters that spell out HO-HO-HO are laying slaughtered on the lawn, airless and deflated like characters out of Flatland. They are dead and cold and covered with Jack Frost, and its really nothing you want to see first thing in the morning. Very sad.


Thank God they dont have them for Valentines Day.

BULLETHOLES BUYS A HOUSE!

I moved into my new house a few days ago. It needs a little TLC. And curtains. I woke up last night at 3 am, thinking about the damn closet light that wont come on. I went in the kitchen, bare beamed and buck naked, got a butter knife, took the cover off the closet light switch, crossed the terminals with the butter knife and the light came on! Top wire was a little loose. Project complete!
Tonight I plan to tackle the doorbell. If anyone wants to stop by, or wants to learn about how a doorbell works, the show starts at Midnight.

THE ISLAND OF MISFIT TOYS

Last Minute Gift Ideas From The Island of Misfit Toys.
A water gun that shoots jelly! I’d love a water gun that shoots jelly. Imagine the fun you could have with a gun like this, a box of Bisquick, and a couple of Lithuanian redheads. Sounds like one hell of a weekend.
Or you could just not put jelly in it.

MY CONFESSION

Every year I post this pic because it makes me happy, makes me want to decorate something, and every year Facebook, because of some kind of ridiculous Community Standards, sees fit to take such a wonderful image down. 


“How do I usually Christmas shop? Well, usually about December 23rd, when there is no moon, I go to Walmart, and wander lonely haggard through the aisles; I search and search, and find nothing. I find nothing, because mine is not a shopping trip, it is a confession. It is like sitting in a darkened booth adjacent to a priest, surrounded by lights and trees and fake snow; amidst beautiful ornaments and twinkle-lites and glitter; there is wrapping paper with happy little snowmen that I can’t afford (I suck at wrapping anyway) and smiling faces everywhere that puzzle me; it is a money shuffle where the plastic reindeer are marked down at midnight and everyone not smiling is in a hurry, in a hurry to a confession of their own, and my confession is that I do not know how to act around all this gaiety, all this capitalism, all this tinsel.
So I'm sad, very sad, and come Christmas Day I just want to scream like I'm at Gitmo.
 When I break it down, I don't even know who I need to buy for and I wouldn't have a clue what to get them if I did. Its the most confusing time of the year”

WHEN DAVE AND I WENT TO KANSAS CITY

Steve to Dave

Remember how when we got to Sprint Center, just before we got in line for the show, and I discovered the Black Sabbath tickets weren't in my pocket? That the possibility existed I had left them at the hotel, or lost them at the Wendy's where we stopped to eat? And we had to go back to the car, hoping against all hope they were in the car?
That's as close to breaking into a full run as I've been in years.



Dave to Steve

You're such a mess, Steve Renfro! I said  that you understand me better than anyone else, but as a person who goes through a mental checklist before even getting up from a toilet, I admit that I still don't quite understand you. While I worry every second of every minute of every day, asleep or awake, it's as if you never worry at all. That is until you realize the Sabbath tickets aren't in your pocket, then all the worrying you should have been doing for the last several days kicks in in one giant cardiac event. I'm sure I was laughing when you broke into a dead run in that parking garage, your giant head engorged with bright red blood like a bloated tick. Comical terror!

ON INTENT

I got this story from a long time ago I sent to the House Committee. They are probably saving it for the Senate. I’ll give you the short version.
Back when I lived on Lancaster a friend of mine and his wife came over on New Years Eve for a couple minutes. They had a Corvette with a T Top and it was a nice night, so they had the T Top off. When they left, they spotted one of the local girls working the street. They pulled over, and they asked her how much it would be to have a go with the two of them.
Now, I cant hardly blame them. This particular girl wasn’t one of the regular girls. She was especially good looking, thick wavy hair, and a marvelous way of walking and tossing that hair. Real clean too. I’d even had a conversation with her one day, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

So my friend and his wife ask how much it would be for a go with the both of them.

And the next thing you know, they were surrounded by 10 cop cars and spent the night in jail.

Its seems that clean looking hooker was a cop.

True story.