Indiana

Ladies Restroom Stall. PETRO2 Gas Stop and Restaurant

My Kind of Gatherings

Found here in Memphis:

Crafting out the Flu Demons

I'm making a wreath – I hope when i am finished that I will have kicked this headcold. Unlike my illness, I am making it all up as I go along. These color choices are influenced by blue Nyquil and I hereby declare that alterna-colored poinsettias look a lot like Hawaiian print somethings so the theme this year will be Christmas in Hawaii.

I am also going to finish this little needlepoint kit I picked up at a Little Rock thrift store:

 

The cashier said, “Taking on a big project, huh? Sure you can handle it?”

“Well sir, I need the extra free time to sew your big mouth shut.” And then I promptly opened the kit, took out the needle and yarn and sewed his mouth shut with two daisies and chain stitch. He spent the rest of the day ringing customers up without comment.

(The above is an example of the great partial fiction for which I am known )

Get Lost (if you can)

My story starts with a freckled-faced eight year old and ends in a domestic dispute.

See, freckles weren’t the only thing on little Sally’s face (named changed to protect the selfish parent that sent a sick child to school  - the day I was called in to substitute - in lieu of staying home with them), her nose was dripping with vibrant green boogers that seemed to change consistency throughout the day. One minute it would look like a slim scene from Nickelodeon TV and the next, a fifties B-movie Swamp thing type coagulation. “May I go blow my nose?” she would ask and I’d say “Oh child! please do! With haste!” And I would run and dunk my head, hands, and elbows in a bucket of Purell.

But it didn’t help, and I know I can’t entirely blame Sally Snot Face, but I can blame the entire second grade because I contracted some kind of disease in the germ incubator they call elementary school. I’ve been suffering all week, the week where I happened to get a few job interviews.

My wits were not about me during the last interview, an hour long phone panel complete with awkward pauses and verbal missteps. I failed to answer questions like, “Tell me about a time you have used written communication to convey an important message.” Mucinex made me think this was a trick question, I wanted clarification on what would be considered an “Important Message” and I could only think of scenes from the new John Cusack movie, messages about an impending violent apocalyptic situation, or just messages about  donuts now available in the break room? I was not of right mind.

After the exhausting phone interview, B came home with a broken cell phone and bad attitude and I just wasn’t having it so I left in an abrupt dramatic fashion (in a way I thought would best punctuate a domestic dispute) and started to drive around to look for a place to get lost (and blow my nose). During this journey I became painfully aware of the limitations of my new home town. There is no place to hide, unless you want to be hidden forever if you know what I am saying. I caught a movie about Coco before she was Chanel at the Ridgeway but that was over by 9:30 and nothing else was playing after that. I drove up and down Poplar and examined my options for burning up some time – gas stations, Krystal Burger, and Kinko’s  - not a whole lot of options since even the Chili’s bar starts to wind down around ten.

I debated looking through my car to find something to photocopy and bind at Kinko’s, but thought against it. I would have probably contracted more germs. So instead I went home, longing for the days of Los Angeles where you can shop for decent lip gloss past ten pm, where you can be invisible everyplace, and drink alone without interruption or judgment within a block of your overpriced apartment. Or the days of small towning in the Michigan country where a contemplative corn field or gravel pit is only a half-can-of-beer’s drive away. I will someday find comfort in a city that forces me to go home, but not until this snot goes away.

A Photo Essay Explaining Why My Posts Have Been Fewer These Past Weeks

 

If you must know the rest of the story: I’ve been getting up insanely early, painting my own nails, suffering from the embarrassment of ordering decaf Americanos, falling behind in a word count race, prepping for interviews, researching my next big thing, replacing the word project with the word thing, ignoring the World Series, meeting the cute, the kind, and the troubled private school youth of Memphis, and of course, saving up all my good words to blow your mind -- after I get through tomorrow.

Objects In Picture Are Way Cooler Than They Appear

Drove to and fro Little Rock and Memphis today for some thrifting and a HOSB session. It was perfect weather for driving and listening to Inherent Vice and the Lewis Family. I’ve been trying to break my very dangerous taking pictures/video while driving habit but did anyone else see the moon tonight? Giant. Orange. Unable to be captured with a consumer grade digital camera from the early 2000s – that is it right there in the picture – the bright shining ball over the eighteen-wheeler taillights.

It’s blurry because of those pesky rumble strips that you hit when you are driving off the road.

Halloween Of Yesteryear, Hard To Top

Last year? Trapped in a Corn Maze, Seizure Baby and the ICP:

This year? I’m thinking I’ll find Elvis, eat three pounds of candy corn, and flying a broom to the moon.

Happy Halloween!

Visual Merch in Hot Springs, AR

The Pie Place

You can get lost in a pigs belly of bad bar-b-q here in the south so it pays to do your research. Before we left for Hot Springs last week we consulted our road food experts of Here Comes Trouble fame, and also the website Roadfood. Both connoisseur resources insisted that we stop at Craigs BBQ in De Valls Bluff, a quaint little town near the White River in Arkansas.

Roadfood said the rib plate was the real hit, but they don’t live in Memphis so we went with the other advice to get the cheeseburger. Yes, The cheeseburger. We were not disappointed.

Slaw-on-burger. Just order it the way it comes.

The service was great and the clientele was nothing but camo and Carharts. Not too many people dined inside but we did because we had to stay put – our desert was waiting across the street.

We were told that we had to get pies from The Pie Lady, a kind older woman who runs a pie shop out of her house, after we ate at Craigs. As you can see, the home is clearly labeled.

Inside was a trove of magical light and buttery crusts.

We ordered two apricot fried pies and ate them on the road. They tasted like homemade jam and dirty fruit. That is kind of what I call the decor of the place as well: Homemade Jam and Dirty Fruit – it is a distinct southern style. I’d go back for sure. Whole Pie style.

My Kind Of Gymnasium

The latest Vista Video taken inside the historic Fordyce Bath House in Hot Springs, AR shows the gym equipment of yesteryear:

Never Toss Your Go-To Material

I decided to get legit this month. Well, legit as far as becoming a proper Tennessee resident because I’ve pretty much decided to stay. This means getting a new license plate for my car. DONE. And a new drivers license. NOT DONE.

See, on my drive over to the DMV or DLS or XYZ of the great state of Tennessee, I started to feel a deep sadness about turning in my California ID. It isn’t due to expire for a good 4.8 years, but it is more than that that fed my resistance.

My hair and cheesy smile on that DL photo has consistently, and I mean 1 out of every 2 times I show the thing, gotten me attention. The kind of attention that makes TSA guards say I look like Linda Blair and waiters at Applebees say, “ha..nice smile.” It has become the only item in my comedy arsenal that produces such reliable results. I got the picture taken soon after I moved to Los Angeles and my hair was still growing out chemically induced curls from chemotherapy so I always looked like I had hot-rollered my hair. The photo quite possibly marks the greatest time of my life (minus the chemo, poverty, and 5am shift at Starbucks across from the Beverly Center).

So when I got to the Tennessee Licensing center and stood in the line behind twenty other people, I made up several excuses including the line being too long and the place smelling like wet diaper liner and I turned around and left, my Linda Blair ID still in my wallet.

My ID doesn’t identify me. Or maybe it does. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to pin myself to the confines of state borders and boundaries.  After all, I am and always will be just a world resident, who just happens to hold an astounding, unparalleled piece of personal identification (that is valid for another 4.8 years).

Welcome To The Bath Clinic

Hot Springs National Park Fordyce Bathhouse.

Headed Out To The Ozarks

Check Tumblr for photo updates.

Learned, Observed, and Celebrated

… at the Indie Memphis Film Festival

All In: The Poker Movie. I learned that poker is more part of America than the national parks or baseball and I think Ken Burns could do an 18 hours series on the card game. I also learned that once again it was my the technological champion, the camera, the kino-eye, that “let us in” and turned poker into a spectator sport of skill, luck, and psychological study. Thank you Henry Orenstein – the inventor of the Hole Card Camera and owner of large, handsome sunglasses.

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo Tears and steers! Rodeos are cinematic, prisons are metaphorical, put the two together and you have the perfect ingredients for a movie.

Memphis Movement: Jookin’ The Urban Ballet And I thought that was breakdancing I saw the other night at the Best of The Flyer party. I’m so glad that film has the power to educate, I won’t make that mistake again. The people behind this production are genuinely rad people. I hope they get distribution. If not, I can post the video right here on this heavily trafficked site.

Ghost Bird On our way out to Little Rock to see the Bill Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, we passed a small town with a big billboard that said, “Brinkley: Home of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.” and I thought to myself, I really should stop, that sounds rare and important. But the exit passed by and I missed my opportunity. I was thrilled when I found out Ghost Bird, a documentary that would explain it all, was screening at Indie Memphis. Some great footage in this -- particularly a short segment that show duck/geese (?) hunters preparing a field of decoys made from white trash bags and plastic ducks.

The Garden Lesson in filmmaking: An exhausting and spirited battle for public land compressed into a tightly edited (a perfect 80 minutes) documentary makes a riveting story, powerful political message, and a worthy historical document.

Getting Over The Hump

I consider myself middle-aged (for someone that lived in 1809) and I am happy that I found an instructional video that justifies my current state of retirement (more like deep R&D) as well as a nice essay written by a smart New Yorker that succinctly describes the effect that life-comparison has on our friendships.

Give Life to Little Things

You don’t have to give birth to get on the latest cultural bandwagon. Try non-committal windowsill gardening. That is what I do. Your best bet in those dollar bins near the entrance to your favorite Target store: Mini Grow Kits!

For a whole week, I thought I got a bunk batch of Black-Eyed Susans (BES) because they were really lagging behind the pot of gold, but this came up yesterday:

This makes me think I could have plant races. I could just watch these little pots for hours. Can’t wait to see BES shake off that dirt and flower up. It seems to be more productive than watching paint dry and gentler than watching water boil. Coming up next Lavender vs Forget-Me-Nots:

A Gesture Study

Mesmerizing hair handling and astounding perm spring-back from a local documentary about Elmwood Cemetery.

From my Historians Hair series.

Concussions

Oh my gosh – Playgrounds from the 70s got me thinking about Monkey Bars and if we are allowed to use that term or equipment anymore. I’m allowed to say whatever I want of course but I just need to know should I get called in to substitute teach a recess of some kind. I was witness to a rather severe concussion in the fifth grade and I have vowed to never challenge a person to a gymnastic competition on metal bars ever again. Monkeys may not be the symbols of play that they used to be.

Be warned: If you search the internet for Monkey Bars you should be prepared to get a bunch of unsettling news about the popular piece of playground equipment.

A Shell of A Different Color

Pre-show warm-up at the Levitt Shell.

Tinted Window