Author: docthink

no one of consequence

Teddy Bears & Unicorns & Bellybuttons

My ancient Wayfarers. Same 'script for decades.

Sometimes I find myself overcome by a surprise rush of happiness. It’s like warm puppy kisses and a wave of lightheadedness like from champagne with tiny bubbles.

Sometimes I’m surprised by the proximate cause. Upon my analysis I think there may be something wrong with me. So be it. I thought I’d share just a few of the things that make me inexplicably happy.

  • Empty tupperware containers in the sink evidencing the enjoyment of leftovers when the Big Guy got home late last night.
  • Pulling my red raincoat out of the closet.
  • Every single time my friend posts anything about Mount Vernon on Facebook. He does it a lot, too.
  • Trout on a menu. I might not eat it every time but am oddly ecstatic that it’s there.
  • Wool socks that belonged to someone with big feet that shrunk to my size and because of the concentration of yarn have an extra deep layer of lamby, cushiony comfort.
  • The Beast bounding to the door then stopping  just before he reaches me to turn around to find a toy to present as tribute.
  • Grape potatoes.
  • Hearing a Muzaked version of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. It should, but does not, offend me.
  • The strike of a match and smell of sulfur for the dinner candles.
  • Texts from Baby Bear rueing the current state of political affairs.
  • The fresh fish displayed on what looks like black marble in the case at The District Fishwife.
  • Pulling the threads to open up the pocket on a new jacket. The moment when you pull that long string and the pocket is fully freed? That.
  • Seeing the neighbor kid driving their folks’ car for the first time. Scary, too.
  • Honey in a comb, especially if it sits next to the tasty mustard on my artisan charcuterie plate.
  • The laser mouse for our TV. Every time I use it, I’m excited.
  • A fourth grader opening a book they’re carrying then shoving their face between the pages as soon as they find a place to sit.
  • Someone truly enjoying the music that I’m hearing from their headphones. Bonus if they’re singing–with or without sound. Quality of singing not a factor in my joy.
  • Dogs sniffing and spinning and positioning their rumps to take a crap.
  • The way the hinge rocks up and down on my ancient Wayfarers.
  • The spouse, haloed by the lamp, sitting on the couch doing a crossword puzzle.
  • People blindly walking down the street with their conference name tag. I well up in affection. Sometimes I suggest that they take it off. For safety’s sake.
  • Peeling a slightly dried out clementine. There is a pleasure in the way that it almosts pops like a bubble as you pull away the peel.
  • Someone flirting with me. I don’t care that his cologne is eau du piss and his bling is the jingle of coins in the cup he picked out of the trash. I’m still flattered.
  • Hitting publish on a post.

Well, that last one isn’t so inexplicable, but I don’t really have much explanation for the rest.

I hope that you, too, My Loyal Reader, have simple things that make you inexplicably happy. Do share.

Posted on by docthink 0

Fooled Again

Walking down the street.

I jaywalked right in front of a cop.

As I was stepping up to the light, I saw the Crown Vic from the corner of my right eye. The cruiser slowly pulled to the middle of the empty block. Very empty in that the restaurant that used to anchor that space and eight or ten houses around that block were cleared away four years ago. The holding-out-for-more-compensation owners of 5 row houses on the east side of the block have been dooming the planned mixed-use development. That’s a different story. I’ll write that another time. But there is a big empty space.

MPD rolled up next to the tall metal construction fence sprouting from cement blocks. The fence ringed the big empty space now taken back by vines and weeds pushing through old foundations, around the trunks of once mighty trees and snaking through what had been an alley. It could use a mowing.

I watched as he pulled to the curb and parked. I realized he was active. But as I stood there on the corner watching 23 seconds counting down to my permission to cross and with no cars coming over the hill from the West and zero traffic approaching from the East, I lost any patience or law-abiding self-restraint. (The Spouse would have heartily disapproved.)

A car passed, the street was clear. I looked both ways. I started to cross. I was feeling a little cheeky since Johnny Blue was just a glance from that intersection. When I was halfway across the street, he slowly moved from his perch. I kept my eyes straight ahead and likely stood a little taller. I didn’t pick up my pace, too much. I thought that he was going to screech his siren and censure me. If I made eye contact, he’d for sure bust me.

He wasn’t coming for me, though.  He had likely been sitting there to check a text before driving around the block to check out the local reform school.

I stepped on the curb, and the police drove by. I didn’t look back. I had purposely flaunted the law, in front of an enforcer of the law. Somehow, in that minute, it seemed stupider to stand and wait 23 seconds than to tick off a cop. I contemplate that as I walk the next block. Is it okay to break that pedestrian law? I already made an excuse for myself, but wanted some absolution.

I criss-crossed from one corner to the next, and a hybrid SUV revved up behind me. It speeded to the stop sign with the radio blasting. As it slowed and rolled through the intersection I recognized the strains of The Who.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I recognized the ghost of my youth granting me amnesty and egging me on. Privilege checked.

Posted on by docthink 1

Not My Beautiful Cake

David Byrne from Talking Heads in a very ill-fitting and white suit.

He was wearing a department store suit. While he had the trouser legs hemmed and left uncuffed, the attire would have benefitted from additional tailoring. In lieu of that, he could have selected a suit that fit him better.

That wasn’t something he saw. The suit wasn’t too big. It wasn’t too small. It was the right shade of corporate steel-navy. It was buy-one get-one for half price, so it was a value purchase, too. The label on the inside pocket was printed with a name he heard before, or at least a name that sounded like one he knew. It could be a designer’s name. It was definitely not an Italian name.

His wife didn’t see it either. Although the two of them were on the fussy side, the fussiness didn’t extend to the hang of fabric.

His hair was thinning, but was holding onto its off brown color. Off brown in that it was not black, but it didn’t have the warmth a shade of fawn would have. It was a bit steely, without being gray, like the color of his department store suit with less blue.

He couldn’t see the hairless spot at the back of his head. He was ambiently aware that there was less hair there, but he believed there was some. There was actually a barren spot reminiscent of a secret marshy spot, where all the grasses grow long and somewhat willowy around a water-filled hollow. Except the water here was exposed skin.

His gait was like a flat half-skip. His body jangled jauntily as he stepped but his feet barely left the ground. He balanced a huge plastic cake carrier on his left hand. The bottom of the container was dark blue. There was no cake left, but some icing clung to the inside of the dome and was joined by some chocolate flavored crumbs stuck to the edge and along the bottom.

He randomly baked, mostly cakes, mostly from a box, and brought the goods to share at his office. He’d always add something special to the cake, to make it his own like the coaches tell contestants covering Whitney Houston on a singing show. This time he added instant espresso crystals to the Duncan Hines mix for a mocha-flavor. It was his idea. He thought it was very special and very creative. His colleagues thought it made the cake taste bitter and a little burnt. The double coating of frosting was a counterbalance, but they would have eaten it anyway.

He hurried in his half-skip to the escalator and disappeared down the tunnel to the train that would take him home.

Posted on by docthink 1

Sweet, Sour & Hot Sauce

Beyonce fooled you again. (from Telephone video)

Ring the alarm! Beyoncé is black!

It’s been creeping up on white people for a while, but they can no longer deny.

Sure, there were early signs, but many white people refused to acknowledge them until it was too late. [I see YOU Piers Morgan.] They bought her music on CDs and iTunes and just added a Tidal subscription to their bills, bills, bills for her newest visual album.

But in people’s sweet dreams, Beyoncé is simply an American sweetheart. We might have a black president, but a black America’s sweetheart? Her white fans had their flawless evidence.

Single ladies, put a ring on it.

For example, in her Dreamgirls role, she famously starved herself, erasing her beautiful, bootylicious curves to portray a teen diva. She was just like a waif-like Audrey Hepburn, right? Also, isn’t she crowned by a halo of blonde hair? And isn’t she besties with whitest and most clueless diva ever, Gwyneth P? They were even sighted at a Coldplay show together. That’s super white.

Hot sauce?  Hot sauce looked like a total false alarm when Hillary Clinton–with her awkward inability to say her name–also claimed to never leave home without it. That could be dismissed as a Southern thing. Guess I missed the image of Scarlett and Melanie as single ladies hoisting bottles of Tabasco out of their bags before the burning of Atlanta.

Beyonce? She Flawless!Her shocked white fans started on their path to resentment when Bey called herself a feminist, like she runs the world? But as long as she was a naughty girl riding her surfboard–a definite white Beach Boys’ reference, right?–and writhed drunk in love on the floor her agency as an independent woman could be dismissed, too.

Beyonce flips out.Then, out of the blue, she drops her new album. While there is definitely universality in her countdown of shared human experiences of intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation, forgiveness, resurrection, hope, redemption, she also excludes.

She might tell a different story if she were a boy, but she focuses on her own experience as a woman. She is a mother to a daughter. She is a daughter to a mother who, too, was a survivor of marital infidelity. She works words and music along her journey beyond the poison of resentment that many women have faced. But she goes further into her own experience–that of a black woman, in formation with other black women and their unique experiences of love, loss and tenacity. And, white America, you aren’t with that because that message is not for you. It is for her and her sisters. You feel left out.
Foxy Cleopatra throwing some shade.

Oh, that sneaky Beyoncé. She made you all crazy in love with her because of her talent and hard work–and because she didn’t talk too much. You liked that she was empowering but not scary. And now, after sucking you in, she goes ahead and scares the living shit out of you. She is provocatively political. She made you look when you weren’t intending.  Don’t hurt yourself, but listen. Move your body and embrace what makes these women beautiful.

Beyonce telling us.You go, Beyoncé. That’s a tall, sweet glass of lemonade I see you sipping. I know you weren’t intending for the white folk to be all sour and salty, but it’s up to them to make their own lemonade this time. XO
Beyonce runs this world as an independent woman.

Tomorrow’s news: the irreplaceable Prince rocking an Afro? Yeah, déjà vu, he’s black, too.

Posted on by docthink 0

Doc & The Beast: Continuing Adventures

NOT a good boy. The Beast.

Finally, the morning fulfilled the promise that has been teased this spring. Sunshine bounced off the shrubbery and landed a soft, warm kiss on my nose. I clipped the collar around the cold, wet nose of my companion, and we headed out.

As per usual, he started off in his herky-jerk pull. First he jerked to the right. I yanked him toward me. He then herked straight ahead. I admonished him, sternly but ineffectively, but we were going that way anyhow. I halted him when we got to the gate. The bushes that bound our front yard have grown taller than me. Well, not that tall, but are big and thick enough that I can’t see if someone is coming.

It’s important for us all to be forewarned. First, pedestrians can be quite surprised if they walk into what strangers generally marvel at as a “big dog.” Then if the dog is surprised, that mutual surprise becomes a tangle of the neighbor tripping backwards saying, “whoa!” or sometimes, “holy shit! is that a DOG?” and the dog embracing the movement and shrieks as an opportunity to make a new friend who may, in a moment of shock, drop a sandwich.

This becomes a jump-jive lurch and a wrench of my shoulder. Really the wrench of the entire right side of my body from shoulder, to pectorals, to the 3 of my 6-pack that hides underneath middle-age and sometimes through my adductor longus. UNLESS, the person is coming from the other side, then it’s the pivot wrench in which the only thing planted is my left leg. Please pray for that knee. So I hang on to the leash for all that is good in the world and offer my profuse apologies for the unwelcome charge. And I can’t help to pick anything up since I need to redirect The Beast. I spin and swiftly walk away, with a weak wave, a grimacey smile and another cluster of sorries.

That didn’t happen this morning. It’s all about that strategic pause and being ever-vigilant. It’s also all about an empty sidewalk. Issue avoided.

I was ready for work and didn’t have any pockets. I clipped my house key to my sweater and stuffed a plastic bag with a few treats in the elastic at the top of my skirt. It was a a stunning morning indeed, and The Beast, after making sure that the Soviet exile kitty-cat was not hiding underneath the Mini, fell into my pace.

I didn’t have alot of time so we were taking the abbreviated route. There were many new spring smells, but he used the lead I gave him to maximize his sniffs and minimize his corrections. There were some sticks to chew through and napkins on the sidewalk that he was not allowed to investigate further.

We turned the corner and passed the bike share that was half-full of cherry red units. This turn directs us toward the tracks. As we approach the last third of the block, I need to be hyper-aware for approaching trains. I usually use a combination of cooing, bribes and two-handed leash reminders to make the next turn.

It was just as I was looking up ahead and as the beast was retrieving his pee-mail left by other canines on the trunk of the old tree that it happened. The smelling at the base of the tree changed to him rolling his head and neck on the ground. At first I thought he was having a seizure of sorts until I saw him place his shoulder and euphorically rub through that shoulder, neck, ear and nose in, in, in, something.

Oh, God!

So disgusting. I pulled him off it and did a super quick assessment. It didn’t seem to be a dead animal. But it was definitely a gross enough pile that I choked back a gag and dragged him from his holy place.

I cursed a fair amount the rest of the way home. I needed to clean him off enough so I could get to work. Which I did. He would get the full salon treatment this evening.

The Petco has dog-wash stations. For a Hamilton they supply all you need to wash your dog–aprons, shampoo, sprayers and big silver tubs.

Although The Beast was not obviously foul-smelling, I knew (mostly) what he had rolled in. He needed a full refresh.

We took a real walk, the better to wear him out before tonight’s new experience, and I coaxed him into the car. We insaned it to the pet store and were gifted with a parking spot exactly in front of the store. Good omen!

The Beast likes the dogstore. He sniffs around for treats, pokes at the toys and occassionally leaves with one. And cookies. He always gets a cookie.

The cashier looked at us and asked if we were going to the tubs. I’m wondering how she knew. I told her it was my first time. She nodded and asked if we could wait while she took care of the man buying something special for his cute brown moppet dog who began leaping in place at our entrance. That leaping in place was quite a talent.

The attendant walked me to the back of the store where a woman was shampooing her sweet moppet dog in one of the three tubs. Guess moppet dogs are in. There were no other eighty-pound Bambi dogs.

We stood at the wash station. I surveyed the area. Rubber mats on the ground and the bottom of the tubs. Good, neither of us would slip. There was a water spray and cleats on the side. There were some shampoo leashes hanging. I guess the cleats were to hitch the leash.

I took a breath and looked at The Beast. He may have seen a flash of my apprehension. I gave him a treat and moved him toward the bath. He looked at the stainless steel tub and eyed the open door. He looked at me and as much as said, “Seriously, Doc? What the hell do you think is going to happen here?”

He wouldn’t get in. I lifted his front legs in, like we do with the car. The idea was to get the front part in and then I’d lift the rear. This was NOT his idea. He splayed not only his legs out, but grabbed onto the edge of the tub with his paws. He dug in. I couldn’t get behind him in time. He brought his legs back to terra firma.

The attendant asked if we wanted to use a lower tub on the other side of the “salon.” Sounded good to me. I tried to walk him the nine steps to the other tub. He pulled back like a Jeep with a winch. I was on the other end of the rope. He was working to reel me in. I produced another treat and some soothing words. I had to coax him to take the goodie. This was not a good omen.

I out-winched him and pulled him to the other tub. The woman bathing her sweet moppet dog was judging me. I know. I felt it.

I lifted his front paws into this lower tub. He had clearly used the first tub experience as his rehearsal for a true protest. He would not be moved. I hopped up into the tub myself, thinking that I could get him to loosen his resolve if he saw how easy it was. There I am standing in the dog tub and the dog immobile outside of it. Another couple came in with their dog.

The guy looked at me standing in the tub with The Beast doing his sit down strike. He said that his dog would be just like The Beast. I’m looking at him and then his dog. I wonder aloud if the dog was twenty-five pounds. The woman offered, “Sixteen.” Sure, just like my dog. They lifted her up with one friggin’ hand and murmured sweet pleas for forgiveness as they did their washing. Meanwhile, the moppet dog woman was still secretly judging me. I caught the shade.

I got out of the tub since that was not working and pulled another treat out of my pocket. I was running out. It didn’t matter, though. The Beast refused to turn his head toward me. I told him there’s a cookie, and while I got a recognition via one raised eyebrow (yes, he has eyebrows, I’ll show you sometime) he did not turn. I was standing between him and the stainless steel tub. He would not deign to look toward that hated stainless steel tub. I stepped to his other side, and he looked at me away from the stainless steel tub. I gave him the treat. And I gave up.

I was beyond the judgement of my washmates. Beyond the judgement of the attendant who asked me what I was going to do as I left the wash station.

I needed a solution. I asked for dry shampoo. The Beast put his head in a box of toys. I paid the $20 for the dry shampoo and left. But no cookie for The Beast this time. Nope. No cookie. Not this time. Not a toy either.

Posted on by docthink 1

Markers In Time

Entrance to Glenwood Cemetery in D.C.

Lincoln Road heading away from the Shrine curves around like an S up the hill and then curves to the next S–a reversed S that hugs the other side of the hill between the two cemeteries.  It’s a beautiful park on this sunny spring day.

A crabapple tree extends its branches over the iron fence and shades the road. The tree is starting to switch from flowers to leaves. The flowers are like pink painted orbs against the green that is barging in. Just before the first S there is a Japanese-styled garden with a bridge arching over most likely a rock river. This tribute is new. I remember them moving the earth around and creating some moguls before they constructed a pagoda and then the bridge. Mylar balloons tied to one side of the bridge are lurching toward the sky. It seems strange, attaching balloons to the bridge. There isn’t an obvious marker. I don’t think they were from a birthday party–unless it was marking the birthday of someone dead?

Lifesized cement angels herald visitors at the entrance at deepest part of the curve. Well, person-lifesized. I don’t know what the size of an actual angel would be. Anyway, if you were trying to enter the grounds from the north, you’d have to turn your car 270°. Funeral processions always enter from the south for ease and are guided around a large circle with more angels, some blaring trumpets others in thoughtful prayer poses.

This is an old cemetery. The sign says it was founded in 1854. The stones are all different shapes and sizes. There’s some tall ones that look like the Washington Monument. These obelisks are different heights. Is there some status here? There are some twin stones, maybe marking a couple. Some markers are big crosses. There are square crypts that hold families full of remains. There is an old azaela that sits in front of a gravestone and has just about overtaken it. There are tall trees throughout the winding roads of the cemetery. There are lots of low flowering plants.

Modern cemeteries are designed for efficiency. There are no trees and no above ground stones so the groundskeepers can easily cut the grass. The graves are lined up in rows and are navigated to using simple coordinates. Some modern cemeteries limit the types of homage family and friends can leave behind. There is a sameness.

Not at this old cemetery. The grave markings are as different as the people buried here. There are old trees and young ones, too. Somebody is taking care to ensure that there will always be some shade. The grass is mowed, at least from where you can see from the road. Maybe people have to pay a fee to maintain the plots, but none are overgrown.

The leaves on the trees sway slightly and the sun warms the garden. There isn’t a funeral today, but there are a few people coming to visit those who have left them. They have picked a good day to pay their respects and to walk through the garden.

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Power Play

WCAC wrestling match. Fierce!

If any of you are still wondering how the Catholic Church not only covered up but also supported pedophile priests for decades and generations, look here and here.

For those of you who didn’t click through, here’s the tl;dr. Sixty people sent letters defending the character of Denny Hastert to the Chicago judge sentencing Hastert in a money laundering case that exposed the former wrestling coach and U.S. Speaker of the House as a serial pedophile. His supporters had a chance to pull back their letters before they went public. Forty-one decided that they were okay with not only publicly supporting but, in some instances, minimizing the impact of Hastert’s crimes.

I can get the ones from family who can’t believe he is a monster who via his position of power and respect as a person in authority–a wrestling coach–identified and groomed boys for sexual abuse. Yeah. I would have a tough time reconciling my spouse or parent or sibling with that. Wrong, but I can see it.

But “former national and state politicians as well as local leaders, board members, police officers”?  State attorney generals? Members of Congress? Ex-CIA heads?

That’s how this crap happens. People in power supporting other people in power and systematically–yes systematically, methodically and deliberately–minimizing the humanity of those who are not powerful. People like the young, the poor, the differently-able, the non-white, the non-cis, the non-hetero, and, frequently, the women.

I don’t care if the old man is in poor health. It’s not like he stole a loaf of bread to feed his family and has been chased for a lifetime while doing good. He purposefully hurt kids and then hid those crimes behind more than a million dollars in hush money. Then, when it got too hot, he said he was sorry for transgressions of “a young man.”

What does it mean that he is a “god-fearing man”? Does claiming that give a pass for preying on people? It doesn’t make sense to me.

My Bear wrestled. It was the only sport that drew my tears–not for winning or losing, but for the fierceness of the competition. Fierce. Intense. Personal. We trust our sons and our daughters to coaches, teachers and other group and club leaders. That trust should be sacrosanct no matter the power differential.

The crimes against children must not be brushed aside as a minor “flaw.” Must. Not. We need to defend the survivors, not the abusers.

 

 

Posted on by docthink 0

Rendering

An xBox controller with an array of confusing buttons. WTH?

Some of my best friends are gamers. I guess that’s how I’ll backhandedly describe the fact that I am, most definitely, not.

There used to be a game that the boys played with a friendly cartoon tiger running along a crumbling Great Wall. I played that. I could do three or four runs before it was beyond my skills. That was the last game they ever caught me playing.

I was pretty good at Pajama Sam and Putt Putt Saves the Zoo on the PC. That said, their pre-school selves were better players than me. I set the low bar.

I wasn’t anxious to buy a gaming system. Others in the house were much more anxious. We made a deal. If they could save up half the cost of the PlayStation, I’d make up the difference. Baby Bear got $1 each week and The Big Guy $3. They were required to request their allowance each week. The cash was lost to the nethers if the transaction wasn’t made by the end of the weekend. No back pay. Saved me having to remember and from doling out extra bank.

The Big Guy was quite lackadaisical about money. Not Baby Bear. He was on a mission. You could mark your calendar by his Friday night request. He made sure to get The Big Guy’s dough, too. His rigor soon fulfilled their side of the bargain, an annoying three weeks before Christmas. So they bought themselves the gift.

They are still bitter about the games I would not let them play. No killing games. That Star Wars game with the light sabers that My Sib bought them? Nope. Not even if they killed Jar Jar Binks. No killing games. I gave it away.

There were plenty of running and jumping and driving games. There was Mario & Luigi, Crash Bandicoot and that cute purple dragon. I even flew the dragon on occasion when they handed me the controller, just to be friendly.

The Toy Story game was a big puzzle that let them explore outside of a defined path. Well, until they got to the side of Andy’s room where there wasn’t any drawing left. Rendering. Rendering. Rendering.

My parental standard graduated to cartoon level mayhem, as long as the weapon wasn’t a gun. And no games rated “M.” The boys were disgusted with me. They were definitely out of sync with their peers. I was okay with that. They had Madden, and FIFA and some crazy basketball game.

My rules were harder for The Big Guy. I held him back a bit because Bear would play it, too. I know. Not fair. It’s always harder on the oldest.

I found a killing game cartridge when I was putting away underwear. Leaving aside why someone hides contraband behind their boxers–the most obvious place to hide stuff–I knew it was time to adjust. My response was to keep an eye on the gameplay. I would sit with them as they would play. I would ask them questions. And they would hand me the controller.

I would inevitably shoot my own feet, maim my teammates, and not be able to move. Seriously, the boys would shout, BOX, BOX, A, X or whatever. It didn’t matter. I have absolutely no controller-brain coordination. I would try. I would fail. We would laugh.

Over time, I watched the games change. First it was watching them play football in the rain–maybe the year Brett Farve was on the cover of Madden. The shadows of the players, the jerseys worn by the crowds, the options for play became more sophisticated.

Then there were the killing games. They became more realistic, too. It was stunning, and awful. But another thing happened. Some of the killing games had characters who had to make challenging decisions. The first-person missions became more morally complex.

I grew to like some of the characters. Some of them a lot. I cared about their success. In some games, there were real storylines. Characters had different personalities. You could do more than upgrade your weapon or change your armor. You could even reveal a different story if you played as a different cast member. I would check in to see not just how the game progressed, but what happened, what decisions were made and what were the consequences.

I went from the parent who railed against the violence and stupidity of GTA, to a binge-watching regular, like watching The Sopranos through a kaleidoscope where I get to spin the colored glass and view a new, crooked, yet beautiful, version. A good game is art–there is plot, conflict and denouement. A world is created. There are heroes, villains and anti-heroes. The gamer makes decisions that impact not only the gameplay, but the outcome of the tale.

As the boys play, I watch the games like a movie. They sometimes ask me which weapon to use or if they should buy more health or more cunning. I share my uninformed opinion, sometimes after asking questions about the options. I sometimes share my opinion about their decisions–like to not be mean. They usually acquiesce or explain why they need to be mean at that moment. They know that I’ll refuse to take the unfathomable controller into my clumsy hands, so they don’t pass that on. I sit with them to be with them, to watch the show and just to be friendly.

 

Posted on by docthink 1

Purple Reign

Prince, summoning the purple reign.

I would listen to the Electrifying Mojo religiously. He would land his mothership on WJLB and the members of the Midnight Funk Association would be brought to order. He would spin funk, R&B, rap, soul and even new wave from 10-2 every night. They say that Mojo broke Prince to the Detroit airwaves.

One night Mojo opened with the promise that he would play When Doves Cry for his entire show. And he did. I was in the car and listened for fifty miles, stopping only when I turned off the engine at my destination.

Mojo looped the song back on itself, reinserted the guitar intro and elongated the bridge. And did it all again in a different configuration. And again. It was seamless and beautiful. I didn’t think that I would listen for long, but I was bewitched by the tom tom, guitar, howls, falsetto and the telling and retelling of the story of the sad love birds.

I knew that the Electrifying Mojo took plenty of chances, playing full albums and mixing genres. But I almost thought that he would get fired for playing When Doves Cry for four hours. Four hours one continuous song. It was subversive. And it was art.

Like Prince, a most subversive artist. Prince sang about love, sex, sexuality and making love. He performed looking sexy in a ruffled shirt, high heeled boots and a purple satin frock coat. Men loved him. Women loved him. He wore eyeliner. He changed his name into a symbol over his rights to his music. He played an inspired Super Bowl halftime in the pouring rain. His tour bands always included women musicians. He made pancakes. He shredded on the guitar. He made us party like it’s 1999. He rocked, he rolled, he whispered, he screamed. He pretended we were married and that he was your girlfriend. He sang for Freddy Gray and for Baltimore. He was funky. He was a star. He left unexpectedly, and too early. I hope to a place where your horses run free.

Thanks, Prince, for being on the soundtrack of my life. Tonite I have you on loop. Game blouses.

Posted on by docthink 0

What you talkin ’bout Willis?

From Different Strokes, when Arnold'd look up and say, "what you talkin bout Willis??"

When I was growing up, I thought my name was roxgwemishDoc.

That’s what my mother called me. She would go through all the names in the credits before she finally got to mine. She’d do it quickly. It sounded like an ancient elvish language. Sometimes it might be Docrocksmish. Then I might be first. It wasn’t logical. Sometimes, in exasperation, she would just point and spit out, “You!”

I have spoken to The Spouse and got his attention by dropping the name of the dog.

For the record: I know that The Spouse is NOT The Beast.

I have seen The Spouse shudder at my error, but he knows it’s a mistake. Everyone knows. Even The Beast himself. He doesn’t move his head, cock an ear or raise an eyelid when I call The Spouse by The Beast’s name.

Sometimes, when I am speaking quickly, which is often, I say the wrong word. When it’s worth a laugh and could be misconstrued as a double entendre, we call it a Freudian Slip.

It could be calling a quarterback by the name of a point guard. It could be misnaming a river. Maybe I say rock when I mean sugar. It could be using the brand name of a cookie for a wine. I know, weird.

In each and every case, I am making a mistake.

Any day I might speak 10 thousand or 15 thousand words. I get some wrong for reasons of speed, laziness and the actual phenomenon of brain efficiency in which I autoinsert a word or phrase that doesn’t belong but could.

Like I might say 7-11 instead of 9-11. Where I am talking at length about how we came together after the terror attack and my brain subbed out the slurpee store on the way.

I know the difference. You do, too. So let’s talk about something else.

Posted on by docthink 1