The Perfect Song Blog

I ran into Wal Mart to get a grab a can of deodorant – Axe Tsunami. Leigh and I had just eaten dinner at the nearby TGI Friday’s. I had blackened chicken and fries. I always curse myself for eating the fries. I know better but I love the salt and the grease.

The grease does not love me. I felt a major gas attack coming. I hurried over to the Express Aisle which was developed for people with few goods who are in a hurry and people who have gas.

The line was at a standstill. The cashier stood staring at the machine. The customer, a young man stared blankly at her. Is it just me or do you see this a lot in stores? A cashier stymied by a stubborn machine, customer staring at her, then at the counter, then at her.

“Fran I need help?” The cashier called out like it was a question. No wonder she was having problems. She didn’t know the difference between a question and a command. Fran made her way over, stuck in her magic key (and I’ve seen this in enough stores that I’ve developed magic key envy).

The gas was building.

I turned my attention to a hyperactive three-year-old with curly blond hair who was karate chopping the air, falling on the floor, rolling, leaping up, and kicking out at a black guy built like a bear who ignored the kid. God, the mother must start the kid out with Coke for breakfast and let him dine on potato chips, cookies and donuts the rest of the day.

Mom appeared out of the aisle, pushing her cart and acting like she had a normal kid. She was tall, blonde and wore a low cut top that lead your eye down to her tan breasts.

As she entered the next aisle, a 20ish guy passed by and checked out her ass, thinking he was being subtle about it. I made a mental note that men just aren’t built for subtlety.

My bowels were about to burst.

The kid leaped, sucker-punched a bag of cheesies, whirled and disappeared into the next aisle.

Finally the cashier took the man’s check. “Oh I need to see your driver’s license,” she said laughing like she really enjoyed this game she played on minimum wage.

Finally the transaction was finished and two overweight blonde girls about 12 stepped up. The first one handed the cashier a tennis racket. “Could you scan it and tell me how much it is?” She asked quietly.

The cashier did. “$26.” She said.

The girl looked at her sister. The sister looked back.

The gas had worked its way down.

I had to fart.

“Do you want it?”: The cashier asked.

The girl nodded. The cashier rang it up. The girl looked at her money. Apparently she forgot about sales tax. Embarrassed, she shook her head.

The cashier said nothing and voided the sale.

I was on the verge of voiding. Come on! Move, folks!

Okay, we’re all adults here. I know you’ve experienced it. You’ve got gas and you know it’s big. You know you’re not going to let it out in little increments. You know when you relax the sphincter it’s really going to announce itself with authority.

Behind me now were an Indian mother and her daughter. They didn’t speak English, not that it mattered. It just meant I was truly sealed in. There’s no way I could fart at two generations of Indian women. It’s not only politically incorrect, it probably has some kind of international relations ramifications.

There was one guy ahead of me now. The two chubby girls had gone back into the store to find something else they couldn’t afford and hold up some other hapless middle aged guy with an internal ailment.

My God. I was ready to scream: “Attention Wal Mart Shoppers. I’m going to fart and it’s going to break the sound barrier. The blast is going to rock the shelves. Its intensity will knock you over, and while you’re down you’ll be begging God for nothing more than one good breath of fresh air. Those of you within 10 feet of me may be permanently damaged. Any women with babies, please cover them! You two Indian women, God rest your souls. You should never have come to America and gone shopping at Wal Mart.”

My head was bowed and I was mentally slapping duct tape on my butt to hold everything in when I realized it was my turn. The cashier rang up my deodorant. I paid her and got four cents back. “Thank you. Have a nice evening,” she said without meaning it. They never mean it. Why should they after a day of dealing with stubborn machines, chubby girls with no money, hyperactive kids with mothers showing off their boobs, and middle aged men who really have to fart?

I rushed to the exit door. A smiling little Wal Mart male senior citizen gave me a practiced smile. “Thank you for shopping at Wal Mart.”

I nodded, wanting to tell him just how close Wal Mart came to major internal wind and odor damage.

Outside, a motorcyclist pulled up to the stop sign where I stood. Yes! Yes! I remained there a moment and competed with his rumbling engine. He revved it a couple times waiting for pedestrians.

Finally he looked over at me. He had tears in his eyes. I’m not sure, but I think I melted his goggles.

He took off in a hurry and I, in great relief, went off to find my car.

Everyone in the cartoon world knows that Olive Oyl is a whiney know-it-all who is not good for Popeye. Recently she started nagging him about eating canned spinach.

“It’s so 20th century,” she told him. “It’s barbaric the way you grab a can and squeeze it until the top pops off and then you just pour it down your throat! It’s gross, Popeye.”

“I am what I am,” Popeye said. That’s true. He is what he is and he’s never been known for his profound statements. Just an uneducated sailor who swallows spinach with a pipe in his mouth, and, with his spinach strength, beats people up.

“I want you to start eating fresh spinach,” Olive Oyl continued.

Popeye’s good eye widened. “Shiver me timbers!” (See what I mean?)

“Fresh spinach is good for you. It will probably make you even stronger,” Olive Oyl persisted.

Between spinach intake, Popeye is a wimp and gave in to Olive Oyl. He knew what all men know. If you don’t do what a woman asks, she’ll shut you off. So Popeye bought bags of fresh spinach. One day day when Popeye and Olive Oyl were out strolling, Bluto came along and said he was going to kidnap Olive Oyl. Popeye reached into his pocket looking for his can of spinach. He pulled out a bag of fresh spinach instead. He tore open the bag and started eating it, realizing suddenly that he had to chew this stuff.
This was not right, at all. He was used to slimey green gloppy stuff that slid down his throat before he had to taste it. But Olive Oyl was being threatened and he chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed.

“Well, it’s time to take you away,” Bluto said with a bearded evil grin and Olive Oyl knew what he had in mind.

Popeye’s face began turning white. His stomach churned.  Without a word he waddled tight-assed across the street to a public restroom, which they have in cartoon land. He slammed the door.

“Popeye!” Olive Oyl screamed in that high, steel-piercing whiney voice that has grated on me since childhood. “Help me! Help me!”

“I can’t, Olive Oil,” came the muffled voice from the rest room.

Both Olive Oyl and Bluto paused, puzzled. This was not in the script. “Why not?” Olive Oyl screamed.

“I got the shits,” came the voice.

“You got the what?” Olive Oyl screamed.

“The shits! I got the shits, Olive Oyl. Bad shits. I gotta stay here.”

Bluto laughed as Olive Oyl’s skinny body writhed in his arm. He carried her to the nearest motel and had his way with her, which could be tragic except that the motel owner swears he heard her humming “I did it my way,” as the couple left.

This double dipping is something that kids for generations have suspected. Olive Oyl’s sex life with Popeye was never satisfactory because he withered as soon as his dose of spinach wore off. That’s right, a can of spinach hardened all his muscles. But only in short spurts, as it were.
Popeye was feeling better by the next day but that didn’t help his hurt pride. To have your woman carried off by a guy even dumber than you are and have his way with her while you strapped to the john is not a good thing for a crusty sailor used to beating people to toony pulps.

A few days later Popeye saw two men fighting on top of a building, and this being a cartoon, he knew that a man was going to fall and he would have to rush to the rescue. He ripped open his bag of spinach and tried to swallow it. He began choking. Bluto rushed in and administered the Heimlich maneuvere until the one-eyed sailor spat out the spinach gob and gasped himself back to life. Meanwhile both men fell from the room and crashed through the sidewalk. Another blow for Popeye.

Later Bluto took Popeye to the diner.  “Popeye, I got a reputation to look out for.  What do you think my credibility’s gonna be when the word gets out that I saved your life?”

“It’s humiligratin’ alright,” Popeye said emiting a puff of smoke from his pipe.

“The only reason I did it is ’cause we got a season to finish out and there can’t be a bad guy without a good guy. Got it?”

Popeye hung his head in shame. God, he had to be saved by his arch enemy while two perfectly good cartoon characters fell through the sidewalk.

It was a good lesson for Popeye. He couldn’t fresh spinach down it like a can, so he began eating it a little at a time so he could build up and sustain strength. The feeling of sickness came over him again as he and Olive Oyl were crossing the street. Out of nowhere came The Pusher who pushed Olive Oyl into the path of an oncoming bus.

Normally, Popeye would have done the canned spinach thing, run over and slammed his fist into the bus, injuring every passenger on it and wrecking the vehiclel, but saving Olive Oyl, nevertheless. Now, he had to rush to the men’s room

“Pope! Popeeye! Save me!”

“I got the shits again!” He called weakly from the toilet.

“Popeye, I don’t understand why you get the shits everytime I’m in danger!” She screamed.

“We don’t either!” The people on the bus yelled.

“”I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” He could barely get the words out because all that he was was draining fast. He’d never had shits like this.

“Popeye, you save me or –” Her high whiney voice was cut off when the bus ran over her. In cartoon land nobody dies. Olive Oyl stood up with a pretty deep bus tire tread mark across her chest and one leg was now longer than the other. Olive Oyl was not much of a catch before the accident. Now her once flat chest was an indented chest with tire marks. Her bra size had instantly changed from 28 A to 16 three-ply.
She stood at an angle from a crushed spine and with the longer leg walked like she was on a pogo stick.

She limped over the the men’s room. “Popeye, you and I are finished!”

Popeye sighed in relief. She’d been getting on his nerves and right now he had to concentrate on his dehydrating body.  “Later sweetie.  Right now I got a bad poop deck.”
It was all down hill from there. Popeye’s reputation was ruined. He had acquired the nickname of “Poopeye.”  He changed his diet to asparagus canned in Argentina and began putting dope in his corn cob.

He was finished.

He never made the connection. He never understood that bagged spinach ruined him.

Olive Oyl checked into a nursing home for deformed cartoon characters.  She would never scream again.

The only character to come through unscathed was the oversized, bearded carnivore, Bluto, who to this day can be heard singing:

“He’s Poopeye the Sailor man, Poopeye the sailor man,

He’s really finished cause he ate his spinach.

He’s Poopeye the sailor man.”

And his rich, evil laugh echoes down the crime-ridden streets of the city, as Popeye lies in an alley, accepting the fate that was Doled out to him.

September 11, 2006

Did the usual run yesterday. Gathered up all the trash and recyclible things, loaded them into the Explorer. The dogs leaped in as soon as I opened the back door. One of the highlights of their week is riding around the area. If no one is at the transfer station I let them out. A dump is olfactory heaven for a dog. Their noses are never more than two inches of the ground as they trot around the station area basking in a million rotten smells — old cat food, rotting tomatoes, mildewed paper, rancid fruit –stuff all in the process of breaking down, making their slow transformation into cells again.

I talk to the old guy in the trailer who takes three dollars and hands me an official Chemung County garbage bag. He has a long face, like a pleasant looking horse and chews gum with an energy that tells me he’s an ex-smoker. He’s always wearing a baseball cap and smiling.

We talk about our gardens.

“I plant some beans and tomatas, you know, and maybe a squash. Not much. My wife, she used to can the tomatas for winter, you know. But she died three years ago and, you know, hell, I don’t can.” I nod. Most men don’t can. It’s a lot of work.

He adjusts his glasses and seems to be at peace with himself, though it’s pretty clear he and his wife were very close. “Naw, I just pick the beans, cook a few for myself, ‘n give the rest to the neighbors.” He smiles and shakes his head once. “You know with tomatas, I just like to go out to the garden with a shaker of salt, pick a tomata, and rub it off.” He makes a rubbing motion with both hands as if he’s wiping any dirt off. “Then I put a little salt on it and pop it in my mouth.” He shakes his head in a very satisfied way. “That’s the way I like my tomatas–right there in the garden!”

I agree there’s nothing better. “Well, you have a good weekend,” he says, and he means it. It’s refreshing to have someone wish you a nice weekend in a sincere way. It comes from being old and losing someone close. You know the next moment is not guaranteed. And you know you don’t have to wish anyone well.

The dogs are waiting in the Explorer. I go to Blockbuster and pick up the next Deadwood disc. Swing around by the mall and drop my shoes off to have new heels put on them. I’ve been dealing with the same guy for more than 20 years. “When do you want them?”

“As soon as possible.”

“An hour?”

“Perfect.”

We go home. I take the dogs to the creek where Zeus loves to have us throw stones that he can chase through the creek, romping with such energy that he turns the water brown and the splashing water cover him.

To see a ton of photos and other writings, see my Perfect Song website. Click here.

Poul wanders across the country in a desperate search for Mendel. He grows gradually weaker. He slowly loses touch with one reality as he moves quietly into another. A group of campers find him as he finds Mendel.

Some readers feel it’s a down ending. Others are mildly shocked. Everyone seems to agree that The Perfect Song ends the only way it can.

If The Perfect Song moved you, helped you, changed you or just entertained you, please send a contribution to The Perfect Song Scholarship, Mansfield University Foundation, Alumni House, Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA 16933. It’s tax deductible.

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Size: 21.2
Length: 26:24