The Perfect Song Blog

I had to go grocery shopping Saturday  because we scheduled Christmas shopping for Sunday, two events that have all the potential of purgatory.

In Sam’s Club I needed bird seed.  I roamed the aisles, remembering only when it was a special display in the middle of the outdoor section.  I finally broke down and asked an associate.  She thought a minute.  “It’s in the dog food aisle.”

Dog food. The bird seed’s with dog food.  I wanted to say, “Okay, I need new skivvies.  I suppose they’re in hardware?”  But I didn’t, figuring she’d scan my body and banish me to the software section.

Found the bird seed, pretty much buried between mountains of dog and cat food.

Over to Tops. I found what I needed without much incident except for the food sticker shock of $140 for a few bags of food.  Outside, an old man threw slices of bread to the seagulls who swooped and fluttered and fought for each slice, totally ungrateful to their benefactor.  I’ve seen him before and need to get some pictures.

It could make some neat shots:  A dumpy but caring little guy and a white cloud of birds snatching supplies offered for a limited time only.

Over to Dollar General, which takes me through the empty parking lot of a deserted WalMart.  The traffic on Rt. 64 which has grown from a pot-holed two-lane over the years to a  five lane, is packed with traffic which inches forward at the mechanical whim of the traffic lights.

Someone runs a stop sign.  Another is pulled over by the Sheriff.  Drivers honk angrily if someone doesn’t start up fast enough.  Why is it that the season of peace and love brings out all the angry, impatient people?

I leave dollar bills at every Salvation Army post even though I hate the idea of people standing around ringing a bell at  store entrances and exits, dinging up your guilt whether you fight it or not.  Today I had to take our plastic bags into the Tops recycling center.

The Salval point was an entire outpost with what appeared to be a large family supporting each other and making the silly small talk that groups of people do when they’re doing something new and having more fun than the situation calls for.  They mixed “excuse me’s” with “Merry Christmas” as they parted to let me through.

Coming back out I made my way through them to push a buck into the pot and they all yelled “Merry Christmas,” a phrase which has become a seasonal replacement for “Have A Nice Day.”

Back home a friend posted on his Facebook that as he paid  for some gift items at a box store, the cashier got her belly button ring caught in the cash register.

Where, I asked him, was his cell phone?  That could have been a picture worth a thousand hits.

Sunday Branden hauled out his box of graphic novels and proceeded to give me a quick overview and rating of each one or each series.  He brought in a second box that I didn’t even know about, reviewed and rated those.  I stood there divided: his reviews were so enticing I wanted to read all of them while the other part of me realized I’ll never live long enough to read all of them.

He had brought back CDs that he had borrowed and I told him to go up to my library and find more.  He came back a half hour later with a box full.  “I’m borrowing all your Emmylou Harris CDs if that’s okay.”  Mildly stunned, I said sure. He had about three dozen others.

“Man, you have a lot of Cds, like thousands!”  I nodded.  “You have enough to like apply for a grant for a project!”

He left around noon.  I moved into action, feeling like a student who’s put off his homework until the last day.  I repotted plants, mowed the lawn, weed whacked, cleaned out the kennel and scattered fresh straw.  I ran over to ProMart and bought siding for the shed.

Leigh and I both made supper.  Cleaned up, played with the dogs and began reading one of the graphic novels, The Preacher, and Monday Morning Mentor, an assignment for work.

So I accomplished about half of what I wanted.  It was an ambitious list so I’m fairly happy.  The one thing I didn’t mention in previous posts that I found myself, slowing down, sometimes just watching the clouds or appreciating the beauty of our wooded property with the flower and vegetable gardens, and sometimes just feeling the natural, quiet buzz of a slower pace, outside.

I took my brother Terry’s advice and had a couple night caps and sat on the deck feeling the peaceful power of the night, trying, as Blake advised, to “hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”

It was good.

Finally, a weekend in which nothing expensive broke, the weather was good and life for the most part made sense.

Up at 9:30 (how did I sleep so long again?  Ah, we watched The Express until after midnight.  I loved the biopic about Ernie Davis and the brief appearance of the actor portraying Al Mallette, a colleague of mine at the Star Gazette in the 1960s who discovered Davis).

Coffee.  A Pipe.  Play with the dogs on a brisk but beautiful Sunday morning.  Breakfast, then over to Sam’s Club.  I bought six ink cartridges for Leigh’s printers, toilet paper, paper towels, two cans of Folgers, a 40-pound bag Purina dog food, and two frying chickens.

My knees felt wobbly when the register rang up $277!

What the hell are we coming to here, folks?  My cart was not quite full–eight items!– nearly 300 bucks!

Came home, made a couple concrete plaques for Leigh’s garden areas, checked my garden, my spot of peace, serenity and ongoing battles with weeds and mint.

Spent the afternoon sealing the deck while listening to various podcasts on my iPod.  Put the chicken on the spit and fired up the grill, took my shirt off and basked in the sun while sealing a hundred deck spindles.

We’re slaves to our deck, lawn, gardens, patios and house, but then, we created them.  We have a responsibility to maintain them and keep them healthy.

I hope God feels the same way about us. I’m pretty sure he does.  I hope he has a chance to relax and enjoy the beautiful days, too.

*  *  *

Over the past few months a lot of folks from Russia have subscribed to my blog.  So I send a big hello to all of you.  Thanks for your interest!

After the rush of Friday, Leigh and I planned a quiet day of getting a lot of things around the house.  Up at 9 a.m., have a coffee and pipe out on the deck.  It’s chilly, not hot like July 4 should be.

Play with the three dogs who live to chase balls as I throw them through the yard and up the driveway.

Come in, fix breakfast of bacon, eggs and juice.  I ate my eggs scrambled with hot sauce for years.  Now, I don’t know why, I fix them sunny side up lightly so the white is firm and the yolk is creamy.

Off to Lowe’s to pick up a special-order door for the storage shed, along with deck sealer and a garden hose to use as an extension to water all the perennials we planted yesterday.

I take the cover off the garden tractor to mow the lawn.  The battery’s dead.  I have a spare and put that in.  It’s also dead.

Back over to Lowe’s to buy a battery and hinges and knob for the new door.  Two trips totaling nearly $200.

On the way back home on County Rt. 64 I see a llama taking a dump.  This is not something you normally see in upper New York State.  The timing has to be just right.

Leigh is working in the garden so I work on the shed door to see what all I’ll need to do to make it fit.  I measure and drill holes and screw the hinges in the door, then begin the laborious process of putting it into the doorway and shoving it around to see what kind of shims it will need.

I take a break, put the battery in the tractor and fire it up.  I make three passes around the lawn when I hear a metallic snap and the tractor stops moving forward.  The clutch is broken.  I’m dead in my tracks.  I have no other mower so I hang up that project.

I pull out my battery powered circular saw to work on the door again.  The saw is dead.  I plug in the charger.  It, too, is dead.

I’m beginning to feel jinxed.

Independence Day is crumbling to a dependence on tools that are breaking all around me.

I’m beginning to have a new respect for founding father Ben Franklin.  If something didn’t work for him, he modified it.  If he needed something that didn’t exist, he invented it.

And when tyranny didn’t work, he and his buddies wrote a document to create democracy.

Armed with the wider perspective,  I had a drink and went to bed.

Standing in line at Tops, the tabloid headline blared:  “Bigfoot Diet, Loses 150 Pounds.”

I weigh 149 pounds. Losing that much would shrink me to a cell, but I was interested.  If Bigfoot can do it, why can’t the rest of America, 66% of whom are overweight?  Bigfoot should be an inspiration to us all.

Through the miracles of technology, I tracked down Bigfoot’s cell phone and lined up an interview.

“So Bigfoot — can I call you BF?”

“Sure.  People have called me worse.”

“What’s this new diet you’re on and, I guess, why?  I mean you’re a pretty free spirit.  People occasionally report a sighting on you, but for the most part, you’re just out there in nature, skulking.”

“Well, Dennis, the world has been closing in.  What with cell phone cameras, video and that infernal Twitter, I just don’t have that much privacy anymore.”

“But the diet, the weight loss.”

BF paused.  “When the world’s eyes are on you, you’ve got to look your best.  I finally gave in and hired a PR firm.  First thing they said was, ‘you got to get rid of the gut.  Being big and hairy is one thing.  Being big and hairy and fat doesn’t is so uncool.’  So I went on a regimen to lose 150 pounds.”

“Going from 800 pounds to 650 is pretty impressive.  The drawings of you look great. You’ve got a barrel chest, huge shoulders and biceps–”

“Thank you.  The drawings are pretty accurate by the way.”

“So are you going to lose the hair, too?”

“No!  The hair is part of my heritage.  Besides, I watched The 40-Year Old Virgin.  Did you see that scene where they put tape on Steve Carrell’s tummy and ripped his hair off?  No way am I going through that.  Besides, I’ve got an image to uphold.  I’ll lose the gut but the hair stays.  Actually I think hair is the next bald, you know?  I’ve been around awhile, and I can tell you, women like hair.  Especially big hairy women.  All this bald shit is for reptiles,”

“If I wore a t-shirt it would say ‘Mammals Love Hair.’”

“Speaking of t-shirts,” I said, “I see you’re wearing a breech cloth to cover your privates.”

There was a pause.  “Yeah.  That was the PR firm again.  Said if I was going to be on the cover of Weekly World News I had to hide Winky.  It’s in the grocery stores, you know, the newspaper, I mean.”

I pressed on.  “But in all the photos and videos caught of you, there are no clothes.”

“Yeah, well, and my back is always to the camera.”  There was a slight silence as he pondered this.  “I think the real thing is male insecurity, you know?  Now that I’m slimmed down to 650 pounds, Winky looks a lot more impressive than he did when he was stunted by my gut.  I’m not into size issues, but, look, I know the more women fantasize, the more men get shaky.  Men are so insecure. . . . . ”

“So what’s your next step now that you’re slim and have gone public?”

“Well,” he said quietly.  “I’d like to go on Dancing with the Stars.  I’ve got a pretty good routine called In Step with Big Foot.“  He chuckled to himself.  “There’s a good double entendre there.  Get it?”

There was another pause as if he were considering how much to divulge. “A couple football teams have approached me but, honestly, I don’t like the sport.  Too violent.  Oh, and my agent is working with Hollywood to develop feature length movie, “Big Steps to Glory.”

“Wow, you’ve really come out,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said enthusiastically.  I really have. . . . And I love public service.  I’m doing some consulting with the Boy Scouts right now, developing a program in outdoor recreation.  And of course there’s the upcoming book The Bigfoot All Natural Diet.  It’s a big change from the painfully shy guy I used to be.”

“That’s great, Big Foot,” I said.  “I’m sure it took a lot of courage to do the diet, put on some clothes and move out into society the way you have.”

“Yes,” he said quietly.  “My Mom is pretty proud.”

I think I was working out when I felt the earth move.  Not in the sense that Hemingway meant it.  It was more like a quiet catch of cosmological breath.

Whoosh.  And it was gone.  After my work out I went to the Web to see if I could find out what happened.  I found it immediately.

Michele Obama touched the Queen of England.

Touched her!  Don’t let the off-the-Richter-scale-significance of this pass by you.  The world has revolved for hundreds of years with a royal hands-off policy.  With one slow, gentle sweep of the hand, Michele Obama changed all that.  She put her arm around the queen’s back as if the queen were a person!

Many reporters and commentators asked (and I think sincerely) what the world was coming to.  Here’s Anderson Cooper trying to get at the bottom of all this.

Actually I find a First Lady treating a queen like a person pretty refreshing.

This act has solidified Michele Obama as an international star, an icon, more popular than Madonna.  On the international stage she’s more popular than her husband. Even CNN’s Jack Cafferty asked asked what’s behind her rocket to international stardom.

For a moment it all this helps you forget that people are dying courtesy of genocide, the fact that we’re still in Iraq and the economy’s lower than a snail’s belly in a sand pit.

That’s okay.  God knows we need good news.  I like the image of a  First Lady working the soil to plant a garden in the White House.  I nod at the picture of her ladling out food in a soup kitchen for the homeless.  I stop for a moment to wonder why the guy in line is taking a picture of her with his cell phone.  If he’s homeless how does he have a cell phone and where does his carrier send the monthly bill?

Maybe he “borrowed” it for the occasion.  Hey, how many times is a homeless guy going to get served a meal by the First Lady?

Anyway, Mrs. Obama’s royal touch made her queen for a day.  When the English get their composure back we can move on and wait for the next news making move from the First Lady.

Bottom line is that it’s better for all of us to watch Michele and the queen in a touching moment than watching a president duck flying shoes.

Kids should not be allowed in grocery stores. I have good reasons for saying this.

I’ve taken over the grocery shopping to give Leigh more time with her business. I don’t mind extra duty but I do shop like a male.

I have a list. I want to find an item as quickly as possible, cross it off and move on.

I don’t mind other shoppers who pull off to the side of the aisle and park as they study ingredients on a package or compare prices. I don’t mind the elderly who move at a slower pace. I can pass them, just as someday, a new generation will pass me.

What I absolutely can’t stand are shopping carts that have little kids attached to them – to the front, the sides, the back and to mom’s pants. One, two, sometimes three hyperactive, nose-picking rug rats all vying for attention while Mom is trying to find the best prices and make sure she remembers her husband’s favorite beer.

I don’t even like the ones who are trying to be good, standing still—in the middle of the aisle. The last thing I as a male am going to do is ask the child to get out of the way and trigger the terrifying ire of a mother whose child is being threatened by a male.

No, I am going to stand there politely, gritting my teeth and trying to maintain an expression of empathetic patience until the mom sees the traffic blockage and says: “Come over here, Megan. Stay out of the way.”

She then gives me a look that says: “Thanks for your patience. And polite as you are, please get lost and don’t interrupt us again.”

Grocery shopping is the one recurring life experience in which a woman has to question the practicality of motherhood. She’s looking for low sodium pickles while trying to watch the whirling, kicking kids and hoping they don’t pick up a jar and drop it. . .or throw it at a sibling.

If they’re not trying to get mom’s attention by asking questions, the kids are doing it by crying or pleading for some sugar-laden treat that’s making them hyper and fat. They’re wild cards, not staying on their side of the lane, darting in and out, bouncing , grabbing stuff off shelves, begging mom to buy something or (I’ve seen it), sneaking it into the cart.

Kids are shifty little buggers and we don’t give them enough credit.

They also do not belong here. Grocery stores should be for adults only.

Really.

And those damnable “grocery cars” are the worst thing to ever occupy into a grocery store. In the next post I’ll tell you why.

It’s a story you won’t believe, but it is, I swear, true.

My quest:  to make great barbecued spare ribs.

Not just great, but outstanding. Fall-off-the-bone. Melt-in-your-mouth.

The first couple tries were failures with dry, tough meat that left jaws aching from all the chewing. But last Sunday, I knew I had it down. I put the baby-back rack in the oven at 300 degrees. I would do them for six hours, checking every two hours to make sure there was water on them to keep them moist and tender.

At 5:30 I asked Leigh if she’d made the barbecue sauce. She hadn’t. I said I would. I knew where the recipe was. I was in a rush because all the side dishes were done. I tossed in a quarter cup of ketchup, measured out the mustard, crushed the garlic clove and added a dash of worchestershire sauce.

The last ingredient was ¼ cup of strong coffee. I measured it out and poured it in. I brought it to a slow, simmering boil.

Leigh came out to the kitchen. “What’s wrong with that sauce?”

I shrugged. “Nothing that I know of. I followed the recipe.”

“It looks dark.”

“I followed the recipe.”

It was a beautiful day so we ate on the deck. I brought out the ribs and as I dished them out I was quietly ecstatic that they did, indeed, fall off the bone. I picked off a test piece. Ahh, melt-in-the-mouth it did.

“I don’t understand why the barbecue sauce looks so dark,” Leigh said again.

We spooned some out and put it on the done-to-perfection ribs.

“Ooh,” Leigh said quietly. What’s that funny taste?”

I took a bite. Something wasn’t right.

“Why’s it crunchy?” She asked.

As soon as she asked that, I had a suspicion of some wrong doing.

“Are these crunchy things coffee grounds?”

Bingo!

“Mmm, yeah. It said ¼ cup strong coffee.”

“It’s supposed to be coffee! Boiled coffee. Not coffee grounds.

I had to admit that her observation made perfect sense. I tried another bite. The most tender baby back ribs in the world still tasted wretched in a sauce made of coffee grounds.

She ran into the kitchen and in five minutes made a barbecue sauce that did justice to the ribs.

Okay. I got the ribs down.

Now I work on the sauce.

Life can be complicated sometimes.

So in the last post I was in Wal-Mart trying to buy my seed starter kids, seeds, storage crates and T-Gel shampoo. I was after the crates when this huge couple appeared in front of me. Aside from crying, spoiled kids with a helpless mother, nothing makes me more uptight than large people who take more than a fair allotment of space in the world.

This couple was composed of a 6-foot, 250-pound human in jeans so tight they had to have been put on by a construction crew.

Her boyfriend was even bigger, lumbering along in a daze that he had been born with.

I was directly behind them so I can tell you with authority that side-by-side they were wide enough for a truck license.

They held hands, meaty hands. While this was nice and loving in a big, meaty innocent way, all they were doing was staying in my way. They were slow. Of course they were slow. Part of me understood that.

When you’re forcing this much mass to move, your velocity never shifts out of first gear. I found an opening by a garden hose display and veered left.

An aisle later, closing in on my T- Gel , I ran into an old, bent lady plodding with a walker.

Don’t get me wrong. I love old, bent ladies with walkers. They are the white-haired salt-of-the-earth, still determined to be a part of society, which is to say, they’re damn well going to shop at Wal-Mart. The one downside of old ladies with walkers is they’re scary. I have this neurotic feeling that at any given moment their determination can turn into rage and the walker will become a weapon of destruction.

I can just see this lady – repressed and misunderstood all her life, finally rising in a burst of animal strength nurtured by decades of seething, silent anger, bringing the aluminum walker crashing down on my unsuspecting male head and smiling with a wild triumphant look in her pale eyes: “I’ve always wanted to do that. You didn’t think I had it in me, did you? You male chauvinist T-gel using pig. Pick up your seeds and get out of my way!”

I cautiously avoided the little old lady, grabbed my shampoo and rushed to the check-out where a cashier associate punched the numbers with skill created by practice, swung my bag around on the turnstile and said “Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.

“Have a nice day.”

I have mentioned in several posts that I hate “Have a nice day.” The vast majority of “nice day” users don’t mean it and if they thought about it at all would probably realize they want their day to be as rotten as theirs.

I took my bag and headed out as the wizened 75-year-old dude in his baggy blue vest at the exit door looked at my receipt , nodded and said, “Have a Good Day” in a way that said “My legs are killing me.”

I stepped out in the parking lot. Mission accomplished.

It’s a really big parking lot .

I know my car’s out there somewhere. . . .

My name is Dennis Miller and I’m an ebayholic.

Yes, I’m addicted. I thought I could just visit the site, have a quick peek and walk away, a social eBayer as it were. But no, I found myself gradually going back more and more until it became once a day, then twice. My God, sometimes I even signed on in the morning. I don’t know how this happened.

I’m not proud of it.

Let me give you some background. Let me talk about it. I need to talk about it, to share my story.

I first logged onto eBay in the 1990s, — wait! – let me leave for a moment and check. . . . Yes, I joined November 27, 1999, as the door closed quickly on the 20^th century. At that time I was interested in . . .oh, God, I don’t even know what I was interested in. But I bid on some things and won and played around with it for maybe a couple years. It was cheap high, but nothing serious.

Then I walked away from it. Cold turkey! I didn’t look back. I had neither need nor desire.

Nearly 10 years went by. Any of you my age knows how fast 10 years goes by. A blink. A wink. A heartbeat and –whoosh—a decade is behind you.

Then, in 2007 I started a website on a forgotten hard-boiled detective writer named William Ard. I had written an article about him for a magazine in 1992. I suddenly had the urge –no, a craving!—to start a web site and write about him, include photos of the numerous paperback book covers. I wanted to share him with the world and there is no better place than a web site.

I needed (and I say this in a hushed voice, looking to my right and left; God knows who is listening to all this) books. I needed books to photograph and upload onto the site.

My shoulders sag and I stare vacantly at my shoes as I admit this. I returned to eBay. . . . Yes! Nearly ten years clean and I returned to eBay. This time it wasn’t gradual. I strode through the cyber bat-winged doors, flinging them back and ordering auctions straight up!

I wanted Ard books! I sought them out with the full knowledge that I would pay any price for a first edition vintage paper back in very good condition or better. No one, please understand, no one would outbid me. I had the means and the will.

Needless to say, I found titles and I bid. And I won. With each title or lot I placed an initial bid with a maximum bid. As other bidders weighed in, I watched them carefully. I hit on their links to see who they were, if they were a casual collector or a seller. I was unmerciful in my quest to gather Ard titles. No one would get in my way.

As the bidding of each auction neared its end, I stayed on the site and hit the refresh button every 30 seconds, thwarting anyone who tried to come in at the last minute. Swoop in and throw another 10% on? Forget it, competitor! I toss in 20%!

In the first few weeks, I won every bid. Yes, it felt good. And no, I felt no remorse. I had a William Ard Website and I was determined to become the world’s leading expert in the works and life of this author. It’s a narrow, specialized field, but please try to understand the need, the attraction, the addiction of being the world’s best something or other.

Little did I know it would lead to bigger, stronger addictions that I’m in the middle of. Yes, even as you read this I’m struggling with a force more powerful than anything I ever imagined.

It’s pulling me into it’s black hole even as I write. I never thought it would go as far as it did. I thought I was in control.

Hard as it is, I’ll complete my confession in Part 2.

If you’d like to comment, please do. I could use the support.