CHIPOTLE

(** if you have found this post because you are having chipotle diarrhea, please go here)

I went to Chipotle for dinner tonight. If you are not familiar with it, it is a now-corporate-owned chain of basic Mexican food, mainly famous for its burritos, which are the size of a Chihuahua. A silver-paper-wrapped, cylindrical Chihuahua. It is not as gringo as Taco Bell, but is still derided by Mexisnobs as inauthentic. Should I care about this? I could go into the local hot dog joint and complain that their brats are weak and boiled and served without proper sauerkraut (always with caraway seeds, thanks) and brown mustard, but I don’t. WTF is “authentic food?” I don’t care who makes it or how, as long as I LIKE IT. I like those burritos. They are cheap and yummy and filling and taste fresh.

I also have a sentimental fondness for Chipotle. The first one was located in Denver on Evans Avenue by the University of Denver, down the block from my house, and across the street from my children’s schools on the campus. It is tiny with just a few seats, and you would often see people, mainly students, lined up far out the door to get their Chihuaburritos. It reminds me of a time and a place that was good. They also support sustainable agriculture, so nyah nyah, snobs.

I can’t even finish half of one of those burritos, but that’s OK. A half a burrito, a Corona Light, and some nice old feelings make for a good meal.

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LAKE

I am a fan of lakes. Proper lakes, of course. Let me be clear: reservoirs are NOT LAKES. They are man-made dirt holes filled with filthy stagnant water that are closed most of the summer from fecal contamination. They might be slightly more interesting to look at than the dirt hole with no water in it, but not by much. Reservoirs are a depressing water experience. No shade, no beach, just a nasty boring toilet bowl with Joe Jet Ski getting a mouthful of e.coli every time he wipes out on his buzz bomb.

Proper lakes are also not ponds. Ponds are usually green, small, weedy, and may or may not contain leeches or alligators or crappies. Ponds are often known as “the ol’ swimmin’ hole,” if you are a toothless hillbilly, or to be PC, a “dentally-challenged societally-oppressed rural dweller.” You have to be a little more brave to venture into a pond, like totally willing to emerge covered in algae and snapping turtles.

Rivers and streams are not lakes; they are smaller, generally, and go in a line. I also really like rivers and streams, but primarily just to float paper-and-twig boats down them. I like really really really tiny streams that I can dam up with rocks and cause a miniature ecological disaster. With rivers and streams, you must beware rocks and currents. The worst would be if you were pulled away by a current, then got smashed on some rocks. Actually, even worse than that would be if you discovered you were actually immersed in a sewer runoff.

Oceans, gulfs, and seas are also good. They have better beaches, and shells, make better noise, and have fun waves. However, they annoy the eyes with salt, are far too deep, and contain animals that might sting or consume you. I like the vastness of these bodies of water; they are calming to look at, or awesome in that old-style awesome way like WOW, but in the end they are not as friendly as lakes. They also can do the hurricane/tsunami thing, which is downright testy of them.

Fuck swamps.

Lakes, good, decent, reasonable lakes, should be of a large size, but never so big that you cannot get into shore quickly when a thunderstorm comes up. They should have an irregular rounded shape, and may be connected to the aforementioned rivers or streams. They should contain fish and plants, but not too many weeds. If you step on the lake bottom, you should not go up to your hips in silt. They should have lots and lots of big trees around them. The water should be clear and a bit chilly. A good lake has at least a couple of good swimming beaches, and a really good lake should have an island in the middle of it with no one living on it. Lakes should smell fresh and watery and not too too much like dead frogs. Everyone on the lake should follow Lake Etiquette: don’t bother the fishermen, don’t run over the swimmers with your motorized lake vehicle, try not to pee in the lake near other swimmers, never throw garbage in the lake, don’t vomit 50 Miller Lites into the lake, and do not ram your boat into your neighbor’s pier while shouting “OOOOPS! SORRY MAN!”

Now you know.

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DOCTOR

So I called to make my annual checkup appointment with my doctor, a pretty, sensible, and reasonably compassionate young woman from Chicago. The appointment slurdge on the other end of the phone informed me that she had no openings until October. ORLY? IS THAT SO? October. So I said well, NO. Slurdge tapped around on her computer and replied that I could see one of the physician assistants if I wanted to get in earlier. I was so very wanting to get my mams smashed before October, so I said fine, OK, whatever, yas yas. Doesn’t matter. Poke, prod, prod, poke, lift, smash, weigh, urgh. October? Come on now. Work more hours or take fewer patients, sweets.

I thought about being a doctor. I think I would’ve been a good doctor in many ways, and a terrible one in others. I like biology, I have a good memory, am interested in medicine, and affable, conscientious, and compassionate. However, I hate the crap – literal and figural -- that comes out of people and would flinch badly to hear their disgusting complaints. You really don’t want to be confessing some awful malady to your doctor and have him or her wince and say, “Oh, shit, that is vile, I gotta go! Good luck! EWWW!” I would’ve been too blunt with some people (“You are out of breath not because of the humidity, you are out of breath because you smoke and are 295 pounds! FACE IT!”). Or more likely, I would be reasoned and moderate to all in my practice, then would go home and smash plates for several hours. I would work tirelessly to solve everyone’s problems, and stay up all night every night looking for the answer if I could not. I would become Zombie Doctor, living on coffee and medical journals. When you are expected to be God, you have to put in a good effort.

What happens to those in the medical profession, I gather, is to compartmentalize. Physician, heal thyself! Oh, sure. I know a few. They all have some little, or big, spring loose. Smoke. Overweight. Obsessive. Unfeeling. Drunk. Workaholic. It’s too much. Everyone expects too much. Even to be able to get into the office before October. Bah. Obviously, you can’t fix everyone or everything, and of course then everyone dies at some point, which is like the Big Doctor Fail. People dying on you is not so good, Especially if they DIE RIGHT ON YOU, and you have to move them. So you have to build up walls, boundaries, tell yourself you did the best you could. There is a loss in that, a piece of your humanity gone to keep you from going crazy. In the end, that was the biggest problem for me. I wasn’t willing to cut off feeling for function.

I am sure whatever physician assistant I see will be just fine. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Say ahhhh.

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NEIGHBORS 2

Sir. I know you are retired and all, and enjoy keeping up your property, and like keeping busy and such, but you really really really really really really really do not need to use your leaf blower every single day at 8AM. There aren't that many leaves that need blowing in the entire State of Washington. Please go back to watching the Today Show and complaining about how Matt Lauer is a tool of the pussy Democrats. Inside your house. Thank you.

PS. Your flowers are lovely, but bring bees into my mailbox. Why do you hate me so? Thank you.

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RADIO

~KHJ Los Angeles!~ Portions of the day's programming are reproduced by means of electrical transcriptions or tape recordings.
You can hear the music on the AM radio
The VCR and the DVD
There wasn't none of that crap back in 1970
We didn't know about a World Wide Web
It was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid
Wanna get down in a cool way
Picture yourself on a beautiful day
Big bell bottoms and groovy long hair
Just walkin' in style with a portable CD player
No, you would listen to the music on the AM radio
Yeah, you could hear the music on a AM radio

Art Alexakis of Everclear pretty much sums it up with “AM Radio.” Another thing that is impossible for me to effectively explain to the youngsters – the HUGE importance of the radio in my life, and for so many others, too. There were fewer links to each other then, fewer ways to hook into the collective. I got my first transistor radio on my 2nd birthday. It was my best thing, a magic little red-and-gold box where I could spin the dial back and forth and the world would come right to me. I figured out where the pop stations were, took my little baby fingers and slowly, carefully, tuned…it…in. WOKY, The Mighty 92! The Beatles owned it all then.

I'd be in bed with the radio on
I would listen to it all night long
Just to hear my favorite song
You'd have to wait but you could hear it on the AM radio
Yeah, you could hear the music on an AM radio

The most exciting time was dusk. Some of the stations would sign off for the day, then the AM signals would go into free-for-all, and depending upon the time of the year and the weather, you would pick up stations from all over the country, which just thrilled me to no end. WLS was the big boy from Chicago, so I always got that in, but at night some of the 50,000 watt powerhouse stations would drift in and out, and who knows what else. I’d hear the famous DJs from New York City, funny call letters from Canada and Mexico, country music from Tennessee or Louisiana, sometimes one of the “K” stations from the Wild West. My mind would float out into the night sky, trying to ride the waves, closing my eyes, feeling the connection between me, the music, the spinning records, the people who sat and played the music, for me.

Things changed back in '75
We were all growing up on the in and the outside
We got in trouble with the police man
We got busted gettin' high in the back of my friend's van
I remember 1977
I started going to concerts and I saw the Led Zeppelin
I got a guitar on Christmas day
I dreamed that Jimmy Page would come from Santa Monica and teach me to play
Teach me to play...

By this time, AM radio was burnt and fried. Nothing can keep that kind of energy going, and as the industry changed, the music changed, Top 40 tightened to Top 20, and pop turned to schmaltz. Again. FM radio, at one time the haven of classical music with serious, droning DJs, switched over to Rock (as opposed to Pop), and the growing, changing audience went there. The serious, droning DJs stayed. Stereos instead of transistor radios, long album cuts instead of singles, laid-back instead of frenetic. I went, too.

Over the years, radio was eaten alive by corporate playlists, the FCC, music industry greed, and listener apathy. Terrestrial radio is now, more or less, a wasteland of dull talk radio, manic Spanish-language stations, bloated and aging NPR programs, computer-generated Oldies, and pop stations that play song after song after song from “artists” groomed to sound exactly like the last one who made a profit for the office dudes.

Well I never pray
But tonight I'm on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now.

--Richard Ashcroft, “Bitter Sweet Symphony”

The revolution, or maybe the revision, is occurring now on satellite radio: XM and Sirius. If you loved radio, go there. Whatever you loved about it lives there, somewhere. For me, it is worth the money to pay the subscription, buy the equipment, to feel like those of us who really cared about the music, cared about sharing it, have a place to be. Connect.

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MEMORIAL

A really nice way for you to honor all the men and women who have died in the service would be to actually vote in the upcoming Presidential election.

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GYM 2

Sunday at the gym on a holiday weekend, you get some strange folks.

• A tiny Chinese grandmother who, like me, alternated fast walking and running. I was worried her little leg bones would snap, but she kicked ass for about 20 minutes.

• A person whose gender I am unsure of. If I had to guess, I would say it was a man who looked like an aging effeminate British rock n roller, with stringy thinning longish hair, stooped and skinny. He walked by me once and I am pretty sure s/he farted. Nasty man/woman.

• A dwarf-like man who did wild scissor kicks on the floor.

• A woman who was so tall and reedy that she reminded me of a giraffe in a green t-shirt.

• A big dude who swung his arms wildly on the treadmill like Pete Townshend, ran really fast for 10 minutes, then pumped his fist in the air and left.

• A pot-bellied bespectacled nerd walking on his treadmill, reading a large technical manual and EATING CHIPS.

• A gangly teenage boy next to Chip Nerd who looked like all his arms and legs were going to fly off at any second, hopefully hitting Chip Nerd in the head and causing him to land flat on his face on the treadmill, then the floor.

• An extremely-thin woman who was going as fast as a person could possibly go on the elliptical, longer than the hour I was on the treadmill. I think she was not a human.

• A woman, who when she finished with the Stairmaster, sprayed antibacterial stuff on each stair and wiped it down.

• An ancient Korean man in a gray suit who sat and read the paper.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I imagine I look just as strange. Today I was all in black: Coolmax shirt and capris, sweatbands, cardio gloves. Anyone could see me there when “Do You Love Me?” by The Contours came on my ipod, fwapping away on the tread, dancing with my head, and pounding on the arms to the beat. What a dork! I can see myself in the mirror there, and I never look as fast or sleek as I imagine I am. I just look like some mom chugging away like The Little Engine That Could. Hardly sleek, more utilitarian.

No one talks. Everyone does their thing.

*additional visual content from cj -- hahaha, thank you!

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TORNADO

FUN FUN FUNNEL CLOUDS! What horrible, fascinating things they are. They have been featured as a life-long recurrent nightmare for me -- always essentially the same vision, a massive looming spinning pitch-black unavoidable terror closing in. I always wake up before the thing hits, but that feeling is still there, of helplessness and hopelessness. THANKS, BRAIN! What an ass the brain is, torturing you with tornadoes in what is supposed to be a nice peaceful rest. Stupid synapses.

Growing up in Wisconsin, I had my share of tornado fun. Wisconsin has some real weather issues. I am not exactly sure why people persist in living there after a few go-rounds of said tornadoes, the cloudy oppressive humidity, and the 1/2 year long blizzard season. Perhaps it is the excellent cheese that compels folks to stay. Mmm. Cheese. Anyway. The Looming Dread of the Tornado was drilled into my kiddie head with the town siren and the BRAP BRAP BRAP! of the tv and radio Emergency Warning System. I would watch the sky for some building fluffy swirling darkness, a rotation. You knew it was really gonna be bad when the sky turned kind of a seafoam green, the air hung sick and stagnant, the birds stopped singing, and time seemed to stop. The tv would run warnings across the bottom of the screen: “MOVE IMMEDIATELY TO SHELTER.”

One night, my mother scooped me up into her arms out of my bed. In my sleepy stupor I remember her saying, “tornado…basement…” She carried me there, where my father had already taken my brother. It was noisy and windy outside, the town siren was blaring, and the basement was even more stark than usual now, cement floor and single bare lightbulb. When I awoke a little more, a horrible panic hit me: “DADDY, WHERE IS SAM?” Sam was our sweet Great Pyrenees, mainly banished to a filthy doghouse in a pen far from the house. My father insisted the dog would be OK, and I started to cry and begged him to go get him and bring him to the basement. I pleaded and pleaded, looked at my mother who could only hold me tighter with her sad face. “I’LL GO! I’LL GO!!!” I cried. I pictured Sam taking off into the sky in his doghouse ala The Wizard of Oz and never seeing him again. I thought how frightened he must be. I hoped he would escape and run over to the farm next door and hide in the barn with the cows and horses. I cried and seethed with helpless anger.

The roar. There it was. The train sound, so loud. The house shook and creaked and I imagined any second the windows would explode, timbers would fly, and we would all be blenderized. Instead, the cellar doors to the outside flew open with a tremendous metal clatter, and down the stairs came a young tree, more leaves and branches and wood pieces. I think we all screamed but I don’t remember. I just recall the shock of seeing a tree in my basement. As I processed that, I realized that the noise and the wind had stopped. After a few minutes my dad got up and made his way through the mess and the ripped-off cellar doors, and said it looked like it had passed through and was done. The siren stopped. As my mother walked us back upstairs, I wondered if the rest of the house was gone. But it was fine, just a few roof tiles knocked off, laying outside scattered on the grass as the sunrise just began to emerge. My father brought Sam, very shaky but OK, into the garage as a silent kindness to me.

I am long-removed from the Land Of Tornadoes. Somebody tell that to my stupid brain.

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PLAY

I spent a very pleasant evening at the theatre this evening. My teenage son’s small school put on a production of the musical “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown,” staged at the local Performance Center. The kids ranged in age from 12 to 16, and were for the most part unflappable, brave, in tune, and quite charming. I smiled at them from my darkened seat. I am just – just – old enough to remember when the play first came out, when “Peanuts” mania was in full force. I think the musical made the cover of Life, and I since I read that religiously I recall seeing the stage photographs and being irritated that they had young adults playing children’s roles, and a person playing Snoopy. “WTF?” I said in my little mind, although the “F”would’ve been replaced by “H” for “heck” or something. I was a very sheltered little girl.

Tonight’s play reminded me of my play days. There weren’t any opportunities to be in plays when I was in early grade school, so I “wrote,” directed, and performed my own. The “wrote” is in quotes because what I did was take “Peanuts” comics from the paper, compile them for a few months, then write them as dialogue in some kind of logical order, and stage them, suited for the front of the 2nd Grade classroom blackboard, at the end of the day on a Friday, if allowed. I seem to remember them as going over well – god knows they were better than the stinking “Life Cycle Of A Monarch Butterfly” filmstrips that passed for entertainment.

A couple of years later I horned my way into proper school productions. I was the narrator in “Oliver!” because I was the best reader in the school – that was the casting qualification. This irked the older kids I think, but tough shit – read a book sometimes, you farm clods. Two years later, I was Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” By then I learned this: if you have a main role in a school play, you can get out of most any other schoolwork by simply saying, “I have to rehearse.” I spent most of 6th grade year “rehearsing,” which really was going into the hallway with Hermia and throwing pencils into the asbestos ceiling tiles and reading teen magazines. It was sweet.

Later on, the school talent shows were the thing, and I would write a sketch, dance in another, do a parody country song in another, and do makeup for my friends backstage. Another reason I have poor math skills – SHOWBIZ. If I was going to “rehearse," you can damn well bet Algebra was the class I was going to cut. Ah, such fun we had.

I stopped all that by 10th grade, stopped participating in anything at school at all. I am not exactly sure why I stopped, watched as my other friends continued on with the plays and shows, cheered them but would no longer go onstage. I wasn’t having fun any more at school, didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to give THE MAN anything. Show over.

I hope all the kids I saw this evening continue on just getting out there. It’s a good thing being part of a group, working together, making something happen. I see them now, the whole laughing, hopping, giddy lot of them, actors, crew, and orchestra, head out across the parking lot for their after-party. A big pickup truck goes by, loaded with Snoopy’s big red doghouse. It was good.

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IDOL

All I have wanted from this season's American Idol is one thing, just one: for David Archuleta to throw up violently onstage. I know he wants to, oh, he's holding back with all his teen might. Look at that poor kid: watery eyes, trembling lips, clammy pale skin, shuffling and bowing in humbled fear. It would be the single greatest moment ever on television, made even more fabulous if his projectile vomit would spew all over Ryan Seacrest, live. Ryan would handle it like the entertainment pro he is, all serious concern for the mortified boy and a quick cut to commercial. Oh, GOD, how I want this to happen! HAHAHAHA!

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80s

These are some of the clothes I can remember wearing in the 80s:

• A Japanese wildly-painted turquoise, white, and orange jacket that turned into a skirt. I think Fee Waybill of the Tubes had one. Maybe his jacket turned into pants. Yes.

• A neon-yellow sleeveless t-shirt with black bats and neon orange paint splatters on it that I wore with black leggings and neon orange gloves. I wore this to a Pee-Wee Herman show and he walked up to me and said, “Not looking for attention, huh?”

• A “Go Greyhound!” bus t-shirt and a red miniskirt. The t-shirt sentiment was deeply sarcastic.

• Z. Cavaricci washed out jeans with HUGE elaborate flaps on the sides that made my waist look teeny, and butt huge. I would wear a red cut-off t-shirt with those. I am sure they looked even more stupid than I now recall.

• A washed-out pink sweatshirt with a black piano keyboard print running down the arms. I think Pat Benatar had one just like it.

• Skintight dark stretch jeans from England, essentially painted-on. Impossible to find in the States. Left nothing to the imagination. I would tuck a t-shirt into them, even.

• A 50s vintage cashmere houndstooth men’s jacket with the sleeves rolled up. This came from Aardvark’s on Melrose. I think it was $32.00. It went with everything and was very soft.

• A long yellow knit skirt that once flew up and over my head completely with a gust of Chicago wind. I was so shocked at the sheer force of this and that the skirt stayed up and up and up and up that I didn’t immediately do something. I did eventually set down my two bags of groceries and pulled the skirt down. A passing young professional man grinned wildly as I blushed red-hot and hoped my underwear was not torn or something.

• A pair of Levi’s that were so old and worn that both the knees and the butt were torn out. I think they were from the early 70s, and had been passed from friend to friend over the years. They died with me. I mourned them.

• A red satin baseball jacket. I like baseball gear. A little too Bee Gees, in retrospect, the jacket. It ripped anyway.

• Purple high Doc Martin boots with yellow laces. Incredibly uncomfortable.

• White leather pants, which made me look like a whale. They were really expensive, and I felt like an idiot after I bought them. Worn once, with a horrid dark pink puffy shirt and a zig-zaggy white leather belt over that and white go-go boots. Oy.

• Black pleated pleather pants, which did not look bad. Dave Davies of the Kinks complimented them, and that made them wear-worthy. They did get hot, though.

• A white puffyshirt, ala Seinfeld. A lot of buttons and seams. Cute, if busy.

• A strange white long skirt, top 15” was white satin, the rest see-through organza. This skirt was reserved for rock shows only. I suspect it was actually a slip.

• Silver leather penny loafers. I wore them until they fell apart. I really like shiny shit.

• A black lace see-though vintage dress, which underneath I wore red underwear. God. Stupid girl. That was an interesting evening out.

• Red flat-heeled go-go boots. Again, worn them until they died.

• A giant poofy fuchsia and black cheetah print winter jacket with black rabbit fur trim. Oddly enough, purchased at a store in Rochester, Minnesota when I was at the Mayo Clinic for a few days and saving my poop samples in a jar in the hotel room, which made the room smell like death and poop. I associated the coat with poop and never wore it much, especially after I figured out the rabbit fur was real.

• A teeny-tiny butter-soft 13” black leather miniskirt, worn low on the hips. This took serious balls to wear, I think I did only once or twice. Once I was told not to wear it to a club, as my date said he did not want to get in a fight over me. That was a nice compliment, or a very slick way of saying it looked awful.

The only things I still have somewhere, I think, are the cashmere men’s jacket and the teeny leather skirt. My teen son would love the jacket, but I am hanging onto it for a bit more. He’d wear it in the rain and rip it playing basketball. The skirt? I think now I couldn’t get it past my butt, and also should not. Do I pass it on to my daughter someday? Hmmmmm.

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OTHER 2

At the Other Good Coffee Place this morning, they are playing very loud techno music. It’s 9AM. This would not be my first choice, especially prior to ingesting coffee. But, whatever. It’s different.

Right now, everyone in here is a woman. Two are in their late 20s, four in their 40s. The light streaming in from the big front window tells the story. Skin never lies. One of the 40-somethings is playing with her Blackberry and tapping her New Balance-clad foot to the techno music. One of the 20-somethings seems deep in thought, hunched over a book using a hot-pink highlighter pen, looking studious and serious with her blond ponytail and crisp plaid shirt. The techno-tap woman could’ve been her 20 years ago, but her own ponytail is now mostly gray. You could see them as a long-lost mother and daughter, sitting 10 feet away from each other, never knowing. I try to create mental drama wherever I go. It keeps me from drifting off.

My attention is diverted by a deliveryman from Food Services of America across the street. He has remarkable hair. On the back of his head he has a grapefruit-sized bald spot, surrounded by a massive poof of wild brown/gray hair. It looks like an overhead shot of Mt. St. Helen’s or something. How cruel fate is, to give him this fluffy thick hair, and take just a circle away. If I were H.R. Poofnspot, I would tattoo “KAPOW!” on the bald spot.

In comes a boy barista to work his shift. He has on a white t-shirt and a cowboy bandanna and looks about 14 with black short hair and a sweet smile. I wonder why he isn’t in school. Another man comes in maybe 30 or so, greek-ish, and sits down with a coffee and yogurt and watches the people walk by. No one seems in any hurry this Monday. The techno beats drives on, but this crowd is more “Moon River.”

As I finish my coffee, the crowd here is thinning out, moving on to whatever in next in their respective days as the clouds break apart and I see the blue sky again. The techno-beat goes on…sunny and share.

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HORSE

Today at the gym, I had a revelation, two actually. The first was that 5PM on a Saturday is a great time to go there because it is dead. The second occurred as I was watching a playback of the Preakness on the big tv as I slogged along on the tread. I thought: I want to be that horse. I want to run, and then from somewhere way deep inside, pull something out and lengthen my stride and pull away from the pack and keep going. The win wouldn't even be in question.It would be mine.

My revelation had nothing to do with running.

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SUN

I’m a fan. I know this is a medically-unpopular thing to admit, liking the sun, but I DO I DO I DO I DO!

It is a stunningly beautiful warm sunny day here, the damp and the rain vanquished for at least today. Never have I been so appreciative of a bright, cloudless blue sky, a light breeze, and the feel of the sun on my skin at 10:30AM – a perfect 75 degrees. There were many of these nice days in the spring, fall, and some of the summer in Colorado. Here, they are relegated to the short summers and an occasional anomaly day like this one. I could sit all day very happy, here at a teak table outside at the Other Other Good Coffee Place, just watching the people and their assorted dogs go by. I don’t need to be anywhere else, doing anything in particular. This is quite, quite good.

A very loud blaring fire truck and an ambulance scream by. No one even turns to look. They are all bewitched by the weather, lazily walking along in shorts and sandals dug out from closets. There is a couple at the table to my right. The guy looks like, really looks like, Brad Pitt about 10 years ago. The similarity is striking, and I bet he gets told that a hundred times a day. He’s quite all perfect – yellow t-shirt and blue and white madras plaid shorts, flip flops, tan, expensive sunglasses, gym body deluxe but not obnoxiously-so, artfully poofed sandy blond hair, a small gold chain, expensive watch. His girlfriend is attractive, but nowhere in his league, not even close. She is very thin, but in kind of a bony bird way, and she looks pinched a bit in the face and more conservative, in sort of bland tennis-looking gear, a white visor on her dishwater blond hair, and white tank top and a black skort. I notice him checking out all the girls – and there are many – walking and lounging around outside the coffee shop. His birdfriend doesn’t seem to catch it. Someone very cynical once noted that men strive to get the most physically-attractive women they can possibly get, while women strive to snare the richest and most stable men possible. Now that is all very sexist and backwards. How much of that is true? I don’t know. I suppose feelings enter in to it all somewhere.

Looking around at all the couples it seems like people generally end up with their approximate match in looks and social status. When there is a striking anomaly, like Anna Nicole Smith and the million-year-old Texas guy, there’s a reason. Otherwise, people gravitate towards who they somehow intuit is in the league, so to speak. It is interesting.

There are psychological tests where you ask people to rate their own attractiveness. I think most people pick around a 7. Everyone likes to think they are above-average. That seems mentally-healthy, if inaccurate on the bell curve.

OK, here’s a very buff young guy walking a teeny little shivering terrier with a jeweled collar. I will bet you a zillion dollars he has some kind of fluffy hot gf and it’s her dog. AHAHAHAHAH! LOOK! I AM RIGHT! Here she comes, in a bright billowing yellow sundress, big gold heels, gold hoop earrings, very pretty. They sit at the table to my left and begin talking about their drinks, while Shakes starts running his leash around their table and panting.

Sundress: Why aren’t you drinking?
Buffboy: I don’t want a hot drink.
S: Well, why didn’t you tell me that!! I’ll go get you another one.
BB: No, Whatever. I won’t have a drink.
S: You should just drink it! God! They sell Mexican Coke here. I could get you that.
BB: What is that?
S: I think it’s like regular Coke, but sweeter?
BB: I don’t want that. Just forget it.
Shakes: YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!
S: Oh, god, can you fix the fucking leash on him?

They sit and pout for awhile while Sundress finishes her drink and Buffboy unwraps Shakes, then they wander off into the perfect day. I give then a year more. Unless Shakes has an untimely demise.

There is laundry to do, oh is there laundry, the house needs vacuuming, the dishes are in the sink, I have 15 years worth of papers to go through, phone calls to return, and 300 emails sitting in my inbox. But all of that will have to wait. It is a beautiful sunny day, there are above-average people walking about, and I am just going to appreciate a bit more.

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DUDE

I know it was hot out today, and it looks like you were coming from the gym, but I gotta tell ya: you looked like a big strutting ass walking slowly through the shopping center and the parking lot with your shirt off.

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