“Holding up my dead dad’s stuff. Living the dream.”
It could be worse.
“Listen, I’m not comparing myself to a Uighur here.”
You’re doing better than the Uighurs.
“And I’m not Meghan McCain.”
In no way, shape, or form. Plus, your father wasn’t a war criminal.
“I thought McCain was a war hero.”
Fucker was on his way to blow up a power plant when he got shot down.
“My dad never blew up anything. Unless fireworks count. Jerry enjoyed a good cherry bomb same as the next guy.”
Trixie, do you think Billie Eilish is an industry plant?
“I don’t know who that is, and I don’t know what that is.”
Cool.
CELL PHONE NOISE
“Is that me?”
Yes. You should take it.
“Hold on.”
…
“Trixie here.”
“What is that, one of those WASP nicknames?”
“Who is this?”
“You know damn well who it is. Many young people today, I’m told, can do an impression of my voice. The timbre, my particular locution, phrases of speech, so forth. Perhaps they do it at parties to, uh, entertain their peers. Nixon has always had an identifiable sound.”
“Uh-huh. I was gonna ask you how you got that number, but then I realized how many other questions I have.”
“Trixie. Trixie. Nonsense. If it weren’t an election year, I’d have your parents arrested. Roughed up, maybe. The liberals frown on those sorts of actions nowadays, but it keeps the world honest. A good beating would do most of the world quite well. Quite well. I learned this playing football. Nixon was not the biggest, not the strongest, but by God I was the toughest.”
“Why are you calling me, Richard Nixon?”
“I was looking for Elvis.”
…
“Presley?”
“That is his last name. Some refer to him as ‘The King.’ Not an official title. He’s of common blood, incredibly common.”
“I don’t know Elvis.”
“Dammit, this is Ziegler’s fault.”
DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
…
“Excuse me. Dickhead?”
Me?
“Yeah. I did not enjoy that and it’s not gonna happen again.”
In my defense, there aren’t four seasons in Florida. There’s six months of “almost too hot.” and six months of “far too fucking hot Jesus Christ my balls are epoxied to my thigh with sweat .” Spring and autumn don’t happen here. Or winter. Florida is just varying degrees of summer.
So what brings about this realization that the civilized world has entered spring?
News reports. Pictures of cherry blossoms. Also, it’s 93 degrees and 50% humidity out there; last week, it was lovely. Something’s changed.
Climate Change?
Did you not hear me when I said “Florida?” Every summer is like this. Remember when all the Avengers were fighting at the airport and Paul Rudd got real big?
Sure.
Like being up his ass. That is what Florida is like from April to October. Hot and so, so, so sticky.
Did you begin this post with a point or is this one of those times you just started typing?
Point.
Yay.
Spring cleaning time, Enthusiasts! I have had–for what seems like weeks now–some tabs open on my desktop that I meant to have something interesting to say about. Failing that, something funny. Failing that, I figured I could half-ass a dialogue or a list or something. (Loyal readers will know that TotD is the reigning champ of half-assing dialogues and lists.)
But, Jesus, I’m beaten. I got nothing. Here we go:
I hate to end this cheery section on a sour note, but I have to upbraid JamBase for burying the lede of this story.
SHAKEY ZIMMERMAN. There’s a name that brings home the bacon and then sexually satisfies the bacon. You lead off the first paragraph with that, JamBase. Maybe that’s your subhead, even: LOCAL MAN HAS AWESOME NAME. I expect more from you, JamBase. Don’t be like Live4LiveMusic.
Rock Scene! was a magazine that came out sporadically in the 70’s; the best I can figure out is that it was New York’s version of Creem. The great Lisa Robinson (whose book There Goes Gravity is one of the better Rock Books ever written) and her husband ran it; he was a producer for Lou Reed and Vladimir Putin’s favorite band, The Flaming Groovies. The covers were colored, and glossy, but the pages instead were newsprint and the pictures–and kids bought these things for the pictures–were black and white. The magazine folded in ’83. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.
Alligators have teeth. Sure, they also have claws, but the claws aren’t the star of the show. Teeth are the headliners. If we were playing a word-association game and I said “alligator,” you would say “teeth.” If you said “claws,” I would be like, “Shit, this motherfucker’s crazy.”
It saddens me to say this, but I now must now take anything the great Jesse Jarnow tells me about reptiles with a grain of salt. 2017 is about losing your innocence.
Stop being weird.
He is deliberately emphasizing the wrong part of an alligator!
I swear you only write so you can come up with sentences no one’s said before.
Oh, anyone can do that. The trick’s making them make sense.
You’re stalling because you don’t want to talk about the commercial real estate guys.
Ugh. The first real estate deal ever made in New York was when the Dutch bought the place from the Manhasset. We are told that the price was $24 worth of beads. What is not mentioned are the broker’s fee and hidden charges that brought the real amount up to 40 bucks. Since then, one of New York’s primary economic drivers has been trading parts of itself to itself. Sometimes other countries will come and buy parts of New York–the Japanese in the 1980’s, the Chinese now–but mostly the city sells itself to itself.
Like any business, there is glamour. You could sell a condo to Doctors Oz or Phil. But most of it the dreariest slog you can imagine: negotiating 30-year leases on office buildings in Long Island City; selling warehouses in Bayhurst. Someone has to do the due diligence on a dental building in Staten Island. Not gonna be me.
And, apparently, some of these guys (they’re all guys) listen to the Dead. One of them listens to the Dead and loves Trump, but I don’t think we can blame all commercial real estate guys for the lunatic beliefs of a fringe few. Still, though: maybe we should stop letting them in the country for a while. Just until we know what’s going on.
And now I am clean, reborn; pure again in the eyes of the Christ.
Is this, Enthusiasts, the Fullest Muppet? Garcia was throughout his life on the precipice of muppet fullness, but is this it? Should we even dare to declaim, knowing as we do that a Black Swan event might be lurking out there, a photo in which Garcia achieved–though briefly–muppetry of 110%?
Always a mystery when you contemplate the Full Muppet.
“While we cannot say with absolute certainty that the subject animal has been taken, we are confident that the evidence gathered shows it is very likely that one of the two females captured close to the attack location was the offending animal,” the report said. – “Alligator Seized Boy…in Disney” Buzzfeed, 8/22/16
“Where am I!? What happened?”
Hey, there. How are you? May I call you Allie?
“Because I’m an alligator?”
Yes.
“That was as hard as you wanted to work on my name? ‘Allie?’ Really?”
Well, what is your name?
“Constance.”
That’s lovely.
“Sure. Where am I?”
Do you see a gorilla?
“Yes.”
Uh-huh. You’re in Famous Dead Animal Heaven, buddy. Getting awfully full up there this year.
“Sure. Okay. Did I miss a trial or something? My cousin and I get murdered and sliced open at the beginning of the investigation. Like: what if we were innocent?”
Reptiles don’t get the presumption of innocence.
…
“You say that so casually, that I have no rights.”
You don’t, and please don’t say Green–
“Green Lives Matter.”
–lives matter. There you go. Listen, the past is done with. You gotta make do. Besides, you ate a kid.
“A what?”
A kid. A human child. Humanity has progressed to the point where we know that killing an animal that hurts or kills a person is totally pointless, but we still do it. It’s a pretty strict rule, actually.
“Manticore.”
The tiger that ate Roy?
“Yeah. They didn’t put him down.”
Manticore’s one of, like, two dozen Siberian tigers on the planet. You’re a gator in Florida. Differing levels of expendability.
“You’re cruel, man.”
You ate a kid!
“A what?”
A kid.
“Do you mean a food? I ate a food.”
What kind of food are you talking about?
“There’s no kinds. Something is a food or a threat or a sex. That’s it.”
Okay, what did the food look like?
“Like it wasn’t paying attention. And delicious.”
Let’s try this: did the food fight back?
“All food fights back! That’s what food does!”
…
You’re being very difficult.
“Gee, I’m sorry. Maybe if you kill me and slice me open a couple more times, I’ll get all friendly-like.”
Wait, I got it: was the food different than you had had before? Was this new food? Did it taste weird or anything?
“Now that you mention it, there was a piquant oakiness to the finish.”
Really?
“You’re a shithead. I barely have taste buds. I saw a food that didn’t see me. I ate the food. That’s what I do, because I am an alligator.”
Were.
“Keep laughing. At least one of us got to leave Florida.”
This picture was taken at a different show than the header photo of these bloggings; he’s playing Alligator instead of that obscure Sunburst model.
And it’s a snappy and snazzy pic, until you realize that fucking Garcia is wearing JEANS WITH HIS NUDIE SUIT. You lazy fuck, Garcia: this is why we can’t have nice things.
Garcia didn’t need explosions or makeup or circus tricks. Just Billy behind him and Phil and Bobby by his side and Alligator in front of him and God in his Heaven.
Later on, he would need a blowjob and a steak sandwich, but who could say he did not earn these things?
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