Monday, August 28, 2006

It Must Be Really Good


So a buddy and I were in line down at the Soup Plantation -- pretty far into the experience -- past the garbanzo beans and the dressings and checkout where we flashed our expired AAA cards so we could save .42 cents on our salad, but not quite yet sitting down to enjoy (I use the term quite loosely here) a salad and some, what seemed to be Clam Chowder but was actually Yankee Clipper Clam Chowder with Bacon -- all of this in the hope that we will make it to the soft-serve dessert with those little baby cones; but at that moment, actually in the soup line, (which, inexplicably, comes after the cash register, for some strange reason) where we both watch as an elderly woman with some bifocals who looks like she came out of the library across the street dips into the "Big Chunk Chicken Noodle Soup," and proceeds to pile mounds and mounds of noodles and poultry chunks into her tiny ladle-handled bowl as the sneeze guard fogs up from her elevated breathing, like a bear near an Alaskan stream munching on some fresh-caught salmon just before the hibernation of winter; and I turn to my friend and I tell him my new term for these voracious John D. Rockefeller wanna-be's of Brentwood; and I tell it to you now so you can register it, start a website and spread it across the far wires of the Internet -- Hogalots -- yes, that pretty much describes them, always hungry, firm believers in the American Dream(s) and all of the plenty that comes with it, including an unlimited supply of overcooked grains and cut-up, canned poultry products -- far more than a normal person (or even themselves) could ever eat...but that's not really the point, is it?

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Late Corn

I've neglected to say that the family and I have moved into our house. It's beyond what we imagined it to be and we're spending time trying to get everything together and working. I suppose the fact that we've not ordered in food for the past 3 weeks is a testament to how sweet this home is. In the rental, every other day was a regular order from the fantastic Thai Bamboo resturant in West L.A (that's 90049) -- best Thai wonton soup and BBQ sesame beef I have ever tasted. Made the loud nights in the cramped apartment roll by like Bangkok afternoons in the sun with a couple of petite women who didn't understand a lick of English working the kinks out of back (don't get any ideas).

Anyway, the real reason for this post stems from the afternoon in the yard, which I must say is looking very magazine worthy. I setup the workbench and used the leftover siding from the house to construct what will become the third iteration of "My Wife's Cathouse," not in the Vegas way, but in a feline way.

When I first met my wife, she, unfortunately, came with cats. I'm a dog person -- through and through, and besides the fact that I'm allergic to cats, she had two rescue cats who had "adjustment issues" and enjoyed the company of none, especially me -- the sneezing, wheezing lumbering dude who was shacking up with the chick who fed them.

Anyway, in my courting phase, beset with guilt, I built my then girlfriend an 8' x 6' house, complete with shingles, 2 floors and a "kitty cam" (don't go there)( so she could watch them hiss at each other from the comfort of her (our) bedroom) or sit comfortably inside while the 1 friendly cat drooled on her arm.

When we got married and moved to our 2nd house, Brady and I demolished the ski chalet and a made a 4'x2' mini-house between the ficus trees -- no camera, no door, no seat.

The birth of my son sent the kittys into a position similar to divorced step-children, and their third house consisted of a 2' x 3' particle board box on the porch of the Thai delivery apartment, where they were tormented by my son with his crayons and a rather large, Santa Monica-based racoon.

So today I built them a nice house where they can spend the rest of their .75 remaining lives in splendid repose amidst the grass and bark.

But the real reason I'm writing today has to do with the back of my yard, where we had originally transplanted some succulent from a dude in Brentwood who was replacing his yard with a 1/2 basketball court (kudos to Alex for the free plants and fence). I moved the succulent and after trenching the clay-heavy soil, dropped a few seeds of sweet corn in the groove, knowing full well that it's way too late for planting corn, but feeling a tinge of hope that maybe it would take -- and the cats might trade-up to a 3/2 condo off Sunset.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Stunt Cowboy

So last night, my son was getting ready for bed and he asked me what a cowboy says. "Well, a cowboy says 'Yippee Kay Yea'," I said, leaving out the memorable addition Bruce Willis made in Die Hard. This led to 5 minutes of him trying to repeat the word, and 5 minutes more of me singing "home on the range" in a weak falsetto at the top of the stairs.

My kid was intrigued, so I thought I would show him a little more of what cowboy life was like through the magic of television. Now, I'm not a big TV watcher, but when I do watch, I usually spin around to PBS or FoodTV or G4 or BBC America. So searching for some cowboys on the 600 or so channels was a bit of a challenge and kinda fun.

Unfortunately, it turns out that it's hard to find cowboys on TV, and the closest I could find without keeping the kid up WAY past his bedtime was "The Dukes of Hazzard" on CMT. "Son, these are rednecks," I said. "Oh," was the response. And we sat there for 20 minutes or so watching something that touched way back into the files of my mind to a childhood filled with Atari, wacky packs and banana seats on bicycles -- all good things -- but something that "The Dukes of Hazzard" was not.

Still, despite the pants that showed me a bit more of then, mutton-chop heart-throb John Schneider, the thing that most impressed me about the show were the stunts. This particular episode, aptly titled "Carnival of Thrills" (Episodes 1-2 of Year 3) focused on Bo Duke falling for a girl and trying to jump his car over a bunch of other beaters from the last 70s. (In fact, I think that's what every episode centered around -- I can see the show's producers sitting around and saying to the writers "Come on, you hacks, we need to find something fresh. People don't want to see us jump over the same river every week. Think bigger! Like "The White House."

Today in movies and TV, special effects has reigned in the role of the stuntman in the same way cities and cars have crippled the role of cowboys and morphed them into massive arena monkeys, where they watch glittering singers -- or even worse --actors at dude ranches, where they live a lie based on nostalgic reflection for tourists who pay top dollar to live the same lie for a little while.

In the 70's and 80's, there were companies in Hollywood, like Stunts Unlimited, that modeled themselves after Evil Knievel and basically risked their lives to do stupid stuff -- not so much for the money, but for the sheer lunacy of what producers wanted them to do. They were rock stars, the top of the heap, crazy moffos with a taste for adventure -- so much so that when an actor today says that they do their own stunts, I think "Right. They hang on a wire in front of a green screen so a kid in front of a computer can composite in some explosions and gunfire." No, my friends, these guys were the real deal.



So when I sing "Home on the Range" to my kid from now on, I won't think of Robert Duvall or Kevin Costner sitting around a firepit talking about the coming storm; instead, I'll remember Bo Duke's stunt double jumping the General Lee over 32 cars.

(Epilogue: After "The Dukes," we stayed on CMT for a while and watched "Hee Haw." Besides Buck Owens' great singing, God that was an awful show.)