Got to come clean here…I have an addiction. Oh not anything too naughty; but last year thanks in part to “K” up in Canada I have become addicted to Old Dutch dill pickle-flavored potato chips. These things go so good with a cheeseburger words fail me here; I would rather have these as a burger side any time as opposed to greasy fries. She mails me a few bags from time to time but this is awfully expensive so I have been looking and looking for someone, anyone who sells them here in the US.

We Texans love our snacks. Don’t know about where you live but here the chip aisle at the grocery stores usually spans the length of the store. Of course Lays and Ruffles dominate the snack aisle, but there are a few small shelves of their competitors. Chips are available in BBQ, salt and vinegar, green onion, “Limon” and also cheddar cheese flavors but I cannot find dill pickle flavored to save my life.

Imagine my shock when I look in the vending machine at work and there are Snyder’s kosher dill chips in the rack for 50 cents each. I usually avoid the vending machines at work; I’ve seen people stand there and sneeze all over them but I had to make an exception this week. Inserted a dollar and got two bags; ate one with my sandwich at lunch and decided to go back and get some more. Then I walk back into the lunchroom , look at the machine and find this:

 The bags have tangled up at the end of the coil; the end of the coil is penetrating one bag. The other two are hopelessly bunched up. Tried to pry them loose at first by grasping the machine firmly at the corners and shaking it; no use. Then I slip a tape measure under the door and attempt to poke them loose; this fails miserably too. Son of a bitch!

So near, so close and yet so out of my grasp.

Yeah… life’s fair ….

I have a love/hate relationship with TruTV; I love shows like “Wildest Police Videos” but find dreck like Worlds Biggest Dumbasses or the vacation videos thing with people getting hurt over and over to be the real-life equivalent of IDIOCRACY’s OW MY BALLS (“huh huh…balls…”) but on Wednesday nights Jesse Ventura is now hosting CONSPIRACY THEORY which I recommend whole-heartedly.

So far they have only had two episodes but this weeks episode on 9/11 was most excellent and pulled few punches. Jesse is not afraid to ask the tough questions you will never hear asked on 60 minutes or Dateline, and those shows should be taking notes. Watch this before the copyright police at YouTube pull it…

  It’s that time of year again in Texas. The sun goes AWOL, the sky turns blue-gray and the temperature plummets downward. Winter in Texas is a lot like some incoherent rambling bar-room drunk. Annoying, irritating and spewing a whole lot of bluster but delivering little in terms of snow or ice. Easily survivable yet still just a great big pain in the ass nonetheless.

 Took a vacation day last Wednesday; my machine at work was broken down and we were having to wait for the replacement part to show up. Felt good about my decision when I looked out the door and saw snowing pouring down. It wasn’t actually sticking but it made the cup of coffee I was drinking taste even better.

 Daytime TV however is bad enough to make someone get out of the house and go look for a job. Paid programming, repetitive news and talk shows, sitcoms that no one anywhere ever wanted to watch…do they program these schedules to be this unwatchable on purpose so we will go look for employment? Cleaning the house is no fun and it’s too cold to do any yard work. Pacing around the apartment after a very short while; guzzling coffee by the gallon probably isn’t helping here…okay time to get caught up on reading, watch a movie or something. Realizing that I am probably on the verge of good old winter-time depression; got to act fast.

Just recently bought myself a Zadro Sunlight simulator for my kitchen. It’s a little plastic box about the size of an cell phone with 35 bright blue LED lights. The idea is to have it on for about 30 minutes every morning at about arms length away on the desk and don’t look directly at it or that’s all you’ll see all day.

I’ve had a personal serenity ritual for years of lighting a candle for a few minutes every morning and it is now occurring to me that this was just a variation of what this device does. It puts a little extra light in the room just like a candle although you can’t warm your hands by it.

 Does the Zadro device work? It does seem to help a bit although the second I step out the door into frigid 25-degree temperatures I am reminded real quick it’s winter again. But it does make the room seem a little less dreary for a few minutes each day, so that counts for something I guess.

Also helping me is the arrival of another CARE package from Canada this week. Hey look Tim Horton’s coffee, a TH travel mug and a TH ceramic mug too! More dill pickle potato chips, more of those delicious Canadian candies, a beautiful coffee table book about Canada and a 2010 calendar as well; Christmas has come early at my place this year.

 Christmas will be in our faces soon before any of us are ready; fortunately I have a small family so I have only a limited amount of shopping to do. I would rather take a nap this afternoon instead of shopping although it would make sense. Instead I know I will be out there on Christmas Eve with all the other idiots who put it off until the last second. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off desperately looking for a good idea for gifts. If you stop and think about it long enough isn’t that the true meaning of Christmas? It’s the only one I know….

I’m at my parents house on Thanksgiving and amazed at how so little has changed. When I was a kid I would usually finish eating first and then run back to the den and commandeer the television until the adults wandered back from the dinner table. Then it would be “What’s this shit?” as Dad changed the station from Bugs Bunny back to football. Here I am forty-odd years later doing the same thing; I have finished dinner first and have tip-toed back to the den to see what’s on TV.

As my feet glide across their thick plush carpet, everything I touch gives me a little shock. Used to love this little game when I was a kid but the joke has grown thin since; now I just find it annoying. Touching the door-knob to the bathroom makes me cringe as that microscopic little jolt of electricity zaps my fingers.

 Up front the rest of the family is engaged in routine chit chat; now’s my chance. After scraping off and rinsing my plate I walk down the hall to the den. Wonder what I’m missing on TV? Spot the remote on the table next to Dads big Archie Bunker chair and pick it up. It sparks as I touch it.

 The next thing I know I’m doing full body head-to-toe spins in slow motion backwards in slow motion through outer space. Try to scream but nothing comes out. Can’t control my arms and legs; what the hell? Falling…falling…and then with a thud I fall hard on something. Ow! Open my eyes and notice a pair of black dress shoes next to my head.

 Where am I? Look back over at the shoes; must be Dad. Then I notice the wire next to them; I follow it up; this guy isn’t my father. Takes a few seconds but I recognize the face of Gene Rayburn; he is smiling broadly at me and says: “My wife’s ass is so big you can park a “blank” in it...” and then he points the microphone he is speaking into towards me…

I don’t know how to react to this; I get up and dust myself off and look around. Wherever I am it’s dark and foggy; I’m having trouble making out shapes of anything definitive. Is this some kind of studio?

Gene stands staring at me waiting for an answer. Looking over to my left I can see no audience, only black space; I look over to my right and see some sort of partition. It’s a big wooden box with people sitting in it. I recognize Paul Lynde, Kitty Carlisle and Charles Nelson Reilly.

 “Uh… an SUV?” I answer.

“Wrong!” he replies and a trap door opens under my feet; I begin falling again down a dark shaft and hear him laughing maniacally as I drop.

Once again I land with a thud somewhere else. Oh my aching back….

Looking over once again I notice another pair of well-shined shoes connected to a suit. Look up slowly afraid of what I might see. The opening of “Swan Lake” swells from unseen speakers as I recognize the face of Hans Conreid. “Isn’t that beautiful?” he asks. “Just imagine listening to it in the comfort of your own home!”

I pull myself up and look around; this can’t be happening. Is this some kind of bad dream?

“Where am I?” I ask him but he doesn’t seem to be listening to me; just reading unseen cue cards.

“Order these today on LP or stereo cassettes.” he drones to an unseen camera. Grab him by the collars of his jacket: “Goddammit where the fuck am I? Answer me!” He just smiles at me as another trap door opens beneath my feet. More free-falling and tumbling head-over-heels in mid-air follows.

 Fortunately I land on something soft this time; looking around I see I have landed on one of those big beds from “Love American Style”. That’s better. But the bed is rolling down a busy city street in broad daylight; what the hell?

Looking around I see Mike, Peter, Davy and Mickey of The Monkees dressed in those long Fred Mertz nightgowns at each corner guiding the wheeled bed to some unknown destination. Try to ask them what’s going on but they are looking away from me and ignore my questions. Climb out of the bed and grab Davy by the shoulders since he’s closest to my own height. “What’s going on here? Where are you taking me?”

Davy looks right through me and says nothing just as I feel the ground giving way under my feet…

Another trap door opens and I begin free-falling through black air ; not again! Hope I land on another bed; can’t take too much more of this…this time I hit water and I panic. Never have been much of a swimmer. Splash around uncontrollably; am I a goner this time? Something grabs me by the collar and drops me aboard a boat deck like a fish. Looking up I recognize Lloyd Bridges in full scuba gear.

“Thanks for saving me; now can you tell me what I am doing here?”

He lights a cigarette, takes a long slow drag and gives me a grim sort of look and actually answers me.

“I’m not supposed to tell you this; but what the hell… you have fallen into the depths of your subconscious.”

This makes no sense to me on any level.

“I just want to go home; how do I get out of here?”

“You can only leave when you have achieved enlightenment; you’ve spent your whole life staring at the television. Now you have become prisoner of your own subconscious; you can only leave when you start to think outside of that damned box.”

 Start to tremble…there’s only one thing left to do. Start rubbing my feet on the floor again; maybe I can build that same static shock back up to zap my way back out of here. But I am on the  deck of a boat and this only gets me stranger stares than I was already getting.

Suddenly I awake in a chair surrounded by my family; look around. I am still in my parents den; must have been the effects of too much turkey and dressing.

“You must have been having one heck of a dream...”

“Uh… yeah I was.…”

There’s the remote on the coffee table; I start to pick it up. Wonder what’s on TV?

Sorry; old habits die hard I guess…

Was standing at my job the other day in front of my water jet cutter staring into a dark murky swirling pool of toxic water as it slowly cut a pattern into a large sheet of aluminum and experienced a series of out-of-left-field brain spasms. One of those out of sync thoughts that has absolutely nothing to do with what you are supposed to be thinking about; some people call them “brain farts” although even typing that phrase makes me want to get up and open the doors and windows.

But as much as I dislike the term “brain fart” I am forced to admit somehow to the accuracy of it; sometimes little bits of memory from my past make their way to the surface of my train of thought. Maybe it’s the melody of some old song that works its way up from my subconscious. Or I’ll start thinking about some old sitcom I have in the back room on an old VHS; whatever happened to the guy who starred in that?
Sometimes a scene from a movie I watched twenty years ago replays in my head as if someone had installed a DVD player in there and hit “select a scene”.

But sometimes I look at them and it makes being stuck inside on a nice day even tougher than it already is.

And it’s about moments like that something seems to short-circuit in my mind; weird bits of memory begin bobbing to the surface like wreckage from some disaster at sea. Like take the other day for example; this melody from an old song gets stuck in my head and loops for the rest of the day. What triggers these things? Boredom digging through the album collection like an unwanted guest? (“Are these all the records you’ve got?”) For example I got this melody stuck in my head recently :

After work I had to rush home and look this guy up on www.imdb.com ; whatever happened to that guy? I hadn’t seen his name anywhere in years. Turns out he has been married to the same woman since 1982 (how many people in the entertainment business can say that?) and owns a cattle ranch down in the Hill country of right here in my home state of Texas. Strange the circles these trains of thought weave themselves into. Is Brian Ben-ben sending me some sort of psychic message? Well if he is I wish he would stop it; can’t he see I’m trying to work here ?

Well yeah actually they did play Dallas within the last year; but that was on a Wednesday night. I had to work the next day, no getting around it. But this time was on a Friday night and when my friend Tom calls and says Let’s Go I am game. They put on simply the Greatest Show On Earth. Movies, strobes, and smoke machines; it’s never boring to say the least. We ride on that gleaming blur of lights and concrete known as I-30 and cruise east towards Dallas, detouring to pick up his brother James, who is married and has kids now. Oh boy a for-real guys night out. About a half hour later we are pulling into the parking lot of the Granada Theater in Dallas.
There is a small crowd hanging around out on the sidewalk in front of the box office. We see several people we know and stop and talk before going in. Many people are already wearing their Halloween costumes. What better time to see a show than on Halloween? I remember seeing King Crimson on Halloween back in 1995 and the image of the guy in front of me wearing the cow costume silhouetted against the band is forever imprinted in my brain.

The Granada is a very old movie theater; Tom and I used to drive to it in the late 70’s/early 80’s and watch double bills like ERASERHEAD and FREAKS. A few years ago they ripped out the seats and turned it into a live venue. I hadn’t bothered to check it out yet but then again since I find the majority of rock acts these days to be slightly redundant and tiresome. But when the Butthole Surfers are touring I will get off the couch.

Thirty bucks at the door got us in. We missed the first act but the second opener Peaches was interesting. Think of a punk Madonna ( who actually plays a number of instruments) with a frequent number of onstage costume changes and with a big emphasis on Gary Numan-ish electronic noise and you pretty much get the drift.

The highlight of the set was probably when two audience members in Halloween costumes (Elvis and Santa!) climbed up onstage and danced as the audience cheered. The Granada has installed additional screens to both sides of the stage and it looks like digital projection equipment now sits side by side with the audio soundboard so this is perfect for the Butthole Surfers multi-media assault on its audience sensibilities. I first saw them in 1986 and back then they had movie projectors (the old-fashioned kind with film reels) set up to show movies behind them. Now they had three screens behind them and one on each side of the stage, all with digital projected imagery being broadcast at once while they played. To the uninitiated the Surfers might sound like just random noise, but what amazes me is how well they reproduce that noise every time I see them. I get the same feeling listening to them I got the first time I ever saw a MAD comic book. Not the black and white magazine we know today but the color ones with that insane Bill Elder artwork. I get the same feeling listening to the Butthole Surfers I got the first time I ever read a National Lampoon or ZAP Comics. The feeling that it’s okay to draw/write/ paint/or play a musical instrument any way you wanted. Coloring outside of the lines if you will; that to me is a wonderful level of artistic freedom. When I listen to tunes like “100 Million Dead” or “Jimi” I smile.
Can’t really offer a you a detailed review of the show because I didn’t really take notes but I did take about a hundred photos. And good thing I took them when I did because during their final chaotic number, they turned on the fog machines and despite the two industrial-sized fans I saw mounted on the rear of the balcony reduced visibility in the theater to near-zero.
Security was almost not needed at this show; the Surfers audience is aging and it showed more than a little Friday night. In fact Gibby Haynes even said something to the crowd between songs about “look at how many people here are wearing glasses” (which included Yours Truly and three fourths of the Surfers) I saw no one moshing (thank Gawd) no fights and no one really visibly drinking to excess. Compared to some of their shows I have attended in the past, the contrast was as startling to me as the loops of exploding heads shown behind them as they played would have been to Tipper Gore.
Toms brother James ( who is a few years younger that us) was laughing at Tom and I while we were walking back to the car because we were both moaning and groaning like two old men after having to stand up for four or five hours (“Oy…for a couple of Naproxens!”)
“Is this what I have to look forward to when I turn fifty?” he wanted to know.
“Yeah and it’ll happen faster than you think  too.” I think to myself. The next day I awake with a slight headache and ringing ears; how’d that happen? I am talking to “K” on the phone long-distance when I hear the mailman at the door. Mentally chambering a round, I head for the door thinking: “this better not be another goddam bill” when I find a box on the porch wrapped in red and white tape. Someone has sent me a CARE package from Canada. Oh…boy!!!
After carefully opening it with a box cutter the first layer reveals two bags of Old Dutch dill-pickle flavored potato chips: manna from the Gods? No just obviously from their placement the first thing “K” wanted me to see when I opened it. I became totally addicted to these during my ten-day visit to Canada. While walking through the Vancouver airport on my way out, I walked past kiosk after kiosk that visibly had Old Dutch chips on their shelves but not a single one of them had the dill flavored ones. I didn’t fret about it too much at the time because I was already lugging a Canadian coffee cup, a beautiful but delicate-as-dinnerware oyster shell and an even more delicate sand dollar “K” found while we were sharing coffee on the beach at Tofino one heavenly morning. So sacrificing potato chips was a deliberate choice; I figured carrying three delicate objects 4000 miles was challenging enough.
Another souvenir I brought back from Tofino was a handful of Tazo tea bags I snagged from a shelf in the lobby of the hotel, specifically “Wild Sweet Orange” flavor. Hey two hundred bucks a night of my hard-earned cash for a room; I figured a few cups of tea would be an okay souvenir.
It wasn’t until I got back to the US that I bothered boiling some water and trying some. After taking the first sip I think I felt my pupils dilate; this stuff is like liquid candy. The pleasure sensors in my brain went into overdrive: “I want more of this stuff…” Now I was wishing I had snagged all the bags on the shelf back in Tofino instead of the half dozen or so I did take.

A quick inspection of the tea bag wrapper reveals (surprise!) “Made In Canada” Upon visiting their website ( which resembles a video poker game) it lists two local grocery stores that allegedly carry their teas. After driving to both of them I discover neither of them have the Wild Sweet Orange, only teas with weird names like “Tranquility” and “Bliss” etc. Dammit!
Bigelow makes an orange-flavored tea that tastes okay but the only way they could make this box any gay-er would be to have two Raggedy Andys smooching on the front of it:
“K” has thoughfully included a few precious packages of Tazo Wild Sweet Orange tea as well as three other flavors so I can quit trying to squeeze any more flavor out of the Tofino bags (“Come on, baby!”) She has also tossed in an assortment of three of my favorite Canadian candy bars: Coffee Crisps and my two favorite varities of Aero bars: peppermint and “milk lait” and two packages of chewing gum that have Maple leaves printed on them. Besides two packages of dill chips, she has included one of the ketchup flavored variety. These are really tasty with cheeseburgers. Since they don’t last forever I can’t really horde them; must eat them soon. I will make chicken salad sandwiches to eat with the dill chips; Sunday I will get a burger for lunch to eat with the ketchup chips. I love my CARE packages; will have to assemble one to return her way. A certain someone I know in Canada who used to live here in the States has told me she misses little things. Things like Almond Joys she can’t find in Canada…So okay so it’s Sunday and Halloween is over. Happy Halloween to you anyway !
This has been a memorable Halloweekend for me…

Musical genius Vic Mizzy passed away in his Bel Air home Saturday. A composer for many years he wrote songs recorded by Louis Prima, Perry Como, Billie Holiday and Dean Martin.

But it is probably his sixty second theme song for The Addams Family TV show that he is most famous and reportedly he was comfortable with it. In terms of familiarity his theme song for Green Acres is probably a close second. I loved Don Knotts’ movies when I was a child and Vic Mizzys soundtracks for those films is one of the things I remember best about them. He played many instruments although he wrote the majority of his compositions on a harpsichord and to this day The Addams Family is one of the very few if not the only TV show theme song to feature a harpsichord.

He also loved playing the organ and this is never more apparent than the unforgettable pipe organ soundtrack he composed for The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. He was also using heavily distorted guitar years before it was “cool” in his soundtracks. So I am dressed in black and my hat is off.

Goodbye Vic; you were a one-of-a-kind and you will be missed.

Saturday morning I couldn’t sleep. Laid in bed and tossed and turned all morning long.
My lawn which besides being covered in wet leaves (damn seasonal changes; can’t something be done about that?) hadn’t been mowed in over two weeks because of the near-constant rain. I was starting to go absolutely Hank Hill. My hands were trembling; I was ready to mow that lawn before it started raining again.

Really should have waited until Sunday to do this; the grass was still damp. Had to mow it in half-strips and even then had to stop periodically and scrape the wet grass out from underneath the mower. It was like trying to mow wet spinach. It usually only takes about twenty minutes to do this; I spent at least an hour out there. I knew damn well as I put the mower and the edger up that the fall leaves would cover everything soon and the yard would look awful again unless I raked up the leaves every day but hey head number two of The Beast was off.

Saturday night the temperature drops to the 40’s as it turns into Sunday morning. I sleep late and awake wrapped up like a mummy in my freshly-washed sheets and blankets. Start to write but sit staring at a blank document page instead. Writing for me personally isn’t exactly an automatic process. Sometimes the words just don’t flow; this Sunday appears to be one of them.
This Mexican stand-off is interrupted by “K” showing up in a chat window.
As we chat outside I watch it change from the half-light of sunrise to full-blown bright white beams of sunlight shining into my kitchen from outside. Our chat runs into several hours (as they tend to do on weekends) before she tells me she needs to go to the store. I tell her I am going to clean my apartment. We say goodbye and I sign out and shut off the PC.

Go as far as to get out the Swiffer and all of the other necessary implements and then make the mistake of looking outside. It has been raining almost constantly for the last two weeks. Fall is here and the temperatures have been slowly dropping. Open the door and step out; the thermometer in my carport says 70. The last two weekends it was raining; today the sun is out. It’s warm enough to wear shorts.
Step back inside, walk back to my bedroom and dig out a pair of shorts. Screw cleaning the house; I’m going for a walk.

Toss the jeans in my “wash” basket and slip into my black shorts. Grab the keys and I’m off. The sun already feels good on my legs as I slip the key into the dead-bolt.
Walking gives such a new perspective on my neighborhood; ordinarily I am zooming through it at 30mph. Walking forces me to actually look at my surroundings. Hey look is that a 1962 Dodge in that old mans garage? I get around the corner and find my first flattened 32 oz aluminum beer can in the street. Fish a plastic bag from my pocket and bag it. Hey 40 cents a pound…

Besides aluminum cans I find a large amount of nails and large screws when I am walking around my neighborhood. And even though I can’t sell them, I pick up each and every one; I drive these streets too. The city should give me some kind of award; I have over the years picked up a truly disturbing amount of these things from our streets. Who’s dropping these things all over the place?

Since today is Sunday, many nearby businesses are closed. This allows me to root through their dumpsters for the Diet Coke and Monster energy drink cans I will inevitably find. And since Texas finally passed an open container law, the streets are usually littered with beer cans especially later in the afternoon. The best places besides dumpsters are the areas around stop sign and traffic signals, bus stops and parking lots. The convenience store by my house is usually a goldmine in between their dumpster, their parking lot and the alley behind them where the homeless sit and drink.

In less than an hour I fill up three plastic shopping bags with flattened cans; not bad if I do say so myself. Come home and add them to the latest 55 gallon bag; the damn thing is almost as tall as me and getting full. I will wait until I have three or four of them to bother hauling them in. The weekend before I left for Canada I sold 46 pounds of aluminum in three large bags that filled the back of my truck for a mere 18 dollars. The price tends to go up in the winter months; it will be wise to sit on them until then.

My cats are waiting at the door for me as usual wanting food; give me a minute, will you? The sun is going down and I am tired from my extensive little hike. Don’t think I’ll be cleaning the house today.
I shove a frozen pizza from the dollar store in the oven and reach for a can of cat food for the hungry horde outside. Looks like an evening of falling asleep in front of the TV for me.

MONDAY…Go to my menial job, clock in and go through the motions. Kill ten hours, then stop and get orange chicken to go at my current favorite Asian place on the way home. Unlock the door and the cleaning implements I laid out the day before are all staring at me. Oh shit; I haven’t cleaned this place in at least two weeks. I DID drag out the cleaning stuff for a reason.
The food goes in the fridge and I go to work. Without missing a beat I begin to clean the bathroom, dust, vacuum and mop the floors. Two hours later my humble little bachelor pad is spotless and ready for a white-glove inspection.

Heat up my dinner in the microwave and sit down and look around my place. The three-headed dragon has been conquered. Everything has been washed, my badly-needed lawn has been mowed and I took an extra 24 hours to do it but my house has been cleaned as well.
Have some chicken and rice, boy; you’ve earned it.

DEATH TO THE BEAST !