I Remember A Place Called The Malecon...

The Malecon was wonderful.  It means Boardwalk in Spanish.  It spanned about 4 blocks in El Centro in Vallarta.  It ran parallel to the ocean and was the main drag of Hwy 200 running through the business and tourista district.  It was busy, loud, clogged with taxis and filled with wonderful sculptures.  It was a meeting place for Vallarta, locals and gringos filled it day and night, eating street tacos and dodging time-share vampires.  About 150 feet west of it waves were crashing ashore.  Across the street to the east music was blaring and people were partying.  It was the typical Mexican dichotomy.  Beautiful and weird.  Calming and scary.  All at the same time.  I loved it.

Several months ago the "restoration" started.   That is SO not a word you want to hear in Mexico.  In English it loosely translates as "cluster fuck".  In my years in Vallarta I have seen them level parks and green spaces for "improvement", build parking garages that make no fucking sense and build high rises that are destined to come sliding down off of hill sides.  But this one just takes the cake in my  opinion.  The malecon had a broad stretch of beach, a 6 foot high sea wall, a wide sidewalk and a counter sunk three lane highway that was impossible to cross by foot unless you were either drunk or suicidal.

What do they do to this thing???  They demolish it.  Completely.  The sea wall is gone.  The sculptures are either damaged beyond repair or "lost".  LOST???  How the fuck do you lose sculptures the size of my apartment???  OK, Mexico...  The counter sunk street has disappeared and has been replaced by a pedestrian mall, all of which is at beach level.  I don't know where the next storm surge is supposed to go.  Less than a decade ago Hurricane Kenna brought a storm surge up to 300 meters inland in this area and devastated everything in site.  It was nothing but mud, goo and dead shit everywhere.  It was like Vulcan's Hammer come to life!!!  On a good day that part of the bay can have waves we call "beach busters" that can be 20 feet high when they hit the shore.  You don't just hear them, you actually feel them!!!

This is a disaster just waiting to happen.  Yeah, it may be pretty and tourista friendly but it is a nightmare in the making.  I can only imagine Calle de Juarez becoming something akin to the canals of Venice and the Cathedral de Guadalupe washing out to the Isla de Morietas with the cross becoming a nesting grounds for the frigate birds.  What is the current mayor of Vallarta thinking???  Stop listening to the local gringos!!!  We're dumber than shit and we are fucking up your city!!!

Give me back the Mexico I love and stop Miami-ing your lovely city because we tell you that we want it more "user friendly"!!!

We Are All Just A Single Phone Call Away From Our Knees...

Trust me on this one.  Those phone calls suck ass.  Big time.  I've been there.  I've done that.  I've got WAY too fucking many t-shirts!!!  Those calls are the Exit to Hell...   And they all end in a cul-de-sac.   You're trapped.

If my phone rings before 7 AM or after 10 PM somebody better be dead.  And they usually are.  I'm 58.  You think I would have learned not to pick up the phone at this point.  But I haven't.

"Mr. Colee, this is Doctor Headupmyass.  Did I wake you?  I just wanted to give you your HIV test results.  You are positive.  Please call my nurse if you have any questions.  Click."   I called in sick, drove to the coast and spent the day getting puking drunk on champaign and throwing rocks at the seagulls.

"Hi, honey, this is your Aunt Jeanne.   Please sit down, I don't know how to say this.  Your dad is dead."   I kind of remember dropping the phone.

"Donn!!!  OMg!!!  Turn on your TV!!!   The Trade Towers have been hit!!!"   I will never, EVER forget that wake-up call as long as I live.   What I watched unfold that morning is burnt into my memory.

"Donn???  (Long pause...)  Grab a chair.   I have bad news.  John Geske just died in Mexico."  I dropped the phone.   Again.

Then there was the dead body in the basement in the middle of the night.  Oh, yeah, that was a delicious roller coaster ride.  2 AM.  Dead body.  Basement.  SO not a pretty adventure.  I spent over an hour "sanitizing" that house before I called 911.  There where drugs everywhere.  And fingerprints.  Mostly mine.  And a dead body in the basement.  With dildos, a tank of nitrous oxide and  duct tape.   A suicide is never pretty.  Crunch the freaking numbers....  I was totally fucking boned.   And not in that good way that I usually like.  I chained smoked and drank bourbon out of the bottle for the next 10 hours while I was being interrogated in the dining room.  Can you say "homo-cide"???

We have all been gob-smacked by these things.   They are like a bowling ball to the back of the head with enough force to leave a crater on the surface of the moon that is visible from Earth.   Cold cocked is an understatement.  Uncomfortably numb doesn't even come close.   It's like being fucked up the ass, raw and dry, in an alley in the middle of the night next to a dumpster.   It's "short, sharp and shock" in the worst way imaginable.   And there you are.  On your knees.  Thinking about what the next chapter may hold.  And finding yourself afraid to turn the page...  You just don't want to know what the next intersection may hold...  Perhaps a train wreck.  Which, considering the cesspool you find yourself in at the moment, just might be a welcome relief of sorts...

There is an ancient Chinese curse.  It goes "May you lead an interesting life.".   It is SO not Zen it just hurts.   It's all about living your life like water.  Don't try to overcome obstacles, go around them.  Again, a closet full of t-shirts.

Yet, I keep going down that highway.  In the middle of the night.  Over driving my headlights.  And nervously giggling behind the steering wheel.  Just waiting to see that deer in the headlights that I am about to smash into that just stands there stupidly.  Somehow, ready for the impact that is about to happen.  That is a reality that I know all too well.   I hate it with all of my heart.

I have lost too much, too many and too soon.   And always with a phone call.   And usually in the middle of the night.  My knees are damned near 6 freaking decades old and have been knocked down to the concrete more times than I care to count.  If I see one more casket I swear to god I'm taking out an McDonald's with my bare teeth and a plastic butter knife!!!

I could write a book...

If This Doesn't Put You Off Your Food I Don't Know What Will...

Just Google "Warren Jeffs Wiki" and see what you get.  Then hit on some of the other links to this monster.

Enough said...

EWWWW!!!!!   Yeah, this bastard gets 4 exclamation points...

I Swear, Texas Just Gets Stranger By The Minute!!!

OMg, it's the End of Days!!!  This could only happen in west Texas.  Just how loony are those cow pokers???

Have you heard about this?  It's stupifyingly frightening to say the least.  First, they build a man made lake with no real fresh water feeding into it.  STEE-RIKE ONE!  They are now in one of the worst droughts since the Dust Bowl and the lake is about 10-percent of it's original size.  STEE-RIKE TWO!!  It full of dead, rotting fish, smells like a sewer and has turned blood red.  STEE-RIKE THREE!!!  Of course, none of these things has anything to do with science, reason or reality.  IT IS THE END OF DAYS!!!  Yes, this is the Nile River of west Texas.  They're all shaking in their c'boy boots down there, waving hands full of snakes at the sky and stocking up at the local Wal-Mart.  News reports say that there is not a single tube of Pringle's, a 12-pack of Barq's rootbeer, a Moon Pie or any  Kodiak "chew" left on the shelves.  May they all lock themselves into their single-wides and await the outcome.  With the windows closed.  In the heat.  Good riddance!!!

You idiots, it's an algae bloom on a dead lake that should have never been  built in the first place!!!  This thing must smell just lovely in early August.  I have one question though...  Some reports call this a lake.  Other reports call it a reservoir.   You swam and fished in this nightmare???  This cluster fuck was your water supply???  You actually drank, bathed and cooked from this  thing???   No wonder the Wal-Mart pharmacy is doing such a land office business.  And that most of you have one eye and three thumbs!!!

This is not, I repeat, NOT a portent from god!!!  If it were she would have smote y'all several generations ago just to get you off of her desert and clear out all of those cars on cement blocks you seem to love so much.
Personally, as you all know, I am not a big fan of water.  I never have been.  I really do shower with a life preserver on.  I hate water.  It's just my nature.  Y'know why?  FISH FUCK IN IT!!!

Lasagna! Lasagna! Lasagna!

Did you know that in Polish it means "I love you"?   Oh hell, don't believe that, I lie like a cheap suit!!!  Trust me, it's true...

In  1980 I was living in Minneapolis with my first partner David, (he called himself Dave but I called him David.  Pissed him off so badly he blew smoke out of his ass).   More on that later...

So, I'm in the kitchen cooking up some soup one day and David comes home from work.  Keep in mind that this was my day off so naturally I had a few martini's in me.  As did the soup.  We were both feeling wonderful...  god only knows what got into me but from out of nowhere I grabbed him and forced him into a polka thru the living room all the while singing "Lasagna, lasagna, lasagna!  In Polish it means I love you!"  Repeatedly.  As we did the polka.  And I have to tell you, he was  damned good at the polka.  After all, he was from Pittsburgh and of heavy Polish descent.  He bit on this one hook, line and sinker so I reeled him in.  In less than two minutes I had him believing that lasagna really was Polish for I love you!!!  He actually thanked me for teaching him a new word in Polish.  Lasagna???  He was Polish for chris'sakes and he fell for this one???

Jump ahead a few years.  He goes to visit family in Pittsburgh that he has not seen in almost 2 decades.  He walks up to one of his aunts, throws his arms around her and gleefully exclaims "LASAGNA!"  Well, of course, she looks at him like he's nuts.   A short time later he is made aware of the fact that lasagna is NOT Polish for I love you but instead is an Italian pasta dish.  He was crushed.  And I got a phone call from Pittsburgh.  I won't share the gory details...

Jump ahead another 20 years.  Sea Squirt.  Oh god, he is so gullible that it's almost criminal for me to be with him at times.  I turned him onto Mexico and he lost his heart to her.  He thinks I "speak" Spanish.  LMAO!!!   Oh, well, he is from the Fox Valley after all...   When we met he didn't know a word in Spanish so I decided to start teaching him some along with a few phrases to get him by when we are down there.  He's a quick learner so all went well.  Then the urge hit me.  I just HAD to teach him something really stupid in Spanish.  Nosotros.  In Spanish it means "we" depending upon the context of use.  By the time I was finished with him he thought it meant "many noses".  Sorry, I just couldn't help myself.

Anyone out there remember Firesign Theater and their 1970's comedy album "I Think We're All Bozo's On This Bus"?   There is a line on that album, " 'Bozotros', from the Spanish 'nosotros', meaning 'many noses' ".  Think about it, it's about clowns on a bus!!!  I love that line.  So, several years ago we're down in Bucerias and the fridge is covered in those little magnets with words on them that you make sentences out of as you sober up.   All of them in Spanish.  And what do I find???  One that says "nosotros"!!!  I was in heaven.  Especially since that was the year we were down there for Halloween and I had brought a selection of foam clown noses to pass around.  The very next day, Sea Squirt is  talking with our good friend who lives next door and "nosotros" reared it's ugly, if not hilarious, head.

I was up on the roof of the house we were staying in catching some rays and swilling margy's when I hear our good friend break into peels of laughter.  Then I hear her say, "He told you WHAT???" followed immediately by "Donn!!!  Get your ass over here NOW!!!"  By the time I get downstairs I am met in the driveway by Sea Squirt and our friend, who has both hands on her hips and patting a flip-flopped foot in the dirt so frantically even the scorpions were running.   With her head cocked at an angle and one eye brow dangerously arched she looks me straight in the eye and says "NOSOTROS???".   Busted.  Then she broke into laughter again, gave me a hug and said, "Priceless!!!".  I love her!!!

Sea Squirt quickly informed me that he will never again trust me around anything even remotely involving a foreign tongue.  Well, he might just be right on that one.  I don't trust myself around foreign tongues either...

Adios!  Which, BTW, is Mandarin for "Got any gum?".

Dum & Dumerer...

Oh, lord, Madison has certainly had a weekend that befits us.  www.channel3000.com has been a plethora of local stupidity on a grand scale.  Humankind will never cease to amaze, confound and depress me.  And keep me laughing what is left of my ass off.  We have opposable thumbs.  Fabulous invention.  What do most of us do with them?  Roll our boogers till they get dry enough to flick them off...  Trust me, I can't make this kind of shit up.

First, there was a train and vehicle "mishap".  Some idiot was racing a train to an intersection crossing.  Never a good thing.  The driver apparently thought that he could make it over the unprotected crossing first.  NOT!!!  Damned near cut the car in half.  Since the driver is no longer with us I plan on nominating him for a "Darwin Award".  That's the award you win when you are just TOO FUCKING STUPID  to be alive.  It's like a Nobel Prize for the shallow end of the gene pool.  And what the fuck is up with unprotected railroad crossings???  A yield sign is not enough in my opinion.

Then there was the idiot with the horses.  Three of them to be exact.  Which he abandoned on the Capital Square to die of hunger, thirst and heat exhaustion.  He had just ridden them here from southern Florida to raise awareness for hunger.  Hunger.  How about you feed your freaking horses, you bastard!!!  What part of the hottest summer in the history of Earth did you miss???  And yes, he is now in jail.  The horses are now in protective custody under the witness protection program and hooked up to saline and glucose IV push therapy.  Much to their delight.

Here's my favorite.  A cop exits the police station to go and grab dinner.  Who does he find leaning up against the side of his squad car in the parking lot?  A TOTALLY brain dead individual smoking a joint the size of a cigar and drinking a 40 ounce of Old English out of a paper bag!!!  Dude, you are in the police station parking lot!!!  You have a rapsheet longer than Grace Jones's tongue!!!  You are waiting outside while a friend of yours bails out  her husband inside the station!!!  Hello???  You are not the shallow end of the gene pool, you are the shore line!!!  Needless to say, he is now sharing a cell with the horse guy.

I guess they don't call us Mad-Town without good reason...

Alice In Dairyland.

Oh, lord...  Only is 'sconsin is this type of insanity not only legal but encouraged, celebrated and made public.  Yes, Alice In Dairyland.   She is an institution here.  Nay, an icon.  When you see her pass by in any one of the innumerable local parades she graces you put your hand over your heart.  And her in 'sconsin that just means that your cholesterol level is in the 4 digit range from all of the dairy products that you have been consuming and that you are about to drop to the pavement.  I am an oddity in 'sconsin because I do not have a cholesterol level.  Seriously.  When they check my levels they always ask if I am vegetarian.  I have actually presented readings that were classified as unhealthily low.  Now I hit the drive up window for two double bacon cheeseburgers, an order of large fries and grocery store for a pint of heavy whipping cream  just to wash it all down with before I go to the clinic just to give them something to count.  Bite me!!!  I will outlive you all...

Here in 'sconsin we are the "Dairy State".  Well, not really.  California stole that title from us about 15 years ago.  But we still proudly put "Wisconsin.  The Dairy State" on our license plates.  Why?  Because we are 'sconsin.  We are a state of truly bull headed bohunks that just don't like being fucked with.  Yep, we just love our Holsteins!!!  And our cheese.  And our butter.  And our whole milk, Half & Half, HEAVY whipping cream, sour cream, ice cream and custard.  The average 'sconsinite weighs in at about 487 pounds.  We are so gung-ho on dairy here that the Monroe Cheese Factory is the only place in the world to produce Limburger cheese out side of Limburger, Germany.  It took them almost half of a century of cajoling and petitioning just to get the starter mix sent over.  BTW, I LOVE Limburger cheese.  It's like the durian fruit of dairy...

Anyway, back to Alice.  The title goes back to 1947 and it is a really big thing here.  It is sponsored by the 'sconsin Dairy Advisory Board and they shower the newly crowned one with goodies.  She gets a car, a scholarship, a chunk of cash, a clothing allowance and an appearance schedule and tons of endorsements.  She is indeed "Queen For A Day".  All 365 of them.  And then she is tossed out onto the compost heap and forgotten.  Why?  Because we have a new Alice to be excited about.  'sconsinites can be so fickle it just hurts!!!

The highlight of the current reigning Alice are all of the county fairs she makes an appearance at as well as the crowning glory, the 'sconsin State Fair.  At these events she gets reduced to pure cholesterol in the weirdest way imaginable.  The Alice In Dairyland Butter Carving Contests.  Yes, you heard me right, I actually said that.  "Artists" are given a 75 pound block of butter and proceed to carve a bust in the likeness of Alice.  Alice herself traditionally gets to pick the winner.  They give prizes for this insanity.  And then you get to shake her hand with your greasy fat fingers.  Who in their right mind would want to wear this crown???   The ultimate mental melt down, however, is the State Fair.  After the carving contest winner is announced  a group of true loonies set down for the butter eating contest.  Yes, I actually said that too...  It's sad.  Contestants set down, face to face with "Alice" (literally) and proceed to see how much of one of the carvings they can each consume in 30 minutes.  I am gagging as I type.  Oh lord...  Difibrillators are usually placed strategically around the tent and within easy arms reach because heart attacks are a common occurrence.  Why do they do this?  Because the "winner" gets a brand new motor home!!!  Which they will never get to drive because they have stroked out, are on a ventilator for the rest of their lives and have lost the use of their legs.

If I get caught with a roach in my pocket my ass goes to jail.  If I set down and eat the better part of 75 pounds of butter in public I get a motor home.  WTF???  Just how shell shocked were we all after World War II that this sort of nuttiness and abuse made sense to anyone with a dimes worth of gray matter???   Alice, oh Alice.  You are a wicked mistress...