In The Meantime ...

Dearth of inspiration of late, which only means a 1500 word, geniusly amusing, digressive screed is imminent. In the meantime, taking my clue from some other blog, here are not one but three songs that never fail to make me happy.



(didn't know that about Marilyn Monroe, did you?)



(onions)



(actually I was looking for a good clip of Joni Mitchell's "Carey," but this, which I never knew existed, is much better; tell me after seeing this you wouldn't want to have a beer with Cass Elliot over discussing art with Joni or politics with Mary anyday)

Paradise Found

Well, forget sliced bread. There's a new greatest-thing-ever kid on the block, and methinks this one's got staying power. Maybe you folks on the coasts have been blessed for years, but this is the first I have ever heard of this nugget of nirvana, and I would just love for this to be its world-wide debut. Cleveland could use a little recognition, and this item has Cleveland written all over it.

What the hell am I talking about, you scream? It's simply the simplest. It's culinary Lennon & McCartney; a gourmand's Burns & Allen; a munchie fiend's Watson & Crick; a gustatory Trinidad & Tobago. It's bacon, covered in chocolate!.

Hey, you, come back down to Earth; spark up the defibrillator; you haven't died, but this is heaven. The ultimate pairing of the two greatest food groups, nay, the two greatest foods. Bacon, covered in chocolate!. Elton John once sang that the New York Times said God was dead. Well, if that's so, He/She/It is back and wearing a confectioner's toque. I think this might spell the death of sex, amusement parks, cable TV, booze, and Lotto. I mean, really, once one has bacon, covered in chocolate!, what does one need/want/crave?

Keep thinking, because now that there's bacon, covered in chocolate!, I've got all the time in the world.

The last thing I ever want to be (besides, suddenly, a man without access to bacon, covered in chocolate!) is a shill, but I must tip my spat out gum to Cleveland's greatest institution, Malley's Chocolates. This morning I turned on the radio and heard an ad for Malley's, pushing their usual (and very scrumptious) chocolate-covered grapes and strawberries, among other goodies, all in time for Sweetest Day this Saturday. Now at first I was disappointed not to hear the voice of the Malley's Matriarch, Adele, on the radio. The way she pronounces "chocolate-covered strawberries" makes you want to shed everything you are or will ever be, down to your mouth, tongue, and stomach, and burn effigies of Hershey's bars and the like, just so you can indulge yourself in chocolate-covered strawberries.

But then, just as I was missing Adele's tenderly excitable tones, came the announcement: Malley's now has bacon, covered in chocolate! Five hours later, when I could again breathe somewhat normally and had shed every tear of joy I'll ever muster for the rest of my life, I realized that if Adele had made the announcement of Malley's new bacon, covered in chocolate!, well, the excitement in her voice and the excitement that that voice would have ignited in the listeners, would have blown out any sense of sanity left in Cleveland. For public health reasons, I'm thankful Adele stayed away from the microphone; for personal mental health reasons, I'm thankful Adele and her minions have now taken bacon, and covered it in chocolate!.

Go to Malley's website, it's drool-worthy enough, but I just checked and there are no pictures of bacon, covered in chocolate! Again, for our safety, I'm sure. Just reading the phrase bacon, covered in chocolate! must have you all in a lather (writing it is just as bad); imagine seeing a picture of bacon, covered in chocolate! and not being able to sample it immediately? Torture.

I'm at a loss of thought. Jet packs, the ability to Tivo my dreams, a Cleveland championship of some kind--those seemingly untouchable wished-for lifetime dreams now seem so passe. We've got bacon, covered with chocolate!. What more could one ask for?

Um, Adele, how about sausage links, covered in chocolate!?

Joan Armatrading-Heaven

Pere Ubu-Heaven

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians-Heaven

This Estivation Must Stop

Sounds like one of my made-up words, estivation. If it were, it would probably mean a rough guess as to how high a mountain or a college roommate is. As it is, estivate is an actual word, meaning "to pass the summer in a state of torpor," basically the opposite of hibernate (in my version of Scrabble, estivate would warrant about a million points because not only is it a beautiful word, but its definition contains an equally amazing word, torpor). Now if someone gave me the definition and told me to make up a word, I'd probably go with slummer, or dozummer. Better yet, I'd probably just say, high school English teacher, because having the experience, and not knowing much zoology, I'd put my money on the high school English teacher being the only creature who estivates.

I realize summer ended and autumn began a few days ago, chronologically, at least, but the weather's been nice, and although fall is my favorite time of year, I wasn't ready to bid adieu to summer yet. But this morning it definitely felt like fall: gray, rainy skies, trees blowing aggressively, leaves starting to change color (at least to my color-blind eyes), and a temperature that had no hint of summer in it. So I muttered to myself, that's it, quit the estivating, get to work. I've been cleaning ever since. To be honest, it's probably my spring cleaning, but as I recall, the first day that felt like spring several months ago, I said, that's it, summer's coming, commence estivation.

All I can say is that I've been places in my domicile today that Columbus, Balboa, and even Carl Kolchak couldn't have found. Apparently, dust doesn't estivate, hibernate, or vacate. Procreate, though, for sure.

Unfortunately, my bed right now is too piled up with stuff I've moved to get to such dusty, unmapped places, that starting to autumnate with a nice rain-soothing afternoon nap is out of the question. But I guess it's football season: three piles and a cloud of dust. Back to excavation.

Freakwater-When The Leaves Begin To Fall

Robyn Hitchcock-Autumn Is Your Last Chance

Spit Out Your Gum

"Did you just spit?"

"Yeah, I love to spit."

She was the most beautiful tomboy I've ever known, and she had just expectorated a rather throaty gob on the sidewalk right next to the main doors of the venerable all-girls private school where I taught and she learned. Hundreds of girls in requisite plaid skirts were jamming the narrow entrance-way after a routine fire drill when I first heard then saw the spit.

It truly was "the spit" of my time at that school. After years of teaching at a similarly venerable all-boys school where there was "a spit" about every 90 seconds (so much so that the head maintenance guy would inform faculty meetings about the astronomical costs of spit removal around campus), including the rite of passage attempt to spit down six flights of steps and hit bottom rather than a banister (oh the demerits meted out for such salivary, phlegmatic infractions), my time at the girls school was happily spit-free, until that glorious moment when that particular girl let go.

Her spit shocked me, but her response delighted me. Instead of some blatant quick lie, "No, I didn't just spit," or some long-winded excuse about asthma, bronchitis, or accidentally inhaling a mosquito, the girl's no-shame, matter-of-fact, nearly proud declaration or her love of spitting just made me chuckle, and maybe shake my head a bit (no demerit was issued).

Shaking not in any "kids these days" impotent dismissal, but shaking in an almost awed respect for her honesty and, most important, her wisdom. Because really, who doesn't love to spit? I had thought it was just a guy thing, but as in so many other ways at that school, the girls--in this case, the girl--taught me a thing or two about the ways of the world. Yes, hopefully we all do move on from the twelve-year-old boy "I spit, therefore I am" ethos, but still, a good spit when needed, or in the right situation, just for the hell of it, is wholly satisfying.

But yes, gum. The girls might not have spit spit, but they sure chewed a helluva lot of gum, which under my vigilant watch entailed a lot of spitting out of gum. I'm sure by the time I taught girls, the boys had taught me the conniving trick of walking to the wastebasket and very demonstratively pulling out a long string of gum, snapping it off, then loudly dropping the gum into the trash--all the better to distract the teacher from the fact that there was still a good-sized hunk of gum in the offender's mouth. "All of it, Sara or Maya or Sarah or Eva or Marcella or whoever."

Some of them were armed with statistics about chewing gum and burning calories, others pleaded the age-old girls-school lament about being "so stressed out." Others just smiled, disposed of the gum, and I'm sure were chewing a fresh piece thirty seconds later.

When chaperoning a dance, it was easy to tell the kids you had to keep an eye on: the ones sloppily chewing a wad of gum.

One of my childhood friends, Tom, and I developed a ritual around the age of ten, when bubblegum chewing was a quasi-religious experience. After an hour or two of gnashing gum and replenishing the wad with fresh pieces every so often, one of us would pull out the well-masticated slab of whitened gunk and announce proudly, "Man, I chewed the HECK out of that gum." To this day, I can't get rid of a piece of gum without looking at it and saying softly, "Man, I chewed the HECK out of that gum."

But mainly for the great line in Bob (Uncle Bob) Dylan's "4th Time Around," his devastating parody of John Lennon's "Norwegian Wood." "Your words are not clear/You better spit out your gum."



Bob Dylan-4th Time Around

Robyn Hitchcock-4th Time Around

Chris Whitley-4th Time Around