I’m getting over this flu, but my brain still doesn’t seem to be working right. I feel like I blew a fuse up there or something. Benny says that on Monday night (I think it was Monday night) I seemed to be having a really bad nightmare because I was whining, “Pacoima… Pacoimaaaa…!” while thrashing around. Maybe that dream is what blew the fuse in my brain. All I know is it’s not working right, right now…
Last night there was some sort of police lockdown at my work, so I was detained for a little while and was unable to meet some friends at Clifton’s Cafeteria downtown. I would have loved to have met my friends for a nice turkey leg and jello after the police lockdown was called off, but unfortunately Clifton’s closes at 7:30 pm every night. Even last night during the very popular monthly downtown art walk, where droves of drunken people unfamiliar with downtown LA and in serious need of delicious roasted turkey legs roam the streets right in front of Clifton’s, the cafeteria workers put the lids on the steam tables promptly at 7:30 and drummed their fingers on the tables waiting for my friends to finish their tapioca puddings.
I know one of your mottoes is that your management will be firm, Clifton’s, but this seems a little silly to me. Just a couple of months ago I was reading about how you were looking for a new buyer to take over the building because business at the cafeteria was down, and the reason given for business being down was there was less foot traffic downtown these days. Well, yeah, there’s less foot traffic downtown at 6:30 in the morning when you open, but there are restaurants that would kill for the kind of nighttime foot traffic you’re getting from the art walk, not to mention the plethora of fancypants bars that have opened up mere blocks away.
I don’t know. Maybe you’re too distracted by the incredible decor inside the restaurant to notice all the hubbub outside your doors. I can’t blame you. If I owned Clifton’s, I would sit all night in front of the kettle at the fireplace roasting marshmallows and looking at the moon.
I might not even ever leave the place, sleeping in one of the log cabins and taking my showers under the waterfall. But I beg of you – look outside your door. Those drunk people lurking outside now have lots of money in their pockets, and I know their lives would be so much better if they only knew about your crudité duck
and happy fishing bear family
and the only chapel in the city that encourages eating mashed potatoes during services.
Think about it, Clifton’s. I think with the right strategy you could even reopen the Pacific Seas location.
Take a deep breath, hold it for ten counts, and think of this:
instead of this:
Okay, okay. Breathe out. Let’s try that again. Deep breath.
Sorry for three moon posts in a row, but I love the moon. I want to have a vacation house on the moon. I want to have a vacation house on the moon, and I want Walter Cronkite to tell me the way it is every night. Maybe that’s a lot to ask for.
When I was a kid I used to talk in my sleep, but the only phrase I speak clearly in my sleep these days is “honk shoe.” It’s kind of sad. Some people get better at somniloquy when they get older; why did I get worse? Some people are so good, in fact, that they are recording themselves and posting the results online. Nate at Night speaks with different accents, DanDan has discovered that his sister also talks in her sleep, and Rich Jones analyzes himself. I don’t think any of them are up to the level of the king of somniloquists Dion McGregor, but just give them a few years. There may be a major label record album in one of them yet.
2009 is shaping up to be a bad year for wonderful creative maniacs. First, noted Nazi memorabilia collector World War Two buff Ron Asheton is found dead, and now film auteur and musician Ray Dennis Steckler (a/k/a Cash Flagg, a/k/a Sven Christian, a/k/a Sven Hellstrom, a/k/a Harry Nixon, a/k/a Michael J. Rogers, a/k/a Michel J. Rogers, a/k/a Wolfgang Schmidt, a/k/a Cindy Lou Steckler, a/k/a Cindy Lou Sutters) has left our midst.
I know you’re not going to believe this, but I managed to obtain some exclusive footage of RDS as he passed from this world to the next:
Wow, dying looks scarier than I thought.
Please be careful in 2009, friends. I consider you all to be wonderful creative maniacs.
So tired. So weary. I feel like my job is falling apart and I’m running in a vat of oatmeal all the time. I don’t believe in what I do anymore, and yet, I find myself having arguments with people defending what I do. I’m a priest who believes in God and doesn’t like him very much. Maybe I need to find something else to do.
It looks like BibliOdyssey may be able to help me out. They’ve found a manuscript containing illustrations of jobs performed at the Twelve Brothers House Foundation in the 14th century. The Twelve Brothers House Foundation was a place where “a dozen elderly and unwell (but capable) citizens were … given a place to live in exchange for their performing work duties.” Elderly and unwell, but capable. That sounds rights up my alley. And I already look a bit like the goldsmith; maybe they have a place for me at the Twelve Brothers. What do you say, guys?
The Christmas holiday season can be a stressful time leading to anxiety, loneliness and depression in the strongest of us. While self-medication in the form of comfort food, alcohol and drugs may be temporary cures, it’s better to figure out a more reliable way to deal with these emotions. Many recommend meditation.
This singing cowboy alligator can teach you how:
Maybe he’s a crocodile. Anyway, good luck with your sad and gloomy mind. Things will get better soon.
When I was a kid, I was really happy that the only way into the crawlspace under the house was through a door in my closet floor. It was my own secret passageway, just like I read about all the time. Amazing. I would go down there sometimes and wait in the dirt and cobwebs for my parents to discover I had disappeared from my room into thin air, but they never did. After that, I tried making secret rooms out in the yard out of sheets hung from clothesline across the hedges, but that didn’t work very well either. Gentle breezes and my inability to hover a few inches in the air always spoiled my attempts at hiding from my brother in the bedsheet maze.
I guess everybody loves secret compartments and hidden messages. Some really lucky rich people in New York have been discovering over the past year that they are in fact living in an ornate puzzle created by the designer who remodeled their apartment, and I have to say I’m a little jealous. Their apartment has way more interesting things than a staircase that leads to nowhere or a bedroom with four fireplaces (though I wouldn’t complain if I lived in a place with those things either).
Apparently there are other rich people who enjoy mystery spaces being liberated from the virtual world of video games, too. I think it’s too late for me to get rich, so I’m either going to have to get better at carpentry or figure out how to house sit for these folks. Then again, there’s already a ghost in the crawlspace under my house. Maybe I can work with her to make a hidden passage or two.
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