Miscellany

I had my first encounter with evil when I was 15.

It was the summer of 1971. I was visiting a friend in Spokane, Washington.

We were walking around late at night and we stepped into a public restroom.

Somebody had written the following graffiti on the wall:

"A little bird with yellow bill
Perched upon my windowsill.
I lured him in with crumbs of bread,
and then I crushed his fucking head."

Some low-life dirtball apparently thought that was funny. (You know the type of person I'm talking about: the kind who writes on restroom walls.)

I hope he's dead, and I hope his death hurt a lot. I'm putting the world on notice: anybody, and I mean anybody, who thinks cruelty to animals is funny should have his belly torn open and his entrails set on fire before his eyes.

...

I attended a meeting of Washington, D.C.'s Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Ward 5 last night. Councilmember Harry Thomas addressed the gathering. Let it be known that when my neighbor Donald L. Williams asked why the D.C. police are flouting the city's no-cellphone-use-while-driving law, (along with everybody else) he could not get a straight answer out of Councilmember Thomas.

I met Commmissioner Robert King at that same meeting. He looks like James Earl Jones and he's a brother Mason. Good to meet you, Bob.

...

I saw something on the street in downtown Washington, D.C. on Monday that made me wish I'd had my camera with me. It would have been a fabulous photo. A guy was lying flat on his stomach in the middle of the street at the corner of 14th and F NW, half his body down inside an open manhole. The only things sticking out of the manhole were his legs and feet. Apparently he was talking to someone down inside that manhole. God, what a great photo that would have made!

...

This time of year I always kind of miss being in California. May is coming up, just about the best time of year in San Diego. There's nothing quite like a bright, breezy day in May out there on the west coast. I used to love sitting on the porch of my family's ancestral home in Chula Vista on an afternoon in May, the Padres' game on the radio (usually they were losing) and the gentle May breeze ringing the wind-chime that my father fashioned out of an empty wine jug many years ago. Once May is over, though, things get pretty grim. Come June, the area is enveloped almost daily in a persistent marine layer that keeps the sky quite gray. You can set your calendar by it: San Diegans call it "the June gloom."

...

I got an e-mail this morning from Roxanne at Roxanne's Artiques Gallery near the Brookland/CUA Metro station here in D.C. The same Donald L. Williams who couldn't get a straight answer out of Councilman Thomas about cellphone use by cops approached Roxanne yesterday on behalf of yours truly. You see, in addition to all of the other wild n' crazy things in my quiver, I'm also a sometime painter. Donald thought that Roxanne might be interested in displaying some of my art work in her gallery. I e-mailed her digital photos of a few of my canvases, and she inquired as to the media I used. I combine oil-and-acrylic on canvas with pastiche, a sop to the fact that I can't draw worth a damn. And no, I don't do Elvis on black velvet or dogs shooting pool.

...

I was at the Brookland/CUA Metro station the other day, wearing my Boston Red Sox cap. I saw another guy on the platform wearing a Red Sox cap, so I gave him the "Go Sox" countersign. He returned it, then rolled up his sleeve and showed me the beautifully-executed Red Sox team logo that he had tattooed on his left arm. "Red Sox Nation is just amazing," I told him. Later that same day, Donald L. Williams and I got into a whimsical discussion of how we might manage as roommates, should we ever be forced by circumstances (we're both basically destitute) to share space. Answer: Felix and Oscar writ large. "Now, THAT would be a mixed marriage," I said in all seriousness. And it's not because I'm white and Donald's black. There are more serious issues than race here. I mean, can you imagine a Red Sox fan and a Yankees fan living under the same roof? As the Germans say, Ausgeschlossen.*

...

There's a stretch of South Dakota Avenue in Northeast D.C., a residential area, where the average motorist averages 70 mph. The police department keeps records of this stuff. It's the reason they're installing cameras on South Dakota Avenue. I hate these cameras, especially after getting nailed by one myself, trying to beat a red light on Rhode Island Avenue a few months ago. But in a neighborhood where there's a playground, people should not drive 70 mph. Sorry, I'm just an old stick-in-the-mud that way. And I don't even have any children.

...

My pal Chris down in North Carolina gave up bread for lent. He says he's lost 25 pounds. I haven't seen him lately so I'll have to take his word for it. But now that lent is over, I hope he hasn't gone back to the baguettes and the dinner rolls. Chris has a new girlfriend; maybe that will help his resolve. You know the old saying: behind every man successfully losing weight there's either a trainer in a smelly sweatsuit waving a six-foot bullwhip, or a woman reminding him of what wonders weight loss will do for his...uh, stamina.

...

We are now a mere six weeks and change from the Tour de Cure in Reston, Virginia, a cycling event for the American Diabetes Association in which I am slated to ride a "metric century," e.g. 63 miles. I have been steadfastly in training since February, and have received $340 in donations from my friends, which has been generous and for which I am grateful. However some of my other friends who promised donations months ago have NOT coughed up and are steadfastly ignoring my repeated e-mail pleas for redemption. I'm about to give up on this crowd, but let me do so with the immortal words of Beatrice Arthur when she was playing that old bag Maude on CBS television back in the 1970s: "God will get you for that."

...

(Drum roll.) Millions of people have started writing novels; a few thousand actually finish writing them. I'm at work on a novel that I began last June 15 when the aforementioned bread-avoider, Chris, and I returned from attending the 13th International Hemingway Conference in Kansas City. I have given myself a deadline of this coming June 15 to complete this novel. I'm going to meet that deadline, folks. I have written 136,000 words as of yesterday. Meanwhile my pal Tony out in California, who has been working on a novel for about the last four years when he isn't out doing contracting work, has about 200,000 done on his. That's already too long, and Tony knows it. He and I have an interesting reciprocal deal in place, though. I'm a good editor, and when Tony's finished with his manuscript I'm going to cut Fastglass (that's the title) down to size. In return, Tony, an on-again, off-again writer for movies, is going to adapt my first novel, Tower-102 (iUniverse, 2000) as a screenplay.


*Ausgeschlossen--"Extremely unlikely."