Cologne Revisited

Maybe I didn't give Cologne enough credit.

COLOGNE, GERMANY.

After I've reached my destination via train track--- I meet this Canadian fellow... we check in at the same hotel.  My phone's gone all haywire.  We promise to reunite for an evening of expedition.  That's what it is.  When I first get there, it's fresh and new.  There's a gothic cathedral, big as fuck, land-marked in the center of town.  I never enter it...go figures...but, I watch it from far away, never up close--- which seems odd at this very moment.  Peculiar!  Why didn't I enter (or, at the very least, walk  to the base and touch the gravel stone?).......

But.... alas! I never approached the gothic thing... just peered from afar, gasping at its darkness.

So, I book a room in this somewhat ritzy town,,, lots of chain-stores and accordions and this eery cathedral... GIANT.  The size is shocking.

So, I book a room.  I purchase a cute little bottle of wine.  First, I walk 2 miles, searching for a grocery store.  I find one inside of a German mall, with chocolate shops and shoe stores.  I buy a small red wine... a screw top.  I return to my room: a bed, a mini fridge, a marble bathroom.  I roll a joint.  I light up a joint (weed supplied from good old Amsterdam) and drink my petite bottle.

Canadian knocks on my hotel door.  I answer....buzzed from a mini-bottle and a small joint.  We walk.  There's a concert.  We eat kabab.  We meet four German blonde girls.  We all go dancing at a club.  Lots of techno.  Lots of beer.  We dance like robots (my specialty).  I'm a hit.

I walk back alone.  I stop at McDonalds.  I eat a fish fillet.  I look for the giant cathedral.  I get hassled by two tacky German guys with frosted hair.  I find my hotel (right next to the giant cathedral).  I pee my pants.  I pass out.  I wake up.  I've lost my wallet.  I freak out.  The Canadian knocks on my hotel door... gives me 20 euros.  I search for my wallet.  I retrace my steps... back to the concert... back to McDonalds.  No such luck...free CocaCola.  A car is turned over.  I give up.  I buy a night at a shitty hostel.  I smoke another joint in a parking lot...it's raining.  I cry.  A guy drops a gun.  I cry some more.  I hate Cologne.

Live Shrimp

"I saw it! It's little pink legs and it's little black eyes."  She's talking about shrimp...the live ones...in the tank... and she's cringing.  Like hell, she's cringing.  This sushi joint serves live shrimp...a daily special etched in blue on their dry-erase board.

Poor little things.  Snatched from its watery box, a scaled-to-fit ship anchored in the pebbles, a mermaid, a sunken treasure trunk, a couple of lobsters clawing at the glass, and the shrimp...just bobbing in the tide-less tank.

Little black eyes... soulless little insects.  Except, they must have some sort of purpose.  Like that one-eyed photographer.  I don't know his name, but he wore a black patch over his left eye...a snarling pirate...and he snapped photos.  He wore prescription eye-wear, lop-sided because of his patch *(and you'd think, any Lenscrafters salesman with an ounce of integrity, would give him half-off)... and his purpose... to snap photos...like the Beethoven of photography.

And maybe, I'll carry Louis Vuittons and wear stilettos.  Maybe, I'll drive a Mercedes convertible and it'll smell new, like polished cow skin.  Maybe I'll get my hair done, all pomped up and pretty.  I'll eat carpaccio and super greens and caviar.  I'll marry an older man, and he'll die 20 years later than expected.  I'll be his nurse and when I'm a widow with our three adult children, I'll live alone in a big house.  I'll wear St. John's pantsuits and be a member of a country club.  I'll get older and I'll move into a highrise on Wilshire.  I'll get older.  I'll hire a "girl" to cook me breakfast and take me to the movies.  We'll go to the theater and talk about the weather. 

And those damn shrimp, crawling on your white plate.  Writhing every which way and that.  Their little pink bodies and their blinking black eyes.  Can shrimp blink?

Fame

He says, “I’ll take a photo of you and make you famous.”  And he takes out his smart phone, and smiles.

Today’s the end of the world.  No party, it just is.  That’s that.  Some guy gets stabbed outside of the Apple Pan.  A mom witnesses this, texts her son, and he reads it out loud, inside his century-old shack.  “Stabbed?” everyone gasps in horror.  “Yes,” the girl squeaks, “today’s a weird-vibe day.”  And the girl in the long flowing dress asks, “Because it’s judgment day?”  Yes, they all agree, because it’s judgment day. 

So, the skinny girl with skinny hips and wild Shakira curls, steps out of her curtained-in dressing room, in the skinniest cigarette jeans you ever saw, sucking into her skinny-tanned crevices like a hand vacuum.  Her wild black hair hangs down her breast, her white lace bralette, and she says, “What’s going on out here?”

Oh!  He thinks, putting down his phone with a ghastly warning from his mother, I need to photograph you.  I need to immortalize this beautiful moment, where a guy gets stabbed in front of the Apple Pan, and you come out, like a little nymph, with your wild curls and your skinny legs.  “I’m gonna make you famous,” he says, and he takes out his smart phone.  And this is her big break, immortalized as someone’s cell-phone desktop picture.  “Well, golly!”  And she shakes her full head of curls to the right, and looks shy at the camera, her white bra pointed.

So, today’s judgment day.  And this is true because some rich pastor bought a bunch of billboards across the globe, and told everyone: May 21, 2011.  5-21-2011… and you’d think the accumulation of numbers would be more interesting...like a bunch of ones, or a bunch of sixes, or even sevens.  Nope, just five-two-one-two-zero-one-one.  Just like a phone number.   

A girl, sloppy drunk, tells a boy, who’s not so sloppy drunk, “call me.”  “What’s your number?” he asks.  And it’s judgment day.  Don’t call her, buddy.  She won’t remember anyway.  Plus, it’s judgment day.  And it’s a bad omen.  Ask anyone; it’s a bad omen.

And I don’t care if I die poor.  As long as I’m famous. 

Mother's Day

Mother dearest... the only e-mail subscribed to my blog feed... I've abandoned updates on this, but after I post this, you'll get an automatic e-mail.  You'll check it on your orange iPad2, while watching 60 minutes or a pre-recorded reality show.  And damn those automatic e-mails!  So hasty, and you forward them to all your tennis friends before I get to edit all the grammatical errors.  And to be honest, you only have one tennis friend... Hi Sandy.  Maybe Sherry too, but I don't think she cares for you much.

And did you both enjoy your Palm Springs rendezvous?  I'm sure you did. 

You're probably expecting a sappy Mother's Day letter.  And no siree.  This is public, so I'm not going to get all mushy.  I'll say one thing.  This past Sabbath, when I was Orthodox for a day (and don't get me started on that bitch Erica Schwartz), I missed you painfully.  But, maybe I'll regress and mention Erica for a quick second... in her bucket hat and skirt suit.  Besides the obvious truth that I'm a lucky bastard that you're my mother, as chance would have it, and not the bitch Erica, I'm lucky you're so hip... a bit sacrilegious...but, the most spiritual individual I ever did see.  See, Erica's religious, but cold as stone... spiritually void.  When I'm down and out, you say something so darn zen about energy or the universe, or some new age crap like that.  And all those SECRET-type books on your bookshelf... Divine Wisdom...guides to a centered self.  I remember your meditation story... about how you met Jesus one afternoon in our backyard.  Erica could never manifest the spiritual divination of Jesus, even if she really wanted to.

Does it bother me that your cooler than me?  I think that's subjective.  Who's to say what's really cool... and what isn't.  But, no, it doesn't at all. 

So, mom... I'm going to put on a mineral mask with you and Chelsea... I'm going to post this and, if all goes as planned, I'll join you on the couch, catch the middle of 60 minutes, and maybe during a commercial break, you can read this.  I'll watch you read it, of course.

Happy Mother's Day.

Corsair Snippet- Volume XCV, Issue 6

Distasteful Rambling

Panda, my bow-legged designer dog, ate the bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Two hours later, she's yacking all over the damn place, chunky bile that smells like chocolate malt.

To the animal hospital, where there are girlie girls in blue scrubs and howling dogs in the back (it sounds like a full moon).  "Sit in this room," and we do.  Panda's behind the scenes and the two of us are sitting quiet in this white and metal room.  Then, she walks in.  First, I just see her thigh-high boots, then her mini dress, and her white lab coat.  She walks in, stilettos puncturing the cheap linoleum floor and... wait a second, she turns, clipboard in her right hand... and her left side's facing me... and she's got no arm.  Her white lab coat is folded back neatly with a safety pin.  Bless her heart.  Suddenly, it's okay.  It's okay that she's dressed like a major slut because she only has one arm.  My heart goes out to her.  And she goes through her clipboard, crossing off the to-do list.  "First," she says in a professional manner, "we're going to induce vomit with an injection of Toxi-ban...then, a Cerenia injection..." and she goes on, spitting out Vet lingo and "fluid maintenance" and "fluid pump" and "fluid what-not."  And bless her soul.  She's got spunk.

Spring Forward Party

First, the magnitude nine, then the tsunami.  And nuclear reactors.  How many is it now?

I'm at Coffee Bean as the world spins to an end, drinking a light roast of house-brew.  It's subtle and sprite; a quick tang, then mellow.  Italian light roast.

Our own technology is our own demise.  "Like Atlantis!"  Exactly like Atlantis, that fool-proof plan.  It's change of course.  And you say, "It's change, of course!"  

And with change, comes death.  And with death, comes birth.  It's one cyclic hum-drum routine of beginning then end, then beginning again.  Yeah, we get it.

So, the Spring Forward Party: morning of, I was in the kitchen roasting vegetables, sweeping the floor, watching CNN.  A pretty typical day, except there's the tsunami, that foaming wave.  Little cars and little buildings swirl and sink in the white froth.  Like breakfast cereal, drowning cheerios. 
That's in the morning.

I'm going to take a shower and the drain's clogged, so I'm up to my ankles in dirty water, strands of hair floating and a daddy long legs all clumped up.

The evening approaches and the floors are swept, the vegetables are roasted, and the tv's off.  (And if I recall correctly, it was tallied at two nuclear power plants and a thousand deaths.)

And the doorball rings!  Oh, goody!  Let me smack some pink on my lips and greet our guests like a proper host: with a hearty welcome!  I scramble to the door, but she gets it first.  "Hello!" and please come in.  I'm out of breath from scrambling.  Drinks?  Let's all go to the main room.  And like a flight attendant, I signal my hands 'this way.'  The clock's ticking and I'm on my second glass of merlot and (later in the night) when everyone's in the living room playing bonfire songs (Greenday's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," naturally) with knee-clapping and tambourine rattles, I've almost forgotten.  The girls are up and twirling and the boys are banging the drums... it's very tribal.  And we're all drinking and falling deeper.

I'm playing the harmonica and stomping my foot and slapping my thigh (my hand and foot are bruised) and they tell me I'm off tune.  It's heart-breaking.

Oh and there's revolution in the Middle East.  That too, but back to the party.

I can't think.  No, siree.  I see him in the kitchen, so, I go, I swagger, and I'm looking straight at him.  "You know," I say, "the world's going to end."  He laughs.
"Honest to god," and I'm smiling, standing against the fridge.  He says something about my hair, but I'm bending my back and swaying my hips forward.  And the moment ends, somebody walks in, just like that- and that's this whole night, a big pause---like a baby right before a big scream, the intake of air, the quiet gulp, and you close your eyes because you're expecting a terrible sound... but nothing... it's just a yawn.  That's this night.  Back into the main room with the camp-fire songs and the kumbayas.

Later, I'm pouring wine into a plastic tumbler.  "Red or white?" I ask her.  "Red stains your teeth," and she's laughing.

It's a drag to wake up the very next morning, with a headache and red teeth- at that!  Another nuclear reactor and a thousand more dead.

The perfect weather for a stroll in the park: it's a bit chilly, so bring a sweater, but the sun's out.