All You Need Is Love

I was listening to the radio today and some country artist was going off on some twangy fools rant to the affect that "all you need is love." I felt echoes of the Beatles whom I am damned sure weren’t the first to propose this hedonistic way of living and it sent shivers down my spine that a sentiment this trite could still find its ways over the airways. Furthermore, in a time when a person can sue the manufacturer of a hot tub company because he got his dick stuck in one of the water jets...and WIN then I would think it risky, at best, to allow such callous advice to be given to a group of already mentally disadvantaged listeners. Don't get me wrong but if you have a country station pre-programmed on your radio then there is more than a fifty percent chance that when you lost your virginity all you needed was a handful of carrots and a key to a barn door. With that said, I still feel it is unfair to lead people to the foolish belief that Love is all you need.
First of all lets set the record straight; love is a wonderful emotional experience. Nothing can compare with a bottle of cheap whiskey, the passwords to a dozen porn websites and an empty house. But this only fills the emotional voids in your life. I would certainly think that if I was a country crooner and wanted to send a message of truth I would start with the hit "all you need is Food." Give or take a few lustful cravings, you can probably last an entire lifetime without love. However, try and go three weeks without a burger and your spleen will start chewing on your liver. And in the country world you are basically preaching to the chorus. These people understand what it means to be well fed. Did you know that any state South of Maryland has to have the words "Beef" and Cream cheese" in their states anthem? Its true.
And what about water? Experts say that in optimal conditions a person will last about a week without water. Considering the human body is comprised of nearly 72ish percent of this liquid it is not surprising that after three days without water a person will attempt slit their wrists with the family Poodle. But again, "All You Need Is Water" played by a country singer whose initiation to manhood included lighting his own urine on fire after a five day moonshine bender is not going to have the same intended educational effect.
What about shelter? Its a nice place to start. A warm house to keep you out of the elements seems to me to be far more important than love. Sure, a nice set of tits to stand under during a driving rain is one thing but throw in freezing temperatures and those hammers better be hiding a wood burning stove. Once again we find ourselves barking up the wrong tree. How do you impress upon someone the importance of staying out of the elements when their idea of a house includes four tires, a propane tank and an awning. They’re just not going to listen.
Lastly, and far more important than anything I have previously proposed...there is air. Within 6 to 10 minutes of losing your last breath you are on deaths door. Even if revived atr this point the only thing you would ever be capable of again would be drooling or maybe clapping for you high school football team. You just have to have air. Try holding your breath for a minute. Now imagine some crazy bitch who you thought loved you holding a pillow over your face for five minutes. Hmmm? AIR! But how am I ever going to get "Hopalong Hayseed" to sing the virtues of cool clean air when he has a lit Lucky hanging from his lips, two between his fingers waiting to go and a group of kids at his feet dying to be just...like...him. Ah, fuck it. Maybe we do need to over simplify things and pander to the masses. I know for a fact that love aint all you need...but maybe its a good place to start.

Halloween

Of all the celebrations that this holiday-overdosed nation observes Halloween is by far the one that I most look forward to. Not so much for the event itself but for the absolute gold mine of memories it has served. Unofficially, it is Halloween that begins the two and a half month spiral of festive nonsense that culminates in the obligatory dry heaves on January 1st. Like a runner loading carbs the night before a marathon, Halloween serves a similar purpose by encouraging an already overweight nation to get jacked out of their tits on sugar so that they can power through the coming months on artificial energy. On paper Thanksgiving and Christmas each have their own merits. What other back to back holidays celebrate the annihilation of one culture and the intolerance of the rest? It is Halloween that rests unpretentiously here at the end of October; no shiny new bikes or remote controlled cars held above children's heads as hostages of good and bad. It simply exists as an exhibition of flawed American understanding of foreign cultural celebrations. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
My earliest memories of Halloween come mostly from washed out Polaroids and grainy black and white super8 films. With man attempting to set foot on the moon and Vietnam raging a world away I was often dressed up as an pint sized astronaut or baby faced G.I.. I can only imagine what goes on in the mind of a child not yet capable of rational thought as they are dragged through the streets at night with countless horrors passing before their eyes. Can't understand why you child wets the bed? But when that magical age is reached and the comprehension that playing dress-up equates with bags of sugary treats then the true games begin. You now understand that dressed like a lunatic and armed with three magic words a world of legalized begging has opened where, if the porch light is on, you are almost certainly guaranteed something special for your efforts.
You always remember those houses that offer the best treats; full sized candy bars, sticks of gum or some other expensive store-bought item. And you learned to avoid those houses that pushed shit like candy corn, popcorn balls or something that could easily hide a saw blade or arsenic. Our house fell in the middle range of these two. Some years my parents would buy so much candy that we would heap handfuls on wide eyed kids. Other times my father would expect a single bag of mini-Snickers to supply a neighborhood full of rowdy kids only to realize at 5pm that he had run out and rather than turning off the porch light he would begin passing out individual marshmallows or Ritz Crackers (no shit). I guess if you have any sense of dignity, or remember how fantastic it was to say "trick or Treat" and be met with something substantial, then you prepare for the onslaught of kids with truly memorable goodies.
I can't think of any celebration that allows everyone involved a chance to feel like they are making a contribution. Certainly you were whoring yourself off as a Devil or super hero only to be paid off in confection but at the same time the "Johnny" homeowner had the satisfaction of opening his doors to some smiling faces and a flood of memories. Its a victimless event.
Just remember the two cardinal rules of Halloween: 1) don't be a dick by skimping on the candy 2) you now serve as the memory provider...don't fuck it up.

Say what?

As a working class stiff and a card carrying member of "de collar bleu" I often come into contact with some fairly sketchy individuals whose pasts read like some bus stop, pulp novel rap sheet. Superficially these people would appear to be fine upstanding members of the community. Give them a shave, a haircut and teach them that "aint" is not a conjunction and you have before you Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen just waiting to perform some sort of manual task. What you see is what you get. Scratch the surface, however, and you get a glimpse at dysfunctional with a lemon twist. Whether by tongues loosened by to much drink or simply time and trust, sooner or later an opportunity will present itself where you become privy to some extreme and often hilarious shit.
For instance, there was "Dan" a fellow construction worker who had one of the sharpest minds I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. There were few historical facts he did not know. I'm not talking "what's the worlds biggest lake" bullshit trivia, this cat could tell you the "who, what why, where when and how's" of most anything asked of him. We worked side by side for quite a while and I thought I had him all figured out. It wasn't until I had know him for about a year that he pulled me aside at a Christmas party and began an hour long monologue about how he had escaped from a Mexican prison after being arrested and sentenced to twenty years for smuggling heroin. It was, he said "just a thing." Shit, "just a thing" is getting pulled over and finding that you left your wallet at home. This was Hollywood shit. If anything, I would have pegged him as a embezzler. I heard recently that he was strung out on the same shit he used to run from the south.
My first real initiation into "human camouflage" came when I was 17 and working for a food supplier for a large restaurant chain. I was extremely naive and inexperienced and hadn't been working there for more than a month when all of my "nice" coworkers began rapidly unhinging themselves from reality and I always seemed to be at the epicenter of their collapses. A black dude named Ollie and I ate lunch together every day and over time I thought of him as the ideal family man; wife, kids, been with the company for a decade. Then one day he began to where combat fatigues and headbands to work. Our lunch hour discussions went from how well the Boston Celtics were doing to how fast he could disassemble and reassemble an M-16 assault rifle. He just didn't show up for work one Tuesday. In passing, another worker commented "Vietnam's a motherfucker." Indeed. And then there was the guy who filled Ollie's shoes at the lunch table. He wanted me to help him heist cars. "maybe we can go out and have a few drinks first." That was my last day pushing burgers into an eighteen wheeler.
I guess I should be somewhat desensitized to people pulling rabbits out of their asses, but I still find it hard to reconcile perception with reality. A little more icing on the cake came today when "Jeff", a guy I've know for over a year and always thought of as gruff but harmless threw a beauty out there that had me doubled over laughing my ass off; not so much at what he said but more the matter of fact "oh, by the way..." way in which he just put it out there. I'd been talking with another coworker and I asked him how his little girls were doing. He said they were just fine but that the youngest one had been starting to bite his oldest girl. Out of left field "Jeff" chimed in, "yeah, I know how that can be, that's why they put me in prison." I absolutely lost it. "Say What????" "Yeah", he said "the old lady owed me some money, when I tried to take it out of her purse she tried to pull the purse away....so I bit her shoulder!" Aaaaannnd?? "Well, she called 911 and I got booked on felony assault, the jail was full and they sent me to the state prison." Unbelievable.
So, I guess I will have to assume the position that nobody is really who they portray themselves to be. This is, of course, unless they entirely spill their guts. However, I think the game is best played making these erroneous assumptions and having your world bent a little bit sideways when someone pulls that rabbit out of their ass.

Social Darwinism

Today I saw a fat kid bullying another fat kid. Normally I wouldn't have paid much attention to a couple of neighborhood kids practicing the time honored tradition of "bully and prey." However, it struck me as odd that both of these future diabetics seemed to be cut from a similar socio-economic cloth as well as waddling from the same Ben and Jerry's filled gene pool. In most instances the aggressor has some sort of physical or status superiority which grants him an advantage over an individual of lessor claims. Take the "special needs" kid in gym class for example; you know for a fact that as soon as the whistle is blown every dodge-ball in the room will be air mailed to his melon. Sadly, there is an unwritten hierarchy that was established long ago that ensures that at some point in your life you are going to get punished for your shortcomings. From guys who stayed home on Saturday nights to knit scarves for their cats to anyone whose ever confessed to owning an album by ABBA, everyone has been a target at one point or another. In my day the hierarchy appeared something like this:
1)Jocks/heads
2)hipsters
3)bookworms
4)band members/chorus
5)guys who had posters of Eric Estrada in their lockers
6)Team Short Bus

This is not to say that you could not fall into multiple categories. I was actually the quarterback on my junior high football team and sang in the school chorus. You just learn to take your lumps when half the team shows up and sits in the front row to bust your balls during a concert. You then took out your frustration by giving an atomic wedgie to the lead trombone after the show. Order restored.
I think as you age you become less and less aware of the differences that separate and begin to explore those differences that engage. You no longer find yourself trying to, well, find yourself and are more apt to be open to those that are downright fucking bizarre. By bullying yourself into a social pecking order you surround yourself with individuals of similar attitudes and interests. After a while you discover that your life has become as interesting as a loaf of white bread. I envy those individuals young enough and strong enough not to buy into the rules of order that stipulate that only a certain drumbeat can be marched to. I am also discovering that it is never to late to free your mind of this fallacy.
As the two kids chased each other across the front lawn of a neighboring house I noticed that the lead man had a bag of chips clenched tightly in his fist. Explanation gained, theory held.