Key West

Over the past few years fate has somehow ordained that I would be a party to brief visitations to the Southernmost city in the Continental US-- Key West , Florida. Having had more than its share of genuine characters in its past, the city seems in no danger of losing even a percentage of its resident hooligans. Long known for Ernest Hemmingway and his antics at Sloppy Joes, his frequent watering hole, the city probably is much like he left it at his untimely death. Hemmingway left a legacy as a genius writer and hard drinking scoundral, yet his most talked about link in Key West is the tribe of oddly mutated cats with an extra toe on each front paw. These felines, like the legion of scrawny bantam like chickens, wander the streets at will, and without enemies save for the occasional aging yankee in his rental convertible that often leaves a ball of feathers or cat pelt smashed on the narrow blacktop trails leading to Duvall Street. Key west is perhaps one of the few remaining tourist haunts in the US where you're awakened from your $200 a night room to ugly little bags of feathers crowing angrily at the rising sun. I can personally vouch that the place would be far more pleasant and clean if the police were allowed free hunting with a double barrel twelve gauge and a load of birdshot on these miserable creatures, The chickens only live to eat ,defecate, and procreate; yet in hindsight that's what most of my buddies do, and noone is hunting them with birdshot, except for a few ex-wives. Back to Duvall Street one's sense of normalcy is laid to rest as every dreg of society from pickpockets, hustlers, streetpeople, hookers, and con artists meld somehow together to lend a festive air. Tourists come here and spend bunches of money to be insulted, conned, and treated badly. They find amusing the things that people are regularly arrested for in Times Square. Let the day draw to a close and everyone heads to Mallory Square to watch the sunset and the performers. Junk is sold and everyone is drinking silly little beverages with paper umbrellas, while every Jimmy Buffet wannabee is Singing Margaritaville with a cup close by for donations. Mr. Buffet himself comes in regularily to his Margaritaville Restaurant and his giftshop. You can always tell when he's visiting because there's a fleet of Brinks Trucks to take his money to his island estate. You know where it's 5 O'clock somewhere? The streets are filled with gross sights of fat,obese yankee men and women riding rental bicycles with far too skimpy shorts and tops displaying obscene draps of flesh. What possesses these grandparents to display unsightly old ,fleshy bodies while they're in Key West? Do they cross The Seven Mile Bridge and suddenly want to display their white corpulent, disease ridden bodies?Does Sam and Lucille from Buffalo suddenly think that society wants to see their drooping ass cheeks as they placidly peddle their bikes down Duvall?? I think not. There should be some remnants of decorum even after crossing the bridge. And street people. These characters have been here so long that their bodies look like my old Sperry Topsiders after a Summer on Cumberland Lake. They have not one ounce of body fat on their filthy bodies, as they scrounge behind the restaurants in competition with the cats and chickens for morsels of homosexually produced finger food from fruity little restaurants with French names and Cuban food. Everything is a "wrap" with red wine something and balsamic vinegar. I promise you can't find a balogna and cheese any nearer than Tavanier, and that can be doubtful. Every year in October is when there is a week of debauchery nonpareil called Fantesy Fest , when even the wild ways are topped! The clothing du jour is body paint for women and alcohol for the men . Everyone participates, regardless of sexual persuasion, body type or financial standing. Did I mention Key West is an outpost of homosexuality, for women as well as men? I guess in hindsight that it is an outpost for a lot of things. For some it is a group of middleaged men being led around by wives and being admonished to "Put your Eyes back in your head!" If at times I seem weary of the Conch Republic , I must be excused as fatigued. Come October I'll be searching for Cheap Miami Tickets, and the best rental car deals. Its become a ritual ,and I look forward to the ugly ,depraved sights. If Sandy would just consider letting us plan for Fantasy Fest week. Right. It won't happen.

Beauty-Skindeep or What?

I've often tried to figure out what it is that allows men and women to be attracted to the opposite sex, and what subliminal signals we pick up that makes us think of an attraction. Now a knockout woman always will stand out in a crowd to almost any man, but women are more complex in what they see as attractive and find interesting in a male. I have personally developed a criteria of my own of what makes a woman interesting to me , and oddly enough this changes as I get older. I once read that changing trends had been studied and researchers had found that young women were attracted to older men--great news! The downside was that their definition of older men was 30!That's just another wedge in any feelings of self esteem that I might otherwise have had. My favorite quote that some charlatan like Doctor Phil had come up with was "Men talk to have sex, and women have sex to talk". Well as sensitive as I and my colleagues have become, this solves a lot of problems and lets everyone build up their self-esteem. Women and men are so vastly different in what makes a woman attractive that the two sides will never agree. Women dress and lose weight for other women, as no sane man wants a skinny woman. The chicks just don't get the message that nearly all men want a woman with curves and a little more meat on the bones. Rubens was not wrong when he painted his statuesque models.Men like friendly,yet mysterious women who act like they really enjoy being with the man. I think from my limited knowledge of todays younger women and men that both sexes are more interested in having the right clothes , right hair, make-up ,and the right car than they are of impressing the opposite sex. Olive tries to explain to me what some of the new vocabulary is. Take "Hooking Up" for instance. It is not what I initially thought it to be. Alice and Jerry can hook-up ,and yet not be intimate, and they can become intimate and that can be a type of Hook-up. I think I hooked up with Sandy when I met her downtown for lunch, but I can't be sure of what degree of hook-up we partook of. I don't think it was especially good for her , but I was sensitive to not ask. You cannot say that a relationship is "Rolling "as this means having sex under the influence of drugs. People used to ask how work was coming along and I would say "We're rolling along". Not anymore." Players" are both admired and scorned, and it depends on who has been a part of the play--I think. And Metro sexuals??? This seems to be a male who is straight, but spends a lot of money on haircuts, shampoo, manicures, pedicures, and body lotions. I don't understand the Queer Eyes /straight guys phenom as I plod through middle-agedom. I am told that even Hazmit had his brows waxed to enter a body building contest. You know talking to a male buddy about his brow wax is like having your father talk to you about sex- you just don't go there. I travel a lot and somehow just the glimpse of a flashing earring in a mirror on the car ahead of you will instinctively tell you whether the chick is a babe or less. I can see a little bit of tanned cheek or flashing white teeth and go on the witness stand as to what degree of beauty a woman has. Maybe it's some subliminal way her head is turned, or maybe her confidence is psychically projected, but nontheless most men have radar when it comes to babes. The one exception to the rule that all men can vouch for is that you cannot trust the sound of an unseen woman's voice on the telephone. Every man on earth has a story of hell that came from the blind date with the beautiful voice. Guys-trust me, get a picture before you commit. That's what college yearbooks were invented for. I guess these insights were most helpful to some people unless you are a narcissistic metro-sexual or a woman,in which circumstance I guess hooking up would be an exercise in futility either way. I'm still trying to be more sensitive toward the opposite sex but I just don't have any patience.

The New Frontier Part Two

Blogging is a relatively painful experience for me as I never learned the joy of typing, hence a perfect way for me to spend an hour typing out even a short paragraph. At times I am so envious at the ease which good typists race across the keyboard and magically make stories come together , something I will never achieve. I have often, and truthfully stated that I would exchange two college degrees and assorted other college hours for the ability to play guitar like Eric Clapton,as college degrees come and go but God-given talents are few and far between. As previously stated Americans have always had safety valves in the frontier until the US became settled in 1892 with the end of the frontier era. There was an interesting book about a decade ago called THE POPCORN REPORT which made the premise that it was the first time in history that the civilized areas of the world was more dangerous than the wilderness. Now that got me to thinking ,and the author was right on the money. We often have more people killed daily in Central Kentucky in automobile accidents, shootings, and acts of violence than in the battlegrounds of Iraq! Early Kentucky settlements in Kentucky often had huge numbers of settlers killed due to Indian attacks, accidents, and illness. Some historians calculated that the average Kentucky settler lived only two years after they crossed the mountains in the 1770s and1780s. The year of 1777 was known as the year of the "Bloody Sevens" because so many Kentuckians were killed by the British and Shawnee Indians during a siege that lasted nearly the whole year. Those settlers certainly had the intestinal fortitude just to come across the mountains. Can you imagine how bad were the conditions along the east coast to make them cross the formidable hills as a safety valve? We, on the other hand must constantly look to diversions in modern life for our own safety valves, and there certainly seem to be a myriad of choices to lure us away from the everyday , mundane hours of our lives. Some choose the easy route of narcotics or alcohol to bring some sort of relief, while others will go deeply in debt to attempt to buy relief in the form of happiness. One thing is certain: the wealthy never have to seek relief as much as the poor. Happiness and relief can fall on people with new hobbies as Jimmy Olsen and Pepper Anderson found in Golf. Maynard finds relief catching big fish , and he was recently crestfallen when he found a comrade who supplied him with fishing bait was moving out of state. "You can replace a wife, but a source for big shad is moving and can't be replaced". True quote. Olive can replace total depression on a single visit to the cosmetics counter at Lazarus, and my brother will sit for hours waiting for a turkey or deer. Speaking of which, countless billions of dollars are spent yearly by otherwise intelligent men in the pursuit of wild turkeys. How some creature with a brain the size of a large marble eludes all these grown men is beyond me. Some men ride Motorcycles, and others drive fast cars. Some women buy clothes and look better through plastic surgery;the common denominator being that we each have our poison, the only difference being how much we need and how much it costs.Youth makes a difference as the population of the United States is obsessed with youth and vitality, whereas the true youth is obsessed with the money that the Baby Boomers are spending in pursuit of their youth. No person is happy with what they have.First time job applicants out of high school want supervisory jobs from the start without consideration that they have no skills. Newly wed young couples want new homes in the best subdivisions with Hummers in the driveway. Job skills have gone South and no worker can seem to put in a 40 hour week;I have become the person at 56 that I ridiculed and despised at 26. The other day Olive and I were going to a job site and she was driving with 50Cents screaming hate filled invectives out her CD player and I felt really,really old. I felt like my Dad as her ranted about the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I don't understand rap, and I don't much like Kenny Chesney, who reminds me of a precocious chipmunk. Musically I'm a dinosaur looking for a tar pit to fall into-headfirst. It takes so long to type this that my trains of thought meander around like some old man trying to go to the bathroom, and paragraphs? Hell, I'm lucky just to type with some of the proper letters. I would trade a lot to play like Eric Clapton , and I wouldn't have to type. I'd let my guitar do my talking for me.

The New Frontier

In the early days of American social development Civilization travelled from thev East Coast ever Westward. Frederick Jackson Turner had "the Frontier Thesis" that stated that the Frontier was a safety valve that acted as relief to social conditions to a growing mass of immigrants to the new world. A Frenchman, Alexis De Tocqueville wrote later of the raw spirit of Americans on the frontier in his memoirs about American Democracy. His travels along the frontier during the 1820's were fascinating reading to later historians and Europeans. He was particularly fascinated with the habit of spitting on the muddy sidewalks that the frontiersmen exhibited with regularity. Nothing good lasts forever , and the United States Department of Interior officially declared that the frontier was no more in existence in 192; the Safety Valve was gone forever! One might ask how then do modern Americans relieve stress when they cannot just pack up and move across the mountains when things become unbearable?Well, we as a society have had to become very innovative and invent new ways to beat stress and monotony. I vividly remember my grandfather who was born coincidentally in 1892, the end of the frontier. He never worked a day in his life that I can remember and raised a family of ten children on a small subsistence farm. He never had running water in his house , and resisted any effort of his children to modernize or come into the 20th century. He had a wood cookstove that my grandmother prepared three meals a day like clockwork on, and the rest of the time he sat on the porch chewing tobacco and whittling. In cold weather he sat by a coal stove and did equally nothing , just like summer. He didn't read or participate in anything intellectual. Not being a particularly religious man, he "allowed" my grandmother and the children to go to church, yet refrained from going himself. Living to be around 80 years old, he probably only saw a MD a couple of times in his life, and stayed remarkably fit and healthy for the lifestyle he chose. Not a believer in any form of alcohol, chewing tobacco his only vice, he was all in all a very honorable and proud man. While refusing to come into the modern world, he would have me take him to the grocery store once a week in my then Ultra hip Ford Grand Torino with the big tires and shiny chrome wheels, the 351 Cleveland growling as we went up Kings Mountain Hill in a streak of metallic blue. PawPaw would have his elbow out the window watching the scenery go by as we talked about times past, his favorite riding horse while he was a young man down in Middleburg,Casey County , the scene of his youth. He never seemed to think my hair was getting too long, or that I was anything other than his companion on short adventures. PawPaw died in the Seventies after I graduated from college and he was buried in Middleburg Cemetary next to his father, who was buried next to his father who was buried next to his father. Later in 1990 my own father was interred next to PawPaw, way too early, but laid to rest nontheless. Altogether there are five of my ancestors laid peacefully in a row, overlooking the pretty little valley that most of them had called home since the early 1800's. I sometimes envy them the peace and harmony that they shared in their lives; a commonality that I have never known or attained, and not likely to ever achieve. I have always envied their inner strength and composure and felt alien from their world. My own life is too jumbled to ever have peace, and I guess I wouldn't want it any other way. I've often wondered if I would have gotten along with my ancestors and inevitably come up with the conclusion that we wouldn't have much in common from what I've heard and observed. I guess I've gotten too much from my mother, which isn't a compliment to her at this life. Old De Tocqueville was right in a lot of things to be a Frenchman. I learned most of this while drawing numbers on round track cars for my mentor Danny Coffman and his band of henchmen.

What about Brittany?

OK, so I'm writing this in my most peaceful and tranquil color since I need a little solace about now. It's not easy being a 56 year old man in today's fast paced society.When everything hurls at you at 100 mph , and you are only capable of a maximum speed of 65 , then debris starts hitting your body, if not completely overwhelming you. Tonight I was watching the weather channel when Carl Edwards broke his forecast to say that he had been handed a bulletin saying Brittany Spears was pregnant. I was as shocked as his co-anchor , the Babe Jennifer Lopez! No , not the J. Lo with the marvelous set of buttocks, of P. Diddy /Ben Affleck fame, but Weather woman Jennifer Lopez. I try to keep up with the weather babes because all in all they are pretty nice window dressing for a normally boring subject-the weather.Now we've all seen Jim Cantore nearly blown away by hurricanes, or Mike Sliddell in snow up to his bushy eyebrows, and who hasn't listened to Dr. Paul Kochin as he tries to talk in a gravelly voice? After all he is the winter weather expert. I was completely taken aback as the announcement of Brittany's pregnancy came out of a meteorologist's mouth. I hope this is not a new trend, as all the airwaves will be following this story. How could something of the magnitude of the Pope's death be even followed by such drivel? I personally have know many ,many couples of the caliber of Ms. Spears and her husband , and none have even gotten an announcement in the papers of a new child, yet none have the money and notoriety of the soon to be mother. I guess what I'm saying is that I would like a break from this trashy bunch of the nouveau riche and their constant escapades. I wish Michael Jackson , Robert Blake, O J Simpson, and Anna Nicole Smith were somewhere else. Court TV has just about been locked out on my tv, along with the shopping channels. And E , Entertainment TV, has actors that recreate the daily carryings-on of the Michael Jackson Trial. Where did they get that androgynous creature to play Michael? I hope that's all make-up and not a true person just like Michael. Could he have spent millions of dollars cloning himself? Has Dolly the sheep come back to haunt us?And still on Michael, am I the only one that thinks the long , straight white hair of his lawyer is just a little too similar to Jackson's long straight black Hair? Good Lord is this"Ebony And Ivory" come to fruition? Is this Ying and Yang? And now we are told Mr. Home Alone with his jelly filled lips was a playmate at Neverland. I'm waiting to hear that Robert Blake spent some quality time with Jocko. All this ruminating leads to the conclusion that our country has somehow lost our focus and ethical priorities. Nearly one half of a Million people perished in December's Tsunami, and have received less press coverage than these little court cases. Up until recent times the most talked about court cases were the Lindberg baby kidnapping, the Neurenberg Trials, and probably the McCarthy hearings . Never have so many words been so wasted on such unworthy subjects. We all know about Paris Hilton's sex tapes, Pamela Anderson's sex tapes, and Bill "I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT WOMAN", and nothing shocks us anymore. I remember in college not so long ago that "orals" meant something altogether different. Thanks to the Oval Office even Blue haired grannies talk about oral sex. I think this is not a healthy direction for our society. I feel that Nicole Brown Simpson, Ron Goldman, Jon Benet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, and Bonnie Blake went awfully easily and cheaply down the drain.Some people care, but not the legal system, as fame and power has a way of eluding justice.This weekend the future King of England remarried, and nobody cared. It was like two old plow horses that had been living together for 35 years suddenly made it legal. They didn't get much more publicity than if the nuptials had been performed at my mentor Danny Coffman's garage.In this particular case I was proud of the restraint of the fifth estate. Maybe all this blabbering has to do with my bio-rhythms being out of whack. Does anybody remember Bio-rhytms? I think those went out with The BeeGees and Dance Fever, but I feel somehow disconnected with Ms. Spears and her upcoming birth.Will we have to send gifts? Will she have showers? What do you give to the"OOPS I DID IT AGAIN" new mother?I  do somewhat understand Paris Hilton, as I knew some like her years ago.