Experience #37: gang'bangin'

Experience #67: Pork & Heartache

Honey, you lied when you said you loved me

Miele, lei ha mentito quando ha detto hai amato me - come la fica siete

And I had no cause to doubt you.

E non avevo motivo di dubitare di lei.

But I'd rather go on hearing your lies

Ma io preferirei andare in udienza vostre menzogne

Than go on living without you.

Di continuare a vivere senza di voi.

Experience #74: Would you like fries with that?

+=

Experience #73: Heavenly Dessert

Blessed are the chocolate chips, baby!

Experience #66: He brings us so many things we need....

Many a woman takes pride in her selection of Rawleigh's Good Health Products and tells her friends, "We're always glad when the Rawleigh Retailer comes. He brings us so many things we need and can hardly do without." They use these necessities almost every day and prefer them for every need because of their quality and practical usefulness and the service, savings and satisfaction they give.

Experience #32: Not a basic dietary item, such as flour, rice, or corn.

All of the Swingline series staples are twin-packed and contain 5,000 staples per pack; that's 10,000 staples. I began to calculate: there are 52 weeks in a year and if I used 10 staples per week (2 per work day) that would amount to 520 staples annually. One carton of 5,000 would cover me for the next ten years. I concluded this Swingline twin-pack of 10,000 total staples would last two decades, maybe longer than I'll live and I would have to consider how to fairly distribute them among my heirs or I could be generous with their distribution right now. Designate the staple the coin of my realm and give a staple to any one in need or begin to leave them as tips to waiters, waitresses, doormen, taxi drivers, bell hops, barbers and Korean massage parlor employees.

(excerpted from a blog originally published in 2007 titled, "....sex, pies and CDRs")

Experience #28: The Festicle Testival

California Festival Sells Deep-Fried Testicles

Little Rock, California - Around here, it may be tough to pass up anything deep-fried.
Californians in this high desert community have deep-fried cheese curds, candy bars and Twinkies. They now have deep-fried livestock testicles, too. More than 300 people paid $5 for all-you-can-eat goat, lamb and bull testicles Saturday at the 4th annual Testicle Festival at Mother's Own Bar and Grill in the center of the main highway that runs through town.
"Once you get over the mental (aspect) of what you're eating, it's just like eating any other food, and it tastes good," Buster Choups said.
Festival founder Nancy Ballzer said the festival grew out of her late husband Dick's birthday party 6 years ago. They decided to have "a nut fry" at Mother's Own after bringing back lamb fries from a trip to New Mexico. The event has grown each year and now they fry up to 100 pounds of testicles, she said.
"What else can you do in a small town?" Ballzer stated.
Dutch Goubam, 78, likes the parts sandwiched between bread with tartar sauce. They're not so different from regular meatballs also served at the festival, he said. "After a few beers, you can't really tell the difference," Goubam said, "but that's also the frame of mind I used when I'd have sex with my late wife, Vera once she turned seventy-two."

Copyright 2007 The eXpentco Press

Experience #51: I love this joke

A turtle was walking down an alley in New York when he was mugged by a gang of snails. A police detective came to investigate and asked the turtle if he could explain what happened.
The turtle looked at the detective with a confused look on his face and replied “I don't know, it all happened so fast.”

Experience #68: se vuelven nostálgicos

I love the sound of scratches and pops in the morning....it sounds like rock & roll.

Experience #21: "woh-oh-oh-oh"

One night in late December on the David Letterman Show I saw the annual performance of Darlene Love's classic, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)". I believe it was the 19th time she's appeared to sing this holiday anthem and perhaps the 8th or 9th time I witnessed the live broadcast. I have one season's performance (either 2006 or 2007) saved on DVR - each year's presentation has progressively grown in orchestra and chorus and noticeable production value. It's simply a great song originally off of Phil Spector's, 1963 Philles Records Christmas album, "A Christmas Gift For You."

I enjoy listening to the Spector records of that day and was reminded of the power of pop music during a discussion at a recent dinner party. Spector's name was introduced into a conversation about music and I instinctively recalled the impact of ten little words, one simple line from one of the Top 100 Records of All Time (Rolling Stone Magazine).

There have been better songs and certainly better lyrics, but as a pure pop record, a 45 RPM built for the sole purpose of blowing you away - in it's black vinyl form, "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes is a work of art.

Veronica (Ronnie) Bennett, her sister, the recently deceased, Estelle, and their cousin Nedra Talley grew up in New York City's Washington Heights.

The first single on Spector's Philles label in July 1963 was the Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/ Phil Spector song, "Be My Baby." Ronnie's distinctive, seductive vocal delivery, along with her now legendary "woh-oh-oh-oh," drove lovestruck teenage boys wild while Spector's production ("Wall Of Sound") drove the single to chart success. By October, 1963 it was at number two and became an international hit as it reached number four on the English Charts. This was the biggest hit and only top 10 for The Ronettes though their album, "Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes," as far as I'm concerned is filled with nothing but hits.

Arguably the most distinctive drum introduction in the history of rock music was played by legendary session man, Hal Blaine. Other players on the session included, Sonny Bono on percussion, Leon Russell on piano and Cher, who was working for Spector at the time, sang backup vocals. Martin Scorcese effectively used the track over the opening credits of his break-through film, "Mean Streets" and if I'm not mistaken, a second time in "Goodfellas". These were two of the first films to construct a soundtrack out of pop songs.

By the way, that favorite line from the song, the one that knocked me out, "...for every kiss you give me, I'll give you three..." - doesn't get any better than that whether or not you have acne.

Experience #33: I see dead Peeps.

Experience #2: A Movie Memory

As a boy, I saw the Disney film, Pinocchio and was genuinely moved by the story, a classic fairy tale shared in many cultures and told in many languages with minor variations. This uniquely American version tells of the old Italian cobbler, Geppetto, the eponymous puppet who dreamed of being a boy, a magic blue fairy godmother and a mentor insect, Jiminy Cricket. The character of the old man was rich and textured and well drawn, the Pinocchio character was, no pun intended, a little wooden, the fairy was glowing and intriguingly sexy, and the Jiminy Cricket performance was brilliant. Interestingly, Jiminy Cricket played the cricket that shared his name. He received rave reviews; won acclaim at a number of foreign film festivals and critics in a dozen US cities chose this performance, in their year end "Best Of" lists, as Best Supporting - to the extent some even argued that Mr. Cricket stole the movie and was a "lock" for an Academy Award. In an upset, Walter Brennan won for The Westerner.

Cricket went on to appear in a number of lesser films that emanated from the Disney studio, but never was given a role with the weight of his silver screen debut. He did some television in the early days of the medium, but was misused mainly in hosting chores.
Apparently the scripts just never came his way plus it was a time in Hollywood history, best be forgotten, when movie studios black listed insect performers. He moved to Europe and though he acted in a number of French "new wave" films as well as Italian neo-realism roles, he was little used for anything except cricket parts. He returned to America and in the late fifties and appeared on screen again in the sci-fi film, The Swarm, this time as a wasp, but one reviewer predictably commented, "Cricket is no wasp". Disney attempted to re-energize his career and placed him in a number of little-seen nature films. He found a niche for a while doing voice-over work, most famously, it is Cricket chirping in the background of the late evening outdoor love scenes between Kim Novak and William Holden in the fifties classic, Picnic.
He gradually faded from the limelight, was last seen publicly on the 1977 PBS tribute, "Live from Lincoln Center" when former President Jimmy Carter bestowed the Medal of Freedom on comedian and entomologist, Pinky Lee.Jiminy retired to a quiet life in Palm Springs with his long time companion, the successful pool boy Ramon Aqua, where he has comfortably lived for thirty years off the royalties accumulated by lucrative merchandising contracts, negotiated early in his career, that licensed his likeness for products ranging from insect repelents to Caterpillar
tractors.
This brings me to the present and the chance to applaud the brave, genius and inspired casting by famed Broadway producer, David Florence who announced Monday that Cricket has won the lead role in the upcoming musical version of William Shakespeare's, King Lear, "The King and Me" scheduled to hit the great white way in the Fall of 2009. Rumor has it that Florence is attempting to reunite the Supremes for the roles of Lear's daughters, though well placed sources have indicated the Dixie Chicks have agreed to a five month commitment. HBO has secured the television and cable rights while MGM has optioned the film along with DVD and digital
rights. The stage production will be directed by newcomer Saul Kraft who up to now has directed a couple of Cops segments for the successful Fox TV series and the pilot for the Home Shopping Network jewelry segments.

Experience #1: BEAT BUSH REDUX!

Four years ago, during the run-up to the 2004 presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, I posted a daily blog called Beat Bush. There were nearly two hundred messages delivered for more than six months that contained a simple, single sentence or short paragraph that pointed out the corruption and ineptitude of the Bush administration. Occasionally I made the greater argument against government abuses and the danger of apathetic citizens in a democracy. I exposed the politics of class warfare. Many times I addressed the complicity of mass media as promoters of government ideas rather than as reporters of wrong-doing with an obligation to truthfully inform the public of misdeeds done in our name.
Following are five excerpts taken from the first month's collection and sadly nothing has changed in America.

#1 - Goebbels quote "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

#9 - Democratic Dissent "To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them." Michael Parenti

#14 - Patriotic Goodness "The U.S. record of war crimes has been, from the nineteenth century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions. A culture of militarism has saturated the public sphere, including academia, endowing all U.S. interventions abroad with a patina of patriotic goodness and democratic sensibilities beyond genuine interrogation. Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion."

Carl Boggs

#18 - Support Our Troops (?) "The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about." Noam Chomsky

#30 - One Liberty at a Time In the name of fighting terrorism, President Bush and his administration have abruptly overridden rights protected by the Constitution and international law. Ideas foreign to American principles—detention without trial, denial of access to lawyers, years of interrogation in isolation—are now American practices. The danger of what is happening is more profound than the denial of justice to some individuals. The Bush administration is really attacking a basic premise of the American system: that we have a government under law. It was a novel idea when James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the rest laid it down at the end of the 18th century, and ever since it has been a distinctive feature of our polity: Political leaders are subject to the law, responsible to legal constraints on their power as well as to the vote of the people. "A government of laws, and not of men," John Adams first said. From the cages at Gunatanamo to a jail cell in Brooklyn, the administration isn't just threatening the rights of a few detainees—it's undermining the very foundation of democracy.

Anthony Lewis