Having the Last Laugh

Since we're both in the same predicament, being the last one's standing after the rest of our family has bitten the dust., Barn and I wonder who will run our funerals, properly? We've discussed per-arrangement plans but that requires the upfront expense of thousands of dollars and there's still no guarantee the person you appoint to run it will do a decent job. We both know and agree, since we two have buried, between us, five people, that funerals never seem to go according to the script. That being due to everyone else wanting a “part” in it, as if we're auditioning for a play.

We wonder how fucked up ours will be.

Who will write the obituary? It seems most certainly they will not include what we want in it. Most obits read like a Final Resume and are just as boring. We both felt our obits ought to include some comedy, some shocking revelations of deep, dark secrets and replace our photo in the paper's obit with Larry from the Three Stooges.

Barn once thought he might get those three women in Plymouth who are professional mourners. There is apparently three older Italian women who, for a price, will dress in black, stand by your coffin and weep and tear, just audibly enough to make it look like you really will be missed. I suggested to him to instead get three professional laughers. They instead can point at his casket, giggle, smirk and guffaw.

We both thought our funerals should be absolute travesties of good taste.

I thought on it and figured, for shits 'n' giggles, that I'd have an Al Jolson type, in blackface, tap dance on my coffin with singing “Mammy!

“The sun shines East! The sun shines West! But I know where the sun shines best! Mammy! Mammy!(Tappity tap tap!)

I can remember sitting in funeral home while I was planning out my brother's funeral. The “president emeritus” of the place was/is Max B. who, quite fortunately for him, manage to cultivate that morose, waxy-faced dour look about him. I swear could be a stand in for Lurch in the Adams Family. Funeral directors ought to look the part! 

Anyways, as he was getting the history of my brother he probably built a certain quick opinion about how the funeral might go and says this, as a gentle reproach.

“The Catholic church, St Joseph's, will not allow any other music to be played other than the choral favorites...and Mt St Mary's cemetery has strict regulations on what kinds of memorial stones can be placed there.”

I say: “Oh, I had no plans of playing Jimi Hendrix's “Star Spangled Banner” in the church.” And I smirk a bit.

Lurch, never did get the joke. God! These guys are too serious!

Lurch still is the funeral director there and if I were to pre plan my own, I'd probably make him very uncomfortable with the requests I'd want carried out.

“NO! I will not have a trampoline act on these premises! That's too disrespectful!”

“...but I want it to be disrespectful”

“NOT in my funeral home!!”

I wonder how far you can push these guys before they start worrying about the business's reputation?

**

M*h**n, Ronald. February 5 1965 – July 7 20??

Ron died last Tuesday after a coward's battle with terminal hemorrhoids. A Pulitzer Prize winner, astrophysicist, accomplished pianist and poet...lived near him. He leaves behind him a series of numerous failed romances that never resulted in any children (well, he was pretty sure there weren't any, we're so not sure though).

He attended local Pawtucket schools and graduated (late) from Rhode Island College in 1988. He proudly once stated that he had a GPA of 0.93 at one time.

Ron was never a veteran, nor did he belong to any organizations such as the Elks, Rotary Club or Knights of Columbus. He did however belong to that loosely held organization of imbibers of Irish pubs. He manage to vomit in each of them at least once during his career.

As a gesture of good faith, Ron would like to pubically thank the late Secretary of State Robert Burns, who managed to get his arrest and charges squashed after the Pawtucket Police raided the Slater Park drug ring in 1984.

Funeral arrangements include a remembrance celebration at Attleboro's Chuck E Cheez with burial at Swan Point Cemetery with the Grateful Dead cover band, “Village Idiots” officiating.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the German/American Bund Nazi Party.

That Boy is a P.I.G.!

I'll overhear stories of the 20 Somethings I know and each cohort pretty much does the same thing as the one before it. The difference is that for the upcoming one, “It's New To Them.” It was new to my peers at one time too.

So these young adults have jobs, some money and now can exercise new found freedoms that they can purchase. Get enough money and you purchase some pretty unique ones too. But that comes later. I listened as they discovered, for the first time, the Nordic Lodge down there in Charlestown. I don't think they went for the food, more likely it sounded they all wanted to be together to experience a good gorging at a Pig Out Fest type restaurant. I think Nordic charges $90 now.

“Pigging out.” Anyone use this phrase anymore? Christ, I still say “you dig that...right?” I'm old...

For my droogs in the early 80's, anything south of Cranston didn't exist unless it was the beach. So we traveled around Providence or north or east of that. On a Saturday night once, we had finally discovered the Mon Kou restaurant in Attleboro. (Hint: We had enough money from our shitty first jobs to eat out!).

Mon Kou, is a terrifically gaudy, Polynesian restaurant that doesn't serve Polynesian food, only it serves to Americans what they think is Polynesian food. AKA: Sweetened Garbage. But so what, to us 20 year olds, this was new and different. We all grew up on garbage as well too, Chef Boyardee and Kraft's Mac 'N' Cheese. We've always seen the Mon Kou commercials on TV, with their strange rum loaded drinks and the Pou Pou platter with the little blue alcohol flame in the middle. Now we finally got to check it out.

We get the Pou Pou platter and like a bunch of pigs, we start tearing it apart. I had grabbed what looked like Teriyaki steak but it was dyed red and cooked properly to 165 degrees...plus another 200 for 45 minutes. I had to tear into this thing like a wolf tears ligaments off a bone. I held it tight with two hands, bite down hard, then pull my head back to tear a piece off. It was that tough. I kept at this when I felt someone looking at me. You all know that feeling.

I look up as I was hunched over and spy three girls in the next booth, near our age, staring at me as I was ripping the meat off that giant toothpick they stuck it on. I sat there, with shreds of meat hanging out my mouth, looking over the tops of my glasses at them with this, “Yeah....so?” look. Jim and Mark who I was with didn't give a crap at how I was eating.

Of course, it dawns on me late that I'm in public and these are girls, possible dates, possible Mothers to my 200 babies when I slowly sit up straight and give up the Neanderthal eating technique.

Whoops!

Well, when you have a buzz on, your with your longtime friends who are very used to you and you're hungry...I guess eating like a dog ain't too bad. No?

**

The second time I was there was with my RIC friends. We were bar hopping around when we stopped in there for drinks and not too many. I had ordered a Fog Cutter just for an experiment as I had never ordered their oddly named drinks before except beer. That was a mistake.

As my friends kept talking and talking, the rum, brandy, vodka and whatever they fill up the glass with was hitting me. Back then I knew I was drunk with the possible chance of puking when I felt I had crossed that invisible line I knew I had. I can't really describe what that line felt like but once I crossed it, and it was always too late, I quietly thought to myself, “Uh-oh...You're fucked.”

So like any other 20 Something guy, you MUST keep the pretense up that you're not about to fall forward into the plate of appetizers then tilt the whole table onto you with your weight. Don't pass out is the rule!

99.99% of the time if I was nauseous, I would have this little conversation in my head trying to convince my stomach that, “You're not going to puke...you feel fine...this'll pass...just wait another ten minutes and be calm...”

This time. I cheered my stomach to heave it all up. I had “normally” gone to the bathroom, hoping no one was in it and then kept saying...”I'm sick I'm sick! I think i'm gonna puke!” I was cheering on that part of your brain that throws that switch. I wanted all that liquor out of me. I still had to drive some of these people home to Coventry!

And out it came! Thank God! It's funny how that'll sober you up fast. I gave a quick shot in the mirror after I washed out my mouth and said, “Hell, you handsome devil, you look great even after you puke!” The real fact is that my eyes were red and glossy from tearing, but I was still sort of heavily buzzed and self deception works great!

Those are my two experiences with Mon Kou. I haven't been back since.

Since then, I've eaten at far better Asian restaurants that serve you sea creatures you can't identify...and I use a knife and fork. Want to eat food that you can't figure out what it is? Go to Pho Horns in Providence, they'll serve you tiny, Vietnamese sea monsters caught from the South China Sea. 

 Love the Fake Gaugin Paintings at Mon Kou!

Indestructible

Hubris, in your twenties I guess is somewhat normal. You're still just barely out of your teens and you still feel you can take on the world. Ok. Fine. That's good in a one way. No one's ever pissed all over a positive attitude that can help propel you along to your goals. But add to that the “nothing can harm me because I haven't been through the wringer yet,” which is a protective bubble mentality based on having a decent life up to now, is taking it too far. Well, they don't do it consciously...it's a element of being young still.

If all your life the weather's been fine, why shouldn't it continue to do so?

You both and I know adults, day to day schlepping, older adults who are battle worn, see the world differently. But I've witnessed the youth, without them meaning to, offhandedly insult the shit out of these Veterans of Life. I call the youth's backhanded slap, a “Oh, That Won't Happen To Me” approach of Life. I and other my age have felt those broad statements like pellets from an ever spreading shotgun blast. It wasn't aimed at us but wow, does it sting when it hits. “Whoa kid, you don't know where you speak of yet! Stop firing!”

At Quinn's the other day, I was discussing the many divorces I've seen happen around me with another guy and we sort of just sat there in awe at the wasteland that's left of former families. I suppose it's the same astonishment you'd see looking at town ripped up by a tornado for the first time.

“Holy Shit! I didn't know how bad it could get!”

As we talk of other of Life's little storms, usually ones we two never experienced but respect because we've seen it happen to others close to us, come up. Alcoholism, fucked-up kids who turned about bad and still live at home at 29, others with health issues they created themselves but seem powerless to change and what not. As we were going over this, a “kid” seated next to us and I mean kid as a guy in his mid 20's, has to get into the conversation...

“That can't happen to me...I've heard of that stuff too...I'll probably steer clear of all of that.”

I and the guy next to me look at the kid with sluggish amazement. You could read our faces saying: “ Whaaat?”

“You'll steer clear of it all? I ask him.

“Yeah, sure...if you just don't do the stupid things your parents, older people do, you'll escape that fate.”

I talk on as this is one hell of a belief system I'm hearing. At first I thought this kid was one smug son a bitch but quickly realized it wasn't from that tact at all. It was just someone who hasn't met Life yet.

“You mean that IF you make the right decisions, in a vacuum..without other of Life's variables...you can't help but to achieve nirvana?”

“What do you mean by variables?” he asks.

“I mean stuff in your life you can't control.”

He counters with, “But I pretty much control everything in my life.”

“Do you?” I say like a smart alec.

**

The “I Won't Make the Same Mistakes as My Parents/Elders Made” mentality is something to see. Hell, I was of the same mind set when I was 25. I suppose each generation had to go through it. After being knocked around a few hundred dozen times...you finally 'get it.'

“I won't make the same mistakes...”

Just you wait! Ah HA HA HA HA! Is what I have to say. It's part of being human and each generation usually never listens to it's elders...and repeats it all again.

Social Climbers and the Ones Above Them

People change and yet they don't. Sigh, how's that for a starting sentence? I mean that their core personality really doesn't change over the years, only the volume of them gets turned down as they age. Mine has. Everyone I know has had their volume turned down to “3” instead of blasting at “10" when we were 19.

I was watching the Today Show, sort of, when I noticed something I saw at a high school reunion. The hosts, Morales, Geist, Roker and Hall were falling over one another to take the “lead” in some project they had to accomplish, each trying to outdo the other, each trying to be exec in charge. It “looks” helpful but it's just a subdued and hidden vicious competition. They were all talented at it. I began to wonder if they were exactly this way in high school? Probably so....

At my last high school reunion, I saw this very same behavior occur when someone suggested we all take a class photo for the school's alumni website. At once, all of the top, A-List girls who were the most popular in our senior class sprang immediately to the challenge. They were moving tables, chairs, and trying to herd us into an alcove so we'd all “fit” within the picture frame. Funny thing though, it was only the women who were doing this. The A-List guys from our class didn't seem to care a whit. The A-List men had beer guts and seemed far more interested in moving slowly as they could.

A problem arose when the A-List girls couldn't figure out how to use a SLR digital camera. The grumbling from us in the alcove started to get a bit louder. One of us mentioned to me, “Jesus, they never grew up, they're still the same.” Finally I shouted to Jill, “Jill, there's an “automatic” setting, use that! It'll focus, flash and do it all for you!. It's probably the “green” setting on the dial!”

The pics were finally snapped and we all dispersed back to our h'orderves and drinks. I then watched a bit as the A List Girls buzzed around like bees trying to get names and locations of all of us as we were in that picture. Again, each one was trying to outdo the other as to how to do this properly. As one became Queen, the others would find ways to oust her by coming up with a better idea.

They were 48 years old...it's been a while since the Prom.

**

I once talked to an admin guy, his job was to motivate, manage and direct a bunch of bank managers under his control. He told me that part of the interview process not only included the screens for typical experience, recommendations and such, but also did a bit of a sly psychological test on them. He asked about their high school experience and teased out of them if they were ever in the top echelon. He told me he wanted just those who were just that.

He went on to say that they were easily controlled and motivated to outdo one another.

“I pit them against one another, to compete, to gain the most profit from their particular branches. They're like Pavlov's Dogs, I ring my bell and they salivate.”

He also told me that creating a culture within that group was fairly easy. He made it known, sort of covertly, that he loved seeing his managers always striving, always breaking records...in anything.

“One guy was taking flying lessons to “improve”. Another was enrolled in a bike race around Lake George and I told him I hoped he would win, not just finish, but WIN.”

“None of this has anything to do with increasing profit, gaining more customers, coming up with “sticky” products to keep customers there, it all has to do with stoking their knee jerk desire to be First. I hold out the King or Queen of the Prom crown and they all want it.”

“You cynical bastard.” I thought.

I also thought that the A-List in our school who rose to the ranks of managerials and if they knew they were marionettes on strings?

Townie

I dream of my past. I'm unsure why that is, perhaps it's what you do when you can stack decades like book volumes. This morning I had a weird one that replayed an old short-lived romance I had with a girl entirely out of my league. The dream started of all places, in Dublin. The dream had us in restaurant and for some reason, I knew the IRA had placed a bomb there. I suggested we go across the street to the other restaurant and we dined al fresco, waiting for the bomb to go off. It did, blowing curtains, plates and diners out the windows. But we just sat there, munching our food and watching the first responders come to clean up the mess. We both acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. The dream woke me up because it was vivid and I had pretty much forgotten about her over the years.

I sat up on my elbows and thought. “What the fuck was that about?”

The Real Story:

The girl I'll call the girl Bella Thorpe because she resembled her. She was the daughter of RISD's one time curator of painting and sculpture in the mid 90's. The girl lived in about every major European metropolitan center since childhood. I, however, was from Puh-TUH-kit. We had met at the Living Room watching a cover band of the Rolling Stones. She was very easy to approach because of the “come hither” grenade she tossed at my feet. She might have shot a Coast Guard illumination flare over my head as well too. That and those bangs she had that spilled across her forehead. I'm a sucker for the “right” hair...still am! She wasn't the usual S.P. (Sickening Pig) I usually dated. “Sickening Pigs” were local girls we hung with, local yokels. They weren't ugly in any way but for some reason, that's what we called them, SP's. To the girls, we local guys were “scum/dirt bags.” All terms of endearment, you know.

“Hey, you taking that Sickening Pig to the see Petty at Great Woods?”

“Yeah, she bought the tickets months ago, she really wants to go.”

Anyways...

I knew I was out of my league because she was drop dead pretty, cultured, monied and was working toward her Masters. I was working at a social service job trying to translate for the deaf. Some of those duties included translating to a teen at a Warren Dunkin' Donuts that my guy wanted four sugars in his coffee. Between Bella and I, there was a tiny bit of disparity in our socio-economic levels there.

The neighborhood surrounding Blackstone Blvd is ridiculously well to do. The part down by the Seekonk River is pretty much out of the way and you will not know it exists...I didn't really till I picked her up one night. She had come bounding out of her house when I pulled up. Again, that long hair swaying, big eyes and nice summer dress were making me fall in love. Shit! Wrong thing to do. You're getting lost in her! But your heart loves to do amazing mental gymnastics with your brain and I was hoping...perhaps...this could last?

When I had pulled up in front of her house the very first time, the first thought I had was this: “I Swear Upon My Mother's Soul..she will NEVER see the house I live in.” The home she was in looked a bit of a Frank Lloyd Wright/Brady Bunch rambling ranch with this huge crawling garden that was well tended, along with a large Shinto post and beam thingy covered in ivy. I lived in a Cape Cod Box surrounded by half crab grass and a few yew bushes...on a wide and spreading .12 acre plot.

We palled around for about a month and a half when I heard something she said that seemed kind of insulting but I didn't quite get the phrase. That phrase, had I understood it, would've told me all the truth I needed to know.

We were at WaterPlace park, down by that small amphitheater where they have the free summer concert series, when one of her RISD friends came by. They were about twenty feet off, talking when the girl asks who I was. Bella says, “That's Ronnie, he's my Townie boyfriend.”

“Townie?” I thought. “What's a 'townie?'”

I didn't ask or pursue her for a definition. Thought I did come to understand it in another month.

Of course, I was getting deeper and deeper into her, rationalizing the fact that we had very different backgrounds and very different futures. Love, is in love with itself. That lesson you learn after you whomp your head on it time and time again till you “get it.” But until that time, you can hope for FantasyLand, Puppies and Unicorns and Skittles. Plus, she was sooo damn pretty, engaging, smart and the whole package seemed perfect. She was a rare find.

That day came when reality thudded. She had told me she had won internship at NYC's Metropolitan Museum and couldn't pass that up. At first, I agreed, “Yes, this is in your best interests.” But of course, the other side was screaming “NO NO NO I DON”T WANT TO LOSE MY CANDY!” I didn't make a scene but felt like she had ripped my heart out through my rib cage, using a warm spoon. Shit...

Well, I told myself later on that night, the kid (she 23, I 32 at the time) did bounce from city to city in her life and apparently loved doing so. Her life took her from Warsaw to Seattle. The rest of reality sunk in weeks later.

“Townie...hmm...I have been a Townie fling. I can put that on my resume.” I thought. I knew what that word meant then.

You pile on life's experiences and it can be shocking when you look back on all the things you did or all the roles you filled for a time. I have been a young punk, semi-orphan, a stand off-ish investor in various underground economies in Slater Park in the early 80's, college kid and a social worker type. I had nailed myself to the Cross for other family members when they needed the help. A “Dad” to too many lost and confused waifs, beach bum, a balls to the wall day trader yelling at a computer screen and mortgage originator. I also have sneezed a lot, threw up through my nose once and laughed till I teared.

I also was a Townie...

Hell of a resume huh?

For those of you who don't know...

And "Bella," a similar look she had and bangs, bangs bangs!