That’s Impossible!

When we were kids, we were infatuated with the magic box called radio.  Most of them were sizeable then, some as big as furniture pieces, often ornate and almost always set up in the parlor or main room of the house so many people could listen at the same time.  And they did, to Jack Benny, to Fibber McGee and Molly, to Meet the Press, Ellery Queen Mysteries and Duffy’s Tavern.  The kids had The Lone Ranger, Jack Armstrong--All-American Boy, The Green Hornet and others.  All us kids could answer the whispered question, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.”  That was Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, who could make himself invisible and was the first to let us know “The seed of crime bears bitter fruit!”

Then there were the beloved Red Sox games starting in February in a faraway paradise called Florida, where the grass was always green and you could play ball all year long.  The announcers were ebullient, describing their surroundings as Monsignor Daly and our catechisms might paint heaven, not a cloud in the sky, perfect temperatures, the home team uniforms as white as the driven snow.

All of this bounty was provided by the munificence of radio, the ultimate source.  It woke us up in the morning, put us to bed at night and played music all day long.  It gave us war bulletins, told us what the president was up to, brought glee on snow days with its no-school bulletins, told us what was on the menu at Adventure Car Hop.  We couldn’t imagine a world where radio played second fiddle to anything.  Then one day, Jackie Mercier pulled up on his bike and spoke blasphemy.  He told us sometime soon radio would be upstaged by an electronic device which would let us see pictures along with hearing sounds.  “I think they’re gonna call it television.” he said.

Everybody laughed at the hilarious folly.  “Jackie, that’s impossible!” said Bobby Bennett, who was extra-smart because his father was a doctor.  “How can you get the picture from somewhere else to here?”  Exactly!  It was a pipedream, a crime against nature, the notion of fools.  But gee, what if we could actually see Ted Williams smack one up into the light tower?  Then one day, we did.  It was a very small picture, grainy as hell, almost as if you were looking through a veil, and the sound was crackly, but we did see Ted Williams rounding the bases, never tipping his cap.  If this was possible, what might be next?

Austin, 1962.  Photo by Marjorie Aletta

Oh Lord, Won’t You Buy Me A Monterey Pop?

I didn’t know a lot of famous people in 1962.  To us, we lived here and famous people lived over there.  The notion of one of us crossing over to their camp was never considered.  In 1962, the ultimate dream was to some day have a $100 a week job and a wife who looked like Jean Shrimpton.  Fame and fortune were crafty demons seeking to lure you off the road most travelled.  And there might have been no single person I knew less likely to achieve success than 19-year-old Janis Joplin, a cranky, unkempt University of Texas art student who broke every rule society put in front of her.  I met her at a party at the apartment of one Neil Unterseher, a UT scholarship tennis player and friend of Gilbert Shelton.  She was dressed all in black and carried a black autoharp, wending her way around the crowd of “straight people” (Janis’ description of almost everyone else).  Nobody paid a bit of attention to her.  Then she sang a little folk song and it was a different story.

When the party broke up, she walked off down Congress Avenue with me and Lieuen Adkins, talking about nothing.  We dipped into a sparse eatery, found a booth and a bat followed us in the door, circling the restaurant menacingly while the employees sought to corner the thing.  Janis, of course rooted for the bat.  Loudly…earning the enmity of the bat posse, which encouraged us to leave.  Eventually, Lieuen (who actually had a curfew) went home and Janis and I found some foliage to sleep in on the Texas State Capitol  grounds, roused several hours later by a security patrol which was not amused.  We became friends, maybe because I was just as weird to her as she was to me.  Or maybe because the bent members of the Texas Ranger magazine staff enjoyed a certain status among the studentry as slightly off-kilter mavericks on a mission from a different god.

Originally, I lived in Gilbert’s condemned apartment and stayed in the deserted building after everyone had moved out and until the wreckers knocked on the door.  I hitchhiked to Houston looking for a job, didn’t get it, and returned to Austin, picked up at the county line by Lieuen, who asked me where I was going to live.  I told him I didn’t know and he advised that Janis had found a free house, the owners of which were in Europe for the next three months.  She took me in and I stayed there for  eight weeks, at which time the owners made an unexpected early return and threw us out.  During those eight weeks, I was privy to endless rehearsals by Janis’ band, The Waller Creek Boys, which included Powell St. John and Lannie Wiggins.  After the rehearsals, there were endless speculations about “making it,” finding some modicum of success in the cold, cruel world.  Lannie and Powell were content to earn a simple living plying their trade, evading the nine-to-five trip they equated with death.  Not Janis.  “I want to be a star!” she raved, waving her arms in the air.  Everybody laughed.  Stars in those days did not look like Janis.  They looked like Joan Baez, or the lovely blonde-haired Lolita, who charmed the boys at the UT Student Union’s Wednesday night folksings.  Janis couldn’t even get a singing job in a bar.  To earn extra money, she found a waitress gig at a Pancake House.  She lasted three weeks.

There was no question Janis Joplin had talent, though in those days it was spent on folk songs, old Bible numbers, western stuff.  But now and then, a St. James Infirmary Blues would sneak in and everybody would sit up straight.  Janis had the musical chops but she also had an uncompromising determination to do everything her way, to barge ahead recklessly and crash into obstacles.  She always wanted to be on the edge, whatever the subject.  When I read her a newspaper article about a dumb high school kid who took some new drug called LSD and tried to fly off his garage roof, she said, “I want some of that stuff right now!”

One night, an English professor hanging out at the folksing told her, “Janice, it’s impossible to succeed with your modus operandi.  You have to bend, to clean up your act, to be nicer to people you don’t like, to sing stuff you don’t want to sing.”  She gave him a crooked smile and a confident look.  “Why should I?” she asked.  “Bob Dylan doesn’t do that.”  The prof had no idea who she was talking about.  Dylan had about one album at the time.  But I always remembered that line.

Everybody knows what happened when Janis Joplin eventually hit San Francisco in the midst of the hippie revolution and hooked up with Big Brother and the Holding Company, still doing things her way.  I ran into her again at the first Atlanta Pop Festival and she said, “Can you believe it, Killeen---I’m a fucking corporation?”  She was utterly thrilled that the straight people finally had to bow down.  But her demons never left.  “How’s your life otherwise,” I asked.  “You know, when I’m on that stage getting all the love, there’s nothing like it.  It’s the time in between that’s tough.  But I cope, I have my ways.”

The same thing which created her, alas, finally brought her down---the hutzpah, the need for a higher high, the runaway train demeanor.  She was full speed ahead til the end.  Any fool who thinks Janis Joplin opted for suicide is a blind observer.  With suicide, everything stops.  Janis wanted nothing more than to keep on going, as fast and as far as possible.

“That’s Impossible, Whether It Happened Or Not!”

On the final day of the 2026 National Basketball Association season, the hungry Orlando Magic invaded TD Garden in Boston looking for their sixth consecutive NBA victory, one which would free them from a play-in game and install them as a top six playoff team.  Things were looking rosy for the Magic because the home team Celtics had announced than none of their top eight players would risk injury by participating in what was a meaningless game to them.  The Celts had already sealed the championship of their division and had nothing to gain from a victory.  You can imagine the mood of the Boston fans as they dutifully worked their way to their seats to suffer through the coming massacre.  “I have season tickets, but I almost stayed home,” admitted John Dykes of Woburn.  “I thought we’d lose by forty.  I just came to watch the new guys who never play.”

That’s when the noted Celtics culture arrived at the party.  Some people think the notion of a franchise’s “culture” is a corny fraud, but the Celtics have a long history of success and team pride that winning brings and such teams have elevated standards.  The rarely-used players in the starting lineup intended to play exactly the same way as the regular rotation, thrilled with their rare opportunity.  Things started as expected, with Orlando jumping off to a 29-20 first-quarter advantage.  They couldn’t shake the young Celts, however, and at halftime their lead was by the same nine points.  There was murmuring in the Garden, raised eyebrows, nervous laughter.  Do you think that maybe…no, of course no  It’s the NBA…things like that just don’t happen.  Except, this time they did.

A big white guy wearing an undershirt beneath his tank named Baylor Scheierman started throwing up moonshots, and they went in.  Another big lug named Luka Garza did the same.  Pretty soon everybody on the team was hitting ridiculous threes, causing the game announcers to start screaming in delight, slapping their foreheads and falling off their chairs in wonder and disbelief.  The crowd was aroar with shock and delight.  The Celtics threw up 42 points to the Magic’s 20 and led by 13 after three quarters.

Dazed and confused at the prospect of what one Orlando reporter labelled a “borderline catastrophe,” the Magic came off the bench with a vengeance, geared up their defense and played with the desperation of wild dogs, eventually tying the game at 108 with 1:37 left to play.  It stayed that way until with 31.6 seconds remaining Garza, well-guarded in the corner, tossed up a miracle that soared high and true.  Final score, Boston 113-108.

It was an unheard of result which defied a historical comparison.  Nothing like this had ever happened in the National Basketball Association before.  Even blase Las Vegas was in shock.  “It was like Chuck Wepner just beat Muhammad Ali,” said one paralyzed Caesar’s Palace habitue.  “Things like that don’t happen in the real world.”  As Orlando coach Jamahl Mosely wobbled off the court, he turned and answered a television interviewer’s question by saying, “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”  And that’s where he went three nights later to play the 76ers. 

Impossible But True

1. The original Dirty Dancing came in 1518.  For some reason, people began dancing uncontrollably for days in Strasbourg, France, led by Frau Troffea.  For some, days turned to months, with many eventually collapsing from exhaustion, stroke or heart attack.  The cause remains debated, with theories including mass hysteria, ergot poisoning and a lively Twist concert by Chubby Checker.

2. There was no Summer in 1816.  Following the eruption of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia, massive quantities of volcanic ash and aerosols blocked the sunlight and caused global temperatures to drop dramatically, leading to snow in July, widespread famine and the cancellation of Willie Nelson’s Mediterranean Tour.

3. There really was a Great Boston Molasses Flood in 1919.  A  25-foot-high wave of molasses rushed through the streets of Beantown at 35 mph, destroying buildings and killing 21 people.  The cause of the disaster was a leak in a hulking 50-foot molasses tank built by the Purity Distilling Company four years earlier.  The resulting debris was virtually impossible to move because it was coated with molasses.  Sticky wicket.

4. Giant birds defeated humans in the Great Australian Emu War of 1932.  The Australian government was all adither about the soaring emu population in the country destroying farmers’ crops in the Campion wheat belt district of Northern Australia, thus deployed military personnel with machine guns to combat the enemy.  Alas, the criminal emus were very hard to find and the shootings were abandoned a few weeks later.  The government admitted the emus had won the war.

5. In 1950, Bill Killeen fell from the tallest tree on Garfield Street and landed on a telephone post.  What are the odds?  The tree was about 2 1/2 times the height of the post, high enough to see most of the city of Lawrence from the top branches.  My pal Jackie Fournier, safely entrenched on the ground kept yelling, “You’re going too high, Billy!” but fearless explorers march to the beat of a different drum.  When a branch under my feet finally cracked, I was able to claw at lower branches to slow my fall.  Just when I ran out of branches, the top of the telephone post showed up.  I probably touched every wire on the pole climbing down, but somehow was never fried.  Jackie asked me if I was secretly from another planet.  I told him I wasn’t sure.  I’m still not sure.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

   

 

Foiling The Reaper

When you’re 85 years old, you are aware that the Grim Reaper is somewhere in the vicinity and it might be time to incorporate a few delaying tactics.  Sitting quietly in Section 109 and hoping he won’t notice you sometimes works, as does taking a different route from your house to Publix every week.  A nice trapdoor into an alligator pit just inside the front entrance to your home is a thought and Reaper-proof socks that smell like Vieux Boulogne cheese would send anyone off at a run.  Over the centuries, all civilizations have had to contend with the problem, some with better luck than others.

Chinese alchemists and European nobles such as Diane de Poitiers in the 16th century consumed gold and mercury to achieve immortality, believing that because gold did not decay it could prevent human deterioration.  Someone should have told them that Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China tried it and died of mercury poisoning in 210 BC.

These days, death-defiers like Bryan Johnson on the West Coast are getting injections of young blood from twentyish donors.  Pope Innocent VIII tried that in 1492, receiving blood from three young men, all of whom died in the process.  So did Innocent not long after.

“Virginal Warmth” was once a thing.  The practice was based on 1 Kings 1:1, where elderly regents like David were accompanied by young virgins in bed to transfer heat and vigor into a cold old body.  If it didn’t work, well, who’s to complain?

Trepanning, the practice of drilling holes into the skull to allow evil spirits to escape, thereby extending life, once seemed like a good idea.  Didn’t work, but some ancient skulls showed bone regrowth, indicating the patient survived the procedure.  What’s left?  Holding your breath?  Moving to Venus?  A Cloak of Invisibility?  The Reaper is a diligent adversary with cheap transportation, a high success rate and a dearth of mercy, but an abundance of caution around demons, which he hates.  So if you know any of the little devils, think about inviting them over for tea and a game of cribbage.  If they like the surroundings, maybe they’ll stay.  And you, too.

Baby, It’s Cold Inside

Cryogenics, the study of the effects of very low temperatures (-150 degrees Centigrade), began in the late 19th century with the liquefication of gas, notably oxygen in 1877.  Pioneered by figures like Raoul Pictet, Louis Cailletet and James Dewar (inventor of the vacuum flask in 1892), it evolved from scientific curiosity into industrial gas manufacturing, supercomputing, medical preservation and rocket propulsion.  In 1908, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes successfully liquified helium at 4.2 K, allowing for experiments near absolute zero.  In 1911, Onnes discovered that certain materials lose all electrical resistance at cryogenic temperatures.  Cryogenic hardening of materials was discovered in the 1940s, increasing the lifespan of tools and putting some weird ideas into the brains of outlaw scientists.  Finally, it happened: in 1967, Dr. James Bedford became the first human to be cryogenically preserved for future resuscitation.

James Bedford (1893-1967) was a University of California psychology professor who was fascinated by the possibilities of Cryogenics.  Dying of kidney cancer but hoping for future revival, he volunteered to be the first person to undergo cryopreservation to escape imminent death.  Following his demise, his body was immediately treated to keep blood flowing, then frozen using early methods and transported to a facility in Arizona.  Over the decades Bedford’s body was moved from one storage facility to another as preservation techniques supposedly improved.  James Bedford is easily the longest-surviving human being in terms of cryogenic preservation, having now rung up 57 chilly years.  In the cryonics community, January 12 is celebrated as “Bedford Day.”

How Does It Work, Dr. Science?

Cryopreservation works by replacing body fluids with antifreeze agents to prevent ice damage and then cooling to approximately –196C using liquid nitrogen.  The process stops biological decay by halting metabolic activity, allowing cells to enter a state of suspended animation known as vitrification, where liquids become a glassy solid rather than expanding ice crystals.  The dead guy or gal is slowly cooled, often over several days, until the body reaches the desired temperature, then stored in a vacuum-insulated container known as a cryostat, which does not require electricity, ensuring long-term stability.  Nobody wants his future annulled by a silly water oak tumbling onto an electrical wire.

Like any new venture, the early Cryogenics business had its ups and downs.  Early efforts were plagued by disasters, including nine bodies decomposing in a Los Angeles crypt in 1979, a big oopsie in anybody’s book.  There were also unhappy reports of “dying sludge” at some facilities and James Bedford’s 1991 examination found him with a collapsed nose and a cracked chest.  He’ll be so disappointed when he wakes up to that annoying inconvenience.

Currently, the oldest company in the Cryocare business is Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which first appeared in the early seventies.  Struggling with all those ungainly old bodies, the folks at Alcor came up with a new idea---preserving only the heads of new customers, the philosophy being that future tech would either regenerate the body or transfer the head or brain to a spanking-new one.  Probably just as well---examinations of early thawees showed severe physical trauma, including snapped spinal cords and fractured hearts.  Dr Bedford must be rolling in his cryostat.

If you’re looking for a Latter Day Saint of the Cryogenics persuasion, that would be one Bredo Morstol, who died of a heart condition in 1989.  His loving daughter and grandson brought Bredo to the States for Cryogenic preservation and wound up in Colorado in 1993, where they stored the body in a Tuff Shed on dry ice.  The Chamber of Commerce in Nederland, always looking to increase tourism, initiated Frozen Dead Guy Day in 2002, with events like coffin races, a polar plunge and a parade of hearses to honor “Grandpa Bredo.”  In 2023, the festival was moved to Estes Park with headquarters at the famous Stanley Hotel, where Turkey Bowling has been added to the event card.

In Zuzalu, that's how conditions are.

Others

Some immortality advocates view aging as a disease for which we have a moral responsibility to find a cure.  Others believe everlasting life will ultimately come from humans uploading themselves to computers so they can live forever in digital form.  Life expectancy has already doubled in the last 100 years, so with billions now being invested in longevity research there’s every reason to believe greater gains are possible.  Here are some of the shenanigans today’s anti-aging pioneers are up to:

1. Stitching old and young mice together.  No, really.  Scientists Mike and Irina Conboy, trying to understand the role blood plays in how tissues age, decided to see what would happen to an old mouse when it received young blood.  So they did what any curious young imps would do and stitched a few pairs of mice together.  As the tissues healed and blood vessels formed, blood trickled from one animal to the other.

The results were compelling.  The old mice became stronger and mentally sharper, and markers of age were reversed.  Although the sample size was small, the Conboys’ findings were notable enough to be published in the peer-reviewed journals Science and Nature and have significantly influenced the longevity community.

2. Getting injected with young blood plasma.  Inspired by the Conboys’ research, tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson began getting injections of his 17-year-old son’s blood plasma.  “I never imagined my little baby would grow up to be a life-extender, but that’s what is happening,” said Johnson.  “Now I am giving blood to my father, as well.”

Several others jumped in, including a company called Ambrosia Plasma, led by Jesse Karmazin, which launched a clinical trial to find out whether young blood plasma really could reverse aging.  Each subject received a single dose of plasma and was measured for about 100 blood markers before and 30 days after the treatment.  Media hype followed and the treatment briefly grabbed the attention of some of the biggest tech billionaires.  Karmazin claimed striking results but the trial’s findings were never published.  In 2019, Ambrosia Plasma ceased operations after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration admonished that “Such treatments have no proven clinical benefits for the uses for which these clinics are advertising them and are potentially harmful.”  Spoilsports.

3. Testing anti-aging drugs on dogs.  Biotechnology start-up founder Celine Halioua is determined to find a drug that can treat aging.  Because humans age so slowly, however, running a clinical trial would take decades and cost billions.  So, that wily Celine has found an ingenious hack---her company plans to test longevity on canines instead.  She claims “dogs develop the same age-related diseases we do at approximately the same time in their lifespan.”  But because they don’t live nearly as long, Halioua believes she could see results from a drug within six to twelve months.

Another clever bit: until now, U.S. regulators have never approved trials on a drug for aging.  Celine contends that if her plan is approved, it will illustrate that anti-aging medicine is a legitimate field and potentially open a route for future drug research in humans.

4. Creating a longevity city.  Russian-Canadian cryptocurrency superstar Vitalik Buterin wanted to see if he could radically extend human life for everyone, so in March of 2023 he set up Zuzalu, an experimental pop-up city that brought together 200 of the brightest longevity minds for two months to tackle the problem of aging.  Buterin sought to create a test space where like-minded people could collaborate and “work on possible treatments in a very structured way,” with the ultimate aim of exporting their discoveries to the world.

Zuzalu got people talking about how to accelerate the longevity movement and raised the idea of a potential “longevity state” built around a belief that humans can and should defeat aging and death.  In such a place, innovation would be encouraged and barriers to research removed, creating a new kind of society.

5. Merging humans with machines.  Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University thinks immortality lies in giving ourselves over to technology entirely.  He contends that “radical life extension won’t come from medical research but will go instead through us first developing really powerful Artificial Intelligence and incidentally unlocking a lot of other radical possibilities for humanity, like uploading into computers.”  Other Transhumanists agree with this more extreme agenda---merging entirely with machines.  The notion covers everything from biohackers inserting microchips under the skin to tech startups working on replicating the human brain.  True devotees believe this is the key to humans ultimately cheating death.

Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper smiles, picks his teeth and sits on a rock reading Walden.  He has all the time in the world. 

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

      

Weirdos

Weirdos.  You can’t live with ‘em, you can’t live without ‘em.  Okay, yes you can, but it’s not nearly as much fun.  My initial weirdo was Timothy McGovern in the first grade.  One day, Timothy climbed up on the class window sill, opened the window, saluted, yelled “Goodbye, cruel world!” and jumped.  Of course, it was only the first floor, but he still made quite an impression---on us, if not the new sod down below.  A few days later later, they came and took Timmy away, but we never forgot him.

Then, in fourth grade, we got Leo Monte.  He transferred in from points north and west, maybe Des Moines.  Leo might have been Charles Schultz’ model for Pigpen in his Peanuts strips, he carried a cloud of dirt with him wherever he went.  On his first day in class, Sister Mary Lawrence sent him to the bathroom to wash his hands.  When he came back, they looked exactly the same.  He usually wore the same torn shirt and stained pants every day, and no socks.  Sister ML told him, “Leo, you have to change your clothes now and then.”  Leo looked up and said “Why?”   And no, he wasn’t poor---his father ran a construction crew and his mother was an attorney.  We used to write essays in fourth grade which the nuns called “compositions,” about such things as what we did on our Summer vacations.  Leo’s first composition was about the neighborhood coal yard, his fascination with anthracite and bituminous.  We kids thought he was pretty cool after that.

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

Anyone who has ever been to the Waffle House at three a.m. can tell you about weirdos.  They cluster there in the pre-dawn hours with the drug dealers, winding-down musicians and nerds who couldn’t get a date, skulking down in their booths gobbling All-Star Special pecan waffles and hash browns and making strange noises.  Any sane person in need of eggs just before sunrise looks around and thinks, Jesus---I didn’t know there were so many grubby lunatics living in the neighborhood.  Good news!  They’re not just from down the block.  Some of them may have teleported in.

Weirdos like FEMA official Gregg Phillips, who claimed on a podcast he was teleported 50 miles to a Waffle House near Rome, Georgia.  Hold your horses before condemning Greg, he claims it was not his idea.  Somewhere in the remote reaches of the universe, the Cosmic Arbiter plunked his Magic Twanger and sent Mr. Phillips adrift through the friendly skies of the Peach State.  On the podcast, Gregg swore that his car was “lifted up” while he was driving and transported to the eatery.

“I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House.  And I ended up at a Waffle House.  This was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips swore on the podcast Onward, co-hosted by right-wing activist Catherine Engelbrecht.

“And they asked, ‘Where are you?’ and I told them and they said ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’  And let me tell you, teleporting is no fun.  You know it’s happening and you can’t do anything about it, so you just let go, you just go with the ride.” 

Listen, Gregg, it could be worse.  The ultimate bummer would be if you bounced through the stratosphere, finally got there and the Waffle House was closed.  Do you sit down in the parking lot and sulk or do you get back in the car, close your eyes and hope for a lusty trip to Aunt Jemima’s?

"See--there I am right there talking to G.W.!"

Back To The Future

For the last 22 years, Seattle attorney Andrew Basiago has been making the claim that he time-traveled between the ages of seven and twelve, when most self-respecting lads were playing whiffleball and dunking girls’ braids in their inkwells.  It wasn’t his idea, of course, he was recruited by a secret government program called DARPA for an experiment called Project Pegasus.  Basiago claimed the project used children to carry out their experiments because the kids would be more adaptable to changes in space-time.  He said he was the first child to take the leap.  The Portal to Anywhere was described as looking like two parentheses-shaped booms which were 8 feet tall and about 10 feet apart.  He described the computer configuration from which the portal was controlled as rudimentary and plugged into the wall with a power cord.

Upon activation, the machine created a “vortal tunnel” from radiant energy that was capable of “bending the fabric of reality,” according to Andrew.  (“Radiant Energy” was discovered by Nikola Tesla, whose schematic was posthumously discovered by the government in a New York apartment in 1943.)  The technology was parlayed into what Basiago calls a plasma confinement chamber, which a user jumps into before being transported to a different place in time and space to meet historical and future dignitaries, as well as various extraterrestrial entities and maybe even Dick Clark.

Andrew’s first journey transported him to the state capital of New Mexico, though he remained in the same time period.  Basiago claimed the capital building was a common location DARPA used and a woman friend saw people materialize there frequently.  He continued his training by traveling back in time just a few hours to get the gist of it.  Eventually, he was able to travel back to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and check out George Washington’s tent during the Revolutionary War.  Finally, he was ready to meet Jesus, which went off without a hitch, earning him a rare visit to the future.  Basiago traveled to 2045, where he was “transported to a building made of emerald and tungsten steel.”  There he was given a canister of microfilm to be brought back to his mentors.  Supposedly, it contained a wealth of knowledge of every historical event up until that time.  Apparently, everything will not be digitized in the future.

Andrew Basiago later made news by claiming that Barack Obama was a fellow time-traveler who went by the name “Barry Soetero.”  Barack/Barry was supposedly transported to Mars at the age of 19 to communicate with Martian animals and extraterrestrials.  Basiago claimed in a 2012 speech that he had definitive photographic evidence of intelligent life on the red planet, but of course it was a little blurry.  He also insists that he will be installed as President of the U.S.A. sometime between now and 2028 (hurry up, Andrew).  Unlike other candidates, Basiago has posted a very detailed layout of his presidential platform and the 100 policies he intends to enact once in the White House.  His first measure will be to declassify and reveal all technology related to quantum transportation, including the chronovisor and the holographic transportation machine he used to speak to George Washington.  Then, thank God, he will get rid of all atomic weapons, which “could create a tear in the fabric of space-time, of which there is nothing worse we could be doing.  The extraterrestrials don’t like it one bit.”

We don’t know about you, but we’re thinking we might be voting for Andrew.  He didn’t say one word about immigration, Haitians eating cats and dogs or Joe Biden causing world hunger.  And he says he has a critical message from Janis Joplin which he will reveal on New Year’s Day of 2030.  Andrew Basiago---the man for the Big Chair in the next big shootout.  Hey, you could do a lot worse.  You already did.

The All-Star Team

History calls them eccentrics, AI dubs them outliers, but we know they’re just plain weirdos.  Herewith, the Cream of the Crop:

1. Yongmei, bigamist.  This woman got around.  Enough to marry over 900 men in just over two decades.  She made Elizabeth Taylor look like a piker.  Her husband-hunting spree began in 1993, when she realized she could make a quick buck by dragging suckers to the altar.  Yongmei would marry men, usually poor farmers, then divorce them a few days later.  The victims would have to pay her a small amount each time, but after awhile it began adding up.  At her peak, she was making about $8000 a month before she was arrested in 2011.  Hey, it beats playing piano at the Holiday Inn for tips.

2. Marina David, zythophile.  For 34 years (1851-1885) Marina consumed only beer.  That’s it.  No water, no food, nothing but beer.  She was reputed to insist on the strongest and most bitter beers available.  How she survived is a bit of a mystery.  Some say her diet caused her to produce stomach acid, which in turn helped her to break down and digest the sugars in the beer.  Others contended she suffered from a condition that left her unable to absorb nutrients from other food sources.  Despite her proclivities, David led a relatively normal life, leading beer enthusiasts to eschew moderation.  Norm, of Cheers, had a shrine to Marina in his breezeway.

3. Lillian Alling, wanderer.  Alling was an Eastern European immigrant who became famous in the 1920s for attempting to return by foot to her homeland.  That’s right, by foot.  Frequently ridiculed for her foolishness, Lillian was unruffled.  She began a four-year journey in New York, then traveled westward across Canada, then north through British Columbia, the Yukon, then west again to Alaska by 1929, usually walking about 30 miles a day.  In Hazelton, B.C., a telegraph lineman noticed Alling’s tattered and malnourished appearance and phoned authorities, who arrested her for vagrancy to protect her from the elements.  When searched, she was found with two ten-dollar bills and an iron bar with which to “ward off bad-intentioned men, not animals.”  Lillian was kept in jail for two months, then spent the rest of the winter working in a Vancouver restaurant to save enough money to continue her trip.  Records have her reaching the Bering Sea, where all communication with her was lost.  While working in Hazelton, she answered critics with a single sentence: “Don’t think of me as a weirdo---think of me as a through-hiker.”   

4. Shia LaBeouf, performance artist.  Shia is probably best known for his 2014 stint sitting in an L.A. art gallery wearing a paper bag on his head that read “I Am Not Famous Anymore” and crying in front of visitors.  2014 was a big year for LaBouef---he also ran 144 laps around the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam wearing bright green leggings and was escorted out of the musical Cabaret in New York for disruptive behavior and spitting at police.  He also pulled out one of his own teeth, cut his face and refused to shower to truly experience the life of a World War II soldier.  Earlier, in 2013, he took LSD to prepare for a movie scene and later had to be pulled off the director while choking him.   In 2020, LaBeouf tattooed his entire torso and aligned himself with the Westside Harpys street gang.

In May, 2016, Shia launched an open-sourced month-long cross-country journey called TakeMeAnywhere, in which he tweeted out his geographic coordinates daily, allowing fans to pick him up and take him…well, anywhere.  And do just about anything with him in the process.  Some fans were impressed.  “Usually, when you meet your heroes they’re a disappointment,” said one.  But this guy is different.  He was just an amazing guy.  He was incredibly receptive to what we wanted to do and very conversational.  I think he’s a true artist.”

But still…a weirdo.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com    
 

Going Down For The Third Time

“With Death staring you in the face, you truly understand what it means to be alive.”—Haro Aso

How many of you out there have come within an errant swipe of the Grim Reaper’s scythe?  It’s tough to make it all the way to retirement age without ducking the wrecking ball once or twice, and we’ve had our share of close calls.  Once, in grade school, Mr. Bill fell off an undependable log into the nasty Shawsheen River, bouncing right back up and noticing a small tree which had fallen out into the river.  He went back down before he could grab onto it and got his foot caught in some metal trash on the bottom.  “Oh-oh,” he thought, “and me a long way from my last Confession.”

Eventually slithering loose, he got to the surface, grabbed the tree and pulled himself out of the water.  “Damn,” he remarked.  “I always thought that stuff in the comic books about going down for the third time was silly.  I almost got a chance to find out.”

That Sinking Feeling

Arches National Park in Moab, Utah seems a safe enough place, with its dearth of narrow hiking trails, dramatic drop-offs or confusing wilderness.  Little kids frolic along its gentle trails, parents in tow, pointing out one or another of the endless stream of natural arches.  No one gets eaten by bears or mountain lions, terrified by Gila monsters or bitten by ill-mannered chipmunks.  As hiking goes, it’s a day at the sandy beach as long as you stay away from lonely Courthouse Wash just off the Hayduke Trail, which experienced hiker Austin Dirks didn’t do.

There is an evil section of the Wash where flowing water saturates loose sand, creating a dangerous trap, despite appearing solid and shallow.  Austin stepped into what looked like normal sand and quickly sunk to his thighs in quicksand as the water-saturated sand lost its friction, trapping him.  Quicksand forms when there is no friction between the grains of sand, making the ground unable to support weight.  We have all seen quicksand do its ugly work in old Western movies and early television serials, where the poor victim sinks into oblivion and his sad, weathered cowboy hat is left floating on the slimy surface.

Now all these unpleasantries can be avoided if there is just a heroic savior nearby with a rope, which seems to happen a lot in the movies.  Alas, Dirks was a lone stranger in a strange land and he had communicated his hiking plans to nobody.  Anyone who has been to a large national park knows there are vast swaths of landscape where cell phones are useless, so Austin Dirks seemed to be in a bit of a pickle.  Christmas might indeed be approaching but visions of sugarplums were not dancing in his head.

But as Batman has his utility belt, Dirks had his Garmin emergency satellite beacon, which he activated with fingers crossed.  His message was forwarded to Grand County emergency responders and one John Marshall got the call at 7:15 a.m.  “I was just rolling out of bed,” said Marshall.  “I was a little sleepy and I’m scratching my head.  Did I hear that right?  Did they say quicksand?”

Marshall put his boots on and rendezvoused with a team that set out with all-terrain vehicles, a ladder, traction boards, backboards, a drone and five golden rings.  Soon, the men had a bird’s-eye view of the situation.  The drone camera showed a park ranger on-scene with a shovel, which was useless.  The quicksand flowed back as soon as Dirks shoveled it away.  The rescue team arrived and positioned the ladder and boards near the backpacker and slowly worked one leg loose.  By that time, Austin had been standing in near-freezing muck with temperatures in the 20s for two hours and was having fantasies about The Cremation of Sam McGee.

The rescuers finally pried him out and warmed him up until he could stand.  As soon as he was able to walk, Dirks insisted on hiking out on his own, even carrying his backpack.  “Many people think you will eventually sink into the quicksand and sort of drown,” said Marshall.  “But in quicksand, you’re extremely buoyant.  Most people won’t sink past their waist.  In 2014, we had a 78-year-old woman who got stuck just two miles from here for over 13 hours.  Her book club got worried when she missed their meeting.  They went looking for her and found her car at a trailhead and we got her out.  Fortunately for her, it was June.  Without that beacon, Austin would have been toast.”

The Survivors Hall Of Fame

1. Jordan Hatmaker, skydiver.  She wasn’t an expert but Jordan Hatmaker had taken enough jumps to recognize that something was wrong.  On November 14, 2021, she jumped from a height of 4100 meters and deployed her parachute, but it didn’t open.  She tried again and again, but a series of unfortunate malfunctions led to the chute not opening until the very last minute, causing her to crash land.  Although she somehow survived, Jordan suffered a spinal injury, broke a shin, shattered an ankle and was paralyzed from the waist down.  Doctors were pessimistic as to whether she would ever walk again, but they didn’t know Jordan.  Three months after the accident, she began walking.  Eventually, she even made a climb to the Mount Everest base camp.

2. Jean Hilliard, popsicle.  The prospect of being frozen for six hours brings visions of mega-frostbite and a slow and gruesome death.  Not for Jean Hilliard, however, who slipped on some unfriendly Minnesota ice in the harsh throes of winter, knocked herself out and lay frozen for six hours until a friend wandered by.  At the hospital, doctors had trouble inserting an IV cannula because her arm was frozen solid.  They used heating pads to thaw her out and she woke up, but her extremities, especially her toes, were numb for a long time.  Remarkably Hilliard recovered fairly quickly and has experienced no lasting physical effects from her frosty adventure.

3. Aron Ralston, hiker.  Many of you have seen the film 127 Hours, in which Ralston was hiking in a remote Utah canyon when a boulder fell, trapping his arm.  With no one around to hear his cries for help and his water supply dwindling, Ralston made the critical decision to sever his arm below the elbow using a dull multitool.  Finally freeing himself, Aron rappelled down a 60-foot cliff and hiked several miles through rugged terrain before being discovered by a search-and-rescue helicopter.  His saviors radioed the rescue back to their home base and asked Ralston if he had any words for the folks back home.  “Ouch!” he said.

On the horns of a dilemma, Aron Ralston still managed this selfie.  Note his right arm immobilized by the large rock.

4. David Steeves, USAF pilot.  Lieutenant Dave was ordered to fly a Lockheed T-33A trainer jet from San Francisco to Craig Air Force Base near Selma, Alabama on May 9, 1957.  Shortly after takeoff, the jet disappeared without a trace and Steeves was declared dead after an extensive search yielded no results.  Many thought the pilot might have defected (the incident was at the height of the Cold War) and donated the jet to the evil Russians.  In July, however, Steeves popped out of the Sierra Nevada, claiming that he ejected after the jet exploded, then parachuted to safety.  For two weeks, he survived without food, eventually discovering a ranger’s cabin in King’s Canyon National Park, where he found fishhooks, beans and canned ham to sustain himself.  Since the missing plane wasn’t located, Steeves’ career bottomed out and he eventually left the Air Force to become a test pilot.  In 1977, Boy Scouts discovered the cockpit canopy of the plane, the serial number matching that of Steeves’ jet.

5. Angela Hernandez, Sunday driver.  In a scene straight out of Hollywood, Ms. Hernandez, 23, swerved to avoid a small animal in the road and accidentally drove her SUV off an oceanside cliff in Big Sur, the vehicle tumbling about 200 feet down onto a desolate rocky beach.  (This is an incident your wife will mention when she thinks you’re going too fast on the way to Carmel.)  Despite suffering a brain hemorrhage, fractured ribs, a broken collarbone, ruptured blood vessels in both eyes and a collapsed lung, Hernandez managed to pull herself out of the sinking car, then walked around the area for days until hikers stumbled across her wrecked Jeep and scoured the beach.  Eventually, they found Angela crumpled up, laying on some rocks.  After surviving for seven days, she was finally rescued.

6. Ryker Webb, wandering tyke.  Three-year-old Ryker was playing with his dog when the two of them decided to take a little walk in the woods.  The dog eventually went back to base camp but little Ryker kept on truckin’.  A massive search was launched but two days went by with no luck.  Then, a family visiting their remote cabin in the middle of the wilderness heard the faint cries of a little boy coming from behind a shed.  They found Ryker tucked into a lawnmower bag, dressed in a light blue onesie covered in dirt.  The little boy had survived two days in the Montana woods in near-freezing temperatures in an area rife with bears and mountain lions.  He told his rescuers he was “very, very scared.”  Not as much as his grateful parents, though.

The Meanest Cut

There are bad days, and then there are bad days.  Loren Schauers of Great Falls, Montana had one of the latter in 2019 while working as a laborer on a bridge.  Oncoming traffic nudged him close to the edge of the road and he fell 50 feet, which was bad enough.  The forklift that fell on top of him was the cherry on the cake.  It crushed the lower half of his torso and severed a forearm.  Schauers underwent intense surgery, with doctors performing a hemicorporectomy, a procedure that surgically removes organs and bones in the lower extremities.  Surgeons amputated everything below his navel, unsure of whether he’d even survive the operation.  Loren surprised everyone by making a successful recovery.

Imagine yourself in his predicament.  Twenty-plus years old, suddenly shot from the prime of life into a pit of uncertainty and dismaying limitation.  Suicide is a valid temptation, serious depression almost inevitable. joy an unfathomable creature which lives in a universe far, far away.  But Loren rolled on and even found a wife, Sabia Reiche, a trooper of the first magnitude.  They married in 2021 and now spend their time making YouTube videos on their channel “Sabia and Loren,” where they document their journey since the accident.  They have amassed half a million subscribers on the platform, with dozens of videos uploaded since 2019.

The elephant in the room is freely discussed.  How long can a person in Loren Schauers’ condition carry on?  Nobody knows because there are few people to compare him with.  Sabia’s research tells her the average time until death is about 11 years, but there is one man who has lived for 24.  As one might imagine, comparison is virtually impossible because every case is different.  “We’re going for forty years,” say the Schauers.  “Two down, 38 to go.”

Don’t be surprised if they make it.  Loren hasn’t even gone down for the second time.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

 

Welcome To The Grand Finale!

This is, among other things, your information kit for The Big Party in May celebrating Life, Love and the fact we’re all still here, but also remembering those who are not.  Stash it in your rucksack or your cell phone and keep it for further reference.  Share it with your less fortunate friends, if you will.  Our bandwidth is narrow and we need all the help we can get putting out the word.  Early May in Gainesville is luxurious, the temperatures kind and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Despite one Richard Parker’s pleas to the contrary, this is indeed the last tango.  The management is getting old and rickety, the customers less mobile and our doctors less tolerant of our drug intake.  Sometimes the bands forget to show up or they absolutely refuse to play Light My Fire.  Even though the admonition Don’t Take Your Snakes To Town, Will is tattooed on his chest, yesterday elderly William Thacker forgot and was arrested for illegal trafficking of varmints.  Did somebody say “assisted living?”

But that will be then, this is now.  Wake the town and tell the people the final installment of the Hippie Olympics is on the way.  If you have any, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

‘Twas The Day Before Blissout

'Twas the day before Blissout, and all through the town,
The natives were buzzing with nary a frown;
The reefer was stashed in the glove box with care
To welcome the visitors soon to be there.

Old hippies were nestled all snug in their pads,
While visions of ancient friends danced in their heads;
And she with her Afro and I in my shag
Dug through the closet to find a peace flag.

When down at Heartwood there arose such a din,
We knew that Wil Maring must just have barged in.
We raced to the porch in the blink of an eye
And heard Robert Bowlin make his old fiddle cry.

Now Cathy DeWitt and her five buckaroos,

Now young Nancy Luca and her eclectic crew,
Now the grand Couch Messiahs with a sackful of tunes.
Now the wild Chasing Rabbits, all gaily festooned.

As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So the guitars rang out and the mandolins, too,
And the banjos, the bass and the drums fairly flew.

The crowd was awash with both laughter and tears,

immersed in old friendships revived after years;
Old lovers embraced, lost friends reappeared,
Recalling the glories when last they were here.

Ishmael Schwartz got down on one knee

And proposed to Miss Annabelle ("Sunshine") McGee;

Steven the sandal man stood on his head; 
Moonbeam McGonigal took him to bed.

The sweet scent of cannabis flicked through the crowd.

The bands played their hearts out, ably and loud.

The dancers were young again, just for a day,

Their race might be run, but they paused on the way.

Alas, as we’re told, all good things must end,
So the old hippies rose and saluted their friends;
“We’ll all meet again,” they lied to each other,
Touched by the moment, sister and brother.

Then finally Sir Donald strode up to the line

And made the crowd tear when he sang Auld Lang Syne; 

Said Anna Marie in the fast-fading light,

“Happy Trails to all and to all a good night!”

When, Where & Why

Location: Heartwood Soundstage, 619 South Main Street, Gainesville

Dates: May 1 & 2, 2026

Hours: May 1---7-9 p.m. (inside stage).  May 2---Noon to 8 p.m. (outside)

Performers: May 1---Mike Boulware to open, followed by Wil Maring & Robert Bowlin

May 2---In order: Chasing Rabbits…Patchwork & Friends…Couch Messiahs…Nancy Luca Band…Uncle John’s Band

Closing: Auld Lang Syne by Don David and you

Tickets: May 1---$47.60….May 2---Free.  If you have a Friday ticket, it is ALL ACCESS, and you don’t need another one for Saturday.

All performances will require a ticket from Heartwood, free or charged.  The link is:

https://heartwoodsoundstage.com/shows/the-grand-finale-01-may

Disa & Data

While The Grand Finale is primarily a reunion for old Gainesvillians from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, everyone over 15 is welcome.  Sorry, no pets.  There will be food available from on-site restaurants and drink from Heartwood’s jaunty quaffing crew.  We will have a doctor on the grounds in case you fall down and a minister for impromptu marriages (please tip your minister).  If you become overwhelmed with emotion, Judi Cain will read you calming sonnets by William Wordsworth.  If you are sad, Lily Van Halen will tickle your feet.  If you are naked, we’ll sell you a lovely Finale t-shirt which will last you several decades for a piffling $30.  Bring your own condoms.

Why We’re Going:

I am going to The Grand Finale because it is there, the Mount Everest of Reunions.  I am going to The Grand Finale because I was at the Last Tango In Gainesville and it was one of the best days of my life.  I am going to The Grand Finale because a Bill Killeen event never lets you down.  At the Last Tango, I laughed, I cried, I was hypnotized with emotion.  I was the last one hanging around the grounds, the Heartwood people had to ask me to leave so they could close up.  I went out and sat in my car for a half-hour, gobsmacked by the events and emotions of the day.  You think you’re going to a reunion and you wind up in an unreal cosmic circus with acrobats, clowns and dancing bears.  I suppose I was more affected than many because I’d been struggling with a long-time relationship and was trying to find my way.  And I did, thanks to what greeted me that priceless day in Gainesville.---Arthur King, Charlotte, N.C.

I guess I have become cynical in my old age because I don’t get out and visit as much as I used to.  These days you have to skirt touchy political issues, contend with unreliable air travel and hope to God you can find a place to park somewhere near your destination.  So call me a grouch if you like but I’ll counter with this; I AM going to The Grand Finale in Gainesville on May 1 and 2.  I wouldn’t miss it for anything.  You see, I was one of the lucky ones who took a chance on the Last Tango in Gainesville and that was like an impossible dream and I know I’ll never see its equal.  But I’ll be satisfied with anything close, and I see Nancy Luca and Cathy DeWitt are back again, so that’s a good start.  What I”m really going for is the ambiance of the crowd, the incredible good feelings generated in that atmosphere, the Love Potion Number 9.  See you soon.  I’ll be the one in the tie-dyed skirt, haha.---Betty LaMont, Scottsdale, Arizona

I’ll be there if they’ll have me.  You see, I don’t smoke dope any more (bad lungs), incense makes me wheeze and I discovered I’m allergic to patchouli oil.  I used to play music myself but now I have a tiny tremor than makes me shy away from any venue that is not my bedroom.  Despite all that, I have not lost my interest in the ladies, especially ladies like Myra who I met at The Last Tango in ‘22.  We had a whomping big day at the Tango but Myra was still attached, so that was that.  I’m hoping that the attachment might have frayed by now or that there is a second Myra in the woodwork looking for fun in all the wrong places.---Teddy Sapienza, Naples, Fla. 

I am a person who has always valued community, sisterhood, multiple friendships.  I probably would have been a good candidate for commune life, but at the ones I visited egos always got in the way.  I had a small family, but valued and stayed in close touch with all my family members as long as they were alive.  Incomprehensibly, I now find myself alone in a small city in conservative Iowa, devoid of local friends and amicable neighbors.  I did not go to The Last Tango because my husband’s health was failing (he’s since passed), but you can bet your life I’ll be at The Grand Finale.  I went to school for two years in Gainesville and lived there another four years and I recognize a lot of names in the Finale bulletins and comments.  I have a feeling there are a LOT of people in the same boat as I find myself and an event like this is a Godsend for us.  See you all at the party!---Mary Callahan, Davenport, Iowa

Oh, but now old friends, they’re acting strange.  They shake their heads, tell me I’ve changed.  Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day.

I used to think you could move almost anywhere and make friends, watch sunset on a prairie, find a place on every corner to listen to music, ally yourself with idealists to fight for a worthy cause.  Not so.  Since leaving Gainesville, I have lived in half a dozen okay places with all the frills an outsider might be impressed by, safe little cities and towns with reasonable people and no outstanding deficits.  The trouble is, every one of them lacks soul, that indescribable mist that hangs over a place and gives it a unique style, a singular camaraderie of spirit and ethics and appreciation of the arts.  They say you can’t go home again, but I’m going to try it on May 1 and 2 to see if the phantom vibe is still there, waiting for me at a table outside Lillian’s.  See you at The Grand Finale!---Della Foster, New Braunfels, Texas

See you soon, Della.  As the event shirts says, “here comes the sun.”

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

                    

Kathygrams II

Ace reporter Kathleen Knight, aware that Inquiring Minds Want to Know, travels the Earth looking for answers to difficult questions, enigmas large and small, messy riddles long unsolved, and she finds them.  More difficult, of course, is discerning the secret questions people hesitate to ask for fear of ridicule or being reported to the Thought Police.  Since you were afraid to inquire, we’ll answer them anyway.

Answers To Questions You Never Asked

1. Where, exactly, is the middle of nowhere?

Ask a farm boy, an irritable ascetic or someone from Wyoming where they live and they will promptly tell you “In the middle of nowhere.”  Obviously, they are exaggerating, overstating their rustic digs, boasting about their extreme isolation.  As we all know, there is a Dollar Store within five miles of everywhere, so how remote can you be?  Well…plenty, it turns out.  And now, finally, some scientists with nothing better to do have figured out precisely where the middle of nowhere is.

Point Nemo is the most remote location on Earth, so far removed from civilization that the closest humans to there at any given time are likely to be astronauts.  In fact, that’s precisely why NASA and other global space agencies have designated Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean as their underwater space graveyard for falling debris.  In 2031, when the International Space Station comes tumbling down, it will do so at the Point, as far away from humans as geographically possible.

Pointe Nemo is officially known as “the ocean pole of inaccessibility,” or the point in the ocean farthest from land.  Located at 48 degrees, 52.6’S and 123 degrees 23.6’W, the spot is quite literally the middle of nowhere, surrounded by 1000 miles of ocean in every direction.  The closest landmasses to the place are one of the Pitcairn Islands to the north, one of the Easter Islands to the northeast and an island off the coast of Antarctica to the south. There are no human inhabitants anywhere near Point Nemo.  Scientists chose to call the location “Nemo” because it is Latin for “no one” and as a reference to Jules Verne’s submarine captain from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

Not even the man who first calculated the precise location of Point Nemo has visited.  In 1992, Croation survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela set out to find the exact point in the Pacific that was farthest away from any land using an esoteric computer program.  Ever thought about seeing your creation, Hrvoje?  “I thought about it once,” he smiled, “but  my wife talked me into going to the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, instead.”

2. Do Chickens Really Have A Church Of Their Own?  I Have Seen Photos.

No, chickens profess no religion (although they are a sacred animal themselves in many cultures, including Sheltonism), despite being deeply embedded in belief systems and religious worship practices.  In Greek mythology, Alectryon was the guard of Ares, waiting beside his door to alert him if anyone came close while he was sleeping.  In Ancient Greece, chickens were not used for sacrifices because they were considered exotic animals.  The Greeks believed that even lions were afraid of roosters.

However, there IS an abandoned church called Bukit Rhema located in the Magelang area of Central Java, Indonesia that absolutely resembles a chicken.  The building was erected during the 1890s by Daniel Alamsjah, who claimed to have been inspired by God to build a prayer house in a dream he had.  Now called Gareja Ayam (Indonesian for “chicken church”), construction was never completed and the place was left to deteriorate.  Despite all this, the odd building has become a tourist attraction and a movie setting.  If you go, Gareja Ayam has a cute little restaurant in the chicken’s rear.  Incredibly, no eggs are served. 

3. How Much Fun Was It To Have A Harem?

Perhaps not so much as you think.  One man’s harem might be another man’s dog pound, at least in terms of then and now.  Women’s beauty standards constantly change, just like our taste in fashion, music or dildos.  For a while, one thing is in vogue, then another, like bellbottoms and skinny jeans or Lawrence Welk and Snoop Dogg.  In Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, they sing songs extolling the beauty of a woman’s thick black eyebrows.  Back in the day, when Iran was called Persia, women with light mustaches were considered the bees’ knees.  Persian poets, whose words shaped the cultural landscape, compared a woman’s stache to a shadow on the moon, a subtle enhancement that amplified its radiance.  (“Her lip adorned with a shadow’s trace, Holds a sweetness time cannot erase.”)  Somebody call Burma-Shave.

In the opulent courts of Qajar, Nasir al-Din Shah reigned as both a monarch and a connoisseur of beauty.  The big guy had 84 women in his harem, none of them allowed to shave their mustaches, all of them required to gain weight.  Today, none of them would meet the minimal standards for consideration in the Miss Pflugerville contest.  Think date night at MIT or Carnegie Mellon.  Back then, these beauties were on the tool company calendars while the lean baldfaced lovelies of today were selling pencils in front of the Apadana Walmart.  Jeeves, take me to the nearest Time Machine, my proclivities are boiling over.

  

4. I Am Chronically Indecisive.  Is There A Restaurant Somewhere That Will Tell Me What I Want For Dinner?

Of course!  That would be Tokyo’s unparalleled Restaurant of Mistaken Orders, where every  server has dementia.  Feel free to order anything on the menu, your order will go astray and be replaced by something delicious and one of a kind.  The restaurant exists to challenge perception and celebrate ability.  What a concept!

The idea belongs to Shiro Oguni, a television director who visited a group home for people with dementia and noticed something shift when he was served the wrong dish.  His hamburger order turned into gyoza, but he didn’t protest.  Instead, he realized that society’s view of dementia limited what people believe those living with it can do.

Around the table, everyone ate with such pleasure that for a moment he wondered if he was the one who’d become confused.  Clarity came not with the impulse to correct the mistake, but with a question: what if the mistake isn’t a problem?  What if my need for someone to get it right is?  Shiro took a bite of the gyoza, and it was really good.  Suddenly, the order being incorrect didn’t matter very much.  “Why raise our eyebrows at the difference between sizzling steak and gyoza?” he laughed.

The experience stayed with Oguni for days and he found himself wondering “if one wrong order could cause such a reaction in me, what would happen if someone built an entire restaurant around that feeling?”  He decided to find out.  Shiro opened RANDY, a pop-up restaurant in Tokyo’s Roppongi district.

Rather then hide errors, the restaurant makes them visible.  At one event, 37% of the orders were mistaken but 99% of the customers claimed they were happy anyway.  Servers wear color-coded aprons, and order sheets make use of simple visuals, supporting memory and ease.  One waiter, 85 years old, forgot his clipboard but still greeted guests, delivered dessert and laughed along with customers when things went sideways.  Behind every order is extraordinary planning.  Support staff are positioned everywhere, ready to step in without taking over.  The restaurant exists to help people with dementia succeed, even when success produces results that look nothing like traditional service.

You go in, sit at a small pop-up table.  Servers with dementia lead you to your seat.  You order coffee or cake.  Perhaps your coffee comes with a straw or your cake arrives elsewhere.  Mistakes are baked into the experience.  Maybe an older woman shows you to your table, then sits down with you like you’re old friends.  Another server wrestles with the pepper mill, concentrating hard but not entirely sure where the pepper will land.  Maybe you reach over to help.  Other diners join in.  Then someone shouts “We did it!” when the problem is solved.  Everyone laughs with the shared absurdity of how much effort a simple act can take.  Instead of frustration, the vulnerability opens space for connection.  One guest described seeing a server smile after a “thank you” and said it reminded her of her grandfather’s last months.

“I’m still capable,” a waiter might say after his shift.  “This has given me confidence.”  The servers are not looking for pity, they’re grateful for honest work.  They want to contribute and feel useful to their community, but society keeps telling them no.  Ah, but The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders tells them yes! and they finally have a place in the sun.

5. Does “The One” Exist?

No, so stop it.

But The Right One definitely exists, if only we can recognize him or her when we run across them.  Being obsessed with finding physical perfection won’t help.  There isn’t just one perfect person for you somewhere in the world, there’s a raft of them.  That might be one of them over there in the next row at the ballgame or playing guitar up there on the stage at a folk festival.  Some people have great instincts.  Aimee, a young nurse not particularly in the market for a love interest at the time, saw Tom with the Stetson singing a song one day at a club, jumped up and ran right up to the stage, yelling “Clear the aisles, I’ll be taking that cowboy right there!”  Almost 50 years later, they’re still together and the temperature at their place is still high.

Not everyone, alas, is as adept as Aimee.  And even when you get a great notion, it has to be reciprocated by the pursuee.  Fortunately for her, Tom was putty in her hands.  Your first choice might laugh or give you the stinkeye.  At Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, I asked my lovely lab partner Betty Jane Kendrick out on a date.  She looked at me with incredulity.  “But you’re a YANKEE!” she gasped.  I tried telling her no, I’m a Red Sox, but that didn’t help.  “Strike three!” the umpire said.

Dr. John Gottman, with 50 years of research and thousands of couples studied under his belt says “True connection doesn’t always feel like fireworks.  Often, it feels like coming home.  You know you’ve found someone special when being together feels as natural as breathing.  When you can sit in comfortable silence.  When your partner’s presence soothes your nervous system rather than activating it.  This deep comfort isn’t about settling or lacking passion.  It’s about being able to navigate life as a team and having mutual commitment to your relationship and each other’s wellbeing.  Our research clearly shows that couples with lower baseline stress hormones when together have significantly higher relationship satisfaction and longevity.”  Who’s going to argue with comfy stress hormones?

And stop being a baby when you don’t get your way.  Smart couples don’t break up—or threaten to—over minor disagreements.  Gottman says a surprising 69% of relationship problems are perpetual.  This means that successful couples learn to navigate these issues even while disagreeing.  “Learning to communicate through conflict productively is a cornerstone of a healthy relationship.” he avers.

There are, of course, limits to disagreement.  “You do have to align on things that matter most,” says Dr. G.  “When you’ve found the right person, your fundamental views about family, career, spirituality and life priorities will complement each other in meaningful ways.  This alignment becomes particularly clear when you discuss the future.  You both want similar things, whether that’s children, career ambitions, lifestyle choices, a ferret or how you want to spend your so-called golden years.  There’s a natural flow to these conversations rather than constant negotiation or compromise that leaves one person feeling unheard.”

Hollywood has tried to sell us The Beautiful Lie, that we’ll know instantly when we’ve found “The One.”  But they also tried to make Forrest Gump viable and convince us that when we are possessed by the devil, our heads can twirl completely around.  Not so.  That only happens when Dolly Parton is walking by.

That’s all, folks….

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