Monsoon Season
They closed the road this morning leading from the Principality of Fairfield to the goober fields of Williston. Too much rain. The westernmost ditches of Route 316 are gagging with rainwater and spitting the overflow back onto the roadway. While this temporarily protects us from rabble approaching from the west, it also cuts us off from the nearest post office, drug store and mobile BBQ stands. What if we urgently need to get to Bill’s Tire Repair, The Dollar Store or Florinda’s Hair & Nail Salon? What if we need some overlarge lug nuts from Tractor Supply? Those Amazon drones aren’t circulating in northwestern Marion County yet.
All this without the slightest sniff of a tropical storm. What happens if Hurricane Algernon breezes in unannounced and takes out the east, west and south? This has happened on a few scary occasions, requiring the implementation of hi-pocket trucks, rechargeable chain saws and driving down a lot of blind alleys looking for a way out. It’s like motoring through one of those Halloween cornfield mazes without the knowledge there is at least one escape route. You meet a lot of interesting people while you’re clearing trees from the street but you don’t jot down too many names and addresses.
If all this wasn’t bad enough, this is the time of year all the larger mosquito colleges let their kids out for Summer Break. Most of them end up in Daytona or Fort Lauderdale, dive-bombing the swimming pools, tying up traffic, getting drunk and taking their clothes off on A1A, but we get our share of the bottom feeders. Each morning, a big yellow bus pulls up at our gate and disgorges half-a-million of the vampires, which then circulate around the property feeding on goat ears and irking no end our slow-moving Rottweiler, Lila. Siobhan has to follow her around on their morning walks with a large palm frond to beat away offenders. We have also purchased a novel blue-light gizmo which sings a mosquito siren song, then sucks them into its ample belly and dehydrates them to death in no time. Don’t worry, we have a sign on there that says “No butterflies allowed!”
Where Have All The Therapists Gone, Long Time Passing?
In the midst of all the Covid carnage, I contracted a meager cold (I felt like a sissy among the big sufferers) and missed my appointment with Desdemona, High Priestess of Thai Massage. If this happens, rest assured you won’t see her until your next monthly session, she is that busy grinding, skewering and twisting her clients into knots of ecstasy. My backup girl, Lily, was out of town having her chakras aligned and her backup, Sheree, was busy at the Shamanic Mystic Fair & Craft Show at the Chacana Spiritual Center in Melbourne. It’s always something.
Now, I’m here to tell you that you can’t just walk into any massage place and get a tuneup. There is funny business going on in some of these places and you could get swept up in the shuffle. Even my old pal Bob Kraft of the Boston Patriots, a sophisticated man of means, was hauled in with the rest of the fish when South Florida lawmen cast a wide net a couple years ago. “I was just there to get my sacroiliac adjusted,” said he, but they wouldn’t listen. Bob has since enlisted a live-in specialist but the untoward incident cost him a pretty penny and now his players all laugh at him.
I once went to an Asian salon in Ocala which was on the up and up, but offered unusual services. “Would you like me to walk on your back?” the therapist asked. “Why would you do that?” I wondered. The lady said she would show me, and told me when I screamed she would stop. The girl did not actually walk on my back---she laid on her back and placed both feet on my lower back with powerful effect. I was impressed that such a little woman would have such strength in her legs and feet and recommended straightaway that she contact the Jacksonville Jaguars, who were having trouble with their field goal kickers.
Good news! During the last paragraph, I heard from Melissa, an old favorite living some distance away. She is full but promises to call if there is a last-minute cancellation. When I last went there, Melissa was insufficiently experienced in the treatment of the psoas muscle and practiced on me as her guinea pig. Some people will do anything for a discount. She has advised me that she is now exceptional with her psoas work but has a few new things she’d like to work on. I can hardly wait to find out.
“I Got Two On The Thoity!”
It’s football season again and all University of Florida fans are eager to get back to moaning and complaining. We have a new, charismatic coach named Billy Napier, who we hope will carry us to glory or at least a 9-3 record, but the roster is full of inexperienced young bucks who may need a few weeks to get into fine fettle, whatever that is. I bought a season ticket this year for the first time in history because I didn’t want to negotiate the mysteries of the non-paper ticket era which have left me dazed and confused. I have finally figured out how to get my tickets to appear on my phone but I don’t want to fiddle with scalpers manipulating mobile tickets. Call me a dino, you’ll be right on.
I will, of course, miss the eloquent Bobby Dee and the always-reliable Ticket Steve, who saves me singles in sections 8 and 10 every week. Steve has become almost a member of the family and I always enjoy discussing with him the highs and lows of the scalper industry (I’m thinking we’re at a historic low since the death of paper tickets). Sometimes, when things are slow, Ticket Steve calls me just to talk for awhile. The average fan doesn’t realize it, but many of these guys make their living off the sports and concert scene, moving around the state from day to day to service their steady customers.
I have benefitted immensely from my relationship with scalpers. I learned long ago that sometimes they are the only game in town and treating them respectfully rather than like bandits will pay off in the long run. Since they deal with constant abuse from barbarians who don’t know how to haggle, they appreciate a cultured buyer and enjoy these relationships. Many a game, I’ve taken a call from Steve, who is holding one on the fifty and just wants reassurance I’m on the way. Perhaps after a modest adjustment period, I will revert to form and return to my old ways. Right now, I have seven tickets on the fifty safely locked into my iPhone, unconcerned whether suddenly Bobby slips into Covidland or Ticket Steve comes up with a disappointing case of renal failure. I have to tell you, it makes me feel very warm and fuzzy.
Coming Soon To A Theater Near You….
After weeks of primping and preening, The Last Tango movie is almost ready for the red carpet. Superbob Simmons has been fussing and fuming, Editor Marc Storch has been snipping and shuffling and Bill Killeen has been insisting on putting in his two cents worth (“More Strawberry Fields, Bob!”) on a regular basis. The three of us think you will like our little 41-minute production, which will debut at Heartwood Soundstage in Gainesville on Sunday, October 2.
The film depicts the now world-famous Subterranean Circus Grand Reunion of May 7, when a thousand old hippies returned to Gainesville to schmooze, smoke and sizzle. Over the course of the movie, Monsignor Bill presents a brief history of the store and a reflection on the times while several interviewees recall The Golden Days. While Class Photographer Allen Cheuvront provides laughs, the true comic relief is delivered by up-and-coming ingenue Chuck LeMasters, a long-time townie. “LeMasters is hilarious,” says West Coast film critic Martin Jourard. “He looks like Iggy Pop.”
The Last Tango is loaded with music, as The Impostors, Nancy Luca, FATWOOD, The Relics and the Don David Band crank it out, followed by a sentimental sayonara from Big Tom Shed. If any of them have had better days, we haven’t seen them. Bob Simmons’ camera work and Marc Storch’s editing present the music-makers at their best, juking and jiving and squeezing the life out of their instruments. We may be sentimental old fools but we nominated the movie to several Florida film festivals because there’s nothing else like it. Once during filming we even caught Jeff Goldstein in a good mood.
Season Of The Pig
Here come the Gators, and about time. Florida fans can hardly wait to replace last year’s horrid memories with visions of Sugar Bowls dancing in their heads. UF fans are as sappily overoptimistic as most but this year’s team dispersed an ornery crew of Utah Utes in its first effort and hopes are rising.
There is a great divide between football fans and dissenters who think it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. This grouchiness usually starts in high school when your girlfriend drops you for the handsome tight end or one of the noseguards gives you a wedgie. While it might be true that for every 10,000 high school graduates there is only one football-playing valedictorian, we ask you where else can you find 90,000 white people, professional rednecks included, standing on their toes screaming support for 70-plus black kids?
Pseudosophisticated people prefer soccer and will point out that it is the most popular sport world-wide. That’s pretty much because even the most destitute children can find an old goat’s head to kick around the slums. Exposure to an exciting new sport can change minds over time. Baseball in Japan was nonexistent until the Japanese had the good fortune to lose their share of World War II and inherited baseball instructors. Now, the natives are gaga over baseball, having produced dozens of players who have emigrated to the American major leagues.
We tried to like soccer, we really did. When the University of Florida succumbed to Title Nine and rustled up a women’s soccer team, we went to the games and sat there in a total stupor as play after offensive play collapsed due to a combination of ineptness, bad luck and silly rules. Any sport where the final score is often 1-0 doesn’t sit well with us. If that happened in baseball, the moguls who run the sport would move the fences in, liven up the baseballs and start manufacturing leaden bats. In soccer, if one team gets a 2-0 lead, the game is basically finished; turn out the lights, the party’s over. In football, Tom Brady’s New England Patriots once won a Super Bowl after trailing 28-3 with two minutes left in the third quarter.
Okay, you say, but what about hockey, which is basically the same as soccer? True, but hockey is much faster and has better fights. And you never know when some unaware fan in the stands is going to eat a puck.
Soccer is also causing problems with American basketball. If you watch any soccer game, you are guaranteed to see a player who has received a slight nudge from an opponent crash to the earth as if he’d been struck down by Thor’s hammer. The horrified referee, noticing this carnage, will whip out a card testifying to this atrocity. One more of those, mister, and you’re back in Lilliput, peeling onions.
Noticing this successful larceny, basketball players in this country have been dropping like flies every time an opponent drives to the basket. Far too often, the officials are bamboozled and call a charging foul on an innocent man, similar to the outrageous behavior of soccer referees. At least the fouled basketball players have the decency to walk off the court under their own power rather than waiting for a pitiful pallet to arrive, as often happens in soccer. Once off the field, the wounded soccer player leaps off the stretcher and begins dancing the hoochie-coochie with a big smile on his face. We think anyone carried off on a pallet should at least be bleeding, have a bone poking through his skin or have had his pants torn off in the collision. Anyway, call us when it’s over.
Are you ready for some football?
That’s all, folks….
