If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can find fault with, you will not do much. ~Lewis Carroll

Who doesn’t love anonymous internet haters these days, eh? Well, most of us I guess, but you have to admit that they can be pretty entertaining if you adjust your perspective.

For example, I posted a video to YouTube a while back that shows some firemen putting out a trashcan fire in front of our building, which I recorded from our second story window.

In the description I said,

“Members of the San Francisco Fire Department bravely tackle a horrendous trashcan fire on Market Street.”“

Which brings us to a prime example of an anonymous internet hater, who recently commented on that video..

This wasn’t horrendous, it was just a diddy little fire, could have been put out using a small home fire extinguisher. What’s so brave about this tiny incident, you should have put a few aerosol cannisters (sic) in the trash box to make it more exciting……

Where were you filming this from anyway, your bedroom window, how convenient, I bet you started this fire just so you could get a video on You Tube…….Pathetic.

Isn’t that fun? HAHA! Obviously I’m not going to waste two seconds beyond the time it takes to delete an asinine comment like this and then block the sender. Life is too short to spend any time at all thinking about it, beyond posting it here for educational purposes.

I’ll answer to this comment here, since I’ve deleted it from YouTube..

Dear SLP (Sad Little Person),

First of all, I’m sorry you don’t understand sarcasm. That’s what it is when I say “brave firemen” and “horrendous fire” in my description, and then you see that it’s a little trashcan fire. It’s to state the opposite of what’s seemingly obvious for the purpose of humor or to make a point.

So, repeat after me.. “SARCASM”.. very good! *pat pat*

On to point two.. we have these little fire extinguishers in glass boxes in the hallway of our building. Sure, I could have grabbed one of those and ran outside to extinguish it myself without calling the fire department. This is what our building manager would have said..

“Are you freakin’ KIDDING ME? You expended one of those for a city trashcan out front? Those are for INSIDE the building, idiot! You are SO paying for having that extinguisher recharged! Next time just call the damned fire department!”

Note – I have no desire to pay for recharging one of the building’s extinguishers when it’s the city fire department’s job to put out trashcan fires that happen on a public sidewalk. I’ve already paid for that in what are called “taxes.”

Ready to repeat after me again? “TAXES!” Very good! *pat pat*

Finally, as to starting this fire “just to get a video on YouTube,” guess what? I didn’t! I didn’t even call it in to the fire department. I smelled smoke so I looked out the window and saw the flames, then I was going to call it in but heard sirens approaching.

During that time I grabbed the video cam and turned it on. Sure enough, someone else had called it in and the video shows the rest of it. Did you notice the oblivious guy in the blue jacket who almost walks right into the stream of the firehose? HAHA! Now THERE’S something to comment on, if you want to go around making out what idiots people are.

“Hey, look at that idiot who almost walked right into the firehose Stream, LMFAO!”

But to say “I bet you started this fire just to get a video on YouTube” doesn’t make it so, and therefore your “pathetic” at the end is completely unwarranted and certainly not true. It’s not in the least bit pathetic! It’s FUN!

Repeat once again.. “FUN!” Yay!!

So now I’m done talking to the sad little person and I’m talking to you readers instead, because you’re all much more interesting than that person, and a heckuva lot smarter too.

I have to say that as entertaining as those type of comments are, I just don’t get them, just as this sad little person doesn’t get sarcasm.

I mean, WHY? Why would anyone go around leaving comments like this? Why do they want to spend their time leaving junk all over the Internet when they could be creating something that helps and inspires people, or at least makes them laugh, instead of tearing them down with idiotic assumptions and erroneous “facts” based on nothing?

Of course, this was just a diddy little comment that was easily put out by using a small home delete button. We’ve had our share of those over the years and they keep coming, but thankfully not by the truckload. But some people have it worse.. much worse.

I saw a post on Tumblr wherein a hater called a young woman all kinds of nasty names and threatened her, all for being outwardly gay. He said that if he went to her school (I take it they’re both high-schoolers) that he’d kill her.

To this, all I can say is WHY WHY WHY? ..ad infinitum.

So many questions. WHY such hate and viciousness? WHY such venomous evil?

Aside from that, it doesn’t even make sense. Practically speaking it defies logic, just as my commenter did when suggesting I should use a small home extinguisher and that I called the fire department just to get a video on YouTube.

In the post the hater called the girl a “sinning bitch” (implying that he agrees sin is wrong) and then threatens to kill her. I’m pretty sure killing another human being is an even greater sin than sexual promiscuity with the same sex, as far as sins go.

So yeah, no logic or sense whatsoever, but that’s the way of these things.

It’s easy for someone like me to diss a diddy little comment about a firetruck video, but it’s not always so easy for a young person to handle something like this.

They cut themselves, they wallow, they’re pushed further into drugs and alcohol and their lives are devastated, simply because they don’t have the life experience to deal properly with idiots. More often than we know, they attempt to take their own lives and are occasionally successful.

To any young people who are getting bullied, I just want to say that you don’t have to take it, because IT DOESN’T MATTER.

It doesn’t matter what someone like that thinks of you. Don’t let their inane opinion sway you, and don’t use their negative energy to sink further into self-destruction.

Here’s a great truth – they don’t have any power over you except what YOU GIVE THEM.

So don’t give them any.

Don’t give them one second of your time or thought. These kind of comments and negativity are what they do, and not just to you.. they suck energy out of victims and thrive on it. They’re vampires, but not in the glamorously gothic sense we see in movies, TV and books. They’re the real deal who don’t feed on blood.. they feed on your soul.

But you know how vampire lore says they can’t get into your house unless you invite them in? We’re talking about the blood-sucking kind when they’re standing on your front porch, but it also applies to these kind when you realize that you don’t have to invite them into your heart, mind and soul when they knock. You don’t even have to answer the door.

Just go about your business and when they realize you’re not a victim, which won’t take long at all, they’ll go away. More will come along because life isn’t in the least bit fair, but as you go along you’ll get better at dissing them.

You’ll eventually learn to care only about what matters, but it’s a skill that needs to be honed with time and experience. You’ll soon see that they’re nothing but diddy little commenters who are simply pathetic, and they can be easily extinguished with your tremendously positive attitude and self-confidence.

The glass box is in the hall, so just grab the extinguisher, pull the pin and squirt. Then go about living your life because that’s all that really matters.

Members of the San Francisco Fire Department bravely tackle a horrendous trashcan fire on Market Street.

“Morality is simply an attitude we adopt toward people we dislike.”
~ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

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The “sissy film,” rattling the bones of bigots everywhere!

Note- Videos don’t show up in the emailings, so come on over to the site if you want to see it.

Hey, welcome to 2012, you made it!

Before we get to the good stuff, let’s establish some ground rules going in..

1. Keep negativity to a minimum. No one can completely get rid of it because we all have those kind of days, you know? But it’s not that hard to keep it in check and think before you talk.

2. Try some positive thinking. I know you haven’t been crazy about the motivational speakers who bank on that stuff and preach it to the masses, but there’s something to it. Just try to see the good in people, a lot more than you have been.

3. Make something of yourself this year.  Less sitting on your butt and more going with your gut. Trite, I know. But who cares?

By the way folks, I’m talking to myself here. It’s not my place to tell you what to do, especially since I need to work on my own attitude and motivation. I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions but this year is different. Despite what the false prophets have predicted, we’re all still here (well, a lot of us anyway) and I intend to make the most of it.

This blog is changing a bit because I’m changing a bit. I already feel it in my bones. They say people don’t change that much – about 12 to 15 percent one way or the other, for better or worse – so I’m working on that 15 percent. Maybe I’ll defy the odds and hit twenty! Oh, and that’s for the better, in case you were wondering.

You who come for the humor are still going to get it, hopefully in bucket-loads. But I want to embrace the beautifully mundane too, and throw a spotlight on wonder. I want to ponder, examine, extrapolate and muse.

The old tagline was “sweet, succulent satire,” which we’ll still provide on occasion but only for dessert. Our main course will now be life as it is, with all its silly beauty, drastic pain and magnificent achievement.

Welcome to Rhodester Dot Net. My name is Dave, and it’s 2012. Let’s rock some socks off.

Rhodester's home of nearly four years, the USS Fanning.

Sometimes when I tell people that I’m a US Navy Veteran they say, “Oh really? Hey, thanks for your service!”

I’m never sure how to react to this so I just kind of snort and go, “Oh it’s no big deal.” This is because to me, it really isn’t. It’s not like I helped storm a beach at Normandy. I was just a kid who did things on a ship that a kid would do at a McDonald’s, if the McDonald’s sailed the ocean and delivered Big Macs to foreign countries.

I even accidentally enlisted. I ran around with this kid named Sterling in high school, and as we were wrapping up our senior year he decided he wanted to join the Navy, so not having anything better to do I enlisted with him on the buddy system.

Problem was, he didn’t pass the testing and I did. So I didn’t go into the Navy with Sterling, I went by myself and Sterling went to prison. This wasn’t because he failed the admissions test (that’d be rather harsh) but because he did some really bad things a few years later, while I was sailing the high seas on a US Navy ship. I found out about it after I’d done my Navy hitch and trust me, he deserved it.

So there I was, on a ship based in San Diego, and I didn’t have a particular job so I did a lot of small jobs that needed doing. This was called “First Division,” where they’d put the guys who didn’t have any specialized training. We’d sweep the ship, then paint it, then chip the paint off and paint it again, then we’d steer it when it went out to sea and when we weren’t steering it we’d stand up on the upper decks with binoculars and be lookouts so that the ship wouldn’t run into other ships while we were out there.

We visited all kinds of foreign countries during my four-year hitch and we even got into a few sticky situations, like that time President Jimmy Carter botched the Iranian hostage rescue. Well, he didn’t personally botch it but I understand it was an ill-advised maneuver and the responsibility for it lay with him. Whatever.

All I know is that we were over there at the time, with “there” being the Indian Ocean,” and alla-sudden we were on full alert and spent the next few months thinking we were going to have Iranian missiles lobbed at us at any second. I practically lived up on the signal bridge with my binoculars, scanning the sky and water for hostile aircraft and boats.

We were supposed to go to Australia but it got cancelled thanks to PRESIDENT JIMMY FREAKIN’ CARTER, so instead of running down a beach on the gold coast hand-in-hand with a gorgeous Aussie chick, I got to spend an additional three months in the Indian Ocean along with the rest of the crew, safeguarding something-or-other until it all “blew over,” which it doesn’t seem to have done even to this day.

We spent Christmas day of that year in the Indian Ocean on a ship made entirely of steel, and it was like a hundred and twelve degrees or something. Do the math.

Still, a few extra months at sea on a small-ish ship full of guys is really nothing compared to what other veterans have gone through, especially those who have lost their lives in service.

There’s Robert Dorey, who I never knew because he left us well before my time. He was a radioman on a bomber that went down in Papa New Guinea during world war two, and I’ve heard he was quite a guy. His younger brother Don is my better-half’s granddad, and at 92 years young, Don Dorey still reminisces about his brother once-in-awhile.

He’ll tell you about Robert’s kindness and how he always looked out for Don, and how he had a way with the ladies. Evidently he was quite the looker but it didn’t go to his head; he was a modest young man who loved his mother and the rest of his family. He loved America too, and gave his life for it.

They found Robert’s airplane many years later buried deep in the jungle foliage. Robert and the other crew-members were still there, sort of. They shipped what was left of them back to the states for a formal burial at Arlington, which grandad Don and grandma Peg attended. They had one of those fancy twenty-one gun salutes and folded the American flag up all nice and proper, which they then presented to grandad Don, who was Robert’s only surviving kin.

Thank you uncle Robert for your service.

Don Dorey himself flew an airplane in that war and almost got into a nasty situation, but the story is they called up his squadron while they were on their way to wreak havoc on some bad guys and they said “the war’s over, so come on home.” It was Don’s first and only mission, from which he returned unscathed.

Thank you grandad Don for your service.

World War Two Veteran Don Dorey with his granddaughter, Dorian.

Uncle Dick, aka Richard Smith, was married to Don’s sister-in-law, Juanita. I knew him well; he put me up on the night before my wedding. He and Juanita had a mountain cabin across from Don and Peg’s, and on the night before our lovely mountain-chapel nuptials, Dorian slept at her grandparent’s place while I laid-over at Dick and Juanita’s with the rest of my wedding party, Larry, Dave and Pete.

Uncle Dick is gone now, but I remember that attic loft full of model airplanes, and one model in particular; a B-29 called the “Enola Gay.” It was a horrible mission and the morality of it will continue in endless debate for generations to come, but Dick was just following orders like anyone else when he sat in the cockpit of his own B-29 that was to serve as a back-up to the Enola Gay.

As he told it they had a fat little nuclear bomb on that airplane too, and he stood by on the tarmac with his crew ready to take-off on a moment’s notice if the Enola Gay had managed to get shot down before completing her mission, which was to unleash the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th, 1945.

Fortunately for Captain Richard Smith the Enola Gay succeeded, so Colonel Paul Tibbets had the distinction of forever being associated with that hellish event, rather than uncle Dick.

Thank you uncle Dick for your service.

The Enola Gay just after her mission over Hiroshima.

 I only worked with Billy Neu for a couple of years, but what a hellcat. Nothing phased him. He was a former Cook County Chicago Sheriff’s Deputy and before that, some kind of special forces operative in Vietnam, which he didn’t talk about very much. None of them do.

Billy witnessed some unimaginable things during that war, only to come home and be spat upon, mocked and ridiculed for following orders. This after he’d seen friends of his die only feet away from him. We worked together as security guys at a resort hotel, so the worst we ever had to deal with were drunken, rowdy guests in the hot-tub too late at night.

Today Billy is fully retired and rides his Harley with a lot of other Vietnam brothers in The Patriot Guard. They’re a bunch of pretty good guys who have a little fun while trying to make America a better place to live.

Thank you Billy, and ALL of Billy’s Vietnam brothers, for your service.

Billy Neu, center, with a couple of his Veteran brothers, Roland Marchand and Malcolm Kirby.

These are just a handful of the veterans that I’ve known personally or, as in the case of Robert and Don Dorey, am related to. There are hundreds of thousands of others, who all outshine me in honor by about a million degrees and I’m in absolute awe of them.

Other vets have always told me that I should feel honored when people thank me for my service, and I do, but I can’t help but stand in the shadows of these great men and women who’ve sacrificed more than a bit of personal freedom.

I swept and painted my way across the sea, and never fired a gun. I was one of those “support people” who helped keep the old ship afloat, as it were. I steered it in the direction I was told to, and kept it looking pretty.

But you know what? I’m a US Navy Veteran, and I’m proud of that. I’m honored to have served for those four years, and I’m a better man for having done so.

Today is Veteran’s Day here in the United States of America, so it’s my day, and those hundreds of thousands of others.

I am always proud to be an American..  and you know what else?

You’re welcome.

Yesterday, a guy died under our window and I felt nothing.

We live in a residential hotel in downtown San Francisco. A lot goes on around here and it’s easy to get de-sensitized to people. It’s easy to not care.

I try not to let that happen to me, but it does. A part of it is self-preservation.

Try not to judge me too harshly about my feelings toward this guy until you’ve heard a little about him. He and his girlfriend are homeless and have been hanging out in this area for about a year. She’s late thirties, he was maybe forty-five at the most. Their fights were epic.

She’d scream at him and he’d yell back at her in a gravelly voice until the blows came. Then they’d pummel each other. Sometimes it’d turn into a wrestling match in the parking lot below, with one or the other burying their opponent’s face into the asphalt. Police and medics are on a first-name basis with them.

These are the type of people I call “homeless-by-choice.” I know some have a problem with that term, but I don’t care; they don’t live here and see this stuff first-hand. Granted, probably no-one starts off with the intent of being homeless, but drugs and/or alcohol just get the best of them and they give up at some point. They no longer try to get any help and they generally feel that the world is against them. They just don’t care anymore.

This guy’s name was Jimmy, which I only know because she constantly shouted it during their fights. “Fuck you Jimmy, you bastard! I hate you! Burn in hell you sonofabitch!” He used his fists and hands more than his voice and he was hard to understand so I never got her name. I’ll just call her Sally.

It became apparent at some point that Sally was pregnant. I remember the day I heard her tell someone, and then as the months went by she started to show more. This didn’t change anything. They still lived on the street, mostly under our window, and they still fought.

When she was in her final month he’d kick her and hit her. Did I call 911? Initially, yes. But when they’d be back on the street and and it would continue, you just reach that awful point of not caring anymore. You can only do so much.

I have to commend Sally for bringing this baby to term and letting social services have him. She disappeared for a few days, right around the time she was due. Then she showed up again, very unpregnant and saying things like “they better take care of my son.”

Recently she went off on another yelling rant at Jimmy, this time saying, “I can’t believe you won’t let me go visit my own son! He’s your son too, don’t you want to go see him? They’ll let us but you won’t even try, you bastard!”

Sometimes these rants were accompanied by the sound of breaking glass as she’d fling a bottle at him. This is only after every drop had been wrung out of it first.

Yesterday we were watching some TV show when her yells brought me to the window, which they hadn’t for a long time. You learn to tune it out – white noise – but this was different. She was sobbing heart-wrenching, deep sobs without being able to catch her breath. “Don’t you do this to me Jimmy, you bastard, don’t leave me alone out here goddammit!”

It occurred to me I’d heard sirens a few minutes earlier but we hear those all the time too – more white noise – so I hadn’t realized they’d stopped in the parking lot down below.

I pulled back the curtain to see Jimmy laying on his back, staring vacantly up to the sky. He was a crimson, purplish-blue. I’d seen it before; he was gone. Probably an overdose or heart-attack. A group of firemen and medics stood around him as a gurney was brought over from an ambulance, then they lowered it and rolled him onto it. She asked where they were taking him.

“San Francisco General, ma’am.”

They rolled what was left of him off to the ambulance, which then took its time leaving. No code-3, another indication that it was over for Jimmy. She stood and stared at it as it pulled into traffic, then collapsed to her knees and sobbed.

I closed the curtain and said to Dorian, “Jimmy’s dead. No more fights!”

“Huh, that’s too bad.” She meant the part about him being dead, of course. We won’t miss the fights at all.

Then we resumed our TV show.

I thought about it, and the only conclusion I can come to over my lack of caring is that Jimmy died long ago. It’s nothing new. Yesterday, his body gave out. That’s all. His soul was dead already.

I FOUND HER!

Young and gorgeous Devon Jenkin

Actually, a friend of mind did. “Look at this..” he said, as he sent a link to “”Devon Jenkin,” who now goes by Devon Kidd. “It’s the girl from Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ video!”

Older and gorgeous Devon Kidd

Well I’ll be darned, it sure is.

In 1989 we all crushed on her. I mean all of us straight guys, and the gay girls. The straight girls wanted to BE her.

She was perfect.

“She’s a good girl, loves her mama.. loves Jesus, and America too. She’s a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis.. loves horses, and her boyfriend too.”

We loved her and her pool, along with her pretty white dress and party balloons. We loved those shorts she wore while chowing down on a Future Dog, and her skateboard and knee-pads later on, when she nervously took the plunge and showed the guys what she had.

We loved her, but hated Tom. How could he break her heart? How could he NOT EVEN MISS HER? HUH?

Had he SEEN her? It wasn’t just the glow, man, really! It was the innocence too, and the naivety. We wanted to put our arm around her and comfort her, offering our protection from those Ventura Boulevard vampires.

Then after the party we’d take her out for a hotdog.

“It’s a long day, livin’ in Reseda.. there’s a freeway, runnin’ through the yard. And I’m a bad boy, ’cause I don’t even miss her.. I’m a bad boy, for breakin’ her heart.”

Jerkwad.

We remember MTV’s Martha Quinn referring to her as “that gorgeous blonde on the skate ramp.” Martha didn’t even know her name! None of us did.

Young-uns need to realize that this was a really long time ago. Not by world standards or as far as the universe is concerned and all of that, no.. it was just a long time ago by pop-culture standards and our individually brief and fleeting lives.

Believe it or not, we didn’t have the Internet back then. We couldn’t Google “girl in Tom Petty video” and get instant answers. We didn’t even have Britney! Well, we DID have a “Britney”.. her name was “Madonna.” She’d made a name for herself by the time Tom’s Free Fallin’ video was made. We’re not sure what she’s doing nowadays.

But we know what Devon’s up to, thanks to that GOOGLE! She still loves Jesus, but now she teaches fitness and sells real estate, and you know what? We’re not in the least bit surprised at any of that. Devon is the quintessential Southern California blonde, still hot and strikingly beautiful, with an aura of sweet warmth and charm that renews every old crush.

We bet she doesn’t miss old Tom in the least. She looks to be healthy and happy, having enjoyed over twenty years of minor pop celebrity. She probably shops at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, and guys like us still stare her to death before finally getting up the nerve to approach her near the yogurt section, saying, “Excuse me, but aren’t you that girl from the Tom Petty video?”

“I want to glide down, over Mulholland.. I want to write her, name in the sky. I want to free fall, out into nothin’.. I want to leave this, world for a while.”

Devon Kidd trades in the skateboard for a parachute on her forty-somethingth *cough* birthday..

The Stanley Cup

CONGRATULATIONS to the Boston Bruins for their victory over the Canucks in the 2011 Stanley Cup Playoff.

As a tribute, we are reblogging this post from 2oo8 about the time Rhodester won the Stanley Cup.

————————————–

At times, I’ve been accused of name dropping on this blog.

To that I say, I don’t!  I just lay them down gently. Then it’s up to you to step through the minefield of celebrity and fame and if you trip over one or two in the process, well, who’s fault is that?  Can I help it that I used to schmooze with the rich and famous?

I’m wondering though, if it counts as name dropping if you talk about a famous pile of metal rather than a person.

You see, yesterday I was asking James at MEN WITH PENS how to give a first-person narrative with strong anchor phrases and keywords, but somehow got onto the subject of Hollywood.  That happens with me a lot, and that’s when I get accused of name-dropping.

James hasn’t accused me of it though, yet, but he should because I couldn’t help showing him up.  I always do that and it’s a bad, BAD habit.  If you saw Steven Spielberg in a mall, I hung out with him on the set of an Oscar nominated film.  If you saw Muhammed Ali fight way back when, I spent half the day with him on a security detail.  If you spotted Gwyneth Paltrow in Sardi’s during your trip to LA, I once tried to kill her.

It never ends.

What happened yesterday is that I’d just mentioned something about some celebrity – I can’t remember WHO, because there are just SO MANY – and James wrote back the following..

I do have an autograph of Denis Hamel on my fridge .. he’s a famous hockey player. Like, you’re supposed to know who he is. Comes from my town. Famous. I’m telling you. Denis. Yes?

Well, like I could leave THAT alone!  I could do better, so I replied..

A few years back I was booked as an extra on an HBO show called “Arli$$“, about a sports agent (or reporter, or something.. I’d never watched it.)

We shot some scenes on a sound stage and then broke for lunch – another sound stage that wasn’t being used for the show had been set up as a cafeteria, and I grabbed a tray of food and took a seat at an empty table.  I didn’t know anyone there, and didn’t really want to fraternize with the crew.

As I was eating, some guy came in with this big-ass trophy, and everyone cheered.  He asked, “Where do I put it?”  One of the crew guys pointed to my table and told him to set it there, so he did.  Then everyone just HAD to come over and flock around it for a nice close-up view and, since it had been set down about three feet away from me, I was suddenly surrounded by crew people, pushing and shoving for a closer view of it.

So, I had lunch with the most prestigious award in hockey and one of the most important awards in the world of sports, THE STANLEY CUP.  The REAL one, not a prop, because they do that sort of thing with it.

I later found out that it makes “appearances” all over the place, just like a celebrity.  It was on loan to be used in that particular episode of the show – I forgot to mention the armed guard who stayed within view of it the whole time.

So, yeah.. speaking of HOCKEY.  Sorry, I’ve never heard of Denis Hamel.

So now you see how annoying I can be.  But I’m still wondering if it counts when it’s a big-ass metal cup instead of a person.

I should phone up Spielberg and ask him.

..from my TUMBLR

(because we’re lazy on Mondays)

If you really want to impress the chicks,
a straw-beard is the way to go.

Waves of PURPLE

Our neighbor Mary dropped by for a visit.

We had a nice chat about this and that.

Then she asked Dorian how she was feeling.

“I’m having a rough day,” Dorian said. “My head is splitting and it’s hard to concentrate.”

Mary then closed her eyes and started waving her hand repeatedly at Dorian’s head.

“Have some purple healing waves,” she said. “Purple is for the brain.. so here, purple.. PUUUUURPLE…”

She waved and waved and waved.

After a few minutes of continuous purple waving she finally stopped, bid us adieu and left.

Life in San Francisco.

When hipsters die and go to heaven

All sleep and no play makes kitty a very, very dull feline

How not to pass a bus driving test. Or in the case of
San Francisco Muni, how to PASS a bus driving test

When someone sins at Disneyland

Don’t be TOO impressed, they’re just MERE CATS *cough*

Shania Twain mentors her apprentice,
Taylor Swift, on the art of handling critics.

‘m fine, thanks. Yes, I took a sabbatical from this blog. Went somewhere else for awhile, but I’m back now.

Sorry about that.

If you subscribed before, you may need to subscribe again.

Sorry about that too.

I thought I’d left this all behind, but fate had different ideas. So did all the people who wondered where the hell I went, and asked for me to come back to rhodester.net

Thank you, wondering people, for bringing me to my senses.

We also physically moved during my sabbatical (“we” being Dorian and I), but just to a different apartment in the same building. We now have a window that looks over at San Francisco City Hall, Civic Center Plaza, and the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, where they hold a lot of concerts and stuff.

Actually, my last post was about Britney Spears making a comeback by launching her new tour there, and last night Kylie Minogue put on a show. Here’s Kylie’s tour-bus as seen from our window..

Someone should tell her that at night, when the bus lights are on inside, people can see in. Especially people with binoculars who are lurking at second story windows across the street. Wow, she’s petite, yet still rocks it!

I posted about this on my facebook yesterday and friends who are not young and hip enough to know who Kylie Minogue is, asked me who Kylie Minogue is.

Basically she’s an Australian Britney Spears, but she’s older than Britney and about half the size. Britney could probably put Kylie in her purse. And from the way Britney was looking at her gig here two months ago, if she sat on Kylie, poor Kylie would certainly be done for.

Okay.. so yeah, we’re glad to be back, bringing you all kinds of random nonsense from San Francisco. And by “we” I mean me, as usual. Except when I mean Dorian too, who’s also glad we’re back.

Confused yet? Good.

Stay tuned.

RHODESTER IS BACK.

It’s been almost two months since we tried another venture at davisrhodes.com, but due to overwhelming failure of that brand and subsequent demand to revive this one, we’ve decided to bring things back here.

We have some work to do, and no internet at the moment with which to do it, because we switched rooms in our building and now we’re waiting on AT&T to switch over. So for the moment we’re in a coffee house in downtown San Francisco, blogging about this.

That’s right, I said “we.” ALL of us. We’re here.

In this coffee house.

We’re also trying to figure out what we’re going to do when the rapture on Saturday takes about a third of our audience (less, really.. a lot less) and how we’re going to write with all those earthquakes and tribulations going on.

But we know we’ll manage somehow.

We’re going to post the things we posted at davisrhodes.com, so bear with us for awhile if you already read all of that. We need to get our Google juice back.

We also need to get “Rhodester” back from Twitter, and get it away from “Darrell Rhodes,” who we suspect doesn’t exist. Check it out.

Yes, we have work to do, and it will be slow going because this coffee house closes at ten and then we’re screwed for the night.

SCREWED.

But we’ll be back. Resubscribe if you want and can, which we’re not even sure about at the moment. Redoing our feed might be one of those things we have to fix.

Damn, we made a mess.

But welcome back anyway. Please watch your step.

Let me start by saying I’m a terrible salesman.

This isn’t because I don’t know how to do it, but rather that I don’t care for it. I detest the idea of selling someone a sucky product or a good product that they don’t really need or want, and let’s face it, a big part of sales is to convince someone that they need or want something when they really didn’t start out that way.

But let’s say you have a good product, like my friend who wrote some cool books that are available on Amazon. There are certain methods of letting people know about these books that are preferable over other methods.

I’ll ‘splain..

Years ago I worked at a radio station that ran paid programs all day and night. The client would buy a block of time and their program would air in the time-slot they paid for. The station would give their program another run in the early morning hours, when there was hardly any audience.

One time I was on the phone with someone while in the studio and the boss overheard me say that we charge for the first airing of a particular program, which was at three in the afternoon, and we gave the client a “freebie” play at two in the morning.

When I got off the phone the boss admonished me to never use the term “freebie,” but rather to refer to it as a “bonus run.” I didn’t work in sales for the station, so I didn’t know any of that stuff and I thought it was kind of petty at the time. Now I realize he had a point.

As much as I detest sales, there are certain techniques and terminology that come into play that are more effective, and one can either use them for something good or something evil. Hey, it’s just like knives! You can use them to cut your meat or stab someone, it’s up to you!

So, let’s not stab anyone here.. let’s instead just learn a more effective way to carve our collective turkeys.

What got my attention was that my friend, who admits that he has all the marketing and sales experience of an Albanian Yak, was constantly posting phrases such as this on his Twitter and Facebook streams..

“You can now buy my latest novel at Amazon! Click this link!”

and..

“I’m having a contest to give away a copy of my book, click here to enter and while you’re at it look at the other ones that are for sale!”

and..

“My book is now only 99 cents in the Amazon store!”

All I saw was “ME,” “MY” and “MONEY.”

So I skyped him, because we’re pals and I knew he’d be able to take some constructive criticism. I prefaced it with saying that it’s all just my opinion and I’m certainly not any marketing expert, but that I know of preferable methods for promotion and it all pretty-much comes down to the wording.

First of all, people don’t want to hear about money.

The money is what they’re going to (hopefully) send to YOU, so leave it out of the equation. When they click the link you provide they’ll see how much something costs, so let them get there before they get to that part. Everything you promote should be about what you can do for them, and since you’re not sending them any money then don’t mention money.

Also, when using adjectives such as “wonderful” and “amazing,” write it in the third-person, so as not to make yourself seem like a pompous ass.

BAD – “Check out my fantastic new ebook about Albanian Yak migration that’s now available on Amazon for only 99 cents!”

BETTER – “Rhodester’s fantastic new ebook on Albanian Yak migration is now available on Amazon for only 99 cents!”

BEST – “Rhodester’s fantastic new ebook on Albanian Yak migration is now available on Amazon!”

NUMBERS

My friend also posted this, which he said was only so fellow writers could track his progress, but the bad part was that everyone could see it..

“My novel sold 14 copies yesterday, and 19 today!”

Granted, he was excited about that and when a person hasn’t sold anything and then alla-sudden they sell 14 copies, it’s kind of cool. It’s also cool to his wife, friend and brother or sister.

But if you don’t know him and you don’t know it’s a first-time self-published novel that’s just been launched, then 14 seems like an incredibly low number. And 14 sales in one day translates to only 14 people out of the billions on this planet who are actually interested enough to plunk down a buck for the thing.

I told him to let me know when it’s 14,000 a day.

The thing is, ratings, numbers and stats don’t necessarily translate to quality but LOW ratings, numbers and stats don’t do anyone any good at all when it comes to promoting something.

REVIEWS

My friend asked about linking to reviews of his book on Amazon. Here’s how I feel about pushing that angle..

I’ve been married for over twenty years and if my wife says I should check something out, there’s an incredibly good chance I’m going to like it. Not only do I know her pretty damned well but she knows me and what my tastes are.

But if I read a glowing report from Alfred Schmoozenburger about my friend’s book, why should I give it any weight at all? Maybe Alfred is a complete kook! Maybe, if I knew Alfred, I’d find that we don’t agree on a single damned thing in this life, including our taste in fiction.

Apologies if your name is Alfred Schmoozenberger. For more than the obvious reason.

This is why reviews don’t pack much of a punch for me, unless I know and respect the source. If you can get a well-known author or celebrity to endorse your book, then by all means use it like crazy in your promotion.. otherwise leave Alfred at Amazon.

I was relieved my friend took my suggestions and adjusted his methods accordingly. I don’t like giving advice, especially unsolicited, but in this case I just want to see him sell more books and I think he will now that he’s changing his approach a bit.

In summation, if you have something to promote then remember these points..

• It’s not about money. It’s about the customer/reader/viewer.
• It’s not about you, it’s about the product. Write promos in the third person or better yet, get someone else to say how wonderful your product is.
• Full reviews don’t matter much unless the reviewer matters to the reader.
• Numbers don’t matter unless they’re high. If you don’t mind straining your ethics, you can make them seem high..

WRONG – “My book sold 10 copies yesterday and 20 today!”

RIGHT – “Rhodester’s book sales doubled overnight!”

I probably wouldn’t even go there unless my sales had gone from 10,000 to 20,000 in 24 hours and even then, it’s not about what a great product I have for people, it’s just saying that 20,000 knuckleheads like it.

But most of them are probably Albanian Yaks.

——————————————————–

Hey, before you go, check out this WONDERFUL BOOK on AMAZON!

Back when I was driving a taxi, I got a call one evening to pick up some guy named Roger at a local shopping center.

It took me about 15 minutes to get there and when I pulled in, I didn’t see anyone who looked like they were waiting for a cab. People would usually wait out front or just inside of the store, then they’d flag you down when they saw you.

There were people going in and out of the supermarket and a security guard who was standing on the sidewalk, watching me as I slowly cruised by.

I went up and turned around to make another pass. Again, nobody flagged me and the security guy just stood there with his hands in his pockets as I glided by him.

I found a spot curbside and pulled up, then sat there with the cab idling. Should this “Roger” character come out anytime soon, he’d surely see the bright yellow taxi sitting there and walk right up to me.

I sat there for ten minutes, then put it into gear and made another slow pass. There were other calls out there that I was losing money on, so I was about to call this a no-show and clear it. The security guard stared at me with a sullen expression, as he’d been doing the entire time I’d sat curbside about fifty feet away from him.

I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask him if he knew anything about someone calling a cab.. it was a last-ditch effort to salvage my fare. Maybe he’d say the guy called and then got into another cab or took off walking. I should have asked him when I’d first arrived, but he looked like kind of an asshole.

I pulled up to him.

“Hey man, how ya doin? You don’t know of anyone who called a cab in the past fifteen minutes or so, do you?”

He glared at me, then opened the rear door of the taxi. That’s when I noticed he had a couple of grocery bags that were sitting on the sidewalk behind him. He lifted them up and placed them in the backseat before sliding in next to them and slamming the door shut.

“I was wondering when you’d ever figure it out.. I’m Roger. Let’s go man, I’ve been waiting a fucking half-hour.”

I drove pensively. I didn’t want to be a jerk back to him, that never got anyone anywhere. But I had to say something, so I did so in the nicest tone I could muster up..

“”Well, you know.. you could have walked-up and told me you were Roger. You saw me looking for someone. And if you’re upset I didn’t come right up to you, it’s because security guards tend to stand around in shopping centers a lot. I thought you were on duty. I had no way of knowing you were the customer.”

“I WAS on duty,” he replied. “Up until forty-five minutes ago, then I clocked out, got some groceries and called a cab. Then I watched you cruise up and down for fifteen minutes.”

I let it go. No use saying any more about it. It was a short trip and when we got to his place the meter said $7.40.. he gave me a ten and asked for the change.

I handed him $2.60 and almost got a nose-bleed from that high road I was taking, as I thanked him and told him to have a good night. He slammed the door without a word.

Roger, here’s a tip for YOU.. don’t be a jerk.

As you can see by our banner sail up overhead, we here at the good ship Rhodester have been compelled to change course once again.

This is due to the stormy weather that we’ve been encountering, which has had us bobbing up and down and swirling around in a daze. That’s what happens when one sails right into the tempest.

There are other ships that are larger and more powerful, which are better equipped for the voyage we’d so foolishly embarked on, which was to maintain a blog dedicated entirely to writing about San Francisco.

We’ve discovered that it’s difficult to write about San Francisco when one can’t actually get out and about IN San Francisco that often, despite one’s living here.

So we need to leave that to the sailors who actually have a job that pays the bills who can get out into the city in their spare time, or to the full-time sailors who have full-time blogs dedicated to the city and they make a living at it.

We’ve been bobbing along seeking the island of self-sufficiency for quite some time, but so far it’s eluded us and in the meantime, the tempest swells.

Whatever that means. But we know it’s bad.

So we’ve decided to go back to writing about anything that strikes our fancy, because we can do that from the safety of our deck cabin. We’ll still write about San Francisco when we happen to go ashore once in a while, but in the meantime we’ll write about subjects like Miley Cyrus, UFOs and wombats, and sometimes we’ll even try to cleverly tie those things in together.

Teen idol and pop-singing sensation Miley Cyrus - photo courtesy of wikipedia

For example, did you hear about Miley Cyrus getting abducted by a UFO and they replaced her with a singing wombat? It’s true! The good news is, the wombat has more talent and looks better in a skirt.

A Wombat - photo courtesy of wikipedia

You might think we’re kidding but the truth is that when she smoked salvia, for a few brief, shining moments she actually thought she WAS a singing wombat.

Cyrus McMiley, the singing Wombat - photo courtesy of Rhodester's Salvia stash

See how much more fun that is than talking about the homeless people around here? That’s what we were saddled with because we live in a cheap hotel in downtown San Francisco, so whenever we run errands that’s pretty much what we come back with; stories of homeless people.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. God bless ‘em.

And their singing wombats.

Lot of salvia floatin’ around on the streets these days.

So there you have it. We’ve once again dropped anchor in satire cove, so if you’d like to go for a swim then just don your RSS shorts and dive in.

Don’t forget to use the safety flotation device that’s shaped like a bookmark.

And whatever you do, don’t let the spam sharks get you.

Carry on.

——————————————–

Links to actual blogs that are actually about San Francisco..

Bay Area on the Cheap

Broke-ass Stuart’s

Caliber

Curbed

Eater

Grub Street

Mission Mission

Muni Diaries

San Francisco Citizen

Johnny’s Funcheap

SFist

——————————————–

Link to a MileyCyrus blog..

The Miley Cyrus Blog

——————————————–

Link to a Wombat blog..

The Wombat Blog

The fast, new server delivers our huge load of email in a hurry

It seems that back in November, the email address for this blog stopped working.

We had no idea.

We use a gmail address for personal stuff, and dave@rhodester.net for you all to contact us from here. Back in November the host informed us they’d moved this blog to a different server but neglected to tell us we’d need to adjust the email settings to have messages forwarded to the gmail account.

We guess that’s one of those things we’re supposed to just know. Like, duh! Of course we needed to adjust the settings! DUMMIES!

We figured that things had just gotten kind of quiet and folks weren’t trying to contact us through this blog.

So mail from this blog just sat there on the server, languishing for months on end until today, FINALLY.. we saw the big red box in our gmail account settings that said..

ERROR! THIS ACCOUNT HAS BEEN UNABLE
TO CONNECT SINCE NOVEMBER.

WHAT??

So we did what we always do in these highly technical situations where we haven’t a clue what the fuck went wrong and we definitely need help..

We turned to Dorian.

“Well, when they notified you a few months ago that they were putting the blog on a new server, did you input the new server number into your email settings?”

Seriously, that’s the first damn thing she asked.

We highly suspect that one of these days she’s just going to build an android replacement of herself and run off with Pablo the fitness instructor from down the block. We won’t catch on for years, until we notice that she’s not growing any older.

So we went to the part where it tells it what server to look on, and we put the number of the server in, and..

BAAAM!!!

A flood of email came in from Rhodester.net!

We spent the better part of the day sorting through it and as a result, we have a few things to say..

1. Aw, thanks for your interest! But we just don’t do link exchanges here. Sure, we have links to other blogs over in the sidebar but they’re blogs that we personally like, and not just links we put there because someone put a link to our blog on their blog. But we hope your blog about Wisconsin quilting bees is a huge success.

2. Aw, thanks for your interest! But we’ve had very few guest bloggers here and they’ve only been folks who we know and ask. We’ll probably just keep it that way for now, but thanks for submitting your review of Toshiba’s latest DVD/blu-ray player with GPS, digital imaging and 4G connectivity. That would have fit right in with our articles about the homeless guys who poop on the sidewalk.

3. Aw, thanks for your interest! But we just don’t do those paid keyword links here despite how broke we are, because when we visit sites that do that sort of thing and we click on a link thinking it will take us to something that’s actually about the thing we clicked on but instead it takes us to a freaking sales pitch, we feel cheap and used. So we’re not going to do that to our readers.

No matter how broke we are.

And yes, we do have ads on this blog, but they’re over on the sidebar and at the bottom of each post, not in the posts. This means people can totally ignore them if they choose to do so, which is exactly what they do.

Which is one of the myriad of reasons that we’re broke.

But never you mind that.

At least now we’re once again getting email from rhodester.net, which seems to consist mainly of people wanting to exchange links, submit guest posts and pay us to whore out our text.

We’re beginning to think things were just fine the way they were before.

Oscar Gets A Blow Job

It seems as though it was only a few years ago – nine, actually – that I stood on that stage myself and accepted the award for my performance as “best security guard to break into the Kodak Theater at three in the morning and stand on the stage holding a flashlight while goofing off award.”

In 2001 the Kodak was being built smack dab in the middle of the Hollywood & Highland complex, which was also being built. We lived behind it on Orchid, right where the soon-to-be Renaissance Hotel was located. It faces Highland, but the loading dock lets out onto Orchid, which is a tiny little street in the heart of Hollywood that doesn’t really go anywhere.

I could walk out the front door of our apartment complex and walk into the loading dock of the Renaissance, but I didn’t because, you know, who wants to go walking around in loading docks?

The Renaissance Hotel as seen from the air, with the rear of the Kodak Theater and our old apartment building, which was the 2nd building down from the Kodak on the right of the pic.

I worked at Universal Studios at the time as a ride operator on the ET Attraction, which was a facsimile of the bicycle ride ET took at the end of the movie, with the dog in the basket past the moon and all of that. It was a horrible job because I was already getting old then, and I worked for 19 year old shift leads, who can be a bit attitudinal when they have a guy like me who has to mop up vomit when they tell him too.

Fortunately there wasn’t a lot of vomit on the ET Attraction because it didn’t go over 5 miles per hour. But there were other things, like dropped snow cones and stuff.

In late 2001 there were these bad guys who flew airplanes into buildings out there in New York City and it scared the crap out of all of us, so security companies started hiring like crazy. I went to work for an outfit that had gotten the contract to provide security to the Hollywood & Highland complex, which was still a pile of construction materials at the time, so we were sent out to augment the security at Warner Brothers Studios for a few weeks.

We mainly searched cars lined up at the gates to come in, and my job was to ride a bicycle around to all of the gates and relieve our security people for breaks and lunch, so I’d search cars at gate nine for a while, and then head over to gate three, and then over to gate two, all day long.

We searched everyone, from the head of Warner Brothers Studios to the lady who flipped burgers at the commissary. Nobody was exempt because, darn it, bad guys had flown airplanes into buildings and we weren’t going to take it lying down.. so we were diligent about making sure Jennifer Aniston wasn’t taking pipe bombs into the set of “Friends.”

Sexy terrorist, Jennifer Aniston

When the Hollywood & Highland Complex approached an opening date, they sent us over there to start getting acclimated. It was still a construction site so we had to wear hard hats and boots as we walked around with flashlights, mace and handcuffs.

One night, Bob and I wandered over to the area of the Kodak Theater to have a look. We found an open door, so in we went. The interior was pristine and looked like it was ready for the first show.

They wouldn’t be hosting the Oscars for a few months yet, but we stood on the stage and speculated as to what it might be like to stand there with the place full of every major player in the entertainment business plus the eyes of a billion people watching you as you stammer through an acceptance speech.

It was a bit exhilarating.

Oddly enough, nobody was around. Lights had been left on and a door unlocked but not a soul was in the place except for Bob and I, making it one of those times I’ll never forget, like when coffeesister and I hung out at the top of the Eiffel Tower for about 25 minutes and watched the sunset over Paris with nobody else around.

I think every now and then God gives me little gifts like this, and I’m supposed to hold onto them and call them up during bad times.

I went to a few shows at the Kodak after it opened, but nothing beat standing on that stage that night long ago. I was a security supervisor at the complex, so I got to be on the red carpet during all kinds of award shows, and there weren’t any 19 year olds who bossed me around. They called me “sir” instead – at least at first, until I told them to knock it off because I’m not like that.

So, coffeesister and I are going to be watching the Oscars Sunday night and I don’t care who wins what, so if you thought this was going to be a typical Oscar post including “RhodesTer’s picks,” then I’m sorry to disappoint – I just don’t see many movies these days. I watch it for the fun of it and to reminisce about my glory days in Hollywood, searching Jennifer Aniston’s Jag for pipe bombs.

True story - shortly after Hollywood & Highland opened, we had a security detail down at the entrance to the parking garage doing the car search thing, just like we’d done out at Warner Brothers, but this time I was in the dispatch center.

They weren’t searching every vehicle coming in because it would have caused traffic to back up onto Highland Avenue, so they were instructed to search every sixth car.

A young security officer called up and asked, “Hey dispatch, I have a sixth car stopped but do I have to search this lady? It’s Gwyneth Paltrow.”

I looked on the security camera and, sure enough, it was her.

“Of course you have to search her,” I said. “Haven’t you seen View From The Top?”

FOLLOW.. Rhodester, Herb Caen, Hotdogsladies, Mystic23

Another Christmas, another year, come and gone. Another New Year ahead. The cycle of life plods along, up the hills and down into the valleys, picking up and discharging passengers along the way. Some deserved it and some didn’t – it was all rather random, but it was the journey that counted. We sat in the back of the bus this time, but we still had a nice view.

photo by Troy Holden on Flickr

Now we’ll board the new bus and although we think we know where we’re going, these things are never certain. We hope we’re going someplace cool, but we’ll just have to trust the driver. We may run out of gas before we get anywhere but then again we might just speed right along and arrive at a shiny new bus terminal in a distant land with gold streets and happy citizens who want for nothing.

Here’s to the journey.

..and too much eggnog.

We bet you didn’t know..

..that SANTA has a REFRIGERATOR embedded into his
TUMMY, and it’s always full of Coca-Cola. YUMMY!

I married a girl some time ago, and there was this whole family that came along with the deal.

My dad had drawn his final breath way back in ‘76 and, although mom and I were pretty close, I hadn’t had any kind of “real family” for years. I’d get up to see her around Christmas time but it was never a big holiday affair.

I’d drop in, bringing the girl with me, and we’d stay a day or two, usually around the holiday season but never on Christmas day itself.. that just never worked out. We’d bring her something — one year it was a puppy who ended up being with us for the next ten years — and she’d always have a little something for us.

Mom wasn’t about “fuss and bother,” as she called it. She’d do a bit of Christmas shopping and get it all sent off to distant relatives who seldom came to see her. Sometimes they’d send her something. I always brought mine in person.

In 1993, she joined my dad. We inherited the pup, Rufus, and proceeded to miss her terribly. We still do.

But I always had Camp Nelson.

The girl I married had told me about the place early on, back when we were just getting to know one another. She said she’d been raised there and that there was nothing closer to heaven-on-earth. Well, that sounded like a good place to get married, so that’s what we did. We tied the knot and vowed to be faithful before God and everyone else right there in a tiny little chapel that looked like something out of Little House on the Prairie, except there wasn’t a prairie for miles.. only gorgeous, breathtaking mountains.

A few months later, I was invited to spend the first (for me) of what would later become an annual tradition.. the Camp Nelson family Christmas trip.

You’ll find the place nestled among the Sierra-Nevada Mountains of California, in the Sequoia National Forest. You drive past the valley town of Porterville and hit the highway to the mountains, enduring an hour on a twisting, winding snake of a road that brings you into the former first world war encampment of Camp Nelson, now home to mostly retirees and mountain folk.

The town looks like Norman Rockwell and John Muir got together and designed it, after having first asked advice from Thomas Kinkade and Ansel Adams.

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in
where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”
–John Muir

I remember that first Christmas visit well. I’d been there a few times by then, but the girl was right.. there was nothing like Christmas in Camp Nelson. A silent hush emanated from the snow, broken by the crunch of our footsteps as we stepped from our car after pulling into the little driveway in front of the cabin. If you stood still for just a few seconds, you could hear the trees breathe.

Granddad Don knew a car had pulled up, so the front door flew open and there he stood, his curiosity satisfied once he saw that it was his “little brown-eyes” and her shiny new husband. He welcomed us in, and in we went.

We stayed for several days and, for that whole time, the welcome never wore out.

Others arrived and they too were ushered in with open arms. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends.. they poured into the cabin and rendered it a sanctuary of acceptance and love. It was a place to forget the woes of the year, even though they were lightly discussed before dinner, but as if they had happened to someone else. We didn’t know worry and stress while we were there. There just wasn’t room for it.

Granddad Don would fix Grandma Peg a bit of holiday cheer in a glass, then she’d regale us with tales from the old days, about family and friends who’d long since passed. I didn’t know of those people, but that wasn’t a requisite for finding charm in her stories. Granddad would chime in and, as often happens with those who’ve been together for a lifetime, they’d spend a great deal of time discussing the finer points of things that may or may not have happened and how they happened, if they did happen at all, depending on who was doing the remembering.

Aunt Donna visited for a few of those Christmases. My girl’s maternal aunt, she was a gracious soul who’d busy herself with things to be done.. dinner preparation, dishes, a spot of cleaning, a little gift wrapping and then a nice nature walk among those majestic trees to cap it off. Her sister would occasionally accompany her on a stroll along the crunchy, snowy paths and they’d gab on endlessly as if they hadn’t seen each other in years.

It’s been years now since Donna herself was peacefully laid to rest under those majestic trees, after cancer had ferociously claimed her kind but fragile body. Her gracious, loving soul flew on and soared like an eagle. Today, as Christmas comes around once again, she patiently awaits the great reunion.

“Take your time,” she says, “there’s plenty yet for you all to do.”

I haven’t had many holiday visits up there in that mountain heaven, where John Denver, Andy Williams and Bing Crosby sang us Christmas tunes and the wispy smell of the fireplace warmed my spirit. But I’ll cherish what few I was invited to with a grateful heart. The time came when life in the mountains was proving to be too much for such hearty old souls as Don and Peg, particularly with the loss of Donna stinging so badly.

Things would never be the same for them without her cheery and loving visits so they moved to the valley below, sadly leaving the glorious cabin to be an empty, lonely sentry of God’s creation. But although the memories are cherished, the place only plays a small part of it, since Christmas is really in the heart.

My girl and I have recently passed through a few tough years. A Camp Nelson Christmas has long been a thing of the past, and there have been Christmases spent solely with each other, wherever we have found ourselves. It looks as though this will be one of those years, but after recently having come so close to forever losing my girl, we both know better than ever how much it’s who you’re with and not so much where.

Grandma Peg herself was called home early last year, so Granddad returned to the lonely cabin to wait out that great reunion in solitude. But he won’t be alone this Christmas, because family will be on hand to stoke the fireplace and the memories, to keep both from waning as the night goes on.

We wish we could be with him, but as Grandma Peg is with him in spirit, we are too.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and
HAPPY NEW YEAR to my readers!

Cherish this coming new year and each other.

Cherish the now.

I saw myself on TV again last night.

It’s been years.

I once worked as an extra in the film and television industry, when we lived down in LA. I was registered with an outfit called Central Casting, which has been around almost as long as movies have, and supplies something like eighty percent of the extras used in movies and TV shows when they shoot in southern California.

There was a time I’d see myself pop-up fairly often. One night I was on all three major networks – ABC, NBC and CBS – in the same evening. This wasn’t really a big deal, since I was never an actor. When you’re an extra, you’re just standing around in a scene or walking by – usually you’re seen for anywhere from ten seconds to a couple of minutes if you’re lucky, and you never, EVER get to talk.

There’s absolutely no creativity involved in this gig, so I didn’t continue with it beyond a couple of years. They tell you where to stand, what to do and what to wear, and you can’t deviate or add anything to what you’re doing. You can’t be expressive and draw any focus away from the main actors in a scene or you get into trouble. You’re basically human furniture. Personally, I liked to visualize myself as a coffee table.

At least actors get to do a character, and they bring their own interpretation to it. They may have to do it a certain way and wear the clothes that are dictated by the scene, but no two actors will do any character exactly the same way, whereas extras are interchangeable and expendable. You want a 30-40 year old clean-cut white guy to wear a suit, carry a briefcase and look like a lawyer? There are a thousand plus to choose from.

I said I was on TV last night, but that’s not really the case. I was on MACBOOK, because coffeesister and I don’t have a TV at the moment and have been catching up on DVD shows and movies using her trusty computer. Carnivàle is an HBO series that I got to be a part of in the first season, but never got to see the episode because we didn’t have HBO.

It shot in either late 2002 or early ‘o3, I really can’t remember. We were all at a tent revival meeting and then later at the set of a dilapidated old town.

Coffeesister and I checked-out the series on DVD after finding it at the library, and I had no idea where I’d show up or IF I’d show up at all. Last night we got to episode three in the first season, which had an old-fashioned tent revival scene, and there I was, standing near the entrance looking like a dustbowl farmer from a small town who was mesmerized by the events taking place.

Memories flooded back.. I’d spent half a day with the cast, crew and other extras when they filmed it back then but I’d forgotten what happened in the scene. As it unfolded I started to think, “Oh, this is where HE comes in, and then the faith-healer does THIS!” and so on. I found myself predicting what was going to happen about five seconds before it actually did.

It was weird seeing myself eight years younger and looking so dusty, disheveled and downtrodden. As I look in the mirror now, I’m still downtrodden but look at least ten years older.

I occasionally miss those couple of years of hanging out on sets, schmoozing around with famous actors and later seeing myself in something, even if it’s just for a few seconds.

But I don’t miss being a coffee table.

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Carnivale: The Complete
First Two Seasons at AMAZON.