Effluvia

You gotta love The Stranger. Taken from this week's Pro Or Con call-in section:

HELEN KELLER: PRO or CON?

1. With her persistence and courage in the face of overwhelming handicaps, Helen Keller makes me proud to be a member of the human race.

2. With her persistence and courage in the face of overwhelming handicaps, Helen Keller makes me feel like an absolute piece of shit, as I am a fully functioning person with both eyes and ears who can barely manage to keep my apartment clean, much less write a motherfucking book.

From Salon:

• All about Lara Flynn Boyle. I don't care about the show, but she sure is cute! I loved her on Twin Peaks.
• The ultimate diary - Sylvia Plath's unedited journals have been published in England and will be out in America this fall.

Fugly - wonderfully mean.

Bygone Days
Uncensored!

125 YEARS AGO
June 1, 1875

An ingenious man, residing in Memphis, has erected a "fly tent" on the river front at the foot of Madison Street and is renting chairs to persons who wish to sit and watch the sun set over Arkansas across the Mississippi River.

What the fuck's a "fly tent?"

Boss Kenny

No, I'm not dead, nor have I quit. I've just been busy. Between moving Jen and James this weekend and laundry and freelance jobs this week I've had no time to update. But I still love you, I promise.

Interestingly enough, I took about a week off last year at this time. Honestly, people, I'm not a machine. These little breaks makes me a better, smarter entertainer.

So, Saturday was all moving Jen and James. We helped Jen pack Saturday morning (all the while listening to disco music - whoo! whoo!) and then we moved all afternoon, stopping only for a long, casual lunch at CK's, Memphis' finest greasy spon franchise. Steak and eggs all around. Many heavy things were moved. Late that night we went home, watched some A-Teens videos and passed out.

Um...we moved them some more Sunday morning, then went to a cookout Sunday evening. Monday we did family stuff. The rest of the week has been an exercise in time-wasting, though I did get a call from a New Orleans headhunter yesterday. I'll keep you posted on that.

It's interesting; I'm totally non-motivatied to write. Thank God I've got the London thing to fall back on! Don't worry though, kids. We've got two high school reunions in the next two weeks and then a trip to DC for the Cure - certainly all that will provide me with some material.

Meanwhile, three months ago in London...

18 March 2000
Roughly one in the afternoon, London time
A table on the sidewalk
Outside the Fresco Cafe
The corner of Wilton Road
and Longmoore Street
London, England

Coffee at a sidewalk cafe in London on a cool and sunny Saturday afternoon. What could be better?

Well, I could feel better, couldn't I? The sore throat arrived on Tuesday, followed by the headache, the runny nose and the persistent, nagging cough. A cold? Possibly. But it feels more like it's a sinus infection. Yes, I went on a trip to London and got sick four days after arrival. Brilliant.

That's something else they say over here a lot - brilliant. It's one of those throw-away words, like cool or great or grovy or keen. It doesn't mean anything, but you sure do hear it a lot.

Anyway, back to my illness. Theoretically, my insurance should cover me here. I hate to think of the paperwork to fill out and the hoops to jump through, though. Better to just stay sick and go to the Baptist Minor Medical when I get home Wednesday night.

So here's a recap:

Wednesday was Church Day. Sonya and I did both Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral. Both very impressive. Queen Elizabeth (the first one) is buried at Westminster, you know, and St. Paul's is breathtaking. A lot of dead people, impressive statues and grand architecture. A big thumbs-up for the Grand Churches of London.

Wednesday night we met Sonya's friend Nancy and her husband for a long, slow Middle Eastern dinner. Nancy's husband is a hoot - a combination of Cliff Clavin, Joe Pesci and the annoying white guy from NYPD Blue. A joy to be around, I tell you.

So we were supposed to be at the Tower O' London at 9:30 p.m. that night to see the Ceremony of the Keys, where the guards at the Tower say some words and lock a door. Not a big thing, but they've done it for several hundred years now and I thought it would be cool to see. We left the restaurant at a few minutes after nine and hauled ass from train to train to get there on time.

By the time we got to the (now-closed) visitor's gate at the Tower we could see the group of peopel maybe twenty feet away. I handed our tickets to the guard at the gate, who started to open up for us. The guard leading the tour, though, was having none of that.

"Shut the gate," he yelled, "they're late!"

The guard at the gate raised an eyebrow.

"I'll go 'ave a word with 'im," he said, ambling down the path.

To no avail, though. The guards at the Tower are all ex-military, and those folks do love their schedules.

Then Sonya and I got into it about some inconsequential nothing (the kind of thing we always fight about - we discuss important matters, we argue over stupid shit) and we didn't really talk until lunch the next day.

Which found us in Soho, wandering Carnaby Street (like we'd promised Sonya's mom we'd do), window shopping and looking at the freaks.

[I forgot to mention lunch Wednesday. We were roaming around near Westminster Abbey, looking for a place to eat, when I led us into a pub called Finnegan's Wake.

"What kind of place is it?" Sonya asked as we walked in the door.

I stepped in and looked around. "It's TJ Mulligan's!" I exclaimed. The place was just like our beloved chain of faux-Irish pubs back home. I speculated that perhaps somewhere out there is an Irish-style bar supply wholesaler that ships dark wood panelling and pithy sayings by Irish poets, tastefully framed.]

Ah, back at the hotel. While scribbling away at a sidewalk cafe is a terribly romantic image, the reality is cold and windy. I'm far more comfortable here.

I'm watching rugby on the TV. England vs. Italy in Rome. England is thumping the dogshit out of the Italians.

Rugby is obviously a distant relative of American football. Play hardly ever stops, though, and you can't pass forward, and the ball has to be downed in the end zone to score. And it's brutal. Every time there's a close-up of a player they're either bleeding or have someone else's blood on their jersey.

Anyway, Thursday. After Soho we went to the British Library to see all the manuscripts that had moved from the British Museum a couple of years ago. It's a gigantic - yet hard to find - red brick building next to St. Pancras Station. There was a big statue of Urizen - Blake's celestial architect - right out front, so I knew it was my kind of place.

Sonya and I spent several hours there, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over manuscripts by Plath, Tolkien, Wordsworth, Byron, Spencer...all the heavy hitters from English Lit I and II. We are literature nerds, so the Williams Family was in Heaven.

Thursday night was Theatre Night. We weren't sure what we were going to see, though Mamma Mia! - a musical composed entirely of Abba songs, if you can believe that - was our top choice. Technically Mamma Mia! is sold out until March of next year, though every ticket booth, scalper and assorted asshole has tickets for sale for every night. So you can get a ticket, but you're going to pay twice the face value. If you know what I mean.

So we went to the official West End Theatre Half-Price Ticket Window where, it was rumored, you could possibly get cheap tickets. Maybe. We didn't have any luck there, though, so we went directly to the Prince Edward Theatre where we joined the line for returns and cancellations. Along the way I was most amused by the groups of German football fans, drunk on beer, singing and wearing their green and white, who were in town to cheer on Werder Bremen in their UEFA match against Arsenal. Arsenal beat them soundly, by the way.

It didn't look good. There were sixty or so people in line in front of us, and the Little Theatre Man who came out and told us how the process worked said that anyone as far back in line as we were getting tickets was "something of a longshot."

Just then as Asian woman - nice bangs, black dress, black heels - came skittering up to us.

"Are you buying tickets?" she asked with her lovely British accent.

"Why, yes!" I said.

"Well, you see, it's like this," she says, "basically, I got these tickets this morning but my boyfriend's father has just died."

So we haggled a little bit and the deal was done. Sonya and I laughed gleefully and ran into the lobby. Minutes later we were in the Grand Circle Bar, having a drink, enjoying our good fortune and feeling oh-so-cosmopolitan.

[Now Wales and Scotland are playing rugby; one announcer is Scottish, the other is Welsh. The commentary is utterly indecipherable to my American ears.]

On the inside, the Prince Edward is a beautiful old Art Deco palace. Mamma Mia! itself, well, if you like Abba and can stand musicals it's really, really good. I thought it was wonderful - pure fun to watch and listen to. Recommended.