before beechwood

It was the summer that I had gone down to the coast to escape the heat of the city that I met Percival Frampton. I was staying at the Beechwood. An authentic dump, I know, but I was broke. My family had refused to see me through with another extension on my stipend and the translations that I'd been working on so strenuously over the winter had been sent back rejected one and all. One editor from New York City had taken the extraordinary step of calling me at home to tell me that my manuscript was shit. His words: shit. He had loudly claimed his willingness to incur the phone charges for the opportunity to tell me personally that my work was shit and that I was shit. I had not protested. He went on to say that he had been astounded at the fathomless depths of my ignorance and that he had marvelled over my complete idiotic misinterpretation of the text. He said it was as if I had never even studied the language. Then he slammed the phone down in my ear.

It was true though. I hadn't studied anymore than the few hours I'd spent lounging in an armchair with whisky and cigarettes; glancing over a few water damaged training manuals purchased from a church rummage sale; manuals apparently owned at some point by one Missy Alexander, an enigma who'd found it necessary to scrawl her name pell mell throughout the books along with stick figures possessing grotesque genitalia. I had found the study process laboriously distasteful, my thoughts impugned upon by masturbatory fantasies of Missy Alexander, a tramp no doubt. Most of the time I had actually worked on the translations I'd been drunk on Gin cadged from the liquor cabinet or high on Aunt Mamie's morphine pills. I didn't remember what I had written at the end of the day but it was important to the family that I keep up some semblance of relevant endeavor. It was explained to visitors, who by accident caught a glimpse of me discombobulated at my desk in the library where I was permitted to work a few hours a day, that I was a scholar of languages. People nodded respectfully when it was explained I had undertaken a serious and challenging translation project. Thankfully they never asked of what. So I was a scholar. I was compelled to hold fast to this line of defense in exchange for a small stipend from Uncle Cicero, the stormy old testament patriarch of the family estate.

Save for when the family was entertaining company I pretty much had the run of the old manse. It was a badly heated crooked affair and yet a noble oddity where it sat on a hill overlooking the hinterland's fledgling cottage sprawl. At one time there had been a church attached to it, but the rector had cast his congregation into the abyss and followed after them and the house had swallowed up the chapel and its offices to silence the existential belchings heard coming from the grounds. I was kept chambered in the bell tower in what had once been a monk's cell. Haunted, they said. I did not dispel the idea. Uncle Cicero slyly referred to it as my study lab. Sometimes when he said it like that I wondered if he knew I was brewing methamphetamine in the sink up there.

But the truth was I could bang about in the tower; cook meth; quaff swill; rant and rave;howl at the moon; and tinker with my manuscripts into the wee hours and no one down in the house proper was ever the wiser. There were times, I admit, when the nights leaned heavily upon me. The roost at the top of the tower could be a lonely place. The family was scattered all about below in which sundry rooms I knew not; Aunt Mamie with her periodic bouts of mortal combat against the fictitious cancers that plagued her laid up on a divan somewhere meditatively sucking on her morphine pills as if they were breath lozenges, listening to a hi-fi; Uncle Cicero stripped to the waist, hairy of teet, working up a lather over his chinchilla ranch in the sub basement; the nameless cousins who came and went and showed up for breakfast the one day and dinner the next farting and moaning in their sleep. And I, high above them, in so many more ways than one, toiling over my sink. So as the winter began to thaw, I found myself turning more and more to the soiled thoughts of Missy Alexander. Her name, the only thing I had learned from those infernal books. The curse of that name burned in my breast.

She was most likely a waitress, I decided. She probably worked in one of those all night neon illuminated coffee shops that polluted the downtown sections near the highway and had names like Fat Frank's All Stars and The Pie Shack . I imagined that her uniform was polyester, grease stained, and hugged her imaginary marvelous ass like a desperate lover's embrace. She was groped by men of low rank. Her dreams were punctuated with the possibilities of making something of herself. She was sassy; her lips pouty; her hips full; her bosom buxom. She had probably taken up the study of language on a flighty womanly whim and discarded it on impulse of the same. I admit that the probables multiplied in my mind and that perhaps the long winter also played some effect. My fancies ran unfettered. I began to lust after this proletariat heifer and I could not gain control of my wild unbridled ideas. I toyed with the notion of finding Missy Alexander and engaging her in a romantic adventure. I obsessed over it. I imagined myself rescuing her at the last minute from the clutches of some corpulent short order cook and spiriting her away to my cabin in the wilderness where I would make her my squaw. I would chop wood in the mornings and then work over my manuscripts while she cleaned the cabin around me. She would be naked of course. We would bathe together nude in a mountain stream surrounded by the majestic forest, under the innocent watchful eyes of the woodland creatures that I would sometimes kill for food.

But the reality of the matter restrained me. I was hampered by my stipend. Uncle Cicero had not been favorable to the expenditure of a car allowance when i had mentioned it to him that first day we worked out the financial needs of my scholarship. When I needed to get about town, he had instructed, I should walk. He brushed aside at the time my concerns that we were seventeen miles outside of the city. Fresh air, he'd muttered. If it took me five hours to get to town, how could I ever hope to locate my Missy Alexander?

I finally surrendered one night to my impulses and set out for town at about midnight to find Missy Alexander. I admit I had drank a good amount that day; first wine and port in the morning after a successful raid on Uncle's cellar and then later after lunch most of a bottle of whisky secreted away since the holidays. I also consumed a dram of Auntie's Laudanum and sampled some of a fresh batch of meth. They say that I made it about a hundred yards or so off of the property before I collapsed by the side of the road. I was rescued the next morning by the milkman. My clothing and shoes were found some good distance from where I had come to lay. It was noted that socks were never recovered. Uncle Cicero pronounced it a scandal and intoned grey faced before me as I lay recuperating in one of the downstairs bedrooms that as much as it pained him he was duty bound to log the episode for eternity in the annals of the family history of which he was the current guardian and scribe. And then, terrible of visage, he suspended my stipend thereby sending my scholarship into a tailspin, and forcing me to make the decision to leave the house in favor of the coast.

It was not only the heat of the city that I had sought to escape. Uncle Cicero had exiled me. But had I not taken my fall from grace I would never have come to rest at the Beechwood and I would have never made the acquaintance of Percival Frampton. And without Percival Frampton I would have never been able to finally track down Missy Alexander. Because that is exactly what we did.

(end part 1)

the jupiter project

Okay, I admit it, I was the one who fucked up the Thriller tribute flash mob at Ocean Beach. I didn't practice the dance moves. I was drinking Mickeys and smoking PCP in the woods across the street with this crack whore who looked like Janet Jackson when I should have been with the others going over the routine. And then when everyone got in their places and the signal was given and the music started I twisted my ankle on the first turn and fell against the girl next to me and knocked her off balance and she fell into the person behind her who crashed into her neighbor and so on and so forth. When I fell over my dockers split down the backside and my ass exploded out. I happened to be wearing a thong. They ran me off and did it again an hour later and I believe that second time things came out better.

Then somehow a video of the original episode got downloaded onto Youtube and I soon became famous. People nicknamed me The Thriller Guy. Or Thong Guy. Or people could google Fat Guy's Ass and I would pop up. Being a celebrity changed everything for me. I had to think of my image so I tried to get off the PCP. Easier said in the throes of a binge than done. Janet Jackson found me in the woods again and she was with her pimp. They threatened to go to Entertainment Tonight with the story about my drug problem if I didn't give them all of my money. I gave it to them. It was only twenty-five dollars.

They forced me to come with them and get in their van. The pimp waved a switchblade in my face as we pulled into traffic. The Janet Jackson crack whore drove like a maniac. They threw me out of the van in the parking lot of Slaw Dog with the final threat that they were watching me. I walked into Slaw Dog and ordered two Slaw Dogs and shoved them both in my mouth when the counter girl brought them to me. I then turned and ran out of the store. I was sure that I was going to get shot. The girl didn't scream or anything, on the contrary she yelled out to me "Thong Guy! Rock on!". I tried it in a Taco Town a few blocks away and the same thing happened. I tried it in Pizza Chicken and I almost got my ass kicked. I ended up getting my head stuffed in a toilet clogged up with a bunch of dried turds and then I had to wash dishes for three hours. A big greek guy in a cheap suit made me drink a glass of bilge water with a cockroach floating in it in front of the kitchen staff. They got a big laugh out of that. It sucked.

The manager of Pizza Chicken took mercy on me and offered me a lift home after we closed down the restaurant. When I tried to explain to him that I was "Thriller Guy", he pulled over to the side of the road and forced me out of the car with threats of violence. I walked seventeen blocks. At one point as a car was roaring past I felt a beer bottle smack me in the back of the head. I crumbled to the sidewalk. Someone in the car yelled "Thriller Guy!"

When I finally got home Uncle Regis asked me why I had beer all over my back. I showed him the bloody gash where the glass had shattered against my head and told him the story. He laughed and he laughed and he didn't stop laughing until he put a whiskey jug in his cake hole. I didn't find the life of a celebrity very funny anymore. I went to my room and took down my ham radio and I dialed in Doctor Birdy. When I told him about everything that had happened since the night the of the flash mob and how that now I was famous, he said that he had actually heard all about it. He said that this was all a part of the plan. What plan? He paused and tapped it out in morse code: The Jupiter Project. The Jupiter Project.

portrait of the artist as a plastic bird

What this country needs right now is a good old fashioned high school drama a la White Shadow but instead we are given Fox's Glee....the simpering limp wristed adventures of one of the most reviled organisations in American society: The High School Glee Club. Our youngsters need strong role models like GI Joe and Sarah Palin not a bunch of falsetto wimps rallying around the piano belting out a rousing version of Chattanooga Choo Choo beneath the approving eye of their mentor, the suspiciously single aging dandy Mr. Felix. Granted, I have not seen Glee nor do I have any intention of watching one second of such claptrap, but judge it I will. If it's a high school drama and it doesn't reinforce the values and mores of our great land with a healthy dose of elitism and hate mongering and team sport then count me out. I want to see a show where the glee club gets the shit beat out of them and rightfully so. Or at the least, the band.



I can tell you this much: it's not the graduates of the glee club that are over there in the 'Stan right now slogging it out against the Taliban, no they're the ones loitering around with their peace signs that they've made at Kinko's and their fucking boysenberry scones and their friggin blue bottle coffee and their sweater vests waiting complacently for their wives and daughters to be gang raped by the Muslim horde. Now and then a religious scholar will attempt to come to the defense of Islam, trying to sell us on the ridiculous notion that it treats women fairly. Yes, that's why they dress them in funeral shrouds. I would like to posit that these assholes are sex crazed horned up falafel mongers who have the high potential of going on a raping spree if they even catch sight of a female knee cap.

Back in the day, I tried to enlist. It was Vietnam. I was only five years old. They wouldn't take me. I can tell you this much: if they had, things might have turned out differently. Why? Because I kick ass and take names. Extreme discipline. That's just how I conduct myself. Sure nowadays you may see me agonizing over a plate of gravy fries at The Lucky Penny with the fries eventually winning but let me tell you there was a day when I would strike off into the forest with little more than a handful of dried lentils and a two liter bottle of Pepsi and I would live off the land and survive by pure animal instinct. I would kill things, I tell you, small things that were trying to run from me. That same instinct I employ today when I venture out on Haight Street at eleven in the evening to secure an ice cream sandwich from Frank's on the corner. It really is a jungle out there.



Hippy Jungle. It is a culture that glorifies gleedom which produces kids who are content to sit on the sidewalk and shoot heroin between their toes. Actually, I think they are mostly Canadians. Glee: unmitigated happiness. There's no goddamn reason for it. Out there beyond our gate the glee piles up like discarded turds. They've shut down the popcorn machines and the cotton candy vendors have moved along. Gone is the day of the lovable counter culture character; the papa bear; the mountain girl; the hippy johnny. Most of those have rolled over and choked on a sandwich. There is no longer dancing in the streets. What is left now is the cretinous mass shambling down the road to Canterbury. A Canterbury constructed of bathtub meth and devil worship. If we had a little less Glee club and a little more Andy Griffith Show we'd be in a lot better shape. You never saw a single bum loitering on the streets of Mayberry. There was Otis, but he was the town drunk not a hobo. The only episode of Andy Griffith that ever addressed the issue of homelessness was during the first season when it came to pass that Andy and Barney burned out a hobo camp between Mayberry and Tuckers Junction and shot two bums dead....in front of Opie.


I have been a life long fan of The Andy Griffith Show. It was shown at five-thirty every afternoon on WFMY in Greensboro. As far as I know it still is. When I was five years old Aunt Bea visited my kindergarten class. And thus for all intents and purposes began this long strange journey far from the watering holes where we swam in the shadows of Mount Pilot. This brings me to what I wanted to write about today: a particular bbq sandwich that my grandmother used to take me to get when we were out on her Thursday shopping day. I haven't had one in about thirty-five years and yet I have never forgotten the experience of that bbq sandwich.

There was a grocery store on the corner of Cornwalis and Battleground Avenue called the Big Bear. It was one of the spots on my grandmother's list. On Thursday mornings my mother would drop me off at my grandmother's house before she went to work. My grandmother and my great aunt would be preparing themselves for shopping day. We would watch The Price is Right with Bob Barker and then we would embark. The nuances of shopping day were byzantine. There were many stops at various outlets in order to take advantage of the best prices and the coupons clipped from the Sunday paper. No matter that we had to drive my grandmother's boat of a Chrysler from one end of town to the other.


We stopped at the Winn Dixie; we stopped at the Big Star; there was an odd little corner store in the Glenwood neighborhood with a deep antique tobacco smell, uneven wood floors, dim lighting, and barrels of pickled pigs feet and hot sausages and nickle sour apple gum at the register where we stopped to get eggs; but it was the Big Bear store that housed my filthy lucre: that pork bbq sandwich that I have never forgotten. The sandwiches were pre made, shreds of pork doused with vinegar and tomato paste and swaddled in a white bread bun and then plastic wrapped and tossed into a bin that was heated by an overhead lamp. Somehow the bun managed to be both crisp and moist and when you bit into the center of the pork the sweetness of the tomato and the pork and the tanginess of the vinegar melded into what for a lack of a better word I must call glee. I was never happier than when my tough skins clad ass was parked in the back of that behemoth of a sedan with bbq sandwich in hand, surrounded by a plethora of grocery bags, listening to my grandmother and my great aunt discuss the finer points of One Life to Live as we careened along the byways of Greensboro.

The Big Bear closed. I think it might be a Fresh Market now. The shoe store, the clock repair shop, even Miss Leon's beauty salon, all gone. Battleground Avenue like much of Greensboro has become swamped with Strip Malls, outlet stores, and Taco Bells. Oh, and the darling tot in the backseat munching on his bbq sammy soon transmogrified into a three hundred pound ten year old with early onset type a adult diabetes who huffed carbon paper in the shed out behind grandmother's house and stole change from her piggy bank to buy pictures clipped from nudie magazines from the man who stood down in the woods by the city dump and sold them to the kids along with wine, menthol cigarettes, and a little morsel known as oblivion.

Tucker's Junction

Once they got the fire started the two cowboys pulled their saddles and their packs from the horses and set up a makeshift camp that they would abandon as soon as the dawn came. One was much older than the other and it showed in the deep shadowed crevices of his face by the meager light of the fire. They laid out their bedrolls close to the edge of it and the younger one began to make a pot of coffee. There were only a few rock hard biscuits for supper.

They were eating their biscuits and sipping the hot bitter coffee propped up on their weathered packs when the dude rode up out of the darkness. His horse was fine. She was outfitted with an expensive saddle, redolent in fancy straps and hooks and nickled ornament . He sat atop her in a long burgundy leather duster. His boots were of polished leather. His riding trousers were cut from quality material. The pearl handle of a shooter was nestled in an ornate holster at his waist and a tall fancy brand new cowboy hat crowned his rather pompous figure. He gave them a wave.

"Gentlemen." He said. The two cowboys looked at each other and then looked at the dude.

"Reckon." The younger one said.

"I am Richie Frockmor." The dude surveyed the campsite. He nodded approvingly at the fire.

There was a pause. The flames snapped and crackled and blew sparks up into the night air. A wolf howled some good distance off.

"Who said you weren't?"

The old cowboy said it and his partner snickered.

"What?"

"I said pleasure to meet you." The two cowboys winked at each other.

The dude cleared his throat,"Yes, I'm sure it is."

The old cowboy pulled a cheroot from his pocket and stuck the nub in his mouth. They watched the dude climb down off of his horse. He became momentarily tangled and cursed beneath his breath. When he finally stood before them in front of the fire they saw that he was no more than five feet tall. The younger one elbowed his partner. Like most common rabble they were for some reason amused at the sight of dwarfs.

"You want some coffee, little feller?" The old cowboy said around his cheroot.

"MY NAME IS RICHIE FROCKMOR!" The dude shouted, "I am not your little feller!"His fine horse grumbled and stamped at the ground. A brittle tangle of nettles erupted in commotion at the center of the fire causing all three men to jump.

"Take it easy, half pint." There was a tinge of menace in the older man's words now and he shifted just ever so slightly on his pack gaining advantage to the six shooter that was slung in his holster.

"You blackguard." The dwarf spat, "Tell me which direction it is to Tucker's Junction and I shall leave you two to your butt fucking."

The young cowboy's jaw dropped open, even his seasoned companion sputtered at the dude's foul words. Before they knew what had happened the little fancy man had drawn his revolver and had gotten the jump on them. They meekly followed his orders and tossed their six shooters at his feet.

"Now," The dude said, taking murderous aim with his pistol at the old cowboy, "kindly tell me, you old queen, in which direction one might have the misfortune of finding Tucker's Junction?"

The old cowboy just sat silent and stared down the barrel of the dude's gun. He worked the damp ragged end of the cheroot from one side of his face to the other. He had been called many names in all the years he'd spent on this patch of earth but he'd never been called an old queen. A homicidal rage began to boil in his gut.

"Mister," The younger cowboy spoke softly, "There ain't no such place around here." The dude stamped his feet, "Fucking Liar." He said and turning towards the youngster he shot him twice in the face. The boy fell over. The explosions from the barrel of the revolver shattered the night calm. The old cowboy sat unfazed covered in bits of brain and quite a large amount of his partner's blood.

The two men looked at each other.

"He weren't lying." The old cowboy said. "Far as he know'd it. " The dude's little face had become a dark stormy menacing mask of anger and frustration. He pointed the shooter at the old cowboy's head.

The cowboy said, "There used to be a place called Tuckers Junction when I was a young one coming up. But it burned down forty years ago. Fire started in a whore house, spread through the whole town, ate everything up, people and all."

The dude gasped. His little hand went to the fancy embroidered kerchief at his throat.

"Nobody even remembers that place."

The old cowboy got up and spat the cheroot at the dude. He had pulled a knife from inside his boot and with it he lunged across the fire towards him. Without pausing to think, the little man fired off a volley of shots into his onrushing attacker's body. The cowboy fell on top of the fire with a groan and expired. The dude returned his pistol to its cradle and contemplated the body as the flames of the fire began to burn through the clothes and into the flesh. The empty quiet of the night returned, only the fire seemed to be talking to itself. It cackled. Once the skin and hair had burned off most of the foul aroma gave way to the smells of roasting meat. The dude crouched down next to the fire and pulled what looked like a rib chop from the smoldering dead man and with relish ripped into it with his teeth. He finished the coffee, too. The biscuits he deemed weren't worth the eating.

The wolves came later that night to feed on what remained of the two cowboys long after the fire had burned down and the figure of the little dude had slipped over the horizon. His search for Tucker's Junction would continue on into the next day and the day after that and it would criss cross back and forth across time and the badlands before a dawn came that would reveal to him his destination.

fluff dog

so a few people have gotten in touch with me and they've told me that once again they are pleased to see that I am blogging. And I am. Actually more than you read because ninety percent of the shit I write I flush down the toilet as self indulgent garbage. But the dilemma is suddenly I am pressured to produce something...something good. And believe me I want to!! But fishing around for excuses to push this thing off one more day, to pray to fucking God that he will give me that nugget of an idea that will unleash me....I stumble upon this whole Michael Jackson thing...and I allow myself to get swept up in the emotion...and crying on my knees, I have to announce to my readers that this is neither the time nor the place to celebrate life as usual, to post some innane blog about whatever.....the king passes...I am high on scotch and some powerful Mendocino skunk and fuck the neighbors...I am going to dance nude to the entire Thriller album in front of the bay windows with all of the lights on......all night long...all night...alllll night......

My Pallet

It seems like at least once or twice a year I am forced to resort to Craigslist for potential kitchen fodder. My present dilemma is no exception. A few days ago I posted an ad seeking line cooks and I suppose it is a sign of the times that my inbox began to fill up with resumes almost immediately. I have never had much success with Craigslist candidates, but at least the process does provide some small amount of amusement.



If the majority of the resumes I receive are any indication the restaurant industry is in serious need of instruction in the field of grammar and rhetoric, not to mention a refresher course on how to follow basic instructions that most infants would be capable of. I'm not expecting to unearth a John Updike in chef's whites but for godsakes is it too much to ask that someone might bother to use that handy spell check option on their Word toolbar?! Maybe I am crazy but if I see grammar errors or spelling errors I drag that sucker straight into the ole trash barrel. I tend to make some exceptions for our spanish speaking brethern but of course that means I am profiling (Juan Diaz misuses an adverbial phrase I might live with, but if Ward Brown missteps...he gone) and I wouldn't want to be accused of doing anything that might smack of racial biasing.

That being said, if your name is something like Shaniqua Jefferson rest assured you won't be getting a call back. Oh yeah, and I never hire asians. Or American Indians. Or Italians for that matter. Also gays and women are out as well. If you're white and you listen to hip-hop there's no fucking chance for you. Why? Because: asians don't get the al dente concept of pasta, everything comes out tasting like chop suey; American Indians are just a dangerous breed of folk prone to drinking and violence and they tend to do peyote at work and let's face it, a tomahawk is not a chef's knife under any circumstance; Italians always stink of cheap colonge and they are usually cokehead assholes; gays, I'm sorry I am not going to deal with a person wearing rainbow chef pants kevetching about their same sex marriage or lack thereof at eight o'clock in the morning; women, the sexual tension is just too much and they usually end up falling in love with me and then I have to do them in the walk-in; and hip-hop white guys are just plain stupid.

But back to the point at hand. My CL posts are usually short and concise and I always make note that potential candidates should paste their resumes into the body of their response. I make a point of stating that responses with attached files are not opened and go immediately to garbage. I do this because I don't want to open a tainted file but also just to see how many dumbasses will still send an email with an attachment. The answer is lots. And they can enjoy each other's company in my trash barrel sitting pretty there on my desktop with just loads of rubbish spilling forth.

Resumes come in all shapes and sizes. Question. What would possess you to have a picture of yourself on your resume? Unless you are a model, a stripper,or a porn star? I find it incredibly disturbing and narcissistic and I without hesitation click and drag your ass into the aforementioned trash barrel. It's getting crowded in there.


Resumes come in all shapes and sizes. Please don't tell me that you have passion. It makes me think of that soap opera Passions, the one that had the conniving midget and the ghosts. And once I am on to that my day is pretty much ruined with deep existential questioning and staggering ennui. If you are in this business it goes without saying that you probably are passionate about the industry. Bravo! Otherwise you would have come to your senses years ago and got the fuck out while the getting was good. Into anything, collecting garbage even....cleaning the shit out of dead people's asses...anything.....drinking piss for five cents a cup....popping crack whore's cankers with your teeth...wading through a vat of fire ants with your pants off just to fetch a pea...anything, I mean it...

Resumes come in all shapes and sizes. People are downright scary. I once read a statistic somewhere, maybe Harper's Index, that something like ninety percent of the prison population in the United States lists Cook as a former occupation. I am probably not going to hire you if in the body of your resume you periodically reference your knives, your deep profound love of your knives, the degree of sharpness of your knives, or anything above and beyond a simple "good knife skills". I don't want to know if you broke down a deer on the side of the highway in a snowstorm. Guys who show up in the kitchen with a knife kit that looks like a suitcase will be shown the door.

Resumes come in all shapes and sizes. Why the fuck are you wasting my time applying for this job? Line Cook. There is not a lot of room for interpretation there. Without fail I will find clogging my hole several resumes that have not a single line in them that has anything to do with professional cooking experience. Telling me that although you have never in your life worked in a kitchen but that you love to make Italian food for your friends and family only makes me want to go to your address and firebomb your next festive gathering. Firebomb it to hell and then when the survivors come running out mow them down with a machine gun and then wait and go to each and every victim's funeral and kill everyone there as well. So just don't. I see here that you worked at the Choc-O-Nut kiosk at the mall. Wonderful. You sold cookies and scones and now you want me to stick you on my line, give you a saute pan, and let you have at it. This would be like taking that fat guy in the security guard uniform outside of Borders and making him a squad leader of an army patrol in the Helmand Province in the shit in the 'Stan. No friggin way.

Resumes, resumes, resumes. In this most recent batch I came across a young man who states his objective as being to further develop his pallet....um...okay. I don't know if you are planning on driving a fork lift into the kitchen on your first day, the only pallets down here have cases of tomatoes stacked on them. Frankly, I have no palate for egregious misspelling. Get it asshole? Pallet. Palate. I almost want to hire you just so I can protect you from the big bad world because you are in deep my friend. But I am almost positive you are a complete jerk. For instance, a guy came into the kitchen to stage once and he had the big bag of knives and he talked all kinds of smack up and down the line, this guy was James Beard Jr. But when he went to julienne a nine pan of basil, he cut the leaf with his serrated bread knife!!?? What the fuck?! That would be like a heart surgeon opening you up with a claymore. The basil turned black in about a minute. Don't call us, we'll call you. Pallet. Jesus.

And so the search continues.....

sweet screams

As a child I was terrified of this woman. My mother enjoyed relaying this news to potential girlfriends and anyone else who might disseminate the information to the public at large. Apparently on more than one occasion, usually on cartoon Saturday mornings, I would get up early and go into the kitchen to look for a bowl of cereal or a side of bacon and I would open the cabinets and there would be Mrs. Butterworth. I think my mom actually moved the bottle around so that it would always be sure to surprise me. But anyway the sight of this little black woman would send me running through the house screaming at the top of my lungs. I eventually had to be taken to a therapist. All I can say is that to this day I am not a big pancake fan and I can only figure that this has something to do with my distaste. Logic would seem to agree, I mean I have never had a problem eating anything else loaded with fat, salt, and sugar.

Upon reflection however there are numerous branding icons of my youth that do seem a bit creepy now that I have chronologically reached adulthood. Take for instance the Lucky Charm's Leprechaun....a bad acid trip waiting to happen. And the Keebler Elves...they lived in a tree and they ate babies and they fucked each other. I have no proof of this other than my gut instinct, but there is just something not right about these guys. And who came up with the idea of a talking vat of margarine? Parkayyyyyyy. that scares the shit out of me to this day!! As you absorbed it into your bloodstream Parkay was whispering to your heart "take a breakkkkkkk".