Mozart Hippopotamus nominates Ten Finger Farmer 3000

 You know what, I don't have any better idea than you do. Here's to ya:

All of you, my darlings, will never truly know how important you have been to me this past year.  You've been wonderful!  Even if you prefer to lurk (HI SOPHIE!) I know you're out there, because I've embedded a Txl4 virus in the 'reply' box    because I can hear you giggling behind my shower curtain   I forgot where I was going with this.  But thank you for stopping by nonetheless. I appreciate each one of you and the things you have to say.  Reading your blogs is a bright spot in my day, even if I don't always comment. I'm just as freaked out by the Tx14 comment virus as you are   Some days the clams won't let me   

Did I keep my last New Years resolution?  Yes. I resolved to read The Classics, and I did. A good many of them, in fact. My takeaway is this:  

1. Thomas Hardy is a little over-represented.  

2. A lot of ancient Greeks and Romans are only famous because nobody thought to use certain scrolls as toilet paper. 

This year's resolution?  I'm thinking I would like to have a side hustle. A little something that brings in cash.  This will take some creative thinking, but that's what resolutions are all about - masochism  hiding from the robot airships  broadening one's horizons.  I mean at the very least.  So here's to me putting this out there!

Gratuitous drag king-age    

  And here's to you! Here's me hoping you all have an astounding 2024, you wonderful people!  My wish is that the light you shine comes back to you tenfold and the good you do comes back ten times more.  Here's to you all, heroes every one!

       

Just The Facts

The facts are these:

The Biker and I (note the specific language here) had an absolutely LOVELY HOLIDAY!  We did!  And Boxing Day was wonderful too!  We hung out and drank eggnog and treated ourselves to some thoroughly decadent meals.  Him and I, kids, had a great holiday. We did.

It's the rest of the family that needs to be stuffed into a sack.  

To sum up:  We should have thought to turn our phones off.  

Fortunately, there was plenty of eggnog.

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I do not have a hat head.  I don't. Not a regular hat head anyway.  I put a hat on, most hats, it begins slipping and tipping and grabbing my hair and it falls off. Most hats make me look like an egg-shaped lunatic.

Ah, but give me a hat with a brim and suddenly I am a star.  I'm not bragging, just stating the facts. 

For years now my go to has been the Flat Cap. Not to be confused with the eight-paneled Newsie - that's the one the Peaky Blinders wore:  

      Not this one. No no no no no. Looks like a cowflop.  

    

 THIS one. Yes yes yes yes yes!       

The Flat Cap and I were made for each other. Flat Caps - Tweed, Linen & Wax (hannahats.com)

Anyway, I had one that I loved, and that I had paid a fair amount of money for years ago, because life is too short to go around wearing sad, cheap hats. That hat was perfectly tailored.  Flat sides, angled back, a relaxed straight shot to the brim, no snap, no buttons or tags or pompoms.  Glorious in every respect.

 That lovely hat got lost in the flood. I was so bummed.  

But guess what the Biker brought in from our storage place today? That's right! My hat!  And I am so happy!  I am wearing it right now!  (note from the future: I wore it for the rest of the day and forgot I had it on.)

I've been wearing a flat cap for...longer than I care to admit, now that I stop to do the math. Never mind how long. I looked damn good in my yoooth; I look better now, it can be argued, since my grey hair has come in very wiry and full, like a Karl Marx effect, less the beard. I look like a savage jazz aficionado with strong Communist leanings. 

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Because we already have everything, for the last fifteen years or so we've been buying ourselves a 'house' gift for Christmas. You get to a certain age and you're just all gifted out. That and we've done a lot of buying low and selling high over the years, and once a lot of things have crossed your table, 'things' stop being special.

That is why we have a brand-new carpet cleaner under the tree this year.

Now if this had been a gift to me, from the Biker I'd still be pissed off.

      "The fuck you think I am, the help? Giving me this utilitarian bullshit for Christmas. No, you fucked up, you can't take it back now, it's done, I see what you think of me, it's fine, I'll just clean the Goddamn carpets now because I'm apparently the maid" and so on. 

But if we discuss this shit and agree on it together, it's absolutely fine. Not only that, it makes for an astounding Christmas.  Bring on the industrial lathe. Wheel in the riding lawnmower. How about a new chain hoist, a car, a stainless-steel prep table for the kitchen...absolutely no romance whatsoever, no surprise, no wrapping paper, no bow, no illusion of scarcity or uniqueness, just an invoice - and it's fantastic!  I mean it. You get to gloat and congratulate one another on your combined practicality, and you get an amazing, cozy feeling of togetherness and accomplishment just knowing that this stuff is going to make your life together more comfortable and efficient. 

Plus we have lots of recreationals and rockin' chow.   

It's open house up to New Years Eve here! Stop on by! You drink, you can smoke, you can snort off the top of the toilet tank if it suits ya. You can plink squirrels, you can visit the ancestral land of my people, you can play your music loud and dance how you want to dance. Hell, there's a brand-new carpet cleaner for you to admire too!

Change of Heart

 I had a less than edifying post up about my current circumstances and I thought 'why bum people out?' so I took it down. Instead, here is a picture of a bunny.

A-Rudolph the arf arf arf arf! Was a very arfy arf!

 The church I went to as a kid was an architectural marvel in it's day. No, it really was.  Take a look:

St. Johns Catholic Church, Milwaukie, Oregon. The tall swoopy-uppy thing is the church proper. Underneath that tall swoopy-uppy thing is the huge, huge sanctuary. The ceiling really does go all the way up into that spire.       

 

 

To give you some faint idea of how huge this place is inside     

People used to come in from all over Oregon to attend mass here just to say they had, it was that famous. Infamous, really, as every older person still able to piss dust hated it with every atom of their being.  I thought it was cool as heck and I still do.  It looks like it was built by Klingons.  I say boring baroque decor might be good enough for other Catholics. We in Milwaukie were Swanky Catholics and very modern indeed. Qapla!!

As hard to love as this interior is, my very favorite Christmas memory took place there.  It was a High mass, and I was about seven years old, and the pomp and circumstance had just about worn me out.  Suddenly all the lights went out. No warning. It was completely silent. At first people gasped. After a few moments more, they'd begin to shift and whisper.  And then the candle above the tabernacle was lit, one tiny little point of light shining in the middle of this immense church.  Then the priest began to sing 'Silent Night', and hesitantly the congregation began to join him. He took a taper and lit it from the tabernacle candle, and he went around and lit all the candles on the altar. The sacristans took the light from him then, and went around the whole sanctuary, to all the votives and all the devotionals and lit them.  At the end of the song he simply said "Christ is born."

It's my favorite Christmas memory. And it's of Christmas - not fake Happy Holidays Christmas, where people get in fistfights over Playstations and send 34,000 cards and dash around to visit people they don't like. I left fake Christmas behind and I am better for it. 

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I am probably the only American who hates the Christmas Classic 'Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer'. I hate the song, and I hate the holiday T.V. special. I do.

For some reason my dad was really taken by the song, but he'd just go around and yodel the words "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer!  Had a very shiny nose!" at random. Starting two months leading up to Christmas. And he'd change the words. "a-Rudolph the Red-Nosed Hoosegoooooow!  Had a ve - hry shiny schnooooo!" And he thought this was utterly hilarious, particularly when my mother got sick of hearing it fifteen times a day and began to yell. Then he'd just do it more. "Rudolph the woof woof a-reindeer!  He had a very shiny nose you know!"  

Now this may sound like fond holiday hijinks, but honestly by the week leading up to Christmas mom and I were ready to shoot the guy. It was demented. He'd answer the phone like this. He'd chase me around the house singing this.  I hid in our basement once, iot got so dumb, and I could hear him prowling around upstairs looking for me going "Rudolph the Goose nose a-honk honk! Had a very goosey goose! Are ya here?  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Red Nose! Was a very rainy day! Are ya here?"

"SHADDUP!" My mom would shout. 

That was the sound of the holidays at my house until my mom took the record off the player one day and broke it over her knee. My dad howled like she'd bit him. Honestly, he's lucky she didn't.

Now as for the T.V. special, let's just say it's a matter of taste. If you like this, you have no taste.

"OK OK so this is a good one, Rudolph. Guy walks into a theatrical agents office. 'So you wanna work in Vaudeville, huh? the agent asks. What kind of act ya got?'  OK OK now, and the guy goes 'Well, first my wife comes out and pulls a sweet potato straight out of her..."

Stop-motion animation has always given me the heebie jeebies. Clearly those things are dolls. Am I supposed to believe they're magic dolls that move and sing?  What weird reality is this? And why does it suck? 

I can trace my dislike of this saccharine offering to the vocal talents of Burl Ives. Burl Ives ruins everything. (Wow, I am desecrating all the holiday traditions, huh?  Look at me go.) I think the UK term for his sound is 'treacly'. Yes. Burl Ives was treacly.  Now he is dead.

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So I began this post with a very gentle Christmas reminisce, and now here I am at the end and I've nearly written down the text of the dirtiest joke in the world (The Aristocrats) and it wasn't on purpose; I'm just writing down this and that.  I think I better leave it at this, OK?

Merry Christmas to all!

 

All is Revealed

 

           

I know two culinary secrets. Just two. That I can remember. At the moment.

Secret one - the thing about teriyaki sauce and Mexican food.

...oh! I should explain. That mystery flavor that you just can't seem to duplicate at home?  It's teriyaki sauce. When you order that sizzling fajitas platter, that's what you're tasting in the meat marinade, as well as in most of the beef dishes. Yup. Teriyaki sauce. 

Ole.

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I am sorry to tell you this but that thing is not Photoshop.  It is a liver pate en gelatine with a glaze of buttermilk...stuff. Sorry.            

       

I wondered:  Why are there so many Jello salads and congealed salads and aspics and shit in vintage cookbooks?  Why was I chosen to live in the 1960s when that stuff was everywhere?  Why, God? 

My answer, after much research:  Because of Auguste Escoffier, The King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings.   

His star turn was fancy aspics, gelees, molds and terrines. His cookbook is full of the things. They were arguably the signature dishes at his ultra fashionable restaurant, The Savoy, which was the combined Alinea/ French Laundry of its day, the top destination for innovative fine dining, the place you went to see the rich and famous eat frogs' legs and pretend to like them.

It must have seemed like the absolute last word in trendy dining, having those glimmering, colorful  dishes land on your table, so novel, so special;  so unlike the utilitarian slop you ate at home. 

Jellies and aspics began appearing on tables all over America as soon as that first Escoffier cookbook landed in the stores back in 1903. The reason for its huge popularity here in the U.S.? It was novel as ol' Billy Heck - and it was pretty. How fancy!  How refined!  What a lovely conceit!  Pretty food...not just well presented, but turned into a heap of jewels! 

EDIBLE FREAKING JEWELS OMGWTFBBQ     

 

 Look at how pretty this is!  This is a terrine en croute and it's held together with neutral gelatine and sheer good looks. Nothing about it says 'Ordinarily we'd throw out hard boiled eggs this old'!         

Back in 1903, America was still struggling to be seen as a place just as cultured as the Old World. What could possibly be more sophisticated than serving such pretty food in your home? Why you must be very very wealthy indeed. Who ever heard of such a notion; I swannee.

 Jellies and aspics on the family table meant you were daring and debonaire and had quite refined tastes indeed. You had travelled, you had tasted, and by God you were sophisticated as fuck. Meanwhile Katy is in the kitchen boiling the crap out of bones that she'd been saving out of the week's meals. 

YES. 

YES.

 That was then. By the time I came along, Jello molds were entering a new era of glamour, and were now being pushed as a low-calorie food. Suddenly it was the magic solution! Go to any buffet and see women loading up their plates like Mt. Fujiama with whatever Jello atrocity was on offer, no matter how much cheese, sugar or cream was in the thing, and listen to those women swear by all that was holy that every item on their plate was low-cal.  Just bear with me here. 

Jello came in vibrant colors and sugary fruit flavors. Most home cooks came from a background of c-grades, limited choices and necessity food, like parsnips and oatmeal and probably gravel and chunks of bark and shit.  I remember horrible Jello salads filled with pineapple and celery, suspended in a ruby red mound of cherry-flavored Jello, people, and being told by my mother "You just concentrate on the Jello. The other stuff will just slip down." 

This is real, people. This was a thing people ate.  

Jello was not only a magical calorie-canceller, it had also become a way to camouflage the food your family refused to eat. 

I mean, I get the idea; it's Jello! Jello is fun! Jello tastes like candy! So what if there's kohlrabi in that Lime flavored Jello salad? Just concentrate on the Jello and let the rest slip down!

Here's the punchline.  Escoffier glammed up the common terrine (which later morphed into the Jello Mold Salad) with truffles, vegetables cut into fancy shapes and garnishes as a way to get rid of ends, peelings, scrapings and stuff about to go by in his restaurant kitchen.  Yup. Grind it up, add some pungent seasonings and some aspic; then send it out onto the floor to wild acclaim. Well, with a sauce too; come on. He wasn't a total barbarian. But there  he was doing the same thing as the ladies in the late 1960's were doing - hiding everything you didn't want to eat under a coating of jiggly, glistening legerdemain.  His genius shines through in that he charged people dearly to eat this stuff and laughed all the way to the bank. Your aunt just thinks you're stupid.* 

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OK then! Now you know why your great aunt keeps bringing that raspberry Jello with peas and parsnips thing to your family get togethers. The old dear thinks it's classy. 

You've got four things you can do when you find yourself in this situation: 

1. Tell her 'It's just too pretty to eat!' and use it as a centerpiece  

2. Niggle out a serving that's all Raspberry Jello and hide your efforts by shooting a fuck-ton of Kool Whip on it 

3. Open the door and sling it outside like a Frisbee 

4. Put her in a home

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*Hell, they'll never notice the squash and onions under a coating of Orange flavored Jello!"

** Anyone in the UK recognize these people?  I give you:  My Evil Aunt – Many have one, I have two!

Your First Fun FirstNations Fact!

 That last post got me thinking. I worked as a maid for years, and I worked my way up from the hot-sheet places to The Hilton, and finally into private home situations where all I did all day was listen to the lady of the house reminisce. One nice lady who lived in Golden Gardens used to make me Swedish Krumkakke! THEY PAID ME TO EAT KRUMKAKKE!!

Out of all those different places over all those years, the place where I ran into the most creeps was the one I wrote about when last we met - The RoseVilla in Portland, Oregon. 

-YES yes I know I called it the City Center in my last post. I was wrong. The City Center was on the other side of the river and was all kinds of skanky. The Rose Villa was plush.  It also had the worst customers by far.  And hey, look at you, you lucky thing! Here comes another sleazy tale from the Rose Villa!

One fine day I was going down the line cleaning the poolside suites. Now for those of you who have never been a chambermaid/bellman, your opening 'maid service' gambit goes like this:

1. Knock in a sharp, no-nonsense way. This is best accomplished with the knuckle of your pointer finger, and I have the arthritis to prove it. RAPRAPRAPRAP.

2. Announce 'Maid Service!' in a cheerful yet businesslike tone of voice. Make sure people in other rooms can hear you. Not kidding. 

3. Listen at the door. Don't flatten your face up against it, just bend near. Keep that shit classy.

4. Knock again. RAPRAPRAPRAP.  Say 'Maid Service!' in a cheerful yet businesslike tone of voice again. Make sure people in other rooms can hear you again. Listen at the door again.

5. Count to ten. 

6. If you hear nothing, open the door a smidge and announce 'Maid Service!' in the same cheerful yet businesslike tone of voice that is also loud, and enter s l o w l y.  

7. Cautiously draw your gun make sure nobody is in that room - not in the closets, in the shower, under the sink, in the cabinets; not in the bed, not suspended from the ceiling in a leather harness like Dabney Coleman. NOBODY shouldn't be in that room that didn't say there were going to be in that room, which makes enough sense for now.

8. Leave the exterior door open behind you at all times. This latter was a rule specific to the RoseVilla Hotel*. 

9. Commence cleaning the room. Top to bottom, back to front.

On this particular morning I made it as far as #7.

 The instant I turned the bathroom doorknob I heard someone inside. I said "Excuse me!" and stepped away fast.

 It doesn't pay to be too careful when you are a woman working alone in a room, and our policy at the Rose Villa was very clear: whenever something iffy happened, you immediately went to the office in person to report it.* I was halfway across the lot when I heard a shout behind me. I turned and looked. 

There on the sidewalk outside stood a naked, red-haired man shouting in a squeaky tone of voice and waving something over his head. I could not make out what he was saying, but I could tell that what he was waving overhead was a pair of red swimming trunks. 

Let's revisit that image just so we get it firmly fixed in our imaginations, shall we? He had blazing red hair, was blazing red naked, was out on the sidewalk in front of his room; and was waving his bathing suit over his head.  And shouting. 

I ran into the office like wild dingo doggies were after me. "There's a naked guy on the sidewalk out there," I said to the desk clerk. 

The desk clerk looked out the window. "I don't see anybody."

I explained the whole thing.

"I didn't see him," the desk clerk maintained. 

"Oh!  You caught me you sassy lil' peckerhead!  I just ran into the office on company time to lie to you!" I didn't say. 

Just then the phone rang, and the desk clerk answered it. I could hear a high-pitched voice ranting down the line, while Desk Clerk kept up a steady stream of 'I'm so sorry' and 'Oh my.' 

"That was the man in room 220," he said. "He said you...were in there."  And he said this was an odd little lilt in his voice. 

"I was," I said. "Briefly. I told you -"

"Well he just said...you were in there."  The desk clerk sat there like a watery mole and blinked at me. 

"I was. I just said. I knocked, and -"

"He said you made him an...offer," said the clerk.  "I mean...he's checked in as Reverend Paterson, so I tend to believe, I mean..." and this utter waste of skin had the nerve to give me this little moue of disapproval. "I mean after all, you're a maid."

I was to find out that Reverend Naked not only complained about me 'propositioning' him, he complained about his room not having been done that day (it was, later, by a bellman.) 

He stayed for a week. By the end of that week we were all refusing to do his room.  He ended up being stuffed into a squad car because he'd gotten drunk and disorderly - and handsy - in our lounge. The cops took him down to Burnside** and kicked him out, which was common practice in those palmy days of carefree police harassment.  We never heard from him again - and we still had his luggage.

 Now that I think back I wonder if the owner had been pouring tales into the desk clerks' ear, or if he just hired the guy on the 'water seeks it's own level' plan. As for the Rev?  If it weren't for nuts there wouldn't be a hotel trade.  

There's no decent ending to this one. -well, I left for greener pastures, yeah. That's good. 

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Your Fun FirstNations Fact:  This is the second time in my life that I've been chased by a naked man waving a swimsuit over his head! 

 

       There is no picture of a man waving a swimsuit overhead, so here is a picture of a Guy Fieri swimsuit instead. You are welcome. 

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*Specific to this place because a. Just the year before a maid had nearly been raped in one of the rooms b. The place was in the center of town c. A lot of our customers were part of a test study being done using DMSO as a carrier agent for psychiatric drugs - so yeah, lots of good reasons. 

**Burnside was the scabrous Skid Row of Portland. Now the entirety of Portland is the scabrous Skid Row of Portland. It's a damned shame too. 

Aw Cheer Up Bunky:  Best Kitsch Theme Hotels in California (& the Rest of the US) (vice.com)

Remembrances of Membrances Remem Berance Ded

 

The Biker was flicking through some alt cinema this evening when he came upon a movie documentary about Nude Cleaners. This unleashed a torrent of memories from my early days, and once I sat down and sorted through those memories, I thought to myself 'Self, you have had a weird life.'

Back when I was a but a First City-State* I worked for a small yet locally prestigious motel-hotel which hosted researchers, specialists and other shit like that from all over the world who came to teach at the local medical school up the hill. Our parking lot would be full of Rolls Royces, our rooms full of self-important pro-social psychopaths, and the restaurant and lounge filled to stinkin' with big brains involved with Medical Research, and therefore Not Obligated To Flush Toilets.  And this was fine with me. They didn't tip, but they left me lots of high-quality pharmaceuticals. And cocaine!  Did I mention the cocaine? There was cocaine.   Oh gracious it was good stuff too.  One fat line and I finished those rooms with wings on and the best darn attitude in the whole wide world!

In the Portland of that time there was a semi-legendary person known in Hospitality circles for living in the exclusive West Hills area and being super kinky. This person was said to be a surgeon in residence up at the medical school.  Was he married? Was he single?  Was he gay or straight? Did he even live in Portland?  Nobody knew. Word was, though,  he had a place up in Healy Heights, and he hired Fetish Maids. 

Well, Fetish maid. One at a time. You would arrive at his place to find an outfit, whatever that might consist of, put it on (or not) and then clean the whole place top to bottom. If you did a good job, you got called back. Otherwise, you found an envelope full of bills on your way out with a note that said, I guess, either 'Take a Hike,' or 'Come Back on Wednesday.' He supposedly watched you on CCTV from some secret location and jacked off or ate live baby mice or whatever freaky people do. 

This guy was not a legend, come to find out. 

My boss at the City Center was one of those old school jackasses who thought that the women who worked for him should also suck his dick. I did not agree. So this fuckweasel passed my information on to Fetish Dude.  And I got contacted. 

Fetish Dude called me at  home. He sounded like a friendly and educated person. He asked me if I took private contracts. He was very professional.

At that point in my life I had never been so scared. This freaky person was calling me up out of nowhere and assuming I was the type of person who did shit like that.  I wasn't!  Maybe I should have been. I would have made a stack of cash.  Too late now.

I got three phonecalls from this person, and all three times I was non-committal. Fetish guy was evidently no idiot, because I never got another call. 

It was when I noticed that fuckweasel boss was astounded that I kept on coming in to clean rooms that I put two and two together.

And so ends another thrilling take of yesteryear!  Would you have taken Fetish Dude's money?  Have you ever been a professional Erotic Maid/Butler? Do tell!   Share your stories of Chastity Assailed and Virtue Triumphant! unless you don't have any stories like that. Then tell us of your slide into SIN, won't you?

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* That was a geography joke, y'all. It is as funny as you'd expect a geography joke to be too.