Hey guess what ? I don’t have a single tattoo nor did I ever want one. I am in the minority here. There is one industry that has not been hurt by the awful current recession and that is the tattoo business.

I was born in 1963 which makes me 49 going on 50 and when I was a teenager, only sailors, prisoners, and just really bad guys got them, now everyone has one, even grandma ( well sadly inasmuch as we are all getting older, there are a lot of grandmas and grandpas who listen to The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and may even smoke weed – lol)

What I find interesting is that a whole lot of women get tattoos – I just don’t get it. Surely an innocent rose on a gal’s ankle will certainly not affect her physical appearance in any sort of positive or negative way, but when a woman paints 50 % of her body I am just stunned and ask myself, why ? Another growing number of folks getting tattoos are black athletes, which actually in my opinion does make them look “badass” and cool.

So another simple and short blog – now WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think ? Do you like tattoos? I, personally think it’s old hat not unlike when men started wearing earrings,  you were making a statement – I am my own person, I don’t follow the rules, I’m rebellious, and I’m just simply anti – establishment. But listen folks, it’s OVER !!! When everyone has tats, you no longer stand out.

Last Father’s Day I wrote about my father. This year I thought I’d do the same for my grandfather. I never knew my father’s father but my mother’s lived with us for a couple of years or so  when I was very young. He emigrated from Austria along with his wife, four daughter’s and their husbands. Some of his grandkids (my older cousins and 10 month old brother) were also in tow. Earlier on, his son had moved further west to settle in Ohio. Like a lot of immigrants back then, they crossed the ocean via ship. To this day my mother hates boats. Everyone was apparently very seasick for the whole of the journey. Lady Liberty held her torch high over the stench of vomit with one hand while holding her nose with the other. Everyone was very happy to see her in spite of her unusual pose.

Back in his homeland, my grandfather was a forest ranger by trade. By the time he moved to the states however, he was already retired. But his love of animals stayed with him and carried over in his day to day life. From my earliest recollection I can see him feeding the squirrels; they’d always eat right out of his outstretched palm. He was never once bitten. He even got my aunt into the act but she only went so far as to leave peanuts on the kitchen windowsill and then close the window as we’d watch “Hansi” eat them from the safety of the glass between us. This went on for several weeks until one day Hansi peed on the window ledge and that was that.

One day my grandfather won a pig at one of the family events we always seemed to be going to. We all thought it was a great big side of ham or something until we were informed that we had to go and pick it up at a farm in New Jersey. While there, a certain little fox terrier took a shine to my grandfather and the farmer told him he could take the dog along with the pig. “Tiny”, as she was called, never left my grandfather’s lap for the remainder of her life. When he removed his pants at night she was always stuck to them until the next morning when he’d put them on again. Occasionally, they’d have to be washed so she was included in the wash, rinse, spin cycle. She adored him and would always yip yip yip any time someone tried to get near him. She didn’t even mind his cigars or that pipe he smoked.

That pipe. That’s another very early memory. When we were quite small, we celebrated the Feast Day of St. Nicholas on the sixth of December. On the evening before, my mom would place our shoes outside the front door and Lo and Behold, the next morning they’d be filled with chocolate, oranges and maybe even a coloring book along with a brand new box of crayons. We either had very large feet or somehow my mother had a real sense of ingenuity and managed to stuff them all in with the aid of a shoe horn. Anyway, on one particular December 6th, mom told us to “Run to the window and look outside!” It was already dark, and our window, two flights up, faced the backyard. She was screaming “It’s Saint Nicholas! It’s Saint Nicholas!” I hadn’t a clue what she was yelling about. All I could see was the glowing embers of my grandfather’s pipe and called out to him wondering what in the world was he doing out there in the dark with Saint Nicholas? This was followed by his deep raspy laugh which meant “Don’t I feel silly”.

Once when I was about 4 or 5, he gave me a tiny gold ring with the initial “M” engraved on the top of it. I was totally amazed. Where did you get it? I naively asked, still too young to know you could go out and purchase these things and they didn’t just magically appear. I found it, he replied. Wow! Imagaine that. He found a ring perfectly sized to my finger that just happens to have my initial on it! It was my prized possession, which I didn’t have too many of at the time, that lasted for about two days. On that second day, I was washing my hands with soap at the bathroom sink when  it slipped off my finger and tinkled down the drain! I was horrified! I can still hear the delicate tune it played all the way down “tink-a-tink-alee-tink-a-tink-tink” translated to “aren’t-you-a-stupid-little-girl”. My heart sank. I didn’t tell anyone. I was too ashamed. I was hoping he’d never ask what happened to it and he never did. But looking back, had I said something, they could have removed the J pipe  where it probably sat for a bit until it was washed out to sea. The same sea they journeyed over on all those years ago. Any chance it may have slipped onto Lady Liberty’s little toe? No, her feet are definitely too big. Her shoe may have been the boat they came over on.

The blue black night
Divulges none of her
Secrets,
Tucked in the velvet
Of her breast.
Pillowed in sleep,
Dreams toss
In turbulent oceans
Too deep to surface.
Keep your stars.
Your moon
To wax and wane.
To blanket me
With the tide.
To drift.

I’m sorry.
It’s broken beyond repair.
I have somehow pieced together
The fragmented shards.
What a little glue can do.
Here’s my heart.

Ed Koch was mayor of New York back in 1989 and the city was an absolute mess – dirty, dangerous, peak of the crack epidemic and brimming with racism; there used to be a saying back then that a young black male in N.Y.C. was among the most endangered species in America.

Remember how scary and disgusting the city was in the ‘80’s? And, how about the hatred, racism and crime ? (Wow how much ink was spilled on the Bernard Goetz case – sadly most white people didn’t blame Goetz for blasting away the would – be perpetrators and quite frankly, well … do you blame him ???)  It was a time for the insanely haves (on Wall St.) and the sickeningly poverty – stricken have – not’s, i.e. black people in Harlem and the outer boroughs who had no other way to survive other than to steal, rob, sell crack, etc. to survive (we’re talking human beings here folks … the super, lilly – white rich I don’t think even to this day understand that you can’t dump on people and expect there not to be repercussions and consequences).

Anyway, the film/documentary to see is Ken and his daughter Sarah Burns’ The Central Park Five – just a first – rate, 5 star film about the grossly unjust indictment and conviction of 5 innocent poor black youths (ages 14 – 16) who were convicted of raping a 28 year old white investment banker jogging in Central park, only to be later found that the thing was a sham. Yes, the white woman was sadly raped and beaten by one man (a serial rapist) but the 5 black youths had absolutely nothing to do with it, yet they were convicted and all of them served out their full sentence without a shred of physical evidence except for coerced testimony illegally eked out by the despicable New York homicide unit who lied, fabricated, and whose mission was to ameliorate the savage racist climate which existed in the ‘80’s. Remember the big Donald Trump posting a full page ad in the New York Times clamoring for the death penalty for theses innocent kids – DISGRACE and SHAME to you Mr. Trump !!! (Do you think Trump would have given a rat’s ass if the victim was a poor black woman???)

Well, WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think ? Also shame on the prosecutor, Elizabeth Lederer, who knew damn well that there was no evidence at all on these poor, black kids but proceeded anyway only to further her career.

“Before I slip into unconsciousness, I’d like to have another kiss … ” Jim Morrison was obsessed with death and talked, sang, and wrote about it his whole short life right up until he met his very own end on July 3, 1971 in Paris – he was only 27. Jim died peacefully in the bathtub they say of – excess, alcoholism, pneumonia, a heroin overdose (though Jim didn’t like the drug) a heart attack … nobody knows for sure. There are conspiracy theories galore and they’re all over the web including the possibility that his death was a fake (another Elvis thing) but sadly Jim Morrison did in fact die and the sad truth is that those who knew him well were not in the least bit surprised; Jim was coughing and throwing  up blood months before and why there was no autopsy and more importantly why his loved ones didn’t help him get some sort of medical attention is a mystery. Nevertheless, Jim and the Doors died in 1971 despite 2 of the remaining band members – Ray Manzarek  (Magdalena wrote an obit. A couple of weeks ago regarding his death) and Robby Krieger tried to revive The Doors with Stewart Copeland as drummer and well …that’s another story.
Since Magdalena’s blog about the death of the amazing keyboardist/bassist Ray Manzarek, I’ve not been able to pull myself away from listening, reading , and researching all about this incredibly original rock band who not only were way before their time but explored death, chaos, edge, uncertainty, revolution, etc. like no other group before – as some people would say, they were the Yang of Yin, the Beatles talked and sang about love and The Doors threw in our face Vietnam and darkness.

Certainly for me, at the age of 49, there are better, more educated writers who can quench my existential thirst, but The Doors were special – no doubt about it. The members of the band were educated and thoughtful; they actually named the group after Aldous Huxley’s ‘Doors Of Perception’ and were heavily influenced by the poet William Blake and the beat writers: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, etc. and Jim read all of Nietzsche’s work. I liked what critic, Henry Collins, had to say about the singing of Jim Morrison – his voice was controlled, rich, masculine, almost balladeer (believe it or not, Jim loved the crooners i.e. Frank Sinatra) and then that tenderness would morph into this wild, feral and ferocious animal!!!
The band really began with a chance encounter with Ray Mancerek and Jim Morrison meeting at UCLA film school – both were never really that serious about EVER becoming rock stars (Jim always wanted to be a poet and Ray contemplated practicing law) but as we all know… the rest is history.
Well, WhaDaYaThink ? What do you think ? Are/were you a Doors fan? What I enjoyed the most was Morrison’s improvisational style; you never knew what he would do next, he was a dangerous, scary, exciting Adonis. The band was also not your three chord, typical boogie back then, the music was jazzy, bluesy and simultaneously beautiful and very odd.