It's Soul Train

I miss Soul Train.

Dig those threads. Dig those moves. Dig those chicks.
 
Soul Train was your real deal. If Soul Train were on today, I'd never miss an episode. Soul Train was reality television that showed actual reality and everyone knew it was reality. No one had to designate it as reality, which is a far cry from the situation you have today.

Code orange news alert: if they are trying hard to convince you it's reality, it probably isn't.

Dancing with the Stars? No way Nancy Grace or Tatum O'Neal or Tom Delay could rock "Ballero" like the Soul Train Dancers did. And they were winging it. So You Think You Can Dance? Yeah, right. Hey ABC and FOX--turn your ears on and dig this: You're shoveling pure candy-assery.

Give me that animated train from the Soul Train intro over your computer generated graphics any day of the week. I loved the way they said "Soooooooooooooul Train." Sometimes I say "Soul Train" like that just because I want to. Who cares?

Ride the Soul Train!

And what about Don Cornelius? What about his suits and that snazzy train-thingie he stood on to announce the Soul Train Dancers? What about that? Huh?

I'm going to iTunes right now and buying "Ballero" by War just because of this video.

I miss Soul Train.

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Your wife

Your wife, being your wife, is your wife.

Your wife will determine what is right. Your wife will determine what is wrong. All disputes concerning your wife's decisions will be settled by your wife.

Do not expect your wife to behave rationally.

Your wife knows things about your socks that are damaging, but not as damaging as the things she knows about your underwear.

In the kitchen, your wife's authority is absolute.

Your wife owns all the stuff over there. Your wife own's all the stuff over here. Your wife owns all the stuff in between. You can have the lawnmower.

Failure to adhere to these posted ordinances regarding your wife will severely limit your access to this.

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The Saturday after Thanksgiving

Hair shampooed for fancy anniversary dinner out with Goat tonight at Crop Bistro--check.

Turkey carcass broken down and boiling for turkey bone soup--check.

Latest feature for fresh water drafted, edited and ready for submission--almost check.

Determined to fit a five-mile walk and a nap into this day no matter what--check.

Got life? Hell yeah!

* * *

Works for me

Whatever you do, watch all the way to the end to see the fancy hat one of the sophisticates is sporting.

Have a great holiday!

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Who do you like in the seventh?

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You like people who say "great toe" instead of "big toe."

You know why you like Mrs. Robinson? You like Mrs. Robinson because she was the original cougar.

You know why you like Maggie Thatcher? You like Maggie Thatcher because she sent out the fleet.

You know why you like bunny dressage? You like bunny dressage because it's bunny dressage.

Do you like road trips ? Hell yes you like road trips.

You like guys with jumper cables and tow ropes. You like guys who drive "beaters."

You like Anderson Cooper but you don't want David Muir to know you like Anderson Cooper.

You like Charlie Sheen because ... oh yeah, you don't like Charlie Sheen.

You like birds that like goats.

You like chicks who practice Reiki and chicks who read palms. You like Wicca chicks.

You like William Shatner. You like Butterfinger Crisp bars. You don't know if William Shatner likes Butterfinger Crisp bars.

You like your adult content, but you don't want anyone to know you like your adult content.

You like Campbell's soup even though you don't like Campbell's soup.

You like alpacas. You like turtles.

Two ladies? You like two ladies. You like two ladies a lot.

You like clean sheet day but you don't like saying "clean sheet day" because it makes you sound like a reject from The Real Housewives of Dayton, Ohio.

You like guys who make a Bloody Mary with horseradish even though you don't like Bloody Marys.

You like signs.

Kleenex says bless you

The God Squad sponsored a GOP presidential candidate forum last night:

Newt Gingrich, who has been preemptively addressing his complicated personal life as he’s shot up in the polls, acknowledged to the crowd of 3,000 gathered at the forum for Iowa social conservatives that there was “a great deal of pain that I had caused others,” and said he was “collapsing” in the 1990s emotionally.

Herman Cain spoke about his wife supporting him through cancer and his regret over not spending enough time with his children. He welled up twice, comforted by Rick Perry, sitting next to him at the table on a church stage set with Thanksgiving adornments for a discussion focused on faith, and in which opposition to abortion and gay marriage were discussed as critical issues. --source

Wow. I about welled up reading that. All they needed was Boehner bringing up the rear.

Now then, speaking of things I can really get behind, here's an uplifting PSA:

Mascot

Yesterday the Goat and I attended our first fine art auction at Gray's, which is a enchanted palace here in Cleveland where you'll find fairy godmothers, chalices, secret scrolls, talismans and magical cloaks. I purchased this netsuke.

A netsuke is a hand carved charm that your way-back Japanese dudes used to attach their manpurses to their kimonos. This one may look like a mild-mannered monkey wielding a skull scepter, but man-o-man, does he have secrets!

Not only is he at-the-ready to secure your manpurse or blast away a bad guy with his skull scepter, he's also transforming into a turtle.

AND his eyes pop out in order to facilitate super-netsuke xray vision.

Although I'm not sure who owns who in this budding relationship, the netsuke and I were clearly destined to be together as mine was the sole bid. For the curious, this skull-scepter-wielding-monkey-whose-eyes-pop-out-and-is-turning-into-a-turtle cost less than a one-year membership to the International Netsuke Society (but not much less).

If this guy doesn't bring me good luck, I just don't know what. Now then, any name suggestions?

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Secret message!

Click here to listen to a secret message!

* * *

Too windy for the Zippo?

My mom Judy O'Brien employing a not-so-portable lighter circa 1967.

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The Flint's Hypnotic Skirt Dance

Dear Readership,

Busy with other tasks, your humble hostess invites you to use the comment section as an open thread. Feel free to discuss today's graphic, the second amendment, best methods for marital aid employ, the intrepid debt panel and their thankless work, your weekend menu, free speech, any of the distinguished array of Republican Presidential candidates (aka Mitt Romney and the Seven Ugly Fucklings), or a topic of your choosing.

If you've gotten this far and don't feel like commenting but still feel hungry, here's some suggestions:

If you'd like to read something funny and political and high octane, go dig this shit.

If you'd like to read something disturbing and short and lingering, go dig this flash.

If you'd like to read something sexy and complex and mysterious, go dig this list.

Enjoy the weekend.

* * *

Gray ladies down

Deba Gray and Serena Harragin run the funkiest cooliest artiest auction house in Cleveland, but the path that led them here is dotted with tears and quiet triumphs. It wound around the lofty world of upscale art, the production and pryrotechnic end of the film industry, and through that morbid pit of Ground Zero that screamed at the sky after the September 11th attacks.

Gray, left, and Harragin are two of the most inspirational women I've ever had the honor to write about. Their story is featured in this week's fresh water.

You'll find some proper photos over there, but here's a few less professional offerings from yours truly. I don't begin to do it justice, but know that the inside of this auction house, brimming with the stuff of humanity, filled me with pure love.

This WWII propaganda poster will be for sale at Gray's next auction on Nov. 17.

Tiny Japanese netsukes. EXTREME WANT.

One bench, no people.

Who says there's no such thing as a treasure chest?

Everything at Gray's inflated me with breathy sighs.

Gray's is housed in a building that was once a Citroën dealership. um ... HELL YEAH.

Each piece of this silverware from the 1700s is embossed with a Knights Templar insignia. Gray expects the set to garner $15,000 to $20,000. I held one of the forks in my hand and marveled. Each tyne--which had delivered a bite of beef or mutton or pheasant to someone's mouth more than 200 years ago--was sharp as a stitching awl.

The hard hat Deba Gray wore while working at Ground Zero.

* * *

An Irish American recipe

~~~~

Ingredients:

Boiled potato

Salt shaker

~~~~

1. Stand in front of kitchen sink.
2. Assume the expression of a cow watching a passing train.
3. Grip potato in one hand
4. Grip salt shaker in the other.
5. Sprinkle salt on potato.
6. Eat salted potato.

*  *  *

The pregnant man

Tomorrow, residents of Mississippi will vote on the controversial "personhood" amendment, which outlaws abortion and some forms of birth control. This may or may not include the pill. The language of the legislation is vague and no one really knows how it will pan out.

The issue is bigger than Mississippi. Presidential candidate Herman Cain also supports banning all abortion. Obviously, a thousand sticky threads hang from this behometh, but I'm going to pull on the one that hasn't gotten a lot of press: Daddyhood.

The last time abortion was illegal in the United States, paternity was a dodgy thing. An unwed pregnant woman was often on her own, particularly if she was a certain kind of girl. A man could simply deny the baby was his.

I swear, Dad, I never laid a hand on her. I swear.

Who knows with a girl like that?

Hey, I paid for it. The rest is her problem.

You'd be surprised how many "good girls" fielded that kind of talk as soon as they were in a family way. Back then, owning up to the pivotal question, "Who is responsible for this girl?" was basically a matter of honor.

Well gentlemen, that has changed. Today's paternity tests are cheap and fast. Pregnant women can verify paternity as early as ten weeks into pregnancy. I have no idea how many women request it now, but if safe effective birth control and abortion are made illegal, I suspect paternity testing will go through the roof. Legally forcing men to submit to their end of the test cannot be far behind.

I'd like all you boys out there to stand up and say "mandatory DNA test" out loud.

Whether the blessed event unfurled in a bordello or nuptial bed, I believe paternity will soon loom large and that a man will be legally and financially bound to parenthood as soon as the two pink lines make it so. Obligation and responsibility will no longer be the right thing to do, they'll be mandatory. Soon, men will be just as pregnant as women in every aspect but the physical one.

I can hear it already.

It's about time.

A man should be responsible for his actions.

Praise the lord!

Yeah, yeah. We'll see how fervent those cries are when the real implications of fatherhood without options or escape take hold.

So then, gentlemen, congratulations. You're expecting.

*  *  *

Egg Art Devastates and Comforts

Special for the Owner's Manual
by Portialista Romverolio

O'Brien, Erin. Egg Art. 2011.

Deceptively simple in title, newcomer Erin O'Brien's Egg Art debuted this weekend to an exclusive crowd at efFLUent gALAveria on the city's near upper west side.

Utilitarian in its approach but devastating in delivery, O'Brien at once corrupts and deconstructs the very coexistence of nascence (as in: ovum) and reality (as in: it is what it is) with an exacting eye for cohesion without abandoning minimalism. Eschewing the stability of linear expression, Egg Art comes to fruition within its own texture, at once violating the viewer and comforting her.

Simply stated, O'Brien convolutes convolution.

Egg Art, detail.

Conventional spatial relationships normally enable viewers. Not so with Egg Art, wherein the edge of dimension diminishes in perpetuity: here there are no lines. Definition evaporates before us. Yet we are invited--compelled even--to tumble ineluctably forward, excusing not only O'Brien, but also ourselves as we fall into in the realm of post-modern neo-deconstructionalism.

"The yolk broke," said a charmingly self-deprecating O'Brien. The room erupted in delighted chortles at her quip.

In one instant, Egg Art demands surrender with simplicity through complexity. Behold ironic plenum, empty capacity, unanswered exactitude and pattering ends.

Egg Art is O'Brien's first public offering. Savvy art lovers can only hope it won't be her last.

* * *

Phone cam round-up

Errant pizza slice, Oct. 8, 2011.

Site of errant pizza slice (shown above), Oct. 10, 2011.

Boots without feet.

Bras without boobs.

Goat considering product from the "Men's Shop at Ulta."

Neuro Bliss bottle and it's shaped like a marital aid.

I suspect these here (ahem) tenderloins haven't said "moo" for a long, long time.

Mac's Backs may be the only book store in the world that has a copy of my novel (out of print) next to a work by my brother John.

Yet another secret force slowly and quietly descending upon us.

Photo snapped in the garage of father of Goat. Forest City? Sanka? Really?

Sock emergency on the road.

They jingle jangle jingle.

*  *  *

Herman Cain refers to himself in the third person

Dear Cain campaign staff: Wait. Let me get this straight. Politico contacted you on October 20th. Their sexual harassment story ran on October 30. Hence you had ten days to prepare the Boy Wonder for the fallout and yesterday's stumbling bumbling mumbling was the best he could do? This, my pretties, does not bode well.

Dear conservative pundits: breaking a story about formally paying off a woman who made allegations of sexual harassment against a presidential candidate is neither racially motivated nor irrelevant.

Dear Hermain Cain: When you announce that you support forcing a woman who was brutally raped to carry her attacker's child to term, women are going to be very interested in your general attitude towards them. So here's a Code Red News Alert: Unwanted sexual advances made by men who support forcing women to bear unwanted children doesn't play real well.

Oh, and another thing: Singing to the National Press Club? That shit's just weird.

Erin O'Brien thinks Herman Cain is in big trouble. Erin O'Brien thinks Hermain Cain had better keep his pizza ovens warm.

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