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The Christmas Bone

Terry Taylor — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 10:00:06 +0000

A while back, our notorious Jack Russell, Rudy (http://twitter.com/Rudythejack), was injured and laid up in bad shape for several weeks. Here he is, back to his snarly self on Christmas Eve, with one of the many gifts from his friends. Rudy’s recovery is the best gift we could get.

Think about the gifts you got this year that will not fit in a box and came with no ribbon. Ours has four legs and is carrying around a rawhide bone the size of a “Shake Weight.”

Merry Christmas.

The Christmas Goose Comes Early

Terry Taylor — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:00:23 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G0PjzwS-M0

Saturday shoppers strut through Tyson’s Corner mall. Christmas is in two weeks. You can see the building stress in their faces. The line for Santa is long and coughing and features a juggling elf amid a gauntlet of snotty sleeves and yawning parents. On Santa’s knee, a full-grown man and woman straddle the jolly old codger as he pretends they don’t weight 230 pounds each. His cheeks are rosy more from hypertension than joy.

At the food court, across from the Cinnabon, sushi rides a conveyor belt beside people who can’t use chopsticks. Sushi and cinnamon rolls probably should not be for sale this close, but that’s just me.

Playing cards spin in the air between the magic hands of a guy who not only can spin a dime in mid air, he can throw down some spin that almost makes me want to buy the $50 magic trick in the cool box. Then I remember that I don’t really like magic all that much.

About 3 P.M., I am tired and thirsty and buy a strawberry lemonade chiller from a fast food joint across from a row of massage chairs. “$1 for 3 minutes.” That’s a cheap massage. I inspect the chair. Seems legit, very sturdy, nice leather, solid construction. I go with it. Besides, I could use 3 minutes of even cheap rubbing after walking for three hours, so I settle in and feed my buck through the slot. The chair comes to life, rollers gouging and prodding my aching back and shoulders. Pressure pads constrict around my calves. Just when I am caught in the chair’s full grasp, another movement starts up, and not in a place I want massaged while sitting in the middle of thousands of people as Taylor Swift’s “Santa Baby” echoes past L’Occitane en Provence, Build-A-Bear Workshop and Godiva.

At this point, let me say that I have sat in my share of massage chairs (mostly at Sharper Image and Brookstone). I have had several serious massages over the years by experts, some using their feet. So I have the massage thing down. I get it. This is not it.

As the rollers drop down into a relaxing lumbar motion, what feels like a pool ball attached to the end of a broom handle begins to ascend from the middle of the seat. It is a bit weird at first. When it does not stop rising, I get concerned. When it gets to full-on prostate exam mode, I panic. My strawberry lemonade ends up on the floor. But my legs are trapped. The pool ball digs in like Hell Boy is head-butting me in the ass.

Is this a joke? Is there a camera videoing this for MTV? I am on my elbows, up off the seat trying to wiggle out of the thing’s way. Finally it eases off and drops back into the seat and I jump up. What the hell? I look around and another guy is sitting down in the chair beside me. He shakes his head and feed in $10 for 30 minutes.

“Man, I could use this,” he grunts to no one in particular.

I back away from him and the chair, un-tucking my massage wedgie. If a dollar gets you 3 minutes of the pool-ball-in-the-back-pocket treatment, what will $10 get you for 30 minutes? I refuse to imagine it. Walking through the crowd I glance back. The man is gone. It hasn’t been two minutes. The chair is rocking and rolling like the sick machine George Clooney constructed in the movie “Burn After Reading.”

And I always thought the Christmas goose was served on a plate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETSWLFWPhqQ

Cars Corkscrewing Tunnels

Terry Taylor — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:46:27 +0000

Mercedes:

Top Gear:

Two Harleys Beside the Road

Terry Taylor — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Temperatures dropped 13 degrees in about five minutes. The sky was pewter and gorged for rain. Light smoothed the rough edges of leaves and trees and the metal of passing cars. Two Harleys sat beside Atlee Station Road sporting for sale signs. The owner was wrangling one’s handlebars attempting to bring it inside before the storm. I drove past the bikes several times last week. I’ve been thinking about them ever sense.

In my dreams I ride them and sometimes even when I’m awake. It will be as close as I ever get to straddling the gas tank of a machine like that. The ubiquitous “Middle Aged Man On a Harley Syndrome” is a cliché from hell and has been for years. The movie “Wild Hogs,” alone, is enough to make a man sell his cycle and buy a Segway. But still those bikes roam in my head.

I will never own one, though. And here’s why: I’m not a joiner.

The motorcycle culture seems to be going the way of the RV culture, at least to me, with groups of like-minded people cruising the interstates in packs or parking at KOA campgrounds, sharing beers and stories and beans and franks. The lone rider on a crooked stretch of road is a rare sight these days. Alone is how I ride in my dreams.

If I got that Harley, used and at a good price, I would have to do it inside the confines of a solemn promise to myself that I would never ride in a pack of CPA’s with Henna tats, bandannas and leather, grumbling their mufflers down the highway in clumps of five and six and eight. I would buy it to ride all by myself with the only thing following me being my past. Those ancient, romantic motorcycle days may be as rare as a Dennis Hopper sighting (yes, I know he’s dead – which is why it is a rare thing).

A friend of mine rides. He smiles when he talks about it. I asked him if he rides with others and he stopped smiling. “That’s just part of the gig sometimes.” It did not sound like fun. My take: when he talks about the bike, he is happy. When he talks about the people, not so much.

And there is my answer. So I will pass the two motorcycles again today and this time, I will not be tempted.

The Best Of Everything

Terry Taylor — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:00:50 +0000

How many “Best Barbecue” places can there be? How many “Best Bars?” How many “Best Burgers” and “Best Pies” and “Best Fried Chicken” establishments can there be?

A lot.

Publications across the South are especially prone to “Bests.” I have seen damned near every barbecue place from Texas to Georgia, and from Florida to Virginia get mentioned on one of these lists. It’s impossible to eat a pulled pork sandwich that doesn’t have some accolade behind it. It seems if you own a pie shop, a bar or a fried chicken joint and don’t have a “Best” mention framed on your wall, you should shoot the cook and deep fry his ass and try to get listed as “Best Deep Fried Ass” in next month’s edition of Whatever Monthly.

I want to see a “Worst Of” list. I want to read a “Worst Of The South” issue of some regional rag. I want some freelancer to visit a barbecue joint in Mississippi and say, “This shit is as inedible as a sun-dried turd, even with the gourmet, hand-crafted piss and vinegar sauce.” Where is the review that reads, “What the hell was that thing I just ate? Was it fried chicken or scabby-crusted squirrel?”

Research shows that if you put a “Best Of” issue out there, people will read it no matter what, especially if they are in a restroom with a little time on their hands or stuck in an airplane or doctor’s office waiting area.

If you run across anything you think is “The Best,” no matter what it is, send it to me and I’ll compile it into a “Best Of” blog. Just make it interesting, that’s all I ask. There are no categories. I’m waiting.

Honda In The Grass

Terry Taylor — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:25:29 +0000

We have a new lawnmower at our house. A self-propelled wonder hiding beneath a Honda logo. It is the first “pull-itself” (as my dad used to call them) mover we’ve ever owned. With our old mower, it had gotten to the point where the hills were too steep and my ass was too tired to push that thing for two hours in Southern summer heat. Not anymore.

My wife follows this Honda around like Rudy does with our vacuum cleaner. It is amazing how different mowing is when you are not pushing up a 45º angle half the time.

Say ‘Honda” in mowing circles (there are mowing aficionados just like there are wine and cigar addicts) and ears perk. They cost more to be sure. But they are cheaper than two minutes in an ER from heat stroke.

A cursory Google search will tell you that Honda makes the best mower that ever bitch-slapped a blade of grass (those exact words were not on the Honda website). After a month of research and a bent undercarriage on our old mower (jumping a stump), we went to Ace Hardware because they had some Hondas on sale.

The joint was packed. Guys were ogling and rubbing rows of sturdy Hondas parked in a log row. It felt a little like one of those biker bars when the riders park their hogs out front.

One guy almost licked a $1200 Honda that was loaded with enough automatic features to mow and mulch a yard, grill a steak and fetch a beer. The sales people were hardcore lawnmower motor-heads who talked reverently about the Hondas and their engines and features and warranties and craftsmanship. I had my credit card out before I could wipe my eyes after he gave a Mr. Douglas speech about how this piece of equipment would likely be in my will 30 years from now.

We bought the cheapest one. I am not a man who would pay $1,200 for anything involving the pleasureless task of mowing a yard. I would pay $300, though. And I did, before tax.

Now I have to change the oil every four mowings. I have to clean the air filter ever five mowings. I have to oil some gear I have not found yet, massage the spark plug, and probably take it to Ruth’s Chris every six months. It’s loyal, but finicky. Luckily, we have been trained by a Jack Russell, so it’ is no big deal.

I sometimes sit in the garage and look at our wonderful machine. It does bother me just a bit that the mower needs more damned care than my yard did. Then again, the Honda is doing the heavy lifting and all we do is tag along behind and keep it from decapitating a squirrel, running over Rudy or climbing the fence. I watch out for Rudy and the fence. When I see a squirrel, however, I gun it like a Harley and imagine the little bastard screaming, “Freedom!” – Braverheart-style– right before that polished blade turns his head into a hairy 90-mph fastball into the woods.

{ NOTE: Sorry if you love squirrels. Please contact me and you can have all of ours. }

Sail Cat Road, Chapter 22 (the final chapter)

Terry Taylor — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 08:59:51 +0000

The last chapter of Sail Cat Road, the sequel to No Good End, is below. It was posted tweet-by-tweet daily on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ttaylordude). For the prequel, please go to: www.nogoodend.com. Thank you for your time.

The metal fishing boat with the 25-horse Merc was nosed up onto the slanted mud bank. They stopped for a second to see if anyone was near

A small cabin was visible through the trees. No movement. People were talking loudly behind them in the direction of the café. Dogs barked.

Gus jumped in the boat and cranked it with two pulls. Jolene was second in. Jimmy pushed it out and pulled himself up and over the side.

A muddy V frothed from the prop. Gus pointed the boat upstream. Police always looked downstream. The Gulf, and freedom, was down there.

No one would suspect upstream; Gus knew that. So did Jimmy. Jolene only wanted to move away quickly. She did not care in which direction.

Jolene lay low in the boat so it would look like two men out fishing. She reloaded her clip from extra rounds in her pockets.

Moss hung from tree branches almost to the water like whiskers from flood-bent trees. To the south, thunder ached over the swamps.

Snakes made S’s through the chocolate water and a small alligator wallowed in mud below a broken, grayed pier. Mosquitoes chased the boat.

Thick brush hugged the rotting riverbanks. The Merc churned against the current. A bridge was ahead. Not good news. Cops loved bridges. Gus slowed.

“Faster,” said Jimmy. “They ain’t up this far yet,” Gus twisted the handle harder. Jolene lay on wet, dead wigglers soaking her clothes.

I moment of cool shade darkened the three as they went under the bridge. On the other side, the sun revealed a fish camp ahead.

“Nobody over there,” said Gus. “There’s a five-gallon gas can on that landing. Let’s see if it’s full of mixture.”

Jimmy slid .45 caliber rounds into his extra clip. “Get it and go. This will be the first place they look. Ease up and I’ll grab it.”

Jolene studied the cabin. No one. She scanned the trees. No trucks. “Fishing must suck here,” she said. “Rednecks fish anytime, anywhere.”

“It’s Tuesday. They don’t fish on Tuesdays,” said Gus. “Tomorrow, they’ll be back. Maybe tonight. They’re working or drinking now.”

“They were going to collect on me,” said Jolene. She dropped her arm over the edge and scooped amber water and wiped her face.

“These are some committed sons of bitches,” said Gus. “They’ll keep coming. There’s no shortage of them. That’s what happens with money.”

Jimmy gazed into the treetops. “There’ll soon be a shortage of them. The thing about chasing is, sometimes to catch what you don’t want.”

“They’ll just send more,” said Jolene. She looked at Gus and changed the subject. “So after all this, you want to be my daddy now?”

Love is hard to see in a person so flawed, but that’s exactly what he saw in his daughter’s eyes, still rimmed in the purple of her beating.

He nodded and she took it for what it was worth. As screwed up as they were, this was her family. None of them had anyone else.

Gus had known little about love beyond Bren. Jimmy never tried to understand it. Jolene has mistaken it for everything from sex to drugs.

Calmness settled between the cypress trees just long enough to let their minds wander about things beyond their present predicament.

The sound peeled the calm from ripples behind the boat. The impact was metal on flesh, exploding bone and the copper smell of blood.

From behind a bent tree, Ritko dropped the scope from his eye. He only needed to kill one of them. And the one he wanted was down.

There was no screaming, no splashing, no panic. Dying is seldom as dramatic is it in the movies. Mostly it is just quiet and final.

The boat drifted to the right toward the far bank and nosed into the brush. Ritko walked away in the direction he had come.

The low clouds hung above, observing the violence with no visible change. Clouds see their share of inhumanity, making no judgments.

The Meaning Of D.C. Traffic

Terry Taylor — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:14:09 +0000

Saying that Washington, D.C. has a traffic problem is like saying Angelina Jolie has huge lips. It is too obvious to even utter. But if you spend time in it, you begin to realize some patterns that lend prescience to bigger issues.
Either the inner loop or the outer loop of the Beltway is always snarled. One flows smoothly, the other is gridlock. This is a recent law that was passed by both inept parties. There has to be gridlock somewhere, if not everywhere. Inside the Beltway, the streets are basically parking lots. Underground on the Metro, however, things move pretty well. The lesson: Everything in D.C. happens under the surface.
No mosquito can possibly survive the carbon monoxide within 20 miles of the city. Everyone is sucking everyone else’s tailpipe. This is not a metaphor.
Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French-born American architect, designed Washington. It was rumored that the traffic circles were constructed to confuse the British. This has led me to believe that I must be British.
Interestingly, L’Enfant was not paid by the U.S. government for his services and died in poverty, leaving a few watches, compasses, instruments and maps, all totaling about $46 dollars. It is hardly ironic that the U.S. government screwed the very guy who planned its own capital city.
L’Enfant got the eternal last laugh, however, with those damned traffic circles. He was French, indeed.

Hoyt and The Pusher

Terry Taylor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:42:22 +0000

Some music goes beyond the sound that comes out of your speakers. From time to time, these sounds define a cultural or political movement. In a few cases, they become the soundtrack for a generation.

Neil Young wailing, “four dead in Ohio,” still conjures memories of a black and white photograph of a young girl on one knee, panic stricken, next to the face-down body of a student shot dead by the National Guard at Kent State.

“The Pusher,” written by Hoyt Axton, and growled by John Kay over a grinding Steppenwolf beat brings images of Easy Rider and a drug culture that slapped America’s conservatism right between their eyes and the sound machine. This is where my intentions went off the tracks.

I started out to write this piece about Steppenwolf. They cranked out several seminal songs in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (Magic Carpet Ride, Born To Be Wild). “The Pusher” sounds like a Steppenwolf song. No surprise there. But knowing Hoyt Axton wrote those words is an interesting contradiction. At least to me.

Growing up, I saw Hoyt Axton as sort of a folksy character like Glenn Campbell or Mac Davis. Then, when you see that he wrote “The Pusher,” it kind of twists in your head a little. I remember the notorious lyrics (“God damn the pusher man”) and I remember Hoyt Axton. I just can’t put the two memories together. John Kay’s voice, yes. Hoyt? No way.

Hoyt Axton wrote a lot of song you have heard for 50 years. He wrote “Joy To The World” (as in Three Dog Night’s “Jeremiah was a bullfrog…”) for god’s sake. He wrote “Heartbreak Hotel” for Elvis and “Greenback Dollar” for the Kingston Trio. He wrote songs covered by Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt and John Denver. He wrote some pretty pop stuff. And then he wrote, “God damn the pusherman.” That is some first class contradiction with a true Southern bent. Got to like that.

Hoyt was on an episode of Bonanza. That’s pretty white bread. He was in the movies: “Gremlins” and “Black Stallion.” He sang the “Head For the Mountains” in Busch beer commercials and “The Ballad of Big Mac” for McDonald’s. He seemed like the most innocent of innocents. Still, “The Pusher” is not a Sunday school song, so Hoyt had done some living. I just had never heard anything about it. Never thought about it. Then I started digging around about Steppenwolf and saw that Hoyt had written that song. I am still digesting it.

Johnny Cash had some of the same depth in his life and career. Many remember Cash as a country singer and even a gospel singer. They forget his rough start, rock and roll and drug use. He was real. And he never tried to hide it. He was never more real than when he sang Trent Resnor’s Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt,” in a way that made you believe that he understood that word better than anyone. And Cash was in his 70’s.

I thought I knew about Hoyt Axton. Hardly.

He died in 1999 of a heart attack in Montana. He was 61. He never fully recovered from a stroke in 1997, the same year he and his wife were arrested for possession of a pound of marijuana (according to Wikipedia). In reading about it, I couldn’t help but remember the first line to “The Pusher.” I can hear John Kay singing it. And now I can see Hoyt Axton living it.

Perhaps I’ll write about Steppenwolf later.

Thankful, Even Now

Terry Taylor — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:53 +0000

By the time you read this, it will be Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Today is considered by many to be the worst travel day of the year. Day after tomorrow will be Black Friday, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. In this jobless recovery, will it be a retail boom or bust? Good question. No matter the answer, I will be thankful.

History has shown that recessions last about two years. This one started in 2007. We hear pundits talking about a recovery, albeit a jobless one (which is an oxymoron to me). They say the recession is officially over. Why? Because they think it is? Do you think it is? As the New York Times postulated Sunday: “Is this recovery just in our minds?” Even if it is, I will be thankful.

People tend to believe what they want to believe. Reality tends to be what it is. When reality runs counter to what people want to believe, what happens? Who knows? But I will be thankful, nevertheless.

Today I will join the last-minuteers and shop for a dead. The good dead birds will probably be taken. I will likely be left with a subpar dead bird. And that’s okay. I will still give thanks. Things could be much worse. We could be turkeys.