Gary makes me hungry.
I had a long, fun conversation with my friend Gary the other day, Sunday actually, over the telephone, and we quickly started talking about food, as our conversations tend to do. Gary, now a famous playwright/critic, who spends most of his days on a plane, as opposed to by a plate, always wants to hear about what Nana has cooked, created, invented, resurrected from her kitchen shelves. Nana’s kind of magical that way. And she has become something of folklore in my social circles, and many of my friends eagerly await for my Sunday dinner details. (I can think of one person who...
There’s no “I” in Verizon. Oh, wait, Yes there is.
I’m going to tell you why I believe in karma: chewing gum. I have never, believe me, ever been one to litter. I don’t like it. I find it tacky, low-class, and uneducated of people to throw trash along streets, highways, and front yards. I’m sure some of this has to do with the near religious obsession U.L. and I had with his own front yard, when I was growing up. The first beer can I ever saw was face-down in his bed of calla lilies, the ones that sat out near the end of the driveway. People threw trash in the...
“I’m the freaking boss of TV, just so you know.”
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, family, humor
I’ve made no little secret about the fact that growing up, as I did, the television was not the center of the universe. Not in our house. It was carefully guarded: it and all its wonders of delicious and suggestive programming. The only television station that I was allowed to watch, almost entirely on my own and un-chaperoned, was good, old PBS. And, oh, how I watched it: Letter People, Clyde the Frog, Voyage of the Mimi, and one of my all-time faves, Read All About It. Even learning, early on, how to convince U.L. that some shows were appropriate—How could they...
A word about lesbians…
Filed under: Deep South, education, faith, family, humor, life
So, Mississippi’s made the news, again. Have you heard? Itawamba County’s School Board has decided to cancel the local high school’s prom because one student, a lesbian, wanted to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend as her date. Of course, the media is licking its chops, I’m sure, over this newest political deep-fried Panic Button. All the more so because it’s straight from the Heart of Dixie, also known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt. It was only a little more than a decade ago, wasn’t it?, when we were splayed across the nation’s newsrooms (again, the culprit being North...
Nothing but the blood: GamVa.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, humor, life
So, keeping with my character sketches, how about I talk a little about the “partly-fictionalized” portion of my family tree? There are quite a few branches there to be sure, of mismatched friends and who-not I’ve come to claim as family, but it starts further down, at the root, and trust me, it is one hell of a strong one. Her name is GamVa. Short for Grandma Virginia. Who isn’t actually my grandmother. She’s not even really related to me. Not even a little bit. But that doesn’t make her any less “blood” in my eyes. She’s been as indelible a mark in my...
Nothing but the blood: Tigi
Filed under: Deep South, faith, family, humor, life
Kirby thinks I ought to pen a few character sketches for you. He and I were talking the other day and he said it’d be nice to explain who some of these people are that I keep writing about. He said it’d increase reader-interest if I described in some detail the repeated members of my sweet, dogged family I refer to so often in my memoir-esque blog. I think that’s a great idea. For several reasons: first, it’ll certainly help those precious few of you who read this thing with any regularity to have some reference points, and secondly, it’ll be a...
Pointing, by the way, is not polite.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, food, health, humor, life, theatre
I’ve become a little too close to the janitor, at the college. And it’s not that I mind, not one bit; it’s how we’ve become close that I find amusing and uncomfortable. It involves Miller Light. Sort of. Before I go any further, I want you to be plainly aware that this is not about an academic caste system. And I have a previous story to prove it. Though I rarely tell this story from my Disney Days, prior to having the high-class job of character entertainment and the allure of being an Attractions Host at Disney Studios, I will come clean and tell you that...
Five foods that made me who I am.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, family, food, health, humor
I’m still stuck on the potato log. Meaning, since confessing to you about my lust and love for the said potato log, yesterday afternoon, I’ve not been able to think about anything else except food. And so, at the risk of offending some of you, I feel I’ve no choice to move myself past this obsessive food-thinking other than to write about it. So, I’m going to spend the next few moments with you, making one confession after another about a few dishes, recipes, snacks, and various other, sundry foods that I not only grew up with, but that, I feel, have defined who...
Isn’t everything always in the trunk?
It wasn’t a lot of ice, but still, this morning, stuck to my windshield, there it was. Even more interesting to see, as it glinted in the waking sunlight, was that it had formed itself to the shmear, shall we call it?, left by my windshield wipers from the evening before; I’d used nearly the last of my washer fluid to clean the windshield. So, this morning, I had crystals galore, streaked in long, fluid (and a little tattered-y, because my wipers are in jeopardy of learning cursive handwriting, so bad are they) rivers of frozen delight. I know this is going to...
Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
Filed under: Deep South, Everyday, education, faith, family, food, health, humor, life
You know what’s hard? Yoga. You know what’s harder than that? Trying to explain yoga to your precious family of aging Southern Baptists. Because if it’s not explicitly typed in the King James version of the Holy Bible then it’s most likely of the devil, who probably created yoga to trick Christians into performing exercises that would get them into positions they couldn’t get out of, thus holding them in place so he could catch them. But, yoga is a later issue. First, we have to address a more pressing item, though there are several items overall, not the least of which is the fact...
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