DON'T BANK ON IT!

Well, it finally happened.

Law firms have been replaced as Number One on my list of groups I deem lower than clam poop.  The group that now has the honor of my complete disdain is...may we have the envelope, please...banks!

I went into one of these banking institutions (and they call them "institutions" for a good reason--after ten minutes of dealing with these people, you'll be ready for one) yesterday to open a checking account.  I had one with a different bank, but finally got sick of having to go down there every other day because they showed my account overdrawn twelve minutes after I had made a deposit.  One wouldn't think it would be too much to hope for that bank employees would be capable of adding.  Perhaps the ones who handle checking accounts are told only to subtract, I don't know.

After the fourth time I was shown to be overdrawn when I wasn't, I had a tug-of-war with the bank manager to get him to let go of my $2000, and left to find another bank in which to put my money that would be gracious enough to allow me to spend it when I want it, if I'm willing to pay them to do it.

Yeah.  Right.  Nothing wrong with that picture...

Okay.  So I went to another bank, sat down and told the nice man what I wanted.  We filled out all the forms, then he asked me for my ID.  I handed him my driver's license.

"Don't you have anything else?" he asked.

"Hey, I got rhythm, I got music, who could ask for anything more?" I replied.

"Hmmmmmmm," he hmmmed.  "I need another form of identification."

"Why?  My photo is on my driver's license, and looks just like me...unfortunately."

"Don't you have a credit card?"

"No."

"Well, the law requires us to have two forms of identification."

Ah, yes.  I could just see our legislators slaving away late at night over a law that requires banks to ask for two forms of identification, even though a driver's license has an address, signature, and photo on it.

Come to think of it, that's exactly what our legislators would spend time on!

"Look, I want to put money in, not take it out!  I thought banks encouraged that behavior.  Now I have to prove that I haven't made a recent appearance on 'American Justice' to deposit money here?"

"We have to be sure of who you are."

"I'm sure of who I am, and I ought to know.  I've been me for quite some time now."

"I'm afraid we need a little more proof than that."

"Then grab a Ouija Board and a wine glass and you can discuss it with my pediatrician."

"I don't think so.  We need documentation," he said.

"All right. Let's examine why the photo on my driver's license is proof positive of who I am.  Do you see many other people, who look exactly like me, walking around with red birthmarks covering one half of their faces?  And canine teeth that are so long they can't close their mouths over them?  And how about the knife scar on the right cheek--did you miss that?  And the fact that I'm 6'7"tall?  How about the eye patch?  Or that I'm female and completely bald?  I really blend into a crowd, don't I?  Yeah, I could see where my identity could be in doubt."

"Do you have a passport, then?"

AUGGGGGGH!

"Sir, if I had a passport, do you thnk I'd be living in this podunk town?"

"How about a birth certificate?"

Oh, sure.  I carry that with me all the time.  Never know when some IDIOT at a bank is going to want proof that I was born.  I restrained myself mightily.  "Sorry," I replied.

"Voter Registration Card?"

"Have you gotten a look at the candidates?"

"I see your point.  How about a Social Security Card, then?"

"No.  I am socially insecure."

I offered my fingerprints, a blood sample, a dental chart, and a fairly interesting amount of bribe money, but he would not be moved and was looking at me as if I had just returned from a grand tour of the city sewer system.

So, gentle reader, my hoard now resides within the secure confines of the First Mattress National Bank.  Give it a try.  There are no fees, it is impossible to be overdrawn, and nobody gives a damn who you are!

CREATIVE INSANITY

            I've discovered something awful about myself.

I am not a deep person.

There are puddles deeper than I am.

I had this epiphany by way of a trip of the Museum of Modern Art's annual show-and-sale in New York (MOMA [pronounced "MOE-Ma"] to those "in the know").  I was accompanied by an excruciatingly bohemian friend of mine, and was anticipating my first foray into modern art with all the excitement of a five-year-old about to meet Mickey Mouse.

Now, I have always favored Renaissance and Flemish art, and I must say that, despite my eagerness for exposure to new things, the trip was less an outing than a rude awakening.

The first room we ventured into contained a huge pink faux marble Formica slab, just leaning against the wall.

"Come on," I said to my companion.  "We'd better go to another room.  They're renovating in here."

"Oh, just look at that!"

"At what?"

"That incredible statement about isolation. Doesn't it just speak to you?"

"WHERE?"

She pointed at the pink monolith.  It was incredible all right.  I sure didn't believe it.

"That?  The only thing that says to me is that someone is getting ready to install a counter!"

My comment was met with an indignant huff.

After she had spent the requisite amount of time drinking in the beauty and profundity of this "creation," we proceeded to our left where, in a trail on the floor, were a dozen or so large, pieces of slate.  I, of course, walked on them.

"Please, Madam!" a distressed museum guard shouted, running up and grabbing me by the back of the coat.  "Don't touch the exhibit!"

"The exhibit?"

"Yes!  The exhibit!"  He pointed to the floor.  "This piece is worth $250,000!"

I gingerly stepped off the stones and made a mental note to go home and cash in my sidewalk.  My friend and tour guide was nowhere to be seen, obviously fearing for her bohemian status in SoHo, should she be caught undead, with a pleb like me.

Bemused, I wandered on alone.  The next exhibit was a glass ball on a pedestal in the center of the room.  That was it…for the whole room!  It looked like the scene of a séance suddenly abandoned.  The descriptive card read, "Universal Teardrop," an apt name considering that the price tag on this baby would have brought not one, but many teardrops to the eyes of any self-respecting universe.  Shaking my head, I moved on.

The next exhibit was called, "Black Lemons."  Certain that I would find my former Camaro on display, you can imagine my surprise upon discovering hundreds of lemons--the fruit, that is--painted black and suspended from nylon filaments attached to the ceiling.  There were screens with black lemons painted on them.  There was a giant one in the shape of a chair.  There was even one that had a television set inside it.

It was beyond my comprehension that people would pay good money to see something that I could easily duplicate in my refrigerator after three or four weeks.

But the final exhibit…the piece de resistance, if you will, was the creation called, simply, "Cans."  The room was so littered with empty soda pop cans of every description that it reminded me of the trash compactor scene in "Star Wars."

After I recovered from the assault on my aesthetics, I noticed that this display was a favorite of the homeless people in the area; most of whom were clustered around the barred windows, undoubtedly toting up what they could get for it at their local redemption center.

According to the card, this pile of litter was purported to be an artistic representation of the creation of the world.

Ohhhhhkay.

The other people in the room--the arty-fartsy Greenwich Village crowd, loved this stuff.  Some of the comments I overheard were:

"It was a good idea…a really good idea…but it isn't conclusive, is it?"

"Not conclusive?  How can you say that?  Look at it!  Have you ever seen a more succinct explanation of the origin of the species?  It's all right there in that arrogant arrangement of the Pepsi and Mountain Dew cans!"

"Oh, don't you just adore Steinputz?  I think this is the most meaningful thing he's ever done!"

God, I felt sorry for Steinputz.

While I was standing there, a MOMA official whisked in and announced that this exhibit had just been sold for $45 million!  There was respectful, subdued applause.

I wondered if they'd deliver it in a garbage truck.

Fed up, I decided to try a little experiment.  I stood in front of a steel door with an EXIT sign above it, and just stared at it.  After a while, someone walked up to me, looked at the EXIT sign, then at me, then at the EXIT sign again.

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

"Only the clearest explanation of death I've ever seen!" I replied, never taking my eyes off the sign.

He looked again.  "Why, yes, you're right!  I can't understand how I could have missed something this fabulous!  Oh, Enid, come over here and look at this.  It's magnificent!"

In less time than it takes Andy Warhol to sneer at Andrew Wyeth, I had been joined by an army of creative cognoscenti, all babbling about this "masterpiece" before us.

I thought I had seen everything until people started bidding on it.

I heard later that the door and the EXIT sign sold for $1.5 million.

There is no doubt in my mind that somewhere P.T. Barnum is rolling on the floor, laughing himself sick.

 

 

IT'S CURTAINS FOR YOU!

            I had a sobering experience yesterday.

I visited a curtain store.

You’d never believe all the different types of curtains there are.  The question that kept coming to mind was:  WHY?

Hundreds of different styles, just to cover up a window?  Damn!  I don’t have a hundred different pieces of clothing!  Why should my window get this sort of special treatment?

And that’s what they’re called, by the way.  Window treatments.  It sounds like some sort of disease.  Does your window look depressed?  Suicidal?  Stall on cold days?  Well, give it a window treatment!

I wandered into this store, called (what else?) “It’s Curtains For You!”

After I lost my lunch in a nearby bush, I ventured inside.  A woman who, I’m sure, was about 112, tottered up to wait on me.

“Hello, dear,” she said to the wall.

“I’m over here,” I said.

“Oh, of course you are.  What can I do for you?”

“I need to replace a curtain in my kitchen.  The grease fire last night pretty much…”

“Oh, fine, fine,” she exclaimed.  “Right this way.”

She led me into a department called, “Kozy Kooking.”

Right after I lost my breakfast and last night’s dinner, I followed her in.

I want to tell you, I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my life.  There were 250 styles to choose from, and I’m the type to whom bacon and eggs or French toast seems like a monumental decision.

I looked around, but my superannuated guide through this diabetes-inducing fairyland had inexplicably disappeared.  I was left to my own devices.

I decided to approach my decision on a step-by-step basis.  First, I’d decide on a fabric.

Easy.  Cotton.

Okay.  Next, solid or pattern?

Pattern.  My kitchen is painted an eggshell color, so a pattern would be just the ticket to brighten it up a bit.

I looked at curtains with flowers, with fruit, with vegetables, with tiny cartoon bears, with cooking utensils, with dismembered animals (a design popular with the Goths in the area), with cats, with toilets, with trees, with aliens, with Monet’s water lilies, with Van Gogh’s sunflowers, with Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, with Edvard Munch’s Scream, with Da Vinci’s Last Supper (the idea must have come from eating at my house), with flying loaves of bread, and other things that I couldn’t begin to identify.

At last I found a nice maroon Navajo pattern that I really liked.  I decided on a pair of non-pleated curtains that would frame the window beautifully and look great against the paint.

And this only took three hours!

Then, as if by magic, the ancient crone reappeared.

“Having any luck, dear?” she asked a decorative pedestal.

“I’m over here,” I said.

“Oh, of course you are.  Have you decided, dear?”

“Yes, I think so.  I’d like the Navajo pattern, in maroon, no pleats.”

“My, what good taste you have!  That’s a marvelous choice.  Now you just wait right here while I go and get them for you.”

She wambled off.

Two hours later, she was back.

“Dear?” she asked a picture frame.

“I’m over here,” I sighed.

“Oh, of course you are.”

“Are we all set, then?”

“We’re all out of that pattern, dear.”

“What?”

“It’s a very popular pattern.  We’ll be getting more any month now.  I could call you when they arrive, if you’d like.”

I sincerely doubted that she’d live that long.

At any rate, my new curtains are the talk of the neighborhood.  You don’t see curtains patterned with serial killers just anywhere, you know!  

 

A NEST OF VIPERS

         As you undoubtedly know by now, I’m a pet fanatic, and the pets I prefer are less than usual ones.

Over the past seven years, I have collected a number of large spiders and venomous snakes.  My favorites are the vipers.  Deadly, but beautiful.  I also have several cobras and mambas.

I think part of the reason I’m such an animal nut is that I have very few friends, for some reason.  I’m a nice person, and reasonably funny and entertaining.  Supportive.  Generous.  I just don’t get it.

Anyhow, my family, most of whom I haven’t seen for the last decade, decided to pay me a visit.  They were passing through on their way to Europe, so they were going to stop overnight at my house in order to save the price of a hotel, then catch their plane the next afternoon.  I planned a cookout.

The morning before they arrived, I double-checked all the padlocks on the snake cages, and then locked the door to my reptile room.  A couple of my aunts were petrified of snakes, so I opted to forgo the coronary occlusions, and keep the folks in the dark about my hobby.

The aged relatives arrived at noon on the dot.  Unfortunately, my 12-year-old cousin, Larry, arrived with them.  Ever see Felix the Cat?  If anyone was the living embodiment of Poindexter, it was Larry . . . or “Lawrence,” as his mother called him.

I hated “Lawrence.”  He was terror in Tommy Hilfiger.  Lucifer in Levis.  Armageddon in Amalfis.   In short, not a fun guy.

“Hi, Larry,” I said, brightly.

“Yeah, whatever,” was his witty reply.

I had already started the charcoal so it would be ready to cook on when the family arrived.  We all adjourned to the patio, and the festivities began.  Between cooking and catching up, I was far too busy to keep track of “Lawrence.”

Big mistake.

The next thing I knew, a very pale 12-year-old was tugging at my sleeve.  He had, for unknown reasons, reverted back to the age of two, and was babbling incoherently.  I took him into the kitchen and tried to find out what had upset him so.  After ten minutes of talking soothingly (plus the shot of whiskey I forced him to drink to calm him down), I got the story.

The little juvenile delinquent-in-training had picked the lock to the snake room.

Not only that, but he had figured out the combination padlock on a cage and had let my Gabon Viper loose. 

He had no idea where it was.

Gabon Vipers are the most beautiful snakes in the world.  Mine was an incredible specimen.  Five feet long, stocky, gorgeous.

Also deadly poisonous.

As the hamburgers burned, I mounted a search, dragging “Lawrence” by the ear to help me and mentally counting the number of vials of antivenin I had in the refrigerator.

Snakes naturally gravitate to dark, warm places, so those are the first places to look.  But when the snake you’re looking for is poisonous, and possibly rather stroppy, you don’t just go lifting up the bedspread and sticking your face or hands under the bed.  Not even with a flashlight.

The whole thing was quite an annoyance, I must say.

What we ended up doing was working as a team.  “Lawrence” lifted up the bedspreads with a long pole and I shone a flashlight beneath, armed with a snake hook and a pair of tongs.

After looking under a couple of beds, “Lawrence” had to go to the bathroom . . . probably to clean out his underwear.  I waited, expecting his return forthwith, but after five minutes, instead of his footsteps down the hall, I heard screams from down the stairs.

“Lawrence,” helpful little bastard that he is, had told all of the semi-fossilized aunts and uncles on the patio about our little scavenger hunt!

The screaming ended with a slamming door.  Silence reigned.

I expect they found they could catch an earlier flight, so left to take advantage of it.

When the echoes died away, my Gabon Viper poked his pointed head around the doorjamb, as if he were looking for me.  I picked him up with the snake hook and put him back in his cage.  I think he may have smiled at me.  He drifted off to sleep, dreaming, I suppose, of growing large enough to substantially decrease the surplus population of the pre-teen males of the world.

If there’s anything more frightening than a deadly snake, it’s a 12-year-old boy.

 

 

 

 

CHAIN SAWS AND YOUR GRANDCHILDREN, RAISING GIRAFFES AT HOME, AND ALBANIAN LITERATURE

Glendale Community College just sent me their yearly schedule for Adult Education night courses, despite my best efforts to stop them. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it’s a course offering that no one on the outside of a lunatic asylum would be remotely interested in exploring. However, the fees are reasonable, so Adult Education remains a popular way of allowing folks my age and older to go out and make fools or hospital patients of themselves by dabbling in such things as knife throwing, juggling, and unicycle racing . . . affordably.

I’d like to share with you this year's course offering . . . maybe you’ll want to sign up. Maybe you'll want to sign up your neighbor with the drum set and take out a large insurance policy on him . . .

ARTS/CRAFTS/HOBBIES

Knitting Your Way to Regularity

Human Skin Collages

Watercolors—Your Key to Desert Survival

Building Your Own Home from Recycled Ivory Snow Containers and      Construction Paper

Ignoring Your Spouse with Paper Mache 

FITNESS

Rappelling for City Dwellers

Push-up Bras and Your Health

Aerobics and the Bible

Volcano Rollerblading

Wheelchair Karate

Weight Training with Used Cars

Your Hernia and You

NEW AGE (yes, it’s still with us!)/PARANORMAL

Edible Trees

Organic Dancing

Shamanic Drumming to Annoy Your Neighbors

Healing with Mulch

Exploring Haunted Cesspools

Beadwork and the Zen of Bleeding

Recycling Finger Cymbals and Fringe

Your Inner Child:  An Excuse for Everything 

SURVIVALIST

New York City Parades

An Evening with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Marriage to Tom Cruise

A Chris Farley Movie Marathon

Shopping at Toys R Us the Day After Thanksgiving 

HEALTH

Russian Literature and Depression

Running in Place in Sixteen Easy Steps

Advanced Running in Place

Assault Weapons – Your Shortcut to Mental Health

Handy Household Uses for Phlegm 

PETS

Dog House Construction with Back Issues of The National Enquirer

Teaching Your Parrot to Shut the Fuck Up

Housebreaking Your Rattlesnake

Cute Tarantula Tricks

Feral Cat Herding in Las Vegas (field trip included)

SCRABBLE for Ferrets 

COOKING

Nuclear Microwaving

Creating a Clam Bake in Your Hot Tub

Canning and Preserving Tropical Fish

Pork Sushi

Chicken Tartare

Flamethrowers and Quick Searing

 

 

 

 

FUNERALS, CHOREOGRAPHY, AND A GOOD, STIFF DRINK

      Before I begin, I should tell you that I’m from New England originally—home of decorum, keeping yourself to yourself, and not posting details about every bowel movement on Facebook.

     I also grew up in the funeral biz.  My dad owned a funeral home and was a funeral director as well as an embalmer—so I understood it pretty well, plus I’ve attended a few funerals in my time.

     Arizona, I discovered, is an entirely different world when it comes to what I had previously regarded as a solemn, and yes, respectful occasion.

     I attended the funeral of the wife of a co-worker friend down here.  It was, and I’m not making this up, 121 degrees that day, but I dutifully dressed appropriately for the occasion, and Stij put on a tie.

     By the time we arrived at the funeral home, we both looked as if we came by way of the Bering Strait—without a boat.  The AC in the truck hadn’t done diddly.  But, at any rate, we were there, intent upon doing the right thing.

     The bereaved husband (and he was bereaved—I happen to know that he loved his wife very much) was greeting mourners at the door.  He was dressed in a tee shirt and blue jeans, with a “Kiss me, I’m Italian” huge silver belt buckle attached to a macramé belt.

     Well, his tee shirt was black . . . but still. . . I’d never seen anything like it.

     Okay, we were greeted and ushered inside, and things moved along fairly normally—until the floor show.

     I shit you not.  A floor show.  This was the first time I ever had to pay a cover charge to attend a funeral.

     First, there was a clergyman whose unidentifiable accent was so profound that he could have been delivering a eulogy, could have been reading the first chapter of Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers.  Or perhaps he was regaling us with Led Zeppelin lyrics. Who could tell?

     After that, we were treated to a slide show of the deceased’s life, from conception up until yesterday—with musical accompaniment.  You guessed it—“Yesterday.”

     Finally, just as I was looking for a convenient rafter to throw a rope over, there bounced onto the stage, in front of the coffin, five pre-teens, one of whom was the deceased’s grandchild.  They burst into a medley of AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and Elmo and Patsy’s “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”  Though the selection was bizarre, at least the last one had “grandma” in the title. However, it was the middle of July and grandma had been mowed down, not by a ruminant, but a heart attack.   We also had to live through their choreography, which would have driven Nigel Lithgoe to open an artery.

     After the utter, paralyzing horror wore off (we were not the only New Englanders in attendance, apparently), there was subdued, confused applause. 

     The bereaved husband/grandfather was not satisfied with this.

     “Come on!  That was great!  These girls worked really hard on this! Get on your feet and give them some real applause!” he shouted into the microphone.

     We did as he demanded, feeling really weird about a standing O at a funeral home.

     Next up—the stand-up comic nephew.  He was so skilled, he made Pauly Shore look like Rodney Dangerfield.  I didn’t think that was even possible.  It was a funereal miracle, and I was there. Hallelujah.

     There was even an idiot walking around with a movie camera, talking to attendees.  Now I hate this kind of bullcrap at weddings, but having a lens shoved in my face at a funeral was another animal completely.

     “What do you remember best about Marie?” this moron asked me.

     “I never met the woman,” I replied.

     “Really?  Then why are you here?”

     “I’m here to perform a public service,” I said.

     Camera still rolling.  “Really?” he asked foolishly.  “What?”

     I removed a small ball peen hammer from my purse and smashed his camera beyond recognition.  I may have even jumped on it a few times. “That,” I said.

     And do you know, I got a spontaneous standing ovation, was hoisted upon shoulders, and borne from the room, followed by the rest of the attendees, all the way to the nearest bar.

     Yessir, it was one hell of a funeral.

 

 

 

 

INSURANCE, WELLS, AND FLYING BOATS

        I had to deal with an insurance claims adjuster recently.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It all began one fine June day when I moved into my little cottage on a lake in Connecticut.  Existence was idyllic.  I awoke and stepped out the back door for a quiet swim or took the canoe out for a paddle through the gently rising mists on the water.

This bucolic bliss was interrupted on a November morning when I jumped into the shower and . . . nothing.  Not a drop!

After a hasty call to the local plumber, I was informed that just before winter each year, the town fathers lower the lake, which, in turn, drastically lowers the water table, through some quantum mechanics principle that I will never understand.  All I knew was, I didn’t have any running water.  And I wasn’t the only one around without it.  No one had any.  Of course, the realtor had had a convenient memory lapse when it came to this vital bit of information.

The bottom line was, if I wanted water during the winter, I had to have a well dug.  I hired the well diggers, who brought in a drill while I was at work, and spent the next two days drilling, mashing my wisteria to a shadow of its former self, and maiming my marigolds.

At last, on the third day, I arrived home from work to find my horticulturally-sensitive drillers gone and a well cap about half the height of a fire hydrant in their place.

I flew to the house and turned on the first faucet I came to.  Water!  I danced!  I shouted for joy!  I called my mother!

After I calmed down, I decided I’d better put something fairly obvious over the top of the well cap, so that people wouldn’t trip over it.  I thought that my old, leaky aluminum rowboat would work, and, as it turned out, was the perfect depth to completely cover the cap and remain flush with the ground.

That night we had a violent storm.  The rain fell in walls, not in drops, and the wind was howling all night long.

The next drizzly morning, I bounced out of bed, euphoric at the prospect of a hot shower.  Everything went as expected.  Upon leaving for work, I even whistled a bar or two from “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”

Three notes into it, the cheery tune died on my lips.

The entire hood of my Fiat Spider convertible was smashed beyond recognition, and the rowboat was on the front lawn.

Evidently, the wind had lifted the boat off the cap and bounced it off the hood of my car, before planting it squarely in my dahlias.

So, I submitted a claim to my insurance company.  Two days later, I received a notice from them indicating that my claim had been denied.  I picked up the phone.

 “Good morning.  I have a claim I need to discuss.”

“What is the policy number?”

“One.”

“What the rest of the number?”

“Just “one.”  I go back a long way with your company.”

“I should say so!  One moment, and I’ll put you through to Mr. Watson.”

“Mr. Watson.  May I help you?”

“Yes.  This is Carson Buckingham.  I want to know why you’ve denied my insurance claim.”

“I’m sorry, m’am.  The person who originally handled your claim is no longer with us.”

“He died?  Good.”

“No, no.  He’s employed elsewhere.”

“Let’s hope it’s making license plates.”

“Yes, well, perhaps you could acquaint me with your problem.”

“The claim was for my Fiat.  The hood is smashed and I have to get it fixed.  My policy is all paid up, so I don’t understand why my claim was denied.”

“And exactly how did the accident occur?”

“It was hit by a flying rowboat.”

And, do you know, that bastard hung up on me!