Monday, December 24, 2001

Sunday, December 23, 2001 8:36 AM

Family Christmas Party Prayer Dec, 24, 2001 Sometime in the evening.

I live, as we all do, in a myriad of intertwining worlds.
You can almost draw it out in a logical diagram.

Circles within circles intersecting circles.
Here is the circle of my beloved children, brother, sister-in-law, niece and mother and father, the expanding circle of Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Second cousins, Third cousins, Nominal cousins, some living some passed on but all with us. Here is the office where I work, here are my long term friends, here my comedy group compatriots, and there receding like galaxies in the expanding universe are the circles of dear and scattered friends from college at Skyum Bjerge, Thy, Danmark, other offices other times, people who I shared in the Summer of Love in Berserkley California, a cluster of high school friends; ever farther out, grade school, and yes even the people from Larimar Avenue whose streets and names reverberate so deeply within me. But as these circles intersect and connect, shrink and grow, I look more closely at the universe that encompasses them. I discover something.
All of these worlds of mine sit, live and react on the deep field of family.

It is Family that nourishes and accepts and expects the best.
What a remarkable thing!

For I realize that there are lost souls in the world who are not nourished or accepted. And when the wind blows they blow with political and social movements that mimic the field of family and what is expected is not always the best. Quite the contrary!

This tradition that we all share tonight, which seems only a few years old, but which really was started by our parents and influenced by their parents and so on ad infinitum is the supreme representation of family. We meet here tonight and mix all of our circles and make them more rich, more complex and we breath in this night in this room the sustenance that keeps all the intricacies of the circles of our lives vibrant, glowing. We go from this room, this night, into the world and every one of the people that reside in our circles on the field of our family are carried and influenced by us and their circles in their turn influence and enrich us.
So are we all blessed!
Amen

Monday, November 19, 2001

Tuesday, November 13, 2001 4:47:29 PM
Tycho Brahe

I've been sick lately, some flu that drags a body already too used by the years through fits of shivering alternating with sweating, twisting pain and groaning as the innumerable cable TV channels manage to run and rerun uninteresting movies, programs and Lord, pulease no more, talk shows that reveal the truly unappealing lives of unprepossessing people. (How did it get to a point where there are commercials about erectile dysfunction on TV?)

At a bookstore, I took a bleary eyed Saturday jaunt with a hard lump in my stomach and my nose temporarily cleared by medication; I came across a book about Tycho Brahe. Tycho lost his nose in a duel and had one fashioned out of metal, strapped to his face. No help from decongestant there. In a flash and a partial delirium I was transported back to the ferry that ran from Copenhagen to Aalborg.

I left New Experimental College, in the high north of Denmark, one spring break to visit Copenhagen. A back pack, my guitar (very hip) and a pumping arm, proper for European hitchiking. I got a little distance south, when I realized that by the end of summer with some luck I could probably mange to hitch the entire way. I stopped a NATO soldier and asked if there was a bus to Copenhagen. He said, or so I thought, “Oh, yes, there are many, many buses to Copenhagen.” The real translation was, “Oh yes, but it takes many, many buses to get to Copenhagen. You should take the train.” Wise advice that shortly I followed.

After a ride to the next town in a belching Mercedes Diesel Truck, I managed to convince the guy in the train station ticket window that I only wanted a one-way trip to Copenhagen. At least I think I only paid for a one way trip. Since I only spoke and could understand the most rudimentary Danish. I would point and gesticulate at what I thought was the train schedule. It could have been the breakfast menu; for all I know I ordered a bowl of Sugar Pops. It did quite a dance, and it did, after all, get me to my destination.

Copenhagen, I moved in a whirl. I walked passed Kierkegaard’s house. I imagined him pacing frantically the night with lights a blazing thinking about Regina. I smiled at each person on the street, convinced that I knew them intimately. I rubbed polsers, thin red skin hot dogs with a gray interior, in yellow mustard and red ketchup smeared on wax paper. Downed them in big gulps as I walked down to Nyhavn. Tivoli bright in old world amusement.Yes, even the little mermaid chaste and naked in the water. I walked and walked for days. And then I took the overnight Ferry from Copenhagen to Aalborg. I couldn’t afford a sleeping cabin so I found a seat in the cafeteria. Read, drank coffee, listened to the buzz of a familiar yet incomprehensible language. The ship traveled in a dense fog and I gave in to it. Got into that twilight world between sleep and waking that can only come when you are traveling.

A fog horn, honest to God! Bellowing like the creature in the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (yes it was from a Bradbury story called The Fog), sounds out into that good Oresund night. And somehow I arouse myself from the demi-slumber that engulfed me and I know that we are passing the Island of Hven, and the vestiges of Uraniborg, where Tycho and his crew labored on clear nights plotting accurate paths in the heaven, collecting monumental bits of astronomical information. Kepler, good assistant, eventually used the data to come up with his elliptical approach to the course of the planets. Tycho, Mr. Brahe, communing with the celestial orbs, face worn like the specter from the attic of the observatory, and his naked eye crew of regulars on that wet island, writing and observing and calculating. And me passing in the shroud of fog out to sea on my way to Aalborg. In the morning we docked to clear skies and I road the train north.

Thursday, November 01, 2001

Thursday, November 01, 2001 5:46:19 PM
The Devil on Nadine Road.
I lived, as a child, and a cute child I was, pictures on the pony to prove it, in the ethnically Italian section of Pittsburgh called East Liberty. An even tighter grid on the map will reveal the name Larimar Avenue and down about a block from the intersection of Carver Street; past the alley that led over to Meadow Street was my paternal house where we lived when I was in the early formative years. Three until I was about eight years old. We thereafter became the first of a growing migration to the suburbs, where I live to this very day deep in the basement, writing.
I am glib with the names of these streets though some have since passed on to historical atlas and most are part of a severely troubled neighborhood, because they are the essence of legend to my family. At re-unions, at least until the older generation passes entirely, they are whispered with reverence and also the butts of many a bawdy joke. I lived on those streets for a very short period of time, but they resonate in me and I feel that I have to make some effort to keep the stories alive.
My formative brain sat on the corner of Carver and Lenora with a group of equally formative brains. Yes, we believed that dinosaurs still ruled the earth. Hadn't we seen the fossil evidence when we removed a dead decayed leaf from the ground, which clearly showed the form of a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Hadn't we all barely escaped from the haunted house on the hill across Negley Run? Didn't the Chinaman at the laundry on the way to East Liberty chase us with his butcher knife as we ran past his business and chanted Ching Ching Chinaman?
It came as no surprise when a group of elder toughs, I mean guys, who fought Golden Gloves up at the Red Eagle, told us what had happened the night before. They were just taking a drive out in the country. Out Allegheny River Boulevard. Just checking things out. They turned onto Nadine Road. About half way up in the hill, when they were immersed in the dark forest, the devil jumped out on the road! With a red skin, a forked tongue and even worse a pitch fork in his hands. The car stopped dead. The devil leered and dared them forward. Those hard inner city guys were terrified!
"Whad' ya do?"
What could they do? They backed the car up, turned around a got the hell out of there. They vowed that they would never return to Nadine Road. And for all I know they never did.
I travel Nadine Road almost every day. And every time I climb the hill up from Allegheny River Boulevard to Lincoln Road, I look out for the devil. Especially late at night. Satan never shows and I wonder what it could have possibly been that they saw? It wasn't Halloween; it was the summer of the year. The shade of Grant Wood's canvas? An Apparition from a can of spiced ham? Catholic neurosis?
I am haunted, as we all are, by all manner of demons. Some harder to vanquish than others. I kinda look for a battle with Old Beelzebub on the curve of the road midway between this life and the next. 'C'mon, make my day,' I'll say as I advance, ' and put down that damn pitchfork!' 'Hey how about a game of chess?'


Tuesday, October 30, 2001

Morley's Dog!
Years ago when the stars shone brightly in my eyes and I had far more sense than I do today I would visit a friend in Johnstown PA. He was part of a living architecture program sponsored by the Pennsylvania State University. A group of students inhabited a low rent house in a back tide water neighborhood of Johnstown. About ten of them went about applying their architecture magic to small scale urban planning deep in the craw of the Little Conemaugh River Valley.
Weekends I would drive into Cambria County following the side of the hill above the River until the industrial descent into town. My friend Terry and his cohorts would greet me. We'd have a beer and settle most of the world's problems. It was a good time, sleeping on the floor and having coffee on a door, sanded smooth tan, fashioned into a table, designer chic, in the morning.
'Course everyone knows what happened in Johnstown, PA. Twice! On May 31, 1889, a dam ill maintained by bunch of big wig fat capitalists up from the wealth of Pittsburgh, The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club sprang a leak during a heavy rain and cascaded a 40 foot wave of water down into the little town of Johnstown. Oops! No more sailboats on the lake up in the mountains! I would have been in a world of trouble sleeping on the first story living room on that day.
Several of us would take lazy walks on autumn afternoons. Eat a chili dog, notice the effect of France en Provence on PA house buildings. Sing praises of Louis H Sullivan and Louis I. Kahn and Beaux Arts. I learned more architecture those days than I would have in course at the University. I still judge a building on the attention paid to the lavatories. I was told, “If the detail isn't there it isn't in the structure either.”
On one of those strolls when we traipsed into Johnstown proper, my eyes lighted on the bronze statue of a dog.
"What the hell is that all about?" I asked. They told me
The day of the flood, liquid seeping and breaking the earthen dam works, starting a wall of water, speeding and growing with the aid of that self same gravity that struck Newton on his head, following Second Law, the least path down into the valley below, taking with it houses, trees, a locomotive engine, bridgeworks, the now silent and cold works of a steel mill, o! the humanity, farm animals, boulders mixed in a deadly forceful concoction. The dog, Morley's Dog, sensing the world of wet and harm that was about to envelop everyone, began racing up the streets barking a warning for the citizenry to hear. Perilous flood waters. Saving, I presume a life or so. And in reward, a statue in celebration of his bravery.
My perverse nature, in the face of the story, began to ask questions, which quite frankly will dull the gleam of the story, but I felt that I had to ask.
How is it that this mongrel pooch could do what only the Psychic Friends Hotline can do, in our day and rather frivolous age, namely foretell an encroaching disaster? Did his excellent doggie nose smell the water in the air? Did his doggie senses perceive the change in atmospheric pressure that must have raced along in front of the deluge? Did his miraculous ears hear the roar of the raging monster? Or did he use all those senses in some sort of doggy intuition that foresaw the doom that was about to befall the poor people of Johnstown?
Ultimately I gave Morey's pup the benefit of the doubt. Somehow this heroic canine did sniff out the danger aborning .
But what really dogs and bogs me down was who understood him? No one, except for Doctor Doolittle, Rex Harrison and Eddie Murphy, can talk to the animals. Okay, Francis the Talking Mule or Mr. Ed, perhaps Saint Francis and Aesop. But I stop there! People and animals don't communicate in English (or Latin I guess for the Saint). C'mon I know your dog thinks that it’s a human. And isn't it cute that your cat can use the toilet just like normal folks. But What?
They have little brains and never once have I had a stimulating intellectual conversation with one. Except one evening while I was under the influence of several psychotropic substances. I think even a lamp post impressed me with its wit.
The story has bothered me for a long time, yet there was the statue of the dog! I visited Virtual Johnstown and found a picture of the Morley’s cast dog. It turns out that the statue itself is a survivor of the flood. Dragged from the debris and the water and placed in the town square for all to view. The dog has become the mascot of Johnstown. A beer, Morley’s Red was named after it.
Architects lie, I now conclude! What is bothering me even more is why Morley, whoever he was, had the casting of a dog in his front yard.

Monday, October 22, 2001

Refrigeration Load Calculation Part II
"Well," I say, "what size walk-in did you have in mind?" There is a pause. When someone balks at this question I know that the ground we are about to cover will mostly be a miasma of swamp.
"I have a space in the basement under the stairs." It starts off badly.
"You want the walk-in to have a slanted ceiling to match the slope of the steps?"
"Can't they?"
"It's unusual but, yes, I suppose so."
"If that's a problem I have a completely empty seven thousand square foot building with twenty foot ceilings out back that I don't use."
“Oh,” I say like a drowning man offered a dry hand, “maybe we should think about the seven thousand square feet.” I take a breath. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing with this space?”
“Getting prices!”
I sigh, “No, I mean, what is it that you want to refrigerate?”
“My wife makes great apple pies!”
“Great, why don’t you tell me about the process?”
“Process?”
“Yeah, will you, I don’t know, want to freeze the pies after you bake them? Cool the separate parts of the pie and assemble them for shipment? Precook the pies? Send raw apples?”
“That all sounds good, freeze them maybe…..”
“Why don’t we start at the end? You want to sell the pies that your wife bakes, right?”
“That was one idea we had. But my Uncle Wilfred has an idea about cutting meat.”
“Okay.” I am more nervous by the minute. I have visions of Elsie with an apple in her mouth “Tell me about the meat cutting.”
“Well, Uncle Wil, wants an old fashion butcher shop, you know with the meat rails…”
“Your Uncle is going to receive sides of beef?”
“Yeah and then you know put them up on rails and run them into the walk-in.”
“And then he’ll cut the beef?”
“Well we haven’t figured that out yet!”
“Uhhh, look,” I say in a strained voice, “you really have to make some kind of decision. You know, to get prices.”
“Can’t you give me a price various ways?”
“That, “I assure him “is my specialty.” It has often been bandied about the company that we would be far ahead of the game if we charged only for the quotation and provided the equipment, material and labor gratis.
Okay, now in the Part III, I tell you what you need to know to help this guy. Definitely a bottle of aspirin is in order. The thought that comes unbidden to my brain is, “Why did I think this was funny?” Bear with me we’ll find humor somewhere, I think.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Refrigeration Load Calculation Part I
What's so funny!
I mean, why do I laugh every time I sit down to figure out what size refrigeration unit is needed to refrigerate and store a product? I'll tell you about the laughter in a moment but first I have the painful task of telling you a few physical constructs and constants.
Senior year in high school I had a diminutive, balding physics teacher who had an uncontrolled eye twitch. We twittered and tittered like small birds. "Blinky" we called him. In whispers behind our cupped hands which if said loudly enough and with enough daring would turn into blooming gales of laughter. From my now stately and advanced age I know that “Blinky” knew what was going on. He had the final laugh in the grade book. One day "Blinky”, talking about our illustrious fourth dimension decided to do away with the second as a means of measurement and to create a new measure that we would use for experimental purposes. That devil in rational scientific school teacher garb chose "an eye blink". A blanket of silence fell over the second floor end of the building physics classroom with its beakers and gauges and spring weights and rheostats now standing at rest. Afterward in the lunch room one flight down and to the right it became the stuff of ridicule, but in that precise eye blink we were stymied, stifled and without speech. I never really did like the guy, but I doff my hat (it would have to be my virtual hat) to him.
So, as "Blinky" would tell you 1 BTU is the amount of heat that must be applied to 1 Pound of Water from 59º to 60º Fahrenheit. An aside or a ramble in the halls of physical reality (something I usually do in parenthesis): the other term I always loved is Standard Air. Standard Air is dry air at 70º Fahrenheit and 14.696 pounds per square inch absolute (psia). See where a ramble takes you. Air (just the good old breathing stuff) exerts a pressure at sea level (every pain in the ass thing in science must be defined, qualified, filtered and explained to tears) on us of roughly 14.7 pounds per square inch and yet we still stand and walk around. It is less in mountains and more in valleys which indicates to me that it is indicative of how long a column of air there is that wighs us down. This really shouldn't surprise you too much. Put a couple two inch 100 pound weights on your head, now add about three inches more. See, science can be painful!
Now "Blinky's" amazing fact number two. You don't really make things cold, what you do is remove heat from them. And what is measurement of heat. Yay! A+, the BTU. Which does stand for British Thermal Unit. Being the patriot that I am I think we should convert to the ATU or American Thermal Unit or the USATU (Well they didn't call it the Great British Thermal Unit did they?) So problems come across my desk everyday. Hey, Joe, says customer, I need a walk-in cooler (or freezer) and how much does that cost? Now, I'm going to break down the rest of this entry into quanta of easy learning. Learn and think lessons, I’ll call them. General Topic: Where is the load in the load calculation?
Say, this is getting long so I am going to make it in at least two parts!

Tuesday, October 09, 2001

Tuesday, October 09, 2001 5:19:42 PM
Backyard - Picnic Table - Squirrels- Trees- Wine. You know the drill, except I have on several layers of clothing. Across the valley the local football team is making sounds like boots in basic training. WhoHa!

COPS!
No, this isn't going to be a tirade. Never once will I use the word PIG except ........ I know a cop's job is hard and thankless. Hell, I couldn't stand it when I was a patrol boy in the sixth grade and a cute little first grade girl cried because I looked so threatening goose-stepping up and down the aisles of the bus. I think the principal chose me for duty because of the imposing flab of my body in the first place. After countless afternoons of her tears, I got a kind of Frankenstein complex. I examined my head each night for bolts. Nothing was ever there, just a fat neck, a shiny badge and a white belt. Yet the little girl still cowered in her seat when all I did was, well, patrol.
Don't think I don't have empathy for people who wear shiny badges and can give you tickets because you break some irrelevant law that some governmental father figure thought would both protect us and keep us from having any fun. I don't hate 'em, honest! I understand 'em. What I don't get is; why don't they train them.
On the north side of the Allegheny River was started this summer in merry may a project that completely dismantled the roadway. I mean, only the concrete pillars were left standing. The entire bloody overpass came down and since we are not up yet to Jetson flying technology, the rotten sniveling bastards from across the river came in hordes over to my side and totally screwed up traffic. I did and do consider it a personal affront. "Damn Tourists!" I hiss every morning as they pour off the Highland Park Bridge on to my personal roadway. It just ain't fair. But I learned to live with it and it is October and the other side of the river now sports happy new steel beams sitting proudly on concrete pillars, but not yet any roadway.
This morning traffic was abhorrent. As I approached the Fleming Bridge from the south I noticed that cars were backed up all the way across the bridge and out on to the Butler Street. My mind goes numb in situations like this. If I lived in England where the people queue up if someone stands still for an instant, I would long ago have been taken away, my arms secure against my side, billowing a spray of spittle and howling like a wild hyena. If a fast food restaurant has a line of, say, more than two people I walk out in disgust. I am irrational about this. I know it. But it doesn't stop the knot in my stomach which reaches to a kink in my brain.
There was nothing for it this morning. I sat on the bridge while I conjured up images of cars falling into the river and the means that I would use to get off the bridge when it happened. There must be an accident. I thought. Dead people and crushed cars. Surely the ambulances were blocking traffic. I ticked off all the possibilities. I was in a Twilight Zone episode where time stopped. I was in Hell where you wait in line for everything and never reach the front. Then it came to me and I knew what was going on.
There was a cop directing traffic! And sure enough when I got close to the end of the bridge. A traffic officer!
I don't know if the guy never had any logic in school, or if he was hopelessly flummoxed by a Rubik Cube, or if Big Blue beat him badly in a game of chess, or if was the only job that they could find for him. I sat and watched the sad spectacle. Until that is there were no cars at any of the other sections of the intersection except for mine. We sat. No one moved. The cop was looking every direction but mine. I pounded the dash board of my car. I honked and then I beeped the horn. To no avail. There was some reasoning far greater than I could figure running this guy. Traffic was probably backed up passed Allegheny River Boulevard to Toronto, Canada. Eventually, a car that must have started several hours earlier in downtown Pittsburgh came slowly down the very empty ramp from Route 28 North made a right turn and moved in the opposite direction up and off the bridge. And, Ay God, there was a still a hesitation from the fine officer. He must have then figured that we had served enough of a jail term, so he smiled and waved us on. I swear, right hand up to God, one more block and a second cop stopped us for another line that coming from the East must have been backed up with cars longer than a freight train.
Did you ever see the cop on Candid Camera? Vic Cianca. He was downtown at various intersections. He could move traffic. Isn't there film of his hand signals, his body moves even the expressions on his face somewhere for study? Can't the Police Academy structure a course; Move the Traffic Along 101, based on his moves. Vic are you up there shaking your head?
I hope they're pouring concrete tonight. I can't take a whole lot more. For now, I'm pouring some wine!

Saturday, October 06, 2001

Saturday, October 06, 2001 7:51:06 AM
Panera Monroeville - Pumpkin Bagel, Hazelnut Coffee
Trying to think of a topic for the Blog
Hey! how about last night’s meeting?

Lackzoom Legal Remedies
Dean, Foley and I sat down last night after a swell dinner of cat fish (not straight from the Mon)(Marc lives in Boston where you can get scrod, but you can't get a river fish) potatoes, avocados , California string beans, Chambersburg Peaches, Coq Au Vin, a soupçon of Neapolitan Minestrone, the second liver of a Venusian Gutter Snipe, and great greasy glasses of Griesedick, okay so I got carried away, we only had the first three, which were great, but didn't seem to make such an impressive list while I was writing this morning..
After the food we cleared the boards and sat down to fifteen pages of torturous legal prose in the form of a contract from www.mp3.com known as "we" or "us" and Lackzoom Acidophilus know as "you". It took a couple hours which I bet any lawyer worth his gelt could read, and more incredibly understand, in a short order. But Dammit! this is important! we kept saying to each other as one or the other of us would nod off or would have a flight of fantasy about retiring with scads of money falling from our pockets as they (tearful and groveling fans) lower our jewel encrusted gold plated coffin into the ground.
And important it is!
Because we are making our tentative steps out of the undifferentiated sea of comic obscurity on to the shore of the continent of commercial virtual realty. (Believe me, it ain't reality, friends) Our behavior, I assure you, will necessarily remain incontinent.
We have, at great cost ($7.95 each a year), reserved not only www.lackzoom.org but www.lackzoom.net and are looking for a place to (to keep to the seafaring metaphor) anchor them in the tempestuous wash of Internet swill. They will, when active, at first point to this blog and to ...possibly mp3.com, if we so choose, but surely someplace where folks will be able to hear (please click on the audio file) the various and sundry bits of comedy that we have for the last year been producing. But there are grand plans hatching for this web site. It will take time, treasure, and talent, two of which we have in varying quantities.
Decisions will be made in the next couple weeks. Hell, yeah! you should stay tuned. It's important!

Thursday, October 04, 2001

Fried Clams and Jailbait Installment #3
I looked closely into the deep black of her eyes. The pupils reflected interrupted light caused by a slow rotation of ceiling fan above and behind me. Her hair ruby, burning, cascaded down her back. The sweet shampoo that she used mingled with her subtle perfume to create a wonderful bouquet.
I sniffed deeply then shrugged my shoulders and moved forward in my seat tipping my wine onto the white table cloth. Only the little liquid left spilled and I dabbed at the growing red spot with my napkin. Emilio appeared; cleaning the table; fluffing a new table cloth in the air. Like a magician covering his assistant in preparation for some mischievous trick, he floated the sheet on to the table, whisked it twice with the back of his hand and gave us new service and a fresh bottle of Chianti.
The girl never said a word, just looked at me with sparking eyes. I apologized weakly as I pushed non-existent crumbs from my suit pants to the floor. I shrugged again and filled her glass.
“Would you like to order now, Signore Doctor?”
“What,” she asked her voice a knife cutting through the air, “You have to ask, Pappy?”
For a brief moment Emilio stiffened, lost his composure, and then he asked gently, “Doctor?”
“Why don’t you fix something special for both of us, old friend.”
He nodded his head, smiled and walked toward the kitchen.
"My name is Maria Petruzzi."
"Ah," I said, "of course! I knew your father!"
"Yes he worked here for many years."
I had not seen him for a long time. I said so. "How is he?"
She hesitated and my eyes fell toward the necklace that she was wearing that rested gold against the white of her blouse. "You knew my mother as well."
"I did?" Hanging from the end of the chain was a tiny locket. Figured with a lovely Florentine pattern engraved on the face of it‘s heart shape.
"Yes." she said it evenly, flatly. The light gone from her eyes.
"I never even knew that Enrico was married."
"He wasn't."

Monday, October 01, 2001

Monday, October 01, 2001 6:06:57 PM
This is one of the last days of the year when I can sit out here in the back yard with the laughing squirrels and the drooping sun flower plants. My mind turns, surely this evening, surely as a compass needle twitches towards magnetic north, toward Duke, the Wonder Dog!
A bit of history for enlightenment, please, maestro!
It was circa 1975 give or take a year, mostly take. The only comedy clubs in America were in San Fran, LA or New York and a tip of the hat to Second City. So we of Lackzoom, in the grand tradition of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, produced our own shows. We would rent a barn like space, print posters that would get tacked to utility poles, and, if we were firing all three cylinders, a newspaper interview, just for the publicity please. There is a picture of me in a turtle suit and Marc as a Martian that made the late edition of - I think - the now defunct Pittsburgh Press. Definitely the big-time.
At first we were tentative. Didn't trust our comedic instincts. We would ask others to perform with us. I think the highest price we ever charged was $ 1.50 per ticket. Actually, we didn't have tickets just Gelt in Hand at the Door stuffed into a shoe box. The show would sometimes last four or five hours. The poor audience sure got their money's worth.
The night that Duke performed there was a Magician, The Flying Zuchini Brothers, B Futz and his all Girl Review singing entr’acte, two sets of Lazkzoom, but before our first appearance - Duke the Wonder Dog!
I swear, I don't know how we found Duke and his Master. My suspicion has always been that they walked in off the street. The audience, by now molded into a crack comedy cluster, after being wowed by a magician, surprised by the antics of the Zuchinis and serenaded by Futz with his rendition of Hey, There Little Girl I Want Your Cookies was ready for anything as Duke took Center Stage . There were all kinds of paraphernalia on display. Step stools, boxes of matches, balls, open backed chairs, one of those pedestals that lions stand on in the circus, things that squeak in a mutt's mouth, most of all an aquarium and a raw egg! Duke was a mottled gray wonder of a German Shepard, Rin Tin Tin looking. Bright as all get out, unlike his Master.
Master: I want yins all to meet Duke, the Wonder Dog!
Audience: (Applause.)
Master: Say, hello, Duke!
Duke: Growl and Bark! (No you, nit, Duke didn't talk he was a Wonder Dog, not an escapee from Doctor Doolittle!)
Master: (with a grin) Hey, ye're simple Duke! (Looks toward the audience)
Audience: (An uneasy laugh! A cough or two.)
And then Duke goes through a couple of tricks. Lights a match! Smokes a Kool! Acts like a cowering cat. Barks America the Beautiful. Plays a drunk in a bar (Wait, maybe that was me later on).
Duke, pro marvel that he is, goes through the act, probably a little bored and definitely tired of being called “Simple!” and swatted on his back, which is causing a certain disquiet and an sympathetic backlash in an audience that is not particularly made up of animal rights activists, just plain folks with a great regard for Fido and Fluffy sitting peacefully at home with the kids and baby sitter. Duke was rapidly gaining their compassion.
The finale:
Master: As most of yins know dogs don't like to stick their heads unner water!
(Well, hell, I never knew that, but it made as much sense as anything we had seen. My mind and spirit went along for the ride)
The master with a water hose commandeered from the kitchen, begins to fill about a thirty gallon aquarium with honest to God Monongahela Tap while he patters on about the fact that it is hard for a dog to pick up a raw egg without breaking it between his powerful jaws.
(Sure! You can sense what is coming!)
Master commands dog to pick up the raw egg, proof positive, I suppose, that Duke is indeed a Wonder. Duke balks just as he is about to put his chompers around the frail egg. Master says (yep), "Y'ere simple Duke and shoves the dog's head down hard, smacking doggy jaw against the floor. The audience, who has been up until now patiently knitting, begins to erect a guillotine. Duke to his credit and to my anguish sucks it up and picks up the egg in his powerful jaws...then gently sets it back on the floor, unscathed. He's a Wonder! He growls triumphantly. Proving to everyone who the really simple one is.
A deathly silence fills the room as Duke's Master puts the slobbery egg into the bottom of the aquarium!
The audience begins collectively gasping for breath in the electric air as the sheer terror of what is about to happen simmers slowly into their consciousness.
Master: Duke! (The master commands, the dog isn't even looking at him any more) Get that egg!
Duke does not move a muscle.
Master: Grabs the dog's head. Lifts it up higher than the edge of the tank, over the water. It is clear now by the menacing canine growls of both Duke and the audience that they are all shocked beyond any relief and mightily pissed.
Master: And shoves Duke's bristling head into the aquarium!
Long suffering, Duke, is, at last, done. His drenched head comes out of the water sputtering. The sounds that he is making would frighten a pack of tigers on the prowl. His hackles up, Duke is at the end of his poor doggy patience and the audience is cheering him on!
I wish I could say that Duke tore the guy's arm off and that the people finished him, but Master Yins, even his dim bulb finally beginning a smoldering glow of understanding, senses his defeat, and pulls Duke by his choker toward the kitchen and the rear door. That was the last that we ever saw them. I still gnaw on the squeaky thing later at night after watching Lassie on the Animal Channel.
After a rousing intermission. We performed our comedy until about one AM.

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Wednesday, September 26, 2001 6:21:08 PM
Basement - deep in the hole (A glass of Merlot - Bill Evans Conversation with Myself)
Books confound me. There are those who say it is a problem, all these books that I have. I look up, innocent as all get out, I don't, I say slowly and deliberately, go to a saloon and come home a whole lot of sheets to the wind, singing bawdy versions of Walking Your Baby Back Home (Oh did we have the lyrics for that one, or These Foolish Things Remind Me of You, absolutely scandalous the poetry of those lines verbally spit in front of the ship port bathroom window of the Eastwood Show on a hot Friday evening.) I don't spend my paycheck on the lottery! (I am convinced that I will find a legitimate lottery ticket tucked in as a book marker from some obscure volume (perhaps Goethe in Drag) that I purchase from a thift store and will cash it in for a cool couple hundred million. That is the extent of my gambling. In Biloxi MS I did not spend even one quarter on the twinkling machines at the Beau Rivage. I was there for four days for a conference.) I don't take women who are way too young for me out on extravagant dates in hopes of getting laid. (This last I have been considering, but it turns out that books are much more reasonable.) What I hope to get across with all this sophistry is that as a vice, this owning of copious books is low the totem pole. How many Hail Marys?
So, I was at Half Price Books the other day and I see a girl way too young for me putting copies of what looks like the full fifteen volumes of Samuel Eliot Morison’s History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. I have only seen a volume here or there and I own his Two Ocean War Abridgement. I get closer (and yes I did have a sexual fantasy or two, but the ring through her upper lip gave me pause) and there they are - fully dust jacketed. All fifteen! What to do? I can't afford them all! My credit cards grumble in my back pocket. I think heavy, agonize, then buy the first three volumes. I will be back next pay check for three more and in five weeks I will own the set.
It is now three weeks later. I own the set and it happened like this. The following week less than half of the volumes are left. Don’t tell me there aren't others out there with large fangs trying to foil my every move! And, more tragedy, volume four is missing - Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions. I settle for five, six and fourteen. This is not good! I travel, two days later, across the city and see in another location another mall, that there is only one copy of Four (Ahh!), Nine and Fifteen. I grab them! Hold them tight to my breast. My cards sing shrilly and growl as the fluorescent light is revealed, the clink of cash register, the bite of the swipe.
I travel to Columbus, OH, where there are three Half Price Books locations. In one I get all the rest but volume ten and volume thirteen. I am in a collector’s tizzy! Maybe there is something psychologically complex to this ranting book fever that I exhibit. A mad passion that sends me reeling through three stores and two cities.
This morning while running an errand I stopped, heart in my mouth, at the original store and on the shelves are the two remaining volumes. I salivate then sigh. It is a feeling akin to sexual release and possibly the satisfaction of nirvana. The completeness that I feel. There are those that say I have too many books! How many is too many? I'm going to call Heather tonight. Maybe she'll remove the lip ring for one evening.

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Tuesday, September 25, 2001 6:59:25 AM
Starbuck's McKnight Road Coffee and scone
I am relatively fresh back from a trip to Columbus Ohio. For what reason I give you a straight answer. Every year in order to retain the certificates (Refrigeration and HVAC), which as of 9/17/01 carry the POWER of licenses, that are assigned to me as a contractor in the State of Ohio; I must be (yea and verily) renewed. That renewal takes the form of 10 hours of training in Ohio law, safety, regulations and, of course, some cash. It is not a daunting ten hours that has me running the gauntlet, regulators lined up on both sides of the hotel lobby, pelting me with loose leaf pages stripped from the BOCA Building Code, OSHA devils flagellating me with fall protection harnesses, college professors beating me with plaster busts of Newton spewing the Second Law of Thermodynamics, nevertheless it takes its toll. I begin to wonder.
What, I am saying to myself (and parenthetically to you) does any of this have to do with comedy. It's a cold world out there. Too flip! I've got this stuff down cold! Not even true. Cold fusion? Well, that was a joke! Hey, here's a little known principal. The act of making things cold is actually the process of removing heat. Okay, so about twenty-five years ago I quit a job as traffic manager at a television production center, after a really miserable stint as Program Director at a community radio station and took a job at a commercial refrigeration company run by a maniac. Out, as is said, of one really big black bottomed sizzling frying pan into one particularly virulent wild fire. But it turned out that I really liked refrigeration and all the intricacies that it placed on my palette. It tickled me brain! The funny thing was that the closer I chased the subject, the closer I got to my essence. Just like writing. Just like comedy. It all comes down to the same thing! Comedy/Refrigeration an unlikely Janus perhaps. But I am pleased to wear both faces. Waiter!? An ice cube or two for my mint julep, perhaps a TV dinner! Oh, yes, put on the tellie, Neddy Seagoon or Monty Python, I think?

Monday, September 24, 2001

Monday, September 24, 2001 6:06:37 PM
Rainy day blog
It is my habit, after dinner, to go out on to the patio, on which I spent many hours earlier this summer, perspiring, fighting off insects of unimaginable dimensions (Walter Reed fought no more daring battles), cutting thorn infested bushes with a machete, digging, cleaning then carrying huge heavy white stones a furlong or further (I know, brothers, how the Druids suffered on the Salisbury Plains), in short (which I admit is almost never my choice of expression) building a backyard patio compete with wooden picnic table and tacky blue and white shade umbrella (nowhere the word Perrier, nor does Calvin Klein, much as I suspect he might like to, adorn my ass). And have a glass or two of some fine Italian wine. (I know California and France make better, but I am really happy with a Sangiovese or some other grape that grows in the Tuscan hills). And write. Alas this evening a drizzle and a grey dead sky bracket the stones of my labor.
So I sit deep in the basement listening to Ornette Coleman and make some necessary corrections to my Blog entries.
I have been chastised. Mea Culpa! I was (and am I suppose) as I mentioned, the Highh Hheen of Lackzoom Acidophilus, but I got all the other titles wrong. Marc was Loww Hhheen, Foley was Double Splagg, Dean was Single Splagg, and Phil was the Treasurer. I almost apologize for any inconvenience I have caused by spewing forth this egregious and incorrect information.
On to the anvil. You will take my anvil over my dead cold.....well I don't really feel that strongly about it, but I would put up a great scratching screeching fight, you beasts! The anvil is a noble tool. Just you go to Danville during the Annual Anvil Celebration, put on by the local Red Grange Ghost Society and see what a festive feast is placed on your pewter platter. And, oi!, the iron pills. It just gives me the shivery fits! Which is also how I feel about my pants in the morning after a dozen or two donuts!
I will not at this time tell y'all how to get in touch with either the Anvil Workers of America or the Anvil Anti-Defamation League. When the two groups got together after an evening of beating dented metals the acronym AWAAAL was created and then later incorporated into a blues hollar that is sung to this day on most parchment farms down in Loosiana, while the prisoners whap heavy sledges on to the hot surfaces of their - dare I say it - Forged Steel America Made ANVILS! AWAAL!
Okay, I've said what I wanted in the most obscure way possible. It is time to move on to other things, but Ornette, Don, Billy and Charlie are done and the wine is but a sip (Now it is even less) - so adieu until the morrow and really parting ain't all that bad!

Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Tuesday, September 18, 2001 5:46:29 PM
It happens every night. It is an obsession I will admit to, not freely, mind you, but with grave worries about the state of mental acuity.
I sit down to dinner. This evening it was some chicken and rice in a mushroom sauce nicely cooked by my mother. I descended into the basement, sat at a table and turned on the TV. I should read, I know, I have so much to read! I flip around the channels, there is Emeril preparing a chicken in rice with a nice mushroom sauce, there is the recycled newscast, and there is a western about a dead horse on AMC, and then I find it. The Pennsylvania Channel or whatever it's called and tonight, so help me, and I think I do need some kind of help, there is a visit to a knitting factory in Hometown, PA. I watch. I chew. I forget to gulp!
Can you remember the joy of a program called Industry on Parade on Sunday mornings? I would sit with about fifteen meat ball sandwiches and a bottle of Vernor's Ginger Ale and feast on plants in America that made shell casings, sausage casings, or beer cases and gyros and nuts, bolts and grommets, glass windows, aluminum extrudings, pig metal castings, airplane wheels, automotive oil and soap. Man, I loved that program. And the Pennsylvania Channel delivers same! I swear I watched for about three hours one night when a factory in Warren, PA made a fire truck. I am most definitely hooked.
It was with some sadness that I realized that I do not belong to an industry that would ever be featured on this most worthy of cable channels.
ME: Hi! (I might say to the camera), my name is Joe and I would like to take you around the comedy factory at Lackzoom Acidophilus.
CUT TO: EXT: Dean's house on the South Side
ME: Here is the entry to the comedy factory. We'd better knock!
DEAN: Well, Hi, to all you nice folks come on in. The place is a mess but comedy is a sloppy business.
FADE: INT A long room that leads to the kitchen. A desk with gads of computer paraphernalia that cascades into metal and plastic boxes full of blinking electronics on the floor, an audio mixer set on an end table and three mics on stands with loops of cable tossed artistically about the black heavy metal bases.
ME: Here is where we make the actual comedy. But (I smile for the camera) it is only one end of a long process. We sometimes sit for hours and throw lines at one another that somehow transform into the brand of humor that we practice.
CUT TO: INT Three people sitting around a kitchen table. Scraps of congealing dinner on the plates in front of them and various colors of liquids in jelly jars that we sip.
FOLEY: I don't think the chicken would cross the road, Joe.
ME: Oh!?
DEAN: I just flew in from Akron and boy are my arms tired!
ME AND FOLEY: Cleveland!
ME (Still smiling at the camera with a knowing grin): Once the writing is down. It's time for the performance!
FADE TO: Three faces huddled about and three microphones
DEAN (Italian accent that turns Irish): And at these prices you won't get any!
FOLEY: (Scottish accent that turns Yinser): That'll be three fitty, Mac!
ME (Simian accent that turns Jewish): So, nu you've done it.
ME (I turn to the camera): We then mix all these comical hijinks with sound effects and music.
CUT TO: INT. Dean madly moving a mouse about a computer screen that has all kinds of scrolling squiggly lines, then hitting a mini disc recorder soundly with the back of his hand while holding a patch cable tight to the audio in of the sound card.
ME: And finally we turn all of this stuff into a CD.
FADE TO: INT. The three of us staring with mad glazed eyes, silent with our thoughts as the computer screen ticks off the number of bytes that have been copied.
The more I think about it.... I'll bet they have a phone number when they flash the channel ID.

Monday, September 17, 2001

Monday, September 17, 2001 5:42:09 PM
I'm sitting in the back yard, comfortable on the picnic table, the umbrella is flying full mast and picks up gushes of wind which threaten to sail me off to Borneo or some such exotic location. Bees buzz around my glass of wine, a peppery Valpolicella from somewhere close to Venizia. Ain't modern commerce a wonder?
And apples are falling. Falling with an appalling frequency in the heavy breeze. I have asked my mother but she assures me these apples are no good. "No pies?" I moan, stricken. I live on Orchard Drive and right next, as I realized about a week ago, to the orchard that gave the street its name. Not the brightest bulb in the incandescent luminescence. Eventually I get it. I have lived here for almost six years and have gazed upon the trees that separate the neighboring house from ours every single day without ever associating the tract of land with an orchard.
There are apple and pear trees and they only serve the function of making mowing the lawn a sticky torture and getting the local fauna drunk. No kidding. The fruit ferments, soggy and soft. I saw a cock-eyed turkey bobbing for apples down by the vegetable garden and I swear he was singing about a dead man's chest. And the bees. They don't sting; they just congregate and buzz some honey dipped gossip while they try to get passed the cork that I am forced to stuff back into the wine bottle. It's madness here in the autumn!
The squirrels and the deer sit on their haunches and sing doo wop favorites. Available. I might add, for just $21.95 on three CD's. Just the other day I saw three raccoons streaking, each carrying dancing chipmunks on their backs. Fetching little dervishes!
I look forward to the bleak black and whiteness of winter. I may just haul the old laptop out and chop ice from the top of the table, brush the snow from the seat, boot it up to this journal and write and drink my wine in peace!
Sunday, September 16, 2001 7:55:10 AM
My friends laugh at me because I have an anvil!
Now, I've had the anvil for a long time. Never once as much as chuckled. One clean-up day at a place that I used to work, the anvil's usefulness came into question in light of tight shop space. I took it home. It languished for years in the basement buried under the detritus of seldom used tools, hardware and books. Then I moved. Follows the laughter.
I enlisted Dean and Bill's aid in the final day of moving. I have no furniture, just thousands of books and some tools. Some very heavy tools. There was no laughter when the Radial Arm Saw was carried up the steps. It was unwieldy. So the table saw on the heavy steel base, even the lathe gave, because of its length, pause, but not much comment going up the steps. Then we came to it as we lifted a box of moldy books that had obscured it. "You have an anvil!" cried one of the two. And I swear they started laughing and dancing about. "We never knew anyone who had an anvil." And then Bill gave Dean proper instruction on the way that you carry an anvil. Thrust the two arms forward like the forks of a lift, insert under the arms of the anvil and lift. It is an intimate way to carry anything I admit and off he went hugging the lump of steel up the steps and down into the truck.
I heard about the anvil for the rest of the day. And with some frequency since. I expect the "we never knew anyone who had an anvil!" litany, although no longer true, will ring out whenever we get together and reminisce. (If you have an anvil to move I do recommend Bill and Dean, although, they will now have to sing out "We only know one other ******* with an anvil!"
The anvil? I was looking at it this morning as I cleaned the workbench. Do I use it? Yes, on the rare occasion that some piece of recalcitrant metal needs a whacking. One proud day, when Dean was at my home and a sprocket or gear or thingy from his bicycle broke, he had to use the anvil the beat it back into shape. Don't think there wasn't a glint of triumph and pride my eyes.

Saturday, September 15, 2001

Saturday, September 15, 2001 8:17:41 AM
Panera Monroeville and actual cream cheese on my bagel
For the Blog
Here I go setting goals that will make me unhappy. I will make as many entries in this Web Log as I do in my personal journal, which is to say at least three and probably six times a week. Wow! I said it and already my stomach is tied in knots. Remember those articles in Reader's Digest. Hi! I'm Joe's Stomach? I don't every remember them getting around to my genitals.
My name is Joe Coluccio and I am the Hhigh Hheen of Lackzoom Acidophilus. Not many can make such a claim. Highh Heenn is a controversial title and we all believed at the moment of creation that it should have as many spellings as possible. (We did reject Hahepe Hfyuyusdf pretty soundly and the perhaps accurate A**H*** I rejected right out of the box.) Before I really tell the story of HHighh Hheenn I want to introduce the group - present and past.
I will use first names only and urge the others to come out of hiding and fess up.
There is Marc, Foley, Dean sometimes Bill. We are au courant. In the passe simple to keep rolling with this French malappropriate lingual romp is Phil, Dave, Mike. (for a tres petite pois I think there was a Jeanine and a Monica, but my hair starts to fizzle when I give that much presence of my mind to our history((And as all can point out that is a precious small commodity(((where does the period go?)))
We started out on a small somebody fill in the wattage cause I don't remember community access FM radio station in Pittsburgh, PA. Call letters WYEP, then 91.5, now 91.3, as a four hour Saturday morning radio program that featured comedy recordings, readings from, well, I remember Woody Allen's Without Feathers anyhow and eventually original work. And the Lackzoom members accrued.
We, in a fit of fatigue, started to perform locally. We almost made it to the movies playing gay sailors at the Erie shore. We once got bonged at a local version of the Gong Show. Yes it was quite a life and someday, I swear, the full story of Duke the Wonder Dog will be read into the historical record.
Hihh Hean!
Well, with all the loot we got from performing, we needed a safe storage place when the mason jar completely filled. We choose good old Mellon Bank here in PBurgh. Marc got a hold of an account application card and we were immediately in a high and definite quandary. They wanted the names and titles of the people who were signatory to the account. What could we do? We had to create them. Hheen, what good was a Hheen without a Hhigh Hheen. Phil volunteered to become Splagg and that left Dean with the title of Double Splagg. (If you are paying close attention, you will have figured that Marc was the Hheen and because I don't want you to think that I think you are really dumb I will not point out that I already laid claim to the title Hhhhighhh Hhhheennn earlier in this journal entry.)
Marc took the proudly and, I would like to point out, fully filled out bank card to the Mellons. Now, we all figured that he would come back with stories of a truly bewildered bank clerk, but instead she entered the information and thanked him. It has been a problem with our comedy.
Ciao bambini!

Tuesday, September 04, 2001