Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Wednesday, January 23, 2002 6:10:07 PM
The names have been changed to protect gl'innocenti.
The first house that I really remember was on Carver Street in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh. 33 Carver Street to be exact. Carver is a tributary to the great Italian American River, Larimer Avenue. I need only say, Kingsley House, Meadow Grill, Red Eagle, Italian Pastry, Sparky's Texaco, to bring memory and drool to my relatives and a dwindling group of old timers.
When Dennis Farina proclaims in the move Striking Distance, "I'm only a Larimer Avenue dago." My family cheered!
The house still stands, and in truth, doesn't look much different now than it did then, but you will no longer find my grandmother, stern woman in black with her white hair pulled back sharply on her head, inhabiting the second floor. Nor will you see and my brother and I stuffed up in the back window of our two door coupe as my mother drove us off to go shopping upstreet.
Upstreet was East Liberty and it was a pretty vibrant place in those days. Somewhere along the line urban planning intervened and this radiant city area was cut off completely. An island created, that left to its own devices, folded in on itself. Even though it has been opened to traffic again, it is still hard to enter and leave and is mostly bypassed. There were five movie theaters. I can name them. The Liberty, The Camerphone, The Sheridan Square, The Enright and The Regent. I spent summer days gnawing popcorn from the balconies, watching Errol Flynn, Don Ameche, John Payne, Robert Taylor, Tarzan in all his guises, Randolph Scott, John Wayne and numerous others save the free world and the western intellectual position.
I traveled upstreet with my group of Carver Street urchins. We were all within a year's age of each other. We all attended Dillworth School. We would make the sign of the cross when we passed Divine Providence. We all took catechism at Help A Christian Church. I can remember the unwashed smell of brown clothed monks as the passed us in the street. Some secret Holy Odor, no doubt.
On the way to school we traversed the Meadow Street Bridge. One of the older guys grabbed Charles' arms and hung him over the side of the bridge, his feet dangling over Negley Run far enough below that he would not survive the fall. It was great fun, and perhaps the reason that I have an unreasonable fear of heights.
For adventures, we would visit the haunted house. When we threw rocks and awakened Casper and his brood, we would run screaming down the hill, cross Negley Run and climb up the million or so steps to the safety of our neighborhood.
My father bought home a box turtle, which I let, roam in the slim strip of concrete that we called the side yard. My friends convinced themselves that it was a snapping turtle. And that snapping turtles could bite you fingers off, if they grabbed you, not to mention the horror of losing your nose. One afternoon I came out to the side yard and someone had smashed the turtle with a large rock. Ignorance. I sigh now, I cried then.
We returned from a movie trip to the Sheridan Square where we had all seen The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms. The dinosaur on the very screen before us had bitten a guy right in half. We sat in T's backyard which was damp from the rain and discussed the ramifications of large reptilian creatures devouring their way from Penn Avenue, squashing The Original Hot Dog and the Flamingo (a roller skating rink). As the creature approached we got more and more spooked. Then someone thought about fossil evidence that these Thunder Lizards had roamed Carver Street, munching second and third generation Italians as they stalked. And T showed us a wet leaf that was stuck to the concrete pad of his porch. Carefully he lifted the leaf and as he did the unmistakable outline of none other than old T-Rex was revealed. We took one thoughtful long communal look at the wet green imagined pattern and ran in terrified disarray from the yard. I am not sure that I ever returned.

Monday, January 21, 2002

Monday, January 21, 2002 6:43:11 PM
Tonight we are taking calls from Time Travelers Only!
In the good old days before my snappy broadband connections, after my glass of warm milk and depositing my slippers on the floor, I would turn on one of three radio talk show stations and sail off to slumber land with either a conservative talk show hack on one, a slick sports talk show guy on the other, or some dreadful combination of both on the third. Not really satisfactory, but it was better than counting sheep. Nowadays I tune into stations across the world and sleep to the morning traffic patter in Australia, or the hot late night subjects in London, or Wisconsin Public Radio which rebroadcasts its morning and afternoon shows, or WGN in Chicago. It is swell fare for a radio talkanatic like me. Sleep inducing eventually, but deeply satisfying nonetheless.
Regardless, or is that irregardless of the broad cast or band invariably, after four hours of sound sleep I awaken and listen for some hint of what portion of the universe has me. One evening, pre-broadband, I awoke to the Art Bell program. Art was saying, "Tonight we are taking calls from Time Travelers Only! My first sleepy thought was 'Oh, good, the Time Traveler (for so it will be convenient to think of him) would surely call. I came out of my stupor with an image of Rod Taylor dressed in Victorian splendor, followed quickly by one of Yvette Mimieux more casually clothed. Closer to fully awake I thought rationally, but, Art, we are all time travelers. Was anyone free to call? I fell back to sleep before any Time Traveler actually called. Alas!
I am a Time Travel addict. Stories of Time Travel have intrigued me since my earliest days. Jack Finney's wonderful and ironic Third Level stories and later novels, a few classics on The Twilight Zone, The Door into Summer, By His Bootstraps by Robert A. Heinlein, to be sure HG Wells and his Time Traveler, Movies: The Philadelphia Experiment, 12:01, even Groundhog Day which is based on 12:01, Back to the Future One and Two, The Time Machine, Late For Dinner, Time and Again.
It is the perfect literary device. Mailer's Time Machines in The Naked and the Dead, Proust's exquisite remembrances from his cork lined Parisian room. It is also a delicious fantasy. I have an image of me, present day, returning to the me sitting on my Maple Avenue porch, set between rhododendron bushes punctuated by beautiful Florida Cast Pink Flamingos, listening to Al Nobel, KQV, list the top songs of the week in order on my brandy new electric blue Arvin Transistor Radio. One Two Three Look At Mr. Lee. Damn! Anyhow, I go up to myself and hand me one of those Sony Watchmen or the like and leave with a smile on my face as a look of comprehension appears on my younger face. I have thought about a Pocket PC or a Laptop computer, but I'm not sure I would have figured them out so it complicates the fantasy. As a kid I was always waiting for someone from the future to rescue me, take me into deep and mysterious adventure. Why not me?
Tonight I am taking dreams from Time Travelers Only!

Friday, January 18, 2002

I haven't talked about the group, the Lackzoom Acidophilus for a while. What’s' so funny about that? I hear you sniggering in the back rows! There's not much gets passed me sharply pointed ears. Come to think about it there is a laughable problem: nothing funny here, at least not anything new that is funny. The Web Site, www.lackzoom.org, has not changed one iota (how much is an iota? just another damned foreign term creeping in to our pristine American language.) since its night of inception. But we have vowed to have a commencement date of April 1, 2002. Surely you see the significance! Hey, wait a minute May 1, 2002 is the celebration we were talking about. Wow, here is a gargantuan idea. I am stunned as I sit here thinking and chewing a cup of very black and tarry coffee left in the microwave about two weeks ago, that no one has really thought of this before. Hello, World, Joe is about to put forth one original idea. One to add to my plank when I run for president, although I think I have a winner already. I swear that if I become the president of the United States of America. I will run on one issue (anon I'll muck it up with another): I don't really care who decides, perhaps a lottery of immense proportion is in order, but that person, place or thing will decide and put to rest something that is holding the whole of construction in the world - namely - Philips or slotted! Do not mock me and talk to me about Torx or Roberston, they are and remain peculiar abominations, a hex on... hey what about hex? And those hermaphroditic Philips/Slotted combinations. Hmmm, this is definitely more complex than I thought. My plank is looser than I thought. Sirrah, hand me please, a screwdriver. What's that you say? Uhhh I guess a Philips....
Okay new plank in my platform. Let the beginning day of each month be named after some frivolous activity and create a new patron saint to make medals for the dashboards of our cars. Look I know this is mixing the state and religion, but I think the ACLU might give me a pass this once. I haven't got them all figured out now but a few have the ring of authenticity. November 1, National Nitpicking Day in honor of Saint Caspar Melchiortoast. or August 1, National Vacational Road kill Day in honor of Saint Peta the Beast, or one last effort March 1 National Act like a Lemming Day in honor of Saint Victoria of the Falls. Any suggestions?
Now for the invention that will yet make me a rich man. I'm sure you have had the problem of a stripped nut or bolt, the edges terrible rounded off. I have the solution! A closed end wrench that by virtue of being completely round fits perfectly over the troubled head of the bolt, nut or lag screw. This idea alone will revolutionize the world. How about, and I can't begin to tell you how thrilled I get just thinking about this, a solar powered flashlight. Yes, friends, it gets its power, for free, from the sun and like those solar calculators you know and love, it will also work without a worry in a lighted room. I have more but I am reluctant to write them in such a public place. Don't worry, you're gonna hear bigger and even better things from me!

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Since I had my cardio logical tussle, I have been thinking about stress, which, of course, serves to enhance and aggravate the amount of stress that I am feeling. Hhmmm! I thought that pondering ideas was supposed to bring me to a deeper understanding and that this new understanding would in turn ameliorate the tension. No wonder the Greeks were walking around so much. This evening I will work on this potent subject until I WORK MYSELF UP IN TO A RAGGED FRAZZLE!
I remember back in the good old days when I stayed up late reading Understanding Media, that McLuhan often wrote about a guy named Hans Selye. (Anyone is free to correct me and my spelling, because I refuse to look all this up on the internet. I am high in my memory, working without a net.) who wrote a book called The Stress of Life. I believe that old Hans posited that life was stress. That we, without stress, would sit around like the Eloi on our clump of paradisiacal ground and quite possibly be eaten by the Morlocks. I know HG had a more political dialectic in mind, but I, in high memory and traveling freely in time, win this day.
Hans further pointed out that there were two kinds of stress. Dis stress. The bad stuff that wakes us in the middle of the night wondering who we killed and why we can't pay our bills and when is the Sheriff coming with his warrants and why we ate that extra piece of pizza with everything on it but the anchovies, no anchovies because Aunt Lucy was over and she thinks fish is something for her fourteen cats in the morning. And Eu stress ( a Eu is a sheep hence sheep stress, or was it good in Sanskrit or Old Icelandic? It was definitely good in some academically delight filled language. Greek it is! Because it is all Greek to me) which is the good stress that drives us forward in our lives and keeps the big fangs of the Morlocks away from our pantry.
I decide to look for good stress. And in truth I find eu and dis are very close to each other. For example, I want to write three times a week to this Blog. The thought pleases me. Eustress. Then it turns out that to write three times a week, I must actually sit down at a keyboard and compose this stuff in my head. Still eu but definitely heading toward dis. Then I am tired after a day of work and wouldn't it be great just to lay with only a tattered vestige of mind in front of the menu of myriad channels on cable TV and gawk at beautiful firm breasted women with hardly any facial hair who smile at me and just make me feel great. See where this eu is leading me, but dis on my other shoulder is saying. Remember you were going to write this evening. Now what was a very positive eu is becoming a very onerous dis. I finally decide that those women only like me as long as I pay my monthly bill to AT&T Broadband. So tonight diseustrss has won out and I am tacking away.
But I don't know whether this is an act of life or and act of desperation.
Now that I am winding down, I feel a sense of accomplishment I have just poured a nice glass of the same Chianti that I was drinking on Monday, eustress, it tastes fruity full of Sangiovese grapes, distress, because I opened the bottle two days ago and horrid oxygen has been eating away at the wonderful taste. But eustress to the rescue, I don't know that much about wines and my palette is definitely better for the varieties of diet colas. Non-knowledge (eu-know), and some alcohol, spreads the tension from my limbs. Hans baby, Marshall, baby, I hope you won't find it too maudlin if I tell you I love you both! Ciao!

Monday, January 14, 2002

Hey thatsa some plump tomata!
My Boss, his name is Tom, walks in one morning, announces "You know, Reynoldsburg Ohio, is the birth place of the tomato." and pretty much leaves. I, of course, keeper of the Mediterranean position on such important issues, am stunned. How could anyone claim that the birthplace of the tomato is in Ohio. The very thought of it made me laughed. I laughed!
I think about the fact that colonists in New England thought that the tomato was poisonous. Wasn't Plymouth Rock before Johnny Appleseed was a dream in his mother's core let alone marching through Ohio spewing his seed. Think about it? Birth place of the apple maybe! But how could Ohio be the birthplace of the tomato. Weren' t they putting a fine marinara on all that spaghetti that Marco Polo and his Uncles brought back from the Orient? That was Italy and a couple centuries short of Ohio!
But he, Tom, and his son tell me they have both seen the sign, Birthplace of the Tomato, that adorns the City of Reynoldsburg or is it a Corporation? A little geography please. Reynoldsburg is an eastern suburb of Columbus. And wasn't that city named after the glorious Italian Explorer Christopher Columbus who discovered India, okay so he was half a world away, but there was no AAA back in those days to provide a Triptych showing heavy construction delays around the Canary Islands. Nor did he have a GPS that could plot his location on the earth to within the skin of a that self-same tomato that concerns us here today.
Nor does he have a high speed cable internet connection at 1.5 Gbps download, sadly only 100 kbps upload to keep me from being a server. So I look up The History of the Tomato. It irks me! Tom is kinda right. I hang, as I'm sure you do, expectantly on "kinda".
The True Story of the Tomato. Here is what I remember. I'm not looking it up again.
The tomato a product originally of Spain was an ugly small football shaped orange thing with spines that ran the length of it. Looking a lot like a wrinkled plum tomato only not nearly so healthy. It was eaten and sauced in Spain, in France and in Italy. Remember Columbus and the really swell bunch of guys that followed him looking for El Dorado and killing whole populations of Yucatan and Mexico Indians. Well those Grandees brought this sick little tomato with them.
It took some time about three or four centuries but the sickly icky little tomato wended it's way north. Let's skip forward to about 1870 when a man named Alexander W. Livingston (Mr. Livingston, I presume) bred and horticultured our wild growing tomato into a variety he called Paragon and five years later he invented the Acme tomato. Why, I am thinking to myself at this moment, a glass of fine Chianti at the ready (at least, Ohio doesn't claim the grape), didn't they call him Alex Tomatoseed? History clearly needs some revision! I know I haven't made it manifestly clear, but old Livingston was the pride of Reynoldsburg Ohio. And if you go to the web site, (I could not resist) not only does a tomato flash fly around for a little, but Reynoldsburg is proclaimed the Birthplace of the Tomato. But subtle reader look under the address of the municipal building and read: and I copy and paste: Birthplace of the Domestic Tomato! Exclamation mine. For proof I give you the URL http://www.ci.reynoldsburg.oh.us/ and I rest my case. What was my case? I forget! But I like Joe Colombo who got shot down by the mob in New York City at a rally proclaiming that Italians are not, as apparently he, mobsters and second class citizens, will not be pushed around. As for Tom, well, I'll make him an offer!

Thursday, January 10, 2002

Penna Turnpike 2 miles.
So I'm driving in Ohio because our company has more work to the West, and I see a sign that says Penna Turnpike 2 miles. For those of you familiar with I-80/I-76, that puts me about a mile past the last rest stop in Ohio, which has a McDonalds , a bathroom and a tourist center, and milling people with confused expressions on their faces. Then I see a sign that says Ohio Bids You Adieu! Okay, It doesn't really, but the point is that Ohio is spelled out in full. I finally cross no man's land, the Turnpike twilight zone, the Interstate DMZ and know I am back in PA Firma for two reasons, one is that my speed must by proper highway law drop precipitously, and two, a large sign that says, Welcome to Pennsylvania!
Once in my home state,thoughts began to rise and fill in my rather empty craw. PA Turnpike 2 miles would be acceptable, but why stint on letters. I mean what is wrong with Pennsylvania, the long spelling, and where is Penna anyway? I mulled over it the whole way home while I nipped at my moustache with my teeth, which I finally clipped the next morning, and went into a fitful sleep. Counting letters and never above five - P-E-N-N-A. Why not, my last thought, before my journey to Cloud Cuckoo Land and Aristophanes, P-E-N-N, at least it was the same length as O-H-I-O.
I awoke early and fit as a fiddle, after shower I played the hair of my mid-back with the towel as a bow, as I danced a jig and wrastled my teeth and yea! and verily took my new medications. When I walked into the office I was greeted with the ubiquitous office phone pink call memo from a customer saying, "Hey, tomorrow, would be a great time to meet with you." Of course, tomorrow was now today and his particular firm is in......, can't fool you reader....., Ohio, only not so far west as the previous day.
I make the trip. I make the meeting. Finally I turn my noble Taurus East, pat its snout, give it a light peck on the hood and head toward the sunrise. There, confronting me almost immediately, at the Tollbooth, are two signs, one says Penna Turnpike and East - Pittsburgh, the other Ohio Turnpike and West - Cleveland. I stifle the oblivious bad taste in my mouth that the Pittsburgh/Cleveland football team rivalry has nurtured over the years. Once took a guy to a Pittsburgh/Cleveland game (the outcome was glorious!) who had lived in the Allegheny County for almost seven years, a transplant from Cleveland, and he was digging great gouts with his fingernails out of the Three Rivers Stadium Seats. It is a deep seated and perhaps ugly prejudice, but it is all ours and both sides will kill you if you mess with it.
Where was I.... oh yes Pittsburgh was spelled out. Cleveland was spelled out. Ohio was spelled out. But BUt BUT Poor Pennsylvania was designated Penna!
Time, I think, to right wrongs, correct injustices, to strike back! How about What's Round On The Ends And High In The Middle Turnpike 2 miles, printed in large lavender letters as you approach Ohio from PA roads. Or spell it, Oiho, backwards or abbreviate Ohi Turnpike 2 miles!
I tell you I was muttering to myself all the way to the state line. Then I was very hungry and I had to eat dinner. I don't like to think what I would have done if food hadn't intervened, after a trip to the hardware for a couple cans of white and green spray paint.
Did you know that Reynoldsburg Ohio is the birth place of the tomato? I didn't think so!

Thursday, January 03, 2002

Thursday, January 03, 2002 6:56:00 PM
Alright!
Don't be too hard on me. I was released from the hospital a few days ago. My birthday to be exact, December 31, 2001. At three o'clock pm just about the time I walked, short of breath from the cold and from my symptom into the emergency room a East Suburban Forbes Regional Center East, or whatever it is now called, three days prior. I thought it was pneumonia. It was something quite different.
See, I knew I was in trouble when I walked out of the Best Buy with my brand new Yamaha Sub Woofer and a couple of deep sounded DVDs. I could hardly carry the box to the car. I was winded like a hundred yard dash and I hadn't walked much more than fifty feet. I struggled, drove home and called the Doctors office. They said, Son, hie yourself up to an emergency room. Three hours in the waiting room and I was dragged back to the emergency floor, where began a series of punctures, pricks and pokes that lasted for a three day period. I admit it. I was optimistic. Thought I would end up going home with an antibiotic to stop the encroachment on my lungs. It is now about eight o'clock in the evening and the ER doctor is saying something about Congestive Heart Failure and I am definitely not going home.
Think about that name for a minute. I must first tell you that I know absolutely nothing about diseases and their names. I never watched ER and I was more interested in the quirkiness of St. Elsewhere. The doctor says, with a certain glibness, evidence of congestive heart failure, which makes my you-know-what that is as equally ignorant as my brain start pitter pattering more quickly. For those of you like me in the dark, Congestive Heart Failure does not exactly mean that your heart is failing. It means that the heart (your heart - my heart) is not pumping enough blood to your system. It is not a good thing, but couldn't they call it Congestive Heart Condition? So liquid builds up in various conduits to and from the heart, spills out into you system and finds itself in your lungs or legs or stomach. Mine was in my lungs and thus the shortness of breath. Pretty common symptoms it turns out. Classic!
So they start me on antibiotics, because the x-ray indicates some evidence of pneumonia and then they give me the devil's drug, I'll probably spell this wrong Lasix (Okay I looked it up) which makes you urinate frequently and long. Not really a social drug is it? So after a couple liters and more plunges and pulses I was admitted to a room around eleven PM. Worried, not at all tired, hooked to a pump that put nitroglycerin in my system at a specified drip rate. I now know how my computer feels after I have hooked up several peripherals. The nitro gave me massive and grand head aches. "Oh," said the nurses, "headaches are good!" I rolled my eyes and swallowed gratefully the Tylenol proffered.
Of course it wasn't pneumonia or a viral infection that enlarged my heart. After stress and cardiograms and irradiation it turns out that sometime in my life I had a "silent" heart attack which damaged my left ventricle. The chamber that pumps blood out to my body. My heart is weak and needs help. I also am diabetic, have high blood pressure and, although not terrible, high cholesterol. Healthy, eh?
The upshot is that I now face a life style change. Not really a problem. I was trying before by exercising and eating less. Low sugar, low salt (by the way all prepared food have salt) and low fat. But I think the thing that disturbs me the most is that I have become a "pill person" and those medicine names that sounded to me like the names of Arab terrorists are becoming all too familiar. Soon I will be exchanging tips with everyone about my secrets to beat my poor battered body into a healthy ruddiness. I think it goes with the territory. What next, yellow pants, green jersey and white shoes?