I showed this to Mrs. Wife and she saw it as a woman about to have her head blown off. I saw something quite different and she accused me of having my mind in the gutter. What did you first see?

* * *

Last week at A Company Called Malice, we were told that until further notice, we are required to work a minimum of 10 hours of overtime each week. This imposition comes right at the onset of summer; the season to be free. That same day, the new unemployment numbers were released. Here in the U.S. we are up to 9.4%. So I’m just going to keep my fucking mouth shut for once and grind it out.

* * *

I watched the Tony Awards last night. Well, part of them. They were so abysmal that I had to bail out. My sister texted me wondering if Broadway has finally hit bottom. I informed her that that’s not possible since Broadway, apparently, has no bottom.

This morning’s Asbury Park Press brought the sad news that Memory Lanes, my local bowling alley, burned to the ground.

If you’re good at shooting billiards, you’re a shark. Pool halls have a dark, sinister, poetic panache associated with them. Being good at pool can get you laid. Have you seen The Hustler? Or its sequel, The Color of Money? But nobody gives a shit if you’re a good bowler. Least of all, hot girls who wear a lot of black and like to hang out in tough neighborhoods. And I don’t know why that is. To me, they’re two sides of the same coin.

Isn’t that a great name for a bowling alley? Memory Lanes? Bowling is perceived as a low-brow form of entertainment but it’s always been a part of my life. There aren’t many things I did as a child that I occasionally still do today. I use to take 7-Year Old Daughter to Memory Lanes. We had a nice time but now it’s gone.

The second passing came courtesy of The Recording Academy, the association that bestows Grammy Awards. Polka music has been quietly eliminated as a category. It’s considered irrelevant. My father was an empty, useless man but one thing he did right was play polka music when I was growing up.

On Sunday mornings we use to watch the locally produced Polka Varieties on TV. It was like (and I’m not kidding about this) American Bandstand for polka music. The host was Paul Wilcox (Paul Whitesocks) and instead of attractive teens dancing to the latest rock hits, there was a live band, usually Frankie Yankovic, and the dancing audience was comprised of extremely old people.

Laugh if you want, but it takes a great deal of dexterity to dance the polka. Especially for women! They have to perform all those complicated steps backwards. Yankovic was a virtuoso of the button box. The Beer Barrel Polka! Who Stole the Keeshka Polka! And the polka guaranteed to offend at least half your audience, The Too Fat Polka.

I don’t want her.
You can have her.
She’s too fat for me.

Look, obviously, I’m not trying to insinuate that a bowling alley and an antiquated form of music meant as much to me as my recently deceased mother. Don’t be an idiot. But things pass out of your life and you feel a void, even if it’s a small one.

* * *

This was the first Saturday that I didn’t have my usual afternoon phone chat with my mom. It was weird. I called her number so I could listen to her recorded greeting but the number had already been disconnected.

I like to read memes but I don’t participate very often. But this one was too good to pass up. It’s from Annie.

List 15 books that will always stay with you. And don’t take too long to think about it. It has to be spontaneous.

I reread my list and some of the choices seem pretty pedestrian and obvious, but it is what it is. They don’t call them classics for nothing. I thought of throwing a ringer in like Das Kapital or Ulysses to sound like a big smarty-pants but it would have been a lie. Play along, if you’d like

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit by Charles Bukowski

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Journey to the End of the Night by Céline

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Will You Please Be Quiet Please by Raymond Carver

If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien

Ironweed by William Kennedy

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I thought the long hours at work would abate with the advent of summer but they have not. I just pulled another 13-hour day. I’m full of spit and bile and anger. I work for people stupid enough to do this:

This is how incoming projects are categorized. When I first saw this I laughed out loud and made a joke about how if everything is a panic then nothing is a panic, but the woman who set up this system got a hurt puppy-dog look on her face.

Artiste Florenza and I attended the Jenny Holzer exhibit at the Whitney. It was a series of LED sculptures that are visually fetching but can also be headache-inducing if you stay in the gallery too long.

Holzer works with words, words, words and most of them have a political bent to them. I sometimes grow weary when art tries to beat me over the head with a political agenda.

Stick with this video. The Whitney installation starts about :30 seconds in and it’s worth a look. Here’s the link if you can’t see it below.

Here are a few stills.