I am doll eyes
Doll mouth, doll legs
I am doll arms, big veins, dog bait
Yeah, they really want you, they really do
I want to be the girl with the most cake

Doll Parts
Hole

Have you ever had an evening that wasn’t suppose to amount to much, but turned out to be magic? I love those.

I am full of hidden prejudices. I’m working hard to rid myself of them but the fact is that I have preconceived notions about some people. I am predisposed to dislike certain types. It’s ugly and unfair.

For instance, politicians. In my mind, politicians are inherently prone to corruption and are not to be trusted. The fact that you would even want to be a politician is an indication that you have a flawed personality. If one of The Daughters marries a politician, I will fell like I failed them.

I was in the city for an interview. Afterwards, I was meeting someone for dinner, but the dinner fell through at the last minute. I sent out a few text messages on my way to the train station and received an invitation to meet a friend and his girlfriend for drinks. They were drinking in one of those unique Manhattan pubs. It’s a converted barge that’s anchored off the 26th Street pier. They were outside on the upper deck. You walk along the side of the ship to the stern and then up a spiral staircase. Cool breeze. Sun setting over New Jersey. The Hudson River slowly floating by. The pub gently rocks. To hell with the train, I decided.

My friend’s girlfriend represented the Dominican Republic in a recent Miss World competition. I’ve seen pics of her and have been wanting to meet her (OF COURSE). She’s a beauty queen. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of beauty pageants? Yeah, me too. JonBenét Ramsey, the nauseating world of child beauty pageants and vapid contestants.

In person, she is so stunning that I was taken aback when I first sat down. Once I regained my composure, I realized that she was speaking in complete, coherent sentences, despite the fact that English is her second language. (She taught herself English by watching TV. She speaks three languages to my one). She couldn’t have been more charming and down to earth. Funny. A good listener. She told interesting stories about living in China for 40 days while in a pageant.

She can’t work in the U.S. because of some immigration documents that haven’t been processed yet. What does she do with all that free time? Does she walk up and down 5th Avenue and spend my friend’s money as quickly as possible? Sit all day and chat with models? Nay. She volunteers. She took it upon herself to find where she could be of good use to the underprivileged. Nobody was looking over her shoulder. It wasn’t to bolster her resume.

Quick to judge. Slow to understand. I wonder what else I’m wrong about?

By the time we left, the boat was packed, packed, packed with the after-work city drones. We walked down the spiral staircase and there was a narrow path out through the crowd. We had to walk single file, my friend first, then his girlfriend, and then me. As we walked through the crowd, I saw men and women freeze in their spot and just stare as she passed by. As though they couldn’t believe their eyes.

Follow me boys, follow me,
When you think you’re really beat
That’s the time to lift your feet,
And follow me boys, follow me,
Pick’em up, put’em down and follow me,

Follow Me Boys
Written for the Boy Scouts of America
by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

I’ve added a Followers gadget over to the right. To those who are psychologically evolved, inserting a tracking gadget is a non-event. Sadly, my insatiable neediness turned it into an angst-ridden ordeal.

As I’ve discussed with Daisyfae in several email exchanges, I spend far (far) too much time pouring over my stats and comments. I realize that maintaining a blog is something that is purely for the ‘self’ and that worrying about the size of your audience is a exercise in futility. Wishing for more readers is inane and pointless, but I’ve never permitted sound reasoning to interfere with my foggy judgment and I’m not about to start now.

Last summer I received a flattering review from the hard asses at Ask and Ye Shall Receive that I thought would result in a media firestorm. Those guys aren’t easy to please, you know! There was a big spike in the bar chart which has since tapered off.

At my worst, I get into comments/unique hits pissing contests with people who are completely unaware that they’re in a pissing contest with me. A Followers gadget seemed suicidal! Which evil genius wrote the code for a gadget whose soul purpose it is to cast a harsh spotlight on how few readers I have? Did he/she do it specifically to mock me? I think so.

But there it is, chuckling. Ridiculing me. I might create a dozen false accounts just to goose up my number.

3-Year Old Daughter removed the flat, wooden slat from its sleeve at the bottom of the window shade, stood up on our bed and stuck it in the rotating ceiling fan. It made a terrible racket. I bolted upstairs and shouted at her.

“What are you doing?!”

“I wanted to see what it felt like. Now, you made me cry. Waaahhhhh…”

She’ll be the one who dates a biker. And not one those weekend pretenders, either. You’ve seen them. Actuary accountants who don expensive leather jackets and get all manly on Sunday mornings. She’ll date the real thing. This is the same innocent flower who took a pair of shears to our curtains.

I went to mass for Easter. I went for the sake of Mrs. Wife and The Daughters. It’s important to them and I respect that. I even went to communion. 8-Year Old Daughter is receiving her first communion in May and I wanted to set a good example. I’m glad I didn’t burst into flames when the host touched my tongue. That would have sent the wrong message.

Even though I left the church years ago, I still try to keep an open mind and listen hard to the readings and sermons. This was a portion of the gospel reading:

God raised him up the third day, and gave him to be revealed, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen before by God, to us, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

Acts 10:40-41

If Christ wanted to pave the way for mankind to embrace Christianity, he should have shown Himself to the masses, not just a chosen few. If you had been there, would you have believed them? Would you have taken their word for it? “He’s not dead. But only we’re allowed to see him.” That’s too convenient.

The night before Easter I was watching the annual broadcast of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. (What a ham.) Marking a doorway with lamb’s blood to avoid the wrath of the Angel of Death made no sense to me. Why would they need to do that? If the Angel of Death is an omnipotent spirit, wouldn’t it, by its own supernatural power, know which houses were Hebrew and which were Egyptian? Isn’t doing something worldly like smearing blood on the door superfluous? It’s a good thing the Egyptians didn’t catch on or it would have blown the whole operation.

And commanding Abraham to slay his son to prove his devotion is sadistic and cruel.

I don’t understand any of it. And I attended a parochial school! It all boils down to a very simple equation; you either believe or you don’t.

I paid a visit to the David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea to view the original drawings from R. Crumb’s latest book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated. All 50 chapters! It was a Friday and the gallery was gloriously empty. I love Crumb’s work. It’s so dense.

Each drawing, some 200+ pages, was arranged sequentially along the perimeter of the gallery as they appear in the book. You could see where Crumb made corrections to some of the drawings with white out. Did you know that in the world of collectors, the less white out used on an illustration, the more valuable it is?

Crumb played it straightforward with this book and didn’t include any of his usual brilliant sarcastic wit and commentary. It’s a studious interpretation that uses text directly quoted from the bible. In perusing the drawings, I couldn’t help noticing how violent and erotic some of the bible stories are.

I asked the gallery attendant if the drawings were for sale. She told me that they can only sold as one lot. That’s so silly! Who would have room to display all of these?