It's all right, hey lawdy mama in Normal entries

So I had pizza delivered yesterday at luncheon, it being MLK day and apparently no meals on wheels for the folks. Dude calls me back and says they don’t have any feta and after a brief and clumsy dance wherein I say foolish things like “Well, then it could hardly be called a feta and spinach pizza then?” and less foolish things like “Trying not to put red meat into the old folks, what do you recommend?” to which I got actual hems and haws. Anyhow as I’m deciding that the feta should be replaced with mozzarella and he says “Ok, provolone it is” my daughter texts that the grandwhelp isn’t responding to texts or voice.

I explain my not-spinach-and-feta-pizza situation and tell her I will run out there the second I can. I think about explaining to my parents but wanted to avoid the conversation I wound up having this morning wherein my mom asks what was going on than repeats the story with her own version and my dad says “I’m going to be all right”.

If he weren’t a freshly baked eleven year old and there were some beer cans on the floor and spilt bong juice the scene would have ranked as pretty dang decadent. He’s in underwear and one sock with an X-box headset on and two bad beta beagles adding to the stink of decadence a bit surprised to see me but carrying on with whatever important x-box related conversation he’s having. I guess his cheap ass Best Buy Bought phone wasn’t getting reception.

I texted my daughter, scratched behind a beagle ear, waved goodbye to the whelp and ate the two pieces that thought they had survived the trip. Provolone is not a substitute for feta anymore then Pizza is a substitute for food. It wasn’t as bad as you’d think.

Up the street is one of my favorite pizza places in the world. It’s not the best one; it’s just distinctive and has a back door to my taste bud neural pathways. However, for what was, up until recently (that is to say before I lived here again, so, say 1979) it was a Greek owned pizza place, they make a terrible spinach and feta pizza. They put lovely dry and cleaned spinach leaves on top and then bake it. Yes, of course, it’s a scorched earth pizza.

Personally if I’m going to cook I don’t make pizza very damn often, but I have cooked with spinach; everything from eggs Florentine to spanakopita. If you bake dry spinach it will burn. Feta will not help; it’s not a fatty cheese like cheddar that makes its own oil when it melts.

So, much as it pains me to admit, I ordered an “Artisan” pizza from Domi-fucking-no’s. Dominos is to pizza what taco bell is to Mexican food; it’s a genre apart, food like substitute in the shape of a popular ethnic-like food substance. What I really object to with dominos is their sauce. The spinach feta “artisan” pizza, however, uses a much less offensive alfredo sauce, unless, of course, you were expecting a fine alfredo sauce, which, IMHO, is kind of hard to fuck up.

Today is long grandwhelping. I even might bring an analog book. I was at a friend’s house and spied Siddhartha in a dusty pile and asked to borrow it. It’s been years and I like the idea of an analog book, even one I’ve read several times. If Barnes and fucking Nobles and/or Amazon get off their high cotton ponies I’d even drop a good buck or two to download Steppenwolf. Hesse is like Malamud or Hound Dog Taylor, once you get the taste in your mouth one is never enough. Do not put any old hound dog in your mouths boys and girls; it’s a figure of speech and a pseudonym.

Though I’ve been playing the game for --- um, a long time? Yes, a long time --- only one person has ever made a comment on my fu-mafia gang name (name of the gang not the players) Pitbulls of Babylon or the Boss Pitbull of the Steppes. Boundless Savagery (a picture of a cute puppy with a sideways tilted head) and I et yer kitty (a vague innuendo, ok, a bog iron mallet of an innuendo) get commented on all the time, by, I’m sure, guys with one sock missing in their underwear with their beagles and reeking of bongwater. The fellow who got Pitbull of the Steppes said something like “Come with me little pooch on a magic carpet ride” --- still, the connection was there.

Even in the itchy and uncomfortable realm of butt rock there are layers of cool. I consider Steppenwolf and Uriah heap the things that float to the top of the butt rock mocha. Get any farther afield and you are a garage band aspiring to mid-level butt rockery.

Here in the Midwest as young men (and women if you were one) we embraced our butt rockery. It’s not like we weren’t exposed to other things, I mean I saw Miles in 68 touring the new bitchs brew (if you check his discography and I’m off by a year or so, it’s my memory, not a fabrication) and I’d been to hoedowns and concertos before I was ten, but butt rock was the flag under which my peers and I sailed.

My tastes tend to run folky, my talents towards jazz (it’s hard to play folk saxophone without sounding all ironic and shit) and the blues is always welcome being the perfect fusion music for the American palette. But, yeah, though I’m like to deny it public, I’ve owned the same Steppenwolf albums on multiple formats. And yes, I got into shouting matches on the street over butt rock versus Disco, evil spangly mechanical shit that it was. Hollywood didn’t help bandage that wound either.

Saturday night fucking fever was like enter the dragon; every left footed farm kid in America was kung fu kicking the divan or dancing in front of a mirror. I never did either of those things and I will admit that in public to anyone who will listen.

By 1980 punk almost had to happen; the air waves were saturated with pabulum. Getting close to that time again. Despite Pandora’s cute little box and other such internet radio, the radio-radio still programs and advertises and is the standard of success. I suppose once there is an award show for downloads it will remain that way. Granted I haven’t seen the Grammys in several years, but I suspect they don’t break down sales that way, and, like any award show, it still comes down to filthy lucre (sounds like a rapper, no?) and/or the calling in of favors, but that’s just filthy lucre disguised as blackmail.

Ok, typing to keep my fingers warm and my mind from deteriorating any further. Be nice to each other. I’m spent.