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The Rasslin

Last night after I walked the dog and grilled some chalky chickenbreast for dinner (it's difficult at 36 to stay lean) I settled onto the couch for an evening of a learned PBS documentary. Much to my disappointment they were playing Night at the Pops or some such nonsense, so I cruised the channels, going from an annoying (albeit chirpy) Rachel Maddow to the Food Network (God, I HATE "Iron Chef"), to the History Channel (enough with the Ice Truckers!) to the Myth Busters Network (formerly knows as the Discovery Channel). None of my regulars were working out for me so I resorted to going up the dial (do we still use that term in the age of remote controls?) through each channel when suddenly I was captivated by a beautiful and half-naked specimen of a Greek god emerging through some pyro special effects to the music of some really obnoxious grunge metal. It was WWE Monday night Raw. The Greek god, none other than Randy Orton, aka "The Legend Killer".

Now, there are many things I can find amazing about the whole wrestling concept, the most obvious being the homoerotic nature of the "sport". I mean, these guys come out in the itty bitty bikinin underwear and get so close in each other's face they might as well be kissing, the proceed to roll around half-naked grabbing and clutching each others' half-naked bodies. Not to mention that other than the hair on their heads, they are shaved completely and totally smooth. And they have fake-n-bake tans! The only reason the "sport" is not more appealing to the gay population is that other than the naked muscley men, the aesthetics are not that appealing--cheesy costumes, bad tattoos and hair, silly dialogue and even sillier plots. Plus, we gays are not that keen on sports to begin with, much less a fake sport. While no gays that I'm aware of are loyal fans of wrestling the crowd at these events probably aren't fans of any gays. The people in the audience look to me like the exact same crowd that go to those monster truck rallies at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center, where the trucks with 20 foot diameter tires run over and crush a row of ten cars. There are ladies with bleach blond hair (of the hydrogen peroxide kind) and beer bellied men in cutoff shirts and John Deere caps holding signs that say such inane things as "Tristan 3:16" and "U Don't C Me". It is not unfair to judge by their excitement that they think the whole affair is real.

Last nigth I was especially lucky because it was the premier of Freddie Prinze, Jr. as the newest host of WWE Monday Night Raw. I've always thought that Prinze was a handsome guy, but I couldn't name one movie he was in. Judging by the delivery of his lines last night it's no surprise he's not making movies anymore and instead has this WWE gig. I'm not sure how these things work in the wrestling world but there are characters (i.e. Orton's name is "The Legend Killer" because he attacks the old champs of wrestling, shaming them into old age, or something like that) and there are plots, most of them very simplistic. Anyway, so Prinze announces that tonight he's pairing Randy Orton with John Cena in a match against Chris Jericho and The Big Show. Well, apparently Randy and Cena are blood rivals and upon hearing this news, Orton busts through the pyrotechnics and tells Prinze that he refuses to be paired with Cena. Prinze stands his ground despite the fact that the scowling and growling Orton is right in his face. Prinze demands that Orton follows his orders. Apparently, you don't mess with Legend Killer Randy Orton, even if you're some B-list dead ender movie star, because Orton picks Prinze up and bodyslams him. Pow! Prinze is on the mat, the crowd is booing, Legend Killer stands in defiance. The announcers then act like they have to cut to commercial break real fast. When WWE Monday Night Raw returns, Prinze is still on the mat with some referees attending to him. The announcers say in what is supposed to be an ad-lib-caught-on-camera whisper, "It's his neck, it's his neck." Wow, it's so much fun! There's nothing like homoerotic sillines to get a crowd going. Finally, Prinze is carried out of the ring and all the raw action commences.

I used to work with a guy named G___, who was the real deal bona fide coonass from New Iberia. This was back in my oilfield days. He was a referee at the weekend cockfights around the state. He and his wife, who he affectionately called "Well Done" because she suffered some burns on her face when a lawnmower blew up, loved The Rasslin (as they called it) and blocked off every Monday night to watch (this was in the '90's) Stone Cold Steve Austin whip some ass. Well, as it so happens, Stone Cold grew up in Edna and G___ and his wife became enamored of me just because they thought I had some sort of familiarity with Steve, even though he was several years older and had left Edna by the time I was in middle school. Anyway, Tuesdays at the office talk was nothing but The Rassling. G___ had his favorite women, who are known as the Divas and his wife loved Stone Cold. I was always amazed at how The Rasslin affected their lives, how they referenced it in many conversations even when the subject had nothing to do with it at all. Most tellingly, they'd say that the only time that they "cut" (this is a term frequently used for "sex" in New Iberia) was after The Rasslin. Something about the staged spectacle, the silly plot lines, the raucous crowds, the half-naked bodies, compelled them to have sex. "Oh, we cut good last night after The Rasslin," G___ would tell me first thing Tuesday morning. "We watched [so and so] fight it out and then I hit that thing real good!" Well, I can't say that it affects me the same way, but I can say that I found watching those guys wrestle around titillating. I'll be watching it again on Monday nights for some raw action, especially when WWE Champion Randy Orton is on the mat defending his title and killing some legends!

Edna, Texas

Rooster and I headed to Texas for my summer vacation a couple of weeks ago. This year has been brutal to the part of the state where I was born and raised--months and months of no rain--and you feel this the minute you drive through Houston and you hit a wall of heat so powerful it saps the moisture right out of the cab of the truck and quickly every part of the vehicle is radiating the same immense heat. It's almost surreal right now, everything so hot and so parched. The river is dry and the cattle stand in the shade of the trees all these long days of summer and then, when it's finally cool enough in the evenings for them to move, there's no grass anywhere. As they scour the bone-dry earth for something to eat with their muzzles, the force of their breath blows the dust. While it was a great trip home and lots of fun, there was a pervasive sense of depression about the place. The heat and drought were the anchor of every conversation: "Is it dry in Louisiana like it is here?", "Have yall been getting rain?","Dubby, we've been so hot and dry". Questions like this made it seem as though Louisiana, or anywhere else for that matter, was like another planet, a strange place where water inexplicably fell from the sky and grass grew from the earth. Here the people only knew the sun and wondered why the rain had left them.

When I was a boy I stayed at what then could only be described as a "daycare" run by a couple known to everyone as Momma Helen and Pa Dewey. I write daycare in quotes because it was nothing like the facilities of today--we kids spent the day locked outside in her enormous back yard with nothing but spoons and a few old Tonka trucks, and were fed sandwiches made of American cheese, white bread and miracle whip along with some chee-tohs and red punch to wash it all down with. It was the most wonderful and imaginary of places, almost a child kingdom where adults were as rare as the rain now is in Edna, and Momma Helen loved her kids more than anything and we were always welcomed. My parents then were still young and it wasn't rare for them to drop me off in the wee hours of the morning before they headed down to the coast for a day (or weekend) of fishing, and it was even less rare for them to pick me up in the wee hours of the morning after a night at a party. Momma Helen was a country woman whose dentures clacked everytime she spoke her colloquial English and I loved her very much. She always told me that I was one of her favorites and I often went to her house on the weekends when the other kids weren't there just so I could climb up into her chair and nuzzle in her bosom and the click click click of her dentures would soothe me to sleep. One of my favorite tricks was to ask her every single day what was for lunch, to which she'd reply without fail, "Poke and grits...poke ya head out the window and grit your teeth!" I still have no idea what poke and grits are but sometimes I like to answer the question the same way when someone asks me what I'm cooking.

Momma Helen ruled her house with a firm but sweet hand. If you violated one of the few rules that governed the place, like biting one of the other kids or being a tattle tale ("Nobody likes a tattle tale," Momma Helen would admonish), you either had to sit at the table for an unspecified amount of time or you got your mouth washed out with soap. During the hottest part of the day, Momma Helen called us inside where we were forced to sit and watch cartoons until the unrelenting summer sun passed far enough in the sky to give some reprieve. The house had only one air conditioner, which was in the living room and this is where Momma Helen retreated to watch "the stories" amongst her collection of dozens of china dolls that peered with their porcelein eyes from the rows of shelves. We kids sat in the sweltering heat of the den, waiting for Momma Helen to announce it was snack time and unlock the back door and dole out some sort of delicious popsickle or ice cream we could then resume speeding our Tonka trucks down our spoon-dug dirt roads to our imaginary houses made of twigs and leaves. When it rained, we huddled underneath the wall-less tin shed that housed our toys. As long as it didn't thunder or lightnening, Momma Helen would let us stay outside, and then we'd pretend to be Indians and perform our rain dances.

Rain rain go away.
Come back another day.

Back then in Edna we used to get daily afternoon showers during the dog days of summer, just like we do here in Louisiana. When the rain stopped falling and the sky cleared, we thought it was us and the power of our imaginations that moved the clouds. We looked around in wonder at what we had done before lining up our Tonka trucks and pushing them down the now muddy dirt roads, laughing and playing until our parents came to pick us up.

Delicious!

From Death, I Return; or, I dreamed of Sonia Sotomayor

Wow it's been a long time since I've posted anything on my blog and I continue to be impressed by how many many people have commented on my pitiful few postings. What can I say, I've been busy. The 2009 Louisiana Legislative gavelled to order on April 27th and at the same time I died. Not the kind of death that turns you back into worm food, but a Catholic kind of death in which one lingers in some weird purgatory of endless committee meetings and mindless deliberations on such issues as whether or not Louisiana needs to do more to protect the freedom of religion in the state (The answer is yes, according the votes of our legislators) or whether we should appeal the motorcycle helmet law (an issue which rumbles through every legislative session since it's repeal several years ago, and which will return next I'm sure, as it failed). Yes, there was a budget shortfall of somewhere around $1.3 billion and yes, there will be more budget troubles in the upcoming year, but that's not the issue that consumed most of the time and energy of the session. I don't want to say much here about political issues because I can get fired--you can ask me my opinion when I see you. But I don't really need to because the 2009 Legislative Session ended in the glorious spectacle of Hurricane Chris performing his best-selling rap song "Halle Berry (She Fine)" before the House of Representatives. Mr. Chris was called to the floor by his godmother, Representative Barbara Norton (D-Shreveport) who asked for a "Pernt" of Order for Personal Privilege and then introduced the young rap star. I'll post the first two stanzas:

Bow bow
Bow bow bow
Bow bow
Bow bow bow
Bow bow
Bow bow bow
Hurricane
Bow bow
Bow bow bow
Bow bow
Bow bow bow

Bum bum bum
Bum bum bum
Bum bum bum
Bum bum bum

And with those opening lines, Hurricane Chris artistically and accurately captured the political rhetoric of this past legislative session. It was wonderous.



So what about me, the walking dead? Purgatory doesn't end with a siren call in the form of a young rap star, nor did it end with the bang of the gavel at 6pm on June 25th. I stayed dead for a few days, including the following Monday (which I took off work) and the rest of the short holiday week (July 4th) in which I tried to purge the legislative demons by spending my time catching up on my reading (8 issues of the New Yorker behind!). No, I officially awoke from death just before the holiday when I was visited in my sleep by Sonia Sotomayor. I have been very interested in the future Supreme Court Justice, obviously because of her politics but also because I'm just fascinated with the Court in general and the possiblity of being vested with that sort of power--being the final word, the final opinion, having a lifetime appointment in which no one can remove you no matter how crazy you become, etc. (Maybe I'm even a little bit jealous?) Anyway, in the dream Sotomayor was just walking past me in some white moo moo dress and well, for supposedly being so brilliant and powerful she's really frumpy. I thought to myself in my dream, "Sonia, girl, you need to get rid of that dress and do something with that hair, you're about to be a Justice on the United States Supreme Court!" I guess her frumpiness had occurred to me in real life but I hadn't given it much thought. So, in my dream as I stood judging her in that moo moo, she looked my way but seemed not to notice. She just walked on by. In my insignificance, I was dismissed! And by such a homely looking chica! I tossed and turned, drenched in sweat, wrestled with the sheets and cried out, "I'm here Sonia Sotomayor! Look at me! I'm smart! I'm not frumpy!" And then I woke up. Not just from my dream but also from my purgatory. I awoke refreshed and renewed, with a new sense of purspose and direction. No more committee meetings this year, no more debating whether or not we should save higher education, no more wrangling over whether or not healthcare providers should be able to refuse to treat someone based on whether it violates their moral sensitivites. I am free!

So today is the first day of a string of months in which I don't have to worry about legislators and their bow bow bow bum bum bum-ing and instead can worry about me and what I love. Sonia Sotomayor came to me in a dream and showed me that I shouldn't be insignificant, that I need to cultivate the things I love (my book, my paintings, my realtionship with Chris). So these months of relative freedom I plan on doing just that. Look for more insightful postings on this blog, a book manuscript, several oil painting masterpieces, some great bread, and just all-around fabulousness--and I won't be no homely chica while I do it, either!

Office of Communication

By popular demand I've been asked to post more on this blog. Other than putting a link on my facebook profile I didn't tell anyone I was making the thing and yet, in the last week, I've had three friends tell me that they enjoyed reading it (You read my blog? I asked in disbelief. Shout out to you S.S. Titiania, my old improv friend from Drama Class in High School!) It's a great feeling to think that people are reading the bullshit you write and then ask for more!

I love my job title and feel like it's more than just a career position. Much more like a judge or something. Just like my great-uncle, who was a judge, was called Judge Joe years after his retirement, I think people will refer to me by my title for the rest of my life. "Hey there, Communication Specialist Dub!"

More communications to come soon...

UPDATE: A correction: it won't be my formal title Communication Specialist Dub that I'll be addressed as for the rest of my life, but rather Communication Specialist Mr. Lee. Thanks for reminding me how I prefer the formal. What was I thinking?

Riddles...

I wonder what this sign in the window means? Is it a riddle of some sort? Just WHO exactly are they trying to keep out???

Bread of Heaven

I decided to cook on Sunday night. I made a lovely chicken and sausage gumbo to go along with the delicious French bread I made from scratch. I've been making homemade French bread for about 4 years now and have just arrived at the point where I'm making the kinds of loaves that I want. Other than the few things I've read, this has mostly been a self-study. My goal is to bake the kinds of loaves that when you bite into them, the crispy crackle of the crust immediately transports you the the French countryside. Baguettes (as they are called) are the most difficult form of bread to make. With only flour, water, yeast and a little salt, it is entirely up to the baker to create the kinds of texture and flavor that he desires. A recipe for classic French bread is only an approximation--everything from the weather, to the age of your flour, to the type of yeast and how many live organisms make it into the dough affect the outcome. So it's a skill I'm quite proud of and there's something symbolic about the bringer of bread. With a couple of baguettes, a few bottles of wine and 12 of my gay friends over, I feel like Jesus!

Mind's Eye

I mentioned in my last post that this blog will give me a chance to flex my writer muscles. (I love to feel muscley.) There are many reasons why this is important--writing is a good exercise for anyone, it's what I do for a living, etc.--but the most important reason is that I've been working on a novel for almost 5 years now and it's still not complete. Writing a book is a goal I've had all my life. From the time I could conceptualize it, I told people I was going to write a book about a boy who wants to escape from Edna, Texas. Back then the working title was "The Stagnant Pond" and it was going to be an allegory with fish, turtles and other aquatic life representing the different people and forms of life I thought existed in Edna. For example, I was a tadpole who developed into a frog and then hopped my way to bigger waters; my enemies were the predatory fish who threatened the lives of all tadpoles. You get the drift, I'm sure.

My dream still endures, but I've put aside "The Stagnant Pond" for higher literary fare. But what I've come to realize is that that original idea (or maybe I should say the worldview that originally inspired that idea) endures on my current project. I'm very concerned with Poverty--and when I say "poverty" I don't mean just people with money, I mean all forms of poverty--spiritual, economic, mental, educational, etc.--that seem to be in overabundance in this day and age, particularly in the South. I witnessed this firsthand growing up in Edna and I'm so very thankful for the things I heard and saw. I learned that Poverty is most overt and apparent in those who live in poverty (big "P" versus little "p"). I developed an endless fascination with the most invisible elements of our society. There was a family back home (I'll call them the Hickeys for the purposes of this blog, and that is the name of the family I use in the book) who lived in the north part of the county and who everyone knew as poor, inbred scoundrels. The narrative was so pervasive that all you had to do was mention that name Hickey and images of run-down houses and cars, of unkempt hollowed-eyed children, of sister sleeping with brother, of petty crimes, etc. all came to mind whenever the name was mentioned. When I was living in Austin and in college, two good girl friends of mine lived together and they were so dirty and trashy--their place was always cluttered and filty, dust sat on the shelved, rotten food was sometimes in the fridge--that I called them the "Hickey Sisters". I made this joke not only to them but to all our friends and acquaintances from back home and it made everyone laugh hysterically, without any further explanation. Narratives are often deep and lasting for many of us, especially for those who grow up in the small-town south, and I'm fascinated by these narratives and how difficult they are to change or escape. This is especially true for those mired in Poverty.

The idea for my book emerges out of this concern and it centers on a nineteen year-old boy named Dickie who lives in a trailer house with his mother and her medically-afflicted dog, Lil Man. His father is long absent. His mother is a maid/dog keeper. They are under threat of being located to the public housing in the black part of town--a move which will forever seal their fate as "sub-human" elements of society. This is something Dickie is acutely aware and struggles against. The trick is--or tragedy, I should proabably say--is that although he is aware of what's happening to him and his family, he doesn't have the skills to overcome and is destined to commit the same acts that have long kept his family where they are. This is a generational story--there's the grandmother Nana, Aunt Cindy, and cousin Tate--who because of their Poverty have been reduced to the basest form of human beings. In their despair they cling to the most simple and basic things: a perverted version of Christianity, sex, a windvane. Because they live moment-to-moment, from dollar to dollar, they are unable to see past the here and now and can only reflect on the past and what's happened to them. And thus they are always forced to repeat. The cycle of Poverty, plain and simple.

It is this cycle that Dickie sees in his own mother, Beverly, who ran away from home at the age of sixteen. She did this because she had an awareness--the same one Dickie now has--that unless she takes bold action, she is destined forever to be cast as a Hickey and all the things that means. She had dreams and through his short life, Dickie has watched these dreams slowly whither and die to the point that she's left being a maid and servant to a woman who raises champion Boston Terriers. Beverly seeks validation through being associated with dogs who win trophies and even though she spends a good part of her week scraping up dog shit in kennels. Long-gone is her dream of baking fabulous wedding cakes.

Dickie is at a point where his awareness is growing. The crisis that's causing this is their impending eviction and removal to public housing, which is, in their minds, populated by nothing but black people. This is a project I've worked on for so long but which seems to always be just beyond my reach. While I've got a great setup, great characters, etc., I'm having problems with really knowing and understanding what these people yearn. That's the key: the yearning. Of course they yearn to have more money, to live in a better house, to be accepted, etc. etc., but how do these yearnings (I'm speaking for all the characters) manifest themselves in the world in which they live? I can't for the life of me figure this out and it's preventing me from figuring out the point-by-point plot of the book. So this blog is also created in an effort to keep my mental faculties strong, to be nimble with words.

In my experience, creative works don't emerge from just one place. A book isn't just a story that goes from point A to point B; it's an entire sensual experience, complete with sounds, smells, tastes, memories. Thus, it's important for me to keep all my creative abilities humming together harmoniously and so I've also re-taken-up oil painting and piano playing, which I'm sure I'll write more about in future posts. Blogging is fun!

First Post

I've been wanting to start a blog for awhile now but have put it off for a variety of reasons--well, ok, really just one: I'm lazy. Plus, I thought, "Will you have enought stuff to write about?" Of course, the answer is "yes", which means that I'm just lazy. I don't like to feel lazy so I figured I better get on the ball. The reason the blog starts today is to commemorate the birth of my second niece, Annie Elizabeth, who was born earlier this morning. So there are actually two births today. I'm very excited and happy for my baby sister Shelley and her husband Jake. What a life they have now with two young girls. It's so much fun to go home and visit now there are little kids running around. For years, it was just Mom, Dad, my sisters, and brothers-in-law and after a few years it got really boring drinking too much and telling the same stories over and over and over. Now we have Parker and Annie to focus our attention on and talk baby talk, and we go to bed early (except for Jon and Dad who still like to drink too much).

Tonight Chris and I are going to our favorite Friday night hangout--J.Alexander's. They have absolutely the best prime rib in town. We haven't been there yet in 2009 so I'm very excited and salivating while I type this. Brian, our favorite waiter, sent Chris a facebook message last night saying he missed us. So it should be extra fun. I might even have a glass of wine to celebrate Annie--welcome to the world, babygirl!