Mark Twain:- Notebook, 1898

When I'm met with too many morning newscasts of another American son dying in another hemisphere, another brilliant human light snuffed, or another earth-bound angel whose wings have been clipped...I just shut down.

I have a definite shut-off valve that kicks in when I hear too much bad news.

I retreat into the literature of the gritty and bitchy. Writers that observe and process the chaos, and spit it back out with honesty and reflection and humor. I love those crazy old loons with pen in hand that can't help themselves.... eloquently baring their souls and chastising and making us laugh at the same time. That, to me...is the sign of brilliant writing.

Dante, Shakespeare, Whitman, Twain, Thurber, Vonnegut, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Robbins.

And nowadays...(passing along the Mark Twain torch)

David Sedaris http://www.barclayagency.com/sedaris.html

and

Hollis Gillespie http://www.hollisgillespie.com/lovehate.htm

(These are two contemporary writers that make me laugh and cry with their no-holds-barred devillishly honest, shit-stained and brutally funny observations)

I'd recommend that you pick up any of Sedaris or Gillespie's books. Talk about a roller coaster ride.





T

Blanche DuBois: I'm very adaptable to circumstances.

I need to stop posting for a while. Picture me as a wind-up toy. The key in my back is turned all the way. I've got to perform and wind down for a while in the cold cruel real world.

I wanted to come out (musically) on this last post for a while.
I wanted to leave you with my FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME.

You can take the boy out of the.....oh whatever....
...just keep my seat warm for me while I'm gone, ok?

***All I ask is that you listen to this song all the way through and get a hit from it.

Nite nite.

Lynard Skynard...The Ballad of Curtis Loew

So...John calls and says he has an urgent "damage-control" meeting in the morning. That means we won't be leaving for the trade show in High Point, NC until tomorrow afternoon.

So...I figure I have a long evening at my disposal and can sleep in. I went into chill mode and headed for the bottle of Reisling we have stashed away in the fridge.

So...I crank up the corkscrew.

I try to peel off the wrap around the top, but it's just not coming off.

I scrape and scrape at it until I bend the knife.

The wrap is still not coming off.

(I really want some of this wine by now. My brows are furroughed and the viens in my forehead are pulsing)

At this point, I am so frustrated that I figure I can just ram the corkscrew into the cork and force it out of the wrap.

I dig into the top with the corkscrew and it plows all the way through and there are shards of metal all over it.

Then and only then did I realize that it was a screw off top.



****That's my curse as an Aries. I can make the easiest things so fucking complicated sometimes.

Cheers...and oh yea... Hot Monkey Love,

T ( )

Lakewood began as an amusement park here in Atlanta in 1914. It went through it's glory days as a park for decades, then evolved into a grand outdoor ampitheatre for acts from Frank Sinatra to The Scissor Sisters. The ampitheatre stills plugs away, and still rocks.

The biggest attraction at Lakewood for people from Atlanta and neighboring states has been the Antique Market that is held here every first weekend of each month. It's been going on like clockwork for 30 years, but this past weekend was the last.

Marc and I had to go to say farewell to this institition this morning. There will never be anything like it again....acres after acres of unusual antiques and memorabilia. Architectural artifacts from all over the globe, real Appalachian primitives, and miles of iconic cultural crap from the 1700's to the 1970's. Lakewood was always like a haven and museum and toy chest for people like me, who love collecting and digging around in the miles and miles of relics of the past.



Going into Gate 2 at Lakewood. The city of Atlanta is bulldozing the grounds and the old 1920's Spanish style arcade buildings to make way for a fancy new live/work project of condos and retail. Phuck that.



We bought this cool 1956 metal game table. It has the presidents up to Eisenhower, and 48 states depicted on it. It has a racetrack game around the edges that taught geography to elementary school kids in the 50's. Very cool. We are going to use it for a display for the kids section in the new store.

Oh by the way...I really have been having fun buying the kids merchandise for our store. Here are a couple of the cool lines I found at the NYC Gift Fair that we are going to carry...

www.wrybaby.com

www.uglydolls.com

(I warned you that I was gonna bore you with the store stuff)



T