Library of Conflict

seniorsinlibraryI don’t often get a chance to go to the public library in the middle of the week but I did today. You know what I learned? I learned you don’t try to compete with senior citizens at the “new releases” rack. I haven’t been elbowed that hard or boxed out that aggressively since my last hockey game or ride on the A-train. Those codgers…including the codg-ettes..don’t screw around when searching for stuff to read..for free. Get in their way, and you might find yourself black and blue from a whack with an oxygen tank or sullied by a squashed Depends after you’ve been hip checked into the “New Biographies.”

First, there was the gent guarding the new John Grisham novel he was caressing. He looked like he had a Derringer hidden between the pages in case someone tried to roll him for the tome. I’ve had it on “hold” for weeks so I couldn’t help jealously noticing his copy and while flipping the pages of the freebie weekly paper I took furtive glances at the guy hoping he’d have to run to the can before checking it out and I could scoop it up before he returned. Mea culpa. Yeah, I know it’s junk but it’s perfect for reading on the, um, poop deck…which is why I’m sure he took it with him.

Then there was a lady who must have been, in her earlier life, a moving shooting gallery target or a pendulum, because she never stopped her back and forth striding in front of me, blocking any chance of grabbing a book off the shelf. Every time I reached in, I was stymied by her giant handbag and severely thrashed by her razor sharp poodle brooch.

The man who answered to “Bash” decided he would defend all “Current Mysteries” and held up and spread his arms and legs in front of the stacks in a posture that gave the unmistakable message, “I’m the only one solving any mysteries today, so beat it!”

Finally, there were the nice little old ladies working as a team to make sure they had an exclusive on “Crafts and Hobbies.” Their winsome smiles were only tactical camouflage for the monsters behind them as they closed ranks on a young mom who just wanted some ideas for knitting a chastity belt for her precocious pre-teen daughter. She ran away making sounds that really belonged in the “Horror” section.

So I’m sticking to the weekends for now on when all I have to worry about are little children throwing up and students sleeping on the floor, and the senior citizens are safely away scarfing up free cookies in the hospital lobby.

The Barber of Civil

cheaphaircutWent for a haircut today. What do you call it? A “styling?” During my TV years I called it that because the places I frequented for my tonsorial trims charged inflated prices for the privilege even though they performed the same service as the much lower priced haircut places. Basically, you come out of both with less hair and less money, with the only difference being how much less money.

I’ve been going to the same chain place for 15 years. It’s in a strip mall that lost its anchor store long ago leaving a few lonely active storefronts scattered along the walkway. There’s a coney restaurant, Eurasian restaurant, dentist, and my haircutting place. In between, an empty hulk where the supermarket once was.

Most of the haircutters at my place are Russian women. There’s one American guy but he talks too much. That’s what “stylists” do. They want to act like they’re your friend. A friend wouldn’t use a sharp instrument to remove part of my body…at any price.

The Russian women don’t screw around. They cut your hair and then it’s out-ski. Typical conversation:

Russian haircutter (RC): “It nice outside.”

Me: “It IS! Beautiful!”

RC: “Dat’s rrrrright!”

They don’t ask what you do, if you’ve had a nice day or how your family is. It’s just snip-snip-snip, cash out, tip and scram.

I found some old photos of when I was on TV and had my hair cut by expensive stylists and compared it with how I look today after being shorn by a chain chopper. No difference. Still have a face for radio.

I think if I ever went back to television I’d still go to the same place to get my hair cut, coughing up 12 bucks each time plus tip. If forced, I’ll just hyperbolize, if asked where I get my hair done, and say FABULOUS Sams. That would just be fantastic.haircut

Set Me Up, Pharm Girl

'Like to sample an antidepressant, sir?...'

‘Like to sample an antidepressant, sir?…’

Like many others of a “certain age” it takes a certain combination of pharmaceuticals to keep me both alive and kvetching. But over the past year or so visits to the pharmacy have morphed into something not unlike popping into the neighborhood watering hole.

I swing through the door and before I can claim a spot in line the friendly pharmacist offers a big wave and a smile with the hearty and familiar greeting, “Hi Mr. Garsten! Have your prescriptions coming right up!”

It’s as if I sidled up to the bar like a regular and having my favorite cocktail served up without the need to order. What’s next? Tipping the pharmacist so she’ll set me up every once in awhile with a free round of painkillers and some fruit flavored Tums to chew on while swapping stories of recent indigestion or infections?

“Oh yeah, Mr. G. I know what cha mean. That stabbing pain in the gut’s a bitch. Another Rolaids? It’s on the house. Here..take the whole roll.”

I’m not complaining, although having her announce my name for all to hear must be at odds with those HIPA privacy laws. That’s all I need is one of the “pharm-flies” hanging around the drug store, following me home, begging for any spare painkillers or a suppository for, you know, later.

Being hard of hearing made Ursula every pharmacy customer's worst nightmare.

Being hard of hearing made Ursula every pharmacy customer’s worst nightmare.

So while I appreciate the instant recognition and not having to announce my name, I’d just as soon my personal drug dispenser either quietly place my stuff in a bag without letting the entire world know exactly what my maladies happen to be, or at least allow me to whisper my name out of earshot of “Hemorrhoid Harry” waiting behind me in line for his weekly tube of relief.

I think on my next trip I’ll bust into the drug store, and before the pharm girl can holler her familiar greeting that includes my name I’m gonna exclaim, “I’m cured!” If she replies, “that’s great, Mr. Garsten,” I’m going mail order…with a stern warning to the postman.

Campaign Candy….If Trick or Treating Told the Story

Updated October 31, 2015

Instead of debates, I think we’d see the true measure of the Presidential candidates through their trick or treating techniques, since an important aspect of being an effective politician is begging for handouts.

halloweenpoliticsHere’s how I imagine it going down.

Hillary Clinton: “Trick or Treat! I’m counting on a fair appropriation of your sugary assets to sweeten my bulging campaign treasure chest and add to the goodies my party and I already promise to re-distribute once I’m elected.”

Donald Trump: “Are you a moron? This is no comic book trick or treat! You hand me minuscule Hershey Kisses when someone of my immense business acumen and ego is worthy of no less than a king sized Kit Kat bar. When I’m President losers like you and anyone with a foreign accent will be choking on M&Ms while true Americans will be dining on Snickers and Toblerones! In fact, I intend to build a wall around your lousy subdivision!”

Jeb Bush: “Trick or treat….please. My costume? Oh…I’m supposed to be masquerading as a viable candidate for President. At this point any donation will be appreciated. By the way, unlike my opponent Marco Rubio, I show up EVERY Halloween to beg for candy.”

Marco Rubio: “Hey, Bush Boy, you didn’t complain when John McCain missed a few Halloweens.  Besides..t’s getting late. My mom says I have to get home, but could you toss in a Milky Way?”

Dr. Ben Carson: Person at door: “What? What? Speak up man!” Carson: “Hey! That’s a ‘gotcha question!’ But if you insist, I’m here in hopes you might toss a bon bon or two in my bag. I firmly believe any variety of violent war crimes and the attempt to exterminate a race could have been avoided if the victims came supplied with Tootsie Rolls rather than Mary Janes. I’m sure you see the logic in that.”

Bernie Sanders: Doesn’t solicit sweets. Knocks on doors and gives out free candy to anyone who wants it.

How to Piss Off a Canadian

canadianelectionsThe Canadian elections remind of when CNN sent us to Ottawa to cover the elections up there. We were given a workspace in the CBC building, which we shared with some very intense guys from the BBC. Our minder was a thin, middle-aged man with scraggly white hair and a beard to match, a cigarette firmly planted in his puss and nicotine stains on his rumpled white shirt. “Come this way,” he urged us. “I’ll take you to a secret room!” So we followed him to what looked like the door to just another office. It wasn’t. It was a crowded, smoke-filled, space with a very full bar, very full of fairly looped CBC personnel. “What are you drinking?” he asked. We put in our orders, drank and ordered some more..all of which were on the house.
This was a terribly bad idea since I had to do some live shots with the esteemed CNN anchor Bernard Shaw. We were warned that Canadian law forbade us from giving any results until all the polls closed across the vast country. With a few shots of CBC’s potent hospitality in me, my judgment became quite clouded. So now I’m on the air with Mr. Shaw and in his booming baritone he asks, “ED! ARE ANY RESULTS IN YET?” “YES, BERNIE, SO AND SO IS OFF TO A HUGE LEAD IN THE EARLY RETURNS!” Uh oh. Our once friendly Canadian minder comes bursting into the room and his attitude has changed markedly and his face is now a deep shade of scarlet as he screams at me, “You have just broken Canadian federal law and will probably go to jail…you idiot!”
This made my next live shot a bit more difficult when I had to inform Mr. Shaw’s producer I was no longer permitted to give results until the last person in the Northwest Territories had tossed his/her parchment into the ballot box.
Of course those boys from the Beeb watched all this happening and could only remark, “Bit of a temper, eh?”

Ladies Who Lunge

ladies-who-lunch_0003I always enjoy eating lunch at a well-known coffee/bagel/sandwich/soup place that starts with a P. Why? The one I tend to go to is in a high-class area and is often populated by “ladies who lunch.” I’m amazed to see a group of them schlepping trays that would indicate they intended, at one time, to eat healthy, but after checking their biological clocks, said ‘screw it. I’m gonna eat as if I was about to walk the Green Mile.” For instance, on this day the very well dressed dowager was decked out in a faultless red ensemble including hat, jacket, skirt and rouge. On her tray, in escalating order of death wish were: cup of water, coffee, garden salad, roast beef sandwich, potato chips, and caramel-nut danish roughly the size of a mastodon’s head.
One of her companions chose a plaid outfit and covered her eczema breeding grounds with a magnificent pair of what looked like boots made of either ostrich or the upholstery from the back seat of a late-model Bentley, which she resembled in proportion and stance. On her tray was the largest cup of soda available and a straw too tall to fit comfortably in her mouth, which cause her first sip to be accomplished by her right nostril. The reservoir-sized soft drink served to swill down the tank of tuna stuffed into a baguette that resembled a torpedo that might have been fired from the Bismark. While she eschewed the chips, she could not resist the cinnamon raisin bagel that could have very well been used as a target for a blind archer.
Indeed, we felt totally inadequate slurping our relatively modest soups in bread bowls accompanied by cups of water, which incidentally, are free. Alas, we finished our lunch before we could see if the dining dowagers survived ingesting the loads on their individual feed lots, although I may have heard the faint call for a clean-up crew as we exited.

Goodbye Columbus

Columbus-DayAnother Columbus Day is upon us and damned, if we didn’t forget to decorate the house again. The big day just creeps up on us just as the scummy Italian explorer skulked onto the island of Hispaniola and promptly pillaged all the Dominican infielders in the name of King Ferdinand, who, up until that moment had a laughably losing fantasy baseball team.

When we were kids in New York City we had the day off school. They told us it was because Christopher Columbus discovered America, but we later found out it was because teachers received twofer coupons at the Olive Garden, even though the food isn’t remotely Italian.

Still, we learned about Columbus’s three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, which ostensibly brought him and his crew to North America on their voyage of discovery. Much later, historians made a startling discovery of their own, revealing many of the crew members took ill, some fatally, since those three vessels were actually early Carnival cruises.

Personally, I don’t see why Columbus got a holiday or cities in Ohio and Georgia since does anyone in their right minds truly believe a land mass as large as America wouldn’t have been found in short order? Truthfully, it was never lost since the native peoples living here were perfectly satisfied they had discovered the land on which they already lived. The fact that some white guy from Italy stumbled on it merely meant he discovered new foods on which to sprinkle garlic.

Truth is, what Columbus really discovered, was that he was terribly lost. Indeed, he was such a blithering idiot he probably couldn’t find his way around his namesake circle in Manhattan. After three fruitless circuits, I could hear him exclaim to his crew, “I’ve discovered Central Park and claim it for Italy!”

Yes, Columbus Day is certainly a worthwhile celebration if only because it’s an easier name to say than Vespucci.

Binging on The Bings…and Their Friends

friendsMy wife and I just lived 10 years in 3 months. That’s because we plowed through all 235 episodes of “Friends.” We boycotted the show during its run because we were loyal to “Seinfeld” and thought “Friends” was a sanitized, read that, “less New Yorky/Jewish” version even though it was set in New York and the siblings Ross and Monica Geller were Jewish. We were also loyal to Seinfeld because he dated a friend of mine for several years and attended my under grad college, SUNY Oswego, for a short time. To be sure, we never uttered a word to each other.

Oh yeah, we heard about the Ross and Rachel angst that lasted the entire run of the show and I think I saw somewhere, probably TV Guide, that Chandler and Monica got married, but that was it.

Here are my conclusions about what likely happened to the six characters after the finale:

1-The marriage between wisecracking Chandler and uptight control freak Monica would end when he replaces their twin babies’ diapers with fart cushions.

2-Dimwit actor-Lothario Joey is killed when he suffocates attempting to have sex with a box of styrofoam.

3-Free-spirit masseuse Phoebe goes on to a career massaging Bernie Sanders’s poll numbers

4-The beautiful fashion plate Rachel realizes wimpy, whiny Ross is not only a horrible, annoying mate, but his greasy, wet hair is actually a growing medium for morel mushrooms. She leaves him for a handsome mannequin she saw in the window of Saks. Ross says, “Oh darned!”

I’ll likely miss work for a few days while I use a mental enema to flush hearing peppy theme song, “I’ll Be There for You” 235 times.  As Chandler might say, “could that song BE any more cloying!”

I kinda preferred Phoebe’s “Smelly Cat.” After all, as the lyric goes, “it’s not your fault.”

My Northern Limits

leaf1Are you a leaf lemming? You know who you are. Around this time of year your internal nav system directs you to travel north to look at the turning leaves. It doesn’t seem to matter how far north you live..you need to go even north-er.

When I lived in Tucson, Arizona it made sense to travel north to the White Mountains or to Flagstaff since Tucson is in the desert and there are no leaves. Although the fools from whom we bought our little adobe home idiotically planted a mulberry tree in the front yard. The poor thing had a few limp leaves, but they never turned anything except crispy in the hot desert sun.

But when we moved to Atlanta, one of most lush cities in America, did I start to scratch my head over the annual migration north to look at leaves turning colors when you could sit on your back porch or patio with a cold beverage and see all you want. Hell, you could watch ‘em turn, fall and then go ahead and rake the suckers without leaving your leaf lair. But no, you were compelled to get in the car and travel to north Georgia or up to the Smokies to witness the natural pigment purging. Yes, those areas are quite scenic and I wouldn’t begrudge anyone their right to travel there. I’m just saying if you want to see orange or yellow leaves there are plenty nearby, or next to a tanning plant, except those leaves turn colors in the summer and spring too.

Now..let’s take the premise to the nth degree. In 1989 we moved more than 700 north to the Detroit area. That’s north, baby! But obviously not north enough. First of all, we quickly learned that Michiganders are obsessed with traveling Up North, which seems to be anywhere north of Bay City, or the nearest Gander Mountain store. They travel Up North year ‘round because evidently the doors on their real homes automatically lock each Friday at 4 p.m. rendering their keys useless. No place to go, but Up North.upnorth

So it was no surprise that come fall we were told you had to go Up North to marvel at the turning leaves. “But we used to go north to north Georgia and the Smokies to look at the leaves. We’re more than 700 miles north of that and you’re telling me we have to travel still further north to see the damn things cough up their chlorophyll?”

That had me wondering where year ‘round residents of Up North go to see the leaves turn. Then it occurred to me. Of course. That’s why we have the Upper Peninsula.up

Hi Times and Misdemeanors

hiI consider myself a pretty friendly person, always armed and ready with a “hi” for anyone I pass. But while taking a short walk with my son at a nearby park, it became evident that the simple salutation comes in many forms, and not always in the spirit of the greeting.

The usual M.O. is this: as you realize you are about to cross paths with another human, or group of them, you quickly size them up as to whether or not you will greet them and, if so, the degree of enthusiasm your “hi” will be. If it looks like the person or persons just decided rainbows are synonymous with chain restaurant salad bars, perhaps only an imperceptible grunt is in order. If it appears as if the couple just reenacted their honeymoon, then a bright smile accompanying a big, rousing, “HI!” is appropriate.

Today my son and I encountered a young couple who appeared to have just emerged from a manhole. Ostensibly in their late 20’s or early 30’s they were as unkempt as a third tier presidential candidate after a debate and just as surly. Nevertheless, we followed established hiking trail protocol and attempted a courteous, if not overly energetic “Hi!” The woman completely ignored us as the guy growled something that was unintelligible but more than the one syllable “hi” would require. My best guess was his rejoinder to our greeting was “yeahwuhuhhuhbrabwahfoo.”

On the other hand, my wife and I have been utterly delighted on several consecutive weekends to encounter a flotilla of Japanese canoeists passing us as we paddled along the Huron River. The occupants in the three boats never fail to wear big smiles and return our sincere “Hi’s” with even bigger “HIs!!!!”

howudoinWe’ve been tempted to act out our hidden Joey Tribbiani from the old show “Friends” by changing it up and asking “how YOU doin’?” Luckily we’re strict “Hi”constructionists, which should be fair warning for anyone considering hitting us with a brazen “good morning,” or “nice day.” Our motto: “Just pass by. Just say hi.” Bye.