The Great Plotnik

49

2012-01-28T16:59:00.000-08:00

We celebrated Schmekl and Little Bear Plotnik's 49th Anniversary (in the year of the 49er) at Buckeye Roadhouse last night. Perhaps you can tell L.B. was well into her second dirty martini, as was The Duck who was sitting next to her. They became rather humorous. Meanwhile, Plot put away a pisco sour and his brother threw off all inhibitions and ordered a Diet Coke.

The artichoke and chicken-under-a-brick were terrific, as always. The Buckeye is one of those rare places where the minute you walk in the door you can't wait to eat.

Earlier in the day the four Plots sat through the planetarium show at the Academy of Sciences, which started out great but ended up pedantic and sleep-inducing, especially since you're in a comfy chair in the dark.

Today R and P are off seeing 'Humor Abuse' and Plot and Duck are off to SF Playhouse for their new show tonight. Tomorrow, if the good weather holds, we'll all head down the coast and take a walk in the redwoods. It's fun, fun, fun, 'til her Daddy takes the T-Bird away.

R and P Day Two

2012-01-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

We're having a great time. Today is Forty Niners Day -- as in, it's Ricky and Paula's 49th Anniversary. Saint Plotniko never looked nicer. We'll do it up tonight.

Why G Blank Blank Doesn't Eat Pork (Supposedly)

2012-01-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed? Plotnik seems to be posting every other day now. It isn't conscious -- could it be he is even boring himself? This trend must be reversed.

Bro and ElBee arrived yesterday with enough bbq ribs to feed Jackson, Mississippi. They were the kind Plottie loves best -- not sauced, but really tasty, and the sauce is on the side. How about three racks for four people? Yes, there are leftovers. Many, many leftovers.

Turns out that tabboule with preserved lemons is the perfect foil for ribs -- all that lemon cuts the grease and allows you eat even more pork.

What do Jews and Muslims have against pig, anyway? It's so tasty, and no worse for you than any other meat. True, there once was a fear of disease from undercooked pork, but, you know, they cooked on campfires. How in the world do you undercook anything on a campfire?

What really happened is far simpler. Who writes this stuff down, anyway? The Chief Rabbi. How do you become Chief Rabbi? You buy political favor. Probably the guy who was the Chief Rabbi's major contributor ran a lamb farm or a cow farm. Prohibiting pork would help buddy's business, and go a long way to securing future donations.

Especially if you could convince your illiterate followers that G Blank Blank, who I can promise you would have LOVED those ribs last night, had ordained it.

Obviously The Great Plotnik neither feels his flock is piggy nor illiterate, nor does he mean to slight Mr. Blank Blank. He is only saying that food is food and religion is religion. Plotnikkies believe you should pray to whomever you prefer and eat whatever you like. Except liver.

The We Didn't Buy The OTHER One Tejido

2012-01-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

Plottie was cleaning up his studio because S. and L.B. Plotnik are arriving tomorrow. He found a tejido, or wall hanging, stuffed into his closet and had to ask Ducknik what it was.

Oh, yeah, THAT tejido. The We Didn't Buy the Other One tejido.

It's a great travel lesson. Plot and Duck were in Cuzco, Peru, and they kept walking by a shop with the most fascinating and unique tejido in the window. After a few days they walked in and little by little convinced themselves they should own that tejido. After inquiring with the lady behind the counter, they discovered this story:

The beautiful wall hanging was from an artist from Ayacucho, Peru. Ayacucho is up in the mountains, perhaps an eight hour drive from Lima. It is the home of an indigenous weaving tradition, but that drive is a tough, mountainous one so the town is not on the tourist circuit. It was, once -- when the trains still ran.

But Ayacucho was also the home of the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, a band of Maoist guerrillas whose desire was to destroy the Peruvian government. They were vicious dudes, to say the least. One of their shining methods was to dynamite the magnificent, century-old railroad trestles which had connected Ayacucho with the rest of the country. Peru used to have the finest railroad system in South America, but once the tracks were destroyed that was the end of it, and Ayacucho became an outpost few know about.

But artists are still there. This tejido was nothing like Plot or Duck had ever seen. Less traditional, except for its large shape, the design was almost Escher-like. The price was $550.00 US.

Now, if you know The Great Cheapnik, you know he doesn't spend that kind of money on anything when they travel (unless it has strings). But this piece was so beautiful! So they began going back to the store every day or two, wondering if the price might be reduced. The lady wouldn't budge.

When you bargain you have to mean it. Plot offered less. She said no. He offered a little more. She said no again, and again. She wouldn't lower the price one penny. Plottie couldn't allow himself to buy if she wouldn't play along too.

So, in the end, they made their last offer, very close to the original price, and the woman, for the last time, said no. They shook hands and walked out of the store. Plot expected the woman to stop him, when she saw he meant it, and give him his asking price.

But now they were out on the little cobblestoned street, surrounded by those gigantic and incredulous hand-hewn Inca walls. They were leaving the next morning. What to do?

They spied another shop. They walked in. It was a more typical place, full of old rugs and other weavings from around the county. They spotted something. They offered $75 bucks. The man took it, gladly, and wrapped the rug up. When Plot and Duck got home, they unwrapped it.

It's very nice. But it's Not the Other One.

The Tejido that isn't the Other Tejido sat in Plottie's studio closet behind a package of old CDs until yesterday. It's on the back of the sofa now. The lesson:

When you're somewhere you know you'll never go back to, and you find something you love, buy it. If you don't spend the money at that moment, you'll just go home with it and buy toothpaste and car insurance. You won't care about the money but you'll miss the Tejido that Got Away.

Three Schoolmarms

2012-01-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

Last night Plotnik posed the question as to if there is any difference between Harry Reed, Mitch McConnell and Ron Paul? We're not talking politics here, but style: those three men aggravate Plotnik the moment they open their mouths, not because they would lie to Mama Mouse to get her to buy one more slice of their toxic cheese, but because they are prissy, eyes-closed, know-it-all, ruler-weilding schoolmarms.

Silent Bill seems to think Eric Kantor is worse than Mitch McConnell, but not for me. Kantor is 100% wrong on practically every issue, but at least he doesn't purse his lips and roll his eyes.

Ron Paul actually makes sense a small percentage of the time -- his opinions on foreign policy match Plotnik's almost exactly, so they must be right. But how can you listen to him? He whines like Ralph Nader. He's like a tiny Kobe Bryant -- convinced everybody is fouling him every time they hand him the ball.

Harry Reed, Plottie just wants to slug, to render him unconscious for awhile. Nobody can out-smug Harry Reed.

You can't slug Mitch McConnell. Your fist will touch nothing but cologne. He is a non-corporal prig. And yet, though without a body, he is fat. Chinese water torture, nothing less will do.

Al Gore was smug. But he had a body. A lot of it. Mitt Romney is not smug, and he has a body too. He's not a bad guy. He's not. C'mon, you guys, really. He's not. Really.

Why doesn't anyone believe that?

But Newt? Corporal. And smart. And a little scary, as cretins tend to be. But Newt doesn't bother Plotnik. Well, the hair. But better Newt Hair than The Donald's.

By the way, The Great Ducknik says don't worry about Newt, because there are more women than men in America. Even Christian die hard evangelist women can't forgive that hypocritical sleezeball, can they?

Buses Take Time. Yogi Berra Didn't Say That

2012-01-20T08:37:00.001-08:00

The Great Ducknik is currently not driving. This means she is using public transportation. This means for an 8:30am appointment this morning she left the house at 7:20.

Plotnik could have bicycled there in half an hour easy.

But he will drive over and pick her up at 9:15. This means he will leave at 9am and probably get there early.

Public trans: an hour. Bike: Half an hour. Car: 12 minutes. Plotnik wishes the discussion on municipal transit would say this out loud once in awhile so they could include in their decision making the way people actually live.

-------

He's picking up Ducknik so they can get out to the Legion of Honor to see the Pissarro exhibition before it closes on Sunday. Why do they always wait until the last minute? Yesterday, Plottie saw the Saint Plotniko photography show at Pier 24. It is closing next week.

He was less than thrilled with that exhibition, but that had something to do with the fact that he decided to drive to it, in order to save time. But that meant he had to park. Parking meant he had to deal with the "new" meter system in front of Pier 24. It doesn't work. No matter how many times you push Green which means CONCLUDE TRANSACTION, nothing happens. And the meter jams so no one behind you can use it either.

So all the time he was inside the museum he was thinking he was going to get towed away any second. It didn't help his enjoyment of this massive exhibit, but as always the old Genthe and Muybridge photos, taken over a century ago, are breathtaking.

Plotnik likes small museums, or, failing that, small exhibitions in large museums, or if it's going to be a huge exhibition in a huge space, at least give the poor uniformed viewer some explanation as to why that photo of the hobo from 1972 is important. Or, if there is to be a lot to see and no explanation whatsoever, at least make it uncrowded. Pier 24 was just about empty, except for Plottie.

Plottie's favorite photo, aside from the Genthe and Muybridge, was a shot taken in Yankee Stadium at night. Why was that photo included in this exhibition? Who the hell knows? But he loved looking at all the people in rapt attention and the old Longine's scoreboard. Number 7 was at bat, according to the numbers on the scoreboard, followed by Number 8. That's Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra, folks.

What a Town, What an Ocean

2012-01-17T09:00:00.000-08:00

The Pacific Ocean in January -- another one of those Giant Bonuses you get when you live in Saint Plotniko. Fifteen minutes from downtown and you're in the world of waves, rocks, fishermen and crab sandwiches.

It was Silent Bill's birthday lunch so along with the crab sandwiches from Nick's went two Crab Louies and one cheeseburger. Guess who ordered that?

Good guess. And Mudd Pie.

Like the Great Domin-Nik says in her blog today, it makes a lot of sense to eat those crab sandwiches. Kool had it right. Celebrate! Dance to the music.

Good for the Tummy and the Heart

2012-01-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

The critic's secret heart is exposed in the latest Word For Word production: "Food Stories - Pleasure is Pleasure." This is a fabulous show, not to be missed, and as you know, this grouchy guy does not say that often. Here's the SF Theater Blog link.

One of the subthemes of the T.C. Boyle story "Sorry, Fugu" which opens the evening, is the concept of how saying no is so much easier than saying yes. As a publisher once explained to Plotnik, "no one ever lost their job by saying no."

The guy who said no to Elvis or the Beatles is probably still working. The guy who said yes to "Cheseburgers on Ice" or that new phenom that neither you nor anyone else has ever heard of was probably in the unemployment office by the weekend.

A restaurant critic is one of the main critics in the first story. Some of us, who used to be restaurant critics, but are now theater critics, will be forced to realize that we never looked as good in our Reviewer Outfit as Delia MacDougall does in that cool red dress.

The Niners Were Beautiful Yesterday. But I'm Still On the Edge of Hating Them.

2012-01-15T12:07:00.000-08:00

It was a sports' fans delirium day yesterday, and after the 49ers' unbelievably exciting win the Mission was awash in honking horns for the rest of the night. All the low riders came out, with their cars double parked while they bbq'd and drank 40s on the sidewalk. What a great day.

And wow, what a football game. Even the Duck, who cares about football even less than Plotnik usually does, sat transfixed with him watching the Fourth Quarter. Amazing.

And with all that there was not one mention anywhere, in the news or on the air, about how the 49ers have told their city to f*** themselves so they can move to Santa Clara in a few years, where people are surprised that the best season boxes will cost in the $80,000 range, for the right to pay an additional $325 per game per seat.

"We're pricing out the middle class," somebody wrote. Really? A hundred K for the season and the middle class is being priced out? Dudes, please.

Do you really think the high techies and ad men will bring their Lexus station wagons out onto Santa Clara Boulevard and party like it used to be 1999? Will the investment fat cats give one damn about this team, in their hearts?

It really makes you sad. Plotnik loves the Niners, but that love has topped out. Yesterday made him feel proud, but really, the second they lose it will be really easy to start feeling disgusted and abandoned again.

The Long View and Lactose

2012-01-14T10:16:00.000-08:00

The long view is best. The long view says that whatever it is that is sticking under your saddle right now, will be lost and forgotten in a relatively short time. In the long view, what counts, counts. What doesn't count isn't worth getting upset about.

It's the time frame that you must work on. For example, your child will eventually do the right thing, but only if he or she does the wrong thing first. This tends to happen during your lifetime, so count it as good.

On the other hand, your wife will sooner or later realize you were right all along, but most likely not until you're dead. This is good, for her, but bad for you. As in comedy, timing is everything.

The short view needs extra money to acquire that -- you know, that thing you can't live without. The long view says technology will render it obsolete before you even buy it. The long view is doing you a favor here.

Not talking food or health care or becoming homeless. But your darling will not curl into a leaf and become a useless larvae if he doesn't get into that pre-school where they learn Urdu.

Reverb units are different. You can't live without the right reverb. This is what happened to Plotnik the other day.

He went to Guitar Center. Guitar Center is where Plotnik goes to feel old and in the way. But it's worth it: all those guitars!

He happened to walk by the Bargain Bin. In the Bargain Bin was a reverb unit -- software. The package looked like it was a hundred years old. The store didn't even have it in its inventory, so they gave it to Plotnik for free.

Of course, when he got it home it wouldn't load in his computer, so he e-mailed the company, which is in Holland. The next day he got an answer: the company told him he could have an upgrade, as long as he gave them his original sales receipt.

He wrote back telling them he didn't have a sales receipt because the store gave it to him for free.

The next day he got an answer: they could give him a free trial of their newest product. It would work for fifteen days. Plotnik figured that in fifteen days he could use it to sweeten his solo project and then wouldn't need it any more. He told them this was fine, what should he do next?

The next day he got an answer: Download this link, hit that link. He did it. At the very end of the installation they asked for a serial number. He didn't have a serial number. He wrote them telling them he needed a way to bypass the serial number.

The next day he got an answer: Just try it again, and when it comes to the serial number, just hit RETURN. He did it. The software just laughed at him, in Dutch, hjar hjar hjar. He wrote and told them he still couldn't install the software.

The next day he got an answer which basically said We are tired of you. Could you please just go away and forget you ever heard of us? Plotnik wrote back and said I'll be glad to, after I sent this correspondence to your president and the International Software Terrorism Committee, which just happens to meet regularly in Amsterdam.

Ha ha ha ha.

Hjar hjar hjar hjar.

The next day he got no answer. Nor today.

All of this is just prelude to the important statement: The Great PunkyDunky just wrote to say that Isabella is now telling people "she is lactose intolerant except for chocolate milk."

Hjar hjar hjar, long view, short view, THAT is just perfect.

Off to the Races

2012-01-12T11:15:00.000-08:00

After reviewing fifty seven plays in 2011 we're off to the races again in 2012. Plotnik is hoping the shows for the rest of the year don't give him many tough-to-write reviews like last night's "thgiL tsohG." This is your Big Deal, a Saint Plotniko natural story which details the effects of Mayor enocsoM's assassination in 1978 on his son noJ. You can read the San Francisco Blog's first review of the year, of "thgiL tsohG" by noJ ecocsoM and ynoT enoccaT here.

Willie Brown was there last night -- he came in late and changed seats for the second act, while his original seat seemed to be taken by Richard Blum, husband of Senator Diane Feinstein. We forget that Mayor Brown is just about legally blind -- he had to be helped to his seat -- because he refuses to be seen in public with either thick glasses, a cane or a dog.

He was standing by the refreshment stand at intermission. Plotnik had to fight back the urge to approach him and ask him if he'd like a cookie. Plotnik would like to buy Willie Brown a cookie. Shoulda done it.

Saxophone for the Masses

2012-01-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

Brother Jimmy Street has been here for a few days, and he will play sax for food, so he and Plot have been down in the cave. This is the first work Plottie has done on "Foghead" for well over a year, and finally it is starting to sound the way it's supposed to sound. Jim's brought his clarinet and flute as well as his alto, but so far it's just that sweet, funky alto sax.

You see him pointing to China here -- that's where the Princess Cruise leaves from that's Jim's going to be on for a few months -- he'll be playing in the ship band. He was just saying yesterday he'd love to go to Asia, and then the phone rang this morning. So Plottie's happy to have him while he can.

Religious Questioning

2012-01-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

Thanks to The Great Large Pants for this chart. Take a look.

Plotnik is afraid he would be classified as a Muslim, but he could be a Mormon if the question about the underwear could refer to someone else's underwear besides his.

We Didn't Want to Come East for Christmas

2012-01-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

The Great Plotnik has received a posting from his Holiday and Hot Sauce Correspondent D. Conrad ("Con") Achy. As always, Achy isn't sure whether this is a story or a song. He's weird like that. Grab an eggnog. This'll take awhile.

Brooklyn Stories 2:

We Didn’t Want to Come East for Christmas

PART ONE

We wanted them to come West, like they always do.

We wanted them to come to us, not we go to them.

Like always. Like Christmas is supposed to be.

Christmas in San Francisco. A taco and a tree.

But on Christmas Eve we all walked up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue

Which was jammed with nicely dressed people

Everyone’s small-looking head

Peeking out of large, furry collars

Gloves on hands and knitted scarves

Hats wrapped around necks and pulled over ears,

To keep away the biting wind

That roars crosstown

Seeking exposed skin

At 57^th Street, at 58^th Street, at 59^th Street

The moment you pass out of the lea

Of uptown skyscrapers, there, on the corner, see

The Arab street vendors

Smell the chestnuts roasting

Or sort of roasting

Actually they are propaning

Then you hunch down into your overcoat and without complaining

Hurry across the avenue

Diving this way and that

Through honking trucks and taxis. Who can believe

That anyone would drive

On Christmas Eve?

There’s Trump Tower, hurry in.

Take a break from this bone-cold wind.

Inside Trump Tower, a book kiosk.

Every book a Donald Trump book.

No one’s behind the counter.

You can only look.

The point is not to sell you

But remind you

That Trump has already defined you

Undermined you

He has written

Or at least had his hair put on the cover of

No less than fifteen books.

An idiot. With fifteen books.

They even have titles:

“How to Get Rich.”

“Think Like a Champion.”

Up an escalator

But we couldn’t get off.

The line to get into the Starbucks on the second floor

Of the Trump Tower

Was at least fifty people long.

What is going on here?

There’s a Starbucks on 56^th Street

And a Starbucks on 57^th Street

And a Starbucks probably mounted on a horse pulling a hansom cab through Central Park.

The horse is tireless.

He surely has wireless.

Why wait in line here?

Is 60 really the new 25?

Is The Donald the New Santa?

Warmed up, we sailed back outside.

I looked up: Wow.

Electronic snowflakes brilliantly illuminating Fifth Avenue

The famous store windows

At Bergdorf-Goodman’s

Which used to be William Vanderbilt’s mansion

One entire square block of Primo Manhattan

One house, 77 rooms

When the One Per Cent

Looked like today’s Ninety Nine

Old money makes Trump

Seem like a chump

When Bill Vanderbilt

And Jake Astor

Were Lord

And Master

These decorated store windows are gorgeous

Each with a different, other-worldy Christmas scene

The last was weird but the next is stranger

Lady Gaga

Jesus in a manger

Mary wearing Prada

Blue icicle erota

Chilled Spaniards

French dreamers

She takes his photo

With freezing fingers

And every single person on the broad avenue

Carrying one shopping bag, or maybe two

Filled with presents, white, red, green.

You cannot not notice

That everyone is smiling

Tacking slowly uptown

with the rest of the crowd

Moving on a leisurely broad reach

Along this world-famous Sea of Holiday Happy

All of us together

Before the gales freeze us

It’s jewels for Jesus.

Moses gets pajamas.

Somehow it all makes sense.

Everybody speaks happy.

At the Hotel Astor

A giant candy cane in front of the black-and-yellow awning

Next to which a red-jacketed Nutcracker

laughs merrily down at passing children.

Every child

Walking in front of the hotel

Looks up and giggles.

“Jeez,” I said to Staci.

“I know,” she said. “It’s magic.”

It is magic.

Christmas in New York is just Christmas-ier than Christmas in San Francisco.

The rest of the year we are the Big Bubble.

The west coast’s cosmopolitan, urban jewel

But in December

compared to The Big Apple

We are the Small Potato.

The Little Orange.

It makes sense to go East for Christmas. It’s cold.

Christmas should be cold.

I could have used a little snow, because I was set

With the alpaca gloves I brought back from Peru

And the knit cap I carried home from Punta Arenas, Chile

Plus the lined and hooded heavy coat Barb bought me

Which I first used for her Dad’s funeral

That icy morning years ago on the hill

Overlooking the railroad hollow in Kentucky.

The hard part, as always, in getting used to cold weather,

Is coming inside.

You endure that atomic flash

Of interior heating

Which requires you to rid yourself of all your cold weather gear

As fast as you can.

But don’t lose the gloves or the hat or the scarf

Because five minutes from now

You are going to have to put them all back on.

It’s Showtime.

It might be snow time.

PART TWO

It was fun to watch Dan and Isabella

Ice skate in Bryant Park

Surrounded by designer skyscrapers

A thousand holiday merrymakers

Four hours in a line so you can skate for free.

People are more patient than they used to be,

Apparently.

Drawn outside, by the zamboni smitten

You can work an I-Phone

With a woolen mitten.

It was fabulous to see our kids put on Christmas

With what seemed to be so little effort.

Did we teach them that?

Christ, I don’t think so.

It seems to me that I have traditionally

Been insane with worry about my family

Coming into town for the holiday

And me in my kerchief and Ma in her cap

Would immediately start our inevitable scrap

And all would pitch in to dive into the crap.

Dan and Staci and Bronnie, thanks,

Don’t seem to be bothering with any of that angst.

But then again, it was only us.

No, not true.

On Christmas Day there were friends dropping in

Dinner to get ready, and one person eats one thing

And not another

And the other eats the second thing

But not the first thing.

But everyone drinks whiskey and martinis.

They serve the dinner without a genie

Everyone enjoys telling jokes and playing music.

Isabella on conga. Jen on dumbek.

Dan plays guitar, Bron and Staci sing

What a snap, let freedom ring

Hanukkah intersected with Christmas this year…

Start spreading the news

Keep choosing the Jews

So from Providence Bron brought down the menorah

She’d made in preschool in Hollywood.

It’s made out of cardboard with hex nuts from the hardware store

To hold the candles.

From Dan’s dining room table in Brooklyn

We called my Mom in L.A.

As we got ready to light them. We’d insert the shamus

Strike the match

Then get Mom on the phone

So we could all sing the prayer together, in real time, while we lit the rest of the candles.

My Mom and I know the prayer.

But she forgets.

Bron sings with me when she's home. Tonight

We all sing it like we mean it.

Melody and light.

I fought my minimal Hebrew School education when I was a boy, hated it, Wanted nothing to do with it.

All I ever really learned was the prayers.

And yet

Baruch ataw adonai elohaynu melech haolam. Asher kidishanu b’mitzvosav vitzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

Blessed art thou oh Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hath commanded us to light the Hanukkah lights.

That’s right, bubba, I’m the Patriarch now.

I could hear my Mom singing into the receiver

In her small but oh-so-familiar voice

Remembering the parts she could

And maybe she forgot that she was in LA

And we were in Brooklyn

Or who all was crowded around whose table

But she never forgot that wherever we were

We had remembered her too.

This was better than jewels.

Or pajamas.

I think Allah, Jesus and Moses

Would all approve

Of calling our Mamas.

And singing a prayer together.

Why don’t we start here?

Perhaps next year we’ll go up to Providence

To BZ’s house. If all goes according to plan and she

Does receive her Ph.D

In May of Two Thousand One and Three

Next Christmas would be her last in Rhode Island.

Maybe we’ll do that.

Or maybe we’ll go back to Brooklyn

Or maybe they’ll all come West like they

Always have done before.

Things have changed now.

It’s a competition.

A small, informal battle

Whose resort? Whose kitchen?

But the tacos are here

At 24^th and Mission.

One thing is for certain

Barb and I have a beautiful family

All of whom will move mountains in their lifetimes.

Our gorgeous grandchild will not move the mountain

She’ll give the orders

And the mountain will move itself.

It doesn’t matter where we have Christmas, does it?

Just so we do.

Macapuno and a Duck

2012-01-05T10:12:00.001-08:00

Plot received a story today from his Holiday Correspondent D. Conrad ("Con") Achy today. He will take it to tonight's TIAPOS meeting. It's called "We Didn't Want to Come East for Christmas." After the group does its thing he'll post D. Con Achy's story tomorrow. Maybe a hankie or two?

Yesterday the Duck had some minor oral surgery and expected to feel horrible last night, so as she and Plottie waited for Walgreens to fill the prescription for amoxycillin they decided she would need macapuno ice cream, and a half gallon would be about right. After dinner, topped by a nice mountain of macapuno, Plot and Duck settled on the sofa to finally watch "Midnight in Paris."

Nice, nice, nice, especially the part about how everybody's fantasy is populated by people whose own fantasy is of somewhere else. Owen Wilson dreams of Paris of the 1920s. He meets Picasso's mistress whose fantasy is of the Belle Epoque -- Paris in the 1890s. They go there and meet Latrec whose fantasy is of the Renaissance. Perfect, so perfect.

Plottie always laughs when he realizes every artist (and film maker) has the same nightmare -- in this case the woman with the wealthy parents who hate the daughter's worthless prospective husband. The would-be-wife always wants the artist to abandon his dream and go sell shoes.

There were times in Plottie's past when this movie probably would have propelled him into a funk about why he didn't get to live on 52nd Street in 1945. No longer. He knows, now, that it doesn't matter where you live, as long as you have macapuno and a Duck.

PS: She's feeling fine. This Macapuno Endorsement has been approved by the Plotniks.

You Weigh Less with Less Dead Weight

2012-01-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

One amendment to the amendment list, especially the second part. And thanks to Cousin Seattle:

"Cut one person out of your life who you truly do not like and add one person who you truly do. Note: not on Facebook, on Earth."

New Year's Resolutions From Your Pastor

2012-01-03T09:07:00.000-08:00

The Great Plotnik knows his flock can have trouble making, and then keeping their New Year's Resolutions. So he has made his own resolutions, stored them in a weatherproof urn, along with the ashes of Hanky Girl's cat, and made the urn available to all at Great Plotnik World Headquarters on 26th of October Boulevard.

The Sacred Doggy photo reminded him of one of his resolutions:

1) Dogs are wonderful. Dog owners are a pain in the ass. So spend more time with dogs.

Also:

2) If the writing on the stone says the world is ending, turn it over and read the other side.

3) There are brilliant people and there are not-very-talented people. This has nothing to do with how nice they are. Some brilliant people are assholes and some are nice people. Some not-very-talented people are also assholes and some are nice people. If you want to be happy, only work with brilliant, nice people.

( *3a: Make sure they know how brilliant YOU are.)

4) As for you, keep writing that song of yours. Only you can do it. But when even you can't remember how the melody goes, start a new one.

Imagine the world with only two people in it: you and the other guy. Accordingly,

5) If the space is more important to your wife than the object is to you, give it up already.

( *5a: However, a music room is for music.)

( *5b: If you take your pool cues, stick them in the ground and tie them together at the top, you'll have a little teepee and you can grow scarlet runner beans.)

6) If your mom repeats herself a lot, it's still a lot better than what might be coming 'round the corner.

( *6a: Yes, Mom, we have had breakfast. Yes, we have. Yes.)

7) If your favorite teams all suck eggs, remember that it is only a game.

( *7a: Yeah, right.)

8) If you are of an age when you ought to know what you want to do with your life, but you still haven't made up your mind, it's probably a good thing.

(* 8a: You sound like a Plotnikkie to me.)

2012 will be a fabulous year. The Maya are wrong, although there is something to be said for eating the hearts out of your enemies while impaling them with sticks on the top of your temples.

( * Occupy Wall Street.)

Happy New Year!

It was a Good Chili Dog, and Mummy P. is Doing Fine, But it's Good to Be Back Home

2012-01-02T16:56:00.000-08:00

Home, Sweet Home.

Plotnik is home, sitting in his office watching the Rose Bowl. He doesn't care about the Rose Bowl. He could eat another chili half-smoke from Ben's Chili Bowl in D.C., but, barring that, it just feels good to have his feet up and nothing planned.

These days he is always shocked, at first glance, when he sees Mummy Plotnik. She is so thin, so lined, so frail looking. But you know what -- the lady is not frail. She can't remember much and she doesn't operate very well in situations larger than one-on-one, but as long as you remember the rules it's kind of astonishing how well she is doing.

Yes, it's "have you had breakfast?" and "have you had breakfast?" and "have you had breakfast?" And yes, because she forgets things so easily, she is often upset because she's sure people have stopped calling her or coming over.

But when you point out to her that she just went out to lunch with Lila and Paula and Ric were over last week and the phone hasn't stopped ringing on New Year's Day, she nods her head and says "Well, I forgot. I guess I'm just an old lady."

And then "have you had breakfast? Have you had breakfast? Have you had breakfast?"

Plot and Duck took a walk yesterday, up the hill towards Mulholland and then across and down Wrightwood back to the house. They weren't really ready to go in yet, so they sat on someone's grass and thought about how beautiful it is in Stiletto City in December and January. The air is clean, the sky is blue and it's always warm. There aren't too many nicer places to spend a winter, weather-wise.

It was really nice for Peter to get pregnant at the same time as his daughter, Hannah.

It was also great to see the designer door opener still in use after nine years.

New Shmork rocked for Christmas, but OK. Next year in Saint Plontiko. Or la Cueva de las Manos Pintadas.

Happy New Year: On the Way to Burbank

2011-12-31T13:57:00.000-08:00

The airplane seat on US Air is bigger heading to Phoenix than the bus seat was from New York to DC, but only marginally so, but still Plotnik had to pay $38 extra, EACH, to be able to actually choose his and Duck's seats, instead of being assigned to a middle seat for free. Don't you just love air travel in the U S of A on the eve of New Year's 2011-12?

"We have snack for sale. Today we have, uh.,." begins the stewardess, "...uh, sandwich, I think, and and, um, Snack Pak. We accept Discover, Master Card or Visa."

Reagan (aka National) Airport in DC is as small as Oakland and Burbank used to be. It's so close to the beltway -- planes look like they're landing on the White House Lawn from a short distance away. Peter and Patsy were kind enough to give a lift to the airport. Such good friends are hard to find.

Ducknik and Plotnik got separated into different security lines. At hers, there was a teenage girl carrying a small poodle in a carry-on case. As the dog got ready to go through his screening, he dropped a turd onto the converyor belt. Everyone panicked and the entire line shut down. The teen cried "Oh, woe, woe, what do you want ME to do about it?" They finally told her to go get a paper towel and clean it up, which she reluctantly did, while everyone else waited.

This is how Plotnik actually beat Duck through the security line, for the first time in a long time.

He remembered, ahead of time, to remove his camera, which he always wears on his belt, from its case. But then they put him through the Hands Up MothaF***a X-ray Shakedown, and when they were patting him down they saw the empty case.

"Remove that," said the guard.

"But it's empty," Plotnik said, showing the empty case. "Here, feel it."

"Remove that," said the guard.

"But," said Plotnik and then "OK, OK." The guard didn't even look at it, but he won the faceoff. They always win. it took a couple of extra minutes, but, thanks to the turd, Plottie beat the Duck through the line, albeit barely.

The bus from New Shmork down to DC on Thursday took almost five hours, but it only cost $15 bucks each. The train would have been an hour and a half faster but it would have cost close to $200, or $400 for the Accela which knocks another hour off the trip.

These days, while traveling, Plot is into more comfort over less comfort, but there's a limit. $15 each is a lot better than $100 or $200, and in end, though Megabus was completely filled with every seat taken, and an Israeli guy across the aisle insisted on talking loudly on a cell phone to his mother, about all the current political twists and turns in every Israeli settlement, until Plotnik was ready to call Terrorists-R-Us to send up a jihadi to dispatch this loudmouth oaf, and though bus seats are small and there are no carry-on racks where you might store your oversized winter jacket, STILL, with all that, the bus isn't much more uncomfortable than a 737 or this Airbus 319, and, to be honest, train seats aren't exactly your living room sofa either.

So Plottie went for the $15 bus ticket and used the $170 he saved as a down payment on that amazing dinner at Pisticci the other night. It was a good call.

Plot bought two $20.00 Metro Cards in the Shmapple and used them both up. It's easy to do -- $2.25 per subway ride, each way, for two people. Brooklyn to Manhattan and back: $9 bucks. The Metro Cards go fast. But it's the greatest system and they're expanding it all the time. How can New Shmork afford to build new lines and expand old ones, when every other city in America is supposed to be broke? It's a mystery.

It cost $45 in the taxi to SFO the other morning because it was so early and we had to get to the airport by 6am so we could wait until 1:30pm to take off.

In DC, both Peter and Patsy's daughters (can you remember The Year of The Wedding? -- when both these girls got married? -- that was FIVE years ago.) live in different parts of Maryland. We went to see them both. Nellie lives in the middle of a home renovation project that is the largest, most complicated and surely the most difficult of any Plottie has ever seen. He knows he could never do it, and would never want to. But Peter is an architect and he and Patsy bought the old, concrete house so they and their daughter and son-in-law could work on something together, and in the end their kids will live in an amazing place. But when?

The house was built for a licensed clairvoyant in the 1930s. If they'd asked the clairvoyant, he would have probably said: "You will take many long trips to the Building Supplies Depot."

Hannah is 32 weeks pregnant. She looks so happy, though it has not been an easy pregnancy. It was wonderful to see both these girls, who Plot and Duck have known since they were born. Their mates got great ladies.

Plot is already counting the hours 'til they get home, but they're not going home. Not yet. Today it's DC to Phoenix to Burbank, so Mummy P. can have some company on New Year's Eve. Then on January 1, on what would have been The Chief's 101st birthday, Plot and Duck will stay over that day and night too, then come home on Monday.

So that's around 48 hours. LA, here we come. But first, Phoenix Airport. Happy New Year everybody!

-------

LATER: the party has started up the hill from Mummy P. AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP. (screams.) AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP AhWHOMP. (shouts.) Gonna be a long night.

Pastrami and Skating

2011-12-29T14:57:00.000-08:00

New Shmork is hard to beat. Eisenberg's is just perfect. But it's crowded. Ice skating in Bryant Park had lines of up to four hours to get on the ice. But Belly ran into a friend in the front of the line so just The Great PD and she got out onto the ice while the rest of us watched. What a scene it is -- a rink in the heart of midtown Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers, and the skating is free.

Afterwards everyone posed in front of the Bryant Park Christmas Tree for a portrait snapped by a tourist. Belly and her friend Theo are down front.

Pisticci is still Plotnik's favorite restaurant in New Shmork. You just can't beat that food, and the atmosphere is perfect. It's a long way from Brooklyn -- all the way up near the 125th Street IRT station -- but it wasn't too far from the ice skating rink. He was too excited to take any photos, but you've seen the spaghetti and meatballs before. PD took some great photos on the way.

A Manly Muppet (or a Muppet of a Man)?

2011-12-28T05:44:00.000-08:00

Are you a man or a muppet? If you're a muppet, you're a manly muppet. If you're a man, you're a muppet of a man.

What a hysterical and rewarding movie is the new Muppet Movie. The Great PD had the idea to go see it yesterday on a stormy and wet afternoon. Plotnik hasn't laughed so hard in a long time and he could hear Isabella Belly Laughs from behind him. All the songs are by Flight of the Conchords and every actor in Hollywood has a cameo part. The Muppet Movie is to L.A. what The Muppets Take Manhattan was to New York. You really want to see it, whether you're a muppet, or a man, or neither one.

We also went on a trip to the Met, where the Egyptian exhibit on the main floor makes you realize nothing changes, century after century, except pages on the calendar. Here, we see the graffiti that Napoleon's soldiers left on a temple more than 200 years ago when they tried to conquer Egypt. Isabella has been attached to The Great BZWZ's hand for several days, but she sat with her dad on the floor of the museum, sketching the temple.

The Great FiveHead gave a hat to both BZWZ and The Great Ducknik.

Plottie would like to meet the famous hatter-lady, but her stand on the street somewhere in Little Italy is sometimes there, and sometimes not.

There's been a lot of music around the house, but not quite enough yet.

We've had our pastrami from Cousin Josh at Eisenberg's, and our pizza and calzone with shallots from Giuseppina's. The only meal missing is spaghetti and meatballs from Pisticci and that comes tonight.

A Glorious Christmas

2011-12-26T06:34:00.000-08:00

Once we could see that the reindeer had eaten the carrots and Santa had drunk the milk and polished off the cookies...

and that there was a present with never-before-seen gift wrap addressed to the youngest member of the family...

...it was time to get cracking on the rest of the presents.

The previous night, Christmas Eve, everyone had bundled up and gone into Manhattan to look at the decorated windows...

(JJJ: I know you remember:

""On the No Parking signs

There are icicles in lines

And the streets are deserted, everybody's home...

And in Bonwit's and Gimbel's

The decorated windows

Are shining like multicolored metronomes...")

There were hundreds and hundreds of people on the streets (the line to get into the Starbucks in the Trump Tower was fifty people long). The famous windows at Bergdorf and Goodman's, the chestnuts roasting on an...er, propane burner, the suspended electrified snowflakes hanging over Fifth Avenue, the lit up tree inside the Plaza Hotel -- the only word that comes close to describing it all is "magic."

Last night -- Christmas night -- The Great Dance-Nik came over along with friends from in town and out of town. The hideous end of the Shmlaker game was watched with expected horror. Dinner was spectacular-- there was crazy-good pot roast and celery root remoulade and cole slaw, plus fresh seared tuna and Farahnaz's mango salad and orange-black olive salad, and delicata squash, plus apple and pecan pie and Chef Pickle's persimmon pudding which made a successful cross-country journey. And music -- Isabella playing congas, of course.

In the end, for whatever it's worth, it is just more Christmas-y in the East than in the West. We've got Halloween. They've got Christmas. That's just the way it is. But the key is being around people you love.

Never Again Airlines

2011-12-24T08:26:00.000-08:00

So, you can see how much good it did to get up at 4:30am to get into the cab by 5am to get to the airport by 5:30am to slog through the bag check line and then the security line, so that it would be easy to make the 7am flight.

The big mistake that Plot and Duck made was not to take the lady up on the offer to transfer over to another plane that was leaving at 8am for LA, and then would head directly to JFK, plus they'd give you $300 each to do it.

But Plot figured: Hell. Right now, they're announcing our plane will leave at 8:20. What happens if that other plane has trouble or there's a problem at LAX? So, they turned it down. Five people rushed the counter, received their vouchers and new tickets, ran for the other gate and were probably in New York by late afternoon.

The next second after the voucher offer was off the table, they changed the 8:20am takeoff delay to 9:20am. And then to 10am. And then 12:05. And then 1:05.

Did we mention that the Duck, in the cab on the way to the airport, contracted stomach flu? So she had to wait for 6 1/2 hours at SFO looking and feeling miserable and running back and forth to the ladies room every few minutes.

Meanwhile, we met Siggie.

He was the kind of guy who is really fascinating for half an hour -- an eighty year old one-armed, partially-legged German from Australia who was traveling by himself to JFK and then to Rio and then onto a ship to the Falkland Islands and lower Patagonia, and then onto another ship across the Beagle Channel to Antarctica.

For the next six hours he wouldn't stop talking. Plotnik kept getting up in the middle of his long winded tales about his ex wife in the Mercedes dealership. Duck would be left to cope with this nice but - lonely? - man while she labored not to pass out. Then Plot would come back and Duck would disappear.

What makes people glom onto you at an airport and then talk talk talk talk talk? 5H and BZ say this happens to them all the time.

But he was a nice guy so Plot hopes he got to his ship on time.

What had happened, by the way, was the first plane broke down so they needed to find another plane. But Never Again Airlines (recently known as American) didn't have any planes that weren't already in use so they had to track one down. The did, in a hanger in LA. By the time that plane could assemble a crew and fly up to SFO, several hours had passed.

But it was a smaller plane. That's why they let the earlier 5 people escape.

Then: the new plane also malfunctioned. Un - be - freaking- believable! Finally, they flew the new part up, also from LA, and fixed the first plane. The plane was due in at 3pm. We got in at 10.

THEN: THE FREAKING SNEAKING CLINKING LUGGAGE CAROUSEL BROKE DOWN! NOBODY WOULD FIX IT! NOBODY CARED! Plotnik seethed.

Next to him, a father, who had been waiting at the airport all day for his son, and the son, who had been waiting with Plot and Duck and everybody else all day, got into a rip roaring fight about the luggage carousel. Finally, the son said to the Dad: "DAD! STOP IT! WE'RE HAVING A NEW YORK FIGHT! I MOVED AWAY! STOP IT!"

The bag finally came, PD picked Plot and Duck up, and off to Brooklyn we went.

This morning BZ and Plottie walked for bagels. The world is back in its place and Duck feels a lot better today.

Thanks Nel

2011-12-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Another of those nice seasonal surprises -- our friend Nel the Bell sent this link this morning.

Plotnik forgets his songs get sung by choirs, because he never gets to hear any of them. There are a lot of them on U-Tube now so he'll maybe invest a little time today and see what's out there.

These kids are really cute. And the way a composer figures out where he got a little bit too inventive with his melody is to listen to the way they changed it for kids to be able to sing it. This simple way, just about no matter what the composer thinks, is the way a song will be repeated and remembered.

It's also fun for Plottie to hear the pianist playing his piano line, which is usually not changed much at all. He can barely remember how to play these songs any more -- maybe he ought to go buy the sheet music.

And now he knows it's pronounced "Ha-Nick-Ah."

Ai Yai Yai I'm Dreaming...

2011-12-20T10:01:00.000-08:00

The question of which Christmas songs would make it onto a list to be taken to Brooklyn and played during the potential upcoming White Christmas -- it's a serious question. After great thought and consideration, however, and of course including several written by The Great Plotnik himself, this has got to be Number One, but only this version:

The Drifter's White Christmas (1954)

The Year of the Coconut

2011-12-19T16:07:00.001-08:00

Plotnik wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to import a photo onto a Word label, when all he had to do was go over to the Avery Label site, where they're all set to guide you easily through the process using their site and their labels. Now his The Tower of Plotnik hot sauce labels are finished.

Yesterday it took all day to collect and arrange in a book the best photos of 2011 photos. The book is called "2011: The Year of the Coconut." You can see why.

Best Of 2011

2011-12-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

Spent all day working up a Best of 2011 Photo Book. Man, we sure had a lot of fun. It was hard to get those handcuffs off, though.

Let's Give The Cave a Little Less Love

2011-12-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

2011's last TIAPOS meeting was the most fun of all. Everybody was in a great mood, looked good, sounded good and ranted like Serbian sailors. The topic was "rant about something." Champion Ranter of the evening was without doubt The Great Domin-Nik aka WantzaNewName. She may or may not be somewhere in the above photo. If her clients ever hear a word of this it is possible that business will fall off. Like, down to nothing, coupled with police dogs.

We laughed and laughed and laughed some more, managing to stuff in plenty of food at the same time, while drinking a lot of red wine. A writing group should never be composed of such good friends, because nobody ever really wants to be too harsh a critic. But Christmas parties are a lot more fun this way.

So Plotnik, especially, who talks a big story about living an isolated, reclusive life, needs to look at the man in the mirror. He and Duck have wonderful friends in this town. If Plottie decides to live in a cave, he shouldn't blame the cave.

Bad Breaking Bad

2011-12-16T09:44:00.000-08:00

Plottie had two episodes left to watch of "Breaking Bad," but that first one, which would be Episode Twelve, Season Two, has got to be the saddest, most heartbreaking piece of episodic TV that he has ever seen. Criminy, how low can these people go?

(Calm yourself, Plotnik, these are actors. None of this stuff really happened. She was not dribbling vomit, it was probably soap bubbles. Get a grip.)

The scene in the previous episode, where they glorify the buzz of heroin, had already put Plotnik on the edge about this show. Not that you're supposed to lie, not that you shouldn't tell the truth about whatever it is you're writing about (in this case the drug trade and the thin line between right and wrong), it's just that Plotnik doesn't really need to see it. He knows about it, thanks.

Hitler made the trains run on time. Right, he knows about that too.

But he'll probably keep watching, just to see if it's truly possible that a show can have only one person who Plotnik likes, and that's the lawyer. Plotnik must be hooked too.

A Great Sounding Gig

2011-12-15T09:20:00.000-08:00

Though for the first time in at least 15 years, The Great Plotnik and NoeValSal did not write a new lampoon Christmas song for the party, Sal had the party anyway and it was as much fun as always. Amazingly, the woman next to Barb is Jeff K.'s daughter Natalie, who you will notice is now taller than everybody else, including her Mom Louise who is hiding in back of Heidi.

Hiding in back of Heidi. This is called an Euphonious Accident.

Why didn't that new Christmas song get written? Probably because Plot and Sal always wait until the last moment, but this year the party was questionable until the very very last. We ran out of time. But Plottie promises two new songs for next year.

Nice people. Because of the Noe Valley Voice, Plot and Duck have made some good friends, friends they see every Labor Day and Christmas, while always making solemn promises to hang out together more in the coming year. But it never happens. Why is that, anyway? This reclusive way of living made sense when kids were small and there really was no extra time. But now there's no excuse, just bad habits.

There was a woman there last night named Corrina, once Sal's neighbor, who got a job as an acupuncturist on a small luxury yacht that took her all around the world for over a year -- LA to Tahiti to Indonesia to Australia to Singapore to India to the Middle East to the Mediterranean to England and finally to New York. How about that for a gig?

How many times could Plotnik play "New York, New York" before he jumped overboard and drowned himself? The number is probably higher now than it used to be.

Plotnikkie Regulation 397846-T

2011-12-14T09:10:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons that Plotnikkie membership is increasing around the world at such rapid rates is that we believe if you've gone to the dentist to have your teeth cleaned in the morning, and he's poked you and prodded you and made you close your lips so he can suck your blood and spit into the stupid little hose, and then he's scraped off the gunk with the pointy metal things, and you didn't cry even once, and then he has polished you and flossed you and pronounced you good to go -- well, you have endured enough. Plotnikkie Regulation 397846-T from the Tall Mud states that after that you don't have to floss for a minimum of 24 hours and you can go eat as much sticky caramel candy as you like because how the hell much gunk can accumulate in 24 hours anyway?

We've also got one for Hindus to justify eating cheeseburgers. But we can't figure out how Congress can ban abortions for servicewomen who have been raped. There can't be any holy book that can justify that one. Maybe we need more Plotnikkies in congress.

No More X-Rays

2011-12-13T12:31:00.000-08:00

Dr. U-Flossem was in fine form this morning. "Are you still flossing the same amount?" "Oh, yes, Doctor." (Translation: "When I remember.")

"Are you using the rubber-tipped dingus?" "No change there, Doctor." (Translation: Never.)

Then they got around to x-rays. Plotnik feels like a crash dummy in that office -- why do they need to take so many x-rays every year? Why not NOT take them unless Plotnik complains about some tooth problem?

When he mentioned that to Dr. Flossem, the doctor said "Let me tell you about my father. My father had colon cancer. He refused to have a colonoscopy, so they never found it until he already had cancer."

"I'm not worrying about cancer of the bicuspid."

"Yes. I only tell you this to say it's good to have more x-rays, just to be sure."

"Just to be sure of what? What are you looking for? Bone loss? People lose bone as they get older. I'm not going to let you fix anything until it hurts. So what's the point?"

"Have I told you about my father?"

Anyway, Plotnik gave in, this time, so Dr. Flossem could have a complete set. Now he's got it. Let him sell it on E-Bay. That's it for a few years. No más.

You Go For Arugula, You Bring Home a Banjo

2011-12-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

Imagine Plotnik's surprise. He took his colander down into the garden to pick some arugula, where he heard his name being called. It was Cheryl, Plot and Duck's wonderful neighbor of eight years. Cheryl told Plottie that she and her husband Keith are moving to Boston, that of course they will keep in touch, and to prove it would Plotnik like to have Keith's gorgeous banjo? Plottie protested to no avail. This is no department store banjo -- it's a glorious, inlayed instrument with a beautiful sound.

So now we are a two banjo family. The other one is in Providence, but the banjoist just happens to be in town, so Plottie put the banjo on her lap and went and got his melodica. The Great BZWZ sang "Ingrid Bergman," apparently an obscure Woody Guthrie song, and The Great Plotnik played along on melodica. This is how you put a smile on Plotnik's face.

Now, if only a bagpiper had showed up.

CARY! LOOK OUT!

2011-12-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

Plotnik is finishing with this crazy laryngitis -- or so he thinks. This morning he was feeling better so he decided to do his Saturday bike ride on Sunday. Half way up the second hill his throat started hurting again and just got worse and worse until he got to the top, panting. But he's got that part figured out -- it's cold out in the morning, and when he goes up hills he gasps in a lot of cold air. That cold air can't be good for the voice box, right?

By the time he got back home, showered, had some hot coffee and a bagel he was back to normal. He's sure this thing will go away sooner or later, but in the meantime he's sort of enjoying the lower octave in what is passing for his voice.

BZ is home for a few days. Last night we watched the kind of movie Plottie would never bother with on his own, but it was, in fact, entertainingly idiotic: "The Crush," with Alicia Silverstone and Cary Elwes. Ooooh, is she ever evil, that Alicia. CARY! IDIOT! DON'T GO UP THAT STAIRWAY INTO THE ATTIC! HEY! DOOFUS! DON'T YOU HEAR THAT SCARY MUSIC?

One More Only In Saint Plotniko:

2011-12-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

Drag Queens on Ice in Union Square.

Basketball News

2011-12-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

Crap. Everybody knows. You're sitting down at the court in the park and the guys are choosing up teams. They look around, find the guy whose head sticks up the highest and pick him. The next biggest guy gets chosen second. After that they can take whoever they want because they've got size on their team now and that's what counts most.

So you're telling me that nobody in the Stiletto City Shmlaker organization ever played pickup basketball in the park?

You don't trade two seven footers for one six footer. Magic Johnson said it best: "you can teach defense but you can't teach 7 feet tall."

So, since everybody knows this, there can be only one explanation: Kobe.

Kobe remembers when the Chicago Bulls had Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and three extra pairs of sweat sox. No other players of note were ever on those great teams. And still Chicago became World Champs year after year, because Jordan was that good.

What else can it be? Kobe wants to be Jordan. There can't be any other explanation. Trade away your big men to get a fast small man, then tell everyone else to get out of the way.

OK, Kobe. It's your time now. I guess.

Hey Diddly Dee

2011-12-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

Wowzer! You've got to see "The Wild Bride." What a romp. It's at Berkeley Rep through January 1.

Plotnik got to sit up close last night -- Row 1. No matter how you slice it, it's really better to be up front. He is asking himself this morning whether the show would have been so spectacular in the balcony. Don't think so.

He sat next to a very lovely young woman who is probably 22 and is a drama fellow with Berkeley Rep. She was all big eyes about the glamorous life of a reviewer. Ducknik being ill and not in attendance, Plotnik was freed up to lie gloriously.

"How many shows do you get to go to? I mean, lots?"

"Oh, harrumph, well, I, ahmmm, yes. Lots. San Francisco is a fabulous city for theater!"

"Oh. You are so lucky!" (Eyelids batting)

"Well, luck is the residue of design, according to Branch Rickey," Plotnik didn't say. If the market had been open he would probably have said something stupid like that though.

Plot sat in front of his buddies who are usually The Grumpy Guys, and they remained so during Act One, but Act Two changed everything. This is a hard show not to love.

Every actor and theater owner in town was there for the premiere of this one. What a hoot. Yes indeed, such glamour! Such excitement! James, please call the Limo.

"Hey Diddly Dee! It's a Reviewer's Life for Me!"

Five Per Cent of The Old Home Town

2011-12-07T09:28:00.000-08:00

Most of you know how The Great Plotnik feels about 95% of his old home town. But there are places he loves, and Venice Beach is one of them. So, how did Dave the Blue manage to move into an apartment on the beach, where all he has to do is place his camera on his balcony railing and take these photos?

Venice Beach, Santa Monica Canyon, The Dodgers, The Lakers, EPark, Watts Towers, The Gamble House, Griffith Park Observatory, Mission San Fernando, Olvera Street, the hobo trails in Elysian Park...that's around 5%, isn't it?

Plotnik Explains it All

2011-12-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

Fifty five shows down and counting. It's been a good year and there are a few more still on the books. Plotnik tends to turn down holiday shows that he has seen before, but he's glad he and Ducknik saw "A Secret Garden" the other night. Ducknik's Shmaltz Filter had apparently been disabled for the evening. She loved it. Plottie did too, though he will admit he's good and tired of the English gentry. Let 'em eat ruffage.

The Great BZWZ arrived last night and was home for a short while, en route to her hotel. She'll be there all week as her yearly convention convenes at Moscone Center until Friday. BZ ran down her upcoming presentation, with Plot and Duck listening and watching the slides. The girl is polished.

What's it about? Well, silly, that's really simple. See, the anti-correlations and non-correlations, plus the positive correlations and negative correlations, when applied to the ENZ over the DMSO, NRA, NFL and applicable intercontinental relative wetness and dryness factors, make it possible to understand African and Indonesian variabilities in decadal or centennial fluctuations, but especially during El Niño.

Any questions?

Police Activity

2011-12-04T10:27:00.001-08:00

Cousin Seattle is in town for the Rockhead Convention. She stayed at World Headquarters last night and helped Plottie put together a delicious dinner. The secret to especially savory cucumber salads has now been isolated and officially recognized: preserved lemons.

Last night Plot and Duck had an LA experience and they're not even there. Heading down to Palo Alto to see a play, traffic was slowed to a crawl right around SFO airport. The news reported "police activity" along the shoulder in Millbrae, and, sure enough, once inching past all the rubbernecking, traffic was light the rest of the way.

But coming home three hours later, sure enough, as they were approaching the airport from the South this time, a Highway Patrolman flew past them at high speed, siren flashing. Two or three miles later, traffic slowed to an absolute stop. Plottie and Duck got off the freeway and figured out, finally, how to get to El Camino Real and head up to St. Plotniko that way, but it took a long time. Later, they heard all Northbound lanes on the 101 in Millbrae had been closed.

Now, even for diehard Saint Plotnikians who might daily use the Deathtrap 405 or 101, how many times have you been in two traffic jams, three hours apart, going different directions, in the same spot? Of course, it may be that the "police activity" actually never stopped in the first place, and just crossed over from side of the freeway to the other?

Maybe It's The Disodium Inosinate?

2011-12-02T09:05:00.000-08:00

How can enriched corn meal, vegetable oil, cheddar bbq seasoning, salt, brown sugar, whey, monosodium glutamate, onion powder, spices, natural and artificial flavors, buttermilk, romano cheese, whey protein concentrate, dextrose, tomato powder, corn oil, autolyzed yeast extract, disodium phosphate, molasses solids, citric acid, corn maltodextrin, nonfat milk, artificial color (including Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 2 Lake), sodium diacetate, garlic powder, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, lactose) and salt (CONTAINS MILK INGREDIENTS)...

taste so GOOD?

Beautiful Belly Doesn't Do Surveys

2011-12-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

After returning home from Seattle Plotnik got two surveys, one in the mail, one on e-mail.

The one in the mail was to rate his experience at California State Parks. "Well, I like State Parks," he thought, so he filled it out, only to discover at the end that it was just a sham to get him to subscribe to Sunset Magazine. So he trashed it, thinking: to hell with California State Parks.

The one on e-mail was to rate his experience at the Courtyard Marriott in Bellevue, WA, which had been perfect. But the survey was page after page after page. By the last half Plotnik was filling in anything at all just to be allowed to leave. How old are you? 90-100 CHECK. How many pleasure trips have you taken this year? 206 CHECK. How many business trips have you taken this year? 584 CHECK. Check 1-10 if applicable: Were our rooms relaxing? 10. Was the bathroom clean? 10. Did you enjoy fast, enjoyable room service served by friendly, helpful staff members? 0. Were the prostitutes suitably attired? 20. Did the constant rain depress you so much that you shot a staff member? 5. Oh God, really? 0.

How about Did you enjoy it? Will you come back? Was the price right? BUT NO. Everybody has mike fever, even in cyberspace.

She's beautiful, isn't she?

Four Wedding Photos And Let Us Say Amen

2011-11-30T09:29:00.000-08:00

Grandma Joy sent some terrific photos from her wedding. Paul and Joy, The Great FiveHead and BellyBone are above, while The Great PD, Paul's son Gavin, Paul and Plottie are below.

The Great Plotnik doesn't like feeling vain, but why does he always seem to be the only gray-headed person in the photo? Yes, he knows why. Just sayin'.

It was hard to get photos of Grandma Ruth, who, at 92, seems to be getting shorter every day. But she hung in there for four days and was always smiling. In the middle of the ceremony she came up and stood by her daughter.

Plotnik is not anti-rabbi, nor anti-deacon nor anti-anybody. The clergy has its place (Sam might say that place is behind its little pulpit in its little church or synagogue).

(Have we spoken of Sam? Plotnik hates it when TV bubbleheads attribute their latest rumor to "Some might say..." You will never read that here. Plotnik prefers to blame it all on Sam.)

But is it really too much to ask a clergyman to take ten minutes and then wrap it up? Does the symbolism become more symbolic if you mention it over and over? Oh Lord, You are So Big! Oh God, Who Ruleth in the Heavens, As We Mentioned Previously?

Ten minutes is enough. It really is. And let us all say Amen.

Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine a more beautiful bride.

Zero

2011-11-29T09:10:00.000-08:00

Large Leaf Maple trees have large leaves.

Now Thanksgiving is over and it's time to, sort of, get back to work. But who cares? Not Plotnik. He has a desk full of projects and this much interest in any of them: 0-zer0.

Ticket Stubs in Seattle

2011-11-28T14:11:00.001-08:00

Plot and Duck are home, but with a resolve to learn more about the Pacific Northwest. B.C., Washington, the coasts of Oregon and Northern California -- it's time to expand the knowledge base to include the color deep green.

Yesterday morning Plottie got up to Isabella's room just on time -- later on, she ran out of hugs. But she still had one big juicy one in stock when he got there. By the time the others made it upstairs, Belly had her head covered up with a blanket and announced she was out but she might be getting some in later in the day. But then they went to the airport and back to Brooklyn.

Last night Plot, Duck and The Little Bear went to the Seattle Norths for a delicious dinner and a tour through J and J's old ticket stub collection. They save the stubs from all the concerts they go to. Probably half are from Yes, Styx or Santana. It's like discovering there's an Old Rock and Roll Cult meeting regularly in the family attic. They have even indoctrinated their poor, innocent children, who can go with their parents to see Jethro Tull and apparently enjoy it.

Seattle is another of those American cities in which it would be fun to spend a little time, and that time would be breakfast. Ooo, that coffee.

Early Review of the Scott/Carrol Wedding

2011-11-27T08:02:00.001-08:00

The Flower Girl came down the stairs slowly and deliberately, distributing the exact amount of flower petals on each stair. Joy and Paul's Wedding pictures are few so far, but since there was a real photographer there we will see more later on.

It was a beautiful party. Plotnik played piano for awhile and he and Ducknik managed to get a few photos of the family.

i
It was great that The Little Bear traveled north for the party and that Aunt Carlee, Cousin Earline, Aunt Renetta, Aunt Jackie and Aunt Pearline could all be there for Grandma Joy.

We're hurrying this morning to get back to the house to say good-bye, and then Plottie will drive The Greats P-Dunk, FiveHead and B-Bone to the airport. Later on today we'll see the Seattle Norths, and perhaps in between take some kind of tour of Seattle?

So how does Plottie look in his new suit? (Like a geezer, he fears.)

A Day in the Woods and a Night Looking at the View

2011-11-26T07:44:00.001-08:00

You're looking at the Space Needle and downtown Seattle from Queen Anne's Hill. Last night Plot and Duck's friends took them on a circle sightseeing tour starting and ending on Mercer Island. The city of Seattle is small and, to Plotnik's eyes, pretty, but not all that unlike lots of other mid-sized cities except for a Starbucks on every single block.

But the area around Seattle sounds fascinating and definitely merits a long look when the rain stops, ha ha ha, no, it really does stop, yeah, right, ha ha ha. No, really.

Earlier in the day it was gorgeous. Paul took Plot, Duck and the Great PD on a cool hike in the woods down to Lake Washington.

The hike was to a place that is called Bastyr and has its name all over the place on large signs, but yet nobody has decorated it with a huge D yet. They must not have spray paint in Seattle.

The new love of Isabella's life is Paul's Cousin Miriam.

She is really sweet and is as close to Isabella's size as anyone else at the party.

It's a lot of fun to hang around The Great FiveHead's Chicago family, and it's about to get even funner -- The Little Bear flies in this morning from Orange County. P and D will pick her up at Sea-Tac and head up to the house. The wedding is tonight and the place is already jumping.

Thanksgiving in Seattle

2011-11-25T09:08:00.001-08:00

Isabella made her Grand Entrance with her mommy. They both looked especially beautiful, except that there were some who knew that Isabella's tummy was already filled with dough from the dinner rolls.

Earlier, she and her Dad had made the dough for the rolls and then it was Belly and Plotnik's turn to form them into shape to put them in the oven. But one of these two people kept eating the raw dough.

But they still came out delicious.

The Great PD was in charge of Turkey and Related Operations. That turkey, with a glaze of guajillo and ancho chiles, plus garlic and oranges and a basting in port wine, was the best, juiciest turkey ever. Plates were easy to fill.

What a delightful day. It's really nice to see 5H's Chicago Aunties and cousin James. Aunt Jackie understands how to travel -- she crossed the country with a pound cake.

And the pecvan, sour cream lemon and sweet potato pies were not too shabby.

sh

Staci's Grandma Ruth, at 92, managed to cross the country too and offer a very nice grace before dinner started, which summed it all up perfectly: "Thank you Heavenly Father that we're all alive."

Plotnik understands a little of the attraction of Seattle -- a totally diverse community over here near the Microsoft Campus, for example, which yielded the best Chinese food he has ever eaten in his life the night before -- and the air smells so clean. The rain -- if Saint Plotnikians can get used to fog, it might be possible to get used to all this rain. Maybe.

One thing's for sure -- Joy and Paul's house is a fantastic place to have Thanksgiving. Plot and Duck are down at the nearby Marriot Courtyard and are getting ready to head back to where that leftover pecan pie is.

Seattle!

2011-11-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

Here we are in Seattle. Guess what? It's raining!

Paul and Grandma Joy live in the woods -- this morning the sun came up over pines and rhododendrons. It's definitely another world up here, and very beautiful.

Thanksgiving tomorrow and the wedding on Saturday. Needless to say, the place is in motion. Today, The Great PD and Plottie will be getting stuff ready for dinner tomorrow at 5pm. Potatoes are a-boilin' for eatin,' sweet potatoes for pie and beets for Beaujolais Beets (thank you, once again, Margaret Fox at the late lamented Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino), and it's only 9am.

The Great FiveHead caught a bug on the plane but it seems to be gone today. It's wonderful to see everybody. The walls in Grandma Joy's kitchen look like the walls at Headquarters: Isabella drawings.

This morning she is spraying everybody for...well, no one knows what for.

Slug Somebody

2011-11-21T09:04:00.000-08:00

Parenting is easy. Everything always runs smoothly. You never get mad and want to go out and slug somebody.

Being the kid is easy too. Your parent is perfect. The nest is comfortable. Life is one cherry in the bowl followed by another cherry in the bowl, and there are lots and lots of cherries.

Being a writer is every bit as easy. You know just what they want and send it to them at exactly the right time. Still, every writer knows you submit two pieces, not one. You give the first one to the producer who asked for it, and you figure out where to submit the second one so if the first guy turns you down you've already sent the second.

Of course, we SAY we're gonna do that, but really, we're pretty sure the first guy is going to love what we gave him, seeing as he asked for it in the first place.

It's a lot easier to just go slug somebody.

CRAB-PEC?

2011-11-20T09:57:00.000-08:00

Brunch with the Fate-Niks got canceled today so Plot and Duck are staring at that beautiful and rare non-involved, calendar-empty Sunday. It's raining, but Plottie already got his spring daffodils in the ground, raspberries transplanted and the rear fifty (feet) covered with compost. So let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

Plot isn't sure who is cooking the turkey in Seattle, so he was looking at this morning's Chron recipe for Air-Chilled Turkey. Are you freaking kidding? Brine it for 24-48 hours, then set it in the fridge all by itself for another day, then make sure the specific gravity of molybdenum is no higher than your nose and then smother the bird in kisses? Who dreams up these recipes, anyway?

Naw, naw, ain't gonna happen. Plot wants to eat that turkey but doesn't want to cook it.

Grandma Joy, who is cooking already even though she's got this wedding, her own, to take care of two days after Thanksgiving, told Plottie she is making mac-and-cheese which will be better than Cousin Walter's, which is not physically possible, in Plotnik's opinion, but even close will be outrageously good.

Plot's got an idea that The Great P-Dunk will end up doing that turkey, and this year he won't stuff it with a duck and a chicken.

So we know about turkey, mac-and-cheese and pecan pie and what in the world else does anyone really need? Just the Happy Dance, and Isabella will be there to help Plottie do it, allevai, inshallah, Ump Willing.

Last night was supposed to be the opening of Dungeness crab season, which the Great Mush-Nik and Silent Bill usually host at their house, but though the season opened the crabbers are locked in a price dispute with the buyers. OPEC was bad enough, but CRAB-PEC? Why can't they just catch the crabs and then get the best price they can from whomever is willing to buy? Who said everybody has to organize about everything?

"So it was a fun evening, but no crab," crabbed Plotnik, who nonetheless really had a great time.

Woooo Hoooo! Christmas Songs!

2011-11-19T11:42:00.000-08:00

There was a time, and Plotnik can remember this well, when the only way you could listen to music was to turn on the radio or play it on a juke box. This meant there was a specific time and place when music was to be a part of your life, if you chose it, and that was pretty much when you were near a radio or at a cafe.

Lunch counters where they served you cherry cokes in huge parfait glasses with skinny red straws often had a little miniature juke box in front of each counter seat. You put in a dime, or three plays for a quarter, and selected your favorite song out of maybe fifty choices. When the music came on you could barely hear it, but it was there, along with your cherry coke and your imaginary girl friend and the childhood you didn't know was disappearing faster than that coke and that lunch counter and that jukebox.

(Sigh)

Because now everybody plays music ALL the time, only you can't hear it. Everyone who walks by you or stares at you on BART is lost in his or her own little world, either listening to an ear bud or fiddling with an I-phone, texting? Reading e-mail? Sending e-mail? Ordering phone sex? Pizza? Or both? On BART?

(sigh)

The thing is, every time you listened to a tune on the jukebox at Thrifty's the songwriter and the singer made a penny or two. Every time a song played on the radio they did too. We still do -- except there are no more jukeboxes and radio plays are strictly segmented along cultural lines. Hip hop? One radio station. Pop? Another? Country? Another. Nobody crosses the lines.

EXCEPT AT CHRISTMAS HEE HEE HEE HEE.

Plotnik got two royalty checks in the mail this week. As his long-ago lyric workshop instructor Buddy Kaye told him: "There is nothing in the world better than Money in the Mail."

Both of these were largely for last year's Christmas air play and record sales. It takes that long to collect.

The first was from ASCAP -- radio play for the last quarter. It was small, but not invisible.

The second was BMG/Chrysalis, the company in Nashville who bought the other company in Nashville who bought the other company in Nashville who sold out after buying the first company in Nashville who collects Plotnik's Mechanical Royalties.

Mechanical Royalties are those that accrue from record sales. Thanks mostly to "It Must Have Been The Mistletoe," and most of that these days from Barbra Streisand (Bless Her Heart and Remember All You Guys In The Castro Babs Needs Your Support At Christmas), Plot still gets nice money in the mail every year from mechanical royalties. This check was not huge but it was larger than invisible -- let's say you wouldn't be able to spot it from outer space but if you saw it on Plotnik's desk you'd say, "Hmmm, maybe you can even buy something for Isabella with that."

Money in the Mail, before Thanksgiving and Christmas, is the jolliest way to start the season.

So all you iPod and iPhone music listeners, know this: you will hear "It Must Have Been The Mistletoe" at some point this holiday season, and maybe even "Happy Hanukkah My Friend" or one or two other Plotnik songs. It won't cost you a penny and Plottie won't make one either, but he is very happy to bring you some uplifting family entertainment, as you sit in your insulated little hidey-holes avoiding eye contact and all human interaction.

(SWAP!)

(Sealed With A Plotnik)

Frangipane Croissants Again

2011-11-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

Plot anyd Duck hadn't been to Tartine a.k.a. The Carb Crackhouse in a long time. Famed Children's Book Author Nguyen Tyrone Goldwasser O'Flaherty met them there and there was a lot of catching up to do.

She's planning a long trip to Guatemala and Mexico over Christmas and New Years, involving many bus trips and markets and other stops along the way, so Plot and Duck had to give her all their favorite places to see. Apparently new boyfriend C-7 (which stands for Seven Dates Already) will join her in Puebla, Oaxaca and Mexico City for some of that time, which shows a favorable trend.

But Rachel (her other name)'s Mom will possibly not make it 'til Rachel gets back. Her mom is in hospice now, no longer able to talk intelligibly and has pretty much stopped eating. Rachel is making her peace with it and plans to spend the next few weeks seeing her mom every day, before her trip. The last thing her Mom said that Rachel could understand was: "Where are we going?"

TIAPOS was fun last night. Looks like a Christmas Party must get planned and Plottie is on it.

Why Not Go Straight to the Top?

2011-11-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

Occupy Oakland just got thrown out of their house: no more camping and no more tents. It is a truly low blow to get thrown out of Oakland.

The A's have been trying to leave Oakland for ten years. They can't find anybody who will take them.

So why is it that the Occupiers can't come up with an agenda? Forget all the excuses. The real reason is probably that the people in the park are there to express their frustration, not to effect change. There is no huge gorilla in the room, just an infinite amount of nasty mosquitos.

If the government was stupid enough to load all of its misdeeds onto a troop train, the Occupiers would lie down in front of it. But the government is not stupid. It spreads its incompetence and venality in all directions. You can't campaign against yesterday's war.

So if you want campaign finance reform but your neighbor in the park wants free brown rice to be given to the homeless and his neighbor wants to end racism in public hiring and her neighbor wants banks to lend money at no interest to anyone who asks for it, how are you going to come to a decision about anything? This is where the word 'leadership' comes in.

Here's an idea: instead of hating on Obama, ask for his help. Remember who used to be a community organizer? How about it? The President of the United States could actually use this rudderless movement to affect the kind of change he can't possibly get working with aging windbags in congress, and you Occupiers could channel your frustration towards goals that are reachable.

Hell, you don't want to stay in downtown Oakland anyway, do you? Nobody wants to stay in Oakland.

Happy Birthday Mushnik!

2011-11-14T11:08:00.000-08:00

Last night was celebration time for The Great Mushnik's upcoming __th Bday. She and Silent Bill are looking this happy because the chow at Regalito was outrageously delicious. Plot and Duck have eaten there four times now and this was the best of all. Sunday nights at 7pm is clearly the best time to go -- not too crowded, no trendy specials, just the regular menu. Those green enchiladas, the cochinita pibil, the roast chicken, the guacamole, the capirotada (bread pudding) and maybe most of all those fantastic fresh and thick tortillas, but then don't forget the hot churros with the cup of hot Mexican chocolate either. Man!

It's Great to See Bobby

2011-11-12T13:53:00.000-08:00

Plot and his friend Bob have been staying up late, lots to talk about, lots to remember, lots of songs to play and comment on. Years don't pass between old friends, you just kind of hibernate and then wake up and start all over again like it was yesterday.

The power's out again, all day until 6pm. But The Great Plotnik can take his computer down to XO Coffee, use their wireless, sit in a sunny window, listen to acoustic guitar music, drink an iced tea and eat a Greek Wedding cookie and think "I ought to be doing this more often on a beautiful Saturday afternoon."

Just before he left the house Plottie spoke to his Mom, who sounded so lost and blurred and confused, and who finally said, with such a tone of surprise in her voice: "Doug, I don't know what's happening to me. This isn't good. I don't like it."

That was a thump to the midsection.

The Great WantzaNewName's friend Wave just died. She kept blogging during her illness and the postings are very beautiful. In her last post, two friends fly in from New York and one brings her a guitar. She sits in bed and she sings a song, but has to put the guitar down for lack of strength. She knows she'll never play it again.

Another thump. Christ. Sleeping, OK, but no guitar?

Since Plotnik started writing all this melancholy stuff, they turned up the emotional piano/violin music at XO Coffee and he feels like he's living a version of "A Man and a Woman" or "Love Story." Sheesh, please, can you just bring back the acoustic guitar Van Morrison songs?

The mushroom sauce is ready to eat, because the stove top still works as long as you have a match. Tonight when Bob gets home he and Ducknik and Plottie will watch "Everything is Illuminated" on Pay Per View. This is one of his favorite movies of all time and Bob's never seen it, so he hasn't met Sammy Davis Junior Junior.

Strawberries and raspberries for dessert.

Oh Christ, Peruvian flutes with tons of vibrato. This must be why nobody can stay too long in these coffee places.

Three Ways to Look at The World

2011-11-10T11:48:00.000-08:00

Plot has a big brother but for awhile he felt like he had a little brother too. Jon was Plottie's bass player, band mate and confidant for quite a few years, but most of all he was a buddy. When he died in 2006 it left a hole. The hole is sealed up pretty well now.

That is, until Bobby comes to town. Bobby was Jon's uncle. His wife Janet was Ducknik's friend -- she introduced them and Plottie was the official who married them in upstate New York. How long ago? Two weeks later, Plot, Duck and two year old P-Dunk packed up the farmhouse, left the east and moved back to California.

Bob's sister Claire, who was Jon's mom, has come to town with Bobby too. They have a convention downtown and Bob will stay at World Headquarters while his sister, who finds it hard to get up and down stairs now, will stay in a hotel downtown.

So last night, Bob and Plottie stayed up talking for a long time. It all comes back in waves: hurt, and guilt, and betrayal, and sadness, all mixed with such happy memories about being young and in New York and having the world spread out for the taking. Jon is always in the middle of this.

Cancer and drugs. The kid who was all about fun died hard.

Bob was a real songwriter in those days, somebody who got PAID a SALARY to go to an office and WRITE SONGS. He wrote a song with Hoagie Carmichael, for God's sake. Then one day, while walking up Sixth Avenue, he announced to Plot and Duck that he wasn't going to do it any more. He didn't love it anymore. He was done. And he was.

Plot didn't believe him. He still doesn't believe him because great songs are not hatched or spawned. Songwriters create them. It's hard to do. If you are able to do it, why wouldn't you want to keep doing it?

A lot of talk. Seeing Bobby reminds The Great Plotnik that we always have three ways to look at the world. One way is remorse about the stuff we didn't do or haven't done. Plottie's brother Schmeckl is like that, but he's wrong.

Another is to figure that you've screwed up enough already so how much worse can you do? Jonny was like that. He was wrong too.

Plottie is on path three: you realize that shit happens and you hope it doesn't happen to you. In the meantime, you do what Bill T. Jones wrote in an interview in the Bird Wrap this morning:

Question: "Where in the world would you like to go?"

Answer: "You name the place and I'll pack my bag."

Sex With Rabbits

2011-11-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

Good, the election is over and somebody probably won. Now they can stop the robocalls and birdcage liner sheets in the mail.

Does anyone listen to robocalls? Do any readers of The Great Plotnik get past the silence when you pick up the phone, or the ".....HI! I'm Kamala Harris!" before you hang up?

Plotnik read that bulk mailers know you'll only glance at their candidate's slick propaganda sheet for an average of three seconds before you toss it in the garbage. So they just want to grab you with a bright color image of the candidate. It's like hearing somebody at a party say someone else's name. It goes in. You ignore it, but it's already in there.

Which of course means that you could produce a mailer with your name on it in bright letters, and then below it a photo of your opponent having sex with a rabbit. In the brief three seconds between table and trash can, your name would register as well as the photo's message.

"Hmm. I LIKE this T.G. Plotnik guy. And, you know, I heard somewhere that all his opponents have sex with rabbits."

A Few Good Ideas

2011-11-08T08:55:00.000-08:00

So it's good to be home. Plot and Duck both had dreams last night that make no sense by themselves, and when you put them together make even less sense. Being in Stiletto City these days seems to tear a few synapses loose and then they must fire at random during the night while they're trying to remember where they belong.

Sleeping down there Plot is half-awake all night, tossing and turning and listening for strange noises. He gets home feeling washed-out-exhausted, and then the dreams take over.

Leaving his mom in L.A. means guilt mixed with relief. A part of him keeps thinking if he were just smarter, cleverer, a better son, he could figure out something that would help her memory, her hip, that would put some meat back on her bones, that could help her see a little better, that could give her some fun. The whole family is glomming onto the hearing aid idea because she needs it so desperately, but of course that's because her hearing is the one thing we know how to fix.

And of course the relief -- there is a tiny warning bell clanging in Plotnik's subconscious the minute he walks into Mummy P.'s house, and it doesn't stop ringing until he's back at the airport. What was that noise? Is she OK? Did she understand what I just said? Can she hear Ducknik's voice at all? She just asked me for the tenth time about Thanksgiving. Don't respond in frustration, just answer the question like it's the first time you've heard it, because it was the first time to her and she wants to know the answer.

Damned annoyance, followed by anger at himself for it. This is the way things are now for Mummy P. and, if he and Ducknik are lucky, the same way things will be for them down the line.

Which is of course the heart of the issue. Plottie sees himself someday as his mom is now, and his kids being where Plot and Duck are now. He knows what he is thinking so he knows what they will be thinking.

But, OK. Move forward. Mummy P. cannot ever remember Gloria's name. Gloria is from Colombia and is sweet and patient, but Plottie would feel a lot better if his mom stopped calling her Lilian.

So he told her: "Mom. When you think about your lady's name, sing Glory Glory Hallelujah." Then you'll remember "Gloria."

"OK, good idea," she says.

Gloria walks over. "Mom, what's her name?" Plotnik whispers.

"Uh...Glory!" says Mummy P. "Gloria!"

"Yes, my darling?" says Gloria.

Now if Plottie could only come up with a few more good ideas.

The Spiritual View of Things

2011-11-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

There are jobs in this world that Plotnik can imagine doing, and then there are those that are incomprehensible to him. Caring for an elderly person is one of those. Mummy P. has two wonderful women right now who share the time with her. Lilian is back in El Salvador with her own mother this week, and while she is gone her friend Gloria is here. Between Gloria and Lilian Mummy P. is in the hands of two caring and spiritual ladies.

But what a job! Plotnik is exhausted after only two days. How anyone can manage both the physical chores and all the endless repetition -- this is not a job he could ever do. God bless Lilian and Gloria, amen.

Plot just heard from his and Duck's good friend Rachie this morning, whose mom has advanced Alzheimer's at a very young age, and who has just been placed into hospice. Truly, nobody can ever feel too sorry for themselves because every time you allow that to happen you hear about somebody else who has it so much worse than you do.

Gloria and Lilian belong to the same church. They seem to trust that everything will work out, that things are proceeding according to plan and that there is nothing to worry about. This sounds exactly like what Plotnik's spiritualist grandparents used to say about life on the next ethereal plane to follow this one. They all use the same words, the same phrases. It's hard to believe, but comforting anyway.

Last night Plot and Mummy P.'s cousin came over to the house with her son Eric. Lila lost her elder son fifteen years ago to cancer, and her other son Eric and she have suffered over this for a long time.

Last night we were talking about dreams. Eric said that he always used to dream about his brother, and in the dream his brother was ill and in pain. When he said that his mom said "I did too."

Then Eric said "but, Mom -- now, when I dream about Drew, he's healthy. And happy. He looks great."

Lila stared at Eric and said "But -- I do too. He's not sick anymore in my dreams either."

Then Gloria said "So you see -- your son Drew is in heaven now. It took him awhile to get there. He's happy now and feels fine. Things always work out. There is nothing to worry about."

So, you take a deep breath and nod your head and keep on keeping on. Life is good.

It's SOOOO Hot

2011-11-06T07:15:00.000-08:00

Things have changed down here. They've turned UP the thermostat. Thankfully, it's raining outside so there is some kind of natural relief from the heat in the house. But only if you're not inside.

But we did get to Plotnik's favorite Stiletto restaurant last night. It's down in his and Duck's old neighborhood. The freeway was 5 mph from Mummy P.'s entrance at Lankershim Blvd. all the way to Silver Lake Blvd. No accident, just too many freaking people in too many freaking cars.

Luckily, none of them seem to know about El Caserio.

The food was, if possible, better than ever. The lomo saltado (beef strips and gravy soaked french fries and tomatoes) was delectable. The sancocho (a beef-stock soup that tastes like your Ecuadorian grandma made it) disappeared in a flash. We got a side order of patacones (hard fried bananas), to go with the sweet bananas, and then they brought a slice of pumpkin pie with a candle on it (supposedly the evening was to belatedly celebrate Plottie's birthday). The best news was Mummy P. herself held up all evening, though she is now fairly absent from events, a combination of pain in her hip, a refusal to get a hearing aid and just the passage of time.

She needs heat. Plot and Duck feel this morning like someone dropped a hot paper bag over their faces and tossed them in the De-Energizer. Rain, beautiful rain.

Coffee. Must go out for coffee.

Heading for Stiletto: The Car and Taco Ghetto

2011-11-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

It's time for the sublime: airports!

Kenya Warns of El Shabab Donkeys

2011-11-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

This headline is in the NYT today. Apparently the Donkeys, presumably Muslim, are being used to transport arms into Kenya, presumably Christian.

Sounds funny, right? But we all know what the next step will be: land mines on the border. Which will remain for a decade or two, hidden from sight, long after whatever they are arguing about now has been forgotten.

They're doing it on the Syria-Lebanon border now too. These are the most hideous weapons of war, attacking the most innocent and vulnerable -- and we don't like it, do we?

But then think about the drones we're using to attack suspected enemies. Plotnik has been told that the hum of the airplanes that contain the drones can be heard, but not seen, all over Afghanistan. Their death falls right out of the sky -- land mines shoot out of the earth. Surprise! Happy No More Head! Or Leg!

It's better, in our case, so the logic goes, than sending in poor American kids to do the killing. It's better too, in every land mine case, than sending poor (fill in nation) kids to do the border watching. This is a cruel logic, but it makes a lot of sense if you're the one who fires the drone or hides the mine.

We've got our panties in a bunch about Occupy Oakland. You want to join a credit union? THAT'LL help! Get real. The earth just hit 7,000,000,000 people. Do you think anybody, except politicos and the sheriff, really cares where you put your little tents?

A Few Favorites

2011-11-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Plottie and Duck are heading down to Stiletto to see Mummy P. this weekend. In advance of arriving, they went over their New York/Providence/Allegheny trip to pick out the best photos, download to Walgreen's on-line site and have them printed to pick up in a few hours. $4.62 for 24 photos. It's tough to beat. Mummy P. enjoys having the photos to look at, although she doesn't always remember that she's seen them.

Plottie used to think she enjoyed them more in large size on the computer monitor, but that is not so. Photos in the hand are familiar, monitors are not.

Day of The Dead at Everett

2011-11-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

Last night's Day of the Dead celebration at Everett Middle School, BZWZ's alma middle mater and the school where Ducknik has volunteered for several years, was quick, informative and fun. Fátima, her teacher, explained that everything you see on that table is traditional, including the tamales, the pan dulce and the orange zempoalxochitls, that we call marigolds.

People put favorite foods and photos of the departed on the altar because it is said that on this day the other side can cross back and communicate with us. Along the top, note Steve Jobs, Fátima's father and Ducknik's Mom.

Ol' Everett hasn't changed. BZWZ would recognize the old mural painted on the wall with the homelands of many of the students. They've put a lot of money into this school since the 1990s and it looks it.

This morning Plottie woke up early and later on took a picture. This was the view at 7am, which will be the new 6am a week from now.

Halloween 2011

2011-11-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

Plot bought (3) 150-piece bags of candy from Costco, thinking that would be more than enough. Of course, he and Duck dug into one of the bags a week early, but only removed a few of the Snickers and Milky Ways to put in the freezer for the dark snowy winter that is almost upon us. And maybe one or two Twixes. OK, a tiny inconsequential bag or two of peanut M&Ms. ONE freaking Almond Joy.

That's a lot of candy at one piece per kid, and yet by 7:30 it was all gone. Avanna from next door might have come over more than once but who's counting?

Kids were swarming up and down 26th of October Street for at least another half hour after that, dressed in the finest home-made and store-bought costumes. It was windy, of course, so the parents accompanying the kids were wrapped up a little more, but they were in costume too. Halloween is the Number One Holiday in this burg.

What? ANOTHER UPS driver? Plot never thought he'd see another one after Isabella wore hers two years ago. (Plot thinks the UPS man's dad might think of moving his devil ears forward.)

SO many kids, so many costumes. Plot kept trying to take pictures but it takes the flash a lot longer to set up than it does for the kids to run next door for their next handout. This gorgeous little clown had some patience.

There was a kid selling vacuum cleaners, sales pitch and all. There were countless princesses and Spider Men (still the favorite little girl and little boy outfits), no political masks (no George Bushes like in previous years, nor Rick Perrys nor Michele Bachmanns). There were several kids wearing a costume Plot didn't recognize, even though they had their character name spelled out: Angry Spider. Turns out 'Angry Spider' is a video game on the I-Phone. Plottie learned something last night, but he already knew it: he doesn't own an I-Phone.

All the neighbors were out -- pirate Keith looks like he is wearing a STOP sign earring.

Cheryl made pumpkin pie and Carlo and Athena had chile and mulled wine and everyone stood on the street, shivering, laughing with the delighted kids filling up their bags long after Plot and Duck ran out of treats. The only down side for Plottie was that his neighbor Ray had his light off for the first year since Plot and Duck have lived here. He always has a small bowl with around ten pieces of candy in it, and every year crosses the street to marvel at all the kids on the block. But Plot has seen Ray going downhill for several years, since his wife Pat died, and this can't be a good sign.

We hear the weather was great in Brooklyn last night. We missed Bellybone on Halloween but it's hard to imagine being anywhere more fun than right here.

Birthday Feast

2011-10-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

Last night, Plot and Duck got to celebrate his recent birthday at La Costanera, down the coast half an hour south of Saint Plotniko.

It's quite a place, on the beach in Montara, with a bar scene downstairs and Peruvian restaurant on the main floor. Of course, any time Pisco Sours are consumed Plot and Duck reminisce about Cuzco and all those memorable meals that started with rice, beans, avocados, eggs, french fries, boiled potatoes and bread and then moved on to the meal on top of all that.

None of that here -- you don't need to conserve energy at sea level, except to cross the highway to get back to your car. The pumpkin soup with corn, farmer cheese and chili was really good and so were the seafood empanadas.

Plot, of all people, did notice one thing: people come to really nice places dressed in the sloppiest fashion. You will notice he put on his nice long sleeved blue shirt and black slacks, and Duck looked like a million dollars as always. So why would somebody show up in ripped jeans and a red sweat shirt that looked like he found it in the parking lot?

Yes, it's karma. Plotnik has had this kind of comment tossed in the direction of his closet from time to time over the years, but maybe since he started reviewing theater and must look sharp at least fifty or sixty times a year he takes more notice than he used to.

That is, when it's not he who is wearing the ratty sweat shirt. Dinner was delicious. Excellent idea and thank you, Great Ducknik.

"Caulk the Bastard, Doug:" A Remembrance of Larry Haun

2011-10-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

The Great PD was taking the subway to work Friday and he opened up the New York Times and ran into this photo. He texted his dad right away -- it was a feature on Larry Haun, once a neighbor of the Plotnik family in Stiletto City, and a brief and world-class mentor of Plotnik himself.

Larry was what philosophers want to be when they tire of talking and want to go build something. He was the carpenter of carpenters and the curmudgeon of curmudgeons, plus he was the only artist Plotnik ever saw whose instrument was the sledgehammer. Read this and then you can read the story below about him, written by West Coast Housing Correspondent Douglas Qué.

Link to NYT feature on Larry Haun.

"Caulk the Bastard, Doug," by Douglas Qué

In the early nineties, my wife Barbara and I were developing a small sideline business where we would buy houses, renovate them and re-sell them. True, it was the wrong business for two people who love houses – you cannot survive in that world unless you buy low and renovate cheap and you cannot renovate cheap if you love houses.

But this was the nineties, and any house you bought today would supposedly appreciate tomorrow, as long as you made it look nice.

There was an old, tiny and decrepit cottage down Lakeshore hill. A very old lady lived in that house. You would occasionally see her in her housedress and slippers, puttering around the miniscule front lawn inside her falling-over white picket fence, where she grew enormous heirloom roses and camellias. The roses were taller than the house itself, which looked like a witch’s cute little storage shed.

One day, a sign went up on the front door that the house would be available for bids at probate court. We didn’t know what had happened to the old lady, but we had just finished one house and were looking for another, so we went downtown, started the bidding at $90,000, crept up by thousand dollar increments until we got to the last bid I was going to make: $107,000. I waited for the bidder standing behind me to make one more bid -- but he didn’t. The house, which you had to purchase before ever being allowed inside, now belonged to us.

When we finally got the key and walked inside we found decades of rot, piles of hoarded garbage, rooms too small to imagine living in and a foundation that seemed to be crumbling.

What to do? I knew that Larry Haun had moved a few years ago, and now lived right on top of this hill, so on a whim I drove up, knocked on Larry's door and asked if he’d like a job renovating a house within walking distance. To my amazement, Larry agreed. He asked if I would be working alongside him and I said yes.

“Do you have the slightest idea what you’re doing?” he asked.

“I’ve renovated houses before,” I said. “I can follow directions.”

Larry stared at me.

“So, no,” I said.

Larry was around sixty, tall, thin, wiry, with very long arms and huge hands. He was a vegetarian and hinted at being a Buddhist. But he didn't act like a Buddhist.

“Shee-it," he said. "But all right. Just stay out of my way. Here’s what you do. First, call John. Here’s his number. He’ll be our structural engineer. Get him to draw you up some plans and then you go down to the city and pull the permits. When you’re all done with that call me and we’ll get cracking.”

“I don’t need a more detailed design?” I asked.

“Shee-it," Larry said. "You’ve got me.”

For the next three months Larry did one kind of magic or another, but I remember the first day the best.

Larry and I stood outside the little house. I was wearing jeans and a work shirt and had a nice nail belt strapped to my waist, packed with tools -- a hammer, nails, screws, gloves, clamps, tape measure, spirit level. Larry wore old overalls and carried a sledgehammer. We (Larry) realized we (Larry) had to tear down a jerry-built porch on one side and put up a straight corner post for a new sitting room. That post would have to be perfect, straight, plumb and sturdy. The rest of the room would be built around it.

Larry grabbed his sledgehammer and started swinging at that old porch. He didn’t swing a sledgehammer like a Buddhist. The sledge pumped around and around, up and down. Boards splintered and fell. Rafters hit the ground. Support members were knocked ten feet away. Within twenty minutes the building was on the ground and I was cleaning it up. Now the hard part began.

Imagine, if you can: A six by six by ten post weighs 80 pounds. You’re holding it in one hand, which is a feat all by itself. In your other hand is your three foot sledgehammer, which probably weighs another fifteen pounds. You have to somehow use that sledgehammer, in your one hand, to drive that post, in your other hand, two feet into the ground and have it end up perfectly plumb: straight up and down. There is nothing to measure against, except what you are seeing in your own head.

Also, the place you have to start pounding is ten feet high and you're looking up at it.

I went to help Larry pick up the post but he waved me away. He grabbed it and held it up, looked at the existing house six feet away, looked down at the ground, looked at the house again, then drew an x on the dirt with his foot. He pointed the post into the dirt, and with his other hand reached up as high as he could and started pounding the post into the dirt with his sledgehammer He managed to get enough force on that sledgehammer that the post disappeared a few inches with every stroke.

You may have no idea how impossible this is to do. You are holding an eighty pound post with one hand, and your other hand is extended straight up in the air, holding a sledgehammer that is also pointed straight up in the air. At the top of the sledgehammer is the top of the post. You have to somehow develop enough strength to pound the head of the hammer onto the top of the post. Most other humans cannot do things like this. Maybe Buddhists can.

I could have held the post for him: no. He could have climbed up on a ladder: no. He could have used plumb bobs and levels to make sure it was level: no.

Within half an hour he had pounded that post two feet into the ground. I could not have done it in a year. He then put down his sledgehammer, sweat dripping onto his t-shirt. I offered him a paper towel: no. He pulled a bandana out of the pocket of his overalls and wiped his forehead, then picked up an eight foot long two by four and a power saw.

He stared at me, then at the power saw, then back at me. Aha! I ran over and plugged it in. Finally! Useful!

He eyeballed the distance from the post to the side of the existing house, pursed his lips for a few seconds then brought the wood level with one hand and with a loud whirr of the power saw sawed two feet off with the other.

OSHA doesn’t even have a category for how dangerous this is. Anyone else would cut their dick off at the very least if not slice their entire body in two. Larry then held the two by four against the house, far over his head, and pounded it into the post he had just inserted in the earth, with several nails that he grabbed from a different overall pocket and held in his mouth until he needed them, then, still holding one end of the two by four walked over to the house and attached the beam to a cleat he then pounded into the rafter.

Don't worry if you don't understand the names for the lumber pieces. Here's all you have to know: you CAN’T pound a two by four into a free standing post with one hand. Every time you pound the nail into the cross piece, the post will move. If nobody is holding the post you will never get the nails into it because by the time you get done the post will have been uprooted and will be sitting on the ground.

...unless you can pound in that three inch long sixteen penny nail with ONE mammoth stroke of the hammer, two at most. By the time the post is ready to come loose it has been tricked: it is already attached.

I walked over to hold the post: no. Larry looked at me with sorrow in his eyes. BANG. Done.

Two more two by fours, all cut off in in midair without measuring, in exactly the right place, and attached in the same John Henry Swung a Mighty Hammer style, and the top of the new room was now outlined. It would had to be perfectly level because a new roof would be going on top of it, but, of course, Larry measured nothing.

What I had done, so far, was to stand in one spot with my mouth wide open, plug in the power saw and bring him a few two by fours. And learn.

Five more two-bys and three four-bys later, the framing of the outside of the new room was finished. It had taken Larry an hour and a half to do all that, using nothing but a power saw, a sledgehammer and a nail hammer.

“I’m done for the day,” he said, got in his old pickup truck and drove home. "Caulk the bastard, Doug," he called as he left.

I waved good-bye, immediately took my levels and plumb bobs and tapes and measured all the boards, which were of course cut straight and attached perfectly level.

When he came to work the next morning I asked him what he meant by "caulk the bastard," and he explained that the number one enemy of every piece of construction is water. If you allow water in it will eventually rot the wood.

"Ever been to the Grand Canyon?" he said.

At that point I hadn't. That would wait until the Trip with the Randy Teenagers when BZWZ was sixteen.

"Well, it's a giant canyon with a river at the bottom. How did that river get down there?"

"Erosion?" I said.

"Right. And water will erode this house a lot faster than the Grand Canyon. So every place one piece of wood is attached to another piece of wood you cover it with caulk. Spread it on thick. We'll sand it and paint over it later.

"You mean I should caulk the bastard."

He had a big smile and I saw it then.

Larry Haun, I have thought of you so many times. I have your book and your video where you build a whole house with your brother and show us how to do it. I remember how much you liked country music and hated politicians. I don't know if you'd be a Tea Party-er or an Occupy-er. Probably neither one.

Every time I have built something since then I caulk the bastard, Larry, and I always remember you when I do it.

When Larry was done with the foundation, Barb and I stayed and finished the place. A solid year of every-day labor later, we had a brand new, lovely little cottage, which we managed to sell, if I remember correctly, for $153,000. Not a lot of profit for all that work, but it was worth every hour.

The young woman who bought it is still there. I promise you no water is getting in.

__________

(Eric or Risa, if you read this: write me.)

Excitement Within the Blah

2011-10-29T15:11:00.001-07:00

Plotnik's four-play week ended last night. Duck had had enough, so Plot met Hanky Girl at SF Playhouse to see an intense and excellent show called "Honey Brown Eyes" about the Bosnian Civil War. You get up to walk out of a show like this and realize that so much of what we whine about in this country would be considered the best of all possible worlds on most of the rest of the planet.

Plotnik has to say Jennifer Stuckert, who plays Alma, not only has those honey brown eyes but one of those Jean Simmons faces at which you never tire of staring. Plotnik thinks that every once in awhile God just gets bored creating blah people who look like the rest of us and decides to turn out a really, really beautiful one, just to break up the routine.

Speaking of the routine: baseball is so boring when your team isn't playing. Plot knows there were some good games during this thankfully finished 2011 World Series, but neither team was really all that good. They both played badly, and one outlasted the other. Blah people playing a blah game in the mid blah west.

Wow

2011-10-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

"Race," at A.C.T. now through November 13, is great theater. Written by David Mamet, it makes you squirm while you are laughing, then wince as you realize how little truth matters to the law, or to the rest of us.

Plot and Duck were knocked out by this show. Plotnik then looked up reviews from around the country since "Race" opened on Broadway in 2009. They are almost universally blah. Reviewers complained about the most banal niggles, seemingly forgetting the amazing dialog, the incisive acting and perfect pacing, not to mention Mamet's damning opinion about just about all of us.

But it's about race, y'know? America does not like to talk about it. Apparently Mamet has moved his politics to the right, which people in the theater don't like, but you'd never know it by this show. It's just hard-hitting brilliance with a lot of words we're not supposed to say.

I'd put it on top of my list, except I already saw it. Wow.

We Need Water in the Vase

2011-10-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

"When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
The age of Aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golding living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revalation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius!
Aquarius!"

(from "Hair" -- Ragni, Rado and MacDermot)

Plot and Duck saw "Hair" last night and Plotnik felt at first like a nasty old curmudgeon bemoaning the passing of time. First off, they parked on the street at Mission near Sixth. As they headed up Sixth, they continually dodged lurching drunks and toothless old women camped on the sidewalk. The theater beckoned a block ahead, its marquee ablaze with colorful letters spelling out the promise of "HAIR," as the old, the black, the sick, the befuddled, the down and the out, one block away, leaned against lamp posts attempting to remain vertical.

"I really hate this street," Duck said.

"Me too."

As Plot and Duck crossed Market and walked towards the crowded press table inside the Golden Gate lobby they were accosted by young people in "hippie" costumes.

"Peace to you brother," said the hired shills. "Peace to you, sister. Have a flower."

The lady at the press table made sure Plotnik had a daisy. Plotnik didn't want a daisy.

"I remember the sixties," he started, "it was a lot more than..."

She wasn't listening. She handed Plottie his tickets. "Reach into this pile and pull out your Hippie Name. Everyone needs to have a Hippie Name."

Plotnik stared at her. She nodded towards a pile of white stick-on rectangles.

Plotnik pulled out his Hippie Name: "Nug Sunburst."

Duck was "Jewel Moonlight."

A skinny dude with an afro wig pressed a daisy into Plotnik's palm. "Peace and love to you, brother." The evening was not starting out well.

"Nug Fucking Sunburst. Nug Fucking Sunburst," he growled, heading towards the counter where a young girl texting on her I-Phone was selling headbands, beads, fifty dollar sweat shirts and thirty dollar tie-dyes and little imitation roach clips (or maybe they were tweezers to pull your head out of your rear end if you think "Hair" is about fifty dollar sweat shirts).

"Take a deep breath," he said to himself, and with the application of a bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, he and Duck took their seats, and the show started, and it was fantastic.

Kind of. You can read the San Francisco Theater Blog Review of "Hair" here.

When The Great Plotnik was the Young Plotnik, curmudgeons would say things like "You shoulda heard Sinatra when he was young" or "You shoulda seen Joe DiMaggio. THAT was baseball!" Plotnik thought they were pathetic.

Now it's he who is saying "...but the sixties were about so much more than flowers or hippies. And "Hair" is a subversive political piece for God's sake. If you want to give away handouts before the show, give out flags. Or joints. Be for real."

Plot shook away drowsiness in the long Act Two, but the show ends with great songs and tremendous understated power. For the most part, he and Duck loved it. Happy Birthday, Plottie.

Then they walked back to their car, only it was three hours later. The armies of the Underclass had mobilized. It was like being in a video game, bouncing through the maze of the barely conscious - but somehow still a little bit menacing - as Nug and Jewel got back to their PlotMobile, fired up and beat it out of there...

"Leaving Flower Power in its blossomy space

Walking through that concrete place

Where they forgot to put water into the vase."

Hair on My Birthday Plus Tiny Rant

2011-10-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

'Tis a Good Birthday that endeth not in Zero nor Five.' -- Wm. Shakesplot

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, hot and sunny. The Great Plotnik is celebrating tonight by going to see "Hair" at the Curran. He and Duck saw it the last time on Broadway, in 1970.

The Fifth Dimension. All those hits from Hair like "Good Morning Starshine/The Age of Aquarius" and "Let the Sunshine In" -- can these songs really be more than forty years old?

Can Plotnik really be more than twenty years old?

Somebody from the Fifth Dimension once recorded one of Plotnik's songs but try as he might he can't remember who it was or what song they recorded. Jeezo. Must not have been a chart topper.

Plottie remembers the big scandalous thing about Hair was that people took their clothes off for a few minutes on stage. He and Duck (and everyone else in the audience) looked forward to that moment, but when it came the naked people were in a chorus, in the back of a bunch of other people, in the rear corner of the stage, and Plot and Duck's tickets were 'way up in the Cheaposphere. Sigh.

The thing that already irritates Plotnik is that the production company is advertising these 'get up on stage and dance with the Hippies' nights at the theater. Once again, hippies are the grand hysterical joke that seems to represent the age.

No, children. When protests were happening in the 1960s, the police didn't stand idly by like they do now -- everybody got smacked. Hippies and non-hippies all bled red. Why do you think that doesn't happen any more? Why do the police stand around Occupy Wall Street, for the most part, chewing on cheeseburgers and letting things slide?

Why has anything changed? Because others had their heads beaten. Because 20-year-olds at Kent State were shot to death. Because the old ways are now in disrepute. You can thank the hippies and the whole generation for that, whether or not you think their clothes look funny now.

Birthday Rant concludes. Curtain.

Food and Stories

2011-10-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

The Great Mushnik and Silent Bill always find great places to eat. Yesterday's lunch was at Lung Shan on Mission Street -- hardly the place you'd expect such delectable Chinese food. If you can believe it, that is pastrami in the above picture.

Later on, Plotnik discovered the probable reason for the extra deliciousness -- all that extra fat. His stomach let him know all about it. But it was worth every bite.

Plot's birthday isn't until tomorrow, but the tradition of birthday lunches continues. Mushnik has already ordered up where she wants to be taken next month.

Last night Plot and Duck saw Word 4 Word act out two Shioban Fallon short stories about Iraqi vets returning home. She is the wife of a career major who currently lives in Jordan, and these stories are chilling. The collection is called "You Know When the Men Are Gone." Did you realize there are 44,000 injured Iraqi vets -- many whose injuries would have killed them in earlier wars? But now they get to return alive and maimed, veterans of yet another unpopular war.

In the small crowd at Z space was a friend Plot and Duck hadn't seen in awhile. Olivia is a Noe Valley Voice veteran and once, before she had two young kids, was a regular at NVV get-togethers. She's a good friend of Shioban Fallon and had the great opportunity last night to see stories that she has heard in many forms over the years actually acted get out on stage. What a thrill that's got to be.

You're Prettier When You're Younger

2011-10-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Great Plotnik has noticed that the older you get the more pronounced your bad habits become. If you used to interrupt people before they were finished speaking, you do it more now. If as a younger person you might have (among friends) allowed the occasional gaseous eruption into the world while looking sideways to blame the next person, as your years advance there may be an increase in frequency (temporal as well as sonic).

Not that Plottie is talking about anybody he knows, just sayin'.

One of those features of aging seems to be an increase in anxiety. It has something to do with your diminishing sense of control over what's going on around you. Maybe you can't do anything about it but you can still worry about it.

Plottie recognizes this readily in his mother but she has an excuse. And he does it too. This morning he awakened very early with a sense of -- well, what was it? Not doom, not imminent danger, just a kind of unfocused ill-at-ease. He and Duck saw a play Friday night about a young man who has to move in with his aging mother as she becomes too frail to care for herself -- that could be part of it.

The upside-downing of this year's holiday planning, where nothing will be as it always has been -- maybe that's part of it too. Realizing he just did a nice long bike trip with PD should make him feel good, but instead he finds himself thinking about the things he can probably no longer do. Could he crank his knees up those stone stairs to the top of the mountain and then down into Macchu Picchu again?...and then continue on with BZWZ to the top of Huayna Picchu?

So why not worry about it?

But most of all, he does, in the middle of the night, what he feels like he spent decades teaching his kids not to do -- worrying about problems for which he knows there is no answer. Is he going to move in with his mom, like the guy in the play did? No. Is anyone going to find a solution to her increasing mental and physical isolation? No, at least not any solution she would ever agree to.

So why worry about it? Why waste hours of sleep upstairs in BZ's room, staring out the window as the sun comes up? Does this mean Plotnik is getting older too?

Just Not Steve Buscemi

2011-10-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday morning. The power was off all day yesterday as PG&E had a "We Shoot All Chronicle Investigative Reporters" Day. Two things surprised Plotnik:

1) He could NOT stop walking into rooms and hitting the light switches. When nothing happened it fooled him every time. All day long. As his mentor Bugs Bunny used to say: "What a mo-roon!"

2) All the neighbors came out on a glorious, hot and sunny day. Plottie sat on his neighbor's stoop and talked with people he hadn't seen in a year, and these are people he likes. Refer to Bugs's comment above.

In the NYT Travel Section this morning the cover feature is the guy who rode his bike across the whole country, including his last section where Plotnik and pals just finished. Plotnik is thinking about two more things:

1) The man's knees.

2) The man's nuts.

Bicycle shorts help for the first four hours. You may think you're wearing some kind of styrofoam diaper when you're off the bike seat, but when you're on it the padding is welcome. But by nightfall you feel like a squirrel has burrowed into your pants and is playing bocci with his friends.

Knees -- this guy is not a young man. Plotnik is impressed.

But does it sound like something Plottie would LOVE to do? Yes indeedy. Especially with a newspaper contract and film in the works with Plotnik played by anyone except Steve Buscemi.

Moammar's Gone, One More Round

2011-10-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Qaddafi's gone. The Libyan rebels got him. Now let's see what they do with their oil-rich, tribal patch of the Sahara.

Plot and Duck were on the sailboat this Spring when NATO started bombing Libya. It made no sense to Plotnik that we would commit our air power to toppling a dictator who was 'only' terrorizing his own people, since by those standards we'd be at war with the entire Middle East, half of Asia and Eastern Europe.

But once more, you've got to give it to President Obama: he set out a program, stuck with it and now he can put Moammar Qadaffi's bloated carcass up on his wall with Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile Sadam Hussein's head is in Crawford, Texas and who knows who's next?

What will the Republicans say this time? They'll probably keep quiet about this one.

It Don't Get No Betta'n'dis.

2011-10-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

So, like he told you last week, Plotnik reunited with his distant cousin Josh at Josh's wildly popular Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop on Sixth Avenue at 22nd Street in Manhattan, across the street from Madison Square Park and the Flatiron Building. At that time, Josh served Plotnik a deliciously disconcerting pastrami sandwich.

See, for Plotnik, Katz's Deli has always been the Pinnacle of Pastrami. But a few days before going into Eisenberg's, PD and Ducknik had gone into Katz's and had a disappointing, dried-out half-hearted pastrami sandwich -- and at $15.95 that's a lot of disappointment.

That overpriced and underwhelming sandwich may have been on Plotnik's mind when Cousin Josh lay two Eisenberg's pastramis down on the counter in front of PD and Plottie.

They were SOOO good! Plot thought he must be dreaming, because the sandwich was only $9 bucks. So he promised Josh he'd come back for further research after the bike trip.

"You can meet Robin then," Josh said. "The love of my life."

Sure enough. On Monday, all packed up and a train and a plane to catch, Plotnik hugged Isabella good-bye at her school and promised he'd see her next month in Seattle. Then, with The Great PD helping Plotnik trudge his suitcase and computer and carry-on up and down the subway stairs, the two veteranos of the Allegheny Bike Trail hopped on the R Train and went back uptown to Eisenberg's.

The Place was absolutely packed with a raucous lunchtime crowd, jammed as only a skinny New York deli can be, with people who couldn't get seats at the lunch counter shouting out their orders like at the NY Stock Exchange, accompanied by frenzied arm wavings and beseechings in many fractured languages.

Josh stood behind the cash register, wearing a blue shirt open at the neck. Josh is one of these big guys who look really good in open shirts. (Somewhere in the past, some very large Viking vacationing in Poland must have done some time with a female Plotnikkie antecedent, because Josh is at least six foot six. His brother is six-four. BOTH their parents added together are shorter than either of their kids. )

Josh can stare out over the masses of squabbling Plotnikkies crowding in front of him. The second Plot and PD jammed their way inside the door Josh shouted: "Daniel! Doug!"

(Plotnik does not know why Josh called The Great Plotnik and The Great PunkyDunky "Daniel" and "Doug" but they knew he was referring to them.)

"C'mere!" he shouted. "Meet Robin, the love of my life."

Standing next to him was a normal sized very pretty woman, in a checked blouse, obviously Josh's girl friend, who was calmly handling all the take-outs and phone-ins and cash transactions and translations, swinging her arms and holding take out food in paper bags over her head, all as easily as if she were home putting on a cup of tea.

"These are my cousins," Josh shouted to her.

"WHO'S GOT GRILLED CHEESE EXTRA ONIONS, CHOCOLATE EGG CREAM?" Robin shouted, holding a bag up in the air that Josh then grabbed to hold up very high, with one hand, while he wrote orders and punched keys with his other. "What's their last name?" Robin said.

"Plotnik!" Josh said.

"Plotnik!" Robin said. "Just like you!"

Josh beamed. He is such a nice guy.

"Josh, give us three pastrami-ryes to go," said Plotnik.

"Mustard?" Josh asked.

"Mustard," Plotnik answered. "And an iced tea."

"Lemon, no sugar, right?"

"How did you know that?"

Josh just laughed. "Look at you," he said. Josh weighs at least 300 pounds. Plotnik took it as a compliment, though he's not really sure.

OK. Plotnik hugged his boy good-bye, thanked him for such a great trip, then took two of the three sandwiches and the iced tea across the street to sit on a bench in Madison Square Park and eat his lunch, while staring up at the glorious Manhattan afternoon. The bench was crowded, and Plotnik also had his suitcase, carry-on and computer bag. He had an hour before he'd have to get back on the subway for JFK.

He found a seat. It wasn't easy but, surrounded by people staring at him, he unwrapped that sandwich.

Plotnik is here to tell you, fellow Plotnikkies, that the Hot Pastrami on Rye with Mustard from Eisenberg's Deli served from Plotnik to Plotnik on Monday, October 17, 2011, was the finest sandwich Plotnik has EVER eaten. Fat, juicy, greasy, perfect.

The sandwich was so good Plotnik would take one bite, then put the sandwich down, say "Ohh! Ahh!" while swiveling around to catch people's eyes, and then he'd pick it up and the whole thing would start over. It was orgasmic, but better because of all the grease.

There was a guy sitting next to him spooning a small container of Dannon yogurt. After awhile he stopped spooning his yogurt and just stared at Plotnik.

"That sounds like a really good sandwich," he said.

"It's the best of the best," Plotnik said, wiping his face with his napkin. "Ohh! Ohh!"

"Makes my yogurt look really stupid," the guy said.

"Mmmm, Oh God, smack," said Plotnik, still smacking his lips.

The guy stopped staring into his yogurt container. He was now staring directly at Plotnik.

"Really stupid," he said.

"Well, I know where you can get one of these," Plotnik said. "Right across the street, over at Eisenberg's. He's my cousin."

"Eisenberg's your cousin?"

"Nahh, not Eisenberg. My cousin Josh bought it from old man Eisenberg around six years ago."

"Must be really good, huh?" The guy kept staring at the other half of Plotnik's sandwich, and he probably sensed, through some pastramic telepathy that Plottie had yet another one in the paper bag, and that although he planned to take it home to Ducknik, it was still hot and equally delicious and possibly available.

"Only $9 bucks," Plotnik said.

"I mean," he said, "this yogurt was $4..." He let his plastic spoon fall into the container.

"Uh, huh," Plotnik said. "Well, you know where to go."

The guy kept staring.

Look, Plotnik has never claimed to be a saint. His own mother could have scammed a bite of that sandwich, and maybe Isabella, but only them and only a bite. Feeling no shame, Plotnik finished the entire sandwich, with Mr. Yogurt staring at him, Plottie moaning in the ecstasy you only get in New York, on a park bench, on a gorgeous day with the sun splashing off rooftops and fire escapes, buses beeping and taxis creeping, his legs folded and locked over his suitcases against some random thief, his lap covered with greasy plastic wrap, multiple napkins yellow with mustard and brown with meat grease, the greatest and most delicious sandwich in mankind's long history still alive in his hands, still hot, still steamy, coriander from the meat and caraway from the bread and diesel from the cabs and buses, and all the people moving up and around and with all the craziness of this city it all comes down to this very moment, and you can go from hell to Staten Island and back and it won't get, it can't get, it'll never get no betta'n'dis.

Pork Product! White Bread! Imitation Butter Spread! Gooooooo.....Allegheny!

2011-10-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

It started at the carbo-intake capital of Western Maryland -- The Waffle House in Hagerstown...

...and ended, after 130 miles winding through southern Pennsylvania, back at the Crabby Pig outside the bike shop in Cumberland, Md. At the outset, The Great Plotnik, The Great PunkyDunky and the Great Chris-Baba were filled with energy.

They ended up looking more like this.

What a grand three days. Plottie, PD and C-B pedaled 40 miles the first day (half day, really), 50 miles the second (with an unforgettable side trip to Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Falling Water' in the middle) and 40 more the last day. The first day was flat, the second and half the third mildly uphill and the last half of Day Three was basically downhill all the way down into Cumberland.

(Yes, some people pedal all the way from Pittsburgh to Cumberland in one day. Like, so?)

The countryside was beautiful -- though many of the leaves had left the trees in the rainstorm Plot and PD drove through coming down from Brooklyn.

The fun, of course, had nothing to do with the bicycles, but with all the laughing, telling of tall tales, singing, beer drinking, cigar smoking and consuming of vast amounts of what no one would mistake for Health Food.

You get into such a nice rhythm on the bikes. The trail was wide enough for three to ride abreast at various points, though usually the alignment was one following two or two following one. The old railroad right of way had at one time hauled coal and coke from the mine country along the Youghiogheny ("The Yock") and Casselman Rivers up to Pittsburgh to be smelted and shipped out on the Great Lakes. Now, after being dead for decades, the tracks have been pulled up and the trail has picked up bicyclers and hikers and river rafters.

The little town of Ohiopyle is the jumping off point for a ten minute van ride up to Falling Water, which is Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece. He built it as a summer home for Edgar Kaufman in the 1930s. Kaufman owned the largest department store in Pittsburgh and the property had been a retreat for his employees until Edgar Kaufman Jr. met Wright and convinced him to consider building a home for his parents, centered around two small waterfalls.

These are really tame photos. The inside of the house, filled with Wright's furniture, with a great room that is the style today but was unheard of in the 1930s, is what makes it even more unique. But you're not allowed to take any photos inside. You'll just have to figure out how to get here some day, because for sheer beauty mixed with great taste Falling Water ranks right up there with Doris Duke's Shangri-La in Diamond Head.

Trip's over. Five hours in the car Sunday night to get back to Brooklyn, pastrami on Monday from Eisenberg's (more on that tomorrow) and then six more hours on a plane last night sitting next to a v-e-r-y- jumbo-sized man in the middle seat.

But it's all good. Plot is home. He is somewhat muscle-sore but just a little bit.

He knows now that there are few cooler sounds than the whistle from a steam engine. But if you try to chase it down on your bicycle you will only f*#&$ up your knee. Here's a tip: don't do it.

Kids everywhere love bridges, even abandoned bridges.

Riding through tunnels is very disorienting when all you can see is the light at the end of it.

Laughter, beer and pizza always make sore butts and creaky joints feel better.

Next year in Portugal? Why not?

Guitar Morning in Brooklyn, then it's Back to Saint Plotniko

2011-10-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

The Great PD had a helper when he put down some guitar licks on one of Plotnik's songs this morning. Plottie now has to pack his voluminous amount of dirty clothes from the bike trip and somehow get them into his carry-on for the flight back from JFK to Saint Plotniko at 4:30 this afternoon.

Tomorrow we'll post all the wonderful photos from three days on the Allegheny Bike Trail. Yesterday Plotnik thought he may never walk again...but today? Perfect. It's been wonderful to be back East.

OK, packing now. 45 minutes to jam it all in.

She's Quite a Swinger

2011-10-13T06:51:00.000-07:00

Tonight Plottie and The Great PD leave for Harrisburg, PA, which announced bankruptcy yesterday. Tomorrow they hook up with Chris in Cumberland, Maryland and then take off for the Allegheny Trail.

It's supposed to rain a bit on the trail. 'A bit' is fine. Plotnik just took PD's old rain jacket to the lady on the corner who is sewing up the rips in the seams to make it more water resistant.

Yesterday Isabella played for a long time at the pickup hour with her good friend Lucy. And then she jumped into Plotnik's suitcase.

Anudda Gwate Day

2011-10-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

Here's what The Great Plotnik was thinking about this morning when he was half-carrying, half-containing Isabella (yelling "Daddy! Daddy! I want my Daddy! I love my Daddy! Daddy!"), as Daddy disappeared in the distance towards the subway, leaving Plot and Belly to move not-very-quickly down DeKalb Avenue on the way to school:

It was the day Ronald Reagan was shot, which makes it March 30, 1981. The Great PunkyDunky was a little older than Isabella is now, and he, his mommy and daddy were on a ski weekend in Squaw Valley.

That is, Plot and Duck wanted to ski, so they needed to place little PD in Squaw Valley's day-care center. It was a little like taking your dog to the vet. All morning long, as everyone put on their ski clothes, PD was happy and singing to himself, happy as a rock in a snowball, until the second they stopped the car outside the Nazi Day Care Center.

Plotnik didn't raise no fool. PD has always been able to put 2 plus 2 together in an instant. He saw the day care center, saw the kids, realized his parents were about to ski away in a different direction and let out a HOWL. No, not a howl. A screeching heart rending child being tortured shriek. He started fighting the air. Nobody could get close enough to him to pick him up, so Plotnik dragged his belovedly screeching lunatic, with his snow boots dragging in the snow, because he refused to move his feet, leaving two thick lines in the snow from the back seat of the car all the way into the into the Nazi Day Care Center, up to the front door where they were met by Mr. Goebbels.

Mr. Goebbels was like December in the Aryan Fire Department Calendar. He was around six foot six, blonde, ripped (Plottie could tell) with a checked ski sweater and stretch pants. He had seen this before. He said something like "Zo, zat is fine, ve vill take gut care ov your leetle heh heh heh monster. You go. Go now, pleeze."

The last words they heard were "MOMMMY! DADDDDDDDDyyyyyyyy........."

All day long Plot felt like shit. He was convinced he had traumatized his child forever, leaving him with Nazis who would torture him and turn him into a Lutheran. Ducknik felt every bit as bad, without the religious overtone.

So they skied, but they sort of didn't ski either, worrying about their little boy, pausing each time at the head of the chair lift to listen for his tormented screams. At the close of the ski day, they took off their skis in a hurry and ran down to the Nazi Day Care Center to pick up the remnants of their child.

An ebullient Great PD came running up to them, happy and smiling and excited to relate to them all the wonderful things he had done that day at the Nazi Day Care Center. What were his first words to his parents?

"Anudda Gwate Day!"

He has never been allowed to forget his monumental temper tantrum followed by "Anudda Gwate Day!" And that's what Plotnik was thinking about this morning as Isabella howled and tugged and fussed and lamented in Plottie's arms -- until she saw her friend Beya out in front of the school, to whom she immediately raced, hugged, and holding her hand, bounded happily up the stairs and into school.

Papa to The Great PunkyDunky: this is all your fault.

Back to Zuccotti Park

2011-10-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

It was starting out to be another hot and beautiful day in Providence when, early this morning, Plottie drove Ducknik to T.F. Green Airport for her flight home to S.P. A few hours later it was time for a somewhat teary goodbye to The Great BZWZ, Plot's all-grown-up scientist who will nonetheless always be his little girl. BZ drove Plot to the Amtrak station and a few hours after that Plot got off in the core of the apple. Even the stairs at Penn Station are painted up.

He and The Great PD went straight over to Eisenberg's Deli for lunch, and posed with their cousin Josh, whose pastrami sandwich was better at $9 than Katz's at $15.95. Josh sits at the counter and eats. What better advertisement for your restaurant? And he's not a little man.

After lunch The Great Plotnik took the R train down to Zuccotti Park to see what has happened to the encampment of Occupy Wall Street-ers in the two weeks since he and Duck were down there looking at the World Trade Center construction.

It has gotten huge.

The police seem content to keep the sidewalks clear as the hundreds of people sit on the concrete inside and an equal amount mill about outside the makeshift campground. It's very fluid -- young and old, black and white, male and female, everyone in their own -- sort of -- marked off spot where they might have a jerry-built display of recycled gray water or a sprouts kitchen or the planning desk with an activity set out for every half hour, or the medical area, or the free, donated food area. Or the people's library.

At one point, Plot was talking with a young guy holding a sign about how corporations are not humans. He made some interesting points. Then, he needed to take a break so Plotnik took his sign for him and held it up himself for fifteen minutes or so.

People came up to him saying all kinds of things, like "What do you guys want anyway, money? Is that it?" Plotnik said "look around. You'll be hard pressed to see any money at all. Money is not the issue here."

Someone else said "I did this in the '60s. I think it's a disgrace. Why are they dressed like it's a circus? Why aren't they wearing suits so people will pay attention?" Plotnik said "Ma'am, I was there in the '60s too. Nobody wore any suits and people paid lots of attention. This is just the start."

Cops surround the park. Plot went over to one of New York's finest and said "Excuse me, officer. You guys are being really nice to these people in here."

"Protect and serve," the officer said, mouthing the official slogan of the NYPD.

Plotnik persisted: "But the last time I did this, you guys were busting heads. I guess times have changed, huh?"

"Huh," he said.

P-Town Saturday

2011-10-09T05:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning in Providence means a trip to the Farmer's Market and sausage sandwiches from the pig truck.

Later on, on a beautifully hot day, Plot, Duck and BZ drove out to Bristol, RI to rent bikes and ride down the bike trail which runs along Naragansett Bay. It's October and that means pumpkins.

BZ's Community Garden plot is only a block from her house. The broccoli is ready to eat.

PD and Belly tried to drive up Friday night but got completely boxed in by traffic. It took them as long to try to leave Brooklyn, then turn around and try to get back, than it would have to drive all the way up here. But it turns out to be a good thing because BZ has a good sized cold this morning and is going to try and sleep it off today. Whale watching has been canceled until next time. Ducknik's flight to SFO is tomorrow morning. Plottie is missing her already.

A Pot of Mint Tea

2011-10-08T07:47:00.001-07:00

A pot of hot mint tea in the local Moroccan place hits the spot on a crisp Fall-ish afternoon in Rhode Island. It's too bad this place isn't right across the street from Great Plotnik World Headquarters. A hookah of pomegranate tobacco to accompany your tea, Sir? No thank you, but it smells very nice.

Plottie had forgotten that the second language in Providence is Portuguese. A substantial portion of the occupants descend from fishermen from the Azore Islands. So Plot got to say 'boa noite' to the woman behind the corner at the liquor store last night. Except for a little bit in Argentina with Brazilian tourists, it's the first 'boa noite' Plot has been able to say since he studied Portuguese in college. And best of all Rhode Island Portuguese is Portuguese Portuguese, like he studied, not Brazilian Portuguese -- so Plottie could actually say 'boa noite' instead of 'boa noich.'

Small pleasures bring great rewards.

A Beautiful Day in P-Town

2011-10-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

It's a blue collar town in a blue collar state. There is only one large city, which feels more like a small town than a state capital. Downtown has the state house and a few hotels, a bus station and a park dedicated to Union Army General Ambrose Burnside.

The East side of Providence has Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. It is filled with glorious 19th Century homes, the majority of which appear to have all their rooms and garages and sheds rented out to students. Plot and Duck walked past these on Sheldon Street yesterday, after their daily walk down to the hardware store for more fix-it supplies.

Plottie has been cooking and filling BZ's freezer. This is the Asado de Bodas (a delicious mole) from the other night.

And this is last night's pizza at Caserta's. Plot and Duck have eaten more pizza in the last two weeks than in the last two years. Good as East Coast pizza is -- Plot has had enough pizza for awhile.

It is always strange to be away from home and not doing something tourist-y -- museums, trekking, hiking. It is pleasant not to do them. Every day in Providence BZ goes to work and Plot and Duck fix stuff. Even after plenty of years, Plottie is always amazed to see what Ducknik can do to an apartment with paint and curtains and a little elbow grease. The drill is like this: Plot cooks and fix-its, Duck does all the big stuff.

Last night's short drive to the Antiques Mart in Pawtucket, a mandatory trip each voyage East, netted BZ the perfect gate-leg table for next to her stove and Plottie yet another cookbook. The pizza came after and was not expensive but still cost more than double the table and cookbook.

Ducknik found a tray that did not have a price marked on it. So she asked a kid to go upstairs and ask the owner how much he was selling it for. When BZ, Plot and Duck went upstairs finally to buy their table and cookbook, and Ducknik asked the owner the price of the tray, he gave her a price.

He then said in the four years he has owned this antiques mall, he has never made one sale on an item without a price marked on it. No matter what he says, it's the wrong price. The person already has an idea in his mind about how much it should cost, and if the owner says more, they customer doesn't want it, and if he says less, the customer still doesn't want it because he figures he was wrong about how nice the piece is. This makes no sense to Plotnik, but there seems to be empirical evidence to the contrary.

Duck did not buy the tray. Wrong price.