Whine and Cheese

Dreaming of Attempting to Interview an Author

2020-08-05T10:14:44Z

Softball was last night. We played well, but I'm sore. I had a great dream and woke up (I think) due to Milo the Cat head-butting me. It's 5:30 AM, but I didn't want to forget the details. Sleepy, I rubbed the bruise on my left shin from last night's bounce that hit me while catching, climbed out of bed, and stumbled past the cats to my desktop in my comic book room.

I think I was in college and had been sent on an assignment to my hometown of Corbin, KY to interview an author, a humorist who had written three books. I had never read any of this books and stopped by Barnes & Noble (which my hometown doesn't have) with a friend and the author himself to buy his books, so I could read them first.

The author, whose name I don't recall, looked an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut, an older gent with thick, curly gray hair, a wrinkled face with sunken eyes and a thick mustache, and a good sense of humor. While the author wasn't Kurt Vonnegut, I'll refer to him as Kurt. Having not read his books, I thought I was giving the author a great first impression. Luckily, the bookstore had his three books together in a compendium at a discount price. I'm sure he enjoyed that as well.

While I'm trying to steamroll through his book, we were giving him a tour of my hometown and all of the local characters that it seems to have. One of the stops was a small market across the street from my Mom's house, a white building with white bars on the teller's window. Like all local small markets, it had odds and ends.

At some point, we ended up in a beat up Ford Pinto with my Mom driving. The floor of the car was littered with various trash. A neighbor was there in front of the house and was either drunk or crazy, likely both. She was yelling at my mom for something, so I immediate took the offensive and told her to f-off and called her "crazy bitch" several times as she shouted obscenities back at me while readjusting her bra strap that had crept out of her sleeveless shirt. The insults from her tapered off as she walked away. Again, I was embarrassed as this was not the best second impression I could make.

"We should get out before she comes back with a gun," I said to Kurt the author.

Kurt got out with me before Mom parked the car. As I shut the door, the door slammed shut on a cinnamon coffee cake in the door frame, unleashing a cloud of powdered cinnamon in the air. I was shocked at first, reopened the car door, moved the cake, and slammed the door shut again, releasing a second cloud for the remainder that I missed.

We went into the house and Mom gave me a mini-recorder, which had her copy of the Kurt's book on audiotape to help me and so I could record the interview. I looked at my copy of the book and I was already near the end of the second book of the three, but it looks like Kurt had tabbed the rest of the book in the lower corner with dates for me. Causing more of a delay, we ran into a few locals on our front porch who had invited the author to a drag show downtown.

Kurt and I went to a small office in the building behind Mom's house to do the interview. The office was full of various papers, stacked high and falling over, and a small TV set that seemed to enamour Kurt with some 1980's television shows. We sat down at a desk. I had about 20 minutes to get this interview as it was getting close to dinner time and Kurt wanted Skyline Chili.

I grabbed the tape recorder, thinking this would be the fastest, then realized the only tape I had was the one inside and it had Mom's bootleg recording of his audiobook. I excused myself from the author and left him continue watching the TV show while I ran back to Mom to get a fresh tape. She handed me the remainder of a thee-piece candy bar, which stated that it came with two mini-audio cassettes on the front wrapper. Excited, I thanked her and ran back toward the office, unwrapping the last chunk for the fresh cassette, only to find that this was the last bit of the candy bar itself. Groaning, I chucked the candy into my mouth and ran across the street to a small market we had gone into earlier to see if they had them.

The small market was now FULL of stacks of tax forms and papers. I'm literally stepping over them to get to the register. As I poke my head through the white bars between us, a black and white spaniel pushed his head against me wanting to be petted. Several people were in the office, dressed like postal workers and carrying more forms. One of them saw me struggling with the attention-wanting puppy and asked what I needed. I asked if he had any blank mini-cassettes. He said no and held up regular-sized cassettes, asking me if they would do. I said no and must have looked disappointed. One of the other postal guys said that I had six minutes to get the cassette. I asked why six minutes and he said that was how long it takes to get to the store that has them.

Realizing how short a time I had left, I resigned myself to just taping over Mom's audiobook and that I'd have to buy her the actual audiobook to replace it. I ran back to the office to find Kurt still sitting there watching TV.

Apologizing profusely, I hit rewind on the tape recorder, suddenly remembering that I had no questions prepared and was going to have to wing it with what little I could recall from trying to power-read his books throughout the day. Instead of hitting him with all the usual questions whose answers I could get from the book jacket, I landed on one that I thought might get him at ease.

At that moment, I woke up, which ended my chances of getting the interview.

For those curious, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

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Wild Bill Attacks The Shack

2020-08-02T02:42:43Z

Nothing spectacular happened today. I slept in, got a late lunch, went to Home Depot to look at storm doors, then back home, inked some comic book pages, watched TV.

I'm not sure what sparked my remembering of this, but I remembered a cousin and a location back home.

My great-uncle Matt and his sons had a small shack on a piece of property outside the city limits. Everyone referred to this as "The Shack." Uncle Matt was a moonshiner. The still itself was not at The Shack, its location never revealed to me. The Shack was where Matt and his boys would sell the 'shine and other alcohol (I hear). Matt and his sons were well known to have done this. Eventually, they sold the land to my Uncle Harold who put his house there. When he passed, a friend of his inherited it. My cousin Wade said it was a shame that one of us couldn't buy it since it had been in the family for generations, hinting I think that one of the well-off cousins should buy it (possibly me). Uhh... no, I thought, it's not like we farmed the land, it was a place where Matt and the boys could get wasted and sell booze. This is the setting for the rest of this entry.

William was a cousin to Matt, I think. The family relations get fuzzy as the generations go forward, so I think Matt and William were first cousins. William was known as "Wild Bill." He was a county sheriff or deputy and was called "Wild Bill" because of his unpredictable behavior. Supposedly, in the middle of shoot-out, he would launch forward, not caring about his own welfare, into the thick of it. Some call it bravery, others would describe it as recklessness. Knowing some of the family traits, I would lean toward the latter.

Matt and the boys were known to stay at The Shack late a night, usually passed out. They were loud drunks from what I have been told and would have firearms handy. I have always been told that you didn't go to The Shack at night because you never knew if they'd take a shot at you.

One dark night, Wild Bill eased his police vehicle as quietly up the gravel road to The Shack as he could. Matt and the boys were likely asleep or passed out. As soon as he got close enough, Wild Bill hit the police lights and the siren.

Calamity ensued.

Matt and the boys (and any other relatives and guests) were startled awake, thinking they were being raided, which had happened in the past. Instead of going for their guns, they were going for the woods. Hillbillies leaping out of windows and staggering as quickly as they could for the nearby woods, hoping in vain that the police wouldn't chase them down.

I can only imagine how this must have looked from the front where Wild Bill was standing, laughing his @$$ off at the absolute panic and pandemonium he had created.

I have no idea how this story concluded, as my Aunt Ruth relayed the story to me years ago and ended it at its climax. I imagine that the cousins stayed in the woods until Wild Bill turned the lights off and yelled for them to come back. I suspect there was lots of cursing and temporary hurt feelings

I never met Wild Bill, unless I was REALLY young, but it's nice to remember the fun stories he generated.

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Home and Back

2018-08-06T03:22:20Z

My "Franken-knee" returned on Friday. I could feel the pain in the back of my left knee pit start. I tried to exercise my way through it, but I think I made it worse. My knee swelled up Saturday morning. I was seriously considering not going to my hometown to see family, as I didn't want to be hobbling around all day. However, having not been home in several weeks I really felt like I should go, so I made an effort and drove down.

It was good to see Mom, who is no better or worse. It was fun to see my sister, as we tend to laugh no matter the topic. When I got in to her house, I had to explain my swollen knee, which made her cringe a bit. After I caught her up on my knee, she started a new topic of discussion with the following question:

"Guess who died..."

I looked at her and smirked, stating "You know, I hate this game."

It's something that my mom always used to do and it usually caused me to roll my eyes.

Later that night at dinner at Applebee's, my sis, brother-in-law, and I got into a good laugh about my knee. We had talked about my brother and his reticence to discuss anything gay-related. My brother-in-law joked that maybe the twin might want to play in the league. I laughed and said that he would never want to discuss it, joking that I got my swollen knee from a softball injury while giving head to the umpire.

My sister picked up this joke and ran with it.

She said, "You were on first base, on your knees, giving the umpire a blowjob, and you didn't see the line drive coming. It hit you in the knee."

My brother-in-law and I were cracking up as she told it, but we lost our breath over the next line.

"And I really would feel bad for the umpire after what happened to him."

*Think "The World According to Garp"*

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The $3 Bill Dream

2018-06-07T09:47:52Z

Last night, I had a dream that my twin brother and oldest nephew were staying a very nice chain hotel. We were heading down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast when I stopped by the front desk to get change for a $20 bill. The front desk was in the center of a large indoor area and I was being helped by an older Hispanic woman with glasses named Lydia.

When asked how I wanted the change, I stated fives and singles. Lydia came back, giving me two $3 bills and other change. I looked at her strangely and then at the bills, which appeared to be legal tender. The president on the face of the bills was Teddy Roosevelt, but it was Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt, from the "Night at the Museum" movies, and he was sticking his tongue out on them.

As I was asking Lydia about the bills, she pointed out that on the back were signatures of hotel guests who had used the bills, one including a signature by Sean Connery. Lydia went on to try to explain at length how the change-making process worked at the hotel, but I stopped her, stating that I only wanted to get change so I could tip the server at the restaurant and that my brother and nephew were waiting for me.

Lydia was seemingly unaware that a $3 bill was an odd thing to give me no matter how ironic, but gave me one more piece of advice.

She told me not to try to spend them in San Francisco, because they wouldn't be accepted there.

And then I woke up.

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Anti-Valentine 2017

2017-02-01T03:11:39Z

I had this idea during my all-day training meeting today at work.

Here is my Goth-spinster, alter-ego Bitchie Ann McSourpuss, pushing her latest money-making idea to fleece the syrupy-sweet romantic couples of the season.

Oh... Crap!

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