'Tis the Season

Parade season, that is!

If there's anything in life better than a mug of beer, a hamburger, and a half dozen marching bands, I don't know what it might be.

I wish Tally's parades were bigger, though. I'd love to see all the incredible floats, costumes, stilt-walkers, and bands that march in the Caribbean and FAMU parades be a bigger part of the large community festivals. Why do you suppose they aren't? Racism? Money? Length of the parade? Lack of interest?

Always Thankful

Now that's how Thanksgiving should go. Rolling Stones songs and bluegrass waltzes on fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. Beer and oysters on ice. Laughing until tears squirt out of your eyes and you have to lean against the door frame to keep your knees from giving out. Family and friends and not really being sure where the line between the two could be drawn. Casseroles named for veggies but mostly made up of cheese and canned cream soup. Eating dinner on tables in the yard while the dogs try to beg without being obvious.

Not much else to say, except that I'm a mighty thankful guy.

Man, Those Crazy Chickens

My friend Deb hates the fair. Oh, man, does she hate it. She works down there on S. Monroe, so to her it's just two weeks of nasty traffic and fuss. I'm in the opposite camp - going to the fair is one of those seasonal events I hate to miss.

For the past two or three years, my neighbor Mark and I have gone down there with a very specific goal in mind: to eat as much carnival food as we can stomach. Do you remember the scene, in the animated Charlotte's Web, when Templeton the rat rolls around the fair after it closes, gorging himself? Our trips are sort of like that, except we pay to get in and don't actually eat out of the garbage cans.

It's like some cold weather tour of gluttony. We started with corn dogs near the ferris wheel and worked our way through the crowds. Sausage on a bun with fried onions, a gyro (my favorite of the night) dripping in tzatziki sauce (and, yes, I had to look up how to spell that), a bowl of cheese grits, a slice of pizza, chicken on a stick, lamb on a stick (no gator on a stick this year, sadly) - if you can serve it off a cart, we ate it.

Temptation set against us from each side - throw a dart and win a giant Spongebob, shoot out the star and win a giant panther, Angel The Beautiful Living Woman With The Body Of A Horrible Snake, the world's largest ox, the world's smallest horse - but we maintained focus and kept right on rolling. Now, after we ran into mom and dad and heard about this year's fancy poultry, we did stop over to check those out. A couple of the featured Chinese birds look like someone took all the brightest feathers from a half dozen different species and stitched them all into one crazyquilt fowl. Did we eat any of those exotic visitors? No, but if you ran a stick through one, dipped it in batter, deep fried it, and sold it off trailer, we'd have been first in line.

We did skip the fried snicker bar, though. Mark had one last year and declared it "just too much".

Go Rattlers

On the list of things I'm pretty sure would kill me, I'd say that high steppin up Tennessee Street from Macomb to Monroe in a full uniform with a foot-tall hat strapped to my head, playing a brass horn with occational stops to dance my ass off has got to be in the top 5. But the FAMU Marching 100 sure did it, and they looked flashy and sounded great doing it. And then a dozen or more other marching bands from the area followed them, spaced in with floats, FAMU alumni, beauty queens, and flag squads.

Hell, the Nims band did it, and those poor kids had a broken drum, a set of cymbols with bits gone from them, and four different makes and colors of sousaphone.

You can forget how racially segregated so many events still are until you wind up as one of the few white folks enjoying the FAMU homecoming parade. I wish the local city parades (spring and winter) attracted more of the folks who got involved with this one, either on the road or alog the edge, cheering.

Thursday's Child Has far To Go

Cool weather reminds me of Atlanta. Starting at 21, I hung my hat there for a few years, staying in a series of rented rooms and mill shacks in dirty, druggie, crackhead and punk filled Cabbagetown. And, of course, I fuckin loved it.

I worked in the kind of pizza places where the ability to carry a keg or work with a beer buzz rated as high as being able to throw a pie. We made a decent cash in tips from the jar on the counter - once, two guys put in $50 total because the other cook and I beat them in a chugging contest, standing right there on the line in the open kitchen. But when your restaurant closes at eleven, you've been drinking with your coworkers since nine, and there are four bars within two blocks that are open until four and friendly to pizza guys, well, cash in hand seldom makes it home.

I lasted through a couple of harsh summers - it may be north of here, but all that concrete and steel holds heat like an oven - but nothing I hadn't felt before. But lingering cold and snow that sticks for a couple days? All new to me. Most of the time I lived there, my car didn't work and I couldn't afford to have it fixed, so I got around by MARTA ("it's smarta!") and boot leather. When the temperature drops like this, I remember walking out of the pizza joint after a shift into a freezing drizzle, my spiked-and-patched hoodie zipped tight and a knit cap down over my short mohawk. My glasses would fog from the temperature change. On busy nights, sweat would steam off my shoulders as I hunched them to keep my body warmer. I'd walk down to Gravity Pub for a couple shots to fortify me against the trip home and then head down the street, past liquor stores and cash checking places, toward my own little bed. I saw drug deals and fights and, on a couple occasions, had to duck into a dark corner for a minute when shooting started up nearby.

Sure, I got scared sometimes, little ol' country mouse me. But every fall, my body remembers the city and it's all I can do not to drag my old duffel out of the closet, lace up my boots, and head north to wander the streets again. Maybe this is the year.

Good God, Y'all

Bethel Baptist wants to buy the round Holiday Inn down on Tennessee and turn it into a "faith-based" dorm. I'm not real sure what that means (no co-ed floors? bibles free? no athiests allowed? simply a feeling of fellowship?), but they hope to charge better than $1000 a month for a studio room with a kitchenette and a bathroom - oh, and you share it with a roommate, who's paying the same. Now, that does include utilities, food, wireless, and a pool (hey, I wonder if you can get kicked out for accessing dirty stuff on your laptop there - one time my friend bought a pretty old bible in a second hand shop and there was a hardcore porn dvd was stuck between the pages), but damn - you could buy a house for that.

I mean, it's a cool building, but it strikes me that maybe Jesus is not necessarily your best financial consultant. I could be proved wrong.

Goblin's Gonna Gitchya

I'm pretty sure that for the first 15 years of my life I went as a pirate for Halloween at least 50% of the time. What can I say? The ocean calls me. The other half the time I was Yoda (should that be "Yoda I was"?), Zorro (mom made me a killer black cape that year that popped up again in costume after costume like Jo Marsh's boots), a vampire, and a "karate guy" (which simply involved putting on the gi I wore to karate class twice a week). Oh, and one time I went as a Columbo-like detective in a trench coat and fake mustache.

The time comes when you can't trick or treat anymore. Luckily, not too long after that, you start to get invited to Halloween parties that still involve tricks and treats, in, well, slightly different forms. I dig putting together a costume, and the opportunities for grown men who don't perform on stage to do that pretty much come annually. But I have to admit, it's less about the outfit (which usually comes out of stuff I already own) and more about the backstory. Living out a character for a night is just fun.

One year I was Buck, one of three Catholic school kids. Two friends and I each scored identical knit ties, made fake school crest patches, put on short pants and white tshirts, and slicked down our hair. We also outfitted ourselves with a deck of cards, a bottle of Jack, and a pack of Luckies, hidden in various pockets. Once, for a friend's fall hair-metal-themed birthday party at the Beta Bar, I put together my own anti-metal religious tracts ("Heavy Metal: Satan's Soundtrack"), a cross made of nails, and a hollowed out bible with a flask inside and went as the fallen preacher trying to save the rockers' souls. You get what I'm saying. I'm a writer, not an actor by nature. Diving into that character for a (probably drunken) night pulls stories off the page.

This year I'm helping put together our second annual Halloi!ween show/party/bonfire. The bands confirmed, the venue's set. Now I just have to invent somebody to be.