Precious Moments

A few moments from the toy store to get us back in the swing of things...

(1) A little girl picks up the Fluffy Ball (a soccer-ball-sized inflatable ball with soft tentacles all over it) and puts it up under her skirt, "Look mommy, it's my baby!"

She squeezes the ball so it shows partially out the bottom of her skirt, "Oh no, mommy, it's coming out!"

Holds the ball triumphantly over her head, "Ahh! It's my hairy baby!"

(2) Angry father shouts, "No running! This is a store. Running is for, uh, the tennis court. And when there's a fire."

(3) Rob: What are you doing with the paper towel?

Pete: There's a spill over here by the baby toys.

Rob: Is that pee?

Pete: sniffs wet paper towel. Nope. Oh wait. Yep, that's pee.

Exercise Ball, Blue w/Nubs, Deflated.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/zip/1713923304.html

as I make the right turn onto bryant street a quick glance to my left is all I need to know I am clear. fuck the stop sign fuck the half glow of the streetlights fuck the couple arm in arm who a step or two ahead of themselves would have met my right handlebar my right elbow and my bloody mouth spitting at them. hey. the guy shouts. nice night. I yell back. with only one gear building speed is the hardest part but once I get there my legs are like pistons pumping in rhythm somebody measure my rpms please. this late at night the bars are closing and I have to be careful at these red lights because any drivers out here have at least one drink in them timing is everything if I can count down my distance by the numbers next to the flashing orange hand four three two one I want to look like a white blur keeping within six inches of sideview mirrors of parked cars. I pass another bike the girl has long curly hair and a basket on her handlebars I make an Indian call as I fly past her and swerve around a Prius who undoubtedly had the right of way. the air is crisp I have been doing these laps for an hour and I cruise right past my building again. this time I dont even look up bryant street or try to slow down I think if a car is coming its coming and there is no way my brakes would catch in time and anyway Ive tasted the pavement before and I know to pull my tongue inside my teeth so I dont bite it off. the toe of my sneaker grazes the asphalt as I lean to make the sharp right but nothing else touches me but the wind. I exhale and drive my legs so hard down on the pedals that soon I am standing leaning forward my chest is out over the handlebars three two one wont make this one I jam on the brakes and a homeless guy pushing a cart waits next to me for the cross traffic to pass. where are you going. he says and I realize how much I am sweating. same place you are. I say. in circles. I push off and when I look back he is smiling. five four three fuck it.

Beans, Beans, they make you poop.
Now scoop it up fucker.
Don't do that again.

(Sign pinned on Peter's bedroom door throughout childhood)

Lessons of the Day: 4/19

1. Don't get Super-glue on your skin.

2. Don't touch insulation then itch your nose.

3. There's more to being a vegetarian than eating peanut butter.

His head lifts from a pillow green. Dew wells and dances two in beads across the hemisphere of his forehead - one departs the other for the bridge of his nose, the other swept up into the cracks of a passing finger.

All the rehearsal and still the novelty of it all! All the talk and he still feels it. His stomach lifts. Anticipation.

I'm here.

He raises to his knees, hands pressed to the clay beneath him. He's to his feet, though his eyes remain looking downwards - he's staring at the outlined furrow he's left on the earth from the night. It is as if she'd swallowed him into her skin, into a single pore - where he was a follicle, perhaps? Some cause for mutuality? An attempt at negotiation?

His eyes turn. The swelling feeling restores itself. He feels an eyebrow (just one) raise in question of the seeming contradictory nature of what he stands before him - this natural engineering been engineered!

It's a tree----that's all. But it's more, really. Her leaves rest on the ground (some having been his bed.) She is asleep. She is unaware.

Though, she has forgotten her own existence, it is apparent that some have not. Still they come to her - they adorn her out of their need for individualism (or perhaps just boredom.) She is trimmed in bulbs by the hundred - floursecently fogged. No electricity here - they inspire by modestly catching passing strands of sunlight that penetrate casually from the canopy above. Even the smallest beam catches the white skin of the glass bulb enough to make its surface glow entirely - they seem to delight in fulfilling this role. Others strands pass through uncaring, and heedless to their participation in this event.

The bulbs flicker - they are persistent. It's as if they wish to announce their own presence in this disregarded wood.

It's just as they said.

The bulbs hang on beaded chain, some showing age in coats of rust - others seem to gleam with youthful boasting. Time is present - that's clear now.

He walks to the tree, smelling the aroma of her damp, decaying leaves below him. One might imagine their scent rising skyward on tendrils of their own mode - much like those stems that supported them in life.

Again, his eyes return to the ground. He hopes for a chance to mark the tree. A true pilgrimage must manifest in a sacrifice? a rite? a symbol? His experience must orbit the others, a filament in this arboreal-mechanical symphony. He cannot explain this rustic need for collaboration. Assuming innocence, one hopes its a boyish longing for the natural. The bond of beaded chain on knobbed branch. That bond is all he cares for.

But, alas, there are no such supplies to fulfill his desire. No box there. This is no grotto in which to make addition upon discovery.

No - this is a tree in some forest - decored once, and, until recently, forgotten.

He walks on.

Rob: So Paul, you're like the first person we've ever had over to our new apartment.

Pete: Rob, I think we should paint those pipes green.
Rob: Yes. Like a bird of flight.


Paul: What the fuck, guys?

conversation outside bar

Man: "I'm glad we're hanging out again"
Woman: "We just have that harmony..."
M: "...like it's always there"

W: "You know, I stopped eating when we broke up"
M: "And the next day you were on the plane to LA"
W: "I was just tired of your games, John"
M: "But you'll always play them, babe..."
W: "I miss... your hair"
(Start making out)

Lessons From Last Night

-Never tell a Latina girl she needs to use more hips when she dances. She'll find another partner.

-Don't assume the guy in the Marilyn Monroe wig is not the lead singer of the band you're about to see.

-It's time to go home when the bouncer pulls out a big water hose and tells you he needs to clean the puddle of urine you're standing in.

-"I like your baby" is not always a good pick-up line.

The Locker Room

When I was six years old, my family joined the local "Racquet and Swim" club. For a monthly fee, we had full use of the basketball half-court, the unlevel tennis courts, the chilly swimming pool divided into lap lanes and the urine-scented hot tub. High luxury.

But the worst moment of each visit was right before we entered the locker rooms. I waved goodbye to my sisters, hugged my mom and grimaced as my father gently placed a hand on my shoulder. I knew too well the horrifying breed that waited for me--pantless and spread-eagle--inside.

Old men who belong to a neighborhood health club such as this one, have let their bodies depreciate long before their doctors decide it's time for them to join a gym. After the mandatory aerobics classes, group tennis lessons and cool-down stretches, these men wanted nothing more than a long hot shower. In their efforts to tone-up bodies that cheeseburgers and gravity have spent decades folding over and weighing down, the first pounds they shed seemed to contain all their notions of shyness and human decency. A 70-year old bare male bottom is more startling to a young boy's eyes than any woman's breasts will ever be.

But the cruelest part was my father's guiding hand. He led me straight into that house of horrors. The knobby joints, the wrinkles, the moles, the genitalia in varying stages of contact with cold water and the hair everywhere; the slapping sounds of old men lathering their sagging chests and powdering their buttocks, it was a strange world all it's own. And daddy--trusted reader of bedtime stories and buyer of hot pretzels--led me there. He dropped his trousers, stuffed mine in a locker without telling me the combination and told me, "No son, leave your towel outside the shower room."

My theory is this: it was all a biology lesson. My father was showing (not telling) me what happens when you grow up. Your penis gets bigger. It hangs down and looks weird covered in soap foam. Your toes grow hair and your toenails turn yellow. You also may lose some hair on your head and get a knot of black curls on your chest. My dad just didn't have the cojones (pardon the pun) to explain anything to me.

He could have said, "This is what a man's naked body looks like. That over there is what an old man looks like naked. Notice the muscle degeneration and that weird thing on his shoulder." I could have said, "I see, I see. And when will I sprout armpit hair, dear father?" These are important things for a young boy to know. They stimulate the developing mind. We could have had an intellectual discussion over a glass of chocolate milk.

Instead I was stood there under the hot spray of water, barefoot, bare-bottomed and stepping over lines of soap scum on the grey tiled floor, wondering:

Will I look like that one day?

Will mine hang crooked like that?

Why are those hairs so dark when his head is all white?

Yes.

Probably.

And Dad doesn't know.

Smurfette's Walk of Shame After a Most Awkward Threesome...

things that happened today

Jeff (official visitor to the toystore on a daily basis / delusional / schizophrenic) comes in, does his usual lap and then PAUSES in front of the Obama 500p puzzle (on sale - 50% off) -- Jeff picks up the first puzzle, looks longingly into Barack's sketched eyes, and plants a kiss on the box. He then does this to the remaining three puzzles. Then he goes and does it to the Hannah Montana games, so I knew it wasn't much symbolism after all.

I'm bent over putting 30% stickers on things when two women (as far as I tell from my side angle) enter the store. I continue with my business of discounting, when I suddenly hear two men discussing the popular board game, "Dirty Minds." I look up and see the two women by the board games. Still, I look around the corner of the nearby display for the new, male customers. Turns out they were two trannys. One wore aftershave (the irony?) Exiting the store, one cried out in a whisper, "I wish that giraffe had a dick."

Text Message - March 23 -- 2:33

" an asian guy named Tang Kwok just bought Bibleopoly"

Collected Poetry

Untitled 1

Left turn, down wind.
Blanket for the road.
Waged on the nostrils.

Never sourced nor seen,
As if a ghostly truck spilled,
Or a tree let for syrup.

Though hardly the syrup
To complement a breakfast,
Please, just walk to a toilet.


Untitled 2

Left hanging there,
Left for dead.
The rotting stench
Gets to your head.

Passersby, heads keep down,
Ye innocent living souls!
Now have you known the wrath
Of these perturbed bowels.


Untitled 3

This the scent of a woman.
Breathe it deeply, lads.
The odor, a welcome friend.
To live is the breathe here.

Ah, to think of whence it came.
Not flower bloom'd in sweet summer,
Nor fragrant fall of dear autumn,
Can match the scent of a woman's bottom.

"Who, in your opinion, is most likely to iron their underwear in their future?"

"John Fazmoli's Indian Roommate"

Dear Mr. Hejny,
   I recently completed and emailed your on-line application form. I trust that you received it on the day specified, March 13th. I am still very much interested in working for GoGames!, and if there is any more information that you need for your consideration, I am anxious to oblige. I am certain that i could make a real contribution to your business.
                                                                         Thank You,   Jim Hornblow

Jim Hornblow has been in retail since 1991. He enjoys fly fishing, women's panties , and The Davinchi Code. (In sum, he could figure out our job in 5 minutes.)

yeah, were free to do anything...

like hapkido, or traveling

I wonder what the Japanese word for hair gel is?

Secret Shopper Stabbed

SAN FRANCISCO --- Tammy Kinderson, renowned Secret Shopper for the website "SassieShop.net" died late last night as a result of head trauma thought to have been caused by assault with a deadly Smencil--a non-toxic scented pencil, not to be consumed with alcohol.

Kinderson, 29, was performing an initial inspection of the highly acclaimed Go! Toys & Games store, wearing her normal less-than-arousing attire of a pleather jacket, silver eyeshadow, and clear braces. Unfortunately for her, the sales associate was highly trained as a student in the Peter J. Hejny School of Retail.

Witnessess claim that Kinderson approached the register after spending 15 minutes or so awkwardly thumbing her pockets in the back corner of the store while looking at her Miss Piggy watch. She is said to have requested a suggestion to the associate as to an appropriate party favor. He invited her to sample the various scented pencils (Smencils) on display near the register, all while his arms were meticulously folded across his chest. Kinderson mistook this gesture to be the look the weary salesman, briefly letting her guard down to tease some day-old tuna from a wired tooth, bringing the smencil up to her nose.

The sales associate is said to have seized this moment to leap over the cash register, perform the moonwalk, and then shove the pencil up Kinderson's nose. He screamed "Mr. Hedgeknee warned me about you" as she fell to the ground dead.  The sales associate then proceeded to tell the corpse how he worked as a wildland firefighter last summer.

Hello World! Robbie's Phone Broke

I told a bum I couldn't give him money because all I had was twenties.  He said, "How 'bout a ten?"
Then we rode our bikes in circles for a while.
Robbie's phone fell on the pavement and got run over by a car.  By the treadmarks, it looks like a hybrid. Go San Francisco.

Just Another Saturday and a Korean Kid Plays the Flute

It was St. Patrick’s Day celebration on Market St. here in San Francisco. It was a warm and sunny and there was a parade. Everyone was wearing green clothing except us. There were large men in green thongs playing tubas and there were girls flashing their green-painted breasts from the windows of a green bus. Somebody gave us green pins that read, “I shamrock SF.” I accidently pricked myself in the chest when I put it on.

We don't know these people and don't care.

A scrawny Korean boy in a sweatshirt came into our toy store carrying a slender black instrument case.

“Oh, do you play the flute?” Robbie asked.

“Um, I just played in the parade.”

“Cool. Could you play something for us?”

“I can play what we just played in, um, the parade.”

He put the case on the counter and unlatched the clasps.

“Would it be cool if I took a video of you?”

“Nah.”

The boy pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and raised the flute to his lips. He inhaled, silently counted off a measure with four nods, one-two-three-four, and blew.

He was no great talent. Wispy, nervous notes tripped and stumbled out of the end of the flute. The tune was akin to “Hot Cross Buns” or “Yankee Doodle” though it as likely could have been Beethoven’s 13th. For all we could tell he was trying to clear the dust out of a Nintendo cartridge. But the boy gave it his all. He held the quarter notes just as long as they should be held and the eighth notes half that. Whole notes were not unnoticed as they lingered longest in the spit-streaked interior of the flute. They seemed to drag their fingernails along the whole length of it, screeching, resisting their inevitable final resting place in our ear canals.

The boy finished playing the song, bowed his head and quickly disassembled the instrument. I applauded loudly. The line of customers waiting to pay at the register did not.

“Boy, that was great. Really. Wow. Here, have a deck of playing cards for free. That was really something.”

“Thanks.”  He walked out the door, head still bowed.

Robbie said to me, “I really hope that free deck of cards holds him over for the next six years of ridicule.”

***

Later Nancy Pelosi's bodyguards came in, privately introduced themselves and recommended we never leave the west coast.  They looked about as aggressive and capable as McDonald's drive-thru workers.

After work, we met two good-looking girls from Phoenix who never called us back later.  We celebrated our new (not newly) gay friend's 26th birthday, and Peter wiped out on his bike when the de-railer broke and he skidded out on the pavement on Fillmore St.  Bloody knees and elbows.

What a strange eventful night.

Let's make dance party videos.

Are we rich yet?

Today's Headlines

Man Sporting Patagonia Shoes Makes Citizens' Arrest.
Suspect Battered Passing Cars with Stale Baguette.

Danny Glover Brings Grandson to Mall.  Buys Nothing.
Entire 2nd Floor Now Believes There Really Are Angels in the Food Court.

Woman Denies Abusing Light-Up Whale Toy in Bath.  Nobody Fooled.

Asian Tourists Take Group Photo with Giant Stuffed Panda. 58th Occurance This Week.