Recalling the days

It's all been about nostalgia this week. I was down the pub last Sunday talking to some friends and we were talking about "kid's today" and how all today's music is bullshit and how spoiled youngster are, etc, etc, etc, when we realised that we have in fact turned into our parents.

The conversation moved on from that to going to school and our on upbringings. I seem to have a bunch of friends who are are "lapsed-lics" (lapsed Catholics) but when I tell them my tales of the Scottish Catholic School system it simultaneously horrifies them and makes them cry with laughter at the same time.

I was telling the story of the "Black Babies". Apparently this particular phenomenon didn't make it to the US School system... thank god!

The "Black Babies" were little cards that you got when you gave donations to the Catholic Missions in Africa.

I remember these cards very distinctly; it was always an little African child staring forlornly at the camera. They had a light blue border or a red border, a prayer on the back and a blank line under the prayer where you could write the name of your little black baby. Saints names were encouraged of course! Peter, Paul and Mary were in, Lakesha and Keyshawn were out.

Now maybe I went to a particularly fucked up school but I think I remember that the red and blue border signified how much money you donated. The blue ones were for the people who gave more than a pound, the red ones were for the cheap bastards who could only scrape together 12p.

Blue cards were to be cherished. We used to compare these little black baby cards in the playground and if we had doubles we would swap them like Panini Stickers. I'm pretty sure that you could get two red ones for a blue one but I might be making that up.

One thing I am sure of though is the reverance that was shown to these missionarys who would come into the classroom to show slides of their work in Africa (and sometimes Latin America). These guys were like returning superstars, they had given up their comfortable posts in Glasgow or Edinburgh or even Rome, to go off and help the poor. Now that I have an ex-priest friend who told me he went to the Seminary because he thought it was a good way to meet other gay men and I have to start wondering if some of these guys ended up in the missions for other reasons. You never met any missionarys from the South Pacific or South Asia. I guess those guys aren't allowed to come back, I wonder what they did.

That same weekend we ended up at a small Italian Festival in Jersey City on a 2-blcok street that has 2 massive Catholic Churches on it, one is an Italian Church and the other is a Polish Church.

You tell by the attendees at the festival that these churches obviously don't pull in the crowds like they used to, most the people there were in their 70's and the entertainment was a kind of cut price version of the 3 Tenors. Actually when we walked up one of those Tenors was singing "Danny Boy" which is about as Italian as Tracy Chapman.

I have to admit that despite my intense hatred of the Vatican, seeing the grannies dancing with a Tony Orlando look-a-like was fun. That generation had it tough, much tougher than we ever did, and maybe your faith was the only thing that kept you going. I don't agree with it but I can't say that it didn't matter.

Hell's Teeth

Next week I am going to the dentist for the first time in years. Certainly it's the first time since I moved to America and even though I have dental insurance I have been warned that I should expect to get hit in the pocket, hard....

It's because of all these dire warnings of impending dental induced bankruptcy that I have avoided going to the tooth hack since I stumbled off the 737 at Newark airport in 1999. Well that, and the image of Laurence Olivier in "Marathon Man". I really am a big baby when it comes to my teeth but I can't avoid it any longer as one of my fillings came loose.

Well it was loose when I made the appointment.

This morning I bit into an onion bagel and now it is gone like the snows of last winter. I have a big hole in my front tooth and although it doesn't hurt (yet), I can't stop touching it with my tongue. Oh well, I guess I might have saved some money on the dental boat-hook, I just hope it doesn't start killing me before I get into Dr Toothy's chair.

Dr Toothy is a real dentist by the way. He's based in NYC's Chinatown and I used to walk past his office all the time and imagine this guy dressed as a clown with big floppy shoes, baggy trousers and a dentist drill. It was always more disturbing than reassuring. I guess it's all in my imagination because his commercial is actually kind of boring.

Needless to say I am still not going to Dr Toothy. My dentist's name is Lustiger, already renamed by me as "Lustybugger".

This is another annoying thing that I do, at least it's annoying to me. I pervert people's names to the point where I actually start to get their real name mixed up with the joke name. It's only a matter of time before I call the dentist "Lustybugger".

Damnit I really need to stop touching that tooth.

Asshole

Up yer bum!

I made a startling find yesterday when I discovered that Mr Potato Head stores all his bits and bobs up his bum. His eyes are there, his nose, his glasses and his arms too. There was even a little green hat stuck up his bum! That can't be comfortable!

I guess I am to blame for this revelation because it seems that no matter how old I get, I can't get over how amused I am by the words "Bum", "fart", "jobbie" and "poop". Those words still get a chuckle every time.

And therein lies a problem for me. I am now reading all these kids books like "Put me in the Zoo" by Robert Lopshire and they all have cute illustrations following a simple and fairly phonetic rhyme system. Every time I read one of these books I think "I can do that!".

Well I can do that... if I didn't have the problem that I am likely.. nay, compelled... to insert the words "bum, "fart" or "poop" in the narrative ("jobbie is out as I am writing for an American audience). I'm telling you it is impossible!!

"See the chickens in their coop, see the chickens covered in poop!".

"See the horse move as fast as a dart, see the horse leave brown clouds of fart"

It's a disease! I can't help it! I honestly think that 30% of my vocabulary is taken up with words for bowel movements. I am like a thesaurus of BM's.

Help!!!!!!!

A Bonfire of Insanities

Yesterday a tornado touched down in New York City, my old neighborhood in Brooklyn to be precise. Over in the Dirty Shitty (as Jersey City is known), I was awakened by a huge crash of thunder right over my house and an almost simultaneous flash of lighting that went on for a lot longer than it takes for one to stay in the comfort zone.

I moved to the edge of my bed and peeked behind the curtain to see a sky that looked like something from the Wizard of Oz, all that was missing was the actual tornado and Judy Garland flying by on a bike while drinking a bottle of hooch.

I do believe that at this point I may have considered having an involuntary bowel movement but decided that would probably wake the baby so I just sat in silence watching this amazing lightning display going on right above my head. The baby slept right through the whole thing (thankfully).

It was time to get up, well it wasn't actually, it was 5.52am, I get up at 5.55am, if it wasn't for the thunder I would have had an extra 3 minutes in bed. AN EXTRA 3 MINUTES!!!! DAMN YOU MOTHER NATURE!!

I crawled out of bed and went downstairs while waterfalls streamed down every window and the air-conditioners sounded like they were under attack from the kid gangsters in Bugsy Malone armed with b.b machine guns, the rain was that heavy! I later read that we got 3 inches of rain in an hour and combined with the 5am high tide it meant that a lot of people were swimming to work.

I had an hour to wake up and get ready for my commute, I considered putting on my day-glo
speedo swimming trunks and my dark green goggles but decided to actually wear my sandals as my feet were gonna get soaked anyway.

I waited for an eternity for a bus and when I got on it was packed with people standing. There was however, one seat left and I grabbed it.

Two seconds later the guy sitting next to me punches me on the knee. Ouch!

I look at him: "What?"

"Nothing" he says.

"Okaaayyyyyy", I'm too knackered to pursue the issue so I go back to trying to wring the water out of my fat folds when he suddenly shoots up out of his seat for a second. He then relaxes and sits back down.

"Oh great" I'm thinking to myself, "I guess I now know why there was an empty seat on a busy bus, everyone else is better at spot the looney than I am".

There are too many people on the bus and I can't get out of the seat now, meanwhile he is twitching away. I was starting to wonder if maybe he was struck by lightning earlier when he starts going: "f-f-f-f-f-f-f-fuck".

He has Tourettes. Great. DAMN YOU AGAIN MOTHER NATURE! DAMN YOU ALL TO HAIL!!

This is the second time this has happened to me in the last two years, I may even have blogged about the last time before, but the last guy wasn't sitting next to me so it wasn't so bad (he was sitting in front of me saying "Mother-f-f-f-f-fucker" over and over again and shooting big gobs of spit on the back of the neck of the poor girl in front of him).

I put my IPOD on and crank up the punk rock. I manage to drown him out but he continues to kick me like an Italian defender. Thankfully it is a short bus ride... to the train station.

The station is chaos. Most of the Manhattan bound trains are suspended due to flooding and I eventually manage to squeeze onto a train that may well be bound for Aushwitz for all I know. The air conditioning is not working and I am jammed in like a toothpick that is still in the little jar with 5oo other little toothpicks.

The train crawls along at 2mph and we are all sweaty and cranky but I am happy just to get anywhere. A lot of people are staying home.

Eventually I get to the World Trade Center to scenes of people fighting over taxis as all the subways are flooded and closed. It is insane. I watch thankful that my work is only a short walk away.

You can see some pictures here. It was a mad morning............