As I was pushing the cart on the side streets toward Telegraph, there came a rustling in the bushes beside me. On reflex I turned to see what was the noise, and saw a middle-aged woman, crouching in the shrubs. Her pants were at her knees as she squatted and squirted, and my eyes were instinctively drawn toward the fountain.
These were the first woman’s pubic hairs I’d seen without having even the slightest sexual thoughts. Embarrassment was my only response — blame my mother and a guilty Christian upbringing.
There was nothing for me to be embarrassed about, though, and philosophically, nothing for that woman to be embarrassed about either. The scene I’d seen was as natural as birth and death and everything in between.
I said nothing, she said nothing, and onward I rolled the cart.
Maybe she didn’t know, maybe she didn’t care, but there is a public restroom at People’s Park, two blocks up the street.
♦ ♦ ♦
In the afternoon, came a few minutes of easy conversation with a personable stranger, who seemed smiley and outgoing.
Personable, smiley, outgoing — I was pretty sure of the answer before asking, “Say, are you a salesman?” and he gave me a happy yes. He sells vacuum cleaners, he said, but he used to sell ‘hand-crafted’ jewelry at a table right here along Telegraph Avenue.
He said ‘hand-crafted’ with the tiniest smirk, so I asked, and he said, “I don’t even know, but it sure wasn’t hand-crafted by me.” A long-time suspicion, confirmed.
Our conversation was interrupted by a couple of potential customers looking at the fish, so I gave them my usual, very brief spiel, “All the fish come as both stickers and magnets.” I said it with my best fake smile, but after that I shut up and let them look. As usually happens, they walked away without buying anything.
The salesman-guy asked if that was really my pitch, and I gave him the truth. “I got this job because I know the fish-designer, not because I know sales.” I didn’t give voice to my next thought, that I could never be a salesman, and wouldn’t want to.
He nodded, because of course he’d already known I didn’t know what I was doing, and then a youngish couple approached the table, lookie-looing at the fish. “Do you mind?” the salesman/stranger asked me softly. I shrugged, sat back and watched.
“Howdy, folks,” he said, sounding sincerely nice, like someone not at all interested in selling anything. “My name’s Bob,” and within two minutes he’d sold ’em two Dali stickers and a Darwin magnet.
For which he earned no commission.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
The fish business was rained out today, sort of. It was drizzling when I woke up, the skies were completely clouded over, and the forecast was rain, so I called in dry.
From Pathetic Life #24 Saturday, May 18, 1996
Instead of BARTing to Berkeley, I walked through the rain to the Roxie, where they’re doing another series of movies from before the Hays code. Don’t tell Jay, but I’d actually been rooting for rain, because I wanted to see today’s triple feature.
The Hays Code? Yeah, that’s something maybe most folks don’t know about, so I’ll briefly ‘splain: When movies were still a relatively new thing, a group of prudes and politicians were demanding more purity and morality on the screen, and under threat of regulation by Congress, the film industry promised it would be prim and proper. Toward that stupid goal, they created the Hays Code, named for Will Hays, then-President of the MPAA (the job an equal schmuck, Jack Valenti, holds today).
The Code was enacted in 1933, promising that movie bad guys would always be caught, that depictions of any woman who enjoys sex would always include her comeuppance by the story’s end, etc. As a result, American films until the late 1960s were effectively sanitized, Disneyfied, reflecting a wholesome, idealized view of the world.
When movies are billed as “pre-Code,” they might have something darker, sexier, and less chaste going on than films from a few years later. I was hoping for less chaste.
Waterloo Bridge (1931) is about a chorus girl who’s out of work once the show she’s in closes, so she becomes a prostitute. She’s haunted by a melodramatic script, in which she meets a soldier boy who’s way, way too quick to say “I love you.”
It’s all cornball, and though it accumulates power and pull toward the end, it’s only OK. Best I can say about it is that it’s better than the Code-era remake with Vivian Leigh.
Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1931) is scary and thoughtful, easily the best version of this oft-told tale of yet another mad scientist tinkering with things best left alone. Fredric March plays both halves of the title role, and he’s excellent, and his transformations from Jekyll to Hyde are genuinely frightful (you do know the story, right?).
From pretending to have read the novel in high school, I thought his transformations were really about alcoholism. That’s what I wrote in my book report, and the teacher didn’t tell me I was wrong. This film, though, has a different subtext. Doc’s fiancée won’t sleep with him, and her father won’t let them marry for another ten months, so he’s driven mad by sexual repression. So it’s a pre-Code movie where the plot is powered by a woman’s refusal to put out. If there’s a moral to the story, it’s lose your morals, ladies. And I like that.
That was my takeaway, at least, but perhaps my interpretation was influenced by being two rows away from a couple of pretty lesbians who were handsy with each other during the show.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) is in sharp two-strip Technicolor, and features fearless Fay Wray as a fast-talking gum-chewing wisecracking reporter. She’s quaintly amusing, but the movie is a workable diversion, nothing more. Or maybe my heart wasn’t in it. After Jekyll & Hyde and the lesbians (who left after the second show), almost anything would be a disappointment.
Was it a mistake to have stayed away from a day’s wages? Yeah, probably, but it wouldn’t have been such a big mistake if the movies would’ve been better.
I still recommend just about anything pre-Code, but I’ve seen a hundred of them, and apparently there isn’t an endless supply of truly terrific pre-Code movies.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
Excerpt: On his last morning in New Zealand, Mr. Patel went for a run and a swim in Wellington’s harbor with the police commissioner, Richard Chambers. The moment was later covered by local media, with reports pointing out that the two were swimming during a tsunami advisory.
The Governor of West Virginia thinks Americans’ cherished right to be stupid should override public safety.
I’m cool with that. Parents should be free to skip vaccines for their children, provided they sign a waiver which admits they did it intentionally, and guarantees their conviction for child endangerment or murder if the kid gets the disease.
This has to be the most brazen, un-hidden corruption in American history. My prediction is, the media will downplay it, perhaps call it “unusual,” and Democrats will put up a mild ruckus that only makes it seem boring.
Full text, because The Oregonian has a very effective paywall: A Eugene police officer resigned after a recently uploaded YouTube video showed him using what Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner called “racist and deeply offensive language.”
The four-minute video, posted on May 8, is clipped from bodycam footage of an on-duty officer talking on the phone with a fellow officer during a Jan. 30 protest against federal immigration agents in downtown Eugene, according to YouTube user Tim Lewis.
As the officer cruises the streets in a patrol car, he and the person on the phone use stereotypes to discuss Black people, chuckle at protesters being gassed and gossip about fellow officers who commit domestic violence, including an incident in which another colleague bragged that he “chucked” his daughter up against a wall.
In a statement, Chief Skinner said the officer resigned on Saturday. According to a police spokesperson, Skinner was referring to “the officer driving the vehicle,” rather than the person on the phone. The officer “came in and resigned prior to any conversations or discussions with management about the incident,” the spokesperson said.
Neither officer has been publicly identified. The Oregonian/OregonLive requested the names and rank of the officer who resigned, as well as the identity of the person on the phone and an unedited version of the bodycam video.
Later Monday, Eugene police released the full video as well as a second clip in which the same officer listens to The Megyn Kelly Show podcast while denigrating the Somali and Latino communities, using an expletive.
Skinner described what was said in the video as “wrong, disrespectful and completely inconsistent with the values of the Eugene Police Department.”
In a separate statement, Eugene Independent Police Auditor Craig Renetzky wrote that he learned of the video Saturday morning and found its contents to be “highly offensive, racist in their nature and, simply put, disgusting.”
Renetzky said he had planned to bring allegations of misconduct against the officer before learning of his resignation that afternoon.
“We will continue with our preliminary investigation to ensure that none of the other voices heard on the video are EPD employees,” Renetzky wrote. “If we identify any other EPD employees who are involved in this incident, we will bring allegations against them as warranted.”
Me again: “Neither officer has been publicly identified” is not incidental. It’s intentional, to make sure these cops will have no trouble being hired by another police department.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Joey Jo Jo & John the Basketemeritus, Jeff Meyer, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn’t always shitty.
News always and only from reliable sources, and I decide what’s reliable — no right-wing bullshit, no Substack because fuck Nazis, and no RawStory, Newsweek, or other clickbait sites. Written news is preferred; video links will be rare, and damned near never to videos where the reporter sits, stands, or strolls in front of a camera — that’s show biz, not news.
If you’re blocked from reading anything linked above, please send an email, and I’ll reply with the article’s complete text, via my computer’s fine ad-blockers and paywall-vaulters.
