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Brrr. Okay, I’m in the gazebo, and wearing shorts, but it’s cold. A taste of September. Makes you want to build fires and drink cider – even though it’s 73 at the moment, and we’ll regard this as tropical in two months time. Is wrong. Mongo want heat. Mongo want to be warm. Another day of sun-up to sun-down duty; after a day lashed to the mast of buzz.mn I took a nap, a deep and intoxicating nap from which I had great difficulty awakening – walked around drooling and bumping into walls for five minutes – then made dinner and got right back to it. Did a piece I said I’d deliver today (hey, 11:59 PM is today) then did part of the Diner. It’s not work in the absolute sense, but I don’t want the site to slack off in any way, and I don’t want to slip back to fortnightly installments. Now this, then the copy for tomorrow morning’s buzz. Anything to say except Gosh, I’m busy? Why, yes. I had a late-morning meeting at the paper, which meant I couldn’t write. Nothing kills productivity like meetings; no matter how necessary, how brisk the agenda or crisp the participants, nothing gets done. So I was in a hurry to get to the meeting so I could return to the site, and as you know nothing makes it harder to leave the house than trying as hard as you can to leave the house. I’d misplace my sunglasses, put down my keys to find them, locate them under a pile of magazines, then I’d discover I’d lost my keys. Film it, speed it up, set it to Yakety Sax, and you’d have a funny YouTube clip, with 9456 comments banged out by sullen antisocial monkeys in basements displaying the effects of the Great Punctuation Drought we’ve been experiencing for the last few years. Note: the man who honked his way through Yakety Sax, Boots Randolph, died the other day. My dad had one of his albums. He also had a Pete Fountain record called “Licorice Stick.” I don’t recall him listening to either one, ever. For that matter I don’t recall my father ever putting on a record, even though he had a bitchin’ collection of 45s from the late 50s and early 60s, including “I’ve Had It” by the Bell Notes. That might have been the last rock record he ever bought; it was Johnny Cash and Ernest Tubb [there’s a name. “Ladies and Gentlemen, here’s Sincere Washbasin.”] and a smattering of Dixieland, of all things. I’m surprised I haven’t put the covers up yet. Here’s one:
I hadn’t looked at the other side for years. What’s this?
That’s my handwriting, trying to spell my name. And for some reason my dad wrote “Andy Pandy Feet.” The circumstances that produced that combination of words will never be known. He probably meant Andy Panda. Maybe I called him Andy Pandy. It’s certain that we were both on the floor by the big ancient console 45 player, where he kept his records. Wow. I’d give anything to rewind that tape and watch that moment. He would too, probably. I’m always haunted by the notion that so much of what Gnat and I do won’t be remembered by her, but it’s doubly chastening to realize I won’t remember it all, either. And I want to remember it all. Finally got out of the house. Hit the freeway. Got a mile and ping! The low fuel light went on. Ah, crap. I pulled off and coated to Lake Street, thinking: major commercial artery. There’ll be a station. But there wasn’t. Block after block, nothing. Eventually I saw an AMOCO sign, which gladdened my heart – and that takes some doing, since AMOCO or STANDARD was always The Enemy when I was a kid. Dad was Texaco; Standard was the Anti-Gas, the rival, the other guys. (Citgo we tolerated, because they just had one station in town.) I still remember the day I found out my dad owed stock in Gulf; it seemed like a betrayal, somehow, like discovering your father slips secrets to the Soviets. I pulled in, got out, saw the sign: all gas pre-pay inside. Argh. I ran to the counter, gave the fellow my card. “How much?” “I don’t know, I haven’t pumped.” He had me there. “Fill it up?” he said. Ah, good to hear someone respects the classics. I nodded. “You can just use the card at the pump,” he said. “But it says – nevermind, thanks.” Ran back outside, and caught sight of the sign: $3.46 per gallon. JEEZUM CROW, that’s a big jump. That’s a 70 cent swing over the last fortnight. Well, what can you do. I filled, got back on the street, and found myself behind a parade of cars filled with guys who were coming from one job and going to another and in no mood to spoil this brief interlude of freedom. Got to the office much later than anticipated. Went to my desk. No computer. Oh, right: I’d been moved. Went to my new desk. Flipped open my laptop: out of wireless range. I almost wept. I ended up sitting at my old desk banging out stuff, but it already felt like I didn’t belong there, the way your house feels the day you move out and walk through one last time. Odd how that empty house the first day feels absolutely and completely yours, and the last day it feels like you never owned it. So that was my great excitement: not running out of gas. After the meeting I ran back home to work some more, then picked up Gnat from “camp.” Anything else? No. Well, we'll have to content ourselves with the weekly Money update – eleven pages of sunny Mexico – and Bleat Radio Theater. This week Ronald Reagan and Floyd the Barber team up to solve a murder! Really. Enjoy, and remember: all day at buzz.mn, starting just about now. See you there!
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