Eight Feet Deep

“Well, Granny never put any distinctions on any of God’s creatures. She always used to say, ‘Meat’s meat, and man’s gotta eat!”

Well hello friends and neighbors. As some of you may know, I was living for a couple of months out of my Toyota Tacoma, the small version of the pickup truck. Since finding a decent-paying part-time job with Uncle Sugar, I have mostly stayed in different hotels until I could find some living quarters which were both affordable and relatively decent.

As one surely knows, staying in motels gets expensive fast so I checked into one of the local roach motels yesterday to stay for at least a week. This gives me some breathing room that I have not had for awhile and will perhaps give me time to extensively search for a real place to live.

As motels go, and I lived for years in a motel on the outskirts of Waco so I think tha gives me some particular insight into the subject, the place in which I am staying is the mother of all dumps. Jeez, it is so trashy that I just don’t know where to begin describing its particular ambiance. So I will have to ask you to just trust me. That’s right, go ahead and kick the football whilst I hold it. I promise not to do a Lucy van Pelt on you.

But as crappy and exceedingly seedy as this motel is, I do have to remind myself that it fits a loose description of housing. It has cable TV, refrigerated air, a shower, a nice-sized closet and it has — even though I have not yet fell to temptation to try it out or even see if it still works — a coin-operated bed massage. If that’s not living, then I’ll kiss your ass.

So as a sign I saw on a motel marquis the other day: “Keep on the sunny side.” And it’s sunny when you are not exactly a street person.

Have a nice day. You deserved it.

Do you ever wonder what happened to Shirley Ellis? Who is Shirley Ellis, you might ask? I might have asked that too had I not heard the 1965 hit “The Name Game” playing in a restaurant earlier today. But I did not have to wait for long to find out who sang the somewhat funny yet somewhat annoying tune. It was:

“Shirley!
Shirley, Shirley bo Birley Bonana fanna fo Firley
Fee fy mo Mirley, Shirley!”

No. Seriously. I wonder what Shirley is doing? There certainly are much worse things for which to be known, like a mass murderer for instance. That’s all I’m saying.

Weasel and the white boys (not so) cool.

If you have ever read this blog before you know that certain individuals are usually identified by specific names that might not be their real names but rather something I call them. It isn’t that I call them these names because I might otherwise forget who they are. No, I only wish that I could forget some of these folks. For instance: Gee Dubya, a.k.a. President George Walker Bush, or The Weasel, a.k.a., Attorney General Alberto “V.O. 5” Gonzales. I call Bush Gee Dubya because others have beat me to other nicknames, the late Molly Ivins, for instance called him “Shrub.” I refer to our alleged attorney general as The Weasel because his expressions combined with his actions often remind me of a weasel. Of course, not all weasels are evil and arrogant.

With Gonzales being grilled recently in congressional hearings and hearing his name mentioned so much, naturally the Rickie Lee Jones song “Weasel in a White Boys Cool” ran through my head. I say naturally perhaps it is because of these lines from her great tune:

“He was pretty sleazy when I met him
A weasel in a poor boy’s wool … “

Of course, I never met Alberto but when I first started knowing very much about him was after he was already an attorney general who wonders why people get upset about torturing prisoners or eavesdropping on their phone calls without a warrant. The poor boy part is just, I guess, artistic license.

Whether this latest circus involving Gonzales and the firing of his U.S. Attorneys turns into something that will make him go away, either from the Justice Department or to prison, only time will tell. And one can only hope.

What is more important is why don’t you hear Rickie Lee Jones on the radio? Even some of the better stations I come across from time-to-time (across the board they aren’t in the southeastern part of Texas)don’t play anything Ricky Lee perhaps maybe “Chuck E.’s in Love.” That was not even the best song on her 1979 self-titled album. While I like “Weasel in a White Boys Cool,” the song, I think that even better is “Danny’s All-Star Joint.”

“Downstairs at Danny’s all-star joint
They got a juke box that goes doyt-doyt
The vice is nice, they stay in the back all day
But when the nighttime comes, hey-hey
There’s this cat down there that makes a bad kinda soup
I come around struttin’ my luck in my shoop coupe
Cecil gives me coffee
And he won’t never take my coin
I say, ” I got thirty dollars in my pocket!
Whatchoo doin’? “

I holler, ” Come on, Cecil, take a dollar!
Come on, Cecil, take a ten!
I’ve finally geared up into a whole buncha big ones
And you’re actin’ like I’m down-shiftin’ “

Then perhaps one of the best lines ever:

“I’m in a halfway house on a one-way street
And I’m a quarter past left alive “

Not that I’ve been in a halfway house on a one-way street or on any other kind of street, other than to visit someone. But I think the line puts into perspective just how screwed up things can be sometimes in your life.

Getting back to reality, relatively speaking, I don’t know what will happen to The Weasel Gonzales. But Rickie Lee has out a new album called “The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard” and I hope to hear it sometime. Maybe Gonzales will resign and perhaps Rickie Lee’s CD (I keep calling them albums for some reason, like being an ancient fart)will be wildly popular if it so deserves.

And maybe I will win the lottery. Rickie Lee probably has a better chance having another hit than fate dealing Gonzales a well-deserved losing hand (and my winning the lottery) But one can always dream.

It is a rather long story of how I came to watch the Neches River Festival Parade today in downtown Beaumont, Texas. The festival celebrates the Neches (NAY-chez)River, which flows down the city’s eastern side on its way to join the Sabine River at Sabine Lake, which is more bay than lake just north of the Gulf of Mexico. The river acts as a waterway for the big ships that dock in the Port of Beaumont. Those ships carry everything from petrochemical products to Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M1-A2 tanks heading from Fort Hood to Iraq.

Mayoral candidate Becky Ames and her little dog too.

As you can see, Becky Ames is a council member at-large. I don’t think she is very large, however. As a matter of fact, I think she’s just right. Nonetheless, she is running for mayor of Beaumont and I don’t know why she can’t advertise the fact while riding in the parade. Perhaps it is common courtesy, maybe it has to do with our election laws. She has been on the council for awhile and I have no idea how well she would do as mayor. I just haven’t followed city politics all that closely. I do know that the King of the Neches River Festival is the outgoing mayor Guy Goodson. Perhaps Councilwoman Ames could be named King of the Neches River Festival (or Queen) if she is elected and term-limited as mayor. Beats me.

Nothing brightens up a parade like a pretty, young girl.

This pretty, young and pretty young girl was riding on a float with other pretty, young girls. By float, I mean a flatbed trailer of the sort that heavy machinery such as Caterpillar tractors are carried upon. Actually, there were quite a few pretty, young girls on this trailer and I cropped all but this one out. The reason was that she had a pretty smile and secondly because my photo skills suck. I will leave it at that.

Why did people keep throwing these things at me?

Usually, I don’t collect Mardi Gras beads. But since it wasn’t Mardi Gras and since kids on these huge floats kept throwing them at me, I decided to pick them up. Yes, it is a crappy picture. No, I don’t really give a damn.

Just when you thought the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings might settle down to allow those affected a chance to heal emotionally, along comes those nutso anti-gay fanatics from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. You know, those folks with the catchy Web site, godhatesfags.com?

Those fine Kansas Christians plan to picket the funeral of Virginia Tech shooting victim Ryan Clark which is to be held tomorrow in Evans, Ga.

The Westboro gang are the ones who picket funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, the fanatics’ reason being that God (apparently the angry one)is punishing our country for its “sodomite” ways.

Now, especially in the wake of what happened in Virginia, I don’t advocate violence. But sometimes actions such as those of these nuts from Westboro make me think they need to be slapped silly. Who knows, perhaps their angry God will turn on them.