Amici:
This past Sunday was extra special and Disney Fran (Zia/Aunt Francesca) was there along with her grandson Jason and his girlfriend Allison. Allison is headed to Columbia on an accelerated Masters this year--10 months to her MA). So, it wasn’t shoe breaking as usual this Sunday. There was extra fun.
Disney Fran is my mother’s youngest sister (youngest of 4 women; two have passed).
DF - Disney Fran
J - Jason
A - Allison
MS - Momma Stella
Moi - the ugly one (me)
We pick up mid conversation ...
DF: (reaching over Hope’s chest) “Where’s you other tit?”
[general laughter]
MS: What the hell are you doing?
DF: Where is it? I can't tell in that dress.
MS: The hell do I know? I’m so old now. It’s over here, it’s over there.
[general laughter]
J: They're crazy, the two of them.
A: They're funny.
Moi: They're sluts, the two of them.
MS: (pointing at her sister) She's the slut. Tell them about all your dates when you were growing up.
DF: I did. I had a lot of them.
Moi: With grandpa in the house? How'd you manage that?
DF: He got a kick out of it. I was the last one.
MS: They wanted her out already.
DF: They did. I had to make Mom answer the phone because of Poppa's accent. He used to say, "Franny? He's a'no here. You wanna leave a massage?"
[general laughter]
MS: Until she met Tony. Then that was it. No more dating.
J: How'd you meet gramps.
DF: In a bar.
Moi: Slut.
DF: ThenI threw up out his car window later.
J: Nice.
Moi: Disney, tell Jason about when Grandpa Pete got caught porking his sister-in-law.
DF: (looks to MS) I don’t remember that one, Spran (Momma Stella).
MS: Yeah, but he didn’t pork that one, he porked the other one, her daughter.
[general laughter]
Moi: Ann Marie loves that story, the way you tell it, Ma. pork ... classic.
MS: Go shit in your hat.
The Doc ...
Hey Chaz,
I've been busy getting jobs and helping with Tatiana's Birthday party and entertaining Sahara's brother who is visiting from Ecuador. He still hasn't figured out that repeating what you said in Spanish to someone who doesn't speak Spanish doesn't really help.
Well, my love affair with Crumley is over. All those metaphors that I liked in the first 20 pages started getting annoying by the end of the book. Not everything is "like" something else.
"He picked his nose like a wolverine digging a rabbit out of its burrow".
"I farted in church like a giant sperm whale clearing its blowhole".
How is your foreign film festival going? Is Ann Marie calling the divorce lawyer yet?
I should be finished with my latest job pretty soon. It might be time for another Knucksline Staff Meeting.
Talk to you soon
Doc
This past Sunday was extra special and Disney Fran (Zia/Aunt Francesca) was there along with her grandson Jason and his girlfriend Allison. Allison is headed to Columbia on an accelerated Masters this year--10 months to her MA). So, it wasn’t shoe breaking as usual this Sunday. There was extra fun.
Disney Fran is my mother’s youngest sister (youngest of 4 women; two have passed).
DF - Disney Fran
J - Jason
A - Allison
MS - Momma Stella
Moi - the ugly one (me)
We pick up mid conversation ...
DF: (reaching over Hope’s chest) “Where’s you other tit?”
[general laughter]
MS: What the hell are you doing?
DF: Where is it? I can't tell in that dress.
MS: The hell do I know? I’m so old now. It’s over here, it’s over there.
[general laughter]
J: They're crazy, the two of them.
A: They're funny.
Moi: They're sluts, the two of them.
MS: (pointing at her sister) She's the slut. Tell them about all your dates when you were growing up.
DF: I did. I had a lot of them.
Moi: With grandpa in the house? How'd you manage that?
DF: He got a kick out of it. I was the last one.
MS: They wanted her out already.
DF: They did. I had to make Mom answer the phone because of Poppa's accent. He used to say, "Franny? He's a'no here. You wanna leave a massage?"
[general laughter]
MS: Until she met Tony. Then that was it. No more dating.
J: How'd you meet gramps.
DF: In a bar.
Moi: Slut.
DF: ThenI threw up out his car window later.
J: Nice.
Moi: Disney, tell Jason about when Grandpa Pete got caught porking his sister-in-law.
DF: (looks to MS) I don’t remember that one, Spran (Momma Stella).
MS: Yeah, but he didn’t pork that one, he porked the other one, her daughter.
[general laughter]
Moi: Ann Marie loves that story, the way you tell it, Ma. pork ... classic.
MS: Go shit in your hat.
The Doc ...
Hey Chaz,
I've been busy getting jobs and helping with Tatiana's Birthday party and entertaining Sahara's brother who is visiting from Ecuador. He still hasn't figured out that repeating what you said in Spanish to someone who doesn't speak Spanish doesn't really help.
Well, my love affair with Crumley is over. All those metaphors that I liked in the first 20 pages started getting annoying by the end of the book. Not everything is "like" something else.
"He picked his nose like a wolverine digging a rabbit out of its burrow".
"I farted in church like a giant sperm whale clearing its blowhole".
How is your foreign film festival going? Is Ann Marie calling the divorce lawyer yet?
I should be finished with my latest job pretty soon. It might be time for another Knucksline Staff Meeting.
Talk to you soon
Doc
Eugene O’neill festival ... I've been rereading the great plays of Eugene O’neill ... Mourning Becomes Electra, Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, Moon for the Misbegotten, Long Day’s Journey into Night ... and Strange Interlude is up next ... as for Mourning Becomes Electra (the play is actually three separate plays and difficult to stage without cuts in the manuscript -- so read it first, then see the staged play and/or the movie). It continues to have a great influence over the whacko Stella family I'm rewriting ... oy vey.
We got boids all over the joint here in beautiful downtown Fords, New Jersey ... a Blue Jay nest is being built somewhere around casa Stella (the Principessa Ann Marie called to me before, “Hey, Fatso, we have blue jays!” I’ve also seen Cardinals, Finches and we have a woodpecker directly in front of the house (outside the writing room) pecking perfectly round holes in the tree (I can see the holes as I type this).
This is pretty cool. When I was a kid, I used to think you had to go to St. Louis to see Cardinals, but I’ve seen several here in Fords since we moved here. In Brooklyn it was either sparrows or pigeons. In Fords, it’s a friggin’ boid sanctuary.
Now, my writing mentor back in North Dakota (Dave Gresham) used to get as excited as the wife did this morning and truth be told, I did run into the kitchen to see the pair of Blue Jays gathering their twigs and it was pretty cool. So maybe there is something to this boid watching thing (although frankly, they make their nests much faster when National Geographic uses the speed frames).
Keep on looking for a blue bird and listening for its song ...
—Knucks
