Trashiness / Life After Death.

My one friend yesterday when we were out drinking was saying that she had to get home to watch Celebrity Rehab, because even though she was recording it and it was on then, she wanted to watch it as soon as possible. "Isn't that the trashiest thing you've heard all day?", she was like, and I actually had to disagree, since just an hour or two earlier a black friend had been telling me that that pimp book I have is representative of a whole genre that black kids pass around in fourth or fifth grade, and he remembers reading that and a memoir by the pimp Iceman Slim.

He also said there's this whole memoir genre of black women's stories that's even trashier than the pimp stories, and to look out for them in bookstores. They're a lot of survivor stories with titles like "Daddy's Girl", that deal with incest and molestation and pole-dancing. He said they're just nuts.

On another note, I've been reading the classic near-death experience books lately, and I read a little bit more of the 1975 classic "Life After Life" yesterday before bed. Everything I had been reading was happy, but yesterday the shit could have given me nightmares... The tunnels people were going through were these large voids which they were pulled through against their will, and many people had this loud uncomfortable buzzing in their ears the entire time, and when people saw themselves being resuscitated, the procedures they saw happening to their bodies were really really awful (e.g. paddles applied to their chest and their bodies jumping while their bones crackle). Fortunately, I had no nightmares, though I could have.

Had beets yesterday.

I had a lot of beets at lunch yesterday. My shit around 5pm had a pink underside to it, and my piss that night was all cloudy like I was a diabetic or something and I was worried, but my piss this morning was all cloudy like it was last night but pink to boot, and so I realized that the cloudiness last night was from when my body was already starting to digest the beets but without yet processing the color.

Hobbies of a King Pimp.

This is a big refrain that Alfred "Bilbo" Gholson uses in his The Pimp's Bible: The Sweet Science of Sin whenever he describes the hobbies of a king pimp (slightly rephrased from p. 52):

"A king pimp has eight hobbies - rest, dress, read the funnies, count the monies, get the honey, golf, craps, and go on shopping sprees."

Every once in a while his lines have the ring of something well-rehearsed that he pulls out when talking to people, like this one does in its rest-dress and funnies-monies-honey rhymes.

No toilet paper.

I haven't had toilet paper since Monday, and the dollar store downstairs has been closed by the time I've been getting home in the evening, so since Monday I've been wiping my ass with paper towels (though not whole ones, bits I tear off of them, I mean).

Another type of pimp...

Another type of pimp from Gholson's The Pimp's Bible: The Sweet Science of Sin, p.123:

#33. STUDENT PIMP

The Student Pimp is the academic-minded young man. He has decided to become a medical doctor, but due to financial reasons, he is in doubt. If he is lucky enough to meet a lady of the evening, and can lie fairly well, that is, good enough to make her believe that if she should support him until he completes medical school, that his future lies with her as far as his becoming a physician. It is a good bet that finances won't be too big a problem. But what does a doctor want with a whore?

FYI, the author was a king pimp in the 40s/50s/60s.

E-mail from my mom: Mashed Potatoes.

So I sent my mom that YouTube video of the Mashed Potatoes and got this response (the e-mail is reproduced in its entirety):

I know I've told you that the mashed potatoe was one of two dances I couldn't do. I LOVE this video!!!!!!!!!!! Have you tried doing the mashed potato? Try it.

I'm waiting to hear back what's the other dance she can't do.

Addendum -- My Visit with Tennille.

Also, Tennille was telling me that I could do platinum highlights over all my hair, but that should be for summer and I should do just a little of the top for spring, so that way I get two new hairstyles out of it rather than just one, since if you start with the full head there's no going back, and besides those two there was a lot of other things I could do with my hair, though when I asked her what, she wouldn't tell me, since she said it would be too much for me right now. She did say, though, that I should bring in pictures of anything I like, and I told her that that was hard, since the only redheaded male celebrites you see are Conan O'Brien and that one guy from NYPD Blue who was always showing his junk, so I never feel like when I see men's hairstyles that I think "Oh, that's for me," since the people I see never look anything like me. She said she understood, and I think overall it's cool that she has all these plans for my hair, which you can just see when you talk with her.

Also also, I told Tenille that I've always wanted to sing "Love Will Keep Us Together" at karaoke. She said that she would like to see that.

Also also also, in the background the entire time, Diezel and the two Japanese women were talking in somber voices about how Amy Winehouse was in such a bad way.

Saw Tennille today.

I got my haircut again today, by Tennille. She had her hair cut a new way again, kind of short and up, with it dyed a tawny color. I liked it and complimented her on it, and then she said she was thinking of dying it a dark red but wasn't sure, and I asked why, and she said it's because she's not sure how it would go over, and I asked her who with, and she was like, "Well, I want a man, so it's whatever'll get me a date." I then told her that I liked red hair on black woman, but if someone saw that when you're out at a martini bar or wherever, it signalled that you lived for nightclubs, whereas her hair now was funky-cool but could also go professional, so it made a person seem more balanced. When she asked me if a banker would look at her with red hair and I said he'd probably be a little hesitant, she thanked me for being honest with her, and said that she'd save that for some spice once she's married.

We also talked about celebrity haircuts. I said I think Rihanna's hair was the coolest hair in a while, and she said that black and white women bring her picture in and want that cut, whereas the only celebrity where it happened so much like that was years ago with white women and Jennifer Aniston, and then a little little bit with white women and Jessica Simpson. She said that it shows you how far we've come, that a black woman can model hair that white women want too, and I agreed that someone with the complexion of Lilly Allen or Amy Winehouse could pull off Rihanna hair, and she said that Amy Winehouse definitely could, and that she just loved Amy Winehouse as an artist.

I asked her if there was any big men's haircut ever since that George Clooney Roman-thing from years ago, and she said whatever happening's with Brad Pitt's hair gets requested, though guys never bring in pictures. She said that his short hair gets asked for a lot in the summers, and guys come in and are like, "I want that Brad Pitt thing", and that sometimes they come in with their wives and their wives tell her to cut their husband's hair like Brad Pitt.

At one point, when Alicia Keys's "No One" came on the radio, I asked her to turn it up, and she was so happy because she likes that song too. I then was talking about how there's that one dance to that "Soldier Boy" song, which I had told my mom about, and how she had thought it was cool since it reminded her of how her friend taught her the Mashed Potatoes, and then Tennille was like, "Oh no, I'm going to have that song stuck in my head all day!" I then confessed that since I got up that morning, I'd been humming "Do That to Me One More Time", and says that she suspects other people probably do that, but I'm the first person to ever say so. Then she was like, "How about that 'Muskrat Love', isn't it a great song?", and I agreed, and said I loved the keyboard solo.

Also, Tennille's trying to convince me next haircut to put platinum highlights in the front of my hair and change things up a bit while keeping it professional. She says it'd look good, and the key is to enhance my natural hair color without having anything jarring happen.

Two Commandments of a King Pimp (of Twelve).

Also from Gholson's The Pimp's Bible: The Sweet Science of Sin, pp. 48-49:

#2. He must be able to control at least 7 to 8 females at the same time. One for each day of the week and if he has the Detroit spirit, the 8th one is a lottery girl. She just keeps his lottery intact. He must handle them with cleverness, shrewdness, intelligence and care, but never with an iron fist...

#5. He never lets a female be equal with him; Equal Rights (ER) are just a fantasy; it will come back to normal pretty soon. Refuse to have oral sex with your woman unless it is your desire. Do not accept "if you do me, I'll do you." She was put on this eart to serve men. She may enjoy the thrill that comes with oral lovemaking but deep in the back of her mind she losses respect for you.

The only animals you see licking their sex organs are cats and dogs. The female knows that during a month's time, her vagina accepts so much filth that nature forces a cleaning-out period (menstrual cycle).

In the book's other anecdotes, so pimps do seem to really have one girl who hangs around just to take lottery numbers and go get tickets at the corner store.

Glove, Toe-nail.

I lost one of my black cordoroy (sp.?) gloves yesterday. I was sad for a minute since I lost it, but then I made myself think that I shouldn't be over-attached to material possessions, so instead I focused on the real sadness of the situation, that each glove since it is separated is deprived of its usefulness, and so I began to lament the waste of it all, and the real misfortune, which is that I didn't lose both at the same time.

My toe-nail I chipped a few weeks ago is growing back in raggedly. I looked at it this morning and its edge has caught black fibers from my socks, and they're hanging out from underneath it where they got wedged.

Types of pimps.

From the 52 types of pimps listed in Alfred "Bilbo" Gholson's The Pimp's Bible: The Sweet Science of Sin, a small press book published near me that is the take on the pimping business by a local guy who was in the business for over 40 years:

#27. THE WEAK PIMP.

The Weak Pimp is the real pretty boy. In fact, he is so pretty he should have been a girl. He out-shines all of his girls and instead of being their protector, they protect him. He is scared to death and his women are his strength. If he is an octoroon with colored eyes and curly hair, he is probably surrounded by those big dark-skinned, husky women. He reminds them of the dolls that they never had as children and they would kill a brick for him. If a gangster, bully, or gorilla pimp comes on the scene and says anything, the weak pimp grins, whether it's funny or not and if it wasn't for the strength of his women, the other pimps would eat him alive...

#36. THE DUMB PIMP.

The Dumb Pimp is easily led. Usually the other pimps know he's dumb. If he has a nice little dish and the rest of the pimps are trying to knock him (steal his woman), they just tell him that she is not bringing home enough money for the way she looks and that if he had her, he'd break that bitch's arms. And besides, they wouldn't let a woman talk to them like the dumb pimp's woman talks to him. The dumb pimp will go for real and break her arm. Then the slick pimp gets her, nurses her back to health and keeps her.

That Gholson guy is a very perceptive writer. He seems to not only intuitively understand personalities and social dynamics, but lay them out clearly for the reader. A lot of the characterizations remind me of the Ancient Greek lists of personalities (e.g. misers, lotharios, etc.) that appear as dramatis personae.