So, outside the deli across the street from my house there's this one older homeless black dude with drugged-out eyes and a big pot belly who always is asking people for money, and since I have to pass by him everyday on the way to school, he always says hi to me, and sometimes he calls me 'big guy', like when he sometimes slurs out, "How you doing today, big guy?"
Anyhow, when I was coming home yesterday, he was like, "How you doing today, big guy?" like he says a lot, only all of a sudden he said, "Hey, you know you're in the paper?", and when I tried to tell him I wasn't, he walked over to a nearby trash barrel, pulled out a paper that was lying near the top, and flipped it to some page and showed a picture of me coming out of an Obama regional office with another canvasser from the first time I went to go canvas for Obama in Indiana, which is already over two months ago.
(I forgot there was a student photographer along on the trip - for some reason the story with the pictures he took only came out in a quarterly student magazine published this week.)
After he showed me that, I was like, "Well, shit," and he immediately was like, "A small coffee would be nice, you don't know how hungry I am," and so I took him in the deli and bought him not only a coffee, but also whatever sandwich he wanted, and he got a cheeseburger, and added in fries too, which I found out when I went to go pay for everything.
Some of the black people in the deli knew him, too, and he kept showing them my picture and being like, "This man here is a celebrity, he works for the Obama campaign!", and they all smiled and nodded appreciatively at me.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Friday, June 6, 2008
3 Detroit stories (III of III): A bar near Wayne State.
Another time, this same guy was meeting a friend at a bar near Wayne State's campus after class, this dirty bar that no one ever really went to, and while they were sitting there having a beer, he noticed his friend had a polo shirt on with the little black logo on his chest, and that was really unlike his friend, so he was just about to comment on it, and the logo moved - it was a roach that had somehow crawled up onto his shirt, and was just sitting there on his chest in the middle of this bar in the middle of the afternoon.
After that, he said, they looked around and everywhere you looked there were roaches, between the floorboards and between the liquor bottles and glasses on the back of the bar, and crawling around too up on the woodwork on the walls, too, he said, and they started shivering, it was so gross.
After that, he said, they looked around and everywhere you looked there were roaches, between the floorboards and between the liquor bottles and glasses on the back of the bar, and crawling around too up on the woodwork on the walls, too, he said, and they started shivering, it was so gross.
3 Detroit stories (II of III): Eastern Market.
This same guy said once he was walking through Eastern Market after getting groceries, and someone ahead of him had tripped with a bag of chitlins and the plastic bag had split open and chitlins were all over the ground, only he didn't notice them, so he walked right into them and slipped and ended up covered in them and had to drive home in them to go take a shower.
3 Detroit stories (I of III): Boston-Edison District.
This guy I know who's originally from Detroit was telling me about this crazy old lady who has this mansion in the really nice Boston-Edison District of Detroit, and she lets young artists stay there rent-free and feeds them as long as they maintain studios and keep working - in other words, she acts like a kind of patron to them.
Anyways, he said once he was over at this mansion to see this installation "The Struggle of a Young Black Woman", and he and some people entered this room to see heaps of old chainlink fences and metal strewed with all this stuff, and a few people started wrinkling their noses and being like, "What's that smell?", and all of a sudden he threw his hand to his chest and cried out, "Oh my lord, it's dried chitlins!", and suddenly everyone gasped because they realized that the entire room was draped with them.
Anyways, he said once he was over at this mansion to see this installation "The Struggle of a Young Black Woman", and he and some people entered this room to see heaps of old chainlink fences and metal strewed with all this stuff, and a few people started wrinkling their noses and being like, "What's that smell?", and all of a sudden he threw his hand to his chest and cried out, "Oh my lord, it's dried chitlins!", and suddenly everyone gasped because they realized that the entire room was draped with them.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Iron Man - Batman Begins - Speed Racer.
So, I went to go see "Iron Man" last night. Despite all the good things I heard about it, it kind of sucked. The plot was really inconsistent, and often stupid. People had said it was good, so I was expecting it to be good on the level of "Batman Begins", but it wasn't at all, saddly.
On another note, my friend who I went to go see "Speed Racer" with the other day confessed that when we were walking to the theater and all of a sudden I sniffed and was like, "I smell pot", it was actually her cigarette she was smoking, since it was a hybrid. Interestingly, the other two people I've met who have said they want to see the movie have also said that they want to get high before they go see it.
On another note, my friend who I went to go see "Speed Racer" with the other day confessed that when we were walking to the theater and all of a sudden I sniffed and was like, "I smell pot", it was actually her cigarette she was smoking, since it was a hybrid. Interestingly, the other two people I've met who have said they want to see the movie have also said that they want to get high before they go see it.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Disappointment // Bobos.
I'm very disappointed. For some reason I didn't think results from South Dakota and Montana would come in until hugely late, and that for some reason Obama wouldn't clinch enough delegates last night to take the nomination, and since I was still tired from staying out past midnight on Monday night to watch the Red Wings in the game that could have clinched them the Stanley Cup (though it didn't, they lost in triple overtime to the Penguins), I didn't head out to the local bar last night to watch primary results. How the heck did I watch primary results all frickin' year and somehow be out of the loop so much that I missed out on last night? Sigh.
On another note, after being up in a hipster area last weekend, I've decided that I'm not opposed to hipsters so much per se, but rather bobos. I hated the word "bobo" (=bourgeious bohemian) when it started circulating like 5-6 years ago, but I realize now that it really captures the yuppieness of 30-something and late 20-something hipster culture, where people have condos and tech jobs and big salaries, but dress and act like disaffected hip people... I think the reason I didn't like the term so much at first is that I didn't realize how much it captured, especially if you say it like, "Fucking bobos."
On another note, after being up in a hipster area last weekend, I've decided that I'm not opposed to hipsters so much per se, but rather bobos. I hated the word "bobo" (=bourgeious bohemian) when it started circulating like 5-6 years ago, but I realize now that it really captures the yuppieness of 30-something and late 20-something hipster culture, where people have condos and tech jobs and big salaries, but dress and act like disaffected hip people... I think the reason I didn't like the term so much at first is that I didn't realize how much it captured, especially if you say it like, "Fucking bobos."
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Nails / Obama / Memories of the Obama campaign.
I was at the black neighborhood bar again last night. I played Ciara's "1, 2 Step" on the jukebox, as well as that one song where the guy goes, "I want to put you to bed/ to bed/ to bed" (the #7 most-played song at the place according to the jukebox stats, by the way!). When the Ciara came on, this round black girl at the bar started swaying in her seat back and forth and snapping her fingers and mouthing the lyrics. Later, her friend with the big tits went up to the jukebox and swayed back and forth and pressed selections on the touch-screen with these long, long hot pink fingernails that clicked against the screen as she touched it.
This morning at school I passed by a soda machine that had a piece of paper on it that said "Do not use this machine to make change," and underneath that someone had written, "No, use OBAMA!"
Yesterday I was thinking about how when I went to this one door in Gary when I was campaigning with my neighbor before the Indiana primary, I got this one middle-aged black guy at the door who was an Obama supporter, and the entire time I talked to him this sullen high schooler with gangster pants and a sports jersey and his hair tied up in a bandana who I assumed was his son stood there behind his dad sullenly, and at the end of the conversation I asked if he was a voter too, and he said no, but his face lit up when I recognized him being there -- at the end of the day, the kid was just a high school kid trying to be cool, and actually looking for attention, and was happy to be recognized by this almost-30 white guy who came to his family's door in an official capacity for the Obama campaign. It gives you a different perspective on some of the gang-banger looking young black males you sometimes see on the street.
This morning at school I passed by a soda machine that had a piece of paper on it that said "Do not use this machine to make change," and underneath that someone had written, "No, use OBAMA!"
Yesterday I was thinking about how when I went to this one door in Gary when I was campaigning with my neighbor before the Indiana primary, I got this one middle-aged black guy at the door who was an Obama supporter, and the entire time I talked to him this sullen high schooler with gangster pants and a sports jersey and his hair tied up in a bandana who I assumed was his son stood there behind his dad sullenly, and at the end of the conversation I asked if he was a voter too, and he said no, but his face lit up when I recognized him being there -- at the end of the day, the kid was just a high school kid trying to be cool, and actually looking for attention, and was happy to be recognized by this almost-30 white guy who came to his family's door in an official capacity for the Obama campaign. It gives you a different perspective on some of the gang-banger looking young black males you sometimes see on the street.
Monday, June 2, 2008
A response to that one t-shirt.
The one Mormon guy in my program and I always bitch about the crass t-shirts you see dumb muscled-up guys wearing around campus or the gym, and so yesterday I e-mailed him about the "MAY CONTAIN NUTS" shirt I saw, and he wrote me back and I just got his response this morning:
i like the waffling tone of "may." if he is masculine enough to brag up his testes shouldn't he use the indicative?
i like the waffling tone of "may." if he is masculine enough to brag up his testes shouldn't he use the indicative?
Three excerpts from "Hell's Angel".
Three excerpts from Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angel Motorcycle Club, by Ralph "Sonny" Barger and Keith and Kent Zimmerman --
A random aside from p. 99:
Earning your Red Wings and Black Wings came from a fifties and sixties HAMC [=Hells Angels Motorcycle Club] ritual. You got your Red Wings by eating a girl on her period and your Black Wings by eating a black girl. A few members earned both wings at once. When Bobby Durt was drinking with us in the Sinner's Club he took a black girl in the bathroom; we opened a stall door, looked in, and validated him...
About Elsie, Sonny's first wife, from pp.102-103:
In 1967, Elsie became pregnant right after New Year's, and since she already had two kids, we talked about it and decided we didn't need to have any more children. Anyway, children didn't fit into my plans. That February, while I was in Boston checking out a new club charter, Elsie tried to self-abort the child by pumping air into her vagina. It caused an air bubble to enter her bloodstream, and Elsie died an agonizing but quick death.
About Sharon, Sonny's second wife, from p. 105:
Sharon, my second wife, was my main squeeze for over two decades... I met Sharon Marie Gruhlke in the summer of 1969 after Elsie died. She was a gorgeous nineteen-year-old who had been crowned the Maid of Livermore. When she was fifteen years old she wanted to be a fashion model, so she arranged to leave high school early and enrolled in a modeling school. The summer she turned sixteen her modeling schoolteacher took her aside and told her she needed to weigh 113 pounds. Weighing in at 119, Sharon freaked and went to see a doctor, who once a week would shoot her up with some kind of speed cocktail... She didn't even know what she was being injected with, finishing each week with little blue supplemental pills to keep going. At seventeen, Sharon left her mom and stepfather's home in Livermore, moving to San Francisco in 1968. She kept her weight down to a 'professional level', ate a lot of cottage cheese, and did her early morning exercises to Jack LaLanne on television.
Sonny Barger also says Hunter S. Thompson is a pussy and exaggerates a lot in his book about the Hell's Angels.
A random aside from p. 99:
Earning your Red Wings and Black Wings came from a fifties and sixties HAMC [=Hells Angels Motorcycle Club] ritual. You got your Red Wings by eating a girl on her period and your Black Wings by eating a black girl. A few members earned both wings at once. When Bobby Durt was drinking with us in the Sinner's Club he took a black girl in the bathroom; we opened a stall door, looked in, and validated him...
About Elsie, Sonny's first wife, from pp.102-103:
In 1967, Elsie became pregnant right after New Year's, and since she already had two kids, we talked about it and decided we didn't need to have any more children. Anyway, children didn't fit into my plans. That February, while I was in Boston checking out a new club charter, Elsie tried to self-abort the child by pumping air into her vagina. It caused an air bubble to enter her bloodstream, and Elsie died an agonizing but quick death.
About Sharon, Sonny's second wife, from p. 105:
Sharon, my second wife, was my main squeeze for over two decades... I met Sharon Marie Gruhlke in the summer of 1969 after Elsie died. She was a gorgeous nineteen-year-old who had been crowned the Maid of Livermore. When she was fifteen years old she wanted to be a fashion model, so she arranged to leave high school early and enrolled in a modeling school. The summer she turned sixteen her modeling schoolteacher took her aside and told her she needed to weigh 113 pounds. Weighing in at 119, Sharon freaked and went to see a doctor, who once a week would shoot her up with some kind of speed cocktail... She didn't even know what she was being injected with, finishing each week with little blue supplemental pills to keep going. At seventeen, Sharon left her mom and stepfather's home in Livermore, moving to San Francisco in 1968. She kept her weight down to a 'professional level', ate a lot of cottage cheese, and did her early morning exercises to Jack LaLanne on television.
Sonny Barger also says Hunter S. Thompson is a pussy and exaggerates a lot in his book about the Hell's Angels.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
T-shirt / Bands.
A t-shirt I saw a guy wearing tonight -
"MAY CONTAIN NUTS".
Also, I was thinking the other day, that although I like the Beach Boys, they really aren't representative of my personality - they're a little too erratic as a group, and went through too many musical styles, and that whole thing where that one Wilson brother was associated with some of the Manson clan is just way too much for me.
Rather, I think that I am like ABBA - happy, cheery, somewhat on the pale side, and, just like their music, there's a lot more than meets the eye.
"MAY CONTAIN NUTS".
Also, I was thinking the other day, that although I like the Beach Boys, they really aren't representative of my personality - they're a little too erratic as a group, and went through too many musical styles, and that whole thing where that one Wilson brother was associated with some of the Manson clan is just way too much for me.
Rather, I think that I am like ABBA - happy, cheery, somewhat on the pale side, and, just like their music, there's a lot more than meets the eye.
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