The ping pong ball

It was the dream the old man had before. The one with the river and the floating that felt so damn good. Beneath his body was a rubber inner tube and his arms and legs hung lazily over the sides of it. On the side of the tube was a cartoon of a smiling big-headed rat twirling a lasso. “The rat must be my guardian angel”, the old man thought. “Could be worse”. Then below his wet backside, in the clear cool water, he spotted, only for a second, amongst the river rocks and fallen branches, a white rosary swaying with the current.

The old man grew up Catholic, and even though he hadn’t stepped inside any kind of church for 50 years, the rosary still snagged him as something precious. It needed a pair of hands. He tried to stand up but his feet couldn’t touch the bottom, and the river was moving too fast for him to swim against backwards. He held his breath deep and stuck his head under the water to get one last blink at it, glowing and yessing at him like a blessed hula. But then the river curved around a bloated bluff of Willow trees, and beyond them was a parking lot full of cars.

The old man climbed up the river bank behind the VFW Hall and tied his raft to the bumper of a white limo. He saw his reflection in the windows, soaking wet and older than he felt, but still with a full head of dark hair to brush back. By the time he crossed the hot parking lot, the steam coming off of him made him look freshly pressed. He felt that the ping pong ball was somewhere inside the building. He could smell hot dogs and buttered popcorn and knew what was going on in there. Bingo. Even though he only loved the Mother Mary part of Catholic, the forgiving, blue-green part of it, he remembered what the nuns had taught him, about the mystery of numbers.

The old man entered the hall. Even with the ceiling clumped full of air conditioners blasting full force, the thickness of the cigarette smoke nearly gagged him. He coughed until his eyes teared up, so when the jittery skittery ping pong ball rolled right in front of him, it looked like he was crying with joy. The players did not look up from their cards because this was the the final game, the jackpot. But the caller did glance over, just in time to see him place the ball in his mouth and sprint out. The old man worked in the Senior Center for going on 6 years. He hadn’t lost a ping pong ball yet. He was happy there was something he was good at. And each time that beautiful, half-blind Sandra Kolenda flicked one out the window, it was another chance to show off his fantastic way with recovery.

Tom Waits for no man

While cleaning out our car to try and find the receipt for a wedding gift (clock) we  needed to return so we could pay our dentist bill, Juicy Planet discovered instead a  ticket stub from a 2002 Tom Petty concert (Grand Rapids), a reddish piece of soft glass that did not want to be found, a good half pound of pretzel salt (once swept), and a photograph of Tom Waits, minding his own business on Rush Street in Chicago on some cloudy afternoon when he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t him and we couldn’t pretend we didn’t care that he was the kind of guy who can charm and stun a heart in a hundred kinda ways before breakfast. We went where he just was and ordered a mocha. Juicy Planet is keeping the clock.

There isn’t an answer to everything

After decades of unfunded research into human psycho-emotional sensitivity, spontaneous, sometimes suspect, transactions of love and memory, and the experience of a Baker’s Dozen of mysterious neurological and/or physical ailments and disorders which have caused various degrees of anxiety and paralysis, Juicy Planet is pleased to finally be able to report that there isn’t an answer to everything. Millions of sticky pages of intel, cross referenced and expertly seasoned, can be made available upon request.

little pea green boat!

done

2 minutes.

The owl and the pussycat went out to sea in a beautiful pea green boat. When they came back, Juicy Planet let them in and this is what they tried to say.

Colonial clock

When the water pipes started to freeze no one was the wiser. It started first down by the potato bin, where all eyes were on the achy shaping of liquid into solid, which turned the outside of the pipe from dirty metal to blue to blue grey, until it looked like the dusty uniform of a captured Union soldier in the Civil War. They had left their house in such a hurry, no one thought to leave a faucet on slow drip. No one knew that winter would come so early or that they would be stranded in Barbados for weeks. By the time they returned, the goldenrod ranch house they had inherited, with Aunt Pat’s colonial clock above the stove coated with hamburger grease like it had been for sixty years, was nothing but a mouth-watering fantastic candy-coated slick-sharded sinking sugarpop write-off…Superman in quicksand.

The Moses frequency

Juicy Planet has been receiving slippery but persistent messages from UHF channel 52 on our black & white Panasonic TV, of various clips of Charlton Heston near naked on the beach from the film, The Planet of the Apes. But as it turns out, this scene cannot be found in the actual Hollywood movie! It seemed at first to be Heston in between takes while filming the movie in 1968, but it has now been confirmed that what we are watching is an actual live feed of Heston, enjoying the pretty beach with his empty machine gun.

The original story of human hubris was written by French author Pierre Boulle, in 1963. The Statue of Liberty, which can be seen toppled and eroding in the background in some future, was a gift to the United States from the people of France. In the hope of minimizing the kind of dang regret depicted, Juicy Planet is actively trying to decipher the meaning of these recurring beachfront broadcasts, before the U.S. government strips the juicy public atmosphere of free analog television transmissions and sells the airwaves to corporate bidders on February 17, 2009.

Ever the liberator on Earth, whether as Moses, Ben Hur, or Chairman of the National Rifle Association, Heston appears in the transmissions to be the one in need of saving, not from slavery and human greed but from loneliness. We shall watch and wait with our hands raised to see if perhaps the kiss of Zira or some other lovely sane and peaceful creature will make any difference for our protagonist.

Vienna at Christmas time

done

A Merry Gents Christmas Drive-by, by Yummy Yumma!

CLICK here for latest Xmas song! Merry Gents Drive-by!

From the upcoming album of Christmas favorites, “Our Traditions are Better”, performed by the Midwest popular song stylists, Yummy Yumma.

ode to Patrick Chan

And on the sixth day of the Juicy Planet flu

it was the ever-so-kind and thoughtful spammer

who remembered us in our suffering

persistently encouraging us to feel better soon through various

get-rich-quick-while-helping-others opportunities (see incredible offer below!).

For this we are grateful and offer in return the following Poem:

—————————————

you

bold fake Patricks

with the will to reach out to so many

will never know your true worth

being never known or loved by any

—————————————

“Patrick W Chan” <patrickchan77@live.com>

To: undisclosed-recipients

Good Day,
I have a business of US $24.5million for you to handle with
me from my bank.Please contact me for details.   Patrick Chan.”

Inverted Stepford Wife-ism taking toll on Golden Rule

Cindy telepathically noisy

  Juicy Planet has been put on ORANGE ALERT due to the curious socio-medical condition whose origin has been traced to the DNA of females born and raised into the American upper middle, lower upper, and middle flyweight classes. The disease, popularly known as the Inverted Stepford, seems to take hold in female subjects in early adulthood, when being privileged and rich sours a tad due to the double pressures of having to be successful at some high level of some kind of field while simultaneously expected to act as a subservient to all the males in her environment, at least in public, regardless of how much more intelligent, talented, or confident the female may be when compared to the male she is seen stiffly standing next to.

Cindy McCain rolls with changes

The original Stepford Wife virus was actually developed and perfected by garden variety sexist males who sought to maintain complete control over their wives, to the point of altering their wives ability to remember how lovely flip flops felt beneath their wet feet, let alone what personality they may have had before being infected.

Inverted Stepford differs from the original strain in that these females seem to enjoy living with the virus; looking, standing and speaking as if they believe the rhetoric of their unattractive right wing spouses, understanding the exquisite pleasure of deferred power, when the cameras are turned off and they can abuse the maid, the dog, the flight attendant, behind closed doors. Many of these subjects seem to share a penchant for prescription drugs, so it is advised to clean out your medicine cabinet before invited one over for tea. The risk of contagious infection is low, although these females do tend to cause an awful lot of damage at the political and cultural levels of society, likely as they are to sit on various and sundry corporate and hospital boards and to be married to politicians, ministers, and Republicans. See entries for: Cindy McCain, Victoria Osteen, et al.

Vicky Osteen smelling fre$h bread

Vicky Osteen semi-pro glarer

 

 

 

 

 

CLICK for evidence of Inverted-Stepford-Illness

Nobody puts Baby in a corner, Helen Shiller

The City of Chicago has a big heart when it comes to summer outdoor movies in it’s bountiful parks. Most of the films are rated PG, whether they’re current, like Transformers, or classics, like All About Eve. However, on August 21st, 2008, when Juicy Planet showed up full of glee at Cricket Hill-Montrose Harbor, with a bottle of chilled white illegal and pasteurized cheese arranged like a tiny silver pie cut into triangles, to see the one and only Dirty Dancing, we were left staring up at the dusty cornflower sky, with no movie of no kind, for two hours.

We waited and waited, along with hundreds of other dejected Chicago admirers of Frances “Baby” Houseman and her spitfire sassypants dancer/lover, Johnny Castle. After several concerned Chicago-311 calls were made demanding info on the whereabouts of the missing mobile movie screen truck, lost in the city somewhere with the 3-story-tall projection of the unmistakable face of the young Jennifer Grey, Cricket Hill erupted into a riot of drinky moves and gritty voices, having the time of our lives, together in the dark, without owing anything at all to the city aldermen.

Jesus falls the third time

Juicy Planet is pleased to announce that there are many more people who care about the well-being of others than there are the ones who claim spiritual-enlightenment but who in reality treat those who are hurting, or anyone different from themselves, with disregard or disdain. We will try to not let the sad machinations of the loudy stompy pouty minority interrupt the slow simmering beauty of our collective, free-thinking humanity.

In other news, American citizens intending to vote for Obama for U.S. President in November 2008, are already anticipating how fabulous it will feel to have a conscience in the White House again, and something to look forward to, other than the occasional decent bagel.

CLICK for ongoing Barack Obama news