wonderingone

The Killer Catfish

2009-02-18T18:15:00.000-08:00

1967

True Story

I don't know if catfish have souls, but if they do I would like to apologize to the catfish gods for one my mother sacrificed on our kitchen countertop back in 1966.

We did not eat this catfish. It was our pet. I suppose that's what makes it all the more horrifying. Although I can't remember the exact date, I do remember the solemnity of the occasion. The feeling was very much "you and me against the fish." The execution had been planned in advance. According to my mother, it was the only thing to do. Nothing could go wrong. A catfish this vile could not simply be flushed down the toilet. It might come back, even bigger. We all agreed that it did seem to be growing at a faster pace than any of the other fish in the aquarium.

It had not been a good week. My parents' marriage was breaking up and now mother had just heard on the evening news that a species of translucent catfish, the very same species currently staring at her from our living room aquarium, was capable of growing to an enormous size and strolling around on dry land. I think the program might have included more information than just those two facts, but those were the two she focused on.

My mother was horrified. And as she sat there in her armchair -- cigarette in one hand, gin and tonic in the other -- she glared at the once benign creature in our tank. And she knew what she had to do.

Life takes a sharp turn sometimes and you have to confront your fears. Things happen that are so shocking, so much a betrayal, that they must be dealt with in the spirit of haste. You wonder why you didn't see it coming.

Mother didn't know whether to blame the fish store employee who sold it to her, or her absentee husband, who certainly would be able to save his family when the catfish from hell suddenly grew too big for its tank and began waddling down the hall devouring their children.

But there was no time for that. A saucepan of ammonia was placed on the kitchen counter. The catfish, about six inches long and awaiting his fate in a small aquarium net, was placed into the ammonia. In shock, the fish flapped violently and found himself once again gulping air on the counter, surrounded by a spreading puddle of ammonia. The stench of it burned into our noses as mother scooped the fish back into the saucepan with a spoon and got the lid on before the catfish could make one last try for freedom.

I remember being shocked at the demise of this fish, how the poor thing went.

But, in an odd way, I think my mother felt somehow reassured.

Their divorce was finalized a year later

The Flying Dutchman

2009-02-18T17:40:00.000-08:00

1987

True Story

There is a tower in San Francisco, Sutro Tower, which rises in the hills to the west of the city like a giant arachnid. Out of place to some, many say it’s ugly. But, most days, fog rolls in and covers it up late in the afternoon. At least the spindly legs are covered. The fog reaches to the highest crosshatch and boils there like waves. And the crosshatch looks like a ship with masts. It has a bow and a stern and two masts. I used to stare at it all the time. It looked like it was sailing in the clouds.

I named it The Flying Dutchman but it wasn’t till later I found out what the legend is about. If you look into the eye of a storm, sayeth the legend, you will be able to see the ship and its captain - The Flying Dutchman. He is doomed to go from sinking ship to sinking ship. Don't look too carefully, for the legend claims that whoever sights the ship will die a terrible death. Oh shit.

I cursed my dead Dutch grandfather.

The late eighties in San Francisco was, for me and many others, a time of sad and intense turmoil. So many friends were sick. The deaths never seemed to stop coming. After I realized I couldn't rescue my friends, that there was actually no hope for them, I became very depressed.

I felt like the Flying Dutchman now, going from one shipwreck to the next. Anonymous parents would swoop in, having ignored their son the whole time, maybe not even knowing the kid was gay, and they would strip the apartment. Everything would be taken. They'd pull up outside with U-Hauls!

So, when a now-defunct magazine asked me to interview the attorney Melvin Belli at his home in Pacific Heights, I accepted immediately. Belli was a hoot, a San Francisco legend, the kind of trial attorney who has a press agent. He was, supposedly, the inspiration for the character “Perry Mason,” and the master of demonstrative evidence in the courtroom. He was also an excellent orator who loved the sound of his own voice.

It sounded like a fun assignment.

The second week of December 1987 Belli, 80, was being taped for the hyper-cheesy television show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” hosted by the unforgettable Robin Leach and I would be there. Taping began at the Belli’s Pacific Heights home, next door to the Gettys and other old moneyed neighborhood residents who never quite knew what to make of them.

They would soon find out. And there would be shots fired.

But that was all months into the future.

Currently, the notorious lawyer and his socialite-wannabe wife were attempting to act out a demonstration of a devoted and loving marriage for the cameras. Although when the Belli piece aired, friction wasn't apparent on tape, to anyone who was there that day and observed them, this marriage was a goner.

"How do you like my outfit honey?" Lia asked, twirling in a taupe jersey cape trimmed with what looked remarkably like the tails of housecats.

"You look like Davey Crockett," Belli replied.

One week after the Lifestyles shoot, it's a beautiful, clear evening in San Francisco. Belli has invited his daughter, a 15-year-old Goth princess, and a few of his trusted, longtime office employees on a New Year's Eve cruise.

The past year has been, to say the least, heartbreaking. The grand finale of the year, this boat ride, convinced me all my Flying Dutchman fears were about to be realized.

On water, just like in the legend.

We sat down to dinner in the walnut-paneled dining salon, which turned out to be a full-on seven course affair. The only light came from a silver candelabra in the center of the mahogany table and from the skyscrapers glittering along the shoreline. From over my shoulder, Prince Philip observed my slovenly table manners from a photograph taken on board the yacht.

Belli never appeared. As it turned out, a hotel in Puerto Rico was in the process of burning to the ground on the evening news and Belli sat glued to the set, ignoring me and the other guests. This is a Saturday night. On Monday morning, I will pick up the paper on my way to work and read that the Law Offices of Melvin M. Belli has filed suit on behalf of some of the survivors of this fire.

Meanwhile, in the dining salon, I suddenly became aware of what sounded like screams coming from somewhere below us. I tried to ignore them, focusing instead on the waiter who was dribbling hot fudge sauce onto my vanilla ice cream and ignoring them himself.

"Little bitches," the woman to my right muttered.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Little bitches. The man is 80 years old. He doesn't need this." She shook her head. "Little bitches."

The lady across from us asked if Caesar Belli, Mel's allegedly coke-addled son, was at the helm. When someone answered back that yes, indeed he was, she crossed herself.

This wasn't good, I thought to myself.

That's when I noticed that my ice cream was sliding toward the edge of the table.

At the helm, Caesar Belli had somehow managed to get the 110-foot “Adequate Award” sandwiched in between two gigantic supertankers, one inbound, the other outbound, in the pitch-black waters of San Francisco Bay. They looked like two massive, black walls sliding by the comparatively baroque interior of the candlelit dining salon. Without stabilizers, the antique boat was an E ticket ride at Disneyland.

At this precise moment down below, Belli's daughter seized the opportunity to sweep a fire extinguisher across her father's stateroom, which, much to her amusement, caused the smoke alarm system to go off, the sensor being unable to distinguish between actual smoke and flame and the chemicals used to extinguish actual smoke and flame.

So there we were, the yacht swinging wildly to and fro in the combined wakes of two colossal oil tankers, screams of unmitigated delight coming from below deck with more waving of the fire extinguisher, those of us having dinner were clutching our plates and chairs while the woman to my right continued to mutter "little bitches."

Capping it all off, of course, was the high-pitched piercing squeal of the yacht's smoke alarm system.

Perhaps the irony was apparent only to me. Through all of this, Melvin Belli sat peacefully alone in front of a television set watching flames engulf a hotel thousands of miles away in Puerto Rico, while ignoring the fire alarm wailing away on his own boat. He didn't move. This quality of his -- absolute singlemindedness -- is probably what enabled Belli, at 80 years of age, to support his family and staff on contingency cases where he got nothing if he lost.

Belli's 96-year-old mentor, Vincent Hallinan -- who was still practicing law downtown and had recently chased off a mugger with his cane -- told me: "A trial attorney needs to have self-confidence. He wants to shine a little."

He also commented that Belli should ditch the boat. "A showboat doesn't need another vessel."

As for shots fired and the inevitable divorce . . .

If Lia had pinned her hopes of saving her marriage by portraying the devoted wife on television, her husband had other ideas. He began dropping items into gossip columns that he'd asked Lia for a divorce but she wouldn't budge from the mansion in Pacific Heights. Then, one sunny San Francisco morning, shortly after these items began appearing, a man took a shot at her in the mansion, which shattered both Lia's hopes and the glass mirror to the left of where she was standing. She ran into her room and locked the door, only to realize that the panic button that would summon the police was in her husband’s room next door. She crossed the balcony to his room, smashed in the window, and pushed the button. But the gunman got away neat and clean. She said he had a key. He let himself in.

Melvin Belli was in China at the time and had a solid alibi.

Lia Belli was snapped for the front page of next morning's paper and was quoted saying that Melvin Belli could have his divorce.

Lia eventually dropped the name Belli and went on to marry Prince Paul of Romania, a wannabe titular head in exile. So, in a way, she got the social advancement she desired. Lia speaks on behalf of Romania, much to the consternation of King Michael who refuses to recognize her husband, the child of his elder half-brother.

Melvin M. Belli, ever the romantic, married again before passing away in July of 1996 at the age of 88.

The Dog Catcher

2009-02-10T14:02:00.001-08:00

1962

True Story:

I was 10-years-old and in the fifth grade when I briefly became friends with a boy named Ed Wick. Not Edward. Just Ed. By giving him that name, I wondered if his mother knew he would turn out to be a killer. Switched around, as his name would be in a phone book, Ed would be listed as Wick, Ed. And wicked he certainly was.

Ed was a slightly-built, quiet kid with red hair and blue eyes. He had freckles. He rarely smiled. We were thrown together in an odd way and briefly became friends. Ed and I shared first place in a pottery contest at school. He designed a perfect, round bowl, glistening with a cherry glaze.

Mine was a lumpy ashtray. It didn’t really look like a bowl, or anything else for that matter, so I decided it would be an ashtray. Our teacher, intent on drawing me out and helping me build self-confidence, decided to offer me some help and, with a few strokes of paint and a clear glaze, helped me create something remarkable. When it came out of our classroom kiln, I was astonished at its beauty, and half-chagrined that I wasn’t fully responsible for its creation.

I wonder now how Ed felt having to share first place with me. It haunts me in a way. Because of what happened afterwards.

After school one day, the former undisputed champion potter suggested I come over to his house. He lived one street over from us and to get to his house I had to cut through the back yard of the famous writer, Jack Kerouac, who had recently moved across the street. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about Kerouac. He was at the end of his career, having bought the house across the street with his earnings from his most famous book -- “On the Road.”

Kerouac was a pugnacious drunk by then, eager to fly off his barstool at the slightest imagined provocation. Consequently, he was 86’d from Skipper's and Gunther's and most of the other taverns down on Main Street. Some people change when they drink. I hear Kerouac was a simple, polite man when he was sober. When was he sober? I don’t know. But I don’t think it was often. I just know that he gave my mother the creeps when he was over at our house. Bennies and Booze. He had that kind of glazed, wild-eyed look that just never seemed to resonate with my mother. When I cut through his backyard, actually a path through the woods next to his fence, I never saw him. I was glad about that. My mother told me he used to dance naked at night in that backyard, mumbling and counting his trees, of which he was quite fond.

Mom was superstitious about things. Alan Ginsburg would come out in a jelaba and sandals in the middle of Winter. She didn't know how to process this information. My Dad, on the other hand, thought it was very cool. It was he who inflicted Kerouac on my mother. And it was an honor that Kerouac liked my father. He ignored everyone else in the neighborhood, pulling his booze and bacon home in a little red wagon.

When I arrived at Ed Wick’s modest ranch house that day, the atmosphere turned seriously creepy. There was a small dog in the house. I love animals of any kind, and I went to pet the dog but he seemed to cower at my approach. I soon found out why. With Ed’s mother busy in the adjoining kitchen, we sat down to watch television.Suddenly, from between the cushions of the living room sofa, Ed pulled out a gun.

“Don’t be afraid,” he explained. “It’s just a pellet gun.” Then he aimed it at his dog and started shooting, slowly, methodically. I immediately became upset and demanded that he stop what he was doing.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Ed said. “They’re just BB’s.”

“It does too hurt," I said. "They can go under his skin.”

No matter what I said, though, Ed wouldn’t stop. Finally, after making a vain attempt to grab the pellet gun, I gave up and ran into the kitchen where his mother was washing dishes.“Please. You’ve got to make him stop. He's shooting your dog!”

In the living room, I saw the dog trapped in a corner, hiding behind the television, terrified and trying to escape.I was stopped cold by his mother’s response. She turned from the sink, lowered herself a bit to my level, and stared directly into my eyes as though she were searching for something. Her words struck me dumb.

“You look like you’ve got a little of the devil in you too.”

I stared back at her wide-eyed. The hair on my neck stood straight out like porcupine quills. I ran out of the house.Once I reached my house, I blurted out what had just happened. "Leave it alone," my mother said. "Don't go back over there."It wasn’t long after this incident that our dog, Dinah, a beautiful silver German Shepherd, collapsed and died in our driveway. I didn’t see it happen. I only remember the aftermath. My mother was crying and trying to pick up the large dog in her arms. Dinah could not stand on her legs and it looked bad. I was horrified as my mother drove her off to the vet and I cried when she arrived home alone. She told me she had no idea how it had happened. I believed that Dinah, who was rather old at the time, had simply died of natural causes.

And I believed that for 25 years.

I didn’t even give it a second thought when Jack Kerouac moved to Florida in 1964. But then a snag developed. His mother, to whom he was devoted and for whom he had bought this house, was refusing to leave.Their three outdoor cats never returned home.Mother and son were bereft. They finally left without them.Fortunately, Ed Wick and his family moved soon after as well. Also to Florida. Good riddance. I was glad to hear he was gone. And, gradually, I managed to forget about him.

It is only in retrospect that I have connected these three incidents -- the torturing of the dog, followed soon afterward by the death of our German Shepherd and Jack Kerouac's three cats.

And then, in 1985, twenty-five years after the events on our quiet little cul-de-sac off Dogwood Road, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an Associated Press article about a man from a small southern town who had been disciplined by his bosses for shooting over 30 cats and dogs with his service revolver. After he killed a young boy's dog and it was published in the local paper, he was forced to resign from Animal Control.

The name and age matched, not to mention the MO. I knew it was him.Ed Wick, 35, was now a Dog Catcher!I phoned my mother and got the same response."Leave it alone."Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, "You know, Ed Wick killed Dinah."

It was light bulb time. The mystery of the cul-de-sac killer was solved.

This time I didn't leave it alone. Instead, I forwarded the information to Oprah Winfrey, after she did a show on serial killers and an expert explained that these people often start out by torturing and killing animals.

Oprah, a dog lover like myself, said if anyone knew of someone who was exhibiting these murderous traits, they could write in and she would forward the mail to the proper authorities. I wrote immediately, giving them my phone number and address.

I never heard back.

Recently, I received some items from my mother's estate. Prominent among them, for me anyway, was that ashtray I made back in 1962. And a photograph of Dinah. There was also a picture of my fifth grade class with Ed Wick sitting front and center, crosslegged on the floor, smirking into the camera.

Some time later, I met a police psychic who helped to solve a couple of cases with Scotland Yard. I told her my story.

"I don't think dogs are enough for Eddie anymore. I see a 17-year-old male.""He killed him?"

"Yes."

She later backed off her response.

Has Ed Wick become a serial killer? I don't know. But he's still out there.Somewhere. (I changed the killer's name to "Ed Wick" to protect the guilty. For now.)

Update:

In 2006, I came across a news item on a spate of cat killings in a small town in Florida. I clicked on the link and found that a neighborhood organization had been formed to get to the bottom of who was killing all the cats in town. The group had a police liaison who created a map of all the killings on a chart. I zabasearched Ed Wick's name and realized he lived smack in the middle of the map. My jaw dropped.

I wrote to the police liaison who created the map, the neighborhood organization, the sheriff and the FBI.

Nothing was done.

A few months later, a fire at the local pet shelter killed about 30 animals and did over $1 million in structural damage.

If anyone ever followed-up on my information, I never knew about it.

He's still out there.

The Funniest Thing

2009-02-05T19:31:00.000-08:00

1972

True Story:

I think the funniest situation I ever got myself into back then was working for these two queens who lived next door to each other in the West Village.

Richard Astor called himself the "Black Sheep" of his family. I don't know which family that was but I know it wasn't the Astors. Everything about Richard was a sham. He was a big time con artist who was constantly in litigation. I only learned the extent of it when I picked up a biography of Roy Cohn and they gave him a couple of pages. Richard lived in a pale green brick townhouse with white shutters on Greenwich Street, right near the infamous International Stud. He was Roy Cohn's ex-lover and, when Cohn broke up with him - probably realizing here is a queen even more nuts than I am - Richard embarked on an epic smear campaign against Cohn.

He cut a stencil out of a cardboard box and spray-painted "Roy Cohn is a Fag" down the sidewalk in front of his law offices.

He phoned the Coast Guard, when Cohn was cruising off Provincetown on his yacht, and told them he had a shipment of illegal narcotics on board.

He learned to impersonate Cohn's voice and would have the mechanic make expensive, unnecessary repairs on Cohn's limo. "Put in a new transmission! Just to be on the safe side."

Finally, Richard turned up in the recovery room at one of Roy Cohn's facelifts - in hospital scrubs, with a bouquet of dead flowers.

That was it.

Cohn pulled some strings with a judge he knew and had Astor shipped upstate for harrassment for 18 months.

After Richard got out is when I met him. He drove by in a Bentley full of boys and stopped. "Do you know where Sam's Bar is?" he asked me. I said No. I looked at the boys, who were laughing. "Do you want to help us find it?" I said Sure, and hopped in. I was crazyin those days. Richard was an odd-looking character. He wore a wifebeater and torn jeans with combat boots. He looked to be in his 40s. His face was slick with liquid bronzer, his eyebrows were penciled in, and he topped the whole thing off with a curly Shirley Temple wig.

I was captivated.

Richard employed me to be his driver. He didn't pay much but he never tried anything, gave me room and board, and let me use his cars. I looked them over and said "Deal." I have always loved cars; I knew the names of all of them by the time I was four.

Basically they were clunkers. There was a mid-60s Bentley, repainted a blood red with white seats and green carpeting. It looked like a pimp might own it. Then there was a black Rolls Royce, ancient, with bug-eye headlights and a stick shift. He also had a Mercedes Pullman.

Right next door, in a modern townhouse with a glass atrium, was Georg Mueller. He was an importer from Germany who hired me to work in his office in midtown. He saw me around Richard's and struck up a conversation, which consisted of him basically telling me that he loathed Richard "Asssstor," he would always draw out his last name, and towed his cars from his driveway if they were even an inch over the line.

So it was the Hatfields and the McCoys, two queens facing off, and I was in the middle.

I needed to earn some money though. Finally, as these things so often do, it all came crashing down.

I had discovered that a Bentley is a good accessory to have when you are cruising outdoors. All sorts of people wanted to talk to me when I pulled over to the curb near the Trucks, a place on the waterfront where people had sex in tractor trailers. Suddenly, they dispersed. I looked in the mirror and saw two policemen heading toward the Bentley. "Hello Officers!" I said brightly.

"License and Registration."

I came up with my license, but the registration was nowhere to be found. This of course meant trouble for me because who's to say this wasn't a stolen vehicle.

"Who is the owner."

"Um, Richard Astor. He lives around the corner."

"Take us there."

Richard made a sweeping appearance down his townhouse stairway that will remain imprinted in my mind forever. It was as though he pictured himself as Bette Davis. He certainly looked like Bette Davis, or at least was holding himself like her. I expected him to take a puff off a cig.

"Officers, come in, come in." He paused midway on the stairs, looking half mad, which is what he was.

"You're from the Sixth Precinct?"

"Yes we are. We need to see the registration to a red Bentley."

"Well, gentlemen, by the way, who's your captain over there at the Sixth? Kramer, isn't it?"

"No, Cunningham. Listen. . . "

"Cunningham, that's it. His wife and my wife play bridge together up in Tuxedo Park."

I stared at Richard. I couldn't believe my ears. I looked at the cops. They seemed intimidated.

"You see gentlemen, the car was stolen about a month ago, and they ripped up the registration papers and I am still in the process of getting them back through the DMV."

The cops murmered something about not letting people drive your cars if they're unable to provide a registration, and they left, practically curtsying on their way out.

Richard gave me a look and went back upstairs.

I realized I was sitting at the feet of a master. I had enjoyed the past Summer, shuttling his black female attorney up to Harlem after court. He was running a fur coat scam where he'd leave a coat in a cab to make a phone call. The driver would take off, he'd sue the company and get damages. Every night I would drive her home. She sat in the back of the Bentley with the windows down, Yoo-hooing to all her friends along 125th Street, who ignored her of course. She was frontin.'

Without Richard paying me, and the absence of a Bentley to drive, I gradually withdrew from his life. Even without having read the Cohn book I knew he was no one to mess with. I always stayed on his good side.

Contemporaneously, after a month of working as a clerk at his office, Georg Mueller began to amp up a seduction routine that I didn't see coming, but should have. He invited me over and showed me his house, made me a sandwich. His little white ankle-biter had a sanitary napkin strapped to its behind. "She's in heat. Would you like more roast beef?"

Georg was proud of his German sound system, the amps inside the speakers, and the crispness of the sound, which he played at high volume to demonstrate. I also liked that he kept a Cougar convertible in his garage, the exact model Diana Rigg saves George Lazenby in in the immortal "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

The little white dog kept rubbing herself on things, looking like she needed dick bad. Then it was time to see the sauna.

Georg sat on the wooden bench in the sauna and I stood next to him peering in. It was nice, kind of small, and then he looked up at me and unbuttoned three lower buttons on my shirt. He kissed me on my stomach, never taking his eyes from mine. I didn't know what to say. I mouthed the word "No." He slowly buttoned me up, continued with the tour, and bid me good afternoon.

I was fired the next week.

I didn't act like a tease. It's just that when you're 20 people walk into your life and give you an option. Soon, I was taken up by one of Jack Kerouac's last editors. He idolized Kerouac and I think he liked the fact I once lived next door to him. He thought our meeting was synchronicity.

But that's another story.

Short Short Story

2006-07-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Jill sat in her grass-papered dining nook and sipped a Cafe Suisse. She made no move to adjust the gingham curtains to filter out the beam of sunlight that was hitting her squarely in the face. She heard her son crying in the nursery down the hall but made no move to comfort him. She was oblivious to the jays in the tree outside the kitchen, the lawnmower across the street and to the nasal sounds of a neighbor calling her three-year-old in from the yard.

That morning Jill chewed off three of her husband’s fingers as he slept in their California King bed. She discarded the fingers in the trash and took the time to neatly bandage the stubs.

“Mornin’ honey, hope I didn’t wake you coming in last night. Another late one with clients.”

He grabbed for a cup and watched in dull amazement as it slid through his hand and shattered on the tile floor below. He looked up at his wife.

“My God, what have you done!”

Jill sat calmly toying with a locket around her neck as she regarded her husband with a cool expression.

“You were with that girl again,” she said plainly.

“But my fingers. What did you do with my fingers?”

“They’re in the garbage, at the bottom of a Gristede's bag.”

He grabbed for the door; his hand slid off the knob.

“The garbage man left an hour ago.”

He stepped back, stared at Jill, looked at his hand and thought of other doors he’d never open. Fear, confusion and hatred passed swiftly over his features. He paused, unable to move. He didn’t know what to do.

He was stumped.

Reality TV

2005-09-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

Reality shows have sort of come full circle for me. I got hooked on a reality show a long time ago, I think it was on MTV, where there was a guy with HIV named Pedro and a rude bike messenger named Puck livng in the same house together. They hated each other. I watched to see the Hollywood Endng. I was certain these two opposites would clasp hands at the end, see the light, and remind all of us in TVland how essentially alike we are. Didn't happen.

And that's reality.

If you are one of the majority of people who have been compelled to watch the public debasement of unknown human beings cooped up together for sport like me, you know exactly what I'm talking about here. If you don't know what in the Real World I'm talking about, you may have already gone on to the next blog. Because reality programming is an either/or, love/hate proposition for the world viewing public, I say the world because let's face it...we're beaming this crap out all over the globe.

Andy Warhol said at one point during the sixties that in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes, and for some reason this little quote, this utterance of his, resonated with the American public even more than his Brillo boxes and soup cans did. And how prescient it was of Andy to think of it, because what he was speaking of has absolutely come true. It's not 15 minutes. It's actually a little longer -- 22 minutes without commercial interruptions. And it has been the hottest thing in programming for like what, ten years?

Lately, the trend seems to have metastsized into shows like the regrettable and hopefully forever-cancelled "Anna Nicole Show," or "Surreal World," where Z-List celebrities and their egos are stuffed into McMansions and forced to interact with each other. Reality for them is having to bake brownies to distribute to their new neighbors -- like a has-been welcome wagon.

Can you imagine watching these people walk up your driveway? The folks refused to come to their doors or just stared blankly at them, and the celebrities left uncharacteristically downcast, and more than a little confused.

"I mean don't they get it, we're famous! And we baked!"

In an early "Surreal Word" Corey Feldman objected to the placement in their midst of Jeri Manthey from CBS's Survivor because "she isn't in our [fame] society." It is for nuggets like this that I have endured, I have pressed on in my quest to view, no matter how repulsive (Hello Anna!) or arcane (hello Big Brother!) every single solitary reality episode out there. But no more.

The end of my addiction to reality for me was actually reminiscent of the beginning, On a Road Rules/Real World reunion show, Puck reappeared, unchanged apparently, and, in a masterpiece of aeronautics, spit 10 feet into the eye of another contestant, who refused to accept his apology and had him kicked off the show. We saw Puck, possibly the most repulsive reality "performer" in the genre's history, break down ... his lip quivered, a tear escaped his eye, and he was allowed to stay. It was an epiphany for me.

For as Puck was allowed to stay, I knew it was half-past time for me to go.

I am free of my addiction now. I have been born again! Last week, as a test of sorts, NBC, the same network which brings you Tom Brokaw and Meet the Press, also brought us an episode of Fear Factor that was described thusly in my cable guide:

"Contestants dine on horse rectums."

Don't get me wrong, I still catch myself lingering over these unreal reality shows while surfing. But I resist the urge. I move on. And I settle on more palatable television fare.

Like The Pet Psychic. Whatever happened to her? Or John Edward? He's gone. I guess there are just so many llamas and dead relatives to go around.

My father and his wife actually used Sonia the Pet Psychic. She told them their horse didn't like the color of his bridle. He wanted a red one. ("That'll be $100 please.")

And then they were gone. Psychics must see their cancellation coming ahead of time. I bet they're all great front-end negotiators. Anyway, now we have popular television psychics like the Medium. Or the Profiler. Fictional characters.

My prediction is that in two years time psyhcics will be helping John Walsh catch Howard Stern for murder of Bobby Trendy on Americas Most Wanted.

And if you don't know who I'm talking about in that last sentence, you are most likely both spectacularly uninformed and blissfully unaware of reality TV.

Andy Warhol would be furious!

The Bamboo Arrow

2005-09-04T09:09:00.001-07:00

Could it be that I harbored murderous thoughts toward my baby brother? Little Ricky?

We're both adults now, a new generation has arrived, and "Little Ricky's" 18-year-old son still asks me about the time I shot his father in the face with an arrow. "Tell it," he'll say. "Tell about the time you almost killed Dad."

"Oh, Mike," I mutter, embarrassed by the topic itself, yet enamored by my own tale-telling skills -- even if they involve inter-familial attempted homicide.

"Okay, I'll tell it."

The property across the road was being subdivided, just like our property had been ten years earlier. Three new homes would soon pop up on old Mrs. Miles' backyard property -- which presently consisted of an old, sealed-up (some say haunted) guest cottage, a goldfish pond encircled by a thatch of bamboo, and a section of woods that served as our "wild-west" set when my brother and I were in our Cowboy and Indian mode.

This time, it was my turn to be the Indian. And I had fashioned a bow from a tree branch with a piece of string. For an arrow, I used a piece of bamboo, snapped off to a length of about two feet.

I told my brother to stand there. I wanted to test something on him. And then, for reasons I can't fathom today, I turned and fired my arrow at him. The jagged edge of the bamboo caught in his chin and the length of it hung there, off his face. He was wounded.

He wears the scar to this day.

Ricky grabbed the arrow with his right hand and pulled. It came out easy and there was very little blood, but I can still remember the tense, but brief, standoff -- before we took off across the road at warp speed. Each of us was hoping to be the first one to tell the story of exactly what had just transpired between us on old Mrs. Miles backyard property.

Even as I was running, though, I knew my defense was weak. My brother had the bloody arrow in his hand, and the circluar wound on his face, just southwest of his mouth. Clearly I needed a good attorney.

When we got home, however, my mother, with three children under 12 now, merely shrugged off what appeared to her to be a minor flesh wound. She didn't even harp on the newly-emerged homicidal tendencies of her oldest son.

I guess it's like Roseanne used to say in her act: "If the kids are still alive at 5 p.m., I've done my job."

But some stories inspire such incredulity, they are requested down through generations. Hopefully this one won't endure as long.

Rick (he asked that we stop calling him "Ricky" when he hit his teens) forgave me in time, my having just spent my Summer vacation with his family serving as testament to that fact.

But it is was what happened after I got back from vacation that made me realize how truly blessed I am to have a little brother who can take on the role of "big" brother when he needs to. I had to spend some "medical downtime" lately, and wouldn't you know "Little Ricky" dropped everything to come down here and be with me the entire time.

It really looks like he has forgotten all about that bamboo arrow thing. . .

Dumb Luck

2005-09-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

True Story

1972

Imagine the confusion: Your mother is a Right Wing Nixon Republican and your father is a Left Wing Liberal Democrat.

Of course they were divorced. Everyone got divorced in the '70's. My folks were like a cute Ricky/Lucy couple who got married in 1950 and just grew in completely different ways. By 1967, the Summer of Love, they were divorced. Mom went on to marry one of the chief engineers on the Moon Landing of 1969. Dad. Well, Dad became a hippie.

The first clue we had of this was when he started a commune in our house.

The commune, which consisted of one other couple, and assorted children, had moved out of the house and onto the Nina ("Neen-ya"), an old racing schooner my father purchased from the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. They called themselves The "Motley Crew" and they had decided to leave Northport forever, sailing off to spread a vague message of peace and love to the savages along the intracoastal waterway. My dad told a reporter from the newspaper it was a "spiritual adventure." And for him, that's exactly what it turned out to be. Roseanne Scamardello (the inspiriation for Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna) came out in our little outboard with her camera crew. She instructed my sister Sandi and me to dive into the jellyfish-infested waters of Northport harbor. We did as we were told, coming up with welts and translucent blobs all over us.

The Nina was a magnificent schooner, built for the race to Spain in 1929, which she won. Through the years, she had been owned by millionaires and served a term as the flagship of the New York Yacht Club The boat had been immaculately maintained by the Academy before ending up in the hands of the Commune, who outfitted her sleek but hollow hull with makeshift bulkheads to create rooms and bunks. The walls didn't go all the way up, so unless you were sleeping in the captain's cabin, there was little privacy. But she was a sight to behold under full sail.

(In her next incarnation, the hapless Nina would be sold to a swinging singles club in Manhattan which used it for "get-togethers.")

I was 20 in 1972. My sister was 18. I took off with her on a hitchhiking trip that I later realized kind of echoed the plot of "On the Road." My sister fell in love with a Mexican boy we met in New Mexico. He would take us for long rides in the desert in his Lipstick-Red Roadrunner. We talked about Viet Nam, the main topic of the day. Pedro, or "Pete," had been deferred due to a an accident when he enlisted in the Navy and was decompressed too quickly after a dive. He moved me and my sister into his house almost immediately. It looked like we'd be staying in Fort Sumner, New Mexico for a while. Actually, our stay lasted longer than I expected. Finally, I headed East.

I got off in Albuquerque. I was in no rush to get home to Northport, Long Island. My draft number was coming up. I had a physical to go to. They were shoveling America's teenagers into the Vietnam war machine by the truckload. I was cannon fodder, I knew it, but I tried not to think about it.

"Tell 'em you're gay!" my father yelled at me.

"Join the Air Force," my mother told me firmly. (Grumman, my new stepfather's employer, manufactured the F-16 fighter jet.)

I chose to do nothing. I couldn't make up my mind. I actually did go tothe Air Force recruiting station, took a test, and was told that I was qualified for quite a few jobs -- "corpse" being top of the list I'm sure -- but I decided not to follow up. I began a protracted waiting game.

Pretty soon the week cane when I had to report to Fort Hamilton in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, a few blocks from where I live now. My Dad, supportive of anything I had ever done, was apoplectic. I found myself, somewhat distracted as I tried hard to deny what appeared to be the inevitable.

The commune would soon be off to distant lands. And so, it appeared would I. And we would be fighting for freedom -- they from boredom and I from Godless Communism. Don't get me wrong. I was no gung ho Marine. My English teacher had run off to Canada with my art teacher. Nobody wanted to be drafted. But I was a deer in the headlights.

So I occupied myself with chores. During my last week of freedom, I helped the Commune ready the boat for their departure date, which had been fixed for the end of August.

Our departures seemed so intertwined, and yet so diametrically opposed.

Here's how that last week went:

First Day, a rash appeared over my entire body, little red dots, something I've never experienced before or since. It stayed with me that whole week.

Second day, I tied the launch up at the stern, stepped up onto the deck and jabbed my shoulder with the boom, which left a nasty bruise.

Third day, tying my father up on a boatswain's chair as he painted the 80-foot mast, I turned and walked straight into same mast, hard. A goose egg developed immediately.

Fourth day, I moved a 75-pound boat battery onto the boat. The boat,which when I left to pick up the battery was level with the dock, was now lowered with the tide. I decided to jump and came crashing to the deck. I sustained a hematoma on the ankle. The family doctor taped me up before sending me out the door with a worried look and a pair of crutches.

Next day I had to get on the bus. I lined up with 15 or 20 other dejected, nervous-looking guys and we boarded the yellow school bus that took us to Fort Hamilton for our physicals.

I wondered if they thought I was faking the crutch thing. Anyway, I got the big rubber stamp "Rejected." Another appointment in two weeks. You're allowed to cancel once between appointments, so I did. When I showed up that second time, Iwas again rejected. Not healed yet. I cancelled my one, final, allowed time and, miraculously, by the time of my third appointment, completely healed and ready to report for duty, Nixon did away with the draft!

If anyone ever asks you what the expression "dumb luck" means, tell them this story.

White Cherries on a Hot Day

2005-07-14T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's the kind of steamy day where cold white cherries and a glass of Paul Newman Lemonade fill the bill. I'll eat anything Paul Newman makes, except for the Fig Newmans. His spaghetti sauce is good too. Newman has been quietly giving kids a big dose of Summertime fun at his "Hole in the Wall" camps for a long time now. He could be, but he's not a horn-tooter.

Paul Newman is one very cool dude.

Summer camp can open a kid up to nature for the first time. Catching fireflies, sitting around a fire burning marshmallows, fishing in rivers and lakes. It's all good.

I was one of those kids where, when the summer came, I was sent off to Camp Greenkill, a YMCA camp near Port Jervis, New York. I say "sent off" because I did not agree to go. And once I got there, I began to wander again. A certain camp counselor kept finding me. I'd be walking down the long dirt road to the highway, and Roger would come along in his '57 Chevy that he called "The Grey Ghost." He knew what to say, and he always brought me back each time I ran away, which was about two. Finally I stayed.

Anyway, I didn't want any more "Missing Boy" stories. I think I wore out my welcome in that department a few years earlier.

It didn't help matters that this place was infested with Rattlesnakes and Copperheads. Captured vipers would be displayed on the hood of Roger's Chevy in a big glass jar, all coiled up and dead. He'd make sure their mouths were open so we could see their fangs. I'd stand five feet back from the Chevy's fender and stare wide-eyed at them.

As I stood there one day, it finally began to sink in . . . my parents were trying to assassinate me. They had sent me here to Camp Greenkill to kill me. How ironic is that name, by the way?

I could hear them plotting: "Honey, what would be the most gruesome way for our oldest son to die?" "I know!" one or the other of them would say. "Let's have him attacked by snakes!"

I could picture them clinking their cocktail glasses.

I decided to confront my mother when she arrived in her station wagon for visitor's day.

"Mom, are you and Dad trying to kill me?"

"That," she said dismissively, "is all in the past."

"No Mom, seriously, I have to know."

"Well," she said. "I'd heard it worked for a couple of the neighbors and I thought I'd try it out on you."

I immediately demanded more money on my "candy card." If they were trying to kill me, the least they could do was buy me a decent last meal. And my card was getting pretty punched

I no longer questioned their motives, until the next day, that is, when I went to the camp store to buy a Clark Bar. When the lady behind the counter returned my candy card, it had a balance of $500 on it.

Business Class Gas

2005-07-11T17:48:00.000-07:00

I can understand something like this happening in Economy Class. (See how quickly one Business Class trip to Europe makes me to the manor born?) And the guy looked like a decent-enough chap, probably 40, had that “still playing in a mid-list rock band” look about him. And there were only ten of us in Business Class for an overnight flight to London. After the nice lady came by with the midnight snack, let’s call him “Clive,” pushed the button which fully reclined his seat into a flat position.

I’m a snorer. I don’t usually like to fall asleep in airplanes or buses or even cars because of my feral snoring. In any event, I seem to be predisposed to staying awake anyway. I’m one of those nervous travelers. I'm up all night, searching for movies and music.

So when Clive began farting in his sleep, I was amused at first, then horrified when it got worse.

For some reason, I became fixated on the fact that Clive’s farts were pressurized, like the cabin, and I actually began to worry whether this fact would render Clive‘s farts explosive? My God, he could go off at any moment!

Like I said, I'm nervous on planes, and I have a lot of time to think.

No, he’ll stop any second, I thought. I jammed the headphones on and reclined my bed too, facing into the aisle. I adjusted my air jet to blow in Clive’s direction.

But I found that the main attraction of the business class experience on this airline -- its comfortable sleeper seats which they claim will have you waking daisy-fresh in London -- was lost on me. I felt like I was in a coffin. I couldn’t sleep on my side because it wasn’t quite wide enough.

And Clive the farter was still going strong.

I couldn’t hear him now, because of the headphones. But you get the drift . . .

The worst embarrassment of the whole flight occurred when a flight attendant walked by me laying there like a patient on a gurney. She smelled it too, looked down at me, our eyes locked, and she gave me a piteous look, as though I were the farter!

I was now completely mortified and reached into my bag for a sedative. If I can just grab a couple of winks, I’ll be fine for the morning. Everything else about this trip was fine. I dozed off to Frank Sinatra singing “How High the Moon” and just as I was approaching alpha, Clive stood up and squeezed past me into the aisle. I looked up at him and he gave me a “Sorry mate” kind of look. No problem, I thought. In fact, this little trip could be the answer to both our prayers.

No matter. I promptly fell off to sleep, fart-free for the first time and eager to grab my moment. I stretched out on my stomach, my head in an unnatural right angle to the rest of my body, but I was somehow able to go to sleep. When I got up at Heathrow, there was Clive, sitting upright in his seat, sipping an orange juice, and appraising my awakened state through bloodshot eyes. I half-smiled in his direction and he put his juice down.

“You know you’re an ‘ell of a snorer mate.”

Missing Boy

2005-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

I found this blog where you write down your secrets and send them in and they post them anonymously online for the whole world to see. It’s cyber-confession. You can see them at www.postsecret.blogspot.com.

Anyway, I have a confession of my own to make, although I should point out it wasn't exactly my fault.

It happened when I was seven or eight. I was given the opportunity to either sit and play in the sandbox with my six-year-old sister, or race my Dad’s brand-new DeSoto on a dragstrip. It took me one second to decide.

“Just run in and tell the babysitter,” my father told me from the idling car. I immediately did a 180 and ran into the house. She was an older woman, our soon to be ex-babysitter, and she seemed to be involved with my sister‘s playtime frivolity, trying to restrain her in some way without the use of a straitjacket. Or maybe it was baby brother, Ricky, who was only two at the time.

I should have waited until I had her full attention, but I just ran in the house, got her attention, and announced “I’m going to the racetrack with my Dad!” Then I ran back out again.

It wasn’t really her fault. I’ve felt bad all these years that I didn’t speak up and explain that she might not have heard me correctly. She did look at me and seem to comprehend what I was saying, but she must have forgotten.

My rep as a wanderer didn't help matters. It wasn’t unusual to see me, as a toddler, walking alongside the main road which led into the next village. I remember the faces of kindly neighbors trying to coax me into their Buicks with expressions similar to those one might use with an obstinate cat. To passersby, I’m sure they must have sounded like perverts, talking to a cautious four-year-old from the open door of their automobile. “You remember us, honey, we’re the Morgans. We live down the street from you. Your mother is very worried about you.” But nobody ever arrested them and I always got home safe.

So, when I didn’t show up later in the afternoon, the sitter called my mother at her job. Mom raced home.

Out at Westhampton Beach, though, all was bliss for me. Dad turned his aqua and white tail-finned beauty out onto the blacktop and revved the engine. He pulled me onto his lap, moved the seat all the way up, and we counted down from ten.

“Three, two, one!” I mashed my foot down on the gas pedal, and the back wheels made a chirping sound. I hung onto the oval-shaped steering wheel tightly and by the time we’d finished we were going about 65 miles per hour. We didn't break the sound barrier, but when you’re that age it feels much faster.

Driving home along 25a at dusk, we began to notice people walking through fields as we got closer to our house. “I wonder what's going on,” my father said. "It looks like they‘re searching for somebody.”

They were.

Me.

The closer we got to our house, more and more people were out and about. When we turned onto our street, there were police cruisers and fire engines parked right out in front of our house. As my father turned into the driveway, flashbulbs went off from people standing around who suddenly produced cameras. My father’s immortal words were printed in the paper the following morning. “What’s going on?” They told us the entire town was looking for me. Boy Scouts were combing the nearby woods calling my name.

On our front porch, a bloodhound was sitting with a handler. In a sea of confusion, I stopped to play with it. I remember the velvet texture of his ears. He became excited, probably recognizing my scent, and realizing his night was over.

Inside the house , I saw my mother with a champagne glass in her hand, talking to some people.

As soon as she saw me, she ran over to me and hugged me. She was crying.

I looked over her shoulder into the living room and saw all my neighbors. They had cocktails too. I thought maybe some adult birthday party was in progress. But then why would my mother be crying. All of a sudden, a photographer with the biggest camera I ever saw, followed me into my bedroom. I cringed against my father who sat with me on my bed.

That photograph appeared in the newspaper the next morning under the headline:

MISSING BOY FOUND SAFE
Was at Racetrack with Father

I never asked them about public apologies or having to perform community service or anything like that, but I imagine it must've taken the folks a while to live that one down.

7/7

2005-07-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Killer Catfish

2005-07-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

I don't know if Catfish have souls, but if they do I would like to apologize to the catfish gods for one my mother sacrificed on our kitchen countertop back in the 1960's.

We did not eat this catfish. It was our pet. I suppose that's what makes it all the more horrifying. Although I can't remember the exact date, I do remember the solemnity of the occasion. The feeling was very much "you and me against the fish." The execution had been planned in advance. According to my mother, it was the only thing to do. Nothing could go wrong. A catfish this vile could not simply be flushed down the toilet. It might come back, even bigger. We all agreed that it did seem to be growing at a faster pace than any of the other fish in the aquarium.

It had not been a good week. My parents' marriage was breaking up and now mother had just heard on the evening news that a species of translucent catfish, the very same species currently staring at her from our living room aquarium, was capable of growing to an enormous size and strolling around on dry land. I think the program might have included more information than just those two facts, but those were the two she focused on.

My mother was horrified. And as she sat there in her armchair -- cigarette in one hand, gin and tonic in the other -- she glared at the once benign creature in our tank. And she knew what she had to do.

Life takes a sharp turn sometimes and you have to confront your fears. Things happen that are so shocking, so much a betrayal, that they must be dealt with in the spirit of haste. You wonder why you didn't see it coming.

Mother didn't know whether to blame the fish store employee who sold it to her, or her absentee husband, who certainly would be able to save his family when the catfish from hell suddenly grew too big for its tank and began waddling down the hall devouring their children.

But there was no time for that. A saucepan of ammonia was placed on the kitchen counter. The catfish, about six inches long and awaiting his fate in a small aquarium net, was placed into the ammonia. In shock, the fish flapped violently and found himself once again gulping air on the counter, surrounded by a spreading puddle of ammonia. The stench of it burned into our noses as mother scooped the fish back into the saucepan with a spoon and got the lid on before the catfish could make one last try for freedom.

I remember being shocked at the demise of this fish, how the poor thing went.

But, in an odd way, I think my mother felt somehow reassured.

Their divorce was finalized a year later.

Tom Cruise

2005-07-02T05:49:00.000-07:00

"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do." (Tom Cruise to Matt Lauer on the Today Show)

Does anyone remember those old TV commercials, starring Chad Everett, pushing some product like aspirin?

"I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV."

What's more ridiculous -- the fact that this statement merely points out his illegitimacy as a spokesperson for aspirin, or the aspirin-manufacturer's arrogant belief in the gullibility of the American population?

Probably a little of both.

We consider ourselves savvy. Sure, Oprah can rocket a book up the charts, but we Americans simply will not accept any old concept these rich movie stars try to foist on us anymore.

Or will we? Tell me the truth. Ten years ago, would you ever have imagined Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California? You were thinking the whole Jessie Ventura, Minnesota thing was a fluke, weren't ya? Me too.

By now, however, I'm jaded. For instance, I wouldn't have been overly surprised, recently, to hear that Mel Gibson had been elevated to Pope.

If you watch Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson talk about their projects on television, they both come off as . . . intense is too nice a word. Crazy. That fits. I remember watching Mel talk to Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America when he was doing publicity for "The Passion of the Christ." He had that same sort of pit bull defensiveness that Tom Cruise gets when he talks about Scientology. I was yelling "Run Diane, Run!" And Diane did look like she wanted to run at one point. She really did.

So, in perspective, Tom's humorless pontificating and monkey-bar antics aren't as unique as we may be making them out to be. It could just be his reaction to Arnie and Mel. After all, they're up there in the earning department, huge egos, though Arnie is sidelined for now. Maybe Tom feels if Mel can blab about his religion and make hundreds of millions of dollars, and Arnie gets to own California, why is Pat Kingsley telling him to keep his mouth shut about Scientology on the red carpet?

Annnnd . . . Scientologists believe we are descended from space aliens who lived inside volcanoes and Tom's new movie - The War of the Worlds - has an almost identical theme. It's a perfect example of "publissuety" -- using your clout to stump your cause.

Movie stars spend their lives reading lines off pieces of paper which tell them who they are and what they are going to say. They don't have to learn anyone else's lines but their own. In some cases, they don't even have to learn their own lines. Should they find themselves unable to memorize for anything under $15 million and ten percent of the front end, a teleprompter is wheeled in.

However, once they achieve the adoration of millions of people, which was their original goal -- oh they'll say it wasn't, but it so was -- it's incumbent on them to remember that power corrupts.

And, as Barbara Walters might say in a celebrity interview, "Abso-wute pow-ah co-wups abso-wute-wee."

You know, I really think that Brooke Shields might be wrong about Tom Cruise. I mean about him not being able to give birth. I believe he just might be able to do it. You see, that's the one thing we truly don't know about Tom Cruise yet.

Is he able to give birth?

If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that truth is stranger than fiction. In my opinion, it's entirely possible that Tom Cruise is a space alien capable of whelping his own young. Honestly, he has always struck me as alien-like. And male space aliens, in some cases, can give birth.

At least that's what I've been told.