A "blood cloth" in his brain (Roy)

AH, MY PARENTS. Love ‘em. They're in their mid-seventies, but they're youthful, healthy.

They’re immigrants. Mom's got a pronounced accent. My dad lost his thirty or forty years ago.

Mom and pop have got a special way with words.

These days, I occasionally report my conversations with my parents to my friend Kris. My conversations with mom and pop, as I recount them, are, she says, “priceless.” I have a duty, she insists, to “record history.”

OK, then.

Now, I don’t want to just make fun of my folks. They’re very generous, very warm, very talented. Everybody says so, and what everybody says is true.

But I value good writing and clear thinking. I value using words carefully and precisely. And that means that conversing with my folks can be—well, challenging.

* * *

The family is going through a difficult time. My sister, Fanny, an artist living in the Bay Area, is scheduled for surgery later this month to remove precancerous cells.

Yesterday, I dropped by my folks’ place—to continue my photographic preservation project—and, at one point, I had the following conversation with mom and dad.

Mom: Fanny called today, and they gave her a stress test. Something about a treadmill. And she did real well!
Chunk: That's great!
Dad: Well, they don't have all the results yet.
Mom: They do, but the doctor can't interpret them.
Chunk: He can't interpret them? How come?
Mom: Well, it's got to be interpreted by the specialist.
Chunk: OK, so has "it" been interpreted by the specialist?
Mom: I don't know. But Fanny says the guy said that he can't say anything, but he said it looked good to him.
Chunk: Wait a minute. —What guy? The guy who ran the test?
Mom: I don't know. I guess so. Maybe.
Dad: These tests involve a pulmonary.....
Chunk: —Which tests? All the parts of the stress test?
Dad: When I had my stress test [my dad had a heart “episode” about two years ago], it involved...

Chunk: OK, that's fine, but I want to know about Fanny's stress test first. So she's had the test, right? And her doctor isn't gonna interpret the results, cuz a specialist is gonna do that, only he hasn't done that yet, and so the guy or gal who ran the treadmill test, who isn't the specialist, said—informally—that the “results” looked good to him. Is that it?
Dad: Well, my test wasn't a treadmill; it was...
Chunk: Um, OK, but right now I'm trying to find out about Fanny's test.
Dad: You don’t want to know about my test?
Chunk: Well, I do. But, first, I want to know how things went with Fanny's test. She's facing surgery, and I want to know why they tested her, and what the test shows.
Mom: Yeah. She did well! Did I tell you, she's making dresses now?
Chunk: —Dresses? Who...
Mom: —Well, Fanny is who. Who did you think we were talking about?

Dad: They’ve got this pulmonary....
Mom: —We're not talking about that. The dresses will be big enough for her, apparently.
Chunk: Big enough for Fanny?
Mom: No, for Susan [my sister-in-law]! She needs maternity dresses!
Dad: These tests, they’re not perfect. My friend Alex passed it with flying colors and then he got a blood cloth.
Chunk: [I pause. Why correct them? Has it ever helped? I simply repeat the phrase:] A blood cloth.
Mom: Yeah, a blood cloth. He died, but she's beautiful. You wanna meet her?

At that point, I threw in the towel. I just sat back. Soon, I went back to scanning slides.

* * *

JUST NOW, my dad dropped by. I opened my front door. He handed me something wrapped in foil. "A veggie burger," he said.

"Oh, great. Thanks!"

DAD: "Have you got the ketchup?"

CHUNK: "The ketchup? What ketchup?"

DAD: "Don't you have the ketchup?"

CHUNK: "Well, I've got ketchup."

DAD: "OK, then. Enjoy!" He walks back to his truck, drives away. He's as happy as a lark.

Several large bowels of pasta

Yesterday, the NYT’s “Schott’s Vocab” zeroed in on malapropisms. Having been raised in an immigrant family, I own a brain that is hard-wired with dozens of malapropistic configuroons. I think I even got some of ‘em through the umbiblical “chord,” though, really, that’s a mute point at this stench in time.

First, the malapropism upon which much of my parents’ fame rests:

“He died because of a blood cloth.”

Sometimes, I will look right at them and say, “There is no such thing as a ‘blood cloth.’ You mean a ‘blood clot.’”

Always, they look right back at me with immediate and utter incredulity.

Here are some examples offered by Schott’s readers:

HE'S VERY EGOTESTICLE

• Someone I know is a genius at this. She spoke of a woman who had her hair up in a buffoon; saw my new shoes and said, "My, aren't you the fashion plague"; and recently spoke of a man who is very egotesticle.

• my favorite poem is "allergy in a church graveyard".

• My aunt always said, "I can't have anymore children because I've had my utopian tubes tied.”

• My father, noting the first hint of fall in the air, sighed and said: "Soon it will be time to fart stars in the fireplace.” [This seems to be something of a Spoonerism.]

• A busy woman: "Sometimes I get so stressed out I have to go to my room and decompose for an hour."

YOU DRIVE MY NUTS!

• A co-worker's little son announced that "you drive my nuts!" My daughter once wrote that our cat Butter Boy jumped on Frenzy when she was "least expectant." My grandfather deliberately invented examples like astosbestos for asbestos and nutneg for nutmeg. Another relative admired the singing of Ethel Murmur and the talents of Shirley Dimple. This becomes a way of life. It's dangerous to be exposed to it when young! [God, this sounds like my upbringing. Pretty whackitudinal!]

• i cannot decide which music i like better, R&B or flip flop

• "lead us snots into temptation...."

• My grandmother was famous for her malaprops; when asked if she would like to take a flight in her friend's new airplane, she gasped "Absolutely not, I like it right here on Terra Cotta";

• At a restaurant: Clams on the half shelf and a cup of chino.

• ". . . government takeover and mandation of healthcare . . ." --Sarah Palin

• Here are selected favorites from my wife:
1. This is the tip of the ice cube.
2. Security in schools has been tighter since 7-11.
3. The right foot doesn't know what the left foot is doing.
4. The swine flu has reached the pandemonium stage.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TURTLE

• At work, our team had been working on a project that had been progressing at snail’s pace with no end remotely in sight. One day, we had a breakthrough, and one of my colleagues excitedly announced at our weekly meeting, “There’s light at the end of the turtle.”

• Our church secretary always refers to the annual report to the denomination as the Sadistical Report.

• A friend with a medical condition consulted a doctor at "Cedars Cyanide"

• "I am impressed by the enormity of the universe."

• I've been tracking these at work:
Someone who is frustrated: "I've been pulling my head out over this one!"
Working through a problem: "I'm just talking out loud here."
Suggesting something: "I don't mean to speak out of tongue, but..."
Rehashing: "I feel like I'm beating this with a dead horse."
Feeling a little disoriented: "At this point, we're running by the fly of our pants."
Is in a bad mood: "He's got a craw up his butt."

• "This is a bare-bones specification, let's flush out the details later".

• After a staff party at which pasta was served, we were reminded that several large bowels of pasta were left over in the refrigerator. None of us went near the fridge as a result.

A translation gone wrong, somehow.

HAD HIS KITCHEN FLOOR POLYURINATED

• A few years back my father, who is now nearing one hundred, proudly announced that he had recently had his kitchen floor polyurinated.

• The late Bruce King, governor of New Mexico for many years, was famous for having said of a legislative proposal that it would "open a whole box of Pandoras."

• One of my son's college roommates, an ROTC cadet, dropped out of the program just as the Iraq war was starting. "This is not a good time," he opined, "to be thinking about joining the Army corpse."

• "Be sure and put some of those neutrons on it." –While ordering a salad.

COULDA KNOCKED ME OVER WITH A FENDER

• "You could have knocked me over with a fender."

• "We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this country hostile or hold our allies hostile." –George W. Bush

• Explaining lethal injection: "First, they give 'em a needle to seduce 'em; then they give the legal injection"

• Friend referring to his relationship with his wife, "...like two ships that go bump in the night."

• "Those kids were able to Flea-Bargain their way to a lesser punishment."

P.S.: My ex and I, having had more than our share of exposure to my nutty family, have always enjoyed, and have been inspired by, endless malapropoidal Bauerific incorrectitude. To this day, when I speak with her, she'll note the "flaw in the ointment" or how the night is as "dark as a bat."

And then we'll just laugh like hell.

"Polyurinated" —January, a year ago

     Regular readers of DtB might be wondering why we’ve posted so little in recent days. Well, the main reason is that I’ve got a bad cold. With luck, in the morning, I’ll be well enough to go to our new chancellor’s “opening session.”
     Maybe not. I still feel like crap.
     I was hoping to write a piece reviewing the events of the past year, as reported by DtB, but I’m not up for that. So I settled for a brief piece about what was going on a year ago (i.e., the month of January 2010).

POWERFUL RIGHT-WING HOMOPHOBES:

Typical Mathurian "keynote speaker": PRI's Lance Izumi

     A year ago, Raghu Mathur was still Chancellor, and the Spring “opening session” featured a presentation about our economic future by one of Mathur’s Republican cronies, Chris Harrington, a VP at Toshiba America Info Systems. That went pretty well. But it irked me that, over the years, so many of these events featured noted Republicans and “business leaders” with close ties to the GOP. At least Harrington wasn’t pushing a right-wing agenda, as was Pacific Research Institute’s Lance Izumi, a foe of public education. [Correction: as an officer of PRI, Izumi undoubtedly is a foe of public education, though he wasn't attacking public education during his visit.]
     Remember those crazy Ugandan politicians who pursued a bill that would permit the execution of “homosexuals”? We wrote about all of that a year ago. Turns out they were brought to their level of focus and enthusiasm re the “homosexual” menace by a series of wacky Americans evengelical Christians, including one Scott Lively, a self-described expert on “curing” homosexuality.
     That name rang a bell, and so I did a little research. Sure enough, Lively is among the religious nuts who’ve been pushing the “homosexual Armageddon” notion. He’s part of a crowd that includes David Llewellyn, who has long been up to his eyeballs in evangelical homophobia.
     Llewellyn, of course, is one of the chief attorneys defending the district (against a crew of “heathens,” to use Nancy Padberg’s term) in the ongoing Westphal v. Wagner “prayer” case.
     Tom Fuentes’ pal Howard Ahmanson, Jr. has been a big contributor to some of Llewellyn’s anti-gay and evangelical efforts. Not long ago, the Ahmansons gave a big chunk of change to Rick Warren (of OC’s own Saddleback Church). Warren is among the evangelicals who has visited Uganda in recent years, giving some Ugandan lawmakers peculiar notions about homosexuality (which Warren has compared to pedophelia).

Saddleback Church's Rick Warren

OUR RIGHT-WING LUNATIC TRADITION:

     A year ago, I did a little looking into the namesake of Saddleback’s strangely fortress-like Utt Library: Congressman James B. Utt. According to an old LA Times article,

James B. Utt … helped Orange County gain a national reputation as a hotbed of archconservatism…. "Utt the Nut," his enemies called him. He was elected to Congress in 1952 and handily won reelection until his death in 1970. Each year Utt introduced a bill to eliminate the federal income tax. He also tried to pass a constitutional amendment which would recognize Jesus Christ as America's authority figure. He opposed all civil rights legislation, but gained national fame, however, when he argued that rock 'n roll was a communist plot.

JOHN WILLIAMS AND LUNCH MEAT:

     We’ve long tried to get Jennifer Muir of the OC Register to take a look at trustee John Williams’ longstanding practice of spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on trips to Orlando and the like. She finally came through with an article.
     She also dug up a curious factoid: “the district has spent $12,184 for catering during the board meetings over the past two and a half years.”

THE PURITAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT (more homophobia):

     An item on the January agenda for the SOCCCD meeting of the board included a recommendation that our colleges’ TV channels only broadcast programming—including student film and TV shows—with a PG rating. Evidently, the request had something to do with an earlier incident: trustee Nancy Padberg had noticed a broadcast of an award-winning student documentary about an older woman “coming out” and going on a cruise (“88 Years in the Closet”).
     Evidently, Saddleback College’s Channel 39 has broadcast programming within the less restrictive PG-13 standard, which the student documentary passed. It would not pass the PG standard.
     Naturally, the usual suspects in the affected programs came to the January board meeting to plead their case to leave the broadcast standard where it was—a change would mean that many student projects could not be broadcast. Further, Saddleback’s faculty senate leader, Bob Cosgrove, warned that this sort of censorship/micromanagement might have serious accreditation consequences.
     Nevertheless, the recommendation was pursued. In the end, officials for the relevant programs agreed to voluntarily limit broadcasts now to programming satisfying the PG standard.
     I tried to get readership riled about this, but—nothin’ doin. When the accreds finally arrived, I mentioned this event as an instance of board micromanagement. But I doubt that they heard me.

DID HE RESIGN? OR WAS HE FIRED?

     From the board room on January 25, I reported that “Mathur was out." I quoted the reading of board actions in closed session:

“In the closed session, the board approved an agreement with Dr. Mathur persuant to which Dr. Mathur’s service as the district chancellor shall end on June 30th, 2010, and provides for his retirement from the district effective June 30, 2011.”

     It was pretty obvious that Mathur had been forced out. He no longer had four trustee votes, especially after some fresh infamy (occurring some time earlier) at the expense of Don Wagner.
     But the district sold this thing as a decision by Mathur to retire—to spend more time with his family, etc.
     Naturally, I ignored that blather, and it was pretty clear that journalists, too, knew what was really going on. But the official word was that Mathur had decided to resign.
     Eventually, the always-stupid John Williams inadvertently spilled the beans. For a Register article, he was quoted as saying: “…You work for an elected board and you need a majority of those board members to vote to keep you. In this case, the majority of the board felt they wanted to have a change, so they voted to.”
     Gosh thanks John. You’re an idiot.
     I reported the fact that the district paid ethically-challenged GOP lawyer Phil Greer $25,000 to help Mathur to negotiate his exit. (He got a pretty sweet deal.)
     That’s pretty amazing, if you ask me. But few were amazed. Greer is also John Williams’ lawyer. He was Chriss Street’s lawyer. He's a typical friend o' Fuentes: corrupt, unethical, slimy. Don't it all make you proud?

WILL THE FIX BE IN?

     We ended the month of January with a post that asked: Will the fix be in—again? We were referring, of course, to the search for Mathur’s replacement. Eventually, Don offered strong assurances that the process would be clean. (In the end, despite a huge expense [a professional search firm was hired] and the efforts of a blue-ribbon committee, the board rejected all candidates and instead reached back for Gary Poertner, a safe [and probably excellent] choice.)
     Also at the end of January, I skimmed the cream from a New York Times piece about funny malapropisms and such. The examples mentioned were pretty damned funny. So here it is again:

SEVERAL LARGE BOWELS OF PASTA
     Yesterday, the NYT’s “Schott’s Vocab” zeroed in on malapropisms. Having been raised in an immigrant family, I own a brain that is hard-wired with dozens of malapropistic configuroons. I think I even got some of ‘em through the umbiblical “chord,” though, really, that’s a mute point at this stench in time.
     First, the malapropism upon which much of my parents’ fame rests:

“He died because of a blood cloth.”

     Sometimes, I will look right at them and say, “There is no such thing as a ‘blood cloth.’ You mean a ‘blood clot.’”
     Always, they look right back at me with immediate and utter incredulity.
     Here are some examples offered by Schott’s readers:

HE'S VERY EGOTESTICLE

• Someone I know is a genius at this. She spoke of a woman who had her hair up in a buffoon; saw my new shoes and said, "My, aren't you the fashion plague"; and recently spoke of a man who is very egotesticle.

• my favorite poem is "allergy in a church graveyard".

• My aunt always said, "I can't have anymore children because I've had my utopian tubes tied.”

• My father, noting the first hint of fall in the air, sighed and said: "Soon it will be time to fart stars in the fireplace.” [This seems to be something of a Spoonerism.]

• A busy woman: "Sometimes I get so stressed out I have to go to my room and decompose for an hour."

YOU DRIVE MY NUTS!

• A co-worker's little son announced that "you drive my nuts!" My daughter once wrote that our cat Butter Boy jumped on Frenzy when she was "least expectant." My grandfather deliberately invented examples like astosbestos for asbestos and nutneg for nutmeg. Another relative admired the singing of Ethel Murmur and the talents of Shirley Dimple. This becomes a way of life. It's dangerous to be exposed to it when young! [God, this sounds like my upbringing. Pretty whackitudinal!]

• i cannot decide which music i like better, R&B or flip flop

• "lead us snots into temptation...."

• My grandmother was famous for her malaprops; when asked if she would like to take a flight in her friend's new airplane, she gasped "Absolutely not, I like it right here on Terra Cotta";

• At a restaurant: Clams on the half shelf and a cup of chino.

• ". . . government takeover and mandation of healthcare . . ." --Sarah Palin

• Here are selected favorites from my wife:
1. This is the tip of the ice cube.
2. Security in schools has been tighter since 7-11.
3. The right foot doesn't know what the left foot is doing.
4. The swine flu has reached the pandemonium stage.

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TURTLE

• At work, our team had been working on a project that had been progressing at snail’s pace with no end remotely in sight. One day, we had a breakthrough, and one of my colleagues excitedly announced at our weekly meeting, “There’s light at the end of the turtle.”

• Our church secretary always refers to the annual report to the denomination as the Sadistical Report.

• A friend with a medical condition consulted a doctor at "Cedars Cyanide"

• "I am impressed by the enormity of the universe."

• I've been tracking these at work:
Someone who is frustrated: "I've been pulling my head out over this one!"
Working through a problem: "I'm just talking out loud here."
Suggesting something: "I don't mean to speak out of tongue, but..."
Rehashing: "I feel like I'm beating this with a dead horse."
Feeling a little disoriented: "At this point, we're running by the fly of our pants."
Is in a bad mood: "He's got a craw up his butt."

• "This is a bare-bones specification, let's flush out the details later".

• After a staff party at which pasta was served, we were reminded that several large bowels of pasta were left over in the refrigerator. None of us went near the fridge as a result.

HAD HIS KITCHEN FLOOR POLYURINATED

• A few years back my father, who is now nearing one hundred, proudly announced that he had recently had his kitchen floor polyurinated.

• The late Bruce King, governor of New Mexico for many years, was famous for having said of a legislative proposal that it would "open a whole box of Pandoras."

• One of my son's college roommates, an ROTC cadet, dropped out of the program just as the Iraq war was starting. "This is not a good time," he opined, "to be thinking about joining the Army corpse."

• "Be sure and put some of those neutrons on it." –While ordering a salad.

COULDA KNOCKED ME OVER WITH A FENDER

• "You could have knocked me over with a fender."

• "We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this country hostile or hold our allies hostile." –George W. Bush

• Explaining lethal injection: "First, they give 'em a needle to seduce 'em; then they give the legal injection"

• Friend referring to his relationship with his wife, "...like two ships that go bump in the night."

• "Those kids were able to Flea-Bargain their way to a lesser punishment."

P.S.: My ex and I, having had more than our share of exposure to my nutty family, have always enjoyed, and have been inspired by, endless malapropoidal Bauerific incorrectitude. To this day, when I speak with her, she'll note the "flaw in the ointment" or how the night is as "dark as a bat."

And then we'll just laugh like hell.

Lots of cloud

     [The further adventures of the Bauer family of Trabuco Canyon, including my parents, my sister (Annie) and I—who live nearby—and sometimes my younger bro (Ron) and his family.]

"It's alive!"

     On Sunday, Ron & Susan and the kids came by to help celebrate Father’s Day, and that went very well, though, as usual, it felt like a hurricane. (But I'm not complainin'!)
     After Ron and the gang blew out toward the ocean, I found what I took to be Susan’s cell phone on the bed in the extra bedroom. (The kids had been in there, playing, telling ghost stories, etc.) I drew attention to the thing as I left for home that night. “I think Susan left this here,” I said.
     Next day: Annie and I came by for lunch. There occurred three conversations. [Imagine now that I am Rod Serling.] Three Bauerian adventures in thought and language—in an area which we call the Bauer Zone.
     The main adventure, which centered on the word "it," was sandwiched between a before and an after adventure:

a priori

     Ma: “Roy called about his radio this morning.”
     “Roy?” I ask. “I'm Roy. You mean Ron, right?”
     “Oh yes, of course,” says Ma. “Ron, then, called about his radio.”
     “His radio?” I asked. “What radio?”
     “Yeah, the radio you found yesterday,” said Pa.
     I stared at Annie. She stared at me. I then said: “do you mean the cell phone I found?”
     “Yeah, the radio,” said Ma.
     Annie got up to find the dang thing.
     “Oh,” I said, “that’s not a radio. It's some kind of cell phone, I think.”
     Annie found it nearby and brought it to the table. She removed the gizmo in question from its small leather sleeve. Said she: “It’s a Blackberry.” She briefly explained what that is.
     “Right,” I said. “Its not a radio and it's not a cell phone. It’s an internet/email/phone gizmo, a precursor to smart phones, sort of. You know what smart phones are?”
     “The original cellphones,” asserts Pa, “were called radiophones.”
     Oh. Beyond anything else he was trying to do, my dad was signaling that we had better drop the subject. We—Annie and I—were causing disharmony, evidently, by picking at my mother and her trivial linguistic errors.
     OK.

a posteriori

"Who's alive?"

     Ma: “He sure has some cloud.” ["He" was some guy—doesn't matter who. I never found out.]
     Pa: “Yeah, lots of cloud.”
     Me: “What’s that you’re saying? ‘Cloud’?”
     “Yeah,” says Pa. “Juice.” He sure had a lot of juice. Or cloud.” He said this with his usual enthusiasm for having mastered a colloquial expression. (My folks are originally from Germany. My dad loves to pick up "new" expressions.)
     I offer: “I think you mean ‘clout.’ He had lots of clout.” (This reminded me of the "blood cloth" saga. Do your recall that one?)
     My dad commences staring in disbelief.
     “That’s what I said,” says Ma. “Cloud. He has lots of cloud.”
     Friends and acquaintances sometimes witness these episodes. At such times, my mother's obliviousness and cheerful disregarding positivity is invariably warmly embraced as Big Old World Charm. —Really Big.
     “No," said I. “It’s not ‘cloud.’ It’s ‘clout,’ with a ‘t.’”
     I pronounce the word very clearly, stressing the hard “t” sound: “ClouTTTT.”
     “Clout?”
     “Yep. That's what you mean to say. He has CLOUT.” (I worry that my folks are running around saying "cloud" when they mean "clout." But I really shouldn't. One more malapropism among dozens: who cares?)
     Says Ma: “Why do they spell it with a ‘t’?”
     “They don’t spell the word 'cloud' with a 't.' The word is clout; they spell that word with a 't.'”
     Ma and Pa look at each other. I do believe they’re giving each other the “there he goes again” look.
     It’s a look of resignation and dismissal. It is communicated quickly, efficiently. A shorthand.
     It is final, a death sentence.
     It means: Evidently, our son Roy is a real troublemaker. And, perversely, he insist on finding error where there is none.
     Why does our son do this? It's a painful thing to contemplate. Horrible, really.
     Tick, tick, tick, tick....
     Oh well, we'll just soldier on, as we always have. We will survive, somehow. (Sigh.)
     --They immediately drop the subject, having identified the nature of the problem and its solution.

OK, so here’s the main event. Get ready.

"He is."

     “Annie, maybe you can help us with the ad for the rental,” said mom.
     “Just put it on Craig’s List,” Annie proclaims.
     Guess so. I know what Craig's List is, but I've never actually gone there. Annie's into Craig's List. Yeah, whatever.
     My folks, however, don’t know about Craig’s List. They know it has something to do with computers and the internet (two things that they refuse to distinguish). Any mention of the internet is, to them, like mention of, say, a “College Professor” to, say, a Tea Partier. It's a red flag waved in front of a bull.
     Bewilderment. Plus hostility. That's what comes up. And a primitive impulse to grab a torch and commence marching up a hill to a castle to help secure an evil-doer's fiery death.
     “We have that ad. It’s been done and done and done,” said Ma.
     She was referring, I think, to all of the ads of all of the rentals in her life, going back many years. Yes, there’ve been many of those, I suppose.
     But here's the thing: none of those ads has much to do with this ad for this house.
     “Well, it doesn’t cost anything to write a specific ad for this rental,” said Annie.
     “It doesn’t need to be different,” said my mom.
     “Well, this isn’t complicated. Just a brief description of the house,” said Annie.
     “It’s pretty much the same thing,” said mom.
     “What is?” I ask.
     “You can write the ad and give it to me. I’ll take it from there,” said Annie.
     “It’s crazy,” said mom.
     “What is exactly? What do you meant by ‘it’? What, exactly, is crazy?”
     Uh-oh. That never works—every time I ask my mom to explain who or what she is referring to by some pronoun, she gets seriously defensive and hostile. Then my dad gets seriously defensive and hostile on her behalf. I could tell that she and my dad (and maybe my sister too) were getting confused about what they were talking about. There’s the needed ad. There's the decision where to run it. There’s the old ads for the same rental--created years ago, before anyone knew about Craig's List. There’s the effort and action of putting out the ad. Etc. I could sort it out for them, but I'd pay a price: I would be accused of "lecturing" them, of bullying them with all manner of clarity and logic. But there's only so much of this kind of endless confused discussion that I can listen to before I say, "Please stop!"
     My folks have a funny way with language. It is very typical of them to use "he," "she," or "it" without any clear idea what they are referring to. They do it all the time. Things are confused all the time.
     It drives me nuts.

"Who's he?"

     “There you go again,” mom said. “I’m being perfectly clear.”
     “Look, I just want to understand what you’re saying. If somebody hears another person say, ‘It’s on the table,’ it’s always fair to ask, ‘what do you mean by IT?’ WHAT is on the table?”
     Good Lord, was I asking for it. I had torn open a festering wound!
     “We don’t need a lecture,” says my dad.
     “You (I was facing my mom) just used a sentence with the word ‘it.’ I’m just asking you what you are referring to with that word. That's all.”
     “There he goes again,” says my dad. “Let’s be pleasant. It's a nice day. Let’s change the subject.”
     That pissed me off. “I’m not being unpleasant," I said. "I’m only asking what you (mom) are talking about.”
     I turned to Annie: “Isn’t it fair to ask what a person means by ‘it’ when they use the word ‘it’?”
     “Well, yes," she said. "And when Roy asked you (Ma) what you meant by ‘it,’ I had no idea what you meant either. And then, when Roy asked what you meant, you didn’t answer,” said Annie.
    "I just want to know what you are saying," I said. "That's all."
    "No," she said. "You do this," she said, accusingly.
     Yeah, I do.
     But mostly now, I don't. And that's OK too. Really, it is.
     I love these people anyway.
     Good grief.

An Evening With Tom Fuentes and Friends

(REBEL GIRL, with a big assist from RED EMMA)

A PALL fell over the festivities in the Grand Ballroom of the Balboa Bay Club last Thursday night, the 1st of November. The gala event, billed as "An Evening with Tom Fuentes and Friends" (tickets $150.00 a head) was a fundraiser for a committee with the amusing, jejeune name of The Committee to Re-Elect Tom Fuentes. Fuentes, as many of you know, has served on the board of the South Orange County Community College District for some years now, so that the committee's moniker suggested straightforwardness and straightshootery.

The Grand Ballroom was full to its grand 7,000 square foot capacity with 300 plus celebrants in attendance. The lights twinkled, the ice cubes tinkled, the necks were wrinkled. Beyond the bay windows, the sun set into the Pacific, as in postcards and direct mail appeals. Somewhere out there to the west, in Newport Harbor (famously dredged by Roosevelt's progressive WPA), John Wayne's luxurious yacht, the Wild Goose, was moored, waiting. This was the Day of the Dead, after all, El Dia de los Muertos , and locals have, for years sworn they've seen the ghost of the Duke and dear departed friends Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bob Hope aboard the former minesweeper for an evening cruise and hand of poker.

Back in the Grand Ballroom, that pall from my opening invocation settled, as I mentioned, like so much dirty, toxic ash from the week-long wildfires burning in the local canyons. —You know, the so-called "Santiago" Fire, the hungry one wreaking its terror still, the cataclysm that might have been curtailed had these Captains of Industry (Ahoy!) and Business Leaders (all graduates of Buy Low Sell High), Orange County's mean and mighty, had the foresight or humanity to fund the purchase of more than only two measly helicopters—what somebody amusingly calls the "first responder air fleet"—for what the U.S. census accurately identifies as the second most populous county in the state, the fifth so in the nation, and one of the wealthiest places in the world. But two years ago they'd decided that the OC Fire Authority didn't need any more funds for flying machines—though, as it happened, the Sheriff's Department did, and for what, exactly, we wonder, Hmmm?


No, not even the good humor and hospitality of the evening's keynote speaker, the inimitable Bruce Herschenson, could dispel the gloom and pallage. Not the hors d'ouevres. Not the booze. Not the swag stacked outside the ballroom's doors, where secret handshakes were exchanged and attendees were given free ceremonial robes to don for the revelry a la the Bohemian Grove.

Herschenson, like many of those in attendance, wore the required costume too, a plush white terry cloth robe embroidered with the Balboa Bay Club insignia: a Balboan in docksiders, smoking a cigar, clubbing an illegal immigrant, on a field of strawberries, the red juice of the fruit mingling with the blood from the open wound. Bruce's robe was sashed low and allowed a few grey chest hairs to peek out—but not even the sight of those frisky follicles nor Herschenson's own powerful charm could lighten the gloomy mood.

Not even the ebullient and fantasical Raghu Mathur, also wearing a monogrammed robe, this one adorned with his official SOCCCD badge and American flag pin, could lighten the mood. He looked especially peppy as he worked the room, pressing flesh with those others similarly clad: the trio of Supervisors (Bates, Moorlach and Campbell), Congressman Rohrabacher, Assemblymen Silva and deVore.

But why the pall? Were they perhaps worried, like most of the county, about those displaced canyon residents, their homes and horses, goats and llamas? Maybe they were concerned about those hard-working firefighters, selfless brave heroes this week, selfish money-grubbing lazy civil servants when next their contracts were up for negotiation? Or perhaps the gang was still smarting over their stinging defeat in l'affaire Chemerinsky? Ouch. Still stinger-inskies.

No. One of their own was missing tonight, at what should have been the Cinderella's Ball of Orange County. Actually, more than one.

America's Sheriff, Mike Carona, freshly and firmly indicted along with his two (count 'em, two!) Debbies, could not be seen in public so soon after his arraignment. Especially since so many in the room were now busy paddling away from his sinking ship, which we like to call the Cooked Goose or, to embrace further easy poultryesque metaphor, the Dead Duck. His spokesman, attorney Mike Schroeder, lingered mysteriously in faraway and exotic Amsterdam, sending a bouquet of tulips and his regrets. Don Haidl, he of the big checks, yachts, private plane and, no doubt, plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against Carona was, well, a no-show. And George Jaramillo, well, his appeal for a Big House furlough to attend the festivities was, strangely, not granted. Of course, Joe Cavallo, a former close Carona amigo and former George Jaramillo and Greg Haidl abogado, also was missing in action, due, no doubt to his recent guilty plea to three felonies (three, count 'em, three!) for a scheme that had bail bondsmen calling him from the county jail to get work, which is indeed nice work if you can get it.

Soon the party of sour celebrants decamps to the pier. Replacing their comfy robes with sailor suits (think Shirley Temple—the star, not the drink) these Titans of OC, their futures perhaps fading as quickly as the fabled green flash on the horizon, board the Wild Goose and join its ghosts. The yacht weighs anchor and chugs out into the back bay, where, for awhile, all is as it should be. Then, the smoke from the east begins to drift in, as does the echo of the sound of two lone fire helicopters, chop chop chop, above the flames.

The foothills look like tiny volcanoes.