Slice of Heaven

When Sue Ten told me she was going to show Hubble on the side of the Swing Barn this week, I thought she meant Robert Redford in The Way We Were. [Cue music.] I was wrong. It turns out she’s gotten access to some images from the Hubble telescope, and not just any images. Now, she’s showing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D images, and I am delighted on at least two separate planes of reality.

I love to look up at a starry sky, even with my soft vision, the kind that comes with a few extra streaks and blurs. If the night is dark enough, I know the stars will be there to greet me.  I also know, as Annie Dillard points out, “You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”

I guess I should really not complain about the lack of darkness here outside the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range. After all, I’ll the one who had the lights installed so I would hit golf balls all night long. Still, there are times when I wish it were darker here, just as it is after a hurricane knocks all the power out in the whole state, hospitals and jails excluded. Then we got some sky!

I remember attending a public art symposium some time ago, and I thought the best possible artwork we could create for SoFLA would be a way to really see the stars. Well, hot damn, I think Sue Ten has done it, and I just can’t wait to get settled in my lawn chair with a bag of popcorn to while the night away.

Then again, this new info from The Hubble does bring Olber’s Paradox to mind, so I’ve posted the Ferlinghetti version below the video. Take it all in, and let me know what you think.

I’ve missed you so much!

OLBERS’ PARADOX

And I heard the learned astronomer

whose name was Heinrich Olbers

speaking to us across the centuries

about how he observed with naked eye

how in the sky there were

some few stars close up

and the further away he looked

the more of them there were

with infinite numbers of clusters of stars

in myriad Milky Ways & myriad nebulae

So that from this we can deduce

that in the infinite distances

there must be a place

there must be a place

where all is light

and that the light from that high place

Where all is light

simply hasn’t got here yet

which is why we still have night

But when at last that light arrives

when at last it does get here

the part of day we now call Night

will have a white sky

little black dots in it

little black holes

where once were stars

And then in that symbolic

so poetic place

which will be ours

we’ll be our own true shadows

and our own illumination

on a sunset earth

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Tags: Mood Menders, Poetry, Sue Ten, Video, science by Bjean
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When Sue Ten asked if I wanted to spend a couple of days with her in the city, naturally I assumed she meant Miami and said “Sure!” As it turns out, she meant New York City, a place I had not visited, nor missed, for 30 years.

I have never made any secret of my bumpkinism. In Missouri, when I’d walk down the sidewalks of Kansas City with my ex-husband Pretty Boy Boyd, he would consistently and persistently tell me to stop smiling at people, saying “You’re in the city now.”

But, really, I couldn’t help it, and for the most part, I never really believed that the city was much more than an illusion. Surely the buildings and traffic were just a temporary aberration, a mirage perhaps, and none of the trappings were meant to be a “lifestyle.”

I simply couldn’t recognize it as anything real, any more than the Arawak indians could see the boats of Columbus. They knew there was something wrong with the water, of course, but caravels with sails? Not possible. (Then again, Columbus had his own vision problem and could not see the Arawak as human beings, either.)

To Sue Ten, though, the city is home, and it calls to her every bit as loudly as the bull gators call to me, out here on the edge of the ’glades. No matter. I love to travel, and this city of hers turned out to be every bit as fascinatingly foreign to me as San Jose in Costa Rica or Hong Kong. The sounds alone were a treat: We heard languages galore, and I made a recording of the subway so I can compare that sound file to the one I made of the BART in San Francisco.

We visited museums, met goddesses, saw the Gay Pride parade, toured historic landmarks, walked for miles, crossed bridges, listened to opera singers, paid $10 for four tiny meatballs, cheered on circus performers, declined to pay $10 for cotton candy, had a slice and a grape at Coney Island, viewed Frank Lloyd Wright’s un-constructed masterpieces, and waited in line at the drug store, right behind a bearded lady.

My favorite part was sitting in green plastic lawn chairs in Times Square. The chairs were remarkably similar

Times Square June 2009

to the ones we set out for movie night at the Swing Barn, although I swear ours are in better condition, the plastic not yet fully shredded. The Morning Guy would never put up for that, not while there is still duct tape to be had somewhere on the planet.

Not unlike The Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range, Times Square – at least at ground level – is now an oasis, surrounded by traffic and humanity. I’m pretty sure you can get pie there some where, but golf is probably frowned upon. I do think they could put in a putting green, though. Of course, the traffic and humanity surrounding The Slice of Heaven has the good sense to keep a respectful distance.

I’m looking forward to going back to the city in another 30 years. By then, perhaps, Times Square will be a garden spot with fabulous water features and gigantic blossoming trees. As usual, I can’t wait to see what will happen next.

Pretty Boy, by the way, is summering in the land of his own native asphalt, which gives all of the regulars at the Swing Barn a little chance to carry on their own conversations without having him skillfully change all their stories into less interesting ones about him. Just before he left, our new neighbor and local salsa-dance therapist, Loretta Beauregard, analyzed Boy’s salsa moves as ones that are only possible (or conceivable) for a full-blown narcissist.

Sue Ten told her that diagnosis didn’t even require a degree from a school that advertises on match book covers.

“What else do you call a man who likes to sit next to the Wurlitzer, not for the music but for the reflection?” she asked. “You ought to try analyzing someone a bit less obvious, like my husband Logan or my Internet boyfriend Hector.”

I’m never sure how much what’s-left-of-Logan can hear from the back room, lit by the glow of CNN, so I changed the subject and asked Loretta how her salsa-therapy classes at Pancho Villas Over-55 Retirement Community and Golf Club was going.

“So far, it’s just as you predicted,” she said. “No one remembers anything from one week to the next, so we’ll be on Lesson One for a long, long time.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Life is just as easy as you let it be.”

Tags: Events, Pretty Boy Boyd, Sue Ten by Bjean
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In just a few days, Sue Ten will be home from her tour of the unknown universe, so I am scrambling to remember whatever it was that I promised to do in her absence. I did check in on her semi-comatose husband Logan every day, making sure that he was receiving just enough electrical charge from the room full of potato-clock batteries to keep a heartbeat going, and a social security check coming. I upgraded a few of the spuds that seemed to be going a little black and shady. I wonder if yams would work as well, or if they would just turn his dreams to orange? I don’t know.

By the way, right before Sue left on her trip, she’d been cast in a leading role of our local Little Theatre’s production of “Linton and Swinton and Michigan” an inspiring story of taking a wilderness and somehow turning it into a Village by the Sea. I just can’t seem to get the soundtrack out of my mind, can you? Maybe the reason I can’t get it out of my mind is because the Little Theatre has been rehearsing almost non-stop over at The Swing Barn, and it’s been that kind of SoFLA perfect weather where we do actually throw open our windows and doors.

I love this story of the hearty pioneers from Michigan heading to the Atlantic coastline to tame the swamp and rusticate on the miles of beach.

Just to the north of us, Mr. Flagler led the way, and he set the bar high. I love going to Palm Beach and visiting the mansion he built for his third wife, soon after coming to the realization that Wife Number Two was doubtless insane and would be much better off in an asylum. Yes, he must have been a rare and compassionate man to understand mental health so well. Wife Number Two was spared the stress of her husband’s private-train-car lifestyle, and The Mistress got a nice promotion. Everyone won.

But back to our musical. Let me tell you, the stage decor is quite impressive, and I think Sue will be ready to step right into her role as Vivienne Venitianne, the pineapple heiress who wins the heart of the Villagers with her mighty wit and repartee. And they, in turn, are there for her after the pineapple blight and the vagaries of the market force her to give up the high life and find true contentment as a Red-Cross certified lifeguard.

Now you may wonder how a musical comedy can be in production without its star, but that’s not really so hard to understand. The character Vivienne suffers from a peculiar inability to sing. She just plain freezes up, but not until she gets in a truly painful line or two, much to the general merriment of all, advancing the plot scene by scene as she does.

Perhaps coincidence, but Sue Ten won’t have to act out that part. She’s long been active in her work to celebrate the tone-deaf and the non-musical, and those of us who sing for joy, not for pleasure, are ever grateful for her openness to our afflictions.  This could be why we never get much of a crowd at The Swing Barn on Karaoke night, but shouldn’t every one have a chance? I for one have also ascribed to the motif: “Introverts with Microphones (A Dangerous Combination)”. But that’s another story.

My big surprise for Sue Ten is this: While she has been away, I’ve arranged through Prentiss to hire a crew of budding young filmmakers to film a documentary about the making of “Linton and Swinton and Michigan.”  They will be at the Tri-Rail Station on Thursday night, waiting to greet her with kleig lights shining. Granted, she will have been traveling for about 27 hours non-stop by then, but we want her to know we are on the scene, and we want her to know we care.

I may even make a pie.

Tags: Logan Ten, Sue Ten, The Swing Barn by Bjean
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Sue Ten will be going on vacation soon, and that means I will be responsible for keeping the potato batteries in her bedroom running so her husband Logan’s semi-comatose brain will get just the right dose to keep his heart beating and his mind tracking The Weather Channel and CNN.

Outside of that, Logan is pretty much an “easy keeper,” which is what my ex-husband Patrick-the-Liar used to call me, endearingly, of course, and I wasn’t even in a semi-coma, although after a few years with Patrick, it was increasingly hard to tell. I suspect that I sleepwalked through much of that part of my life without even knowing it.

Now, I just go with the flow of rampant insomnia, and don’t worry about it. It’s easy enough to leave my turquoise conch cottage and head up the lane to the pie shop where I can hit a few golf balls, have a plate of pie, check the post-it notes covering my computer, read a little poetry, and try not to let it all mesh together too much.

Now, I suppose I could ask your second-cousin Darnell to help out with Logan, but I need him at the Pie Shop to help me with some re-decorating. After looking more and more at that fabulous golf periscope, I’ve been thinking that maybe the Pie Shop needs more of a steampunk flair.

If you don’t know what steampunk is, just let your thoughts drift to an illustrated copy of any Jules Verne book, or just picture Captain Nemo at home in the salon of the Nautilus. It’s the future, visiting us from the past, with all the elegance it can muster.

Take, for example, this picture of a steampunk computer. I want it:

Computer from Steampunkworkshop.com

Now imagine a steampunk jukebox, coffee maker, kitchen, cash register, radio, golf-ball washer, neon lights, soda machine, dishwasher, lawn mower, golf cart, and more.

I’ve never thought of myself as a luddite, but maybe that tendency has always been lurking there. I remember watching TV with the twins when they were in junior high, and we’d often see a public service announcement aimed at kids and asking, “What can you do to change the world?”

Chandler and Rose would say in unison, “We’d go to central control and smash all the machines!” Yes, that would certainly change the world, but where would they get such an idea?

No, I’m not really against technology. In fact, after a week of living out on the other side of the edge of the ’Glades, I have new appreciation for all magic in the air that keeps me in constant touch with you, and really, I don’t know what I would do without you right over there, telling me what I need to do to keep on keeping on. I appreciate it, and I thank you in my heart every day.

Then again, I do think technology could be ever so much more elegant than it is most of the time, so I am pledging to do what I can to re-create The Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range as a steampunk Mecca.

At least, that’s my idea today, but if I ever get a good night’s sleep in, who knows what I may think up next? Maybe a steampunk potato battery? I’m sure Logan won’t mind if I do a little experimenting on his power supply while Sue is on the road, at least not as long as his Social Security checks keep rolling in.

Tags: Steampunk, Sue Ten, Your Second-Cousin Darnell by Bjean
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The warmer weather here in SoFLA and the full moon have certainly combined to bring out the people. Just a week ago, the silence was fairly staggering, but tonight we’ve had a full house most of the night, and not much sign of a slow-down yet. I’m sitting outside the pie shop, just watching the balls arc up into the air, and listening to the washer spit out bucket after bucket after bucket. Life is good.

For some reason, while I was practicing my swing earlier, I kept hearing Frank Zappa’s song, Go Cry on Somebody Else’s Shoulder. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s just a Zappa carryover from a conversation with a friend who shared the news that he wished he’d been named Moon Unit. Knowing his father, though, I’m a little surprised that he wasn’t named Moon Unit.

After that song faded away, it was replaced by Bonnie Raitt’s You gotta know how, which is always a good soundtrack for homemade video greeting cards. At least I think so. I’ll have to add both of those to the pie shop juke box. We haven’t had any new tunes for a while, and we are over due.

Funny, but with such a crowd out tonight, I found that I talked less, concentrated more, and let quite a few thoughts roll around my head. Sue Ten has been away for a while, but called in on video to let me know she’s alive and well. She always asks what great Zen thoughts I’m having, and I often think I should be writing them down on my hand so I don’t forget when she asks. Yes, I do have great thoughts, but then I get hungry, and a large chocolate shake usually chases them away.

Tonight, though, I made a serious effort to try to hold on to a few, and I was doing pretty well until your second-cousin Darnell came by and distracted me completely with the news that he had just finished reading A Beautiful Mind, the biography of mathematician John Nash.

“It was much more interesting then the movie,” he said. “In the movie, I got the idea that John Nash was a pretty smart guy, and he saw things that weren’t there, but who doesn’t do that?” I waited for more. “In the book though, I really couldn’t understand what he was doing most of the time, so I figure he has to be a whole lot smarter than anyone I know, even you.” Again I waited.

Darnell went on. “Another thing that I didn’t get from the movie was how sad it was for him not to be crazy any more, how sad it must have been for him to give up all the magical stuff that was going on when he was nuts. I don’t know. I just think it must have been sad, just like the way Boyd acts when he’s sober.”

Darnell, of course, was referring to my ex-husband Pretty Boy Boyd, and I’ll say Darnell made a good point there. I, personally, got so I couldn’t stand Pretty Boy’s alcoholic flights of fancy, but he certainly was never alone when he was drunk. He always had his selfs (himselfs?) to talk to, and he was certainly a legend in his own mind.

With John Nash, and Pretty Boyd, too, the difference between perceived reality and “normal” reality seems fairly clear to observers, but who are we kidding? Most of us are on the inside looking out, deciding how we want to present ourselves to the world, but a few of us have that decision already made for us in advance.

Me, I live in a world of pie and insomnia where clowns drop by to play golf, your second-cousin Darnell lives with a goat, and my best friend keeps her semi-comatose husband alive by hooking him up to potato-powered batteries. I’m certainly not in any position to argue about reality with anyone.

Sometimes, too, I think maybe there’s an alternative universe in which The Morning Guy has come to his senses and is not vacationing in Key West with his Stepford Girlfriend. Yes, I’m sure there’s a place where he and I are living happily ever after. But if that’s true, there’s probably also an alternate universe in which he’s carried off by a pack of Fem-Bots, and I never see him again.

That makes me sad, too, and what can I do but . . . go cry on somebody else’s shoulder?

Mixtape from http://favtape.com/search/zappa shoulder

Tags: Books, Fantasies, Jukebox Suggestions, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy by Bjean
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I’m headed home from a long trip to the Northwest, and I really just can’t wait to get home to SoFLA and find out what all you all at the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range have been up to in my absence. My apprentice Prentiss at least sent me a message today, just a few hours ago, in fact to tell me she misses me. I suspect she just now noticed that I’ve been gone for a week.

Sue Ten also called to say she’ll be heading out of town shortly after I get back, so the changing of the guard will be quick and efficient. Neither Prentiss nor Sue Ten had much to report. I take this to mean that all is well, or they just really don’t want me to worry about anything in advance. I haven’t heard about any zombie attacks on SoFLA, so I will just hope for the best, and expect the worst, as usual.

In my week in Seattle and points north, I saw very little evidence of golf. There was that one woman on the Bainbridge Ferry, though. Then, in the SeaTac airport this morning, I saw the odd little sculpture below.

Metal Golf Guy, as seen in the SeaTac Airport

I sent a copy of the photo to the Morning Guy, and he did not seem to find it as amusing as I did. I can tell he’s already thinking ahead to long-term maintenance and is worried about me cluttering up the dooryard with such junk. If it were a little smaller, though, it might make a great hood ornament for the E-Z cart, or maybe it could ride on the roof. I’ll have to take that up with Joe Sparkle Junior.

I’ve been passing some of my flight time paging through the “Sky Mall” book, which is my son Chandler’s favorite magazine. His twin sister Rose prefers the parody version, “Sky Maul,” and I have trouble telling the two books apart.

I’d hoped to find some nice golf gadgets in Sky Mall, but I am sadly disappointed. The one true golf item that I can find is a collection of 14 “club links” which are little monogrammed discs to be affixed to one’s clubs. They are available in goldtone, silvertone, or black aluminum; no pink, no Palm Beach green. The message seems to be that these are for people in the habit of losing their clubs. I don’t think I’ll be encouraging this trend: If we help people identify their lost clubs, then we are only cutting down on our supply of rental and “try this” clubs.

I will, however, tell Sue Ten about the Sky Mall’s “Giant 8-in Cupcake” which is supposedly easy to make, and fun to serve. You know as well as I do that she is always looking for something fun to serve, and yes she is still ready to serve. I’m hoping she’ll be joining the FOAS (food on a stick) movement, soon, too. FOAS is not only fun to serve, but can be fun to eat, too, especially FFOAS (fried food on a stick) and DFFOAS (deep-fried food on a stick). Yes, Sue Ten is ready to serve, just like Sarah Palin – remember her? — and I am ready to eat.

Too many days in the Northwest seem to have turned my head to thoughts of warmer clothing, even as I am mere hours from my flip-flops and shorts, so I’ve got to say I am fascinated by the Sky Mall’s “Carbon Fiber Heated Vest.” I’m not quite sure how this works, but I’m all for new technology and I’ve got to tell you that the phrase “laminated microfleece fabric” has the same distracting effect on me as seeing something shiny out of the corner of my eye. Yes, I want it, and I don’t know why. I’m pretty sure it will improve my golf game on nights when the temps in SoFLA dip dangerously below 70. I need to be prepared.

Another tempting item in the catalog is the Kodak EasyShare Wireless Digital Frame, which promises, “The Power of the Internet, Now in Your Picture Frame.” If I can have the Power of the Internet in a picture frame, why not in my golf bag, my pinkie ring, or even my rose tattoo? I’m intrigued.

And, yes, Sky Mall does sell the “Swami Golf GPS” but I think they should combine GPS unit’s “Insta-Lok” technology with their “Electronic Feng Shui Compass,” and if they do that, I’ll be happy to become the exclusive SoFLA distributer. Really, what could be better than GPS Feng Shui – for golfers? Find out how far away the dragon is, align your shot accordingly, live well, and prosper.

Supposedly, the Feng Shui compass operates “with the same compass technology used in aerospace guidance systems,” and that’s not all! It also locates and calculates energy fields to help you align your physical surroundings. I can’t wait to get one of those for the driving range. We may have to move a few palm trees around, and reroute our feral green iguana Hercules on his daily stroll, but I’m sure this will all pay off in better golf for all of us, with or without the Swami GPS Golf option.

All right, my dears. We are just about to land, and you know I’ll soon be out on the range under the lights, so come on by. I’ve got hours to go before I sleep, but if I don’t see you tonight, I hope to visit with you soon at the pie shop. Remember, Prentiss and I are a long way from finding the perfect slice of Key lime, so send in your pictures and recipes, or drop in and sample our latest possibilities.

Tags: Eternal Happiness, Gadgets, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy by Slice of Heaven
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The weather here for New Year’s Eve in SoFLA was close to perfect, with clear skies and a waxing crescent moon. Sue Ten decided it was a good time to show another movie on the side of The Swing Barn and advertised Casino Royale accordingly.

A lot of us were happy to see that since we wanted to be prepared for the new James Bond flick Quantum of Solace which picks up exactly where the previous Daniel-Craig-as-James-Bond movie left off, but Sue surprised us by showing the Peter Sellers / Woody Allen version of Casino Royale, and that one ends in a wild night of cowboys on horseback, Indians with flaming arrows, Navy seals in scuba gear, and US Marines, not unlike many regular nights at The Swing Barn.

The festivities at the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range were a little more restrained, and aimed at the non-drinking crowd. Prentiss, my pie-shop apprentice, did come up with a fabulous new corn-dog pie with an onion-ring crust, and she also served one of the possibilities in our search for “The Best Key Lime Pie Ever”. Sadly, she garnished it with a slice of lime that was definitely not of the key-lime variety, but more on that later.

Out on the driving range, we offered free balls from nine to midnight, and that always brings in a crowd. One new player was a guy with long gray hair and a handlebar moustache, who told me, “I was a caddy 50 years ago, and just now I am starting to play myself.”I told him that it’s a game for optimists, since you can always believe that the next hit will be better. He said, “I was an optimist when I got here tonight, but I think I am a pessimist now.”  I hope he cames back. His accent smacked of New England, and I’m always a sucker for that.

As the evening progressed, I noticed several people from my physical therapist’s office, but I think they were just trolling for business. Also, there were any number of fem-bots in short black dresses and high-high heels, trolling for business of another sort entirely. Granted, there aren’t too many night spots out on the edge of the ‘Glades where we live, and with the economy slumping as it is, we aren’t in a position to turn anyone away.

Your second-cousin Darnell, by the way, did a great job of keeping the kids busy by having them create an “art car” which they covered with spray paint.  I’m fairly sure my ex-husband Pretty Boy Boyd will like the new look of his formerly orange Toyota Celica. He’ll let us know when he gets back from New Orleans, if that is, in fact, where he really is. I hope so. He used to tell me that he had been a river boat gambler in a former life, and died in Louisiana. Perhaps history will repeat itself, not that I wish him ill. Of course not.

Nurse Crotchett brought along a truck load of fireworks, which she set about firing from the driving range, setting them off wherever she found an open slot.  I tell you, it made for a great visual impact: golf balls flying into the air, fireworks lighting up the sky, the movie on the side of the Swing Barn, and the waxing crescent moon overhead.

I worried a little about some of the folks stumbling out of The Swing Barn into harm’s way, but your second-cousin Darnell had the good sense to tether his goat Jonathan on a long line near the edge of the driving range, and for once, Jonathan earned his keep, and we resisted the urge to turn him into goat pie for yet another day.

I headed down to my turquoise conch cottage around 3:00 a.m., which was a nice change from my usual insomniac stroll TO the pie shop at about that time, and fell into a few hours of troubling dreams.

One of the dreams, that I can still see pretty clearly, involved a wild car ride down a mountain road with Nurse Crotchett at my side and distressingly ineffective brakes.  I probably don’t need much help analyzing that one. I also dreamt that I had found an Asian baby, and gotten quite attached to it. The child grew to toddler size and was able to speak quite eloquently in no time, which is when she said, “I think I’m ready to go home now.”

The final dream was that my orange hair color had gone strangely spotty, and was showing peculiar patches of mousy brown and gray. I can’t understand that one at all. Tonight, the girls & I are dressing up to go to the ballet, leaving Darnell; Joe Sparkle, Junior; and The Morning Guy in charge. I’m sure they will do just fine, don’t you agree?

Tags: Dreams, Eternal Happiness, Events, Joe Sparkle Jr., Nurse Crotchett, Prentiss the Apprentice, Pretty Boy Boyd, Sue Ten, The Driving Range, The Morning Guy, The Swing Barn, Your Second-Cousin Darnell by Bjean
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Sue Ten never ceases to amaze me. Just tonight she brought me a plate of piping hot waffle fries, fresh from The Swing Barn’s own organic Fry-O-Lighter.

She assures me that these delicious crispy potatoes are full of vitamin C, and she hardly even winced when I sprinkled malt vinegar over the plate and dug in. As it turns out, confectioner’s sugar would have been just as good.

I tell you, the woman has a gift for potatoes. Granted, I do have an ongoing dispute with her about potatoes masquerading as pie crust, but I will never turn down her potato-sausage-cabbage casserole, her potato-brocolli-cheese soup, or her potato-bacon frittata. They are all perfect beyond question.

Just now, though, I’ve found out a little more about her love affair with The Spud. When her kids were in school, they all five, one after another, took on the daunting assignment of building a potato clock. I’m sure I remember seeing a kit for such a thing in the back of my brother’s copy of Boy’s Life, or Grit, or some such magazine, but I never attempted to assemble one of the things and had pretty much forgotten about the potato-as-battery concept.

Sue Ten never forgot, however, not after helping what must have seemed like a neverending parade of frustrated middle-schoolers year after year re-create this particular piece of magic. Never one to waste hard-gained knowledge though, Sue Ten continued to tinker with the damn things long after all five of the little Tens had long since grown up and moved away, leaving Sue and her husband Logan with time on their hands and several empty rooms.

Let me take a minute now and fill you in on potato-clock technology, Just in case you are one of those rare individuals who doesn’t know what a potato clock is. Yes, you might be, although that would be surprising. Even your second-cousin Darnell knows what one is, and Joe Sparkle Junior has been running one in the E-Z Cart so he knows what time it is when he’s out on the driving range picking up golf balls. I now have two in my turquoise conch cottage down at the end of the lane.

Regardless, I found this description on the Hooting Yard website, and I thought it might help you out:

“Potatoes, as we know, have power.

”Which of us . . . has not, at one time or another, taken two common galvanized nails, three alligator clip/wire units (that is, alligator clips connected to one another with wire), two short pieces of heavy copper wire, a simple low-voltage LED clock unit, and two potatoes, and obtained a simple LED clock unit that functions from the power of a 1- to 2-volt, button-type battery, opened the battery compartment to remove the battery, noted that there is a positive (+) and a negative (-) terminal point where the battery was installed , identified the potatoes as number one and number two, inserted one nail in each potato, inserted one short piece of heavy copper wire in each potato, placing it as far from the nail as possible, used one alligator clip/wire to connect the copper wire inserted in potato number one to the positive terminal in the clock unit, then used one alligator clip/wire to link the nail in potato number two to the negative terminal in the clock unit, used the final alligator clip/wire to link the nail in potato number one to the copper wire in potato number two, and finally, with no little sense of triumph, set the clock a-ticking?

“Which of us has not harnessed the power of the potato to control time?”

Indeed. Heady stuff, I think controlling time with potatoes. There’s more to this particular story, though. I mentioned Sue’s husband, Logan Ten, an affable guy with gifts of his own, a man who would go into any town and find a free buffet or a public reception in a matter of hours. He was a man who had mastered the art of the two-for-one, and usually came out with three.

Once Logan retired, though, he seemed content to collect his pension, and he began a peculiarly sedentary life of watching CNN 24-hours a day.

During that time, though, Sue developed what can only be described as an obsession with potato-clock technology. Her timepieces became ever more efficient, and her potato batteries reached impossible levels of duration. This, I understand now, accounts for the great variety of potato dishes coming out of The Swing Barn kitchen.

As Sue experimented with different strains of potatoes, she would buy spuds in quantity, and then cook up the leftovers after determining key factors such as longevity and quality of the best electrical charge.

While all that was going on, my mother and her sisters were running the pie shop, the driving range was but a fantasy, and I was on an extended walkabout, looking for an honest man, but settling for Pretty Boy Boyd instead. By the time I returned to South Florida, no one had seen Logan for quite some time, but Sue Ten was behind the bar at The Swing Barn, smiling and chatting as usual.

I was happy to see her, and we soon moved from small talk to more serious issues. “It must be hard on you,” I said, “without Logan here now.”

She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry, Sue,” I said. “I thought you and Logan had split up. No one has been him for so long.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “He’s still here. He just doesn’t go out anymore. You know how he always loved to watch CNN? Now he just does it 24 hours a day, but that’s fine. His pension check is on automatic deposit, and he’s fine.”

That night, as I walked down to my turquoise cottage, I looked back at the Tens’ doublewide behind The Swing Barn, and I noticed a warm glow coming from one of the bedroom windows. I knew Sue was still at the Swing Barn cleaning up, so I let my path diverge and headed north to see what was up.

Standing on my toes, I could peek into the window, and there I saw Logan, propped up in bed, smiling just as I remembered him, eyes closed though, and beathing softly. The glow was coming from the television set broadcasting CNN, as well as from an array of aromatherapy candles.

There was just enough light for me to notice that Logan had been outfitted with what appeared to be a couple of electrodes affixed to this temples. The main wires for the electrodes came from opening just above the bed’s elaborate headboard featuring a reproduction of some of the murals in the “happy house” in the ancient city of Pompeii. A container of blue bills was nearby on the nightstand.

I moved silently to the next window and was stunned yet delighted to see shelf after shelf after shelf of potato batteries, some with clocks, some without, but all feeding into the network that was, apparently, keeping our dear Logan in his perpetually restful state.

“Yes,” I thought, “Logan his beloved news show on 24/7, the pension checks are being deposited, and Sue will never really be alone. No need to tell anyone about this at all.”

I don’t know what brought Sue and Logan to this junction, but I do know she does seem as happy now as she ever was. As for Logan, he may even look a little bit more relaxed than before. Yes, I think he is doing fine.

Tags: Eternal Happiness, Fantasies, Sue Ten by Bjean
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A lot has happened since we last spoke. The big news is that both Sue Ten and your second-cousin Darnell tell me that they have seen The Morning Guy out on what appears to be a date. I find this news to be both appalling and beguiling at the same time.

As you may recall, one of the guests at our Hollywood Halloween party was dressed as a Stepford Wife, and she caught our hero’s eye when none of the rest of us even knew he was there. Surprisingly, we now learn, her costume and demeanor were no ruse at all since she is a throw-back to the Mirabel Morgan Total Woman days, and she has had years (some might say decades) in which to practice her craft. Her real costume was the addition of a Stepford Husband, whom we now know was actually her cousin Henry from Ann Arbor.

I still don’t have all the details of this new development, but apparently The Morning Guy was so smitten that he actually spoke to her, obtained her name and phone number, and within days had called her for a date. This information, too, may explain why he was so upset the night he lost his cell phone since he had trusted that wily technology to keep the two of them in touch while he was out of town on his vacation.

According to Sue Ten, the happy couple has now had several meals together at The Swing Barn, and Sue observes that Steppie always orders her pastrami sandwich and fries with extra coleslaw. Then she eats half the sandwich and the coleslaw, leaving the rest of the sandwich and the fries for The Morning Guy. He smiles. She smiles. He talks. She listens. We are all quite anxious to see how this romance will progress.

Last seen, Steppie was dressed as a cheerleader for The Morning Guy’s favorite college football team, and they were tossing back Yinglings and pickled eggs with no concern about gastric after affects, but she never lost track of the score, and she apparently has an encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking a lot lately about the whole concept of matchmaking and matches in general. I do love my life here at the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range, especially my freedom to be as frivolous or as serious as I want to be, but from time to time, I do think it might be nice to go dancing with a willing partner on a Friday night.

When Nurse Crotchett was on site for our Flu Shot Clinic, she encouraged me to try out an Internet dating service, eHarmony. “It’s free this weekend,” she said.

“Free?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, so I gave it a try, passing a few hours of insomnia answering pages and pages about myself, my attitudes, my preferences, and so on. On each page, I read the disclaimer that there were no wrong answers.

“Of course not,” I thought. “Besides, I certainly feel that I am giving out the right answers.”

Finally, I got to the end, and told the machine to begin searching for my match.

“Geographical area?” it asked.

“Why limit it,” I thought, and went for this option: “Anywhere in the World!”

An additional question asked me “How important is this geographical area,” and I said, “Very.” I may be open minded but I’m not sure I’m ready to date extra-terrestrials, at least not just yet.

The screen assured me that the eHarmony system was searching, searching, searching its 85,000-member database. Finally I received my results: “Our matching system was not able to find any matches for you.”

Hello? No matches anywhere in the world?

Sue Ten, on hearing this news, just shook her head. “I can only imagine what foolishness you put down on that form. Next time, you should let me fill it out for you.”

Both my kids assured me that eHarmoney was funded by the religious right and was no place for a good Unitarian-Univesalist Taoist Pagan such as myself to be looking for a date for the New Years Eve festivities at The Swing Barn.

Perhaps I am just matchless. Or maybe it takes someone very special, like you, to appreciate me and my little quirks. Perhaps Sue Ten is right, and I should not list Fight Club as my favorite movie, or Hedwig and the Angry Inch as my favorite musical.

But that would not be authentic.

I do love Hedwig. My life is so easy compared to hers, and The Origin of Love moves me, so would I really want to spend New Years Eve with someone who cared not for her, or for Tyler Durden, for that matter? Get real.

Or watch it yourself, here, and tell me what you think.

Perhaps also I should not mention insomnia, pie, or how many golf balls I hit in the course of any single week or single night. And perhaps I should have mentioned that I do love to wear high heels and lingerie, but I didn’t really see any place where I would include that detail. Ah, well.

The language of love is never easy to learn. Take, for example, this note that I found in a copy of “Leslie Nielsen’s Stupid Little Golf Book,” which I bought at Goodwill for 99 cents the other day:

Note from Buddy to Lillian

I wonder what became of Buddy and Lillian, especially considering that the book — and the note — ended up in the local Goodwill. I have the impression that he is faking his interest in golf. He did show his interest in her, but that’s often not enough or else it leads to something akin to stalking, and that’s no good either.

As for the book, I’ll add it to the Pie Shop bookshelves, and maybe I’ll leave the note tucked in as a bookmark, too. I hate to break up a set.

Stupid Little Golf Book

Tags: Jukebox Suggestions, Nurse Crotchett, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy, Video by Bjean
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I’m sorry to say that I have not been able to keep up with Pie Shop chores as well as I expected with The Morning Guy gone on his vacation, although vacation might not be the right word for it. Let’s just say “during his absence.” So, I was understandably relieved then when I saw a guy out the the I-95 access ramp, holding a sign that said, “Will work for pie.”

Now, some may say it’s risky business to bring a stranger in to one’s place of business, but I say, “Damn, man. He’s willing to work for pie.” Even The Morning Guy wants pie, ice cream, coffee, and free golf. This new guy is a bargain. I will, however, take your warnings under consideration, but first let’s see how much pie he can eat.

My son Chandler and I have both had odd experiences with panhandlers in the past. I still remember being asked for money for food by a young denizen of the streets in Denver.

I was hesitant to talk to him since I could see my bus approaching, but I decided to open my heart and I reached into my capacious bag and pulled out my lunch to share, remembering how one of my undergrad profs had done that for me on more than one occasion.

I handed over my tuna fish sandwich, but to my surprise, the scruffy young man did not thank me. No, he held the skimpy lightweight baggie up to the light, as if expecting to see something revelatory on the bread, perhaps the image of Lord Vader. I don’t know.

“What’s in this?” he asked.

“Tuna, mayo, a little relish.”

“Relish?”

“Yes. Relish. Are you hungry or not? If you don’t want the sandwich, I’ll take it back.”

He thought it over and kept the sandwich, by which time I had missed my bus. I watched him scuffle off, still sniffing the baggie, and poking his finger into the pristine white bread.

I waited to climb on the next bus. Starting to feel a little hungry myself, I got on, sat down, and discovered that someone had left his or her lunch on the seat. Sure enough, it was a tuna fish sandwich, plus a second baggie with six Oreo cookies in it. Score! I came out ahead on that one.

My son Chandler, one of the twins, told me once that he had been in process of moving and had a lot of cupboard-cleanout stuff in his car, and decided to hand those groceries over to a guy who regularly camped out by the side of the road. This camper was not an especially good beggar, but a persistent one, and probably by the end of the day, he would have collected enough coinage and low-end swag to get him through the night.

When Chandler arrived at his new digs, however, he discovered that he still had the bag of groceries in his car, so what had he given the panhandler? An extensive collection of cookie cutters and pastry tools. He drove back to the highway, somewhat relieved that our man was still there, and made a swap, not without being soundly scolded for improper gifting. Apparently, cookie cutters, not matter how festive or celebratory, are not what most panhandlers are seeking.

We are both now a little more cautious and careful now about what we hand out to strangers on the road, or on the sidewalk. Still, I have a weakness for someone who will work for pie, and when my new friend and I reached the pie shop, I got out my to do list while he had some quiche lorraine and coffee for breakfast.

Sparkle told me that Sue Ten was on the phone, so I stopped to speak to her for a few minutes, during which the new guy moved on to a plate of deep-dish apple pie with cheese. I told Sue Ten I would talk to her later, and said, “I’m getting the cabinet doors fixed,” to which she replied “It’s about time.”

She had an unfortunate experience in my conch cottage one day. I was in my rocker out on the porch and heard her yelp of surprise when one of my cabinet doors came off right in her hand, because the screws in the hinges were missing.

“Oh,” I said. “That one. I never use that one. The screws in the hinges are missing. What were you looking for?”

She said she was looking for cake plates — like I have those! — and ended up just bringing her whole cake, delicious as usual, out to the porch with two forks, a quart of milk, and a Mason jars.

“You should get that cabinet fixed. It’s just a couple of screws.”

“I know.”

“You need to call a plumber about the faucet in your bathroom, too.”

“I know.”

“The broken mini-blinds in your bedroom are atrocious.”

“I know.”

“How do you like the cake?”

“It’s wonderful.”

And it was: Lemon cake with chocolate fudge frosting, my birthday dish of choice for many years. Remember that combination of flavors, I started flipping through my recipe file looking for a lemon chiffon recipe with chocolate-cookie crumb crust, when I noticed that the new guy’s plate was empty. I wasn’t really ready to tackle the cabinets yet, so I slid over a piece of chocolate-pecan-bourbon pie, and looked at my list again.

Maybe this guy could help me bring some more books up from the cottage and put them on the new pie-shop shelves. Joe Sparkle Junior had already restocked the soda machine and was  out on the E-Z Cart slowly, meticulously scooping up golf balls. While I was reviewing the list, I noticed that someone had left an unfinished crossword puzzle on the counter, so I started to ink in a few entries.

The new guy finished off another cup of coffee, and smiled. I gave him a piece of banana cream pie with extra whipped cream and he went right to work on that, while I finished the puzzle and looked over my latest crop of Post-It notes, realizing that each one was a project in the making, not something to be tampered with by rank amateurs, such as the new guy and me.

He finished his pie, and I said, “I think we’re good. One for the road?”

He nodded, and I wrapped up a slice of blueberry cheesecake for him, then we headed out to the highway again. I dropped him off where I found him, and gave him $20 for his time.

When I got back, I parked at the Pie Shop and walked down the lane to my cottage, where I noticed that Sue Ten’s bike was on my porch and the light was on in the kitchen. I approached quietly to peek in the window, but she wouldn’t have heard me anyway over the whirring sound of the cordless screwdriver as she patiently replaced the missing screws.

I walked back up the lane, and started fixing some steak and mushroom pie for her supper. I don’t know what I would do without her: Not that many people are willing to work for pie.

Tags: Eternal Happiness, Sue Ten, pie by Bjean
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Your second-cousin Darnell has been talking about starting a horse-and-buggy tour of the neighborhood as a way to “support the community,” he says. Or a way to boondoogle the few tourists that we get out here so close the the ‘glades, I say.

“Just what will you cover on this tour?” I want to know. “Once you’ve gone by the Pie Shop, The Driving Range, The Swing Park, and Pancho Villas, what’s left? The bonsai forest?”

Darnell seemed a little puzzled by my lack of enthusiasm, which was tempered by the knowledge that he did not have a horse nor a buggy, and he sauntered off to The Swing Barn to see if he might have better luck with Sue Ten. I suspect that she probably gave him comments very similar to mine, with perhaps a bit less diplomacy and tact, two qualities which I am seriously trying to develop.

I do actually like the idea of the buggy ride, but I think there has to be an audience for it first, not unlike the Village Players recent production of The Mikado, in which Sue Ten had a staring role. Sadly, most of the people who were interested in hearing Gilbert and Sullivan were already in the cast, so that left but few of us to fill the seats. Still, we all had a good time, especially during Sue Ten’s encore, during which she sang the song Frank Mills, from Hair. The fact that she was still in her geisha costume made it all the more endearing, since her outfit gave the song more of a Teeny-Bopper Butterfly flavor.

Speaking of horse-and-buggy rides, Sue and I have been trying to figure out if Michel Ten, whom I met in Havana, could possibly be a relative, but we weren’t able to find a family line from here to there, so chances are that the similarity in names was either a coincidence or a misunderstanding.

Little Peach and I met Michel on our second day in Havana as we strolled past the horse-cabs. We were besieged by the drivers, a fairly raucous and noisy crew of men in crisp pastel-plaid cotton shirts and jeans. They are all cheery and optimistic that we would take them up on their tour offers, but we had already signed up for our bus tour, so we continued our stroll down the Prado.

Michel, bless his heart, proceeded to stroll with us, spewing his spiel, still, about how great his buggy tour would be. Little Peach took him aside for a moment and explained that we were in Havana without luggage or a change of clothing, and what we really wanted to know was where we could pick up a little dress or two, cheap. We also wanted such niceties as deodorant and shampoo.

None of that really stumped him, but we learned from him that most if not all the retail shops in Cuba were closed for Liberation Day, so with or without him, we would not be able to do too much shopping. We continued our walk, without Michel Ten, and admired the buildings along the Prado, and the young skateboarders operating mainly with lengths of wood and old roller-skate wheels.

Before we parted company, though, Michel Ten did warn us, “Those bus tours aren’t any good. You should come with me. If you change your mind, just ask for Michel Ten. That’s me.”

We asked his price, shook our heads, and said good-bye. When we returned to our hotel a few hours later, Michel was still out in the square, working his work, as charming as ever. That afternoon, we did go on the bus tour, where we met the Philosopher Detective and did have a pleasant afternoon and evening, but we both had to admit we could not always understand our tour guide, and Little Peach did not have an opportunity to ask the detailed questions for which she is so well known, and perhaps a little feared by tour guides everywhere.

The next morning, I told her, “I think we should go talk to Michel Ten and see if we can get him to come down on his price.”

We had a wonderful full breakfast in the elegant old dining room of the Hotel Inglaterra, admiring the tile work from days gone by and the contemporary painting of Cuba today. We chatted with the staff, sipped our juices and coffees, and smiled at the thought of where we really were, with luggage or without. Then, we went out to find Michel Ten.

Of course, he was not there, and several other horse-cab drivers claimed to be him. We said, “No, no, no.” Then they started to call from one to the other, “Michel! Michel Ten!” until suddenly he appeared, a great smile on his face. We proceeded to make our offer for a cheaper ride, but he looked said and said it could not be done.

“You see that man over there? That is my boss. I must give him the price.”

Little Peach and I suggested a shorter ride. He said no. And, great negotiators that we are, we said, “Okay, let’s go.”

I had forgotten that at some point I had tried to teach one of the other drivers how to sing “Una Paloma Blanca,” and as we began to pull away in our cab drawn by Michel Ten’s little horse Mulatta, that driver jumped up on the side of the cab and sang for us, getting the first line out perfectly, and then faking it after that, just as I had earlier. Michel shooed him away, and we took off on our slow, relaxing tour, with Little Peach asking every question that came into her mind, and Michel Ten doing his best to answer them in his almost-perfect English.

One word that he did have trouble with, though, was “horse,” which he pronounced as “whore.” We ignored that at first, until he got into an explanation of memorial statues of soldiers on horseback, and what it means if “the whore has all four feet on the ground” as opposed to “the whore has two feet on the ground.”

“I think you mean to say ‘horse’ said Little Peach, emphasizing the “s” at the end.

“Oh!” said Michel. “So what does ‘whore’ mean?”

I said “puta” and Little Peach said “prostitute” and then we all laughed, and continued our journey past Morro Castle, the open-air market, the booksellers, the museums, the Spanish Embassy, and more until we reached the bar where Michel promised us the best mojitos in Cuba. We each had one, at 11:00 a.m., and then with cups in hand, continued our tour, which ended up lasting at least 90 minutes of main attractions, side streets, and vignettes of daily life in Havana.

And was it better than the bus tour? Absolutely.

Was drinking mojitos before noon a good idea? Perhaps not, especially since we continued to drink Bucanero at lunch and through the afternoon, until the time that we decided to ride on the top of the double-decker hop-on-hop-off bus, our cans of beer neatly tucked into the drink holders. As the bus sped past the horse-cab area, we stood up and yelled, “Michel! Michel Ten!” but I do not know if he heard us.

If you ever go to Havana, please look up Michel 10. I have his phone number, and I’m sure he’d love to hear from you. Tell him that Una Paloma Blanca sent you.

Tags: Cuba, Eternal Happiness, Little Peach, Sue Ten by Bjean
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I still need to scrape the glitter off my face after last night’s Hollywood Halloween. Yes, I know that yesterday was really All Soul’s Day, but we’re talking Hollywood, and we had to take into account the writers’ strike and other details that might conceivably caused a slight delay in our participation in festivities here at the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range. I’m pretty sure, too, that we weren’t the only ones running a day late, or even a dollar short.

I’d thought that everyone would have been pretty much costumed out, especially after Sue Ten’s usual high-tone event over at The Swing Barn on Friday night, but you know how it is once people get into too much sugar and dressing-up. They just want more, more, more.

We had the first arrivals walk in to The Pie Shop around 8:00 p.m., and we served up some of that nice Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake that the India Night girls are always craving. Just for fun, I wore a pink and white waitress costume, modeled on the one in the movie Waitress. I had also pulled on my blonde French-twist wig and applied the blue eye-shadow and glitter liberally. I wanted to chew gum, too, but I’m one of those people without the gum-chewing gene and it prevents me from doing anything else very well.

Joe Sparkle Junior dressed as The Morning Guy, which I thought was especially funny, and Sue Ten came in for a while in full geisha girl regalia. She didn’t stay for long, since it turned out she was really on her way to a dress rehearsal for a local production of The Mikado. She did drop off one of her wonderful pumpkin and potato casseroles seasoned with ginger and allspice, though. Delicious.

As always, we offered our “all the golf balls you can hit” rate of $10, but gave free balls to everyone who brought in some reasonably edible food to share, and before long, we had quite a line-up out on the range, under the lights which were unmercifully bright as we watched the sliver of a moon come up in the sky. People wandered in and out, balancing their paper plates full of chocolate brains, spicy guacamole dip, buffalo wings, organic celery, and watermelon jell-o shots.

One of the girls came in a clown costume that was quite cheery and sweet at the beginning of the night, but grew increasingly frightening until by midnight the melting make-up made her look more and more like the Joker in the last Batman movie. Plus, after three or four margaritas that she’d smuggled over from The Swing Barn, she had developed the disconcerting habit of going up to people, just after they’d set up their shots, and she would leer at them and say, “Why so serious?” Then she’d launch into a chilling and maniacal laugh.

I had to ask her husband, Bob “He No Dead” Marley, to steer The Clown over the the picnic tables so people could work their drivers without a look of terror creeping over their faces. We soon discovered that feeding her chocolate-cinnamon mousse pie did nothing to calm her down, but deep-dish apple was a fairly reasonable antidote.

Earlier in the evening though, when The Clown was still pretty docile, I noticed that one of The Stepford Wives was blissfully welcoming her to the neighborhood and suggesting that she might want to join some of the other wives in their exercise and make-up classes.

“Really, my dear,” said The Wife to The Clown, “you certainly do have a way with make-up and color, but you are in Stepford now, and you might want to tone down that look just a teeny little notch or two, and of course I am telling you this as a friend because I know we are going to be very, very good friends now, aren’t we?”

The Clown continued to smile and nod, and The Wife continued to preach the virtues of living in Stepford, all the while smiling up at her handsome Stepford Husband as she repeatedly replaced the drink in his hand, the ball on his tee, and the cigarette in his mouth. Several of the regulars stood by and watched in amazement at this particular duo in their award-winning performance, which probably ended the minute they got into their SUV to drive home.

Another interesting couple was Joan Crawford and a Philadelphia Flyers hockey player. Joan was scolding him about using wire hangers, but he didn’t seem to mind, and changed to topic to Philadelphia baseball, little knowing that Joan was a die-hard Red Sox fan.

“Once the Red Sox are out, who cares?” said Mommie Dearest.

“You’re a Red Sox fan?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“I’m from New York,” he said. “We are enemies.”

Then he pivoted on his skates and stomped away. Thank god he was still in the pie shop and not out ruining my turf. Mommie Dearest just muttered “Spawn of Satan” and went on to wave her wire hanger at someone else.

Nearby, Wednesday from The Addams Family was giving some excellent golf tips to Nurse Mildred Rached from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but then Rached was called away to administer medication to a tottering Amy Winehouse. Neither Amy nor Rached got in a single golf shot, but at least Amy didn’t hurt anyone too badly when she fell down, again and again and again.

By the end of her visit to the driving range, though, Nurse Rached had transformed into Nurse Crotchett, and her performance had become increasingly X-rated. We all stopped to smoke a cigarette once she passed out beside Amy and lay quietly in the grass for the next hour or so.

Meanwhile, Mommie Dearest pointed out to me that the comatose Amy’s bra strap had slipped own over her tattoo, and the strap was decidedly orange, not unlike the color of my formerly favorite bra, the one that did not return from the BahamasAir luggage system.

This prompted Wednesday Addams to give us a sweet little soliloquy about her days working at Victoria’s Secret, and told us she had always been “the nice one” and never interrupted couples who were having sex in the changing rooms. Note to self: Always look for the most innocent clerk in sight when planning assignations at V.S., even in my mind.

I also noticed a number of James Bond lookalikes passing though, covering five decades of spy movies; one Terminator; two Incredible Hulks; numerous U.S. Presidents and presidential candidates; a dozen or so golfers ranging from The Shark to Spiderman to Happy Gilmore; Jason Varitek; several of The Baldwin Brothers, although they did not seem to know each other; and Joe the Plumber, who confessed that he was not even registered to vote.

Back in The Pie Shop, the cast of Grease took over the sound system and began singing “You’re the one that I want ooh ooh ooh” until I pulled the plug on them and sent them over to The Swing Barn where the acoustics are better, or so I told them. Sue Ten will probably be calling me about that later on. We did keep Sonny and Cher to ourselves, though, and set them up at a table where they could sign autographs and feed each other excessively gooey lemon-meringue pie. They were so cute, back in the early days. I’m sure you remember.

Around 10:00, we had a lull until a crew of Fem-Bot Pirates arrived stark, raving sober, and in search of Georgia Peach Pie and coffee ice cream. When they’d had their fill of pie-booty and black coffee, they went out to the range and offered an astounding exhibition of synchronized golfing. Perhaps they were German pirates, I’m not sure. They were certainly efficient, and knew how to take the minimum amount of fabric to create the maximum amount of costume. Their ability to hit golf balls while wearing high-heeled boots was quite stunning, too.

This morning, as I said, we have a fair amount of clean-up to do, starting with my face. I may even break my no-caffeine rule and have a cup of Joe, the plain-Jane variety that I know you like so well. Remember, we do not serve lattes or mochachinos or frappacoffee or half-fat or low-fat or any other variation other than black or regular. You can put in your own sugar or Sweet N Low, and I really don’t care how much or how little you use, as long as you remember to leave Sparkle a tip. He works hard at not spilling, and that should be rewarded. It’s not as easy as it looks.

We hope you had a good weekend, too. Remember the time change, if you are somewhere where that happens. I’d forgotten, myself, but the clock in the kitchen has shifted, so I know The Morning Guy must have slipped in at some point in the night to make the fix. Now that I think of it, one of those James Bond boys did look strangely familiar.

Tags: Eternal Happiness, Events, Joe Sparkle Jr., Nurse Crotchett, Sue Ten, The Driving Range, The Morning Guy by Bjean
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I’m feeling just a little bad that I was out of town and missed Halloween at The Swing Barn last night. I had a call from Sue Ten this morning, but she was somewhat vague about exactly what had taken place over there. I’m guessing movies on the side of the wall, orange beer, and a lot of fake blood for Sparkle Junior to clean up yet. Possibly some real blood, too.

The Morning Guy left me a note to say he’ll be gone on vacation for a couple of days, too, so I won’t be able to get much information out of him, but what else is new?  A few of the regulars — including yours truly — had a pool going, betting on whether or not he’d hang in here for the whole week.

I won, but just barely. I said he’d make it until 6:30 on Friday night, and I drove in at 6:35, just in time to see the taillight of his motorcycle as he headed home. I didn’t even have the chance to tell him that I’d found a replacement for my orange bra that disappeared from my luggage, somewhere between Florida and Havana.

All that aside, I do have one nice piece of fun to share with you. Take a look at www.favtape.com some time when you’re on the search for an elusive tune or performer, and try your luck.

I just typed in “halloween” and came up with this whole list, good to go and ready to play: A few tunes for Halloween.

Enjoy!

Tags: Joe Sparkle Jr., Jukebox Suggestions, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy by Bjean
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Sparkle Junior and I are starting to consider the possibility of adding a putting green to the Slice of Heaven 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range.  When I say “starting to consider,” I mean I talk and Spark nods. This is all fine and good, but I know, too, that every so often, he will do exactly what I suggest, so I have to be careful to use my powers for good, not for evil, at least when I am around him.

This afternoon, we are eating a real simple lemon-yogurt dream pie with a graham cracker crust. I once made this pie for my dad, and he absolutely loved it, right up until the exact second when I told him it had yogurt in it, and that was that. He put his hand on the edge of the pretty little china dessert plate and pushed it away delicately while at the same time pushing his chair back, and then he went outside for a smoke to get the taste out of his mouth.

Spark, though, has no problem with yogurt, or anything else that might spill on the floor and make an unusually sticky mess. I’ve wondered at times if he were not switched at birth with some very tidy baby at the hospital where he was born.  I’ve been to his family home a couple of times, and it never looked fully lived in.  Or maybe his mom just had emptied out a can of that new-house air freshener. I don’t know. Spark’s room, though, always looked a lot like Spark: slightly disheveled and optimistic, decorated with memories of rock ‘n’ roll parties that never really happened.

I wonder sometimes what he thinks about when he’s out on the tractor, and other times I really don’t want to know.

I’m sending him off now to go find a copy of a Putting Green Construction Manual, and that should keep him busy for a while, and I will clean up before the after-work crowd starts to arrive.

I had my first short-game lesson yesterday, and I found it fascinating, especially since Sandra told me how putting greens are built, at a cost of $40,000 to $60,000 per green. (You can buy a lot of Royal Palms for that money, seven or eight, at least.) Of course, my drives are so short that my regular game is a short game, so putting must be my short-short game.

I would love to bring The Morning Guy in on my new construction project, but I really want him to focus more on my game, and tell me how I can improve my performance. Sadly, he seems a bit distracted lately, and I suspect he’s been watching football again, and backing a losing team. That surely must wear a man down after a while. Still, I know he’ll come around and the tips will start to flow, if not from him, then from one of you. (Don’t hold back now.)

It has occurred to me that you may wonder how I ended up owning a driving range without knowing anything about golf, so perhaps I should fill you in. (Pie pun intended.) The pie shop has been in my family for years, and the building is one of those great low-slung Old Florida places, caught in a tangle of overgrown greenery, and the acreage around it was pretty much a mad scramble of vegetation, too.

One Sunday last spring, I was sipping on an O’Doul’s over at The Swing Barn and talking to Sue Ten as we watched Tiger Woods up on her large-screen TV, and I realized I had been watching golf from a far for more than 30 years. I had fallen in love with The Inner Game of Golf in 1977, but I had only played twice, both times on a ramshackle course in rural Arizona where everything was brown, including the greens.

“I think I will take up golf,” I said.

Sue replied silently by drying a couple more glasses and opening another O’Doul’s for me. By the time I finished off that one, the sugar high was starting to kick in.

Sue looked at me warily, and said, “That would be good. You need to do something to get your mind off your divorce and all that crap.”

Crap, indeed. My ex-husband Pretty Boy Boyd had managed to deplete my savings account completely and run up my credit cards just as thoroughly, and all I got out of it was more than I wanted to know about everything and anything having to do with Kansas City barbecue, and an all too personal knowledge of the local legal system. I tend to fall for men who are talkers, so you can probably understand why I now like to associate with men like Spark and The Morning Guy, neither of whom shows much interest in talking to me at all. Ever.

That night, I went to a driving range for the first time with my sister Mel, who was visiting from Maine, and I became a believer. Melbie and I had no idea what we were doing, but we did laugh a lot, and we were outside in the early evening enjoying life. The big news for me was how quiet it was. At last, a way to have men in my life without having to listen to them, not that I actually listened that much anyway. I think you know what I mean, and I do apologize if you are one of the men to whom I did not listen. I’m much better now, but I still really prefer that you just send me a note, or leave a message on my answering machine. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

What I did not like about that particular driving range was the hours. I am plagued with insomnia, and when I am plagued, my dear, you can expect to be plagued as well. As the saying goes, When Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy.

What I wanted was a late-late-night establishment, a place where I could go and put my dreamless state of mind on hold. The pie shop was already open 24-hours a day, but I did not want to work all night, and I already knew that The Morning Guy had a passion for golf, or as much as he has a passion for anything besides maintaining his own comfort zone. We passed a few notes, we struck a deal, and you know the rest.

That was just a few short months ago, and now I am enjoying some smooth sailing on my own. More people eating pie, and more people hitting balls, 24-hours-a-day. And often, as I fall asleep just before dawn in my little turquoise conch cottage down the far end of the lane, I hear The Morning Guy’s motorcycle as he arrives to stock the soda machine and drink coffee with the other morning guys — and sometimes I dream. I do. I dream.

Tags: Dreams, Events, Introduction, Joe Sparkle Jr., Pretty Boy Boyd, Putting green, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy, pie by Bjean
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I’m out on the driving range before noon today, but I can’t concentrate.

Today, I will blame the New York Yankees since their fans are coming out of the woodwork to mourn the passing of their blessed temple in the Bronx. All my hits are off kilter, low, and lethargic, obviously affected by all that negative energy. In time, I give up and go back into the pie shop to get out of the heat, as much as anything.

I take out my notepad and start working on a recipe for “Spawn of Satan Pie” with a special Derek Jeter Crust.  Jeter’s favorite food is chicken parmesan, so this is a no brainer, and I know I’ll be getting calls from Sue Ten over at the Swing Barn once the pre-game show starts at six.

It’s one of those hot, humid SoFLA days that keeps people indoors, so I’m not expecting much excitement today. I gave The Usual Idiot the day off, and I’m thinking this might be a good time to varnish the new combination step-ladder book selves out in the back room, with the exhaust fan going full blast. The Morning Guy copied the design that I found last week, and he’s already built the prototype, finished the sanding, and vacuumed up every stray bit of sawdust. He’ll be leaving me snitty notes if I don’t get moving on this project soon.

I like varnishing, especially roll-and-tip with warm varnish.  It goes on fast, the tipping with a foam brush breaks down the bubbles, and then I can just pull up a chair and watch it dry. In truth, it’s more fun to watch it dry if someone else did the application work, but I know I’ll see plenty: curtains, holidays, bugs in their death throes, visions of alternate universes, dreams of another time and place. It’s all entertainment to the receptive mind. Varnish, sand, repeat. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. Signs of infinity in the known universe.

I’m sure, too, that the sound of the fan will drown out the noise from the over-emotional Yankee fans at the swing barn. If not, I have a set of Ruger firing-range ear muffs that should do the job.

Before I can put them on, though, the phone rings.  It’s Sue Ten. “Boyd’s here.”

“I wondered why Hercules was heading that way.”

Hercules is our resident feral green iguana, a gargantuan beast by all accounts, and for some reason, he has an attraction for my second ex-husband Pretty Boy Boyd. Hercules’ affection, however, is not returned. Boyd has a deep abiding dislike of all things reptilian, including his own lizard brain.

I look out the window and see my old car in the far side of the parking lot. A lime green Toyota Celica, it was a parting gift, or bribe. Call it what you like. It was the WD-40 that lubricated the exit door to get Boyd out of my life.

“What’s he up to?” I ask Sue.

“He’s pretty quiet so far,” says Sue. “Not annoying anyone too much.  Just the usual ranting about The Royals and how many players started out in Kansas City. Apparently, he no longer has a television at home.”

“And what’s he calling home these days?”

“Hard to tell,” says Sue. “A couple more drinks, and I’m sure I’ll have his full life story. Again.”

“Sorry, honey, but he’s your customer,” I say. “The restraining order has expired. Give him some waffle fries on the house. If he’s busy eating, he won’t be able to talk as much.”

I’m rattled, but I go back to varnishing anyway. Roll. Tip. Roll. Tip. One. Two. Lift. Swing. Lift. Swing. I’m reviewing this morning’s practice, more convinced than ever that negative Yankees energy was my enemy, and Boyd was all too often a fan of The Best Team That Money Can Buy.

I had not watched baseball for years when I met him, but he awoke something deep and significant in me: A Red Sox fan’s utter hatred of the New York Yankees, and it felt good for me to know an emotion that deep and pure. Yes! It’s the opposite end of the mood-spectrum from that mystifying ability that some people have that allows them to say, in any situation, “It’s all good.” Anti-Yankeeism consists of a certaintude and clarity of vision found primarily in extreme religious sects, and it’s a wonderfully cleansing experience. I do recommend it.

Boyd was never much of a golf fan, though. So, now I can picture him at the bar, telling his usual two golf jokes. “Oh, yes,” he says, “I agree with Mark Twain that golf is a good walk spoilt.” Not that he’d know what a good walk is either.

And when someone asks him if he plays, he say, “I do. I love golf, but I always have trouble getting the ball through the windmill and into the clown’s mouth.”

By now he is telling Sue his one remaining joke. “You know why a bartender is like a priest?”

I can see the beatific look of unbearable patience on her face now, her chin cocked to the side, her hand smoothly reaching for the taser under the counter.

She doesn’t answer, just raises her eyebrows a bit in a questioning glance.

“They both serve wine and take confessions,” says Boyd, laughing too loud, and then raising his own eyebrows — in surprise.

The bar goes silent, except for Madeleine Peyroux on the jukebox singing “It’s Allright.” Maybe even singing my favorite line, “Wherever you are, you’re still driving my car.”

Hercules has planted himself directly behind Boyd’s bar stool. Boyd’s already pale skin goes white, and then he yelps. As I hear it later, Hercules has nudged off one of Boyd’s baby-blue flip-flops and has chomped into Boyd’s big left toe.

Everyone else in the room backs off, except for Sue, safely behind the bar.

There’s that beatific smile again.  “I believe you are supposed to remain calm,” she says. “Can you do that, Boyd?”

He nods.

“Now, my understanding is that we need to turn this sucker upside down to get him to release you. Are you ready?”

She motions to a couple of the regulars, one in a Yankees tee-shirt and the other in a faded-orange Oriole shirt. They pick up Hercules and twist him, and Boyd’s toe in the process, with no positive results.

“What about the alcohol trick?” Sue asks.

“Okay,” says the Oriole’s fan. He picks up Boyd’s schooner of Guinness and pours it over Boyd’s foot and Hercules’ face. The well-fed iguana still does not budge.

“Only one more thing to do,” says Sue. “Load them both up and get them to the emergency room.” She points to the door.

“I can’t do that,” says Boyd.

“Oh yes you can,” Sue. “It’s either that, lose your toe, or spend the rest of your life with an iguana attached to your foot.”

She gives the two good Samaritans a quick hand signal and twenty dollars, and they load up Boyd and Hercules, droppng them both in the back of a blue Chevy pick-up truck.

I look out the window just in time to see the truck take off down the hot and dusty road. Boyd’s white ponytail has come undone, and I know by the time they reach the hospital, he will have a serious case of uncombable hair syndrome, as well as the more obvious foot-in-iguana-mouth condition.

Sue is already on the phone giving me the delicious details, but I notice, as we talk, that there’s a little activity going on by the back door of The Swing Barn. Usually, Sue keeps that door shut tight to minimize uninvited guests, such as large feral green iguanas.

I’m about to tell her I’m surprised to see the back door open, and then I see The Morning Guy, laughing to himself, closing the door and walking away. No need to mention that to anyone.

And it’s time for me to bake some chicken-parmesan pie before the game gets underway.

Tags: Pie Shop Stuff, Pretty Boy Boyd, Sue Ten, The Morning Guy by Bjean
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Last night, out on the driving range, well after dark, I go through 100 balls in only an hour, which I know is much too fast. I’m not spending enough time in the silent space between the swings, and I’m going too fast when I am swinging, so I know I need to adjust my sense of time and timing and slow it all right down.

As usual, I need to find a source for the defect, and so today I am passing the blame on to Wendy’s Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough Frosty, a 480-calorie treat, and 25% of those calories are from fat. W00t! The “healthy alternatives” website suggests that I would have been wiser to go for the Mandarin Chicken Salad instead, but it’s just not the same kick, and standing around with a Mandarin Chicken Salad would not endear me to the local golf teens as much as the Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough Frosty does.

“Wow,” says one bright-eyed local boy. “I just had one of those two hours ago, and I am still buzzing.”

My point exactly. If I’d gotten mine with chocolate ice cream in stead of vanilla, I would probably still be out there.  Then again, I didn’t sleep well and I am out there again at 7:00 a.m., hitting balls and musing about the events of the past 9 or so hours.

Picture me on driving too fast on I-95, high on way too much sugar but happily reviewing the evening’s progress, remembering the voices of the two men next to me, softly sharing advice and stories, whistling low in appreciation as one or the other hits a truly spectacular shot.

I am happy. I cruising on the super-highway that can be seen from space, and I am listening to jazz and thinking about The Morning Guy who is out somewhere for his evening run, staying fit, keeping the boxes in his mind all nicely organized and never letting them touch each other, and then it happens: The radio inexplicably switches from jazz to Barry White, and I hear Barry moaning about how he cannot get enough of my love.

Suddenly, my mood goes from crest-of-the-wave to serious paper cut, and I feel like I just plunged my hand into a vat of organic lemon juice.

I want to swerve into the nearest bar and knock back some Jack Daniels Black to ward off the unexpected and unwelcome stab of loneliness.  For just a split second, I even find myself missing my two ex-husbands Pretty Boy Boyd and Patrick-the-Liar, but that impulse blinks out of existence just as quickly as a firefly being eaten by a bat.

The next song, though, is equally devastating, and I am plotting the shortest route to Pepe’s Hideaway, when my cell phone jangles, and it is Sue Ten, stranded at a Starbucks with a folding bike and no interest in pedaling any further.

“I was just reaching out for a human connection,” she says.

Relieved to have a diversion, I say I understand fully, and continue south, well past my exit, slowing down to navigate a major speed trap, with at least a dozen blue lights flashing, and I pick her up in a matter of minutes.

On the way to her house, we debate the Pie Shop menu. I am not at all convinced that her version of Eggs Benedict Pie, with sliced potatoes instead of a crust, works for me. She argues for more variety in the menu. I’m holding my ground. I’m running a 24-Hour Pie Shop and Driving Range, not a cafe. And I like purity of definition. What’s she’s offering is a casserole. I will only serve pie, and metaphors.

So this message is for all of you who want more than what I have to offer: Get in your pick-up truck and just go next door to The Swing Barn. You can talk to Sue Ten, in Italian no less, and you can eat whatever you like. You can even have waffle fries covered with cheese-in-a-can. You can swing dance. You can weep in your beer. Remember, though, The Swing Barn is not open 24-hours a day, there’s no free internet, and there aren’t even any good books to read. Although some of the grafitti in the rest rooms — which, by the way, have signs saying “Them” and “Us” on the doors — is pretty interesting.

Now, if you want a pie for dessert, give us a call, and I’ll send someone over in a golf cart to deliver it to you. Please have exact change.

Life can be so easy.

Mixtape from http://favtape.com/search/barry white can’t get enough

Tags: Sue Ten, The Morning Guy by Bjean
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