Freddogg Off The Chain

Take a summer driving vacation through the ecosystem that produces dysfunctional families of sociopaths Yep just pack the kiddies and soccer balls and lacrosse sticks in the old SUV and take a tour of you nearest urban ghetto. Tell your children “the next time you whine ‘it ain’t fair” your sorry asses are getting dropped off here on the wrong side of the booty tracks for the weekend.”

There is a new form of family therapy under the beach umbrella of social ecology and it’s called multisystemic therapy or MST if you want them to conduct an inservice for a group of burnt out public school teachers because inside the private schools of privilege they definitely do not play with this shit. With the MST approach a counselor from a public school is sent into a home where they have a better chance of being raped and murdered or murdered then raped then getting everyone to anyone to stop throwing sharp to blunt implements of destructive instruction at all living creatures and calling each other mother fuckers.

Imagine taking your silly little Masters in Counseling degree and going for a home visit where mom is a manic depressive stoned on marijuana while the other five half siblings all connected to the mother and an unrelated absent father somewhere in the neighborhood and have a history of throwing knives at each other.

And trust me there are plenty of shirtless white sociopaths, that’s right mom too, because we’ve all seen them on cops and they are littered all over the off road countryside of the good old USA worried about Mexicans coming across the boarder and taking the jobs they have no intention of showing up for.

MST is a theory based on the premise that all of the causes of antisocial behavior should be attacked at once. Let me give them a heads up. If you “attack” anti social behaviors inside the bonus room controlled by manically stoned yet still depressed mommy and her knife throwing children you had better dress like a state cop giving a canine demonstration and bring the canine along because while they’re killing the dog you may have time to escape.

I remember one time when a pair of 16 year old “Crack Heads in Love” were delivered 25 minutes late to my Civics Class because a Hall Monitor on a donut run saw them walking down the road.

I told her to give them each a donut and to drop them back where she found them because I definitely wasn’t signing for a special Crack Head delivery in the middle of Civics class and their lesson for the day was “show up sober and on time or stay the fuck out.”

A few years later this boy made the news for breaking out of a level 5 Violators of Parole facility sprinting out to the highway where he met up with the same girl who had stolen a car. The drove to the hills of Carolina figuring they had a good chance of blending there.

If only MST therapy had been in place perhaps they could have been saved. I’m talking about the Carolinians.

Imagine a counselor showing up at your door because your kids had school related problems. ‘I’m here to work this through inside the social ecosystem that spawned these anti social behaviors of your little asshole children. Are you the recalcitrant and contrary father I’ve heard so much about over inappropriate and unauthorized not to mention totally unprofessional faculty room conversations with the custodians? “

“That’s me. Step inside our humble commode. Why are you dressed like a stuffed sofa?’”

Peace Freddogg

Whatever happened to aunts who were known for their holiday food contributions? I once wrote a story about my fat German Aunts elbow deep in vats of potato salad but they read the story and now they hate me which could only mean they hated me all a long the little doggies.

This is Memorial Day a time to eschew thoughts of positive contributions of any kind in favor of chewing the fat with friends and relatives. Deviled eggs, macaroni and potato salads and artichoke dip. Wet roast beef on hoagie rolls. Rip and tear ham on a plate. Eat the fat it taste the best for a reason. Jewish pickles, no red beats, who brought them?
Brown bottles of beer in metal garbage cans—not trash—garbage cans- hosed out by rubber not gay green vinyl hoses. I want my iced no huggy holder Ortliebs short necked brown bottle to taste like licking the inside of a day old keg and I want it to smell like cabbage and coffee grinds

And who first started saying sentences like Ms Lillie May’s barbeque. Barbeque is not a thing but a thing you do to other things. Language gets stupid and we all copy it. “Would you like some barbeque?” Barbequed what bitch, ”is the proper etiquette response.

You know what’s really scary about relatives? Ones that get along with each other , dominating back yard picnics being all loud and extroverted. I guarantee you in the rest of their life they are judged to be no count personality types.

Wanna play horseshoes while wearing tongs? How about a game of quates? Lawn darts was fun although it was more of a seventies thing and people did die and it would stop a party and somebody did have to pull the dart out of Uncle “Ain’t Happy No More “Harry’s head.

Did you ever ride a 300 pound oiled up Aunt in an above ground swimming pool? Nope me either but my cousin Frogman did but at least it was his mother and Freud may have been weird but he was right about some things.

I am to go sun bath in a webbed chair.

Enjoy your Memorial Day and better yet tell me what you’re about and whether you intend to barbeque and if so please wear sun block.


Peace

Cousin Freddogg

The difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke is like the distinction between dead and real dead.

Every summer I take pictures and interview road racers by the thousands, I watch and I don’t wonder what drives runners because I’ve been there. I know about running through common sense and pushing fitness to an early and untimely but nevertheless timed demise.

But hopefully when a delirious person completes a race, doesn’t sweat but wobbles profusely someone will exercise good sense and get them off their feet. I consented to no one to take a picture of a post traumatic race wobbler, got scolded, but retaliated, ”At least I’m not holding her up saying “walk it off. And in case you haven’t noticed there is still a standard poodle clipped to her waistband. Could that possibly be a good idea?”

I am the same person that years ago when a whiny kid down the street sat on my front stoop and told me he broke his wrist stopping a bike after one of my twin toddlers tried to run over him I handed him a brick.

“What am I supposed to do with that,” he asked, protecting his bad arm with him good one? “Hold it in your hand, ”I instructed in all seriousness. ‘If your wrist and arm are broken you won’t be able to do it.”

He just cried harder and slinked her sorry ass on home. Later he returned with his arm in a cast and his overprotective red necked mother at his side.

“Robbie said one of the twins broke his arm and that you told him to shake it off and grab a brick. Could that possibly be true?”

“Absolutely Robbie is lying. I’m an experienced coach and sports person so why would I tell him to grab the handle bars of a huffy under full power and then pick up a brick to check for arm breakage? Does that sound like a logical story to you?”

Robbie and all his insecurities would reach his senior year in high school and we laughed together about the time I sold him out to protect myself in the grab a brick story.

But then his mother called me and said, ”Robbie is not only on drugs but he’s selling cocaine. He’s a dealer.”

I responded, ”are you cracked like a 12 year old ulna bone? Robbie isn’t close to cool and certainly no user or dealer. Where would you ever get such an idea?”

“I read it is his notebook from mechanical drawing class, ”she said. “He and two friends said they were expecting a large drug shipment any day.”

“They’re in mechanical drawing class. What do you expect them to write about? Protractors, compasses, right triangles? They’re just joking to pass away the protracted minutes of tedious time.”

This mommy dearest once again didn’t believe me, called the state police who found nothing but she kicked Robbie out of the house anyway for ever and ever amen.

There comes a time in every person's life to unhitch the poddle and to get along with it all. Just cute the bitch loose!



Peace Freddogg M.D.

Rich people love their money more than most and when they pay for adventure just stay out of the way and don’t expect CPR, the Heimlich or any other licking Maneuver, unless you’re the one with you tongue out and I have no idea what that means.

I was shocked and appalled—actually I don’t care—I was stunned and surprised—actually not at all-when I read that 40 rich mother fuckers hell bent on a trophy for the custom carved mantle, cock suckers who paid 75 thousand dollars each for permission to climb Mount Everest, passed a dying but still wheezing oxygen depleted social Darwinist on his way back down the almost level to the ground Mountain of no love.

The story unfolds then wraps up with the guy dead under a rock, 1,000 feet from the summit, looking like Pat Summit when she first wakes up in the morning. The defense, “he was already just about dead so what the fuck?”

Did you know that Roger Bannister in the race before he broke the four minute mile went back to pick up a runner who had fallen? Think about it, what kind of person are you?

I was on a rafting trip once down a raging Lehigh River in the Poconos after a tremendous spring runoff. We followed a guide who looked just like Arlo Guthrie wearing a crash helmet. It was four people to a raft. We were exhausted and realized rafting for seven hours down the river was the only way out except death by drowning or a straight stick into the eyeball after crashing into the river bank.

It was white water followed by paddling through calm over and over. We were trapped in the belly of Boy Gorge who really did want to hurt us.

The last and most dangerous rapids was highlighted by a permanent boulder appropriated named Dead Man’s Rock. Arlo said he would position himself behind it and to stay away from him at all cost.

Chris, our fat bald guy on board captain, advised putting all oars in the boat because we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing anyway and so that’s what we did. And down we blistered spinning like a Tea Cup ride, so fast that all other images were blurred. There was no stop action.

But off to out port side steamed the four “Coal Cracking Lesbians” from Shamokin aboard the “USS Carpet Muncher” and they were shouting out a cadence and also heading right for Dead Lesbians Rock. Chris just shrugged and said, ”They’re lunchmeat!”


The raft flew up onto the flat wet surface of the rock and pitched all four Phys Ed teachers up and out into the white water. We laughed so hard it actually hurt and I knew it was because we was delirious anyway.

They all arrived alive into calm waters because Rapid Roy took the big mommas the only place they could have gone it wasn’t like they had a choice. They were hugging each other and crying and we laughed even harder because we were so stupidly exhausted it was the only inappropriate emotion we had left.

Am I stopping 1,000 feet from the summit of Mount Everest to share oxygen with a stranger in the throes of decompression anoxia? Absolutely I am and I wound minister and comfort him “how’d us two assholes get in this predicament” and pray a rouge Sherpa showed up to rescue us and not laugh about it. Then again maybe I would just laugh and keep moving?

Peace Freddogg

Sounds like a great punishment for a white socks wearing 14 year old wiseass with a Hollywood haircut. Throw him into a sea of young women his same age. Women in jumper school uniforms all sporting Toni Home Permanent hair styles right out of the box. Woman only at arms length and as far as the eye can see not to mention close enough to touch and to hear the static electricity as they sneakily run plastic combs through their hair.

Back in 1960, grammar school classrooms absolutely all looked the same. Boys were in the front half of the room and the girls in the back. The bad kids like me usually sat up front and to the sides where there were less temptations and less of an audience to contaminate. But I was a professional contaminator because chaos and comedy are always preferable to drudgery and routine. The very phase “daily routine” made me feel like a white shoed household black water bug was crawling over the nape of my naked neck which actually happened in my house because that early Black Flag take it back to the nest white powder was about as effective as smoking a banana for a reality alteration.

I was born paying attention to details for the purpose of twisting events. I have always heard voices even whispers and at this stage of my life if the cat walks across the bedroom carpet at 3 a.m. I begin to process his direction, destination and motivation. And if that Psycho Siamese meows just once I am up and after his ass to snare and toss into the wild where he can try his luck at annoying nocturnal creators like raccoons, opossums and screech owls, wild animals that would tear his face off at the first sound of that off an octave baby like cry.

I began to hate girls, all of them. I could see they were so devious, much worse than me and they never got caught. And when they talked to each other all I heard were S sounds. And I knew their bodies were changing like “werewuffs” in a Lon Chaney movie. There were two girls unrelated who looked like gypsies and I think one had a crush on me as in a 300 pound steamroller fatal attraction.

Another not exactly white skinned girl was nicknamed “Caveman” and in the circumspection of retrospection that certainly was cruel and became really strange when she became the girl friend of some big freckle faced poor white boy named Wood Odor. I have repressed the likelihood that I nicknamed and tormented these two but I did have that house cat on an injured field mouse trait as part of my matrix of aberrant behaviors back then.

I saw the world from the inside out never empathizing with the young women around me and never thinking or imaging what they were thinking and when I realized that some of them were thinking about illicit images where I was a major player I got really scared.

They would go up to the nun’s desk to get papers and on the way back past my fort would brush up against me. One time Caveman was on my arm like a stray dog rattling through the high heat cycle of nature’s wisdom. Then some cutesy nymph named Maryann told the nun that every time she passed my desk I hung my arm out into the aisle so she would run up against it.

“Would you like me to rub up against your arm ,”the nun asked me sarcastically in a private hallway shakedown but then she batted her eyes and I didn’t know what that meant because it couldn’t have possibly meant what I thought, I just had to be sick and twisted at least I hoped that was the explanation.

On The Next Montell: Cloistered and closeted arm humping nuns. Psychotropic drugs produce “delayed discovery” as a child of the Sixties now sixty himself recounts his bizarre and improbable story.

Peace Freddogg

The first question in the Baltimore Catechism is “Who Made Us?” The second is “Who Is God?” please refer back to number one. And the third “Why Did God Make Us?”

I listened to this drill everyday of school outside of Philly through the first eight grades of Catholic grammar school at Our Lady of Grace which Nick Alvino could play on the accordion to Lady of Spain and I would make up sacrilegious lyrics which is pretty impressive for a third grader.

And by the third grade I always sat upfront to the teachers left and the other big kid Richard Nilsson sat opposite to her right to balance the room like you do if you have two fat people aboard a small boat.

Nilsson was tall and goofy, kind of bent over, and he was retarded because back in the 1950’s that was the only designation available. The nuns were always trying to get god into Richard hoping that a miracle would occur and Richard would answer the question he was asked every day for his eight years of school, ”Who made us Richard” but all Richard ever said was “Da Da Da” but they made him sweat and Richard didn’t like it and I didn’t like them beating on him with the dogma of the day routine.

Somewhere in the middle of eighth grade Sister Saint Winifred was eager to have the revelation of who made us pass through the consciousness of Richard. She was asking him over and over and I across the room commenced to mumble which further stiffened Sister’s cardboard bib protecting her breasts from pagan heads that may accidental bump into her repressed self. Sister hated me with “The Passion.”

“You bold brazen article Frederick. There is nothing God hates more than a sneak!”

“That’s funny, ”I said. “In the universe of the All Knowing there are no sneaks. So how can he hate what I cannot become?”

“Shut up! What were you just mumbling? Show some bravery for once in your sinful life and own up to your mumbled words. I promise I won’t punish you.”

I said, “Richard hasn’t known for eight years of school who made him but if he ever finds out he won’t be a Catholic boy any longer.”

That penguin bitch attacked me—now that’s weird because penguins are nice- started slapping me and calling me names and Richard Nilsson was laughing and he knew why he was laughing and I deduced the “Da Da Da”was just Richard’s game, played to perfection, but only god could be perfect is what we were taught and so when they asked me “who is god” I said, ”Richard Nilsson” and you know, perhaps, just perhaps, he was?

Peace Freddogg

I am retired from teaching which leads most people to think I’m retired from the work force because my major talent in life is no matter what the job or how many balls I have in the air I always look like I’m doing nothing.

People ask question like “how’s retirement” but they don’t want to stick around for some lame assed change of life philosophical treatise from a 60 year old in the throes of a late life identity crises. And that’s fine because fuck them all anyway.

But when I’m asked “playing a lot of golf” I’m ready to snap like the waist band of polyester stretch-o-matic fat boy pants? I am a sports writer and as such not ambivalent concerning the sport of kings or is that horse racing? What’s the difference, I’m not a horse and I don’t golf, I’m not interested in playing, don’t care to yuk it up with my white boy friends and I’d rather play in the sand trap with a Tonka truck then listen to the leisure time set talk about the latest celebrity tournament, member/guest, low gross or best ball with your buddies outing. “Yep with all the balls out you have the best one but then again you’re a scrotum golfer.”
“I’m a scratch golfer.”
“Hey, do what you want with them.”
I have friends who belong to top clubs that cost 10 grand a year. The better ones cost 25k and I even heard of one that now cost 125k to join and you have to submit a financial state each year to make sure you’re financially solvent and worthy of placing your balls in the auto rotating gentle brush ball cleaner, a special privilege for scratch golfers with disposable income.
“Honey, what’s that device next to our bed?”
I know lots of business deals are closed on golf courses, which means, it’s really work and if that’s the case cut the grass on the fairways with a push mower before you play.
I am of course picking on this sport because I’m no good at it. I’m relegated to being aging gym guy who pushes heavy weights around, talk about work with no result. The only thing lifting weights is good for is lifting more weights.
Just the other night as I struggled to maintain erect equilibrium after getting up off the couch my wife asked, ”did you hurt your back?”
“I guess maybe I did but I really don’t remember.”
“And what’s that little tube next to our bed? It looks like it can hook on a belt loop?”
"I'm a scratch weight lifter now, they sell them at Gold's Gym."

Peace Freddogg

A cul-de-sac of opulence where all roads from Tarpon to Wahoo led back to Black Marlin Drive where only white fish live had me trapped for a full 30 minutes on Sunday morning as I cruised in my Tundra listening to Lyle Lovett sing, ”I live in my own mind. Ain’t nothing but a good time.”

Wolfe Point is an upgrade to its adjacent neighbor Wolfe Runne because no matter how much money you are willing to mortgage someone else will eagerly dive deeper into debt to out shine your sorry ass. Then again others just have that much money and if not inherited then something illegal has to be going on-it’s the only way I can explain so many people having so much more disposable money than I do. I mean are they smarter, better networked, more adept at investing? Hell no, none of that can be true.

The first 15 minutes I was just amazed, wondering how big does a house have to be and how many ways are there to landscape a yard and manicure a lawn many of which looked like putting greens? The whole place looked like a development on the Philadelphia Mainline except there is no source of income to support development after development of million dollar houses in Eastern Sussex County Delaware so the question remains, ”Who are these people and are the drywall dust guys I see at WaWa each morning the hands on builders because local craftsman take two years to put down linoleum in a remodeled bathroom.

“ Goddam,” I thought. “Most of these people read my column in the 50 cent twice a week newspaper but who are they? I understand some have custom made bars in the basement along with several wall mounted plasma televisions and even a mini theater for the children to work on performances when they should told to shut up when NASCAR is on the three televisions so mommy can concentrate.

The last 15 minutes being a reverse snob too dumb to escape the inside to outside circle game I just became annoyed. It was just too much overkill. I wondered if I looked out of place and of course the answer was absolutely I was under surveillance with some napping security guard and former student sitting in an office sleeping off Saturday night.

I was glad to get back to the more simple confines of my 2600 square foot home with three full baths and four car garage, an office, Jacuzzi, multi decks, submerged landscape lights and paver brick walkways laid down by illegal alien master craftsmen.

I am basically a humble man with three cars for me and one for my wife. These other showoffs get on my nerves.

Peace Fredman

A High School Coach named Custer with a drinking problem from a School named Holy Ghost “lost his mind” and called me in late March of 1964 to be on his basketball team that was to play in the “one and done” Gold Medal” basketball tournament held each Spring at the West Philadelphia Armory. This Coach Custer was a fan of mine and just raved about watching me play but as soon as we met in person he looked at me and said, ”I thought you were bigger?” and I should have said, ”Hang around 40 years and I’ll show you bigger.”

The court itself was larger than regulation and the players in the tournament were larger than any encountered in my storied high school basketball life that led me to the named M.V. P. in the Philadelphia Catholic League which goes nicely with my modern day M.V.P. card from the Food Lion.

The locker room at the Armory was two levels below the court and had a certain dungeon quality about it. I was handed a sleeveless white shirt with a number to go along with my satin shorts from my white high school uniform. I was dressing next to some 6’10” bald guy out of Wake Forest and there were other huge people on my team and I remember processing it all and thinking, ”what the fuck am I doing here?”

We go up to warm up and out comes the other team all black, dressed in black shirts with gold letters that said, ”Spikes Trophies. They looked so cool and I mentioned to my Greek friend Chris Cosmos who accompanied me to the game that we had to steal a Spikes Trophies jersey before we left.

I didn’t pay much attention to the obvious reality that I was the only high school person on either roster because I just expected to sit and watch. I was totally shocked when Coach Custer picked three big guys along with Bobby Hannah a college guard and me to start the game.

“We’ll play man-fuck-em-“Custer said, and I could tell he’d been drinking. "Go ahead and just match up."

Hannah turned to me and said, ”Do you want Jones or Hazzard?”

I looked out at the tip off circle. There was all American out of Villanova Wally Jones the most electric guard in the city maybe ever? And his running mate Walt Hazzard who had just led UCLA to a 30-0 record and NCAA championship the first of Coach John Wooden’s 10 for 12 streak of titles. Lucious Jackson 6’9” with shaved head who later would be the fourth played chosen by Philly in April’s NBA draft was jumping center.

I choose to guard Hazzard whom I viewed as more conservative and mellow and less likely to make an albino monkey out of me than Jones.

The first time down stranded in the wide open badlands of that spacious court Hazzard gave me a little shake fake and disappeared like a coyote trickster in an Navajo fable. I turned around to see him laying the ball in the basket and the 6’8” bald guy teammate called me a mother fucker.

The next trip down on offense Hannah hit me with a no look backdoor bounce pass and I could jump wrist over rim but Luke Jackson pinned and palmed my ball off the glass and I believe also called me a mother fucker.

The game ended I had actually made a couple of inconsequential jump shots while Hazzard finished with 41 points and Jones had 35.

But all was well because Cosmos and I had each of their jerseys in our gym bags.

We were going to leave until we noticed in the next game Nick Werkman, a 6’3” Trenton white guy who played for Seton Hall and was second in the nation in scoring. Werkman would be drafted by Boston the next month but didn’t stick around long.

“Nick the Quick” he was called and Chris and I were friends with his younger brothers, “Mark The Spark” and Phil The Ill.” Nick always wore a “you’re a fucking idiot” expression, was double jointed, and had the most incredible array of moves and fakes around the basket I had ever seen.

Nick’s team was playing Grocer’s Trophies a bunch of fat older black guys who swore they could play but they weren’t very good. Nick abused them scoring 45 points and after each basket flashed his punk ass smirk and once I even heard him say, ”In your face spade.” We stayed around figuring Nick was going to get killed in the locker room so we may as well hoist his jersey.

Down in the dungeon both teams began to change back to street clothes but there was tension—not racial- just “let’s kill the punk ass 45 point scoring double jointed white boy tension.”

A fat power forward questioned "Nick the Quick" about his spade reference which I guessed didn’t have many good cop out escape routes. But Nick just gave him that characteristic smirk like “it’s not my fault you’re a fat spade has been” then out came the mother fucker and it may have gotten ugly except the two closed metal door flew open and Tarzan was in the doorway dressed in shinny suit. His Tarzan yell bounced, ricocheted and reverberated around the room and rattled the pipes.

Don ‘Tarzan” Bragg stood in the doorway. Bragg had won the Olympic Gold Medal in 1960 setting a world record that still stands for an aluminum non bending pole of 15’9”. Director Steve Speilberg would “shoot” that scene with Don “Trazan” Bragg low to high showing a broad shouldered majestic form filling up the doorway.

Everyone just froze as Bragg announced himself along with his resume. Bragg would later do some sparring work with Muhammad Ali who said he enjoyed “beating up Tarzan” then go on to become the Athletic Director of Stockton State in New Jersey. Bragg had a full paged color photo in Sports Illustrated sitting at his Athletic Director’s desk with a stogie sticking out of his nostril.

Cosmos used the tension to lift "Nick The Quick’s" jersey but we had to give it back when we “bragged” to Mark the Spark that we had it. Nick told us to give him the Grocer’s Trophies jerseys we snatched-one for him and the other for Tarzan- or he would have Tarzan swing from our vines and we would be the ones yelling.

Hazzard,Jones and Jackson went on to make the All Rookie Team in the NBA. Jones and Jackson would later help the 76'rs win an NBA title in 1966 along with Wilt Chamberlain,Chet Walker and Hal "High Gear" Greer.

A brush with success and a brush with death. I'm no star and I'm no thief. My M.V.P.Food Lion card still rocks!

I see dead people because I remember them. I forget many of the living because they are worth it. Short term memory goes first I believe because we don’t care to remember or new data skips off the surface of an already crowded cranial hard drive.

Many years ago my wife’s late grandfather Mart Murphy, a true comedic character if ever one existed, called a gas station in the blighted town of Mahoney City, where the only exciting new news was to check the “who died” list in the local paper because it was the only way you could make the paper and everyone knew everyone and who everyone was related to and at what bar they drank.

Mart called Itsy’s gas station although Itsy had died a couple years earlier. Mart was surprised when Itsy answered the phone. “Is that you Itsy? I thought you were dead? So you didn’t die then? Could you come down to Pine Street, I have a young fella here who can’t get his car started. No, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know anything. Listen, congratulations. I’m sure glad to hear you aren’t dead.”

Over the last three days I’ve run into three people I was pretty sure were dead. But unlike Mart, I didn’t congratulate them because two of them actually still are dead, so when I dropped a name and said hello they said hello back because I don’t think either of them were absolutely sure who they were or what reality they traversed on a daily basis and probably I looked like a person they thought was dead so they took the easy way out and copped to a misidentification.


The other person I thought was dead was, in fact, not dead, but peep this: He was carrying dead branches from a tree down the street said hello to me then said, ”I’m pretty sure these are dead and will no longer live” and I said, ”you can never be certain” because I thought the guy died about four years ago.

I’m off to the boardwalk now that I’ve discovered a new retirement hobby of communicating with the undead from the life of Fred.

Peace Freddogg

Rap is poetry and as such it really sucks. There is little reason behind the rhymes whether they are written down then rapped or laid down freestyle which is some kind of Ivy League vines on the rowhouse facade ghetto status symbol.

I received the ultimate accolade in the classroom once when I circled the room rhyming everybody’s name with some personal personality characteristic causing one young man to canonize me as “A Rhyming Somebody.”

But snobbish white people who do poetry can’t hope to land a piece in the “New Yorker” if they rhyme every line because that’s just so low class and so ghetto yo!

“I fell on my ass in the wet grass and the neighbors all laughed as they drove past.
To my feet I did aspire to catch their cats and set them on fire.”

How did so many “poets” find such an appreciation for the ecological machinations of the planet and solar system to look without to find the solitary person within who runs so silent and oh so deep? Somebody please give my sensibilities a break and keep me away from these snobby bastards fattened on too much leisure time for contemplation. Get a job!

“A pigmy hippo named Defillipo lived in the zoo just to entertain you. He’s a fat, low down, wallowing slug, when the moat dries up, he lies in the mud. His tail spins around following by a sound, as he evacuates, what he just ate. Just watch him, you moron, who has nothing better to do, because in many ways, he’s a mirror of you.”

High school kids love to write poetry then pay money to have it published in an anthology that absolutely no one will ever open much less read. They write of love and death and relationships and most of it is as sickening sweet as saccharine or as depressing as a rainy Monday morning as puffs of dark clouds rumble overhead crashing into each other like dirty pillows in an industrial sized dryer down at the Puerto Rican Laundromat.

I always wanted to sponsor a "Fred's Poet Society" club where people come together once a week and read original poems out loud as other poets eagerly await thier chance to perform. "You think that sucks Fredman wait until you hear mine."

Peace Poetic Fred-Doggie-dogg

I was a sophomore at football camp in 1962 and it was hazing ritual night. I had no intentions of showing up for the traditional degradation not the least of which was running through a gauntlet wearing only a jock doused with wintergreen.

I was amazed that so many teammates showed up for sanctioned humiliation because of what may happen to them. I was very clear on the matter. The first person who touched me was getting punched in the face.

I did have an older brother on the team named “Moose” who was 6’5”250 pounds but he wasn’t in the habit of sticking up for me but also he wasn’t going to help the rest of them deal with me either.

Let’s just say it was a senior named Herb who came into the dorm room and grabbed arm and attempted to pull me out the door. I warned him first before punching him in the face. Suddenly I was the designated sociopath.

The team chaplain came to counsel me and he was so serious but behind him hanging from a closet door was a cardboard skeleton and we had manipulated the long arm and hand to make it look like Philly sign language “I got your skeleton right here pal!”

I got the “they came to crucify Christ” speech that somehow was broken down to a hazing ritual gone bad and I responded, ”If I were Christ I’d have driven railroad spikes into the head of Pontius Pilot or at least fought back and not gone whipped puppy to live out some biblical fable of atonement.”

The priest wanted to put wintergreen in my jock by the time I was through messing with him and that’s the way zealots react when you attack their icons. I was hazing him and he didn't like it. I could tell he wanted to hurt me.

Later in life, after starting for the Temple University football team as a sophomore, I transferred to Kent State in Ohio. That’s before the National Guard whacked four young demonstrators, talk about hazing.

Kent had a ritual that all freshman and transfer students had to wear beanies the first month on campus. Once again I was forced to defend myself as several morons carrying musical instruments tried to forcibly place a beanie on my head. I still would rather die then submit to a formalized humiliation that delights others and I've never again had to injure four people in some blunt force tuba overreaction.

I never attended mandatory faculty meetings as a teacher and I was particularly repulsed by the concepts of weekend retreats and team building. “Fall backwards and we’ll catch your gay ass, you fucking loser—just relax!”

I remember a beginning of the year first day of school for teachers only let’s alleviate the depression without drugs back to school meeting. The administrators brought wheel chairs and masks and before I knew it teachers actually submitted to be pushed around to experience helplessness but trust in their colleagues. I grew up with a wheel chaired father and I was really getting fucking annoyed. But then the ultimate in Psychological induced brain trauma occured when everyone was standing up in the school cafeteria, the music was vibrating through the underpowered intercom system, and they were doing the Macarena.

I escaped to a faculty lounge and started punching myself in the head like an autistic kid fending off a hug from a fat aunt. A teacher joyfully poked her head in the door.

“Fredman, the principal said to come get you, that they had something special just for you."

‘Tell him and every other Macarena Maniac still in the room to go fuck themselves.”

I need to patent a tee shirt, with an image of my barebones skeleton from 1962, just supply your own words to fit the occasion, ”I’ve got your Macarena Right Here!”

Peace Freddogg

I grew up in hoagie heaven in Philadelphia not some stupid sub or hero or grinder or calzone or stromboli neighborhood! And if you want to talk cheese steaks let me be the first native to tell you that Philly cheese steaks are mostly too chopped up and watery, are sometimes doused with clumpy cheese whiz and don’t even ask for lettuce, tomato and mayo because on the first bite all that shit will be lying on the curb.

In my house this was a formal dinner. “Tonight we are having hoagies, ”my mother would say. “Tommy will go get them and David it’s your turn to clean up the wrappers. Don’t let Luigi nub until everyone is finished.” Luigi was the family beagle, some low slung, fat assed, voyeuristic stray vulture, who could tell some stories because like all family dogs he belonged to the Privates Club, know what I’m saying?”

I remember the first day in school history at Our Lady of Grace grammar school that hoagies were served for lunch. Even the poor assed white trash people brought 75 cents because this was a monumental and festive occasion. I was a Cape Cod Kid thanks to government checks and I never brought a Bond Bread inside a paper bag peanut butter and fluff sandwich to school in my life. No sir, I was living high on the hoagie ladder of social stratification.

Any hoagie taste better if someone else makes it because if you make it yourself with a half pound each of two different meats, a blanket of white American cheese and table spoons of mayo and an entire onion all jammed into a Amoroso roll you are just instantly spoiled and become like the depressed rich bastard from up on the hill.

Hundreds of hoagies handed out to repressed Catholic boys can only bring out inappropriate hoagie hand humor which led to whack attacks by frustrated nuns who had their own sexual hang-ups and it got crazy. I stayed below the fray snagging nubs like Luigi under the table and once under the tables I noticed things that were hoagie like but not actual hoagies for kielbasa’s sake.

I’m still not comfortable eating lunch at a working class sub shop unless all the pipe fitters have both hands on the table.

Peace Freddogg

What's Gnu Bison Man?

A dreary fall Monday morning on North Broad Street in 1965 and most of the real players on the winless Temple football team just pulled the blankets up over the heads with no intention of making any classes schedule before noon. And with the Dreaded Monday afternoon football practice beginning at 3 p.m on the attractively named Geasy Field on 16th Street, attending any classes was out of the question.
After a mindless run around in shorts and helmets and non contact practice where we were berated for our lack of competitive lust and basic brain power we walked to South Hall for a film preview on Saturday’s opponent Bucknell. As I waited for the light to change a young prostitute scratching her back against a row house wall asked me if I wanted her. “Can I keep my helmet on,”I joked, because in a real life matching test the word prostitute always lines up with “nasty.”
We watched Hofstra open their game against Bucknell with a 70 yard straight shot touchdown run on a tackle trap play. How boneheaded does a mesomorph have to be not to realize that if you’re walking into somebody’s backfield untouched some Eastern European is happily on his way to plant your dumb ass?
The Temple coaches were so unimaginative that they planned to open the game against Bucknell with the same play expecting the same result. I was to be the pulling guard on the play so after watching the victimization of the Fat Bison over and over I raised my hand and posed a question.
“Coach isn’t number 78 watching this same play. Don’t you think he’ll get a steady dose of it during group work at practice?”
‘Shut the hell up and just do your job Frederick. We ain’t paying for your education so you can sit here and think. That’s the problem with you. You’re a smartass. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes coach, and thank you.”
The Bucknell locker room was old and spacious with big fat metal lockers that rattled like an empty oil drum if you punched the shit out of them.
We were wearing our deep red Cherry uniforms and we were the Owls. Jesus what was I doing there?
Coach George Makris, a former NCAA heavyweight boxing champion from Wisconsin who once said to me, ”Fredericks if I had your talent I would have been a first team All American.”
“Coach it seems to me that all your talents should be focused on being yourself. Don’t drag me into it.”
Makris wanted to punch me so badly but a smartass inside a helmet takes many chances.
The coaches gathered the team together for the pre-game psych talk.
“This game is for the Little Brown Shoe and I’ll bet most of you “Brainiacs “ don’t know what that means and even if you did you wouldn’t care about it. We’ll I tell you it meant something to Leon Bernacki. If Leon Bernacki were here he’d be ready to play his ass off for the Little Brown Shoe.”
I leaned towards a benchwarmer from Brooklyn.
‘Who’s Leon Bernacki?”
“Dead guy,”was all he said.
The seniors had tears rolling down their cheeks. Bernacki was one of their boys—a ROTC wear my uniform around campus kind of guy—Bernacki had been killed in a car accident that summer. The Little Brown Shoe was some military back and forth trophy that is sitting somewhere right now and I’m sure Bernacki knows where.
“So bring the shoe back to Temple for Bernacki! Do you understand? Bernacki!”
The team started chanting “Bernacki! Bernacki! Bernacki!”
Line Coach Dave DeFilippo looked like Danny Devito on steroids with long hair. He began assaulting a locker as I walked past him he snatched me out of line.
“You don’t give a dam about Bernacki do you Fredericks? Why do you always look like you’re staring at the world from inside a fish bowl? Are there people you care about?”
“I love you coach I really do.” Actually I did love that guy because he paid us cash money for second effort blocks.
We receive run it back to the 30 yard line and the offense trots into the huddle. “Thirty-two power trap on one,”said Quarterback Joe Petro who had an uncanny resemblance to Roger Staubach minus the talent.
I pulled to the right, out of the blocks like an Olympic sprinter. And running right for me was the enraged and swollen marshmallow frosty the snowman number 78. I was pushed back into Petro who fumbled the handoff to Stricker and at the bottom of the pig pile was number 78 with the football. He hoisted and screamed like he had done something.
“You’re still a big fat dumb ass,” I told him jogging to the sidelines.
Split end Tom Mitchell, an All American, uncannily great white wideout, who would later play in the NFL, was triple covered as he caught Bucknell’s first offensive play for a 30 yard touchdown.
And on the last play of the half Mitchell once again solved the riddle of the Temple defense catching a pass across the middle losing his shoe on a would be tackle and racing the last 30 yards backwards for his fourth touchdown of the first half.
“Was that a Little Brown shoe that fell off his foot,”I asked my Brooklyn Buddy.
“You think this is funny Fredericks, the defensive backfield coach screaming jumping into my face. “You think an all American running backwards for 30 yards for his fourth touchdown in the half is funny”?
“The question is—does Coach Makris think it’s funny,”I snapped walking to the locker room.
Sometime early in the third quarter I was down field covering a punt. The return man turned that mother up the middle and on an athletic move he high stepped two fallen bodies and in a twisted moment of poetic justice, kicked me right in my face with his dumb ass shoe. I didn’t see stars but rather porky pig retreating inside a tightening kaleidoscope. ”That’s all folks.”
When the offense was called I stayed on the sidelines. Where’s Fredericks? Why isn’t he on the field?”
“He’s going on about shoes Coach,”said Brooklyn Vinnie. “He says from the Little Brown one to Mitchell’s missing one and the one that kicked him in the face he’s just waiting for the other one to drop.”
The story should end here except for boneheaded coach Jack Jones who jumped in front of me and screamed, ”Do you have a concussion? Is that what you’re trying to say? Do you think you have a concussion?’
“How the hell would I know Coach? I think I may but I’m aware I may also be faking. I don’t think I’m faking but what’s up with this theme of shoes, just shoes all over the freaking place. And who’s Bernacki?

Brownie’s drug store in downtown Penndel circa 1955 outside of Philly had a soda fountain and counter with red swivel stools where they served “ice creen” cones and “ice creen” sodas and dishes of “ice creen.”

Any of it could be had for coinage so little heathens or what the nuns called pagans like me and my fiends and Luigi the Beagle could go there and be obnoxious and stupid and laugh at adults and no one stopped us and we needed to be stopped obviously we were plagued by low self esteem and looking for attention while craving discipline and if any of us had ever gone missing our pictures in horizontal striped polo shirts would have been placed on the backs of frozen fish sticks cartoons. In fact, we were the leading edge of the flamer generation.

This really old bent guy who probably had Parkinson’s but back then all that disease shit wasn’t on the street, he was simply, the old shaking guy, came into the drug store everyday and lined up a stool like it was spinning out of control. He’d grab it with two hands then mount it like a cowboy on a miniature pony. Needless to say, we thought that was hilarious, but we stayed dead quiet because this was “punch line” gramps and the fact we knew the joke only made it funnier each time it victimized it’s teller. Speaking of victimizing tellers did I ever tell you my fat Aunt Rose used to work the drive in window at a sperm bank?

Now I don’t know why the “soda jerk” didn’t alleviate this daily delivery of punch line madness and simple ask “the usual” perhaps because the head of Gramps was always shaking in the affirmative but he'd grab a fancy ice cream dish which looked like a small vase in his left hand and a scooper in his right and just stand there and wait wearing some stupid white hat cut in American Legion fashion.

No one ever noticed that the local pagan children and Luigi the Beagle had all gone stone quiet falling into audience mode.

Getting his tremors under control gramps would begin, ”Choc, Choc, Choc, Choc” and finally way too loudly “Chocolate!”

It’s arguable whether dogs laugh but Luigi always went belly up. Did he just yell ‘Chocolate” at me, I asked the “jerk” behind the soda counter. “No, he said, “shut the fuck up” and allow me to add “get the fuck out” and out we’d go and motor home on our fat fendered J.C. Higgins 24 inch bikes purchased from the Sears catalogue.

We’d be “choc chocing” and “get the fuck outing” and just having a great old time. Certainly in retrospect it was way wrong and when my mom asked me if I had ever met the man who went to Brown’s Drug Store everyday and ordered a dish of chocolate ice cream and did I know he’d won the Medal of Honor in World War One and had shrapnel in his head and that he died and was going to be honored at the little league park at the end of the Memorial Day Parade?

Luigi immediately went belly up on the kitchen floor. ‘What’s he laughing at,” my mother asked.

Peace Chocolate Freddogg

Hey Fredricks do you think this is funny because I don’t think it’s funny at all. I’m trying to win a game here, not provide you with comedy material, so answer me, ”Do you think this is funny?”

Temple freshman basketball coach Skippy Wilson was down on one knee and up in my face—and he could be manically scary looking-- as the Owl freshman team averted almost certain overtime defeat when my roommate Johnny Kerr took the ball from the official under the Saint Joe’s basket and threw it right to a wide open Hawk player at the foul line. The kid drove in and clanked the lay-up.

I turned to the 6’9” white guy next to me Skippy had found hanging onto the back of a fire truck in North Philly, and said, ”John was almost the goat in this game. Holy Christ!” And then there was Skippy in my face!

I had been recruited to Temple on the advice of Skippy who was a Philadelphia Catholic League basketball official. I was the Most Valuable Player in the League, averaged 25 points a game, and was a hot recruit coming in. But knee surgery and a big boned German body whose double recessives were starting to kick in had me looking like a huge mistake. I had turned down football offers to Notre Dame and Michigan to play Big Five Philadelphia basketball but now on the third floor of Temple’s South Hall on a Tuesday afternoon sitting on a metal folding chair looking across the gym at my recently widowed mother I was simply, ”Do you think this is funny guy”.

I would like recount that I said, ”Not as funny as your face” or “get out of my fucking face” but I had been kick started into an identity crises and that mother fucker was as real as the word BIKE on my jock. I just sat there, the high school star turned big fucking non valuable loser.

After the game I said goodbye to my mother who had always told me, ”you are so smart please go find yourself” so I grabbed a ball and for the next two hours I just shot and shot more and I knew I was the best pure shooter in the city but even head coach and former NCAA Hall of Famer Harry Litwack had told me, ”Shooting is a cheap skill. Anyone can shoot. I’m 70 years old and I can still shoot better than you. You think that’s funny?”

I left the gym, passed the John Henry looking guy who sold dress socks at the entrance to the subway at Columbia Avenue and Broad Street and went down and got on a train. I rode all the way north then all the way south back and fourth for hours. There were nothing but dangerous characters on platforms and occasionally one came into my car. I didn’t care and I didn’t think it was funny although normally I’d have found something funny about the whole picture of Mr. Hero and Star turned into instant loser guy.

My discovery of self identity was complete when I realized that the fake I.D. in my wallet of Tom Kirby who was black was actually not me. But also that the bottom line is ‘It’s All Funny and funny is what I do best so fuck Skippy and anyone else in power or with a gun who wants to ask me, ”You think this is funny?”

You had better believe that in an expanding intelliegently designed universe that planet earth is Comedy Central.

Peace

Funny Freddogg

I’m not opposed to laughing then running frantically away from an unanticipated reality that could result in my being assaulted.

Years ago before hitch hiking was akin to “calling all cannibals” my friend Bob and I were thumbing along the Roosevelt Boulevard standing by a traffic light at a busy intersection in Northeast Philly.

An Outlaw Warlock on a Harley Hog pulled up to the red light and idled away his time by goosing his engine . This social misfit was big and hairy and was even wearing a German war helmet. Bob and I observed the no eye contact rule although we were both thinking the same thing: ”What a big fat idiot.”

The light changed and the Warlock hit the gas, popped a major wheelie and came right off the back of his bike and slid across the intersection on his butt. Bob was slapstick hyper sensitive –SHS- with a high pitched laugh someone in the octave range between Frankie Valli and Lou “Two Faces Have I” Christie.

Bob laughed so loud and hard and it was spontaneous and uncontrollable and I saw the Warlock snorting then charging towards us filling up my field of vision and I was “so gone for so long” with Bob at my heels.

Later that summer Bob and I-no we were just friends—we in a Horn and Hardart-an automated Philly phenomena getting macaroni and cheese from a vending machine. In walked a Warlock family with a couple of biker bitches. One of the mommas of these Pappas was easily 350 pounds give or take a pizza cheese steak.

They all sat at a table in the middle of the room, the no eye contact rule was in effect, but we were sneaking glances anyway figuring we were on the wanted list of outstanding warrants for sociopaths in that area.

The woman waddled to her seat with some steaming meatballs and spaghetti and slowly sat down. ”Hindenburg is being tethered to the table” I said to Bob who chocked a little. Then her chair with four chrome legs started to sink slowly but most surly to the tile floor below. We were off and running again with fat assed Warlocks in hot pursuit. I thought, ”Jesus, laughter can get you killed.”

Near the end of the summer Bob and I were working as laborers on a school building in Trenton New Jersey. We sat down to lunch one afternoon and this middle aged brick layer by day and Warlock by night started telling a story about his heroic uncle, a fighter pilot who was shot down in World War Two. Bob was into history, knew some stuff and was very respectful of veterans.

“Didn’t he have a chance to bail out, ”Bob asked.

“His plane was just disabled but he managed to fly in back to the airbase because those guys didn’t need instruments like the faggots today those mother fuckers could fly a play if it only had one wing left. “

I was eating a coconut junior then dousing it with a Franks Black Cherry Wishniak soda and I’ll cop to be remotely attentive to a story that was pretty darn close to being interesting.

“So he landed a burning airplane with only one wing, ”Bob inquired. “So how did he die?”

“He jumped free of the plane and took off but he was run over by a fire truck, ”the guy bellowed.

I’ll admit I didn’t see the humor in the story right away but SHS Bob just uncorked with such a high pitched laugh I was startled and started choking and then being choked but I twisted free and ran after Bob who was heading into Trenton proper where we both caught a train home and laughed at every single passenger whether they were tripping, wheezing, guffawing or just sitting there.

I learned laughter can get you killed so be careful out there and if I walk past you then roll my ankle and crash to the floor in agony please laugh I would expect no less of anyone.

Peace Freddogg

Dreg Dogs of Delmarva is a photojournalism fantasy of mine. Now that I’m down home digital and mobile wireless laptop guy my fantasy has come closer to a reality while all my other fantasies slip further away from the fantasy phylum into the tripping old guy category.
There may also be a section for common cats and another for trashy white people who keep rodents as pets, like ferrets, hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs. I even had a student with a pet pig who slept in her bed but was later killed when he was run over by a speeding chicken truck. I consoled the crying and distraught 15 year old."I'm sorry Anna, was he hogging the road?" I thought,"you ain't funny mother fucker" was a justifiable response.

And let’s not forget bandanna dogs and miniatures and teacups and hybrids like Labradoodles and Puggles. And the fucking rescue dog zealots who will kill you if you look cross eyed at their stupid assed gray hounds. Will somebody give me a break here? Can I get a witness?

Back around 1980 I used to drive the back road to Milton every morning to teach a seventh grade multiple repeaters Geography class. Some of my students actually had driver’s licenses and nicer cars as I drove a 1970 three door Suburban and at times the back door just flung open then shut again.

Everyday I passed these two shacks and with abandoned cars in front and trash and garbage all over the lawn and as near as I can tell people lived there. One cold morning I glanced to my right and there was this Biggy Smalls Lab/Rotty drug dealer dog standing in the doorway like “this is my house” while two humans were out front sleeping inside a car up on three blocks with no back window—and you could make it up but I didn’t. I wanted that picture for my book. I mean no disrespect it’s just an aspect of the culture we live in. Some people are just freaking nasty and I have no trouble accepting that.

That spring two senior girls and students of mine were passing the same yard when they noticed a family jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise moon walking and electric sliding backwards through the maze of trash. They turned around after a series of “oh my gods” to discover a yard cat’s greasy head stuck inside the bottle with the cat still on the other end. They could have been eaten alive by Cujo the Crack Dog who must have been “luded out” that afternoon. One quickly snagged the cat while the other “held the mayo” and they drove off to the state police barracks for advice with their consent.

The irony of a jar headed desk sergeant didn’t escape them and when he offered to break the jar with the butt end of his loaded gun they gave him the require burst of “oh my god’s and I don’t think so’s' and went off to the Vet's office.

The vet mainlined a tranquilizing relaxant into the cat’s vein as the cool cat meowed ”That’s what I’m talking about” and then he used baby oil and Vaseline—too much because the girls didn’t like the way he was looking at them—then popped the cat’s head free.

Hellman’s became a house cat, who lived a long and kitchen counter productive life.

Later that Spring another student of mine was coming out of Rehoboth late at night when some drunks threw a German Shepard puppy out the back window into her windshield. She pulled over, tended to the injured dog, called a few Vets all of whom said, “Call state farm” before unplugging their phones. This girl sat in a dangerous place for 90 minutes until friends came to pick her up and the dog which she kept.

So I’m off to take photos of biters and barkers and dog house roof-roofers. And then I will profile the owners and hope I don’t get mauled or shot.

Peace Freddogg

The University of Maryland Terrapins recently came up with a slogan “Fear the Turtle” which is kind of funny because unless you’re a naked swimmer in a river of snappers you just ain’t afraid of turtles or is you?

Two summers ago my dog Jesse came upon a large snapping turtle that just appeared in the middle of a dry field. This turtle was bigger than a manhole cover. Jesse circle and barked and acted nuts but she doesn’t possess the blood lust of a killer. The turtle didn’t retract but just waited with an attitude like “Get closer bitch” and I’ll be hanging on you like an unwanted pregnancy.

The next morning Jesse and I popped out through the garage people door and that turtle seen a mile away the day before was waiting for us in the driveway. I stepped out of the way like Duce Staley on a guard trap. It was eerie, being stalked by a freaking turtle.

Some years back I was at the Philadelphia zoo and who stops and looks at the giant land turtle natural habitat exhibit except me? A zoo keeper with a sullen attitude was rapping a large turtle’s shell with a push broom handle. It was 2 p.m. hot and dusty, and a crew of little black kids from a Philly school stopped and many said, ”Look at that man beating down that turtle, that ain’t right.”

I asked the guy what he was doing and he said he only had two hours to get each of four thousand pound turtles back inside so he could go home at 4 p.m. ‘Do they have a concept of inside, ”I asked. ”I mean they are nature’s mobile homes or trailer trash if you like. Do they have a sense of direction? “

The vibrations agitate them and they move but rather aimlessly and occasionally I have to put a boot up their butt to turn them around.”

Turtle butt? I never heard that used in a sentence before?’ I didn’t say Turtle butt, dickhead, you did.”

Ah you’re a regular raconteur, the uppity professional turtle agitator. Hey get me a cup of turtle soup and make it snappy!”

Back in 1964 I was a freshman for the first of a few times in a history class on Western Civilization at Temple University. The class was packed with smart Jewish kids and some herringboned dweeb professor along with my dumb ass, a virtual snapping sea turtle on the sand flats of knowledge.

I sat for weeks without any interest and without any clue. A class discussion on Roman warfare was underway one morning and the professor asked “What did the Romans called the attack formation where they moved as one covered all around by shields with their lances sticking out.

I raised my hand but not to take the obvious joke. ‘It was called a turtle,” I said, standing up. The entire room erupted in volcanic laughter. Little Jewish guys had tears in their eyes. The laughs kept coming like lava down the mountain.

‘What do you mean a turtle, the professor asked, with an attitude like “I got this—let me make sport of this obvious dumb ass jock”?

Some wired up day student that weighed about 100 pounds said, ”Professor it was called a Phalanx.” More laughter ensued. I was about to launch my own phalanx assault because I don’t mind being stupid and I don’t mind people laughing about it but there is a limited time period that I’m willing to accept being the designated moron.

‘I’ve got your phalanx right here Boney Maroni! If you knew anything about Charlton Hesston and Ben Hur you’d know that attack/retract formation was called “The Turtle”.

Ironically the professor kept me after class and told me I was hostile and that I should concentrate on sports and not intimidate “the real” students and that he never heard of “The Turtle” and he knew everything about Roman warfare.

I thought that was cold blooded. And that is my Turtle triology.

Peace Freddogg

An alcoholic is any person who drinks more than I do. An addiction is any behavior a person can’t stop that I personally have no problem avoiding.

I was recently sitting along a salt water tidal canal In Lewes on a late afternoon weekday drinking a Coors Light and talking to some young people who were former students and didn’t mind getting raging drunk every once in awhile say once or twice a week.

What caught my attention is when they looked down the bar and the row of tables next to the bar and said,” Fredman, some of these people are here everyday. How do they do it? How do they function and get up and go to work everyday? How do they afford it?”

I said, ”I don’t know and waved to the woman behind the bar who cracked open "my beer" and passed me another Coors Light which is what I drink when I’m not drinking.

I’ll never forget the moment 30 years ago in Burke's Irish bar in Philly on a Friday afternoon as a bunch of young teachers raced past hour four of Happy Hour. A young wife appeared and sat at our table. Her English teacher husband was engrossed at the bumper pool table. She asked us all a very serious question: “Do you guys think Tom is an alcoholic?”

The thing is he was definitely an alcoholic while we were only situational take it or leave it drink too much to enhance our socialization skills morons. I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic, Tom knew he wasn’t an alcoholic but all we drunks of that moment knew Tom was an alcoholic.

Little Jewish Howard looked at Italian girl and young wife Carol and said, ”Abso-fucking-lutely on Tom and we’ll all drink to that.” Howard was real smart and considered his joke high ball humor but Carol lost it and never talked to any of us again because she was starting out along a long journey with a loquacious and clever alcoholic funnyman that was funny to everyone but her.

A few Friday's past the alcoholic rekoning I was sitting next to Tom as his assistant basketball coach during a basketball game. Because it was Friday night our Happy Hour had to be postponed. Our team was comfortably ahead in the fourth quarter when point guard Odell Hart was called for traveling. Tom stood up, “Bad Call! Bad Call!” Then he looked at me and said, ”Speaking of bad calls, I have to call my wife. Take over.”

Tom came back a few minutes later, ”We are cleared for Happy Hour. I don’t need a drink but I sure would like one.”

What did you tell Carol?" " I told her you needed somebody to drink with. I told her you had a problem and I wanted to discuss it with you.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she already knew that but I shouldn’t expect you to admit it.”

We got to Burke’s bar and ordered two Heinekens. I loved the way cold drops of water rolled slowly down the green bottle. Tom looked at me and said, ”Do you want a shot of Corby’s?”

“What is Corby’s, ”I asked? “Whisky,” Tom said, and intercepting the bartender said, ”Get my alcoholic friend and me a shot of whiskey."

“Here’s to denying all realities, ”Tom said, as we toasted and got toasted and celebrated still being in the first half our lives.”

What’s the moral? I’m 60 and still here and still a social drinker so give me a plaque. Tom is in the throes of long term recovery and completely sober. I am sorry for his bad fortune.

Hey bartender,"One more and I'm outta here!"

Peace Freddogg

Back in 1971 I was teaching at a private school for emotionally disturbed kids on the Philadelphia Mainline. The school was housed inside a Mansion on an estate. There are farm animals about. Dr. Barry Hershone a Jewish businessman arrived for work everyday by landing a helicopter on the football field. Sometimes he arrived during practice. I was the football coach. Hershone would wave his arms as blocking dummies blew away and once I could read his lips as he was screaming, ”Get the fuck out of the way”

This one morning I am in a small room with a door leading to the outside teaching 12 kids what I called “United States History for the Criminally Insane.”

The was a big headed boy named Frank who looked like “Frankenstein In Middle School” complete with singe marks on his neck. Any question you asked Frank was answered half way through by the word “Hydroelectric.” Frank was literally and cruelly short circuited after a high tension wire had fallen across the hood of a convertible driven by his father. The dad grabbed the door handle to “exit the vehicle” in cop parlance and got fried in front of ball park frank. It was arc of the covenant residual synapse shutdown for poor young Frank who never moved as his father went crispy critter and just kept getting crispier.

Also in this class was a clinically hyperactive tall and muscular blond boy named Mike with zero body fat. This kid was so hyped and piped you could see all the blood vessels at the surface of his skin. His head looked like a wiring harness inside the control panel for a trailer park. Back before A.D.D. hyperactivity was called M.B.D. translated as Minimal Brain Dysfunction.

There was Bruce who during a particular class took a fine tipped pen and drew roaches and ticks and rats all over the Mayflower. They were crawling in and out of ears and noses of the crew while rats chewed off parts of their legs. Bruce made no eye contact and I once asked the Vice Principal, a chain smoking math wizard who suffered from Night terrors during his waking hours, as to the particular behavioral designation used to describe the anti social and mal adaptive behaviors of Bruce. Van didn’t bat an eye. “Look in the cabinet over there filed under ‘Fucking Piece of Shit.”

And finally the ring master himself, a certified sociopath at just 12 years of age: “Ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Frank Zito!”

So this once day a goat from the nearby farm walks into the room and down aisle number two. Hyper Mike leaps up onto his desk top and screams, ”There’s a mother fucking goat in here!”

I exclaim, ”What is the chance?” and Fab Fried Frankie screams ‘Hydroelectric!”

Bruce draws a goat on the Mayflower with a hatchet embedded in his skull. Frank Zito takes a lighter from his pocket and wants to set the goat on fire then laugh but not get blamed for it.

I tell them all to be quiet—not a word—and to look down at their books. They comply immediately and then I scream, ”What’s wrong with you people? You’re looking at textbooks and there’s a Mother Fucking Goat in the room. Let’s absorb and appreciate the moment. Trust me this will never happen again. "

The bell rang and I saw Zito follow Bruce out the door because Bruce was folding and unfolding a 20 dollar bill covered with perfectly drawn silverfish, what my grandmother called potato bugs.

I followed them like an unmarked police car because I knew Bruce was the socio-pathetic target of Zito.

Out in the court yard Bruce folded and unfolded his 20 over and over. Zito started to skulk towards his target like a house cat on a nut hatch. Then Bruce just dropped the 20 dollar bill down a storm drain and walked away. Game, set, match for Bruce! “Fucking with the sociopath” would make a great board game I thought.

About 35 years later I am watching the news out of Salisbury Maryland and I hear “cop killer” and think, ”Oh man, that’s not good.”

It turns out this local crazy dude down by Queen Ann's County in Centerville, Maryland is blasting his stereo so loud that nearby trailers are rattling like a C5 was landing in the side yard that they don’t have. The cops called the phone number but there was no answer.

Two young policemen went up to the side porch pulled open a barely hinged aluminum storm door and knocked on the interior door.

“Frank turn down the music! Yo Frank turn down the music!”

The knew the local whacko inside that trailer was the clinically paranoid, alcohol and drug addicted sociopath Frank Zito but what they didn’t know was that Frank had a double barreled loaded shotgun trained at the door.

Who knows what voices prompted Frank Zito to pull the trigger twice but he did and two young cops lay dead.

I fell out of my chair. The twelve year old Zito, the Captain of what the Vice Principal had called the “All Solar Team of Clinically Disturbed Adolescents” had lost his mind as an adult and became a cop killer.

Zito went to jail where he sat for a year in solitary with a cast of imaginary friends and finally one of them killed him. He did leave a note that had a drawing of a goat with a hatchet in his skull and along with one word, ”Hydroelectric!”

Peace Freddogg
http://www.mdcops.org/news/zito_guilty_in_officers.htm

Zito was real although certain elements of this factual fictional story were embellished although he did die in prison I have no knowledge of a note. But Zito was my student when he was 12. Condolences to the families of the fallen officers.

Growing up I wanted to be an airplane pilot. I had an uncle who flew for Allegheny Airlines-now U.S Air-- and twice a week on a run to a small airport in Northeast Philadelphia he would fly over our brand new suburban Cape Cod. It was a green and silver twin prop-no,not the house. Uncle Donnie would tip one way then the other and my mother would always smile like Donnie was crazy and could get in trouble for going off course, dropping down and playing wing tipping games for the amusement of his dumb ass relatives.

I went to the Willow Grove Naval Air Station and stared at Jets. I wanted to land on carriers and get in dog fights. I had airplane stickers on the walls in my room. Whatever happened to Mohawk Airlines?

My uncle once picked me up on a mail stop somewhere near Trenton. I came up into the cockpit and as the plane climbed and Uncle Donnie looked for Route One below. "I just follow the highway to the Two Guys department store then turn left straight into Newark airport ,"he said. "If they close early and turn off the neon I don't know how we'll get there."

I pointed to a flickering light on the instrument panel. "How come that light is doing that, "I asked. "I don't know Donnie said. "But if it comes on and stays on it means we're all going to die."

That's when I learned that just like my mother the nurse loved gallows humor about hospitals and sick people so did her pilot brother love jokes that involved crashing planes and fireballs.

So I did some piper cub flying, a few stall maneuvers, but refused to study my math in school not because it was beyond me but because I was an asshole. I often wondered what would have happened if I had been the guy in the Captain's suit walking through airports my whole life.

My uncle ended up losing his mind and having a mental breakdown throwing large pieces of furniture out of hotel windows when the big Jets came into play because they fly themselves and every pilot knows, fly is a euphemism for fuck.

I remember in his wingless convalescence Donnie was watching the new United Commercial where a sexy stewardess stands in the narrow aisle stretches out her arms puts a hand on each backrest then turns sideways revealing large authentic breasts and says in a soft voice, "Fly Me! Come to United and Fly Me!"

Donnie sat there bug eyed. I was just a kid but I got it. It was scary. The lusting grounded pilot uncle. And how phallic is a plane and no wonder Africans thought they were gods and offered Ivory tusks to placate them.

"Fear of Flying", sounds like a doomsday book. No more flying, no more people,turkey basters not withstanding

I believe I can fly-for the next four hours I can touch the sky..Enough with the jokes!

Peace Captain Freddogg frustrated flier at your service

Temple Line Coach Dave Defillipo spoke to us-non skilled types- on the practice field at 16th street after practice deep in the heart of the ghetto before ghettos were cool. It was the fall of 1965. In fact, North Philly was about to erupt in riotous fire and looting but the good news was 19 inch portable black and white televisions could be purchased by the truckload at 29 dollars a piece.

A multi racial and ethnic group of teammates gathered around a stout and muscular man who was too Italian for the new millennium 35 years down the road. We all just really liked and enjoyed each other and generally an urban football team is the last place to look for bigotry and racism.

“There is stuff going on in this city but I want to tell you all something right now, ”Coach said. “There will be no racism among the players I coach. As far as I’m concerned every young man standing before me is already an Italian.”

We all laughed.

“Well just yesterday I stepped onto a city bus and the driver pointed towards the back. I told him, ’you don’t understand, I’m Italian. He told me to get off!”

People today are so politically correct as to border on the chicken shit no offense to chickens.

There was an article in the Washington Post about a 62 year old woman, a principal at the flagship elitist Thomas Jefferson School in Northern Virginia who will walk off into forced retirement because at a PTA meeting she made a statement linking cheating at the school as more prevalent among a certain ethnic group. He is the woman’s attempt to back up and beep and the same time.

"I sincerely and unequivocally believe that ethnicity has absolutely no relationship to ethics or behavior. . . . The appearance of bias is inappropriate in any setting, especially an educational one."

Hey bitch stand up and represent! Run and the posse will chase! Stand in front of your comments. What if they’re true? And the ball-less Post completely avoided mentioning what freaking ethnic group she was talking about. Was it those sneaky Asian Americans? I mean how to you come from a language that reads in institutionalized dyslexia and then get perfect SAT scores. You know them bitches are cheating you just don’t know how but anyone who can invent an abacus can deceive anyone else.

And here is the closing Irony. Four years ago this woman emerged with the job from a stagnant pool of retired educators having been discovered by a 20 thousand dollar a year Head Hunter. Head Hunter? Remember Cannibal and the Head Hunters? Nah, nah, nah, nah!” Not to be confused with the Fine Young Cannibals:”She drives me crazy and I can’t help myself.”

Now I’ll tell you what I know. Overachieving Casper is the cheater having cleverly deflected guilt upon anyone with a higher melanin count.

A flaccid and flabby young adult woman with multiple body piercings, some in places only labeled in medical school textbooks, who shows off her lack of self respect to an audience of drunks needs some serious intervention if not forcible commitment to protect her from herself. She certainly doesn’t command the title, ”Exotic Dancer.”

South American parrots of the Amazon rainforest are exotic. Fat and out of shape American exhibitionists who perform for an hourly wage aren’t exotic. They are sick and nasty and everyone knows that even those in attendance.

I’m afraid of these people. I’m afraid they will look at me and I’ll look back and get locked into a temporary exchange or words that can only be broken by my saying, ”Back off bitch and buy your own dam Spritzer.”

There are even porn star conventions in our country that get covered by the media like celebrity galas. By the way, I’m not outraged or appalled, just perplexed. These people are “nasty” why does it ever go beyond that?

I opened the door to my college roommate’s bedroom once and two people I never saw before were rolling around entangled with each other in Mutual of Omaha animalistic ecstasy. I gave a frightened shout and threw the jeep in reverse. I had to keep mumbling and reassuring myself to fend off hysterical blindness.

Now I’m off to the pet store. Is a macaque a monkey or a bird? What about a macaw?

Peace May the pigmy marmoset be with you.

freddogg

I went into a book store yesterday and bought two books. “Everyman” by Phillip Roth I just sat down and read. It was 180 pages. I knew a millionaire and talented stylist like Roth could write that book in a week then have it sold and packaged. The book is about how living begins the road to dying. It’s about the inevitable breakdown of the body. It began and ended in a cemetary.
The other book was by T.R. Pearson , “GLAD NEWS of the NATURAL WORLD”. Pearson is to writing as Miles Davis is to jazz. I read his stuff for the challenge, to wash the words over my brain to help me become a better writer. Here’s a sample “I can’t help but believe I was intended for better use than I’ve gotten. I’m largely wasted, only spottily engaged and, for a robust 34 year old , almost criminally unambitious.”

But mostly when in book stores I yell back at Best Sellers because I am a relentless writer and I can see that in most cases marketability and talent has little to do with each other. There are the books by athletes as told to sports writers. There are the books by historians about athletes then there is John Feinstein who writes a best selling sports book every three months. And let's not even begin with diet and health books. I may write one "Hey Fat Ass!" go on Ophra and tell her,"You're still fat bitch!"

And how about celebrities who write children’s books what is that all about? Mandonna's Like a Virgin" trip to the Philly Zoo until she met the Silver Back "Power Tool."

So a trip through the book store is tough enough for me but yesterday inside a little store on Rehoboth Avenue it got tougher because sitting around in a circle drinking flavored coffee was a small group of haughty pseudo sophisticates one with a laptop the others in rapt attention was a local writers group.

I know that because I asked the “I work in a bookstore so I’m grunge garbed even though I’m 40 “women behind the counter, ”Who are those people?” I wanted to go “Jerky Boys” on her and asked “Who are those dip shits” and she would tell me in all seriousness never hearing “dip shits”.

‘They are “The Local Writers” group, ”she said. “There’s a flyer on the wall that list their schedule of appearances.”

“You don’t say? Local writers group hey? And how does one become a “local writer that no one ever heard of?”

I didn’t like it. I knew for certain these people were “academics” talking about written passages that no one ever reads. I wanted to sit down with them and ask, ”what are you dip shits talking about?” But alas it was into the 4runner with Jesse Dog who if she could talk would have said, ”Thank you for not getting Morley and Me and don’t forget my WaWa doughnut on the way home, dip shit.”

Peace Freddogg

"You can look out the window get mad and get madder ,throw your hands in the air and say what does it matter, but it don’t do no good to get angry so help me I know.
Cause a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter you become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there, wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow.” John Prine

A lifetime sport for me is to throw gasoline on the morally outraged, those people who clearly see conspiracies inside every social structure. I hear it all the time, relentless complaining from those making good money and living better than 99 percent of the people in the history of this planet have lived.

I don’t even mind it when these people come after me or more likely talk about me behind my back because I can take great solace knowing they are miserable and even dream grouchy. You can hear them mumbling into the pillow, ”mother fucker, it just ain’t fair.”

Here’s the reality of adult wellness and something your mother begins telling you when you are old enough to shout, ”It ain’t fair!”

“Life’s not fair. I have to wax that grimy kitchen floor that you’ve been walking on for the last week. I exchange vacuum cleaner bags, I’m an M.V.P at the Food Lion and I was proud and actually was expecting a trophy but then I found out everyone was M.V. P. and…”

“Mom, I’m just a kid. I just want my friend, whose been living here for the last four days because her mom’s a drunk, to sleep over again. I don’t know anything about vacuum cleaner bags.”

But all seriousness aside, the reality of adult life is that the spoils don’t go to the smartest or most talented although that can happen but not often because talented people are too smart to play hard they have better things not to do.

So maybe your boss truly is an idiot. What’s your point? Allowing primates to take control of a group without a physical fight is a distortion of nature, it is tampering with evolution. And if you care then please go for the control, kick some ass then just shut up.

I recently counseled a failed everything white boy who is a fine athlete and is the hands down his own pants winner of the too lazy to get out of his own way award.

I told the kid there are three scenarios to explain his problem and one is worse than the next.

"There are three explanations for your underachievement,"I compassionately explained. First is that you are lazy and disinterested and you not only don’t hand in your work but have no clue what the work is that you don’t hand in.

Second is the drug factor .You’re out there representing as marijuana, cocaine and ecstasy guy and it has robbed you of your motivation.

And third and absolutely the worst!! You really are that dumb!!

But maybe he is that smart because homey don’t care and has a kicking girlfriend to play with while his peers are listening to “boys to men” speeches from middle aged fat white coaches.

I don’t know but like the song “Girls just want to have fun” the same goes for me. I truly am happy to be anywhere.

What about you? Are you happy, morose, sullen, pensive, a pain in the ass? What kind of attitude do you bring to the game of life?

Peace Freddogg