Freddogg Off The Chain

About 35 years ago the post dinner living in an apartment routine was to watch the local Philly news on black and white television then settle in for the Untouchables narrated by Walter Winchell and starring Robert Stack as Elliot Ness and Neville Brand as Al Capone.
One Christmas season the program began with street corner Santa ringing a bell on the Chicago sidewalk. Three year old Dave a very verbal first child started to chirp.
“Santa! There’s Santa. Santa Bell. Why? There’s Santa.”
My wife said to me,”Do you think it’s a good idea that he watches the Untouchables every night after dinner?”
“I don’t care”I said. “I’m watching it. Let him go bury his head in the toy box.”
Just then a car with running boards came speeding around the corner. And of course there was a hit man on the running boards with a Tommy gun and he shot Santa full of holes as it turns out Santa was really rival hit man ‘Stromboli Sal.’
“What happened Santa, Davey asked?
“Santa just got waxed! Swiss cheese baby! God I love this program!”
“Santa Swiss cheese” “that’s right son, and that’s no bologna.”
And so 2008 a guy puts on a Santa outfit straps a gas tank to his leg along with semi automatic pistol goes to the house of his estranged in laws and X dog, knocks on the door, an eight year old answers and he shoots her in the face (she survives with flesh wound) but nine people inside are not so lucky.
This story is so ugly that a movie is unthinkable and Self Inflicted Santa went beyond crazy –premeditated Santa Savagery- what, he looks in the mirror like Dinero in Taxi Driver “You talking to me? Are you talking to me?”
Human behavior, the old explanation of, the lord works in mysterious ways and ours is not to reason why but maniacal Santa shooting little people in the face? There is no good way to spin that but you can bet the Catholics noticed that Saint Nick is some German protestant boogie man.
I could give the mass sermon to close this case. Everyone stands up, offers each other the international no idea sign of the shoulder shrug,then moves on to the parish hall for sandwiches and talk of NFL playoffs. What else is there to say?

Why do people who achieve some modicum of fame and money to go with it make stupid decisions like being drunks and drug users and perhaps spouse and/or girlfriend batterers? And peep this, the face betrays all lies I don’t care who you are if you burn the candle at both ends your face ends up in the house of wax.
Vanilla “ICE BABY” is my boy his one hit rocks old school like no other. I love watching black people watch white people get down to that song. At first Ice was cool like a cube but then he melted but wanted to stay in the Tupperware tray of fame with his stupid haircut low self esteem distorted self image self.
O.J. excluding that likely double murder personality blip just makes me laugh and the more infamous he becomes the more money my lithograph purchased at an art auction 20 years ago the only question remaining is “why was I at an art auction and did I steal the art on the way out the door? “

And the CSI dude sleeping in his car by the side of the road In Palm Springs and pleading guilty to possession of cocaine and ecstasy which means he was guilty of a lot more like that haircut.

I thinking of stealing a 52 inch high definition plasma flat screen just by holding it over my head like a thin crust party pizza and walking past the security girl with an attitude and over those dumb-assed sensors that only go neck high. The heart would pound the blood pressure would elevate my entire reputation on the line and if I’m caught I claim adrenaline addiction.

Early Christmas morning I went to WaWa looking for pudding, grandson Davey’s favorite. Two women in Santa hats were leaning against a side wall used as a wind break to catch a smoke. They looked somewhat harsh but I least they were working and I wasn’t as I turned to the dogs and said,” Nice!”
Inside were more Santa hats and a hefty portion of not right looking white people. I thought my eyes were deceiving me but there was this guy about 40 years old wearing a fleece warm up jacket that looked like he rolled on a rug in a 40 dog house as the zipper was pulled half way up to his belly shelf.
I stared some more because he was in the out of focus zone where near meets far sighted and there was this black matted chest hair escaping like crab grass around a boat trailer that has been left unmoved in the yard for the last 16 years.
This looking like a hijacker of a chicken truck dude was just plain nasty looking and all the nasty people waiting in line grimaced at each other and nodded “that dude is nasty.”
Scud Santa sails through the air in fleece warm up and matted hair and as he soared behind mangy reindeer up into the air the crowd on the ground shouted “that bitch don’t care!”

You know the Brady Quinn workout commercial that ends with him saying “Now I’m done.”
I’ve been finding pictures of myself playing basketball in the Penn Palestra going back to 1964 and I know hardly anyone cares how good I was but I’m motivated to tell my story after writing stories about other people for the last 25 years.
I think I must be psychologically damaged or needy but not really because I know I’m not that guy. But I am a person who believes that most people do good stuff everyday and that’s it’s o.k. to reflect and say” I did a good job with that” as long as you don’t look for affirmation from a friend especially if you brought up the subject in the first place.
Number 54 I am finger rolling in a basket versus four helpless defenders and number 55 I am up and over 6’9” Maurice who dunked in my face earlier in the season back when no one did that.
If you have picture highlights of yourself from better days or yesterday you would like me to post send them along because I am the image maker.

Freddogg

Picture is Dot Frederick with her problem Child David in row house Philly

Picture David and Checkers the calico cat. Checkers was a biter.

picture is Tommy in the army and dog Tippy.

Below links to tracy chapman song



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wijqg5KD5tc&NR=1






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNaNN9c-Hk4





I hear beautiful voices that talk to me like Wissahickon cool mountain water washing over the muddy shorelines of my memory bank as I breathe in and out under the IPOD doing my Gold’s Gym “available apparatus” workout.
Last weekday morining I was swimming in a pool of depression going from Tracy Chapman to the Cowboys Junkies singing the Hank Williams classic “I’m so lonesome I could Cry.”

Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry
Hank was a seriously messed up individual.

But it was Chapman’s new “I used to sing for you” humming lullaby that brought me back to 1963 standing by the bedside of my Father who was dying at the age of 41, emaciated and done in by a virulent case of multiple sclerosis.
My grandmother Rose sat in the rocker and hummed. She rocked and hummed as her fifth child and only son was soon to depart the earthly dimension to the non bodied spiritual world and that I understood.
I also absorbed the image of Tommy’s girlfriend her head on the bed a woman who nursed him through years of his illness and raised three kids and a variety of dumb pets with names like Luigi, Ox, Skungi, Checkers and Cheney State. Mom was just 38 years old and the part of her life she cared about the most was shutting down.
I listened to Tracy thought of my grandmother and parents and the sad story and willingly backstroked through the pool of depressing memories because it is nature’s way of soothing and healing without medication.
Even at 16 I was the “empathy it ain’t about me” person as I looked around the room and felt sadness for the lives that created me but really had lots more fun before I showed up.
John Prine wrote: “I never will remember what I never did forget.”

Eight years and George Bush had never looked so cool. Some stupid Iraqi journalist stands up and throws a shoe-a high hard fast shoe-right at Bush’s head and he just moves to the side like Ali in his prime and flashes that stupid self assured smerk before easily bobbing away from shoe number two.
And then old white guys emerge from back doors like a Marx brothers movie. Where were the young studs with cat quick reflexes? Take a shoe for the president and five minutes later it’s a million dollar book deal.
Wouldn’t it have been great if a shoe riot broke out inside the tent? What if Bush weren’t so quick and took a hoof to the mouth. The ultimate insult in Iraq, we are told, but you know Bush would have been on the phone to Cheney,” Bring down the shock and awe just wait until I’m safely back inside the green zone. Throw a shoe at my head? I don’t think so!”
One year teaching some dirty white boy threw a desk at me when my back was turned. It bounced off the blackboard. He ran from the room and for a minute I thought of chasing so I could beat him into another standard deviation to the left of normal.
But if an adult threw a shoe at my head how would I react. Not as quickly as the president. He is a shoe dodging all star.