Chuck A. Stetson's Open Salon Blog

Hey OS... Trig Palin Has Toe Jam Football: Is There A Cure?

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:11:23 -0500

There's something happening here and what is ain't exactly clear. The Crescent City is going all Kansas City BBQ; New England's clam chowder is about to boil. The Saints aren't going to bless the Patriots. Sounds football? Perhaps, but it can also be religiosity supreme. Trig thinks so. He sometimes thinks too much. You know, Trig needs coolin', baby, I'm not foolin'. I'm gonna wish him back to schoolin'. I hope. I pray... on November 30th, the Patriots by a field goal over the Saints? If not, I'm hitting them streets a runnin' with my cheap sunglasses.

Let's play some football!!!

The quaterbacks

Tom Brady

Who?

the head coaches

the assistant coaches

New England cheerleaders

new orleans' cheerleaders

some players

halftime time entertainment

for the woman who hate football

for the men who hate football

back to the game

a streaker

the fans cheer

one fan boos

I guess there should be some type of bet between Trig and me. Being he's from Kansas City, I figure...

Being I'm from Connecticut, I figure...

Are you ready, Trig...?

For Irritated Mother

and I hope I found Clive?

Viggo emailed me this pic for Sarah

My mother wants me to write her Obituary

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:11:59 -0500

Sometimes sharing a spaghetti dinner with family is a fun thing. I get to be a reminiscing fool, telling lies, insisting on the truth of those lies as I watch my brother Chris smirk our father’s smirk, listen to my sister Claudia break out her, “no sah” [sir] Boston-style, hear my brother-in-law, the Colonel, promise to demote me in his imaginary army and ignore my nephew Michael ignoring himself. My mother, the matriarch of angst, likes to cry, saying she misses my three other sisters, and that she lived a terrible life that she won’t discuss, not wanting to burden her children with the details we have memorized. I smile knowing Mom has more to say. She does; she comes out with her eightieth birthday wish—my present. “Chucky, I want you to write my obituary.”

“What?”

My brother chokes on a piece of turkey sausage.

My nephew, all quiet up until that point, asks himself to pass the bread.

My sister looks at the Colonel: he salutes her.

“I don’t have long,” my mother replies in that way that implies much guilt has to yet to be served.

“Chris?”

My brother shakes his baldhead reminding me that I’m the writer in the family.

“Claudia?”

My sister is on the cell phone to my sister Judy, breaking the Never call during the Patriots game rule.

“Mike?”

My nephew asks himself to pass the butter.

“Colonel?”

My brother-in-law promotes me to Major.

“Mom?”

My mother wipes a faux tear from her sunken cheek. She looks at me with that look that only a mother has: the, I nearly died giving birth to you look.

“I wrote it twenty years ago.”

My brother snorts.

My sister curses voice mail: she calls my sister Amy, bypassing my sister Cheri in the pecking order of the sisterhood.

My nephew passes himself the salt.

The Colonel demotes me to corporal; I remind him he looks like a puffy hamster past his prime. He demotes me to private.

“Always with the jokes,” my mother says. She looks at my brother, who is looking at my sister, who is looking at the Colonel, who is looking at my nephew, who is staring at himself through the saltshaker. “You’re not funny.”

“Chris?”

My brother is on his iPhone, looking up hamster pictures.

“Claudia?”

My sister is pulling out her white hair—again, it’s the voice mail.

“Colonel?”

He promotes me to Captain, promising me a bronze star if I stop the enemy from dumping leaves on his lawn.

“Mike?”

My nephew reminds himself not to remember any of the conversation; he asks himself to put more Parmesan cheese on his spaghetti.

“Are you going to write my damn obituary, or do I have to die and comeback and haunt you?” my mother asks in her way that is not really asking; she’s threatening in a way that’s not really threatening, just booking me on another guilt trip.

“What’s for dessert?”

My brother wants a piece of pumpkin cheesecake he hasn’t made yet.

My sister wants to put her cell phone down the disposal.

The Colonel wants another drink of Colonel Juice—Old Crow Bourbon, neat not stirred. He doesn’t demote me.

My nephew decides he doesn’t like to make decisions that he doesn’t agree with.

“We’ll sit down and write it after Thanksgiving,” my mother says.

“But what if you die before then?”

My brother recreates my father’s smirk.

My sister calls my sister Cheri.

The Colonel gives me a Section Eight discharge. He says something about the idiot returning to the savant.

My nephew wants discuss amongst himself the benefits of going vegan.

“Then don’t you write about me; I’ll be too upset to read it.” My mother salutes me with one finger.

And there’s nothing like family….

She was no Angel of Harlem

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:11:21 -0500

Last night I dreamed of Ramona. It was the kind of dream that palpitates the heart beyond hypertension-drive, ransacking the bladder void of all semblable semiarid sensations, creating a remembered mushy bottom-feeling from your early childhood. Why Ramona? It’s not like I’ve forgotten about her—the exorcism was successful, but come the holiday season when family functions are performed perfunctory masterpieces of illusion, I get all sappy in the REM hoping for a reprieve—a parole from probability.

I met Ramona after I broke it off Shannon, a twenty year-old Satan-loving Dungeon n’ Dragons queen highly skilled in oral sex and figuring out my ATM pin number and many variations of—I mentioned the oral sex, right? But, this dream related is about Ramona, Sally, Michael, Billy, Annie and Noreen. They are all Ramona, bless her identity that split to some dissocial dissociative identity never to be ordered from realities menu. And when I think of her in that dream, again sitting in back of the sheriff’s van, handcuffed and shackled, singing songs and screaming voodoo curses in cultured Creole that sounds more like rabid-Romanian with a slight hint of Boston-Brahman, well, I think of this fat pussycat that came over for tea and little white mice… I cringe knowing I promised myself I’d never think of that again—the fat pussycat, well….

I guess Ramona has been building up inside of me for oh I don't know how long. You know when we made love and she whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry baby, everything will turn out alright.”, I’d wait for Sally to chime in; her lesbian lust hated me. But that didn’t worry me, because I put all sharp objects downstairs in the kitchen after I tied up Ramona with fancy leather restraints reinforced with rubbery rebar. I had to do that, I believe in safe sex. And that Billy was a dangerous five year-old serial-killer-in- waiting: he [Ramona] liked stepping on ants and trapping cockroaches in peanut butter. Man, I bought a lot of peanut butter in the Ramona days; my home was cockroach-free, but I couldn’t convince Billy, because Michael, the pathological-lying prodigy from Prague, argued that cockroaches were also vegetable, mineral and venereal. I hated fucking Michael. In the last sentence, I use fucking as an adjective, but there were times when it was a verb. Many times the personality swapping happened as fast as a pulpit warrior screamed amen… halleluiah. Back to the dream….

I recall telling Ramona she was yesterday’s girl: I wasn’t the same guy she used to know. Annie, always intrusive during the evening news, came forward questioning my logic, blowing it all to smithereens. She said I was just a player. Annie thought she knew me from Monopoly and Chutes and Ladders, which Billy, the serial-killer-in-waiting, liked to play when Ramona took a shower before sex and serious taco bingeing. Annie claimed she was psychic—the reincarnation of Estelle Asmodelle. I never was inclined to correct her by revealing Estelle’s demise had yet to occur. In my own loveable way, I asked Annie to stop messin’ round. She always smiled her toothless smile. That smile confused me; Ramona had wonderfully crooked teeth; Noreen the nun who only cloistered her personality with demented Rodney Dangerfield impressions, wore the dentures; Billy and Michael rarely smiled; Sally just spit a lot.

All this reminiscing has me wanting that dream dropping back into the subconscious closet. I fear clostridium clouding my sanity; I’m needing to breath a big sigh. Relief? Maybe. Dodge reality’s dodge ball? Always. But I realize Ramona and company were so distressed—standing on the brink of emptiness. I sympathize; I digress. But she was no angel of Harlem, so this cat is all Big D boogie woogie until I dream again.

What's ya goin' to do...?

My ex-wife number two dislikes Yoko Ono

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:11:51 -0500

My ex-wife number two called me out of habit to engage in contentious conversation. She likes to tweak my irk. That’s okay, ‘cause my irk is often lonely. I know this because many think I don’t know that I know this. It’s like the sunshine bringing down a snowman on a humid August day. But I can’t tell my ex-wife number two that; instead, I tell her my irascible iridescence is blinding. She tells me to go fuck myself. I remind her I did a lot of that when we were married. She laughs. I snort. My XY chromosomes tickle my testicles. I mention this chemistry rekindled; she reminds me it’s biological. Her XX chromosomes are so bitchy.

My ex-wife number two dislikes Yoko Ono. Yoko had nothing to do with our breaking up, but you can’t tell that to my ex-wife number two unless you want to provoke her wrath beyond obscenities and promised neutering. Oh yes… I can’t mention the neutering either—I mean her already neutering me—because she’ll come over, cut off my nut-sack, and reconstruct into a wooly sock—unpaired. I like my socks to come in twos, so I tell her that her heavy voice sounds like it lost weight. This placates her. I fart in relief. She hears it. Her lecture on my inability control my bodily functions is brief, but to the point. I wish all her lectures were brief and to the point.

Inevitably, the children get brought into the conversation. I try not to talk about the boys, but I ramble when I’m nervous and rambling, stuttering, imitating William Shatner or scratching your butt—how she knows that [the butt scratching] without Skype?—is not allowed. So, I flip her the unseen bird. I’m crazy like that. Ask my children.

Our conversations usually crescendo right before it’s my turn to counter-point with well thought out thoughts made up on the spot. I hate that. I want to remind my ex-wife number two that in all the years we were together, I hate not being able to express a well-conceived cogent thought. I tell her I like pooping by the river. She questions my sobriety. I question her question. We debate. I pray. I release a silent fart. She knows. I cringe.

What’s the point of failed relationships lingering like a lump of linguini in your esophagus? I don’t have an answer. I ask my ex-wife number two for my answer. She ponders in a series of loud exhales. I know those exhales well. Many times I fascinated about them during sex, only to find out what I thought were orgasms were just cramps—hers: sometimes mine. But we were in love. How else do you explain the knife wounds—nicely scarred over all keloid-like—near my heart. I try not to think of the scars unless they itch. Mentioning the scars is verboten big time. Did I mention them? You know, the one thing I’m good at is getting confused during conversations. I don’t pay attention. My ex-wife number two agrees with me on that point. After twenty-two years, we agree on something. That’s how I would have liked to have ended our conversation, with an agreement, but another call interrupted the flow. It was my ex-wife number one calling. She’s a retired nympho. Her conversations are more stimulating. I clicked over to her call….

Love... rain down on me.

Who put the bullshit in my bologny sandwich?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:11:27 -0500

A grey sky is offering nothing but painted paisanos the ability to suffuse the brilliance that once was the day. The cards displayed reveal the takers getting the honey, givers singing the blues; people trapped by fear steering clear of the pain. Do you hear them? They are only coming through in waves without their lips moving and no one hearing what they’re saying. Sadly, what is real doesn’t fade away. A sweet sugar magnolia’s magniloquent blossoms bludgeon a cache memory’s cacophonous’ cadaverine. It’s true. False is my head's all empty and I delight in not wanting to care. If you please, take me to Rosedal, I believe I’m sinking down….

Some curious cat’s sunshine daydream meows a soothing reprieve. Bop bop doo de doo doo, walk with me in the tall trees, going where the wind goes, blooming like a red rose, breathing more freely. We’ll watch the transient souls transcend towards the river were the water washes away the tears. There is no reason to hide. There is no answer. Is there a question? Strange fascination is fascinating the few. Changes… ch-ch-ch-ch-changes….

Perhaps you are tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. Well, ticking away the moments that make up a dull day just fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Sad. Pathetic. You missed the starting gun; you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking. Turn around. Try again. Every year is getting shorter. Desperation destroys the despereal estate. If we have to shout above the din of our Rice Krispies, we can't hear anything at all. Baby please… It’s comin’ on closing time; the bartender he’s ringin’ last call. Pick apart the thesis -traitorous Thessalonians, but the thick-skinned, thick-witted thimbleweeds blooming will still ask questions, ‘cause what you get ain’t what you see. It’s a little fucked up—it’s beyond crazy. Maybe you don’t believe my heart is in the right place. Do I care? Ask the town crier if everybody needs to cry.

Emptiness is worse than darkness. Zygomatic zydeco zombies fear the lonely miles ahead. They swallow their faces to keep from biting—feeding. Stay in hiding if you prefer. It’s funny when things change so much, it's all state of mind. Remember to bring your shovels when the shitheads pilfer pimping piñatas, breaking them open to reveal the bitter candy.

Sadly, the sad, sad truth, the dirty lowdown is nothing you can’t handle is nothing you ain’t got. Listen to the blackbird sing: within the melody is the tragedy. And as the sun shines no more, I’ll beg the moon to do so. Compressed distortion tweaked with a trembling treble will quiver as all we realize it even more; for the wheel’s still in spin and there’s no tellin’ who that it’s naming. This road we are traveling is rapidly aging. The times, they are a changing.