"I know. Stop Talking."

I’m typing this week’s blog with one hand because I’m holding a glass of 2-Buck Chuck in the other. Such self-sacrifice also occurs when my big boy is snuggled up, purring on my arm or lap.
The movement of two-handed typing disturbs "the king" and we wouldn't want to do that,
now would we?   

I had such a great Saturday with Wen and a girl pal, whose name will remain anonymous! 
The three of us headed out early to all the yard sales.  Just to mess with ‘em, we hit the ones that said “No Early Birds” before the given time of arrival, simply to release our rebels within.

While many areas of California are still sweltering in near 100 degree temps we, here in

Monterey County, are dripping in early morning fog and wet mucky muck. 
Plainly stated, I froze my ass off yard saleing. 

We got some damn good bargains though: a couple of fancy vases, a Virgin de Guadalupe lamp for a friend, a pork-n-beans dish with lid, fake beads and a Bob Marley sweatshirt.  Wearing a Bob Marley sweatshirt in the trailer park wouldn’t go over well.  Most likely, I’d have been tied up by my ankles, put on trial and executed without a jury of my peers.

My shit kickin crime?  
 H I P P I E.

After yard saleing, Wen dropped my friend and I off at Hambrook’s Auction in Pacific Grove. 
This is my new addiction; the auction.  Well, I have another:  Peanut Butter Cheerios. OMG!

There's only a couple a things that would make a ‘trailer girl’ chirpier than an auction:
Watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while chugging a free six-pack left over from the Annual
Moose Lodge picnic or winnin 4 bucks on a Quick-Pick.
Hambrook's Auction has been in existence since forever.
http://www.hambrooks-auction.com/
It's held in a huge 16,000 sq foot building, live auction carried out upstairs, silent auction happening downstairs.  The crowd's mixed like a well-tossed salad:
antique dealers, consignment store whores, Ebay fanatics, hillbillies lookin for a deal and us,
two girls just looking for a good time. (I, of course, am also looking for some stock for our resale business known as V W Upcycling.)
Before we enter the action, my pal and I head for Pavel's Bakerei (they spell bakery in a shi shi way) for a delicious breakfast pastry and coffee.
I, being the diabetic, can hardly inject my insulin fast enough and get through the bakery door.
As we storm through the line, taking "cuts" like first graders in a line to get on a field trip bus,
I'm instantly happier than a tornado in a trailer park.

I'm drooling.  No doubt.  My pal says to me, "Let's just get something small and take it to go."
SOMETHING SMALL? Come on now! Are you f@#king kiddin me?
I order some fancy dancy raspberry donut thing that they call a "bombolini" and let me tell y'all,
They ain't the donuts at Winchell's!  She gets a maple.  We order two coffees also different from  Winchell's.  We pay and head to Hambrook's.
We take our seats as the auction is in full-swing.
I'm as happy as a dead pig in sunshine.  In complete heavenly silence, and with the auctioneer's babble rolling off her tongue somewhere in the distant background, we begin eating...
Eating...Eating...Continually and pleasurably devouring our goodies...

Finally, I lean over to my friend and say, "This is better than sex; better than any orgasm."
To which she replies, her mouth shoved halfway into her maple bombolini,
"I know.  Stop talking."

The bidding's crazy-fast and I can barely keep up.  I mean, even if I had money to blow and I paid close attention, I'd miss the train 'cuz the auctioneer, a big girl with fiery red hair,
is totally breakneck.   Vintage tables, an Eames chair, bamboo coffee table, dining sets from France, "known" paintings that are pencil-signed.  Even a turquoise bust of a horse. 
Boy, rich people or "high cotton" as my grandaddy called 'em, are so weird!
After 'bout an hour, we squeeze through the row of fold-ups and lotsa folks, making our way downstairs to look at the silent auction items.  I see a cabinet with a paper description like this:
"ORENTAL CABNET" STARTING BID $10.00. INCRMENTS $2.50.
YowZA! I love it.  I write in $10.00 and crawl back through a now larger-than-ever crowd in search of other bargain items.  My pal bids on a '60's chair and an original piece of framed art for her daughter.
When I return to my "cabnet",  there are about 6 bids written in and the last being $100 bucks.
Sheee it!
I want it bad, but not that bad.  When we return upstairs we see 3 empty chairs, one of which has a purse on it.  We carefully make our way through the aisle, trying not to step on any body's feet, and take two of the chairs.  As we make ourselves comfy, this hoochy mama, owner of the purse, returns.
She flashes us one of those looks that the bitchy, popular girls gave us nerdy, unpopular girls
in high school and says,  "Well, it looks like someone took my chairs which were saved for my
husband and I."
I stare at her and her husband (singular) with my best trailer trash stare, running my tongue over my two front teeth and under my upper lip gum and making a kinda squeaky mouth-sound; the kind that sounds slightly irritated yet confident.  I say,
"Well, unless you got 2 husbands, that looks like 2 empty chairs, so there shouldn't be a problem."


The auction continues with roaring enthusiasm.
The air is electric and the people are so fun to watch.
I end up buying a modern, angular table lamp.  My pal got her '60's chair and painting and some glass vases.
Yep. Yep. A good time was had by all.

On the way out, she says to me, "That was fun! Let's go back next month."

"OK. I think the next one is the first Saturday in October."  I'm on board.

"No, not the auction. I mean Pavel's."

That girl will do anything for a good.....donut.

Speaking of girls that will do anything or, in this case, boys that will do anything.  How about our vice president?  Joe Biden cozied up with a female biker during a stop the other day
at Cruisers Diner.
The Associated Press snapped this photo of the vice president sitting behind a female biker. While he talked with her, two other male bikers looked on.

According to the campaign, the bikers were part of a group called the "Shadowmen," but there were no other details on who the female biker was or what sparked the conversation between her and the vice president, because the pool had been escorted out of the diner before the encounter.

A second AP photo showed Biden grabbing the female biker's shoulders.

When Biden entered the diner, he approached three diners seated at a counter and asked if he they'd lend him one of their motorcycles, according to the pool report.

"Can I borrow one of your bikes? They don't let me ride anymore," Biden said.

"Probably not," Jeff Cook, one of the diners, said. The vice president responded laughing, "Probably not."

Watch yourself, Joe!

Don't you go pullin an "Eastwood" on us.

I dig biker chicks, though.  I shared time with a few at the park over the years.
Male bikers tend to be big, burly scary-looking varmints with hearts as wide as Leonilda's
(from space 18) flowered housedress catching wind.

But the ladies, oh my! 
I seen 'em with their boots, tattered tank-tops, spiked purple hair.  Some loaded with leather bandannas and bandoliers slung low on their sweaty cleavage which glistened with tattoos. 
To me, they're dangerous priestesses not to be reckoned with. But they're not hooches like the high school bitches or the one at the auction.
These gals aren't kiddin anyone. They know their shit stinks like everybody else's.
And like Joe, I kinda dig 'em.

I think I've come to some sort of end in the road.  Some sort of conclusion point if you will. 
Just one more thing though about those fancy donuts we were eating...

Oh, never mind.  I know. I'll just stop talking.
Love y'all.
~tpg

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Quite entertaining to watch Mr. Clint “Get Off My Lawn Because I Carry a Smith & Wesson” Eastwood the other night.  WTF?  I thought the Republican Party had enough bank to hire speech editors.   Clint always gives himself the starring role and he definitely deserves an “Oscar nod” for his performance  with an imaginary President Obama in an empty chair saying imaginary(and disrespectful) things like "I can't tell him to do that to himself." True to the characters he plays, like Josey Wales, Will Munny or Harry Callahan, Clint is as tough as a steel railroad spike and obviously, just as phallic. 

After Clint’s stellar performance at the RNC, the term “Eastwooding” quickly became word and his name hit Twitter over 60,000 times in less than 24 hours according to a trailer park girl’s bible, Wikipedia.  Shit, those guys at Wikipedia are quicker than the fast-dry cycle at the Prunedale laundry mat.  Smarter too.

Since he was once the mayor very close to where I now reside, I decided to read not about
Mr. Eastwood the actor/director, but more so about Mr. Eastwood, the man.

Here’s his track record on relationships.  If you decide to skim this Clint bio, 

I'll summarize.  He's a total womanizer!  Seems he has trouble keeping his railroad spike in his pants, especially on a movie set.

Eastwood has fathered at least seven children by five different women and been described as a "serial womanizer".  He had affairs with actresses Catherine Deneuve, Jill Banner, Jamie Rose, Inger Stevens, Jo Ann Harris, Jean Seberg, script analyst Megan Rose,^[254][256] James Brolin's former wife Jane, columnist Bridget Byrne, and swimming champion Anita Lhoest.

Eastwood married Maggie Johnson on December 19, 1953, six months after they met on a blind date. While separated from Johnson, Eastwood had an affair with dancer Roxanne Tunis, with whom he had his first child, Kimber Tunis (born June 17,1964); he did not publicly acknowledge her until 1996. After a reconciliation, he had two children with Johnson: Kyle Eastwood (born May 19,1968) and Alison Eastwood (born May 22,1972). Eastwood filed for divorce in 1979 after another long separation, but the $25 million divorce settlement was not finalized until May 1984.

Eastwood entered a relationship with actress Sondra Locke in 1975. They lived together for fourteen years, despite the fact that Locke remained married (in name only) to her gay husband, Gordon Anderson. Locke had two abortions and a tubal ligation within the first four years of the relationship. The couple co-starred in six films together:The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Every Which Way but Loose, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can, and Sudden Impact. On April 10, 1989, while Locke was directing the film Impulse, Eastwood changed the locks on their Bel Air home, had many of her possessions removed and placed in storage. Locke filed a palimony suit against Eastwood, then sued him a second time for fraud, regarding a phony directing contract he set up for her in settlement of the first lawsuit.  Eastwood and Locke finally resolved the dispute with a non-public settlement in 1999. Her autobiography, The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly, includes a harrowing account of Eastwood's treatment of her during the events surrounding their separation.

During the last four years of his cohabitation with Locke, Eastwood had an intermittent, hidden affair with flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves. According to biographers, the two met at a pub in Carmel, and conceived a son, Scott Reeves (born March 21,1986), at the premiere of Pale Rider. They also had a daughter, Kathryn Reeves (born February 2,1988). The birth certificates for both children stated "Father declined." Although they were mentioned in exposé articles as early as 1997, Eastwood did not present his and Reeves' children to the public until 2002. Kathryn served as Miss Golden Globe at the 2005 ceremony where she presented Eastwood with an award for Million Dollar Baby.

In 1990, Eastwood began living with actress Frances Fisher, whom he had met on the set of Pink Cadillac (1989). They co-starred in Unforgiven, and had a daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood (born August 7,1993). The couple ended their relationship in early 1995, but remain friends and later acted together in True Crime.

Eastwood with wife Dina in 2007

Eastwood subsequently began dating Dina Ruiz, a television news anchor 35 years his junior, whom he had first met when she interviewed him in 1993. They married on March 31, 1996, when Eastwood surprised her with a private ceremony at a home on the Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas. After their wedding, Dina commented "The fact that I am only the second woman he has married really touches me."The couple have one daughter, Morgan Eastwood (born December 12,1996)."

And what about a conservative Latina governor who packs heat? Now that’s worth sitting up on the sofa and munching a bag of pre-popped corn!  Governor Martinez of New Mexico declared the other night at the RNC that she packed a Smith & Wesson .357 and understands what gun rights are all about. 

Well, sheeee it.  God bless her and Viva la NRA!

I remember a conversation I had with “Pinkie” from space 7 once upon a time. 

“Hell, I vote Republican because they’re the only ones who’ll protect my guns,

my right to bear arms.” 

Hmmm.  Let’s see Pink, you really need that “right” now don’t ya ‘cuz them thar squirrels are nasty little varmints, ain’t they?  Jump on yer neck, attack ya when yer back’s a turned.

Ya gotta be ready for ‘em.  

Well, the Romney/Ryan ticket is the ticket for you, Pink, because their platform is clear:

The party opposes legislation intended to restrict Second Amendment rights by limiting the capacity of clips or magazines or otherwise restoring the assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton presidency.  

Of course, Pink’s not worried about the lil amendment to change America’s Constitution.  
The one that just might infringe upon my rights a wee bit:

Or yours:

Y’all gotta watch this!  Please don’t skip it. Please. Please.

These delegates are being interviewed by Samantha Bee from The Daily Show.

It’s a bit ‘scratch-your-head-in-wonder’ because they’re talking about the essential and undeniable component of the American Dream:

Choice.

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-a-bunch-of-conservative-republicans-demand-the-right-to-choose?c=bl3

Whatcha think?

I’m actually equally concerned about this too:

And this:

A resident from “outskirts” Louisiana spoke with candidate Romney yesterday, who lent a sympathetic ear and then told her to “Go home and dial 211” Since she has no home left, she told Mr. Romney that she will likely seek some other shelter because her home was submerged in water. She expressed frustration about the town's lack of flood protection. "We live outside the levee protection that's why we get all this water because they close the floodgates up front and all they're doing is flooding us out down here," she said. "It's very frustrating, very. We go through Katrina and Rita and now we're going through Cindy, Lee and now Isaac." 

Well, I’ll tell you why. Lots of rich folk live in the cities and we can’t have their mansions getting flooded and lots of po folk live “down here”  in the rural areas and we can get ‘em a single-wide within 6 months or so depending on FEMA and what they got going on.  

And because it's in my blood, I’m also very concerned about this:

Park folk or “trailers” as we are known in some circles, are among the groups that mostly live outside a levee protection zone.  Face it! You don’t put a trailer park in the middle of downtown San Francisco, Beverley Hills or Carmel-By-the-Sea, where the Western superstar, who talks to empty chairs,
owns a home. 

Like gay bars and animal rescue shelters, you gotta put them way the hell out of the city; in some far off, out of reach, dusty trail where there’s no cell phone reception even when using Verizon.
Out in the vicinity where the "powers that be" don't give a shit that buildings are not up to code or earthquake proof.   Hey! What about next to a toxic waste dumping ground! 

“Trailers” have a life to live and it’s a good one; one that revolves around 2 for 1 sales at the Dollar Tree and a good tuna in oil on white bread sandwich. 

My time in the park was what dreams are made of.  Like the time I got a call from space 30, complaining that her neighbor in 31 was seeking revenge for her narking on him for littering
cigarette butts. No, heavens, no.  
He didn’t share Pinkie or Clint’s philosophy of shoot first then ask the questions. 

Nor did he send her a threatening letter. 

Nope.  He simply attached 5 toilet seats to his rain gutters and strategically hung them facing her kitchen window.  Now that’s healthy revenge and nobody gets hurt.

My pal, who I taught 6^th grade with during my pre-trailer park years, took out some revenge
on me one time.

I, upon gathering a very willing group of 6^th graders one early weekday morning, dumped every single one of her students’ desks and played Musical Chairs with all the furniture.  Then we ”Raiderized” the entire classroom until it looked like someone threw up silver and black. 

(She was and still is a big time 49er fan.)

It’s all sweet and fun until the revenge component enters the picture, isn’t it?

Weeks passed and then one afternoon, I walked out to the staff parking lot to find my

truck covered in Oreo cookies.  I would guess they used at least 2-dozen bags, opening each and every cookie and smearing the sticky centers on every damn part of my vehicle.  The sun that day added an extra gooey texture that later became quite a challenge to remove.

“Dalmationized” she called it.  “Sweet revenge.”

Then I took out my 500 Cal Magnum and told her to get the hell off my lawn.

Just kidding.

In all seriousness, I love my prankster pal.  We’re still buddies to this day and I like how she votes too!

Hopefully, November will bring some satisfying revenge, aimed at the delusional, and may it occur at the voter box.

G’day mates! Happy Sunday.

~ tpg