Fucking Dog

"Why does a dog lick its balls?"

"Because it can."

Je Suis Frog

The November Paris Attacks shocked the world into adopting Paris as everyone's City of Light.

City Halls around the globe were lit red, white, and blue to honor the dead.

Egalite, Fraternatie,et Liberte were translated into every language.

Berets and baguettes were treated with respect.

French fries were French fries even in the Deepest South.

I have always loved France.

An expatriate froggie.

With a fondness for cafes, croissant, calvados, and a cigarette.

Gitane bien sur.

Froggie to the core with my blood 50% Hibernian.

Francia go bragh.

Arnold's Hamlet

Some movies beg to be made for a star's public.

HAMLET with Arnold Schwatzenegger in the starring role as the Danish Prince.

"To be or not to be....(explosion)...Not to be."

To view Arnold's Hamlet, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evdkh5yv6gA

Bobby Orr - Tiger # 4

Bobby Orr has undoubtably been the Greatest Boston Bruin in the modern age.

His offensive net-to-net play revolutionized the role of defensemen throughout the NHL.

His team won two Stanley Cups in 1970 and 1972, although were thwarted from adding their names to the championship trophy on more than one occasion in the 197os by their bitter rivals, the Montreal Canadians. Orr retired almost forty years ago, but his memory lives on the ice and off.

As with this video featuring some fights with Chicago Blackhawks defenseman, Keith Magnuson.

Keith should have know better.

To view this video, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd1lfKxMYXE

Five Degrees of Hangover

It's football season in the USA and this Sunday Americans are following their teams. I'm in good shape. The Patriots are undefeated and the rest of the schedule is easy, but even those fans with losing teams have beers in the fridge and burgers on the grill with tequila shots at half-time and whiskey for the winners. The losers finish with flat beer.

Every Monday America should be closed for business, since most men will be nursing catastrophic hang-overs, except the working man in this country have surrendered his bargaining rights with management in order to drive an SUV and watch porno on company time, plus it is late in the year and sick days are all gone, so if the Monday morning rolls around and a worker requires a little extra time before handling heavy machinery, just try calling in sick. Their bosses will love hearing the excuse, but here's a list of hang-over ratings. They just might help to your boss decide that you do deserve a day in bed.

One Star Hangover (*)

No pain. No real feeling of illness. You’re able to function relatively well. However, you are still parched. You can drink 5 cokes and still feel this way. For some reason, you are craving a steak & fries.

Two Star Hangover (**)

No pain, but something is definitely amiss. You may look okay, but you have the mental capacity of a staple gun. The coffee you are chugging is only increasing your rumbling gut, which is still tossing around the fruity pancake from the 3:00 AM Waffle House excursion. There is some definite havoc being wreaked upon your bowels.

Three Star Hangover (***)

Slight headache. Stomach feels crappy. You are definitely not productive. Anytime a girl pass, you gag because her perfume reminds you of the flavored schnapps shots your alcoholic friends dared you to drink. Life would be better right now if you were home in your bed watching Lucy reruns. You’ve had 4 cups of coffee, a gallon of water, 3 iced teas and a diet Coke — yet you haven’t peed once.

Four Star Hangover (****)

Life sucks. Your head is throbbing. You can’t speak too quickly or else you might puke. Your boss has already lambasted you for being late and has given you a lecture for reeking of booze. You wore nice clothes, but that can’t hide the fact that you only shaved one side of your face.

For the ladies, it looks like you put your make-up on while riding the bumper cars. Your eyes look like one big red vein, and even your hair hurts. Your sphincter is in perpetual spasm, and the first of about five shits you take during the day brings water to the eyes of everyone who enters the bathroom.

Five Star Hangover (*****)

You have a second heartbeat in your head, which is actually annoying the employee who sits in the next cube. Vodka vapor is seeping out of every pore and making you dizzy. You still have toothpaste crust in the corners of your mouth from brushing your teeth in an attempt to get the remnants of the poop fairy out. Your body has lost the ability to generate saliva so your tongue is suffocating you. You don’t have the foggiest idea who the hell the stranger was passed out in your bed this morning. Any attempt to defecate results in a fire hose discharge of alcohol-scented fluid with a rare ‘floater’ thrown in. The sole purpose of this ‘floater’ seems to be to splash the toilet water all over your ass. Death sounds pretty good about right now….

This rating system came thanks to an email from Bryan La Boeuf.

My favorite painter and a lover of fine things.

And coming from Louisiana, he knows a little about hangovers.

Go Packers.

The Dream Is Never Over

After spending a lovely night in Houston, JFK and his wife boarded the presidential jet for a short hop to Dallas. The crowds lining the route applauded the president and his hostess, Mrs. Connolly, commented that Dallas loved him and the president replied, "That's very obvious."

A second later a single bullet and then another struck JFK.

November 22, 1963 was a bad day, however a video shows that he had a good time in Texas.

The love was real and real now too.

Johnny Boy we miss you.

To view the lovely night in Houston, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQlw-U8l6YY

THE BIRTH OF THE BOUFFANT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the late-18th Century Marie Antoinette' coiffeur sought to camouflage the queen's baldness by upsweeping her thinning tresses to cascade over her ears. The femme fatales of the ancien regime imitated 'le bouffant, until the royal coif lost its popularity with the Marie's final haircut by the guillotine.

Almost two centuries later Jackie Kennedy, JFK's wife, reincarnated the fashion during her tenure at the White House.

American women idolized the glamorous First Lady regardless of their politics.

Overnight millions of housewives hit their local hair salon to acquire the look.

Movie stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Kim Novak further popularized the rage and within months the only women rejecting the coif were Durgin Park's gang of crew-cut bull dyke waitresses and the nuns at my grammar school, Our Lady of the Foothills.

The bouffant died out with the advent of the hippie era.

Young women grew long hair and coif was once more threatened with extinction, except for brief respite from the lead singers of the B-52s and the late English singer Amy Winehouse.

Last year Jamie Parker and I were happy-houring at Solas in the East Village. We had the Irish bartender to ourselves. Moira liked a good laugh and Jamie told her stories of his go-go bar in Pattaya.

After our second margarita an attractive woman walked into a shadowy bar. Her bleached blonde hair was stacked high on her head. Stiletto heels added another five inches to her Amazonian height.

"A model." Jamie Parker smirked at the passing beauty in designer drag.

"Probably coming from a shoot." The actresses in TV show MADMEN had revitalized the early 60s, although few woman in present-day America could pull off the time-travel make-over.

"She looks like a 1960s transvestite." The lanky ex-con squinted down the bar.

"And that's a bad thing." I caught the scent of Chanel No.5. She was high-class.

The goddess sat at the end of the bar and Moira went to attend to her need. She was into girls.

"Not in this light." It was almost night that deep in Solas.

"You don't like the bouffant?"

"Not at all."

"And why not?"

"Because the Mr. Kenneth who re-invented the hair style for Jackie Kennedy was queer."

"You have something against gays?" Back in the 60s gays were feared by young men, unless they were looking for a good time. This was the modern times. Gay-bashing was not in fashion.

"Me, I love gays, but gay hairdressers used the bouffant hair style as a strategy to turn straight men gay."

"What do you mean?" I wasn't following Jamie's line of thoughtlessness.

"Just that it's not a really natural look and women refused to have sex to avoid ruining the helmet of hair on their head, so men sought release elsewhere."

"With other men?"

"The sexual revolution freed us from our chains." Jamie was a couple of years older than me, although he didn't look it.

"I had a girlfriend with a bouffant in 1965." Jo and I met in the Mattapan Oriental Theater. We were both 13.

"And you went all the way?"

"Not even close." Steel-rimmed bras safeguarded against any attempts by unschooled boys to reach 'second base'.

"See."

"It had nothing to do with the bouffant."

"You're from Boston. Men from Boston love Jackie Kennedy's bouffant. You probably went to bed jerking off to the First Lady."

"Not that I can remember." Jackie O rode horses and spoke French. Women like her were destined to marry rich regardless of their hairstyle. "Jo was my muse. I know my place."

"Don't we all." Jamie was in the States visiting his mother. She lived in the Bronx and thought that he was teaching school in Thailand, instead of running the Pigpen A Go-Go featuring fat pretty bar girls and skinny ugly pole dancers.

"My mom had a bouffant."

"Mine too."

"It had them feel like a queen."

"Better than knowing your place."

"Send the princess a drink on us," Jamie told Moira.

"Happily." Moira played for the other side.

"Do you like the bouffant?"

"It's very Kim Novak." The blonde had mesmerized Hitchcock in his film VERTIGO.

"Wasn't she gay?" Jamie asked eying me.

"I think so." Moira played for the other side. She was holding the model's hand. They looked like a nice couple.

If only for happy hour.

"Ah, here's to the bouffant." Jamie raised his glass.

"And Jackie O."

At my age I might think about her once in a while.

After all she was the mother of the modern bouffant.

Who Killed the Kennedys?

The night Barack Obama was elected president, people danced in the streets of New York. Our man had beaten the GOP. I looked into the eyes of a man my age and we started crying, not out of joy, but in relief of having endured the lost years since November 22 1963.

Obama was one of us. He took office two months later. The presidential limousine drove him from the inauguration stage to a series of parties. Thousands of supporters glad-handed their president and at the end of the festivities Barack Obama found himself in the White House.

He had it all.

The Oval Office.

The Red Phone to Moscow.

The Briefcase.

They were his along with two wars and a shattered economy.

That evening he must have looked at his wife and said, “What now?”

If I was Michelle, I would have said, “What about the Kennedys?”

"What do you mean?"

"Who killed the Kennedys?"

"That's a dangerous question." And he dropped the subject.

The President has had eleven years of access to the deep, dark secrets buried by various agencies; Roswell, Martin Luther King, Pearl Harbor et al. We have too many questions, yet nothing new has come to light during his administration and considering the body count for asking the wrong questions, I can appreciate his patience.

It takes time to unbury the truth and even fifty years after the fact and it doesn't look like Obama is going to get it for us either before his access is gone.

So who killed the Kennedys?

Someone knows, but they ain't saying.

Joni Mitchell In Drag

I was born in 1952.

During that prehistoric period doctors had no way of predicting an infant’s sex, yet my mother was so convinced that her second child would be a girl that a year’s worth of pretty pink baby clothing lay neatly stacked in a crib prior to my birth.

I imagine she experienced more than a little disappointment after 20 hours of labor to hear the attending doctor’s words, “Congratulations, you have a boy.”

Some women would have resigned themselves to this destiny, however my mother dressed me in pink dresses until I was 9 months old, after which my father declared firmly, “He’s a boy. Boys aren’t supposed to wear pink.”

This infantile transvestite period inflicted little if no psychological scarring, but every November I fancy dressing up in the extravagant silk costume for the Thai festival honoring the water goddess, if only so I can say that I was a ka-toey for Loi Krathong.

This one-night transformation into a deeply-desired daughter would reward my late mother with an after-life smile.

Unfortunately for my mother I have always resisted this cross-dressing urge, since no 55-year old man should wear a dress unless it’s to escape from prison, although I have occasionally wondered about my appearance as a woman and several years ago at the Plaza Hotel I tried on a long wig.

"I was not too attractive, although a female friend remarked upon seeing the photo that I resembled Joni Mitchell on steroids.

I was thinking more on the lines of Brigitte Bardot, but I had to admit there was some similarities.

It must have been the hair.

I love Joni and my mother loved her music.

Especially CAREY.

Loi Krathong Buzzkill in Pattaya

The Thai Festival of Loi Krathong is celebrated every year on the full moon of the 12th lunar month. Millions of Thais flock to rivers, canals, lakes, reservoirs, and the sea to launch a Krathong as a sign of respect to Ganga, the river goddess. Up north in Chiang Mai Khon loi or fire lanterns float into the sky to honor heavenly saints. Women spent thousands of baht to dress in ancient costumes and endure hours at beauty salons to construct elaborate hair-dos. Without a question Loi Krathong is the most beautiful festival in the pantheon of Thai holidays. Fireworks, beautiful girls in silk wraps, and candles floating on the water.

I tried to get my daughter to wear a costume.

The silk dress lasted all of ten minutes, but Angie enjoyed helping my wife fabricate a banana leaf Krathong with candles, incense, and small coins.

After sunset we headed for the beach. Strangely few candles appeared offshore and no fireworks were lighting the sky. At the Bali Hai pier the police informed us that the official Loi Krathong was being held at a distant reservoir, but we could make our offering at the beach as long as the Krathong contained no Styrofoam.

"Only banana."

My daughter was eager to get the krathong in the water. Normally you put a 10 baht coin in the float and pray it goes out to sea, a sign of good luck.

Normally young boys would push the krathongs farther from shore. Not this year. The police or tam-luat refused anyone beyond their knees and about 20 meters out a police launch was retrieving the krathongs.

"Kam-mois." My wife's opinion of police ranged from thieves to Mafia.

"Mai-penh-rai." I replied with the standard 'doesn't really matter'.

"Khun mai penh Thai." My wife was angry with this departure from tradition.

"Sure, I'm not Thai, but you have to think about what we are doing. Asking forgiveness from the water goddess. It doesn't matter what else happens."

She looked at me, as if I had insulted Buddha, and she was right, because your wife is always right and nothing makes you more wrong to a woman than trying to prove she's wrong.

Nothing at all.

I picked up my daughter. She was happy we had done what we had done. If she was happy, I was happy and hopefully so was Ganga. Forgive us, o great water goddess, maybe my wife will next year.

Opps. Ouch.

Last week a woman photographer shooting a furniture catalogue at the brownstone stepped off the steps and rolled her ankle.

Two snaps.

I comforted her while we waited for the ambulance and lied to her, saying, "It's probably ligaments."

"How do you know?"

"Because I played basketball for years and we were always getting injured."

She asked more questions and I told her not to worry, but I knew it was a broken ankle.

I had heard those cracks before.

Not from me.

Ten minutes later the EMS crew arrived and strongly suggested her going to the nearest emergency ward, which was less than three blocks away from the Fort Greene Observatory. As they drove away, I thanked the heavens for my good health and thought about what my Irish Nana said in my distant childhood, "As long as you can put on your shoes in the morning than you have no reason to complain."

I wasn't trying to be a smart-aleck, but I asked, "But what if i want to wear sandals?"

Whack.

Sometimes it's better to not ask so many questions.

Especially when there's nothing really wrong with you.

The Sacrifice Of War

After the Fall of Troy the Eastern Mediterranean endured several centuries of chaos. Greece was consumed by wars between the city-states and Asia Minor suffered anarchy until the rise of the Persian Empire. The collapse of Saddam's Baathist dictatorship in Iraq has created a black hole of violence fueled by money and weapons. Syria's collapse into the pit of endless war has forced millions of refugees to seek asylum. 10,000 unfortunates land every day on the Greek island of Lesbos. That nation has neither then resources to provide for this host or the strength to stop them from entering Greece.

For the past two weeks Brock Dundee was on the beach of that Aegean island.

"I've never seen anything like this."

And the Scottish filmmaker has been in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These people have nowhere to go.

Like the Armenians of 1915.

They walk into the unknown future.

Hoping their children will escape their fate.

But there is only one solution.

End the wars.

Peace is the only answer.

EL TOPO

I've been working with Mexicans at the metal shop for the last year and a half.

As always I try to improve my language skills and I help them with English.

The other week I gave Oscar, who has prevented my fingers from getting ripped off my lathes or pierced by drill presses, the movie EL TOPO by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

I explained the surrealistic story line of a mad gunfighter or pistelero loco.

Oscar had walked across the Sonoran Desert for three days.

He finished his water within 24 hours.

"On the third day I thought I was going to die, but I said, "I am not going to die here." I walked another day to the pick-up. Everyone was happy, because they figured me for dead. So I know surrealism, but you know what an el topi is."

"A gopher."

"Si, pero tam bien caca."

"Shit."

"Yes, because when you take a shit in Mexico, we say, "Se me sale le topi." Because the shit is like a gopher sticking his head out of a hole."

"No way."

"Si."

We had a good laugh and Oscar took the film home.

He never watched it, but we still laugh about 'el topo'.

Mexicans have a good sense of humor.

First Line of EL TOPO

"Son, you are seven years old. You are man. Bury your first toy and your mother's picture." El Topo

Life is tough on the young.

Vive La Bataclan

Back in 1989 I worked the door at the Bataclan nightclub in Paris.

Every Sunday for Serge Kruger.

We all went there.

It was a place for everyone and I let anyone in who was looking for a good time.

There were a lot of us.

Better the Bataclan than any house of worship.

And the Bataclan shall rise again.

Le Ville Des Lumiere

Last week Paris was systemically attacked by a gang of Islamic militants from the French and Belgium ghettos. Three teams armed with AK-47s and explosive suicide belts struck the Stade de Paris, the Bataclan nightclub, and several cafes in the 11th arrondisement. Paris was a battle zone for several hours until the police had killed the final gunmen. The city was horrified by the toll of dead (130) and wounded (368 ). Presidente Hollande declared war on ISIS and ordered nearly a 100 jets to strike targets in Syria and Iraq. A day of vengeance and 11.14.15 will exist in the world's mind like 9/11/01.

During the 1980s I lived in Paris. I even worked at the Bataclan. I loved the vie Parisienne, but in 1985 Palestinians bombed the city to free a comrade.

The prisoner was released after four bombs shocked the government to go back on its vow to not deal with 'terrorists'.

If only things were so easy with ISIS.

They will fight to the last man and woman.

Die.

And in death rebirth.

And why?

Because they know there is no talking with the West.

At least not now, but one day someone will have the courage to say peace instead of war.

At least that is my hope.

Because It's 2015

After being appointed Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named a cabinet of 50% women and 50% men. When asked why, the young leader simply said, "Because it's 2015."

He also included four Sikhs, one of whom will run the Ministry of Defence.

Veteran Harjit Singh Sajjan was declared a badass by the media.

The Sikh have earned that reputation as a warrior religious caste from the Punjab.

They believe in peace through strength.

Unlike the US War Czar Ashton Carter, another suck-up for the Pentagon Military-Industrial Complex.

War at any cost is their motto.

And why?'

Because in the USA it's still 1951.

Nouveau Habs A La Classique de l'Hiver

Last week the Montreal Canadians previewed their Winter Classic uniforms.

The Habs will be playing the Bruins in Fenway Park on New Year's Day 2016.

The 'Ruins also revealed their outfits.

May the best team win the game and otherwise the Bs rock the Snowbacks in the fights.

Cassavates' HUSBANDS

Movies were more than movies in the 1970s. Producers and directors sought to change the audience with films about life rather than escapism. John Cassavetes was the king of American realism and in 1970 released HUSBANDS about three suburban family men waking their dead friend with a Manhattan drinking bout. Upon their return to their houses one of them fights with his wife and the three flee to London to continue the funeral bash. A night with three women turns out wrong. Two men fly back to New York, but one stays behind. He was the one I liked best.

Strangely I saw HUSBANDS at the Neponset drive-in on a double-bill with KELLYS HEROES.

As I said the 70s were a different time.

Here's the race scene from Husbands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW0_3pMB6xk

WALTZING MATILDA the Pogues

The Fleet in the Dardanelles.

April 25, 1915.

The British Empire versus The Ottoman Empire.

Bloody disaster for Ireland.

Only one Dubliner officer survived the landing and of the 1,012 Dubliners who landed, just 11 survived the Gallipoli campaign unscathed.

And the rest of the Anzacs fared no better.

Fucking tea bag General Staff.

Peace.

No more wars.

Only fistfights.

To hear the Pogues' WALTZING MATHILDA, please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFjToKuZQM

My Father, My Best Friend

My father, Frank A Smith II came from Maine. His mother and father met during WWI.

Edith Hamlin had been a nurse with Royal Canadian Medical Expedition.

My grandmother had been trying to make a troopship to France. The gangway was being pulled and a man extended his hand to pull her aboard. That man was my grandfather, Frank A Smith I, who had been serving with the RCMEF since 1915.

Both of them saw the horrors of trench warfare.

Their pacifism hadn't prevented my father from joining the US Army Air Force in 1942.

His war was testing B25s over Kentucky. The casualty rate was 25%, but he surviving to marry my mother, who he had met in Boston. The Irish girl said he wasn't his type, until he said he owned a convertible.

They started having kids.

Four was not enough.

Neither was five.

They stopped at six.

We were a happy family living on the South Shore of Boston. My father worked for the phone company. He was an executive. His two loves were his family and my mother.

'Angie' liked to wear her hair in a bouffant.

Me too.

Sadly in 1996 my mother passed a year after my younger brother Michael.

My father and I took trips. He loved traveling.

To Ballyconeeley in Ireland.

France.

Northern Quebec.

Thailand.

The West.

In 2008 he was diagnosed with Alzheimers.

He forgot us one by one.

I was the last, even though I only saw twice a month.

"Why can you remember me?"

"Because you still like you, whoever you are."

All his friends were gone.

As much as he loved his grandchildren, he was ready to go.

'Angie' and Michael were waiting for him.

I wasn't ready to join them.

My family was waiting for me in Thailand.

And anytime I go there.

So does Poo Frank.

He will live in my heart forever.

For one simply reason.

Poo Frank is my best friend.