FatKidsLie

It’s been snowing lately and my sister, humanitarian that she is, was shoveling her elderly neighbor’s sidewalk when this guy pulls up in his guidomobile and blocks the guy’s driveway totally ignoring all established protocols for decent manners. My sister waits until the guy comes out of the 4-wheel-drive-penile-compensator and tells the ponytailed balding man that he simply cannot park there since it is an active driveway. He snort-laughs and then says something to the effect of “That’s ok. I’m fine parking here” and puts his hand on his hip, pushing his jacket out of the way to show off his gun.

My sister, in shock says “Oh. Nice piece! :)” and continues to shovel out the neighbor’s driveway. The guy responds by asking her out for coffee, an offer she quickly turned down. I can only assume that it’s because she’s afraid of intimacy since the guy:

1. Has a good enough job where he can afford a guidomobile in this economy,
2. Has enough self esteem to wear brown jeans, loafers with no socks in the winter, a checkered shirt tucked into his pants to show off his gut
3. Has a gun so she can feel safe!

She needs a man! She’s a single mom and is getting too old to poledance for dollars!

My block has a self appointed mayor. Like many blocks/neighborhoods all around America. These are people that just can’t keep to their own business, or more than likely don’t have their own business to keep to. These are people that comment on everyone else’s business but don’t have their own business in check.

Our mayor is a lifelong resident of our block. Commenting on the “Good Old Days ™” of when there were no business on the block… It was quieter… blah blah blah…

The best part about this guy is that he drives around town in a top of the line luxury car, a FULLY LOADED LEXUS. And by “drives around town” i mean goes to the deli, the Chinese takeaway and the All You Can Shovel Buffet. He then parks it in front of his house during the day to show that he owns it. That it belongs to him. Juxtaposed with his crumbling house, it is one of the most redunkulus sights you’ll ever see.

This guy’s house is falling down. That’s the easiest way to describe it. We’ll start with his back yard. Where he’s got a garage with a tree growing out of the roof. That’s 25 years of neglect right here. Trees don’t just sprout up fully formed over night. They usually take care, and effort and nurturing… and they USUALLY don’t grow up INSIDE a garage, causing the roof to collapse from the tree sprouting through the roof.

The main house looks like a shack from a Popeye cartoon… random pieces of wood holding it all together in a hodgepodge of patchworked haphazard carpentry. Random broken windows being boarded up with wire mesh and cardboard…

The building has 2 apartments. One of them is uninhabited.

About 10 years ago Mr Mayor decided to adopt a stray cat. The man loves cats. He’s constantly feeding the inbred feral monstrosities that pollute our shared back yard. He even lies and blames the “Crazy Lady” that goes back there and throws cat food all over the place… But I’ve seen him. He’s so loony about it that If he gets caught with a can of food he’ll hide it behind his back or he’ll scurry back indoors… so mutant..

Anyway Mr Mayor brought a cat into his apartment. That cat had kittens. Which then had kittens. With each other. He wound up abandoning the apartment to the cats, letting them live wild in there. There were so many cats that they were falling through holes in the wall of the building. The smell got so bad after a couple of years that people called the Dept. Of Health on him. He got rid of all the cats by taking a giant squirming garbage bag ….

I don’t know where he took that bag, other than “away”. not that it matters much.

He’s a hoarder of the worst variety. That bag was the ONLY thing that he’s ever taken out of his building. Nobody believed me, but then I had my sister look out there on garbage day for a few weeks.. Not. One. Bag.

But he’ll go looking at YOUR garbage. And commenting if you put out “too much”… But here’s the deal with the garbage men: You put out garbage? they make it go away.

When he dies I wanna go into his building. Just to see what sort of a disaster area it is. I think he just puts his garbage in the second floor apartment, since he can’t rent it out because of all of the dead cat parts all over the floor. It’s so bad that on those hot, humid summer days… you can smell the building like 3 blocks away.

Yesterday was garbage day. As I’m getting home, before my key’s in the lock “HEY! remember.. today’s GARBAGEDAY…. remember.. you can only put out a limited amount of garbage at any time…”

GAH! It’s time for a recall election.

There’s this guy on my block who’s not really a traffic cop but he directs traffic. And wears a uniform.

He wears a red windbreaker that was a promo item for a now-defunct web startup from the late 1990’s. A baseball cap that he’s spraypainted neon green. He uses a red bandanna stapled to a backscratcher as a flag.

The guy is old, like, 80 or so. He says he was in the mafia, but nobody believes him. Even though he talks to himself. ALL the time. He talks in nonsensical mutterings, often complaining that people don’t follow his directions for where they’ve gotta go… Like he’ll tell me to cross the street even though I might not want to because I’m going around the corner and I just plain don’t need to… Or when the cars on my block decide to follow the traffic lights rather than this little old man with no teeth who smells like… well.. an old man who needs to be taken care of.

He was really upset this morning. He was sitting on the bench on the corner by the church’s parking lot muttering to himself about how they closed the street yesterday because of the street fair/block party and they didn’t tell him and now he looks like a foolish old fart because he was out there trying to direct the police.

At one point the guys setting up the stage for the bands told him to get lost after he came out and tried to get them to move it to the parking lot… where they were told they couldn’t set up by the guys making the block party/ street fair.

He had to go home, and he was crying a little. I don’t know if he’s sad (as in “upset”) or if he’s sad (“pathetic”). I don’t really much care.

My biggest concern is that my job is going to melt my brain to the point that I turn into him. Only fat. And hairy. And bald. That is my fear. That may be my destiny.

Stay tuned.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for weeks but I keep getting caught up on doing school work and cleaning up my apartment and walking my dog and earning enough money to buy malt liquor to dull the pain and shame of my life.

Anyway, there’s a lady that walks around at night playing a saw. Yes. A saw.

Like the kind that lumberjacks use.

… I think I’ve gotta move out of this neighborhood.

I’m assuming that she’s in a band. Or something. because there’s a guy that walks around with her playing bongos and singing opera with her.

The first time I saw her was coming out of the coffee shop across the street when it was closing for the night. She was in a floral mumu, hair-curlers and galoshes. He was wearing a tuxedo and a straw hat. They played a wonderful adaptation of David Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World. But i think he was singing in Esperanto.

The other night it was warm out, but not warm enough for the air conditioner. I was awoken to the sound of the screechy saw, and a harmonica. They then started playing a medley of 1980’s Saturday morning cartoon songs. I watched them as they entered the hipster bar on the corner. They couldn’t have been in there more than one minute before i heard them arguing with the bouncer.

I asked around and, the bartender told me that she got into a fight with the DJ that was playing that night. She wanted the stage and when he wouldn’t relinquish the floor, she started cutting his cables with her saw.

The other day I was working late, getting home at 1am. I saw her sitting on a park bench by the baptist church’s parking lot. Playing a sad sad song. Humming to herself. Not even in the same tune that she was playing in. Her bandmate/husband/brother (maybe one of those, or a combination of those who knows) was sleeping on the other bench next to her. He woke up, looked at me and threw a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup at me.

As i ran away I saw him pouring a sort of borderline of syrup on the ground. The next day I saw that he poured syrup all over the benches. Just like how a dog or a cat marks their territory.

I haven’t seen them in a while. Most of the crazies in my neighborhood stick around, and I can sort of get an idea of where they live or spend their days when they’re not being your average street creepies. These people? Not so much.

They change outfits, even though they keep with the same uniforms: I’ve counted at least 7 different Mumus, 4 different galoshes and 9 different straw hats, so I’m fairly certain that they’re not homeless. I think that there’s a possibility that they are guerilla street performers. Or maybe time travelers.

But I miss them. They were a crazy noisebrigade mariachi couple. With maple syrup defense systems.

I was walking my dog the other day, since I frown on his use of my living room as his own personal deficatorium, and I wound up going up this little tiny dead-end side-street. While I got my dog doing his little parallel-parking/poopoo dance one of the crazy people that lives there comes barreling out of her house in a 1970’s era housecoat like screeching about “HOW DARE YOU!!!! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE” and waving a rolling pin and throwing balls of wadded up newspaper at me.

She starts off on a rant about how she doesn’t want dog-shit all up and down her block! She doesn’t want to get it tracked up inside her house!

What the Hell? It is a tiny little dog, who I pick up after. Plus she hasn’t been out of the house since the Nixon administration. And seriously? Which do you think is less sanitary: 1 dog or the 478592 feral cats in the neighborhood that she and my other neighbor feed?

Just wanted to rant on that. Later this week? You’re gonna get a review of some foods…