Joint Ventures

It's official - I'm going to start doing segments for Worldwide Hippies News again.   Joe and I will talk more about the details in the morning, but it's a Joint Venture between Menopausal Stoners and Worldwide Hippies, for sure.  I'm going to be back on the activist beat, but this time I want to focus more closely on folks who are organizing at the local level.  We'll see where that goes, though.  I'll be starting in early April, after spring break.

Joe, who takes care of everything over at the website (http://www.worldwidehippies.com), would like to have an image to open my segment - kind of like Looney Tunes cartoons always had.

Joe already uses Bugs Bunny to introduce Woody's part because Woody is often called Dr. John, since in real life he is John Konopac, PhD and his students used to call him Dr. John.   He also has prominent front teeth, so Bugs Bunny saying "What's up, Doc?" made sense.

Naturally, I want to have an image specially created for me for this very purpose.  Since Herb has been in advertising for decades and has his own little company up there in the woods with a blog attached that discusses Branding - I wrote to Herb asking for advice and invited him out for cocktails if he ever gets to the city.  He didn't respond.  The day before, he responded to an inquiry I made regarding some photos of him a friend posted on his timeline.  The response was cursory, but he made an effort.   It seems to me that getting served with divorce papers a couple of weeks ago really took the wind out of his sails.  I can understand somebody being so depressed that s/he sleepwalks through life for a period of time.  I've done it myself which is why I totally understand how, when you feel like that, somebody could throw you a life line and you wouldn't even notice.  Not that I was necessarily throwing him a life line.  I just wanted to have sex and see if it went anywhere.  Lots of times, sex leads nowhere.  I'm good with that.  I'm not interested in Hit and Run sex at this point in my life, but Herb didn't seem to be like that.

That's just my impression, however.  For all I know, he's surrounded by crunchy middle-aged beauties up there in the woods.  He could be getting laid every time he attends one of the networking mixers for the local art scene.  Most likely, though, if he were a pussy hound, he'd have already come around HQ looking to Hit It and Quit It.

Before he got the papers, Herb was open about feeling blue and heavy hearted, but he could keep up with a conversation and displayed some real interest.  A couple of times, I got the impression that he was just giving the right answer - like when I asked if he ever missed the city, he wrote a few lines of appropriate bullshit, including how he thought about moving back the last time he was here.  To me, that says he would consider coming down to the city to get laid every now and then.  His words rang hollow, but at least they were the right words.  Last week, he said he was looking forward to spring and stoked to be single.  That was bullshit, and sometimes you have to point out bullshit when you hear it.  

By the time I get to that point, I've generally got an attitude.  Once I start getting an attitude, things usually roll fairly rapidly downhill because Monty Python has made an indelible mark on the archetypes in my personality.  Whatever the original archetypal energy made have been, when it manifests now, the energy is filtered through the French Knight:

Once this character is involved, I've committed to a certain trajectory.

We'll never know how Herb experienced the resulting correspondence.  I certainly forgot it was Valentine's Day when I unfriended him on Facebook and told him why.  I meant to be measured, moderate and mostly impersonal.  His returning salvo opened with, "happy valentines day." I eventually apologized for unnecessary roughness, but in the process, he said he had plenty of sympathetic shoulders in his own neighborhood.  It's hard to tell whether someone is being nice or bitchy in emails.  Harder when you've never spoken to someone face to face, and both parties have been intentionally circumspect about their intentions.

Since he got the papers and revealed that his wife initiated the proceedings, I've begun to recognized shades of Buzz Kill.   Buzz Kill and I lived together for two full years after I served him with divorce papers.  Once he finally went home to mother, you could feel the pathos at 20 paces.  I have no idea how Herb feels in real life, but with a few simple clicks on Facebook, it's easy to land in a friend of friend's photos.  There's Herb in a Mr. Rogers sweater, posing with his wife in front of a Christmas tree with martini glasses in their hands.  They didn't look happy.

I still think it would do Herb a world of good to hang out in Harlem for a little while, relax and get to know each other.  If watching Buzz Kill's evolution since the divorce is any indication, a change of scene and habits is exactly what the situation eventually requires.  Sadly, that ship had sailed, in my view.  Herb's communications remained polite and appropriate to the end, saying again that he would like to meet me in real life someday, and that I seem great.   I suppose I could have said I would like that too - but I wound up saying I don't believe for an instant that he's really interested in meeting me in real life at all.

By the time I got off the bus yesterday morning at work, I had a song in my head again:



As I ran across Riverside Drive, I called The Man from San Antone.  I miss having a lawyer.

Now I'm going to be on Ruthann's show Akasha Live on Wednesday, participating in a round table discussion about collaboration and revolution, and an independent film crew will be using HQ for some location footage on Monday.  They were looking for a loft, but the neon sculpture in the dining room apparently gives the lighting a schizophrenic touch.  This all has something to do with Nicole's new room mate, a young film maker.  Nicole (I Love Nicole Show) and I will be the den mothers while the children work, and hopefully don't make too much noise.

Nicole is a red head too, and for some reason, when ever I think of us both together, I always hear the line:  Two red heads walk into a bar . . .