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Star Wars

I light a cigarette and slip on my replica Boba Fett helmet. “Victory”, I declare to my dog, the imbecile. My mind wanders and through the thin plastic eye-slit I contemplate the cigarette and its potential, already woozy from the swampy labored breaths under my unventilated face. I decide to put it out. She says, “Your metaphors are idiotic, Matthew,” and I have to protest. It’s better on the inside.

A beautiful mammal

They spent the last 17 hours shoving charcoal down my throat to absorb the Hemlock. I just wanted to go to sleep but Camus couldn’t stop laughing and telling me how absurd I was. “I would die for truth!” I yelled at Peter Gabriel in the red rain before the Man in the yellow hat told me to not be so curious. St. Anthony sat spitting in an epileptic fit, “Jesus died for love you fool!”

Rodentia

Every night I’ve been curled up in bed with a glass of red wine and Ulysses listening to the thunder and rain ringing out like an empyrean slot machine. Eventually I’ll fall asleep to find myself dreaming of airplanes and the suicide of prostitutes; I can’t really explain why, other than one is a symbol of freedom and the other the very definition of slavery and despair. You know you got it bad when you dream in clichés. The house I’m at has rats in the attic; I can hear them shuffling about when I pause from typing. It makes me uncomfortable to think of how well rodents survive in the face of so much human technology. From the Paleocene to the Cenozoic these buck toothed little fur balls have been thriving. I have to take a multi vitamin everyday while they flourish by eating drywall and fucking each other in the crawl space.

On the grapes and the grain: or how to fail measurably in fluid ounces.

“O Captain! My Captain,” I say, addressing the glass of whiskey gripped loosely by my paws. My bleary eyes then fall heavily to the left on an empty wine bottle and I lament, “O the bleeding drops of red.” The digital blue furnace light of my laptop illuminates my hot sauce stained face as I pass out to The Clancy Brothers’ Eileen Aroon. I’ve done little for my Irish heritage.

I tend to pass…

I tend to pass my days in solitude, with a cigarette as my only companion. ‘That sounds a trifle Romantic,’ you say. But how else can one be in this situation. In a lamenting world of staggering absurdity it’s hard not to fall back on easy comforts. The romance of solitude is bitterly entwined with the act of smoking. As sobriety looms over my shoulder and says, ‘It’s about time we shared the same table my friend,’ I fall heavily into the English canon, making my bed in the delusions of others, and in a plume of tantric tobacco. Jayne Eyre and I tousle about with filthy fingernails and references to the Greeks and Arabs. My Camel looks on without judgment. I wash my hands and brush the memories off my tongue, yet the night’s vapors persist within my breast. The weight of the smoke hangs in my asthmatic lungs like a jilted lover and I understand the allure of being scorned. I can only increase the weight and drag my feet with the unbecoming smile of a fetishist. ‘This isn’t love,’ you say and I am forced to agree: This is spirituality.

Touché

Sometimes I drink whiskey and need something to glare at. I like to do this at the stars, imagining that they are a disembodied school of luminescent eyes slowly stalking the five visible wanderers. People have told me that they can feel the waters in them being pushed and pulled by the moon and that their moods are governed by external signs. Delusions are never practical and rarely have beauty.

Bookmark

She drifted away in the spring like Mars in retrograde. I dedicated my first book to her, but the publisher wouldn’t print it, said it was fatuous. So I gravitated back to those old bones like an elephant funeral and reexamined the moral of the story. It seems that I operate like a bookmark. Wine is only two dollars; electricity will never be free. And the God of Small Things still makes me cry.

It’s time

The vodka tonight brought out many revelations. I still want to marry you. There is a problem I have with the unarticulated world—this could certainly be better articulated. Somehow when I go to sleep with the sun rising I feel empowered—as though I’ve cheated death. Although if everyone is throwing weighted dice it isn’t really cheating. I’m falling asleep as I type this and this is evidence of my anesthesia. My ceiling fan is a raucous sister, my pink sheets smell like the pack of cigarettes I just smoked, my computer has unionized the toaster and the French press too, my guitar sits alone like the pretty girl at the party, our neighbor’s dog is yelping at its own triviality, my records are planning to lynch Lou Reed, Mary mother of Jesus is looking longingly at my map of Japan, and I have entered into dream. Life is taking on rice crispy clarity. And you should be here in my pink sheets speaking a foreign tongue in my ear.

Cynicism is the unicycle upon which I ride aflame to scare the other apes from mediocrity

What is commonly contrived is a willingness to express,

Those secrets which define a degenerate of a man,

The little whispers of whimsy that lie but never stand,

Wherein wine and cigarettes are the curious foundation of his nest,

His contentment, and his happiness.

Molly

Control is lost to the angelic strings of possibility

When unfettered desperation lunges behind a mask of chemical delight,

‘I simply feel too much!’ I shout to the left and to the right

As frantic faces crowd me with an air of hostility,

Jealous of my synthetic crown, of my compound nobility.

Smoking in the movies 

A bust of a balding man from antiquity sits serenely on a modernly lit pedestal while an image of Venus brandishing a caduceus randomly appears in the ripples of the roman pool; I suppress the caffeine tremors and hold my eyebrows like James Cagney. Caligula should look miserable, but he seems to be doing better than me. I guess this ocean is fresh water, next time I’ll have to bring my own salt.

Pascal’s Wager 

Honesty is talking endlessly about herself in my small room in a loud sequence dress and rattling jewelry as she crosses and uncrosses her long legs. The wine falls through me to the floor and congeals with the shredded pages of my novel as I dance with awkward jerks and spastic facial expressions to Duran Duran’s beloved 1982 hit ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’. Stupidity has become necessary.

I was a camel, then a lion, now a baby boy

I’ve been discussing humanity with Nietzsche over a bowl of brown rice. Billie Holiday continues to pace behind us with drunk eyes, tragic and beautiful like every artist worth a damn. The scene gets desperate when Brando shows up with cheese burgers and whiskey. Something about the sound of the radiator makes me nervous. You are the company you keep.

I’d punch Woody Allen in a bar

“Tomorrow is not a day of rest!” I declare to my perplexed cat who, being a catholic, doesn’t understand the subtleties of ceremony. “Isn’t that a New Order song?” my coffee cup asks, suddenly taking an interest in the conversation and not in the newspaper it habitually rests its eyes on. “Shut up! I’m trying to remember why we love.” roars G.G. Marquez from the confines of my satchel, which smells of Listerine and peanuts.

Fake it till you make it

“What’s your problem?” She asks. I light a cigarette and declare “I’m clumsy and uninspired.” She opens our third story window overlooking the café across the street and says, “You know it’s okay to have regrets Matthew.” I lean my chair back on its hind legs and mumble, “Regret is a four letter word.” Taking the cigarette from my mouth, she replies “No, no it actually isn’t,” then flicks it out onto the street.

Only the lonely

Roy pours another splash of the merlot and lights himself a cigarette. His self possession is intimidating. I can’t seem to articulate myself with those dark glasses reflecting my discomfort back at me, “Mr. Orbison, you make me nostalgic for things I’ve never known.” I fidget in my chair as he puts his calloused hand on my shoulder and says, “That doesn’t make sense kid, I don’t think you know what that word means.”

Realism

I offer Anna a cup of English breakfast tea. She speaks to me in French, so the servants won’t understand, “My darling, Prince Myshkin is in the cellar updating the calendar; we are safe here.” The sound of his name makes me remember the last winter we spent like this, hiding in syllables and behind bear skin rugs, trying our hand at puppetry.

Pasadena

I spent most of the day staring at paintings and sculptures worth more than the GDP of Greenland. Men and women in identical suits stared indifferently at the floor and spitefully at the high vaulted ceilings waiting for their shifts to be over. Vishnu threatened me with the last half of his remaining arm while Ganesha danced whimsically in place. I drank a dirty chai and watched bugs shit in a million dollar pond.

One handed clapping 

I drove 400 miles today listening to hardcore and watching fearless bugs collide with the windshield. Thought about the logistics of livers and silently mumbled ‘ouranophobia, ouranophobia, ouranophobia…” while a cacophony of angry dude rock made my brain feel like a microwaved twinkie. Iron maiden sang ‘run to the hills’ as we approached the grapevine at dusk. Something about something made me think about you.

Channeling

Some days I need a bottle of wine for every note on the guitar. No amount of reverb can camouflage my insolence. I don’t want to be anybody’s beau. Me and Lou Reed keep slinking off to the car to smoke. My throat hurts so I whisper my hate back to the lugubrious radio voices. I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. This hero has more than a thousand faces. “His flashing eyes, His floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.” My mouth tastes metallic and my wine has cork in it. Nothing seems beautiful about their mutual infatuation. I got drunk on the white side of town and woke up next to a wedding gown. If they didn’t want me to pretend they wouldn’t have set all the clocks ahead. It’s all beyond my control anyway, they made me shoot the elephant. We can’t build our dreams on suspicious minds.

Charles Schulz

Am I sick or is it just allergies? Does it matter when there is not a Kleenex in the classroom? Should I sneeze on my derivations or plug my nose with my spare erasers? “No Ma’am, those are not erasers in my nose. Well, yes it does appear that way, but I can assure you they’re the latest in antihistamines. Yes Ma’am, I am aware that I’m an idiot.”

‘The ironic and literal making of a bed’

I’ve been staring at the moldy configuration of tea leaves resting at the bottom of my cup for a few days now trying to divine their meaning. I scratch the dandruff onto my black shirt as Townes Van Zandt, having applied himself to the bourbon, says, “You know Matthew, most people have jobs.” What a remarkably stupid thing to say. “Townes, that’s remarkably profound,” I reply without irony.

Getting sh*t done

So many decisions. My routine is to brew some laughably strong coffee and jot down the pros and cons. Then I whittle away the nonsense and write a narrative of likely outcomes. At this point I’m trembling from the caffeine so bad I can’t type, so I reread everything and note the progression. Eager to share, I call an unwary friend and ramble at them until my minutes run out. Repeat all. Freak out. Then flip a coin.

Gospel Songs

I was swimming with one arm and only breathing through my nose until I heard the color orange. It came in spades and collected itself in the water of the fury. When I attempted to articulate what was happening I spoke in what can only be called tongues. I danced violently like a child and asked the noble platypus, “What is this science? Who wields this stunning melody?” Chortling at me like a redwood it cried, “Hehe, don’t you see? It is thy prophet, it is the number Three!”

Pangea

Living here among the lotus eaters with their eternal spring it’s hard to not dance around the maypole. The cigarettes give me an affinity for yesteryear, yet the wine helps bring the moment to mind and I go to L.A. to get what I need: that’s what it’s all about Charlie Brown. The tender cradle in your head runs repeatedly through my heart in impulsive waves of good cheer. So I followed my blisters and wrote down everything they said, something about “…being hurt before.” My cat asked what the meaning of all this was and I tried my best to sound civil when I replied, “It doesn’t matter anymore: just dance.”

Sesquipedalian: Know nonsense

The insipient night had begun in rouge with similitude; Polysemous thought the curmudgeon had inculcated the caper, though the muliebrity was wanton and waxing westerly in the iatrogenic sky. Sequestered by the pellucid quisling our empyrean sycophant travailed to the ears of ennui. What tocsin perturbed the flagitious fettle? What milksop effrontery maundered to the grandiloquent cabal? Gone are the privation and moil! Surrender to the contretemps and make amicable the somnolent scabbard! Fin de siècle!

Do you know Bill?

I just witnessed a horrible car accident, the passenger of the vehicle that ran the light is definitely dead or permanently injured. The moon is beautiful tonight and it’s chilly out. Hank Williams is a poor excuse for company, he’s always complaining and then saying that he shouldn’t be. I wonder how many cups of tea I’ve made in my life. Over a thousand? My hands are cold. ‘You win again.’

The first thing that struck me as odd about Pangea when they invited me down to their recording studio was the giant hand painted sign above the drums that read: Masturbation is the only sex I have with someone I love! And then there was all the illicit magazines strewn about the kitchenette with their favorite selections pasted on the paisley print walls of the restroom. Art is a scary black hole.

When I walked into the studio on the first day William was performing some alchemy with coffee and malt liquor. Erik was on several stimulants and attempting to paint Caravaggio’s “Bacchus” with his toes while Thomas was engrossed with his lap top, intermittently yelling, “That’s how the fucking cookie crumbles Newb!” Danny was the only one that was routinely sober and usually on the exercise bike or off reading the latest issue of Guns and Ammo. Everyone was in white pants and Koala face paint. They had also hired an Andy Warhol impersonator for the duration of their recording session, he sat quietly drinking green tea and chain smoking clove cigarettes. It always smelled like freshly baked cookies and what the janitor told me was bull semen.

Rock and roll is probably the only genre of music that is even mildly interesting to watch being recorded. William was always trying to put down an excessively wailing guitar solo over every song, which Danny would promptly delete when William would unfailingly thrown down his guitar and yelp, “Chew on that shit long hairs!” The drums probably took the longest to record considering that Erik was always practicing transcendental meditation and freaking out about his sweaty Koala face. Thomas sat hunched in the corner with his computer typing: Bananas, bananas, bananas… over and over again until it was time to record his parts. I was most interested in the inexplicable eight year old Polynesian boy that they kept referring to as their power animal. It took three days to record the album and seventeen to forget the terrified look smeared on the boy’s face as Danny sharpened a bowie knife with a portable belt sander. I found myself weeping on the drive home; it’s all downhill from here friends.

   The Guru sat up upon his royal purple Zazen mat and surveyed the eager faces of the Saturday Zen Meditation lecture crowd. A bottle of Fuji water and some organic, raw cashew cookies were placed near him on the table for his convenience by the organizers of the event, the Santa Monica Philosophers’ Society.

     Marcel’s religious wife discovered that he and his brother-in-law Thomas had visited a brothel when they were land prospecting in Juarez (read: frequent brothel patronage and peyote consumption). Attending this bourgeois hippy fest was his way of smoothing things over. After half a pack of cigarettes and two hours of one handed clapping the lecture was over. As the Q & A section was beginning Marcel sat cross-legged on his wife’s paisley print yoga mat pondering how many ounces of bourbon it would take to get a woolly mammoth drunk. A river of meaningless words flowed over Marcel’s apathy; enlightenment this, mindfulness that, Suzuki says blah, Watts posits yadda yadda yadda.

     The Guru as of late had been growing tired of these bourgeois hippy fests. He longed to be back at the monastery with his books and his garden, with people like him who all dressed the same and not the carefully color coordinated individualists that were his present company. Today he was grateful that Buddhism wasn’t really a religion that expected its leaders to be enthusiastic or charismatic; if you caught him on a good day or a bad day you’d likely get the same impression.

     Simply to free him from the bottomless Buddhist boredom Marcel decided to ask the Guru how he became an authority on enlightenment.

     Taken aback by the question, the Guru paused reflectively and then answered in a tone of paternal warmth and with the serenity of the tides, “I’ve just been staying true to myself, but I don’t know who that is…”

     This duplicity was too much for Marcel, he leapt to his feet and threw his lighter at the fake bamboo plants behind the Guru and yelled, “Even if you don’t think you are, you’re a liar.” The Guru sat motionless for a moment, then began clapping: with two hands.

I don’t know if you have ever had the pleasure of losing a finger, but I assure you it is entirely unpleasant. Despite the dexterity of the characters on the Simpsons, having only three fingers and a thumb is seriously debilitating. My right hand used to have ‘HART’ tattooed across its knuckles. However, my pinky finger was crudely severed between the Metacarpal and the Proximal Phalange, tearing my Hypothenar Eminence muscle and Common Palmar Digital Arteries while giving my Ulnar nerve the electric chair. My hand now reads ‘ART’, so I guess it could be worse, you could call me an optimist.  

         Most of us with missing digits have some humorous or harrowing tale of woodshop class or the War, but to be honest my little finger would demit from my hand family all because (I guess) of a Furby and the September 11^th world trade center attacks. The two are more closely related than you would believe, although I should confess that my logic is predicated on the immeasurable advice given to me by River Phoenix, who is my Púka. What is a Púka you ask? A Púka is a Celtic shaping shifting spirit that gives both guidance and nightmares. The 1950 movie Harvey, starring the lovable drunkard Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart) who talks to his rather tall invisible rabbit shaped Púka named Harvey, is probably the most notable acknowledgment of the Púka’s existence. My beloved Púka, River Phoenix, first appeared to me in the form a Furby during the 1998 holiday season.

       Like most boys of twelve I was an evil bastard, a truly ugly human being in 1998. It just so happened that a family moved onto my street that summer and brought with them an equally horrible creature named Jennifer, who instantly became my mortal enemy for no apparent reason other than my intrinsic desire, nay!, need to propagate the dark forces at work within me. At first we merely scowled at each other while our parents talked urbanely from across the drive ways, but this quickly led to clandestine pranks and outright attacks. I tampered with the brakes on her ten-speed huffy, she would steal my cat; I would throw a water balloon filled with soap at her, she would leave an anonymous note to my parents saying that she saw me smoking behind the garage at night… et cetera. Our relationship would take a drastic turn after Christmas when little Jennifer Knack received a Furby, her most prized possession. Filling note books with plans to destroy this furry robot, I set to work on my Great Mission of Evil: to destroy her love, her Furby.

       It was in late December when I executed my plan and broke into the Knack’s house when they were out seeing Meet Joe Black. The back sliding glass door was unlocked and I tip toed through the house to Jennifer’s room. Here I was in the lair of the enemy, in the den of the devil, and I was serenely calm. Her Furby was sitting on her white wicker dresser facing the wall; I quickly stuffed it into my backpack and ran at full speed toward my house. Later that night I could hear the pubescent witch wailing and crying from across the street, my mission was accomplished…well almost. Now the time came to destroy the insufferable fur ball. And also like all boys of twelve, I was obsessed with the microwave.   

            My folks were at work and I was left alone with bologna sandwiches and Yoo-hoo, the TV and the Furby. Sweat was collecting on my forehead as I solemnly walked the Furby to the kitchen; this was the moment I had been waiting for. I set the gerbil looking robot on the glass carousel, closed the door hurriedly, and set the timer for twenty minutes; I had a lot of ambition in those five fingered days. As the majestic glow from the magical box started to radiate on my furry nemesis and upon my eager face, something went wrong, and not the type of wrong I was anticipating. Suddenly after (merely!) twenty seconds all the lights started to flicker in my kitchen, the windows began to rattle, the room dropped (approximately) fifty degrees, and as I turned to look back at the microwave I saw that it was levitating. This was too much. I fell back into the refrigerator and instinctively closed my eyes, listening to the rhythm of the dark spirits swirling in my kitchen.  From out of the ether I heard a familiar voice, a soothing voice I had known for years. Terrified, I opened my eyes and the familiar voice was coming from the Furby, who was now 5’11 and bearing the spirit of Mr. River Phoenix. Instantly I recognized his voice (I used to watch Stand by Me every day), and was simultaneously calmed by his Buddha like nature in the body of the (slightly singed) Furby. His features were now animated with flesh and blood, the former metal and plastic toy was now a breathing phantom of Majik and wonder. My Púka looked at me and spoke with the velvet voice of the Christ, “I am River Phoenix, I am your Púka and you are my Haunt, you have been called on by the Great Magnet to transcend your flesh like I have returned to mine and become a prophet, you shall be called Numinous by those who see, in your fifteenth year you will face an obstacle in your Paradigm, you must trust me always and in the name of the Great Magnet I bless your walk in the Diamagnetic Paradigm, seek me and I will come, but I must leave you now, the hour is late Numinous, till next we speak, be blessed!” You know, I always really hated when people used this phrase, but in all sincerity, I can say that blew my fucking mind. A white flash filled my vision and my kitchen was returned to its once quiet state, the microwave looked a little warped, but all in all everything had returned to normal in a flash. This was around the time I stopped paying attention in school. I realize now that I never explained how I lost my finger. I guess I’ll leave it for another time.

Or Still Life with Failure

James G. Hollyhock, the world’s foremost armchair anthropologist, sets off on his first hero’s journey to disentangle the mysteries of the Museum after dark. He will only be accompanied by seven female minstrels and a Sherpa named Tenzing. Tenzing will only be accompanied by his mutt, Darwin, and the heavenly scriptures. Both men will remain unarmed and dressed in the latest fashion.

“Poppycock, Hollyhock!” yelled Tenzing from outside the hallway door. “This trip will not require galoshes! This is southern California!”

Inside his study, surrounded by antiquated maps and useless pieces of nautical instruments, Hollyhock whistled ‘Love Potion Number 9’ while attempting to pack a case of brandy into a tattered brown leather briefcase. “One must not be afraid to get one’s feet wet Zingy!” replied Hollyhock absent mindedly. Tenzing rolled his eyes at his employer’s wit and turned sharply on his heels to head back to the kitchen to complain to the gamekeeper about the quality of the quail this season.

In the absence of Tenzing, Hollyhock returned to spinning his globe, which opened up at the equator to reveal his clandestine bar: the two activities often went hand in hand. His eyes scanned the encyclopedia-lined walls and finally rested on a bust of Margaret Mead. “Marge, Marge, Marge. What I wouldn’t give to have a conversation with just one person who could match my wits, who could stimulate this advanced mammal’s cerebellum,” he said, addressing the statue. “It’s far too lonely here in our towers, Margie; we must go back to nature and explore the noble life of the lichen. We must, we must…um,” he trailed off while biting his thumbnail and whirling the globe with his other hand. “AH! We must reinvent human nature!” exclaimed Hollyhock as he jumped onto his imported cherry wood desk. “Tenzing! Tenzing?!”

Hollyhock went on to explain to Tenzing that their southern California vacation would have to be redirected as a study of art in its natural environment. It took poor, dim Tenzing a few minutes to understand what the grapefruit Hollyhock was talking about. “What the grapefruit are you talking about Hollyhock?” asked a very exasperated Tenzing.

“Citrus isn’t diction my syntaxical little coco-bean,” replied the great anthropologist. “And secondly, we are going to sleep in a museum for a week in order to observe the art world in its natural environment. Meaning, we will monitor the paintings and sculptures while they go about their day to day, thus gaining an insight into the memetics of human urban art. I shall title my Nobel Prize winning book, The Acceleration of Inanity: Why Bacchus rode panthers in the carpool lane.”

Tenzing was deprived of a college education and subsequently unable to deduce the remarkable intellect of his employer and resigned himself to whatever may lie ahead. At least he was going to sleep inside, he thought to himself. Poor, dim Tenzing.

Over the years Hollyhock’s books had seen a steady decline in sales, due in part to the ludicrous absinthe habit he developed when his youngest daughter bought him a computer and, inadvertently, familiarized him with the international liquor market. His already incomprehensible prose lapsed into stunning displays of nonsense that made Derrida look like A.A. Milne. However, Hollyhock chalked it up to his ever-expanding genius and growing erudition. ‘History will vindicate me,’ he told himself, ‘the world just isn’t ready to operate at my level of reptilian mental agility.’ He had dined informally over the years with many public intellectuals, clinking glasses with likes of Chomsky, Umberto Eco, A.C. Grayling, Salman Rushdie, and Žižek. No one ever knew what the grapefruit he was talking about.

After a flurry of protest from Tenzing, Hollyhock finally agreed to fly and abandoned his dream of taking the three week transcontinental train ride to California. All in all, Tenzing was surprised to find that the trip went smoothly for the most part. The flight staff had supplied Hollyhock with a steady diet of mojitos, getting him three sheets to the waste bin by the time they landed in Los Angeles. Sitting in the back of the tinted window limousine in dark sunglasses, Hollyhock gave a needlessly detailed oration to the driver about the African Wolof language and its contribution of the word ‘Hip’ to the English vernacular. Tenzing made sure to tip the poor man generously.

The museum had been kind enough to furnish Tenzing and Hollyhock with a suite at the Bonaventure on Figueroa for their first night in town. Hollyhock sat quietly by the pool for most of the night drinking white wine until the hotel staff found him reenacting the Battle of Waterloo with several of the other guests’ children. He had dressed up Tenzing’s dog, Darwin, as Napoleon and lined the children up on opposing sides, giving them all butter knives and folded napkin helmets. He stood on a patio table screaming, “We’ll get you limey bastards! Let your swords drink their Prussian throat wine! Vive La France! Vive La France!” while the unwitting children smashed into each other and popped ketchup packets on their clothes when they became casualties. Tenzing was able to get the police to drop the charges when he explained that a man of Hollyhock’s brilliance must be allowed certain eccentricities. Hollyhock apologized for what he called his “whorehouse of emotions” and offered them all a signed copy of his next book.

It was late in the afternoon when Hollyhock rose the next day. He joined Tenzing for an unceremonious breakfast of mimosas and toast, followed by a few laps in the pool. They made the long drive to the museum on the other side of town when the sun set over the murky downtown skyline. The curator, one Matthieu Ricard, was ecstatic to finally meet the great anthropologist, James G. Hollyhock. Ricard had read all of his books and remembered understanding at least one of them. It came as a surprise when seven female minstrels arrived in the afternoon and made it known that they were under the employ of Hollyhock. So far Ricard had been enthusiastic about Hollyhock’s project, but he could not understand the utility of seven female minstrels. Still more confounding was when he saw Hollyhock’s limo park out front and watched the great anthropologist dressed in a 17^th century period costume exit the vehicle followed by a Sherpa with a dog. As the large glass doors opened automatically for Hollyhock’s grand entrance the seven minstrels began singing ‘Love Potion Number 9.’ Hollyhock made a stately bow and the minstrels genuflected before him while still in song. Tenzing crept behind Hollyhock and introduced himself to the flabbergasted Ricard. “It’s going to be a fun week my friend,” said poor, dim Tenzing.