Jammin' With Jimi

I’m standing ankle deep in the living room shag, legs spread apart, guitar hanging from a strap that crosses my chest like a shoulder bag I’m stowing away from purse thieves. I feel like a Freedom Shopper.

Santa in his jolly elven wisdom brought the children a video game that uses miniature plastic guitars as controllers. That’s like bringing Stephen Hawking a Playskool computer.

Personally, I'm having trouble working up to technology that advanced. Five colored buttons on the guitar correspond to notes on the televison screen. I can type 85 words a minute without so much as a peek at the space bar. So why can’t I play Slow Ride in easy mode without holding the guitar up to my bifocals to help me distinguish the red button from the green?

As the colored numbers disappear down the yellow brick road onscreen, I’m wildly pressing buttons at random, humming “If I only had a brain,” at chipmunk speed in my head. I press the yellow button in time to score a point and figure I’m in the zone. “Jimi Hendrix, eat your heart out!” I squeal, sinking to one knee and head banging with enough gusto to take the curl out of my perm.

“You know Jimi Hendrix?” Apparently I’m earning Mom points with my specialized history knowledge.

“Who doesn’t know Jimi?” I’m in the zone. I feel the music. I also feel pain in my old roller skating injury. “Help me up. My knees are locked.”

I’m just getting into the rhythm of the thing when the song ends. The virtual rock star onscreen shoots me a disgusted look and the audience jeers.

“Gee Mom,” says Son One, ever the encourager. “You got booed by a fake crowd.”

Son Two, heaven’s answer to Eric Clapton, picks up the guitar. “Like this, Mom.” By the time he’s through playing Freebird, we’ve all linked arms and are swaying back and forth. The dog is holding a lighter aloft and wiping a tear from one eye.

Oh sure, kids today have video games that have more moves than the real people we actually knew. But my generation had Jimi before he was an electronic rendition. We had the Beatles live. We had Elvis in his prime. You can’t duplicate that. Not with a plastic guitar and a six inch cartoon figure whose pixels won’t swivel.

Puff Paint and Prada

I have two teenaged sons and a husband who think Dungeons and Dragons should be an integral part of the American educational system and the Vulcan salute a worldwide gesture of solidarity.

For some peace of mind and a chance to chase the boy cooties from our personal space, several of us girlie types have been gathering every couple of weeks for some good, by which I mean stuff I’d never let the kids have, food, and a taste of culture, by which I mean input on the latest computer games, rantings on the working life, and a double shot of craft night.

In recognition of the fact that I am severely craft challenged, my husband calls our outings “Crap Night” and refuses to allow me to max out the Visa card on glitter glue at Hobby Lobby. So no more tie-dyed Elvis T-shirts with hand-beaded Hound Dog hair for him.

Of course, the last time we got together the only thing I successfully tie-dyed was the left leg of my dress pants and the terrier’s bangs, but you can’t have Masterpiece Theatre every night when all you can afford is Mardi Gras beads and chartreuse body paint off the clearance table.

All the same, I’d rather be out with a group of cultured individuals who do not regard a Slim Jim and three packs of barbecued pork rinds as a party. For the guys I left at home, the telephone is the key to epicurean delight. Supper means never forgetting the number for pizza delivery.

So we girls gather like kittens around a cricket, swapping “I could’ves” and “You should’ves.” There’s nothing like a little girl talk to refresh the mind and chase away the mundane worries of the day. My niece is relating—with panache, gusto, and more than a little personal satisfaction—the happenings of a favorite computer game.

“She had too many friends.”

“What did you do?”

“I slapped her.”

“What did she do?”

“Put a contract out on me.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Slapped her again.”

Apparently nothing says female bonding like knocking some girl who needs it right off her platform pumps and into the pit of pledge week. If assault with a deadly diamond tiara brings serenity, this chick is coasting into Nirvana. It’s the sort of slice of life that could knock feminism back to the days when Gloria Steinem was just a pinup girl in horn rimmed glasses.

The game is called—if not in reality, then in intent--Sorority Death House, and it involves joining rabid gangs of starving supermodels, er, sorority houses of preppie girls, in order to band together for the purpose of stealing high dollar stuff on the way to a life of prison reform, er, sorority heaven.

It’s over six scoops of caramel cheesecake ice cream with a cupcake on the side that I find out about life in Sorority Town. True nurturing involves a representative from every group of the food pyramid from sprinkles to artificial flavoring.

“So,” I said, tongue clinched between my teeth in proper crafting manner as I apply hot glue and pink puff paint to my pants. During the process I managed to laminate my bra into Madonna cones right through my tye died Frisbee dog T Shirt. I looked like a lunchroom lady collectible figure.

People keep ganging up and stealing your sapphire bracelets and beating you up for your Prada bags. Why do you play this game?”

“Because every time I beat somebody up, I pretend it’s somebody I don’t like. After my performance review, I beat up my boss every day for a week and nobody ever knew.”

I dropped the glue and grabbed the computer mouse. “Tell me how to get to Animal House. I have an ex-husband who’s begging for a close encounter with the business end of a pair of Monolo Blahniks. Then he’ll be a real heel for sure."

Sugar Tit or Bust

Today in my inbox the Smithsonian, a magazine of knowledgeable and intellectual pursuits, offered me a once in a lifetime opportunity to win a Kentucky Cultural Getaway.

I might be speaking out of turn, but to me a Kentucky Cultural Getaway is about the same as taking a luxury tour down to the 7-11 store in Sugar Tit, which isn’t too far from here but a good ways from Punkintown and has various cultural sights of its own including a brand spanking new left turn lane and a harvested hay field. Once a buffalo got loose and strolled down the highway past the red light there, but that’s extracurricular stuff that you can’t count on as a regular enough occurrence to list in a travel brochure. You don’t want to disappoint tourists that show up looking for livestock during a non-migratory period.

I realize I might be biased about cultural events. I come from South Carolina, the land where classical music means anything you can dance the shag to. Relationships here aren’t considered consummated until the couple has shagged together in public on at least one occasion with a minimum of two sober witnesses, neither of which are related to either party by blood or prison record. It’s not always as easy as it sounds.

Culturally speaking, this is an area where the orchestra string section is a man named Skeeter who wears unbuttoned overalls, a Charlie Daniels Band T-Shirt, and a Nascar cap, and who will die with less teeth than he was born with, having lost several a la carte sets climbing into tree stands on pre-dawn hunting expeditions or on across the county line liquor excursions. Skeeter is perched on a ladderback chair leaned back on two legs in the corner of the local hardware store, playing the banjo like Michelangelo paints ceilings.

Although we have our own Steeple Chase race right up the road and offer advanced degrees in tailgating at the local community college, I don’t often get a chance to visit parts of the country where your place in society is determined by the size hat you wear to a horse race, so I checked out the information on this Kentucky Cultural Extravaganza. And since I never turn down a chance to improve my quality of life, I’m willing to take one for the team and check out the Jim Beam factory.

However I have to draw the line at the expedition to the National Quilt Museum that is included in the package. That handmade stuff can get pricey and I don’t want to have to auction off my collection of glow-in-the-dark velvet Elvis paintings on eBay to raise money for this trip.

Elvis Has Left The Building. Again.

Some people remember where they were the day Kennedy was shot. Me? I know exactly where I was the day that Elvis died. It’s odd because I was never a big Elvis fan. I mean, in the shiny white suit and cape he looked like Batman’s negative. If I had known about Daniel Craig back then, I wouldn’t even be aware there was an Elvis.

But there are things in life that should never change. Gravy goes on biscuits. Elvis goes in Graceland. He’s as much a part of the South as kudzu or socks that leave red mud footprints on the lineoleum. Start messing with the natural order of things and before you know it you have LabraDoodles on every corner.

I was driving across crown to the junior college I would be attending in the fall. Just as I crossed the railroad tracks, which somehow seems appropriate even now, the local radio personality blurted out the news as if it were groundbreaking research concerning self-salting french fries.

“The King is Dead!”

I thought Queen Elizabeth’s mustache waxing had gone poorly. But no. The King had left the building. Somewhere in Tennessee was a pink Cadillac that would never be driven by hands sporting more rings that a store full of Olympic souvenirs.

And thus would begin an era of ghostly sightings in places that Elvis would boldly go where he had never gone before.

Last Saturday marked the anniversary of the day the King found a spot in the great juke box in the sky. And as sure as every summer weekend there’s a vegetable festival somewhere in the South crowning a Squash Queen and a Court of Gourds, there was a midnight vigil in Memphis held by a group of aging debutants humming Love Me Tender and straining to see through the mists of time for a peek of the ghost of He Whose Hips Swivel Like a Twist and Turn Barbie on Speed.

I read that for $27 you could attend an Elvis Gospel breakfast. They also had some book signings. The day I pay to eat breakfast with a man who’s been dead for 32 years, I hope I’m also game enough to hang around for an autograph.

They say there were more Elvis impersonators than stoplights in Memphis last weekend. But there’s only one guy whose loss makes us feel like we’ve checked into permanent rooms at the Heartbreak Hotel.

The King is dead. But we'll see his influence in our lives for many years to come. And that's no ghost story.

Scenic Route

I don’t want to say I’m a city girl, but I compute the distance between two places by how many shopping malls I’ll pass on the way. Contrary to popular urban myths, in the south we don’t compute the miles by how many hills across the holler the neighbor lives or how far down the Appalachian Trail we have to wander to make it to South America. As a matter of fact, if Michael Jackson thought Never Land was a fantasy world, he should see the governor’s mansion here in South Carolina these days.

I’ve grown accustomed to city amenities such as vertical parking places instead of parallel ones, restaurants with drive through windows, and random Elvis sightings in poorly lit taverns, but I don’t live in a place where the yards are marked off by the lines in the concrete or where neon replaces methane as the gross natural gas of choice. As a general rule we grow grass rather than unroll it and are more likely to shoot doves for dinner instead of pop them on top of a wedding cake. Nothing unusual for small town America.

Except for the buffalo.

Riding along even major thoroughfares in our area, you’re never surprised by the random goat standing in a feed trough to the right or a large Labrador guarding a shady spot under a tree on the left. It’s unusual, but not unheard of, to see live chickens instead of lawn ornaments in occasional front yards on the way to the city dump. It did strike me as odd, though, when a coworker encountered a buffalo ambling down the road one summer evening.

I’m not sure which of the Department of Motor Vehicles’ strict principles of road travel apply to your standard buffalo encounter, but I know what my friend did. He gave him the right of way.

I felt the need to test the buffalo theory before I reported the adventure to friends. The people I know are repeat offenders when it comes to embellishing stories and often unfairly suspect me of the same behavior.

“How did you know it was a buffalo?”

He thought a minute. “It had a beard.”

Great. So it was either a buffalo or Abraham Lincoln’s ghost has taken to patrolling the passing lane of South Carolina highways.

“That wouldn’t get you very far with a police sketch artist. All you have is a Beard of Interest?”

“It was bigger than a cow.”

Bearded and bigger than a cow. Insert mother-in-law joke of your choice here. I needed more concrete evidence or that story was going to stay a secret until General Sherman replaced Smokey the Bear in the Stop Forest Fires campaign.

“It walked right down the middle of the road. And it looked hungry.”

Now we’re getting hot. A bearded road hog bigger than a cow wandering down a road in the twilight searching for a snack.

Another Elvis sighting. And he’s in disguise.

The Right to Assemble

Never mind Mars and Venus. There’s nothing like a do-it-yourself project to bring out the beast, er best, in both men and women. This one came in a long, flat, heavier-than-it-looks box full of parts marked with letters of the alphabet. In my euphoria at finding just the right desk for my computer after months of stalking office supply stores, I assumed everyone in the house (Bill Dear) would share my joy and jump at the chance to put my new desk together, whistling a happy tune like so many dwarves in a diamond mine. It turns out this particular mine was missing more pieces than a yard sale jigsaw puzzle.

“Where did the boys go?” Bill looked around the house as if subcontractors would pop up from behind the recliner.

“They’re both out of service. One is napping and the other is at Gumpy’s house killing zombies. You’ll get help from little shoemaking elves before you get anything out of those two.”

Luckily two enthusiastic helpers appeared suddenly in the form of our Mostly Labradors, Hunga Din and Whatzit. Hunga specializes in outdoor labor, such as supervising the weekly trip to the dump and barking at the lawn mower. Whatzit takes over the indoor chores, such as chasing stray beams of light and barking at the vacuum cleaner. Combined they are an awesome team, and in minutes they successfully scattered all the desk parts throughout the house, chewed a decorative pattern on one leg (not mine), and placed muddy paw prints on every bit of the instructions that came after the “If You Speak English” section. Thank goodness they were on the job, but if either one spoke Mandarin Chinese, that desk would have been in place within the hour.

“Don’t worry,” I chirped scraping up spare screws and particle board dust from under the coffee table. “I’ll be glad to help you.”

Bill Dear rubbed his face, a sure sign that he was counting his blessings.

“What do we do first?” I asked, waving a hammer. I try to be patient, but the man is something of a slow starter. He insisted on inventorying the parts and locating the instructions. Meanwhile I practiced my hammering on a scrap of artificial woodgrained paneling-type material. Lord knows, they name office furniture parts like they name snack food. The first time I came across macaroni and cheese product with artificial nondairy flavoring, I thought it came from the toy store.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Bill Dear is given to hysteria when confronted with a take-charge woman.

“Practicing my hammering,” I answered, holding the panel up for inspection. I have to admit I was pleased with the results.

“Great.” More face rubbing.

I smiled contentedly.

“Except that you used the nails we need to put the backs on the drawers, and you filled the modesty panel full of holes.”

He never appreciates anything I do. No wonder nobody wants to help.

“Here.” He handed me a sheaf of paper approximately the size of War and Peace. “Tell me what to do next.”

“Well, take these instructions and. . .”

“Watch it.”

“I was going to say wipe them off. They’re covered in muddy pawprints. I can’t tell where to insert Part B.”

Bill made strangling sounds. I decided he must need a drink of water, so I got up and carefully made my way to the kitchen.

“Would you stop kicking stuff out of the way?”

About that time I hit a spot that was supposed to be carpet, but turned out to be cardboard box, slick as Elvis’s hairdo and long as a mullet. I surfed the living room deep-pile like a seasoned pro at Big Sur, dismounted with a somersault at the hallway, and threw my hands in the air like an Olympic gymnast after a solid gold vault.

Bill Dear was neck deep in my file drawer. “Hand me the specialty screwdriver on the table, will ya?”

“Star?”

“Well that was a great landing, but I wouldn’t turn pro.”

Next time I’m paying extra to have the store put my purchase together and deliver it.

The right to assemble puts a serious damper on my pursuit of happiness.

Jammin' with Jimi

I’m standing ankle deep in the living room shag, legs spread apart, guitar hanging from a strap that crosses my chest like a shoulder bag I’m stowing away from purse thieves. I feel like a Freedom Shopper.

Santa in his jolly elven wisdom brought the children a video game that uses miniature plastic guitars as controllers. That’s like bringing Stephen Hawking a Playskool computer. Personally, I'm having trouble working up to technology that advanced.

Five colored buttons on the guitar correspond to notes on the televison screen. I can type 85 words a minute without so much as a peek at the space bar. So why can’t I play Slow Ride in easy mode without holding the guitar up to my bifocals to help me distinguish the red button from the green?

As the colored numbers disappear down the yellow brick road onscreen, I’m wildly pressing buttons at random, humming “If I only had a brain,” at chipmunk speed in my head.

I press the yellow button in time to score a point and figure I’m in the zone. “Jimi Hendrix, eat your heart out!” I squeal, sinking to one knee and head banging with enough gusto to take the curl out of my perm.

“You know Jimi Hendrix?”

Apparently I’m earning Mom points with my specialized history knowledge.

“Who doesn’t know Jimi?” I’m in the zone. I feel the music.

I also feel pain in my old roller skating injury. “Help me up. My knees are locked.”

I’m just getting into the rhythm of the thing when the song ends. The virtual rock star onscreen shoots me a disgusted look and the audience jeers.

“Gee Mom,” says Son One, ever the encourager. “You got booed by a fake crowd.”

Son Two, heaven’s answer to Eric Clapton, picks up the guitar. “Like this, Mom.”

By the time he’s through playing Freebird, we’ve all linked arms and are swaying back and forth. The dog is holding a lighter aloft and wiping a tear from one eye.

Oh sure, kids today have video games that have more moves than the real people we actually knew. But my generation had Jimi before he was an electronic rendition. We had the Beatles live. We had Elvis in his prime. You can’t duplicate that. Not with a plastic guitar and a six inch cartoon figure whose pixels won’t swivel.