Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Delicious Fishcakes!

I’ve seen some weird things in my day, notwithstanding the cough medicine, which let me tell you has been pretty intense lately.  But today’s little postlet is dedicated to three of the weirdest things to have come to my attention in the last week or so.  I do this as a public service, because a day without weirdness is like a fishcake without sunshine.  Yeah, you heard me. 

So, first up is a little piece of history: I was browsing some of my not-yet-read paperbacks and randomly picked up a copy of “The Second Sex” by Simone de Bouvoir, expecting it to be a spicy little literary chalupa.  Turns out: no pictures, and lots of the words are multisyllabic and nonvulgar.  What a ripoff, right?  But then, just when I was going to give up on French women altogether, what falls out of the back of the book but this:

Yay - my old newspaper ad for that creepy Vincent Price B-horror movie!  I thought I’d lost it!  And now that I’ve found it, I’m sure I’m gonna lose it - I CAN’T COUNT THE ORGIES OF EVIL - AND I LIKE IT! (also playing, “Unearthly Stranger.” Cultural sidenote: check out how many of the places this flick is showing are drive-ins!)

So that was piece of weirdness numbero one-o.  Shall we go for two?

Yes, latex nipples - a gift to my toddler from his pre-school.  Apparently the lovebuttons weren’t quite so prominent when the goods were delivered, but by early on Saturday morning when this photo was taken, there was no mistaking it - somebody was a little chilly.  I did the humane thing and sucked the helium right out of those mcnuggets.  It was a brief interlude, but a blissful one. 

Speaking of weaning.... no, actually, let’s change the subject.  Too painful.  Anyhoo, later on Saturday we went to the Wave Organ.  In some towns that’s a body part to which one shakes one’s hand “hello,” but here it’s a construction at the waterfront made of salvaged hunks of funereal stonework.  There was, legend has it, once a graveyard quite near the present location of my apartment.  The boneyard was broken apart and shipped out of town in the ‘50s to make way for a Taco Bell and some non-dead folk, and I guess a lot of nice stonework went by the wayside at the same time.  In the ‘80s some clever people hauled some of that to the end of a long spit of land and built this:

- for the edification of the masses.  It’s a very cool structure, with pipes and tubes that run underwater and through which one can hear the plings and burbles and other anomatopeaisms of the ocean lapping away as oceans so often do.  Really, it is very cool.  But look more closely at that second picture - can you spot the weirdness? That’s right Don Pardo, the weirdness is just this side of my lovely frolicking family, and here’s a closeup:

It’s a sort of stencil, or litho, or something arty like that, set directly into the face of the marmoreal rock.  I don’t know what it is or what it means.  All I know is these three things: It is not mine; I like it; and it’s weird.

So there you have it.  Weirdness cubed.  That should get you off to a decent start.  Now, send in your favorite weirdnesses.  God knows I get a crawful of that ordinary stuff.  A little weird every day is… say, are those fishcakes?