This blog will be the first in a succession of daily blogs that carry you along on our cross-country journey with us. That’s right, a new blog every day, albeit brief, will feature pictures and details of our twenty-six hundred mile road trip to Canandaigua, NY as well as the final preparations over the next couple of days.
First, since my blogs may have become hum drum for some with all this album and travel stuff, here’s a little tale of a grocery store aisle that was nothing but trouble…
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It was bound to happen. A volatile environment ripe for conflict, and yet Ralphs Grocery Stores saw fit to place the breakfast cereals across the aisle from the teas and coffees; items that inspire fanatical devotion and careful consideration of exactly what to purchase. Someone at one of those meetings should have seen it as plain as day on the shelf layout drawings, stood up and said in a clear loud voice:
“MY GOD MAN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!”
But there it was; a fifty foot corridor of death with boxes of glorious cereal on one side staring down tins of life-giving teas and coffees on the other.
And so there also was I, looking for that perfect breakfast cereal to fit my mood at that moment, among my all cereal brethren.
Many things must be considered: The big three brands versus the natural and organic start-up with the natural and organic sounding names, the stick and twig factor, is it on sale? Does one choose an old-school classic on the bottom shelf or a lesser-known variety that you’ve either never tried or haven’t eaten in years and are amazed that they still sell?
Does one give way to the rare indulgence in a colorful, sugary kid cereal or a feel-good-about-suffering-for your health bran? Perhaps the perfect balance is hiding on the top shelf near the end of the aisle in tiny boxes:
It’s a magic cereal; it’s sugary and fat-laden but with good-for-you fibery, seemingly natural ingredients that, in the eyes of God and everyone at the check-out, makes you look like a good, shiny, health-minded person:
Granola.
The plastic bagged generic brand need not even be considered unless you have kids in your cart, food stamps in your wallet and precious little else.
On the other side of the aisle were the coffee and tea folks giving their own meticulous consideration to what hot beverage to brew in their homes in equipment ranging from ten dollar French presses, to thousand dollar cappuccino machines. There was sniffing, looking, weighing, shaking, reading, sniffing again… and again.
There were Chai teas for after Tai Chi, lattes for before karate, Morning Thunder for after your ‘morning thunder’ not to mention eighty-one (you think I’m kidding) other Celestial Seasonings flavors, each picked up and considered or at least turned over to enjoy the full version of the idyllic Kincaid-like painting on the cover.
Coffee or tea, caffeine or ‘de’, ground or whole bean? Then there are the treatments: sugar or substitute, the pink or the yellow, fancy syrups, sweetened creamers…
The instant coffees, non-dairy creamers and iced tea mixes need not even be considered unless you have grand kids in your cart, a social security check in you wallet and precious little else.
Suffice to say that there was a lot more shopping going on both sides of the aisle than there was purchasing that day at Ralph’s.
Traffic was starting to accumulate.
Traffic was starting to accumulate.
Everyone was polite enough on the surface. I nicely asked a skinny woman with a French accent who was weighing the benefits/deficits of two bags of coffee beans, one in each hand, to move her cart from where she’d parked it, smack in front of the mid shelf Cheerio spin-offs, so that I could reach a box of Chocolate Cheerios (you know, just to check the sugar content).
I couldn’t help but notice her sneer of superiority when she eventually complied with my request.
“Yoo seely cereal-eating maggot, I seep my espresso in yoor jenaral dy-rection,” her narrow eyes seemed to say. “May yoor meelk curdle and yoor spoonz, zay all be dir-tee.”
I said nothing but took her description down in my mind for future reference; the part of my brain I reserve for listing Beemers that have cut me off.
A production assistant and her production assistant boyfriend were in the middle of the aisle debating on which green tea it was in-fact that they overheard Angelina Jolie’s personal assistant recommend to a friend. A woman wearing scrubs with teddy bears printed on them pried her way between them to compare a box of “Fiber Sugar Crunch” with “Crunchy Sugar with Fiber.”
The production assistants looked indignant. They referenced a “Pamela Anderson Incident” loud enough for the teddy bears to hear but not loud enough to reveal that they meant it to be loud enough for the teddy bears to hear.
Then it happened: A pare of gay tea drinkers were both steering their cart side-by-side and arguing about “imposter chai.” Across the aisle, a glutiously well-endowed woman was bending down, reaching low for a bottom-shelf-classic. The tea drinkers attempted to maneuver around a mid-aisle display of coffee filters. Ralph’s may as well have thrown a lit match into a gas tank. They bumped into the large woman's biggest bit enough to tip the scales and send her crashing into the corn flakes. The sound of those golden flakes being crushed into powder by the large woman was sickening. We cereal eaters stared in horror at the array of mangled boxes. The legs of one of our own were sticking out from the middle of them… flailing.
There was a moment of silence when even the Doobies Brothers playing on the PA system seemed to pause to see what was going to happen next.
A tear of rage formed in my eye.
The French woman broke the silence with a snicker.
Oh, it was on!
A tired-looking mother of four calmly opened a bag of generic “Alphabits,” called “Binary Bytes,” and poured the little zeros and ones over the head of the French woman.
The gay men, still both at the helm, looked at each other and charged the mother at ramming speed.
They actually yelled “CHAAAAARGE”.
The mother counter-charged straight at them. After the "clang" of shopping cart armor, her children, like miniature pirates, swung over onto the enemy ship. They trod carelessly over quail's eggs, truffles and fancy cheeses wrapped in wax and leaped on the the co-captains. The men soon had small children climbing all over them. They staggered backwards as if overcome by a hive of killer bees. The sticky fingers alone were enough to give them nightmares.
At the other end of the aisle, a well-educated, unemployed welder had formed a small militia of Korean school girls and quickly trained them to rapid-fire coffee beans using tea bags as sling shots. The effect was devastating. I heard the beans whizzing past my head and felt the sting of a few but I did not falter.
A small boy to my left was not so lucky. He was using yellow marshmallows from Lucky Charms as miniature throwing stars. The soft yellow stars, however, were no match for the hard coffee beans. For every star he could pick from the box and throw they had hit him with a dozen beans. It was like a machine guns vs. a musket. His body convulsed as the beans bounced off him. He fell motionless behind the barricade of Wheaties he had built. The Welder laughed and continued to shout orders to his girls.
A small boy to my left was not so lucky. He was using yellow marshmallows from Lucky Charms as miniature throwing stars. The soft yellow stars, however, were no match for the hard coffee beans. For every star he could pick from the box and throw they had hit him with a dozen beans. It was like a machine guns vs. a musket. His body convulsed as the beans bounced off him. He fell motionless behind the barricade of Wheaties he had built. The Welder laughed and continued to shout orders to his girls.
This injustice could not go unanswered.
I motioned to a former porn star in a pink tank top to avenge the boy. Thinking with cereal-like speed, she grabbed a box of “Kix” and rolled the corn-made ball bearings at the feet of the advancing Korean Schoolgirl Militia. They toppled like Keystone cops or bad guys in a Disney movie; flying in the air at disproportional hieghts, ankles high. The Welder himself went down like a sack of potatoes.
…a sack a potatoes that quotes Byron.
I had other fish to fry. I was fighting my way through the fray, slaying the brewers in my path with fistfuls of “Rice Krispies” to the eyes (you just can’t go wrong with a classic). Cereal and coffee grounds were flying through the air like some apocalyptic food fight. Innocent bystanders were running for cover in the safety of the freezer aisle.
I passed an old lady who was on the floor attempting to encase a CPA she had captured in a papier mache she formed from six cans of oatmeal, her six hundred coupons and a two-liter bottle of Jolt Cola she’d borrowed from the mother’s cart.
Frenchy was still picking digital cereal out of her hair and hurling heavily accented analogy insults. An older man was sneaking up on her, intent on force-feeding her a whole box of pop tarts.
“SHE’S MINE.” I shouted over the din. The old guy looked-up like a prairie dog and quickly planted the box “Pop Tarts” under the soy milk in her cart like an embarrassment bomb timed to go off at the check out and scurried away like a rat.
“YOOO” she bellowed at me in super slo-mo.
She grabbed a box of decaf white tea off the shelf and ran back towards me waving it like a rapier. I gave a Scotsman's war cry, she answered back with a banshee scream.
As we were about to collide in battle, I stepped in a greasy pile of “Cinnamon Toast Crunch.” My feet skidded out from underneath me and I skated forward at a forty-five degree angle. I felt a slight whiff. This was apparently my collision with the forty-pound French woman—who later wanted it to be made clear that she is in-fact Belgian. The French woman (now I’m just calling her that for spite) flew through the air, her stick-like limbs trying to flap like wings. She soared clear out the end of the aisle and landed in the fresh fish counter with a wet thud.
My vision was then cut off as I crashed into large cans of Folgers creating an avalanche of non-dairy creamer from the shelves above. Even though I could no longer see through the white-out, I could tell from the nature of Frenchy’s screams she was not the sort of vegetarian that ate fish.
Then as quickly and senselessly as it had begun, it was over.
There were only occasional moans and the slow crunching gravel of Grape Nuts as a security guard carefully made his way into the destruction. The beam of his flashlight barely pierced the white haze.
Muffled CPA sounds came from inside the rock-hard oatmeal papier mache.
Not all was awry though. The smell of coffee beans and Captain crunch smelled wonderful. It smelled familiar. It calmed our hearts. It was something we—except Frenchy—all loved.
Breakfast!
We’ve since all become great friends and have breakfast together once a month in that fated aisle where we all first met. All we need is lots of hot water and milk. Even Frenchy comes and brings something no one else will eat, for breakfast anyway.
Ralph’s is expected to settle our class action out of court.
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I hope you enjoyed that little tale.
…and I swear it’s aaaaall true!
Even though my CD is in the arms of the manufacturer (one please oh please be done on time) there is still much to be done in the album camp. I have a website but it’s so horribly out of date none of the pictures even work anymore.
I have a handful of journalists and DJ contacts I am going to, um… contact, but I don’t want to do so until I have a decent website up and running again. Other than the preparations for our trip East, redesigning and building the website is my main activity.
My head is currently a-wash with illogical Flash protocol.
Practice is another plate I’m spinning. It’s a little over a week till my first show. I can’t believe how time has crept up on me. In my mind I thought I’d have four to six days to practice at full volume with a PA system out at the poolhouse in Highland
Now that Jeopardy has started up I have been working seven days a week and thank goodness because we can sure use the money to get us through the travel and the next two weeks. As a free-lancer I get no paid vacation.
Overall, the feeling is of excitement. Audra and I both need this road trip and to see family and friends badly. It’s been almost three years since we were in Canandaigua and the Rochester Area. I’m even a little nervous as to the changes I might encounter in places and people too. I haven’t been away from somewhere so familiar for so long in my life.
More tomorrow…
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