July 2006 Archives

Around 16th and Spruce about six-thirty Monday afternoon.

What's Waldo? Waldo is as Waldo does. Find Waldo.

I started watching Saturday morning cartoons when I was younger than you are now. I was a little kid. Pre-literate. Pre-my-parents-waking on a Saturday morning. My brother Dougie and I would sneak downstairs and plant ourselves in front of the TV while the Indian Chief test pattern was still on and the only sound was the eeire "ooooooooo" of the test signal. We were mesmerized by absolutely nothing. It was like waiting for a street light to turn on. We'd sit there with a bowl of Cheerios and the bags of heroin my parents would leave lying around (Mom, Dad, face it: Cheerios are addictive) and wait . . .and wait. . . for the TV to turn on. For the test pattern to turn into the National Anthem which is how TV stations used to start their day followed immediately by cartoons. I am an original Looneytune. All those cliche stories about Baby Boomers weaned on televison by mothers who would plop their kids in a play pen in front of the TV. . . I am that cliche. I was that kid. I yam what I yam, and I don't believe I suffered permanent brain damage from the experience. But I think I'd be a little spooked if I found my six or seven-year-old parked in front of a TV watching the test pattern at 5:30 on a Saturday morning. Fortunately, we have drugs for that kind of behavior now. Maybe they're still calling them Cheerios.

We few. We happy few. We band of Jimbos.

During his wedding in his home in Colorado last month, I stole Steve Levy's hat. Hats, actually. I stole his favorite cowboy hat and his Channel 10 hat when Channel 10 was still part of CBS. Since then Steve Levy's hat has been on a road trip. Where in the world will it turn up next?

The game is called rugby. Today (Saturday, July 29) there will be 33 rugby teams playing in the Surfside Sevens tournament sponsored by my club, Philadelphia Whitemarsh RFC, in Stone Harbor, N.J. This is a photo of a player we call "Junior" getting what we call "good ball" during a lineout against Washington RFC during a match in May.

Bravo, maestro.

'nuff said.

Monday afternoon around 3 o'clock at 16th and Locust Sts. a strange looking machine pulled by a Center City District vehicle stopped traffic as a policeman yelled for motorists to drive around. It looked like a trailer carrying a periscope that rotated in a 360 degree motion with some kind of a flapping motion coming from the eyepiece or camera shutter. Any ideas?

It's not easy being Clarkie. Your best friends tend to think you're a jerkoff. Or a dreamer. Or a douchebag. I've heard it all. It's never stopped me from speaking my mind. And it's never stopped my friends from letting me know exactly what they think about me. I love these guys. They remind me of me.

Wet enough for you over the weekend. (Check out "Watching the Storm from a Safe Harbor")

There is something wonderful about a violent thunderstorm, like the one that roared through Center City Saturday afternoon. Even while feeling safe and protected watching the storm lash the streets and sidewalks from an open doorway on the ground floor of a six-story brick and concrete building, I'd back away from a flash of distant lightning and once a thunderbolt directly overhead made my chin involuntarily turtle down my neckhole nearly forcing an entirely opposite bodily phenomenon below my waist. I've always had an entirely healthy human fear of lightning, but like a moth to flame I've had an irresistible attraction to violent acts of nature, whether it be torrential rain, white-out blizzards, hurricaine force winds or enormous surf crashing into shore. I like the feeling of being an insect in the eye of God. It comforts me to know there is a higher power than can reveal itself from the sultry innocence of an overcast Saturday afternoon.

During his wedding in his home in Colorado last month, I stole Steve Levy's hat. Hats, actually. I stole his favorite cowboy hat and his Channel 10 hat when Channel 10 was still part of CBS. Since then Steve Levy's hat has been on a road trip. Where in the world will it turn up next?

There are times, like yesterday morning around eight o'clock, I can sit on the front steps of our house with a cup of coffee and the morning paper and think to myself without a trace of irony, "I live in the most beautiful city in the world. There is no place I would rather be." And I mean it everytime I think it. And I think it almost as often as I wish the Phillies would win today. I am a total home town goober.

What else do you need for a good time on a Friday night other than what's available at this store near 44th and Lancaster Ave. in West Philadelphia?

I was all dressed up with no one to kill. I had on my best suit a fresh shirt and a new tie. The young man who had shot and killed my best friend was being sentenced for first degree murder. And I was going to read a statement to the court on behalf of the friends and family of the victim. But when I got to Courtroom 1101 at the Criminal Justice Center the morning of June 1, another different murder trial was in progress. The hearing had to be postponed because the court had failed to submit the paperwork to get the convicted out of prison to attend his own sentencing. I was left holding a statement with no one to listen. And I was furious.

Far be in from me to beat a dead horse, which is a particularly indelicate expression to use when discussing the origins of cheesesteaks, but I would like to remind America that the language of Philadelphia steak sandwich establishments has never been recognizable as standard English. By tradition and circumstance what passes for common usage among denizens of 24-hour cheesesteak shops falls somewhere between what linguists would call colloquial, slang, pidgin and Esperanto, the universal language of "It's four-in-the-morning. I'm drunk and hungry and freezing. Feed me." Hence was born the compact, incomprehensible but instantly understood order issued between chattering teeth, "Cheez wit." Soon this order was countered with the question, "Watches wan' widdat?" which cheesesteakophiles understood to be a choice between Coke, Pepsi or Sprite.