Oh the humanity! Oh cruel fate that has torn them asunder! Nicolas Cage seemed poised for a major connection with the King ever since his dweeb-cum-Elviswannabe turn in _Peggy Sue Got Married_. Then Patricia Arquette did the ding-dong honeypot Elvis fanatic in _True Romance_. WHY oh WHY would any guy divorce Patricia Arquette??? But I digress. Didn't we ALL already know Lisa Marie was a bit tetched? Marrying someone else from a famous family who grew up in the spotlight was bound to be fraught with nightmare problems, not to mention her prior marriage to the über-peculiar Michael Jackson. Early buzz on the Lisa Marie/Nicolas union was that Nicolas wanted to close Graceland to the public and live there. In Memphis. Imagine living with the sham-luxe 70's decor of the Jungle Room. I'm guessing Lisa Marie didn't find that such a quaint ideer, considering her wealth is expanded exponentially per annum by virtue of the white trash cavalcade that trots through the disused home of the King. Incidentally, one of my favorite Elvis stories involves his longtime maid at Graceland, who arduously collected hairs when she cleaned around his "throne" for years and years. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was collecting artifacts with which to festoon its new showplace in Cleveland Ohio several years back, this maid offered for sale the baggie of toilet hairs. There were no bidders. Michael Jackson is known for odd predilections, including ownership of the skeleton of David Merrick, the elephant man. My little Gordian Knot theory on Elvis would have been complete if Michael Jackson had tracked down the Elvis maid and bought that bag of pubes. Someday, in the Enquirer you'll read the post-mortem inventory of the gloved one's creepatorium, and listed will be an odd ziploc bag of short-and-curlies, and you'll remember I told ya so.

She is draped across the sun-warmed mosaic tabletop, another page peeling from her finite stack of days. Her little body is heartbreakingly beautiful with its twitching paws and wet nose, and a taut little belly whose spots tan and darken when the long fingers of sunlight creep farther through our windows in winter months. If it could be bottled, I would keep this moment forever.

I awoke at 6:00am today, too early to get up. I went back to sleep and had the most amazing dream. I was in a car, driving out of a city on a very long bridge which traversed the confluence of several rivers. My mother and father were in front, I was in the back seat and free to focus on the frozen city and churning river. Suddenly, a great tidal surge of water burst the banks of one branch of the river, rushing the main and flooding the banks as I looked back. We passed another branch and the same thing, then we were across the bridge, climbing a road chiseled into a dark rocky crag. Icy snow coated everything like a century of dust, when a huge wave came across the top of the mountain crashing to the road behind us. I looked back on the cold bitter scene, all that destruction unfolding like a poem. Then we were over the mountain, and I saw Big Ben rendered in crystal-like ice, falling.

Good cafeteria food is the next best thing to eating at Grandma's. I fear that with the demise of the Baby Boomer population, good cafeterias will go the way of the Drive-In theater, and then where will we be? I regularly visit a cafeteria which has been a fixture in Dallas for nigh-on to seventy years with an unchanged menu for nearly as long. The food is impeccable--the angel-kissed cousin of the slop that is served up in similarly titled national chains.

I count my ability to quash my gag reflex as a mark of distinction. Ponder my ability to never miss a beat eating my heavenly egg custard at my favorite haunt whilst geriatric Mr. Hokka Loogie tries to cough up his emphysema in the booth directly behind me. Call me Miss Jackson, because I'm in control.


I found myself eating in one of those national chains recently, as the Dallas cafeteria I love was not convenient to our locale, and I was bent to the will of people too annoying to argue with. Despite my inimitable ability to suppress the involuntary actions of my alimentary canal, I found it a bit, um, distasteful to be sitting in the very cafeteria where my cousin's brother-in-law had a disturbing anti-culinary experience. At this point allow me to say that I'm very open-minded about the choices of others when it comes to cuisine. We all have our little preferences. Just because I don't find toenails appetizing, who am I to begrudge my little Jack Russell Terrorist the fruits of my clippings? As goes my doglet, so goeth the population, apparently. This distant relation was sitting in that very cafeteria (who knows--perhaps at our very table?) with the bald-faced bad taste to attempt to eat potato-skins slathered with cheese, bacon, chives, and other usual aneurism-on-a-plate style toppings. One particular 'tater-skin was extra-chewy. He said it tasted exceedingly foul, and was kind of rubbery, but he kept thinking it would start to taste better. Hello? Eventually, he abandoned this notion and spat the offending article from his mouth, only to find it was the severed finger tip of an employee who had self-amputated in the kitchen there recently. Person ran from the establishment, finger in tow, and contacted a lawyer. Good thing, too, as he came down with Meningitis. Coincidence or Psychic Phenomenon?
Let us review: Be picky about cafeterias, never under any circumstances order the potato skins, and if it tastes nasty and is rubbery, spit that shit out!

I know a guy who had a spectacular wreck in his Trans Am when he was in high school. Driving while under the influence of testosterone, he achieved such momentum that the inverted vehicle sped unabated on the pavement, glass T-tops bursting and pulling the butt-length blond hair of his girlfriend between the roof of the car and the road surface as she dangled from her safety belt. He is my husband's brother. If my spouse and I breed, that will be in my children's gene pool. That, and my death-row relative. I pray for daughters.
Welcome to my world.