Hi and welcome to the Attic, I'm Frankenberry of said Blog Title and I write of just my everyday here, sometimes funny, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes angry, sometimes funny again because, well, who don't like funny, thoughts on getting older and sometimes stuff that's just kinda shit. I pen and sing the occasional parody tune and other songs, sometimes I even get a little bit poetic or short story-etic or something like that. If you're joining me here I thank you, but just mind your head and feet and keep an eye out for my little Bella and Cricket The Blind as well as the memories of Raspberry (Razzy), Mimi the Quirky, of Blink The Lil' Kit, Grayson the Mighty, Shoes the Big Orange, Shana-Girl, Benny Good Man Benny Brown, Merlin & Bob. Wouldn't want you step on them or anything … 'cause then I might just have to throw you down the stairs … damned humans.
Author: Stephen J Frankenberry
Just some guy in a Pirates hat, couple'o cats and this spot
An impatient King, always. Taxes before fields were plowed netting his peasants their meager fealty, wives before they had chance to know him as husband (though that impatience was prudent lest they all be found having leapt from towers before losing their heads) meats before they’d grown full for the butcher, fruits and vegetables ahead of ripening, even some children conscripted to his army before they were strong enough to fight, paying the price then as mere fodder.
The Gardener knew this, lamenting his own children’s losses, stripped too early from nature’s nurture “The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree: Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape need their time” he thought “hemlock though?” he thought more “can be quite effective if harvested early.”
You see, the Gardener was also impatient … for poetic irony, for poetic justice and for a garden’s proper time.
I only wanted simple he said she said the chorus said with a “we” watching from outside the lines drawn while singing in tune over Greek pastries at that little place in the district that specialized in just that sort of thing, some sweet some tart while she scolded me again and I turned my back not really thinking of where this could end maybe in the bed or maybe in the front yard gathering my clothes or even helping our neighbor, Mrs Pembroke in her constant break downs on the front lawn, such overly dramatic moments that no one needed to see of her loss of Harry and his scratchy chin that reminded her of sandpaper on that first hardwood in that place on Marchan Street, in the suburbs finally, where their little William took his first steps but fell down, fell down a lot, that took them to doctors to try and help him stand back up that she told me of and drained their accounts until William stood and stood tall and thanked his Mom for being patient while Mr Pembroke drank himself away at Louies, everyone hated Louie, but he was refuge with a drink and he just sat the black umbrella’s lamenting how William had never been a famous ballplayer until they found him hunched and dead, the longest time it seemed for anyone to notice and we went back to simple.
Caralie could stand on her own and loved sweet things, like any kid, especially baklava.
Now in January of last year I did a version of Melanie’s “What Have They Done To My Song” from back in 1970 with “Look What They’ve Done To Our Trump” which a good friend of mine commented at the time that she thought was the best parody tune I had done yet which was high praise because one: I had done a ton at that point and was still counting ’em and two: I didn’t really think she liked any of my parody tunes.
Who knew?
But hers is an opinion I value, still do and dearly so, so I took that, as I said, as high praise.
Well, things have changed dramatically since then, as we all know, and not for the better and I thought I’d revisit the song then and update the lyrics and do some liberal “borrowing” from the first one, freakin’ self plagiarist that I am!
Hey!! I said this is just an update!
Well, a slow tap of a foot and bop of a head again and some current thoughts.
Look what Trump’s done to his Trump, Ma
He’s the nightmare now that goes
bump
He finds fascism’s all he wants do just right
So he and despot pals are tight, Ma
Look what Trump’ s done to his Trump
.
Look what Trump’s done to the court, Ma
They’re just bought and paid for cohorts, now
He’s got six of ‘em dismissing precedents
And legislating from the bench, Ma
Look what Trump’s done to the court
.
He just wants a good country for whites to live in, Ma
Says he’s a true proud Ameri-can, Ma
Who just wants dismantle from the inside out
Destroy democracy for autocratic clout
Look what Trump wants for coun-try
.
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Cmon everybody NA NA NA with me
Maybe even LA DE DA
Look what Trump does for his Trump
.
But this’ll surely work for the right, Ma
Who’ll trade our freedoms for their piece of pie
They’ll justify a thuggish po-lice state
If it don’t come for them “well that’d be just great”
Until he finds their loyalty doesn’t rate
.
Now Trump’s just foll-o-wing a simple plan, Ma
Where he’s the Man to all his Stans, Ma
And he revels how easy this all has been
To revisit bleak history’s darkest sins
Look what our vote now calls a win
.
Look what Trump does for his Trump, Ma Ma Ma
He’s found just how to grift us all his chumps, Ma
He dances rooftops once re-vered houses white
While tastelessly gold gilding everything in sight
Austin Road Elementary school, Mahopac NY, early 1970’s.
In the back of the school sat the playground, some basketball hoops, a baseball diamond, grass in an open field that, to the left, as you faced it, sloped slowly up a lazy hill to some broken rock walls lining the top and the sides and over and beyond but here squaring the top of that hill like an uncomfortable, torn hat.
That was our boundary as maybe it had been for some farmer at another time, our boundary that we weren’t to cross, the only stipulation being, if we were to wander up the hill, to just make sure that we stayed in sight.
Well, it was the early 70’s and our teachers weren’t always all that vigilant while grabbing their smoke breaks and coffee and “minding” us. As long as our heads were counted at the end of recess they were good.
My best friend, Dave, and I in an early spring, with a step just beyond our wall squared confine and out of sight, through a break in one of the walls even further up the slope, further to the left, discovered the bones of a roofless old car, with rotted seats, gaps where the doors had been, tire rims and a still steering wheel and tall stick shift. Dave and I and a couple of friends we recruited after the discovery, were always chomping at the bit for recess so we could get to that car as it became our spaceship, specifically the shiny magical flying silver “Jupiter 2” from “Lost in Space” as, every day, while playing our designated roles of Will, the Major, Penny and Judy, we would also trade off one of us getting to play the robot (oh my, a dual role!) that gleaming also magical silver (just like the Jupiter 2) metal behemoth of a glass headed mechanical friend and protector with fancy weapons and the coolest robot voice while we re-enacted some of the show’s stories or made up our own.
But the real excitement was which one of us today, in our trade off, would get to wave our arms dramatically and frantically in the midst of whatever new danger presented itself to us in our latest space tale, which one of us would get to yell “Danger Will Robinson!” or which one of us would simply just say “It does not compute” to whatever story we were playing that maybe had hit a bit of a creative lull.
We didn’t have a Mom and Dad Robinson in our old, long ago abandoned car silver dream Jupiter 2 imagination. They just smoked their cigarettes and drank their coffee down the hill from us on this strange new planet.
And none of us, even if we had an extra friend join in our fun, ever played the Doctor either. EVER. He was just a meanie.
And, well, we also weren’t jaded and conniving and cynical and devious enough to pull that off just yet.
Finally got myself the new PC chair I’ve been wanting. The old one, though of sentimental value, really needed to be retired, not completely, but at least to a different corner of this room, a sort of studio apartment in my sister’s basement, it has a small fridge an air fryer and a microwave so studio apartment enough … and it is still cat worthy with a plush blanket on it. It was Shoes the Big Orange’s fave spot that we occasionally had to fight over, like cats and humans.
But this chair is 20 years old, bought at Staples with an old friend in tow back then, a new radio show partner and a way to christen my new solo apartment and our new gig, but it was eventually like sitting on a slab of patio stone, just with arm rests and minus patio stone parties and the smells of grilling but, more importantly, a slab of patio stone, just with arm rests and minus patio stone parties and the smells of grilling AND no head support.
You see, I have an old man card now and one of the stipulations with being a card carrying old dude is that you fall asleep in chairs. You are even graded on it by outside observers (Beck, my Sis, or Nephew Matt or even some cats though their marker card is a bit of a disdainful mystery) and my grades were pretty top notch according to them, though I just have to trust that they are being honest with me. I mean, I’m reporting this back to the old man guild so …
But in this meeting of old fella requirements I was finding myself with cricks in my neck and sore shoulders as my lolling head had no aforementioned support.
“Beck, my neck is killing me”
“You fell asleep in your chair”
“No I didn’t”
“Yes you did”
Another stipulation for holding onto to your old man card, the sleeping in chairs part at least, there are many other stipulations some of which include suddenly becoming enamored of particular grocery stores, or gingerly sliding your legs together outside your car to get out (hey, I got back issues!) and making breathy grunts every time you stand up, like EVERY time, but another stipulation to falling asleep in chairs is that you don’t actually admit that you fall asleep in chairs.
“No I didn’t”
“Yes you did” with picture proof “and this is one of the reasons that you always have a crick in your neck”
“Damn … ” you whisper to yourself “Ok fine, but what about sharing a pillow with a blind cat who has a totally different definition of “sharing” than you, and you have to contort your head to fit in the small pillow window afforded you by said blind cat, who also happens to be very stretchy?”
“Ok, grant you that but still …”
So a new PC chair it needed to be, plus no one seemed to be inviting me to the patio stone parties with the smells of grilling anyway.
I went online and did an exhaustive search, researched office chairs, checked google reviews, looked for the most stars …”
“Hey, old man, you fell asleep again …”
“Oh, son of a bitch, fucking stars …”
But I eschewed the research and just decided to go on foot/car, sliding my legs together gingerly out of the car at every stop with breathy grunts, and came across nothing but places that had chairs in big boxes with pictures of how they would look when I did, maybe, get them into a basement room in front of a PC for new more comfortable stories in the Attic.
They all sucked.
Then I thought “wait, how about Staples? I’d been there before for just this sort of thing, where I got this old chair in the first place as I mentioned up top right?”
Heavenly horns, invites to patio stone parties but instead with cushioned summer patio furniture and chairs here, a shitload of chairs. No boxes with just pictures on the side of them, but actual chairs layed out in a corner of the store, a free range land of fully assembled chairs exampling, whinnying, imploring you come grab the reigns, in front of boxes, of what I could expect when I rolled in them, and leaned back in them, and possibly fell asleep in them.
Employee: “Sir, are you awake?”
I was a kid a in a chair candy store and I assed in all of them, every last one of them with a little butt wiggle, some bearing too soft, some too hard, some maybe just right and without spilling any porridge on any of them or anything until?
So, I have a new computer chair now and, as a friend said in response to a text pic I sent “That’s FANCY!”
“I know huh?”
And to another who I also sent a text pic I remarked that I feel very “Spaceshippy” now
“This is ready for the bridge, Captain!” she said
Indeed, now I just need a good take off command to throw at my pilot like all the best captains of Star Trek, like I saw in an episode of Strange New Worlds.
“Tally-Ho!” or
“And umm … Start!” or
“Let’s all go to dinner on Cardan Four!”
Ok, works in progress but I can tell ya that “Let’s all go to dinner on Cardan Four!” could really work, could be a thing.
A Quadrille prompt at dVerse Poets earlier this week from Mish, another 44 word poem with a prompted single word to include. The word this time around?
Broke out XTC’s “Oranges and Lemons” from back in ’89 earlier this week as the weather called for something that wasn’t my latest in the car, the slog of old school Deep Purple, in all their iterations.
Now for reference, I don’t listen to music any longer except in the car, 25 minutes at a time, Lilly, my six speed old man CD playing (ask grandma or grandpa about CD’s) girl. Love ya ol’ bluesy heavy metal but you can only go so far and you can be a bit dull. Are you loud, yes, loud is good, has always been good (sorry Ma, I’ll turn it down) especially with open windows, but are you bright and bouncy and lyrically damning and compelling and biting enough for sunny days? No, that you are not.
I’ve been a music only in the car for the longest time now where I used to be an always in the foreground or at least in the background as a subtle soundtrack of days. Should I worry that things are falling off, that once loves have been so easily discarded like baseball (not my doing) or relationships for instance? (reasons) or more, just altered?
I don’t know and I probably should be a little concerned that I don’t really care I guess. I mean I like to hear new things, usually at work where we sometimes build spots with new music, but at this point in my oldness I have my comforts and going back to Deep Purple or The Rainmakers or The Silencers or Alan Parsons or Bob Mould or XTC works just fine for me. I just don’t really feel the need to invest myself in anything new, I’m pretty full in that old regard, though I do look forward to something new from MonaLisa Twins at some point, the only “new” that has caught my fancy in the longest of time.
No, I’m good, I have words and cats and my sister has cats, they sing well enough at my feet at the crack of stinky can or on a set of stairs, one of them just needs to learn how to play guitar or even bass … not drums though, I don’t wanna have to hit a broomstick on a wall like a cranky old landlady.
Including an Arthur … apologies, I kinda talk pretty loud …
“Really Steve, you don’t say”
“What?”
… something I am always reminded of in videos but then forget when taking a video. But ya gotta love his eventual southern belle-esque turn of disdain here, a “Why my Lord, I neva …” the only thing missing being him holding a dramatic paw up to his face.
Now back to XTC and “Oranges and Lemons” their “Sgt Pepper” or from the artwork their “Yellow Submarine” (every band wants to have their own). I had the hardest time trying to decide which tune from it to present in this post as this album is just perfect, and I have only come across a handful or so that would meet that “perfect” mark for me, filled with so many great choices of tune and so many that even sing to our current times from 36 years ago and with Arthur’s disdain.
(writer’s note to self: This isn’t Facebook numbnuts, you can put more than one video here… Oh, right …)
Ok, so three then.
And close with pictures of cats … there’s always pictures of cats.
Saphira The Diva …
Rikki The Raspy … dude, can ya run down the street and get me a pack of smokes …
This week Kim brings us a prosery idea at dVerse Poets, a 144 word piece of prose to include one line from a poem or song. In this case, a line from Dereck Walcott’s “Dark August” …“I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones”
//////////////////////////////////////////
Star Speckled Black Brighter Days
Great grandfather’s generation were the last to know their sun, before it became blackened by dust, frozen air and profound hatred is what my father told me. But they had sent the following generation and a budding next away, a relatively young handful, in secret, from a remote volcanic island in this wondrous living world of a craft before things became too dire.
My grandfather argued for staying, hoping to educate the world away from its end, but for great grandfather?
“I would have learnt to love black days, the ones of space, like bright ones here once but that’s for you son” he told grandfather from inside the volcano’s launch.
“There is no longer any educating, that time is well past. You just go … save us.”
That’s what I was told as I look out at star speckled black brighter days.
Spent the weekend doing nothing (holy crap! really?! that’s new … shut up m’fr!) one new post and then just eyes and headphones down to some old stuff, a bit of a re-set if you will as it seemed necessary.
Re-read a lot of old things just to remind myself that I wasn’t totally crazy when I wrote them and re-listened to a lot of old things just to remind myself that I wasn’t totally crazy and could hold a new lyric’d tune when I sang them.
Very therapeutic.
Now, was this enough of a re-set? Couldn’t tell ya, but it was relaxing and I am fan of “me” things, as I should be. Would be a little awkward if not.
Anyway, along my nothing weekend way … this version of “Yellow Submarine” from back in 2019 and of my favorite Beatle.
These are scary days as we watch in real time the attempted destruction of all we hold, have held, dear and this one still works then.
Cheers Ringo
In the land that we call home
Lives a man who was born to be
A simple con, liar and cheat
Living in an orange quarantine
.
But in this land he would conceive
A man-boy King of him he would be crowned
And to the law he’d not be bound
In his new found Orange Quarantine
.
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Trading truth for beans, an Orange Quarantine
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
The lies come with a sheen in an Orange Quarantine
.
Blind loyal friends all love the ride
Cheer-fully they chide Democ-racy
A prop-a-gandist band does play
.
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Where truth is rarely seen in this Orange Quarantine
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Trump’s pockets full of green, in an Orange Quarantine
.
(Full speed backward, full speed back stupid USA
Blindly so it is general
Look the other way for me… drop the law if you please
Will do general. General?)
.
As we live a life unease
All the rich of us (all the rich of us)
Has what they need (has what they need)
To the rest (to the rest)
Shoulder your part (shoulder your part)
In this Trickle Down (in this trickle down)
Quarantine (quarantine…HA HA!)
.
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Where ignorance is King in this Orange Quarantine
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Of woe we’ll surely sing in an Orange Quarantine
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Bizarro is the norm in this Orange Quarantine
We all live in an Orange Quarantine
Where scary does take form in an Orange Quarantine
Hi and welcome to the Attic, I'm Frankenberry of said Blog Title and I write of just my everyday here, sometimes funny, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes angry, sometimes funny again because, well, who don't like funny, thoughts on getting older and sometimes stuff that's just kinda shit. I pen and sing the occasional parody tune and other songs, sometimes I even get a little bit poetic or short story-etic or something like that. If you're joining me here I thank you, but just mind your head and feet and keep an eye out for my little Bella and Cricket The Blind as well as the memories of Raspberry (Razzy), Mimi the Quirky, of Blink The Lil' Kit, Grayson the Mighty, Shoes the Big Orange, Shana-Girl, Benny Good Man Benny Brown, Merlin & Bob. Wouldn't want you step on them or anything ... 'cause then I might just have to throw you down the stairs ... damned humans.
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A personal exploration of autism from a brother’s perspective, including family relationships, philosophy, neuroscience, mental health history and ethics
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