Monkey Shines

On her album, “Live At Last”, Bette Midler told the story of her encounter with a woman walking down 42nd street.

The lady was humongous and wore a big, blue house dress peppered all over with little white daisies. She was almost bald but sitting on her forehead was a fried egg.  Bette went on to say that she thought of that lady every day.

“Oh God,” she’d say to herself, “Oh God, don’t let me wake up tomorrow and want to put a fried egg on my head. Oh God.”    Then she’d say real fast, “Oh God, if by chance I should wind up with a fried egg on my head (cause sometimes you can’t help those things you know, you can’t), don’t let anybody notice.”   And then she’d say real fast after that, “If they do notice that I’m carrying something that’s not quite right and they want to talk about it, let ‘em talk about it but don’t let ‘em talk so I can hear, I don’t want to hear it, because the truth about fried eggs, you can call it a fried egg, you can call it anything you like, but everybody gets one, some people wear ‘em on the outside, some people they wear ‘em on the inside.” Read more…

Last Monday morning was grey and dreary. Jane and I were doing our usual 7AM carpool to work. There, lying against the concrete barrier on the inside lane of the highway, I saw an inflatable doll, fully inflated, wearing a lacy bra and panties. She looked as surprised to be there as I was surprised to see her. It made me start thinking of all the things I have seen on the side of the road.

When I first moved to Texas, I lived with my parents in Fort Worth. To get home, I liked to take a couple of shortcuts which led me through pastures that were full of wildflowers and big, fat, happy cows. Mind you, I was still new to Texas after moving from suburban Boston. The sight of a cow by the side of the road still caught me by surprise. Frankly, after 25 years, it still does. Read more…