There's a liquor store in Detroit called The Stardust. The sign, meant to emulate The Stardust in Las Vegas, has seen better days. Its small attempt at glamour and beauty makes it even more of a pit stop of despair. To add to the sadness, The Stardust in Las Vegas no longer exists. Its depiction of days gone by makes me think of the difficulty in a breakup, a subject near and dear to my heart as we approach VD (Valentine's Day, people). A college sweetheart got the three weeks in, this isn't really working out phone call from me in the dread that is February and hung up on me. Those were the days that you could really hang up on someone with the satisfying thud of the receiver. You didn't have the cell phone with its continual drops to blame. Before hanging up, he said, I stole flowers from a cemetery for you. I can't believe you're leaving me. And then a dial tone. I thought the flowers had looked a little worse for the wear. Call it women's intuition or the sense that God gave a goat, but you do not want men around you stealing flowers off people's graves and pretending they went to FTD.
Three weeks is a terrible time to break up with someone, truth be told. You haven't even begun to get on each other's nerves in all the predictable ways so there's always the person searching for the door before things get too serious and the other is picking out the wedding china. I've always loved the French Country pattern, don't you? You know I always thought about a honeymoon somewhere warm. The searcher is saying things like, I don't really know what I'm going to do on Saturday, I might not be around because of work, even though he or she has a nine to five office job. I really need to find myself. Shit like that, meaningless even to the least discerning soul. But like the Stardust sign, we find beauty and hope in the least likely places, and sometimes things do work out. If not, you can always go inside the store. There is more than one form of salvation.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that." Molly Ivins
Cocktail Hour
Drinking reading suggestion: A Changed Man Francine Prose
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday! Keep warm!
63 Days until The Sopranos airs!
33 comments:
The cool thing about Vegas is that there's always something new. They keep on building. Former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer wanted to make his city into the Vegas of the midwest. The only problem is that in Detroit they keep on killing.
You can always go inside the store if you want to witness a holdup, especially in Detroit. Murder holdups do tend to make one forget about the cold though.
Detroit is a black hole of crime and no amount of bubble bath can wash off its stench.
The Salvation Army!
There was a time when I actually contemplated fucking Norman Mailer. Jewish guys are so hot for me. But I've never found breaking up with them hard to do. Or anyone for that matter.
Don't cry for me, Argentina!
Molly Ivins' father was president of Tenneco. She had an Ivy League college degree, talked shit her whole life to authority figures, and was proud of her ability to sound like a Texas hillbilly. And that's the the truth.
You must learn to bathe in the nude, Michelle, not with bathing suit on. Hello Kitty is OK. I use it in Fox Creek.
Most of my relationships went a long time and finally just fizzled out. Some early fireworks might have been better.
He stole flowers from the cemetery for you? I can't decide if that's poetic or creepy. I'm leaning towards creepy.
The Arab ones like anal. Use a rubber.
Find 'em. Fuck 'em. Forget 'em.
Sainthood is a thing that human beings must avoid.
Of all the important writers or intellectuals of the last century Orwell was the most modest and least egotistical, in short had the best character. This communicates itself in the writing itself, which is almost always lucid, never pretentious or wilfully obscure and gives the impression that what the writer is trying to communicate is more important to him than the mere fact that it is he who is communicating it.
Which of you first three posters, actually live in the city or for that matter have ever lived south of eight mile. Or do you run in for a sports game or a show then run back to your suburban homes? To all of you shut the fuck up, your refusal to live in the city is 3/4 of the reason things are the way they are, so go fuck yourselves with an AK and if you can't reach the fucking trigger ask me i'll kevorkian it for you stupid fuckers. That is my home you're putting the nationwide rap on. So stay the fuck in your lilly white Royal "Oh we are soooooo Cool, we have two starbucks" Oak or your Precious little Ferndale or wherever the fuck you live at because I know you don't live in MY city. I am Detroit and when you talk any trash about you are talking trash about me so you better have the experience to back it up or come see me in the suburbs at Motor City Jo's and I will be more than happy to introduce myself and My city to you. assholes everyone of you. Fucking idiots.
I say all of your relationships should go as cold as the outside temperature today.
FUCK YOU!
We'll fire bomb Motor City Joe's when you're in it, cinder face.
Just like a stupid white racist throw a bomb instead of get in my face...chumps.
Yeah i am at Motor City Jo's right now for any of you racist asswipes who would care to come in from the cold and get some heat.
You're seriously bipolar. See a therapist.
"The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all."
Mamie Brady mother of Emmet Till
Mr. Till was 12 years old when he had his eye gouged out and his head crushed to the point where he was only identified by a ring he wore. The two white Mississipians on the 162 anniversary of the ratification of the bill of rights were given a not guilty verdict. This was their valentines day present from Justice.
Dr. Elliot Kupferberg said...
You're seriously bipolar. See a therapist.
I was fired by my last therapist but you are very seriously out of touch with reality and won't even use a traceable name like all cowards do
CajunQFoxyLadyD
Staywarm
HotTub
DontforgettheVets
Helpfriends
WeCanMakeItThruThis
BWarm
MightyIsis
barrelfires
Shazammmmmm
steamgrate
R2C2!!!!!
"There is more than one form of salvation."
Amen.
Native Metro-Detroiter that I am, whenever I travel to another city I always compare/contrast it to Detroit. Chicago smelled of chocolate (due to the factory down the street from our hotel) whereas Detroit smells of sewage, but the Chicago bums were rude and pushy.
Stealing flowers off of someone's grave! Boy, you really know how to pick 'em.
All of my wife's and my relatives live in the suburbs. I feel the general difference between the being in the city and suburbs, even on the same day. In the burb's there seems to be a lighter less heavy spirit in the air and in the city, even though it is the same sun, the same warm day there always seems to be this darker heavy feeling.
My neighborhood is not a bad neighborhood, up until this year pretty good actually, but in the past 4 months five of the hoouses on my street have become empty because of the eviction evacuation.
So now us neighbors who are young enough have a sort of empty house watch going on. Everyone tries to be home during certain hours just to make sure that the empty houses retain their fixtures and siding and other salvagable scrap.
Since we have gone from monhly bulk pick up to quarterly the one time I sw an empty field being unloaded into, it was two white guys doing the unloading...I doubt the couch and other shit they were delivering to that vacant lot came from the city but much more likely migrated from someones suburban living room.
Why is it according to police records (a cop friend told me this so take it for what you will) that most of the john busts and drug buyer busts are people with home addresses from the north side of 8 mile? While on the topic of drugs the exctasy that some Black kids use now was a suburban introduction.
Cheri, I am not going to dispute your comment on smell but you explained why Chcago smelled like chocolate but never said why Detroit smells like sewage? Mst of the sewage coming into Detroit comes from the burbs that have no treatment facility of their own, I'll give you the area around the incinerator always smells pretty rank, but I don't think my city overall smells like crap. It doesn't smell like a hill of wild flowers but to me it smells of the 300 year history of the entire 5 county metopolitan area. The birthplace of so much and now the empty nest, left full of baby poop and dinner leavings when the kids have moved on.
"Naga Sadhu said...
Detroit is a black hole of crime and no amount of bubble bath can wash off its stench."
This is the comment that aggravated me the most yesterday. I am no sociologist but what is the reason for there being so much crime? No jobs, poor transportation to what jobs there are for less educated workers, an unemployment rate reaching the same average as the national un-employment rate of that as the depression of the 30's. 39% of the male population having spent time in prison by the time they are forty for a variety of reasons, which is just slightly higher than the national average. a 51% HS failure rate?
Too many single parent homes because it is easier to get government vouchers if there is only one parent in the house...and on and on and on.And yes I voted to stop affirmative action.
Maybe it's because of the people I hang out with,when I hang out with anyone at all, Poets, artists and the like but I know many more Black adults with their MFA's, PhD.'s and other degree's than I do whites.
Yet they accept me not as a dumbass who didn't even finish his associates but as a friend, fellow poet and writer. Maybe I am the token white guy? Although I doubt it because it is a racially diverse group; the art community living in Detroit.
The passion that I have for the area within the boundries of the city limits, probably comes from my mother who taught me quite early on that people are people, there are cultural differences yes but when you need a blood transfusion which of you would say "if that's from a negro take it back and get me some white man's blood"
I have been fighting this war over 8 mile road since Coleman Young and L Brooks Patterson exacerbated the white flight situation 35-40 years ago. Most of the fear comes from their own personal animosities towards each other but think now for a minute, it can't just be from two guys.
Here we are now with the third generation of this Blacks on one side of 8 mile and whites on the other, it is now ingrained and if you talk to an 18 year old who never knew it to be any different on either side of the chasm they will tell you in effect this is the way it is supposed to be, because it has always been this way.
And I have news for you folks a lot of Black people have just as much fear of whites as is the other way around, ever see a white guy spread across the hood of a cop car in eastpoint or Roseville?
Finally i go to a suburban coffee shop near daily for one reason, even though it is more expensive to do so, I can smoke my cigarettes in there and basically be left alone because no one has bothered to introduce themself and I am not there to make friend but o write, something I didn't accomplish much of yesterday.
All I ask is Detroit is my home and this is a written forum don't verbally shit on it, I would never even think of doing that to your home but because as a native I only know how to fight the wars of my tribe, which it seems is not the tribe of humanity but the tribe of us still pitting ones situation against the other.
I am assuming that I have just about lost any chance of a valentines day card from anyone here but i will give that up to make my voice heard in what ever language i need to speak it in to make it heard.
"Those were the days that you could really hang up on someone with the satisfying thud of the receiver."
I always wanted to do that! That's another guilty pleasure that's been taken away....
Danny...one year for chrismas my wife mentioned a couple of months before hand how she too missed those old time heavy black phones with the dial, so I found a guy in PA who rebuilt them to work with the "modern" phone jacks...if you ever want to give the pleasure of someone having that thud as the reciever is slammed down c'mon over you can make a call from my house
TWM-
Yes, I know that not all of the city smells like sewage, but from my experiences in the city (which are limited) that's been the most dominant smell that I can remember. Walking down Woodward to baseball games and concerts this summer the smell was thick. Old Tiger Stadium was rank no matter where you sat. Driving down 94 I always plug my nose when we go past the industrial area.
So are you satisified with my comment now? Or should I go around and smell every corner of the world so that you're not all snappy about things that I say.
Thanks for the lecture, dad.
jwhudwcdCheri,
I would kind of like to have you for a relative, a daughter even because you speak your mind and understand and use the art of sarcasm very well, and better yet you don't do it anonymously.
Yes your answer satisfied the question, and no I wouldn't want you to go to every corner of the world to catch a whiff because some places smell even worse than the "Industrial area" which is the incinerator and slaughter houses over that way and my wife plugs her nost to and keeps her mouth shut as well while we drive past that part of I-94. I think it's the only time she really wants me to hit the gas.
The rest of my statement in that simple paragraph was not specifically directed at you so don't take it personal if I forgot or didn't put a line break in there.
Every friday evening for two years I have been in the Wayne State area and never noticed anything to do with smell other than the smoke from my cigarettes, maybe if I went to shows and ball games further down woodward.
I know edison has a couple of steam generation plants down that way and the stack out put may be what was smelled.
But like I said even I notice a difference between the suburbs and the city, ot of smell but of spirit.
Thanks for honestly answering the question.
Peace
Dad
TWM-
I comment not anonymously because well, thats just lame. I also have a blog but for some reason this thing never lets me post under my blogger name. Thank you for pointing out my mistake- I did not realize that the rest of that comment was not meant for me.
My dad would love to give me away (haha) because often I speak my mind a little too well.
Take care, Daddy-0!
Cheri
I don't know if it will help when posting but in the box where it says user name i have to put the e-mail address I registered under and TWM...thanks for understanding. Personally I like people who say it clearly and directly
peace
DO (kinda like that just no A after the O)
user name...e-mail only ...NOT The Walking Man..I should learn to re-read stuff
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