BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Well, no… Not really. But, you know how I am. If there’s a song out there I can reference – from my era, anyway – I am likely to do so…

So… Anyway… About this whole “Turning Japanese” thing…

A few weeks back the Missouri Botanical Garden, sometimes called Shaw’s Garden – (After Henry Shaw, the man who created the garden and donated the property upon which is resides) – but these days affectionately referred to as MoBot… Not to be confused with MoDoT (Missouri Department of Transportation)… hosted its annual “Japanese Festival.”

Basically, the garden showcases native Japanese plants, flowers, sculptures, music, culture, food, and the whole nine yards. This is something they have been doing for a little slice of forever. Just to give you a frame of reference, back when the Evil Redhead and I were merely dating – not even cohabitating yet – we spent a Saturday at MoBot for the Japanese Fest. It was a great time… We walked around, looked at flowers, drank a couple of Kirins, gnawed on some Teryaki (Yeah, they say traditional Japanese food, but let’s face it – it’s Japanese American food), and lounged on the grass while listening to the syncopated pop jazz stylings of the band, Hiroshima. We even did silly stuff like holding hands and stealing kisses while in the shadows of the Japanese Maple trees… You know, that stuff you do when you are young and in lust…

So, anyway, that tells you right there that this event is better than 20 years old, so it’s been around for a while…

And, since we are on the nostalgia portion of this missive, the above description is pretty much what you saw back then. Maybe… And I do mean maybe… you saw a few (very few) folks in traditional kimonos and the like, and they were most definitely in the employ of the Garden. But generally, it was just folks walking around enjoying the flowers and ambience. (BTW – The picture on the right is from this recent trip. I was much prettier when I was younger. E K, of course, was smoking hot when she was younger, and is now so smoking hot as to burn out the elements in the digital camera’s CCD because she just keeps getting prettier and prettier every single day…)

Several years have passed – obviously – and while I have attended the festival on a variety of occasions since the days of Evil Redhead Courtship, 2009 was the first time in several years since I’ve actually NOT been on tour during the fest. So, we went. E K, the O-spring, and yours truly…

My how times have changed…

Before we ever made it into MoBot proper, I was confronted by 37 twenty-something girls in Sailor Moon outfits. At first I thought they were an actual group of Japanese school children visiting as a part of the cultural aspect of the fest. However, upon closer inspection – not, you know, really close inspection… I’m NOT that kind of a perv ya’know – it became apparent that I was actually dealing with a whole raft of Caucasian, midwestern, late-teen to early-twenty-somethings in schoolgirl costumes and wigs.

Okay… Fair enough. Anime is kind of a big thing, so I figured they were hired to be some manner of hostesses or something. Although, I have to admit, the blue, lemon yellow, and magenta hair scared me a bit.

But then I ended up in line behind them as they bought tickets. So… Obviously they didn’t work there. They were just… Well… fond of dressing up like cartoon schoolgirls I guess…

Then I turned around… Coming at me, flanked by a Sailor Moon knockoff and a Goth Lolita, was a Dalek. Now, some of you may not know what a Dalek is. Well, by way of explanation, it’s an evil robot from a British Sci-Fi TV show called Doctor Who. It basically looks like a giant salt shaker on wheels carrying a plunger, but it’s definitely not out to unplug your toilet. It pretty much runs around screaming in a mechanical voice, “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”

Think low budget, salt shaker shaped terminators.

So, anyway, I kind of understood the anime thing, but now I was truly confused. What was a robot from a British SF series doing at the Japanese Festival.

I took out my cell phone and texted my good friend Anastasia – “I’m surrounded by Sailor Moons, Samurai’s with Superman Capes and Playboy Bunny ears, and Lolitas”

A moment later she texted back. “Bring me one home with you.”

That’s Anastasia for you. Always with the unexpected comebacks.

I texted her again. “There’s a Dalek too.”

I waited. Before long my phone chimed, gave a little shimmy, and I looked at the screen. “A Dalek? WTF?”

Those were my sentiments exactly.

We continued around the garden, enjoying the scenery – and I mean the flora and fauna type scenery here – as we attempted to escape the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Anime convention that had crashed into the festival.

Around the corner we went and I ran smack dab into one of those Oxymoron’s from that commercial – An Asian Scottish Schoolgirl in a corset, tartan mini-kilt-skirt thing, knee socks, heels, a cape, dog ears on a headband, and she was carrying a wooden sword.

I screamed.

She rolled her eyes.

I went the opposite direction as fast as I could.

Eventually we made the circuit. The O-spring went inside the children’s activities area with E K so she could do some arts and crafts. She’s all about that kind of stuff. Me, I sat outside, drank my water, and watched an ice sculpture melting in the bright sun while John Belushi clones tried to do the old Samurai Night Fever routine from SNL (Back when SNL was worth watching.) Some incredibly orange hair walked by and I averted my eyes before being blinded.

I pulled out my phone and texted Anastasia again. I mean, after all, she was at a family BBQ so she had nothing better to do than text back and forth with me, correct?

I sent her, “Magenta, Blue, Yellow, and Orange hair. Scary.”

Seconds later my phone did the vibro-dance and the screen read, “You feel like you dropped a hit of acid without knowing it, don’t you?”

Yeah. I did. I began to wonder if E K had slipped something into my water and was now hiding around the corner laughing at me.

It wasn’t long before we made our way back to the front and it was time to leave. I sat in the shade for a moment, waiting while E K and the O-spring did a quick pass through the vendors in search of a parasol for the munchkin. As I sat watching, confident that nothing could top anything I’d seen so far today, a gorgeous young woman in a bright red, mini-tunic type dress, stiletto heels, and chopsticks protruding from her hair sauntered by, looking every bit like the kind of Asian hookers you see portrayed in bad movies.

But, that wasn’t the one that made my eyes roll back in my head…

Just before E K and the O-spring returned, the crown jewel of the strangeness walked by. Unfortunately I was so stunned I didn’t snap a picture, but I did manage to hack out a text to Anastasia as soon as my retinas settled down…

“Just walked by: Camouflage shorts, red high heels,  bright yellow legwarmers, black tank top, fluorescent blue hair, and a huge raccoon tail hanging off her ass. WTF?” I typed.

Her return text was a simple, rhetorical question. “This is going to be a blog, isn’t it? ;-)”

Well yeah… She was correct… I mean, I couldn’t dream up shit like this even if I had a case of beer and a pound of happy mushrooms at my disposal.

Next year I think I’ll forgo MoBot and throw my own Japanese Festival. There’s a great little Sushi Bar about 5 miles from my house. If you’re looking for me, that’s where I’ll be. Just do me a favor and leave your cape and Fluorescent Crayola hair at home. I’d like to enjoy my sushi without burning out my retinas again…

More to come…

Murv

I like to sing.

Now, please take note – I did not indicate in any way that I am good at singing. I simply said that I like to do it. Therefore, you aren’t about to find me in a Karaoke bar, belting out Bon Jovi or Heart tunes and downing Kirin with a bunch of visiting Japanese businessmen. For one thing, I never have occasion to be socializing with the aforementioned Asian moguls. Just doesn’t happen in my line of work. Maybe someday a Japanese publisher will pick up the foreign rights to the Rowan Gant Investigations and do a translation, but something tells me by the time they were done, he would end up being a Mystical Samurai Pokemon or something of that sort, so I’m not really sure how I feel about that prospect. I guess it all depends on how much Kirin I’ve had, and how much money is on the table when the offer is made.

But, let’s get back to the story…

The truth is, it really doesn’t matter if they are Japanese businessmen, or a visiting friend from the FBI, since the latter actually does happen. You still won’t find me hanging out in the Karaoke bars, because even though I like to sing, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, even with help and I know that. I didn’t used to have this problem. Once upon a time I could cart a tune around in a brown paper sack with no backup whatsoever, and sound pretty good. But, at around age 13 I was afflicted with a bad case of swimmer’s ear. (I bet you thought I was going to say hormones… Well, that’s a different blog…) At any rate, both of my eardrums were perforated by the blistering, which left behind a whole mess of scar tissue. As I have grown older the extent of my frequency hearing loss has worsened considerably. So, no matter whether we are talking brown paper sack, plastic bucket, or galvanized pail, I can’t carry a tune.

Still, I like to sing.

Just ask Anastasia, good friend and co-founder of the “Murv’s Stalkers” fan club. She and her husband are regular visitors to the “Murv Cave,” and were here for the Yule Bash 2007. They were also here for Yule Bash 2008, but 2007 has more to do with the singing thing… You see, that was the year of the 14 inch snowfall type blizzard storm that struck on the very day and evening of the Yule bash. So, Anastasia actually got to witness me shoveling the back deck – repeatedly – while I was holding a Vodka-Tonic in one hand, and belting out my own renditions of A Fairytale of New York, Run, Run Rudolph, and countless other holiday tunes. What I’m trying to illustrate here is this – I am likely to start singing at the drop of a hat. Especially if alcohol is involved, but while it is a good impetus, booze definitely isn’t a pre-requisite.

Such was the case just the other day. And, no, this time there was no alcohol involved.

You see, I had just picked up the offspring from school. We returned home, and following the usual schedule the short person set about doing her homework while I started fixing dinner. After all, E K would be home in just a little over an hour and we all know what happens if I don’t have her dinner on the table when she walks in.

So, anyway, it had been a fairly good day, I was feeling somewhat chipper,  and I was far enough ahead of the game with fixing dinner that I could reasonably assume E K wouldn’t beat me and lock me in the closet that evening. Well, at least not on account of dinner being late, that is… Therefore I started bellowing out some Traveling Wilbury’s tunes. I happen to like the Traveling Wilbury’s. Not only are their songs catchy, but also they’re a lot of fun.  If I remember correctly I started out with Tweeter And The Monkey Man then flowed right into Handle With Care. I think Last Night might have even been in there somewhere as well, although I’m pretty sure it entered the mix a bit later. I left Margarita out of it because it doesn’t sound nearly as good without the 4-part harmony.

Somewhere around the time I was taking a breath before launching into the chorus of one of the above songs, I was cut short by the offspring calling out to me from the dining room…

“Daddy!” she yelled.

Well, it didn’t sound like anything was terribly wrong… Parents kind of have a sixth-sense about that sort of thing believe me. What it sounded like was that she was simply trying to get my attention before I started bellowing again. I made the logical assumption that she might need some help with fractions or some such. She absolutely despises math. It’s not that she’s bad at it or anything. She just hates it with a passion for some odd reason.

Anyway, I stepped out through the kitchen doorway and asked, “What’s up?”

She looked at me, and with all the seriousness she could muster she asked, “Daddy, are you going to be a Pop-Star?”

You see, the offspring is all about that Cyrus kid… The one named after a state…  And the somebody or another brothers… And Denny Tomatoes, or some such… You know, the latest Disney sensations, most of whom probably won’t have the staying power of an Annette Funicello… But, that’s just my opinion… Either way, she is so all about these “Tween/Teen Idols” in fact, that she has abandoned her grand plan to become a Doctor and has decided instead to become a “Pop Star” just like them. When I was her age I think I was planning to be an Astronaut. Shortly after that it was Oceanographer, closely followed by Veterinarian… So, my point is, I’m not worried about her current career choice. I’m sure it will change soon enough. As a matter of fact, she has such a gift for gab and penchant for arguing with us, that I wouldn’t be surprised to see her become a trial attorney. I mean, I hope not. Then when people at the old folks home ask me what my kid does for a living I’ll have to make up a lie and stuff… But, I digress…

So, the kid had just asked me if I was going to become a “Pop Star”…

I looked back at her and chuckled as I replied, “No, honey, I write books for a living. You know that.”

She pondered my answer for less than a heartbeat before replying, “That’s good, because you don’t sing very well.”

Critics. They’re everywhere. But, at least I know my kid is honest, so that gives me some hope that she won’t become an attorney after all, and it should definitely keep her out of politics.

As for me, I guess I won’t be quitting my day job.

More to come…

Murv