Election Time Is Coming!

A Week from today, many of us will go to the polls and take a dump. Please don't do that. I've got plenty of pay stalls at my toilet emporium in downtown Norfolk to serve everyone. I realize that those of us who feel compelled to make plop plops in the voting stall are making a political statement. But there is no need for that. Vote responsibly.

And voting responsibly means voting as close to Libertarian as you can. "Libertarian And Things", right? The Tea Party people are on the absolutely right track. But their method is to put the Republicans back in power, most of whom will be the conventional "me too" type. But this time, I pray thee, oh Lord, that the Republican Party sees that the Tea Party and conservatives and libertarians who make up this wave to wash away the scum is serious this time, now more than ever.

One more chance for the GOP. One more goddamndiddly chance, or they're out, and if the Libertarian Party cannot pick up the slack, than we'll form a third party that will make Ross Perot's couple of runs look like a tea party. But one where little girls sit around and talk about boys. If the Republicans win the House, and if providence provides, also wins the Senate, and goes back to playing footsie with the Barney Franks of the world (I don't even allow that in my own toilets) then there will be, mind you, folks, must be, a real revolution to reform the government of The United States into the constitutional institution it was meant to be.

Damn. Oh damn. I worry so about my beautiful nation becoming a third world and third rate nation, and watch countries like China beat the capitalist shit out of us. And then when capitalism, real live exciting free markets, like the ones that made our bones right here, make China a free, democratic, and most powerful country in the world, whatta we gonna do down here on the farm?

Wave bye bye, baby. Vote responsibly on election day. Make love to our country.

Joe Postove

Mr. C. And Mrs. Cleaver

The election is a'comin', but June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley) and Mr. Cunningham (Tom Bosley) have died, and I want to pay tribute to them. The Beave's Mom and the head of the Cunningham clan, are right now, more important to me.

Though the beginning of "Happy Days" came just a little over ten years after the demise of "Leave It To Beaver" ("Beaver" died in September 1963..."Days" premiered in January 1974) they merged into my childhood-teenage boyhood, made the world a bit lighter, and interestingly enough, though they portrayed people of the same era (50's early 60's), the shows were opposites of each other.

I think I liked Mrs. Cleaver a little better, and the whole Beaver clan, because the show was from the 50's, but not of the 50's. Every week it televised the 50's as the 50's wanted to be seen, certainly not like it was. There were no hermaphrodites, pay toilets, don't ask blah blah, and real life, such as David Halberstam wrote in his epic book on the decade back in the 90's. "Leave It to Beaver" was what we wanted the 50's to be. And it was. For a half hour we could dream of the decade we desperately missed, or never experienced, and forget about the bomb, and Joe McCarthy, and civil rights, and the whole goddamn decade, as it really was. We could luxuriate in a pretend world of malt shops, football practice, double dates, and lovey dovey romance. The worst thing that ever happened on Beaver was when Eddie Haskell moved out to his own apartment. Maybe that wasn't so bad though. He moved back home in record time. In and out before the 30 minutes were up. And that was clocked. That was the 50's we wanted to return to, even if it never existed.

Happy Days was more complicated. It certainly did not have homosexuals, or poop pans, drug fiends, or shooting up the school on a Friday afternoon, like nowadays. But it was a more realistic portrayal of the decade, in that it, in it's own 70's sitcom fashion, confronted black people, sex(!), and poverty, among other things that really happened in the 50's. Mostly, however, Happy Days was malt shops, cars, high school, but with a little more honesty than the Beaver.

Is that what we wanted? No, but both shows satisfied a need, and Mrs. Cleaver, and Mr. C in their own way were a Mom and Dad that we respected, liked, and wanted our own to be more like.

I'd take the fake 50's over the real one. But we have to live with both.

RIP Baraba Billingsley and Tom Bosley.

Joe

Family Time

I have kin coming in this weekend, so you're going to have to find another pay toilet to pee and shit in. I know, I know, you have become used to my high quality stalls, and the alternatives (river, behind car doors, 7/11 cups, low quality pay toilets, like the ones made out of cigar boxes, and other assorted peepee and plop plop stations). I do sympathize with you and urine.

But I haven't seen my cousin in a couple of years, and if I had to man the toilets over the weekend, I wouldn't get to spend good times with family. And as you all know, I am a family man first. Except for those who are waiting for me to die and run off with my pay toilet empire. Girls, I have the biggest operation of dime pis, and fifteen cent plop stations in the southeastern quadrant of Virginia. And I can't give that up by letting some others watch them. Remember that old Haitian lady who collected the money before I perfected the change machine? Well, yeah, she ran off with over 100 million dollars. I made off of your human waste. What? You say that's no big shit? I say it's more like projectile sphincter vomiting. I try not to put too fine a point on these things, and be too gross out of respect for your family and the Godfather and his family and all of the crews who have been made by the mob, and those unfortunates who have not.

I'm not saying that my pay stalls, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week have any mob connections. But you do have to be aware that they are out there, and they want their piece of the pie (fully digested, in my case).

So for those of youse (or you, depending on your good or bad English) who need to use the bathroom this weekend, please try and hold as much as you can inside. I realize there will be some leakage. But that's part of the business that we have chosen, I hope you realize this. There is always going to be a little leakage, whether or not I keep the stalls open or closed.

I am, again, very sorry for any inconvenience to anyone because of my family obligations. On Monday, if there is anyone who has crapped in his pants, or peed in bed or elsewhere, I promise a half price ride on the roller-toilet.

Joey

10/9/40

Let's speak today of pretty things. Of good, and peace, and love. It is John Lennon's 70th birthday after all. John could have spent a life in Key West with Yoko and Sean, and walked out to the mailbox every afternoon and picked up his royalty checks. I would have.

John risked everything, all the time, for an end to war (WAR IS OVER...IF YOU WANT IT) and a start to peace. He was willing to play the fool to some, if it meant gathering steam for a world based on a Lennon model rather than what all the rest of us expected, to throw up our hands, and just give into...war. He would do anything to focus our minds on peace. Too many of us grooved just on the music. Unless we listened to Professor Lennon talk.

Meeting the world from bed, taking up with that woman, fighting the United States government to stay in the country and winning was what John wanted to do in the 70's. And, boy, did we need a John Lennon. Music? Ok, the contract calls for this and that and "here it is...sorry its not the best it could be, but I was in bed for peace"!

The Beatles, of course changed everything, sometimes for the better (mostly) sometimes for the lesser (everything prior to 1964 suddenly disappeared). The four of them, as a group, were together less than eight years. And then they scattered to the edges of music and the world, never to be whole again.

John came out ok. It wasn't as good, but it was John Lennon. He put out a few great albums, a few stinkers, and lost his way, some, while away from Yoko. But his voice, not the yeah yeah yeah, but the "Give Peace A Chance" voice put him in the cross hairs of the Nixon Administration to"get this beatnik out of the country". But John kept a 'comin'. It was for peace, not the victory of the Viet-Cong, or Mao's Cultural Revolution (if you go carrin' pictures...) or war mongers on the left. John fought off the critics on the left and right and did whatever was required for an end to war. He was quite good at that. But war is stronger than one man. If only that one man, followed by us, his folks, could bring us closer to peace, then and only then is peace stronger than war. Peace CAN trump war. WAR IS OVER IF YOU WANT IT! Then John would go along, some, to get along. By 1980, he had fully grown up, and dismissed his flirtation with the left only as a means to whack war to peace.

He couldn't have done it all without the music. That gave him standing. But he didn't have to do it. He could have lost it all, and been as poor as Frank Zappa. Peace and Yoko were what he lived for. And today, October Ninth, 2010 I want to wish John Lennon A Happy Birthday. You will be alive in my heart as long as my heart continues to rock to the beat of the music and the beat of the peace.


I love you.

Joe

Eats

Congress failed to pass the Child Nutrition Bill last week, and once again we have saved our kids from the tyranny of the federal lunch lady. Learning to eat (which was not at all hard for me) is something Mom teaches you when you're a baby, and should monitor at least until you're six or seven, when you start trading your peanut butter sandwiches for Hostess' Ho's and Clark Bars. Can't we keep the federal government out of this most important aspects of growing up, filling your belly with goodies and getting fat. We all go through it, and the government should keep its hands off our jelly-bellies.

I was on a diet starting at the age of six until I could diet no more, sweety. Look at photos of me before I turned 6 and I was some gorgeous babe. Then at six, like right there when the buzzer went off in the kitchen (I had asked Mom to set the thing so I would know the exact time I turned half a dozen) I went into a diabetic slumber. Little did I know then, that I was born at 3:30 in the morning, the time I slid out of my Mom's birth canal and into the arms of the doctor, who beat the shit out of me. At least it felt like it at the time.

But at six years old, my Dad decided I should have my head almost completely shaved (maybe to ward off those Beatles) I started to gain weight, and Dr. Jerome put me on diet pills (I ate them with Jello..J-e-l-l-o) which made me insane. I was shaking my head like a dervish because the pills were too much for my fat little, sweet, boy body. And not long after that, I think when I was eight(!) I got braces, which I hung onto for five years. I was a mess. See how you get to be a mess at 53? Be a mess a six. It works out pretty nice.

But what about kids eating junk food at school. I'll make the NEA a deal, get the junk education out of the schools, and then maybe we can pull some of the chocolate cherries out of the vending machines.

Oh, boy! When I was in school, the vending machines were full of what every boy and girl should have to have a roundy body and every now and then diabetic comas. We had the cherries, peanut butter candy (what is that..it pulls your fillings out, Yoo-Hoo, M&M's, Chunkies, and candy and mess so good and sweet and godly that going to school wasn't so bad). Lots of us kids didn't eat a full breakfast of Count Chockula, and Tab, so that we could gorge on vending munching munch. And then after school, we would go to 7/11 and, well man, I'll tell you this, I thought, at the age of 10, I was getting high on the grease and good grub only a 7/11 has.

I miss those days. How about some Mary-Jane's. I'll send you some teeth.
Now, government, listen up. I want you out of the bedroom, lunchroom, tearoom, bathroom, carport, little plastic pools, my gallows, and anything else that impinges on the rights of me or my children (if God should ever figure a way to get me pregnant...and NOT LIKE THAT!

Joe

Toe Jam

I got my toe stuck in the damn jam jar again last night. I have no one to blame other than myself. I just can't help it. Whenever I get near the jar (which I keep on the floor near the refrigerator) I get so sexy, and suburban-like, that something comes over me, and before I know it, my little toe (the baby toe for you who aren't part of the in crowd) is swimming, luxuriously and proudly in the jar of jam.

I hang my head in shame. I know my relationship with jam (and the jar..I like the jars too) is not the best thing for my mental health. I try to wear my slippers until I'm neatly under the covers and on my way to Sleepytime Village, but I have a routine that invariably leads me to the kitchen and the damn jam jar. My Mother, who passed away almost six years ago tried to cure me of this by fluffing up my pillow ever so nicely before I went to sleep, and put extra 'Redi-Whip' on my Jello hoping this might get me out of the habit and help me lead a moral, Godly life, dedicated to sweets, tv, fried chicken, and fatty potato salad, and no, no, no, to any ideas of sticking my toe in a jam jar for delights. But it didn't work. After Mom tucked me in, I would sneak down to the kitchen (after saying goodnight to the folks at Sleepytime Village, telling them I would be back soon, to ride the white tiger to sleep) and get the jam out of the fridge, and just mess up my whole life slipping my baby toe in and out, in and out, in and out, of the glorious jar of jam that only a precious Lord could understand.

I really don't know what to do. I've tried melted butter in a glass, chicken fat pooped by a real chicken at one of my pay toilets, and many other remedies. None work. Oh, maybe what I do ain't so bad. I mean, I'm not hurting anyone (except me) and it's not like war or eating beets, or trying to flush a meatloaf down a pay toilet for a dime.

Maybe it's just me. And maybe I'm just alright.

Mmmmmmmmmmm. I feel like some jam!

Joey

Happy Birthday Mr. Twister!

Folks, I had written a nice long, bulbous, pretty, sweet paean, to my favorite Rock and Roller, Chubby Checker. But the God of taking away drafts to heaven, swiped my post, and I got nothin' here, girls. Ladies, I tried.

Let me say, however, that tomorrow is Chubby's 69th birthday. He was Rock and roll's first feminist. After the Twist, girls didn't need boys to lead them anymore.

Happy birthday you great man. And may youhave many more!

Joe