Phil: Tell me if this sounds familiar to you, Steve. Has anyone in your household, anyone at all, recently made any purchases in excess of $500 for a variety of seeds, seedlings, mulch, fertilizers, soil additives, large spray bottles of pH balanced stuff, shovels, hoes, rakes, bulldozers, threshing machines, limb-severing combines, etc., etc., in hopes of cultivating a “home garden”? A “home garden” destined to yield a crop that could be obtained from a corner fruit stand for about $5.97 during the course of one leisurely Sunday drive? I’m just curious.
Steve: Funny you should ask. This sounds exactly like my wife, who’s taken a barren alley of concrete and wooden fence alongside our house and turned it into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I know it’s early yet, but she’s already harvested 27 cents worth of mint leaves! We’re farmers now. Bring on the federal subsidies!
Phil: We tried growing tomatoes a few years back. After buying all the necessary hardware, clearing the land, fighting off the vermin and bugs, I figure the three edible ‘maters we wrought from the good earth near our patio came in at around $74.39 each. I ended up with a $3,439.27 B.L.T. (I’ll explain the whole “homegrown bacon” saga another time). I’ve decided that the big building with the word “Market” in big letters across the front is my best bet at securing sustenance. Besides, I could never harvest an adequate Ding Dong from my garden. The Redding heat is murder on chocolate icing.
Steve: I would appreciate it if you would leave your Ding Dong out of this.
Phil: Well, I’ve been asked to keep it out of a lot of things, but we were talking about “farming.”
Steve: Right. When I was growing up in Arkansas, we planted a garden nearly every year. Then, as the weather got muggier, we’d lose interest. Next thing you know, we’d have a patch of six-foot-tall weeds, and we couldn’t go anywhere near it for fear of snakes and other vermin. I knew gardening was not for me. I remember standing out there by the weed patch, just like Scarlett O’Hara, saying to myself: “I’ll never go hungry again. Not as long as there are convenience stores.” I can’t wait for stuff to grow. I have to be able to replenish the household snacks during halftime.
Phil: Speaking of football (hey, guys almost always end up talking about football), I understand Michael Vick, the former quarterback currently serving a two-year sentence on dog-fighting charges, is shopping a “reality show” to the cable networks. The idea is that the cameras would begin following him as he is released from prison and begins doing “good deeds” to make amends for his past. I hear Spike TV is the leading candidate to land the series, though Animal Planet would be the most logical home for such a spectacle. I can see it now, “Welcome to The Dog Whisperer with Michael Vick — Is your pup misbehaving? Peeing on the rug? Chewing up your favorite sneakers? Well, just watch as a few choice words from our own Michael Vick straightens Rover right up!” I smell a hit!
Steve: I smell something, that’s for sure. I think TV audiences would root for the bad dog, especially if we could put Vick in a pit with Rover. Or maybe that’s just me.
Phil: I am in constant awe at what I will watch on television. I recently watched Danny Bonaduce wrestle the guy who played Screech on “Saved By The Bell.” Hulk Hogan was the host. I sat through the whole freaking thing. Once I awoke from my brain-numbed stupor, I took a three-hour shower. Found myself singing the theme to “Gilligan’s Island” for most of it and decided it’s not TV’s fault. I’m just an idiot. Still, the prospect of Michael Vick snuggling puppies on TV makes me want to sit in a corner and wait for The Rapture (which I think will air on Fox).
Steve: I’m a dog lover, as you know, but I got quite a scare from one the other day. I was getting out of my Ford Lemonstar minivan in the parking lot of the Redding Library. I was in a hurry, late for an appointment, and my hands were full. No sooner did I slam my door than a giant Rottweiler reared up from the bed of the neighboring pickup and lunged right at my face, slobbering and snapping and barking, and I nearly wet myself. The dog was tied up, but I couldn’t tell that during those first few seconds, while I sprinted away, cursing and gibbering.
Phil: Steve, as a quasi-friend, I think I should point out that it doesn’t take a rabid hellhound slinging ropes of hot spittle to cause you to curse and gibber. I’ve seen you get pretty close to going all 5150 when you couldn’t get the Fig Newton wrapper off. Granted, anything that separates one from all that chewy goodness is frustrating, but those of us who love you (well, quasi-love you) would like to see you deal with life in a little more rational manner. Now, being one of your quasi-friends who doesn’t have to deal with you much, even I have to say you were a more pleasant man when you were on the barbecued pork rinds and Mountain Dew. Hey, I’m not being judgmental, but guys who curse and talk gibberish in front of the library end up on the Parkview Neighborhood hit list. I’ve been there, and it’s not a place you want to be. Trust me.
Steve: I quasi-trust you. I love the library and would gibber past a whole pack of hellhounds to visit it. The new building’s been open more than two years now, but I still run into local folks who say they’ve never been inside it. Staggering. Anyhow, to bring this back to a manly topic worthy of the Cutting Board: Who’s your favorite literary “guy?” Ernest Hemingway? Jack London? Mark Twain? Norman Mailer? Truman Capote?
Phil: I know you expect a glib answer here (my mom said I could sit in a bowl of ice cream and tell you what flavor it was, I was such a smartass), but the “guys” I read and loved the most tended to be on the funny side. Love the work of some crime novelist with a twistedly funny streak whose name escapes me at the moment. Hard to argue with Papa and London, but I really liked Twain, Thurber, S.J. Perelman, George S. Kaufman, Groucho, Bruce Jay Friedman and Kurt Vonnegut. Read Steinbeck and the Noir guys, the Southern Gothic of Tennessee Williams and the like, but I was really captivated by the “Beats.” Kerouac knocked me out. William S. Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan and that bunch. I love history and biographies, too. Reading a good one on Muddy Waters at the moment (thanks to a Friends of the Library book donation from Slam Buckra hisself! Thanks, Slam!). I guess I have fairly eclectic tastes. I have been wearing out the turnstiles at our beautiful library. This time of year, it is so cool because you can sit with a nice book or periodical upstairs and watch a ballgame at Tiger Field through the windows. I can’t think of a nicer way to fritter away a Saturday afternoon.
Steve: Hey, I like all of those guys! I’ve only dabbled in the Beats, however. Probably more familiar to you because you’re so much older. Har. Reading is one area where I’m a manly man, in that my favorites are the hard-boiled stuff. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald and Richard Stark/Donald Westlake. Inject a little comedy — Elmore Leonard, Ross Thomas, Carl Hiaasen — and I’m in heaven. No wonder I ended up writing the sort of drivel, I mean novels, that I write.
Phil: That’s right, you write novels, huh? I’m amazed that such a degenerate could create such fine work. Just kidding (sorta), I really do wish I could make it to Newport Beach to see the film adaptation of your “Lonely Street,” but I have to get a haircut that day. It’s not that I’m surprised one of your books was made into a movie (great book, really), but I still can’t imagine how a Boston Celtics fan could produce more than a crooked “X” on a sheet of paper — and yet, there you are. Bewildering. Most Hollywood types are Lakers fans. Did you know rooting for the Celtics is considered one of the seven signs of a serious mental illness? You display four out of the other six as well, but your overall score indicates that you’re not a legitimate danger to society, yet. But you really should consider some type of therapeutic activity. Something soothing, to help take the edge off. Have you considered taking up, say, gardening?
Steve: Nah. I can’t afford it.
