I don’t know if any of you folks out there are quite the obsessed Webernet addicts that we are around here, but this Facebook thing is sucking all the time from the Universe and we FBers ain’t gettin’ it back.
Case in point: Back in the time before there was time, my wife and I worked at a Southern California chain of record stores called Licorice Pizza (she actually hired me, that’s how we met). The stores were the epitome of “hippie chic”, burlap sacks for wallpaper, sofas in the middle of the store to sit and groove to the latest releases and don’t forget the free wax licorice we gave away. The chain did really well until the 80’s, when Reaganomics and corporate greed sucked it up into the dustbin of What Once Was. Well, there just happens to be a Licorice Pizza Alumni group on Facebook (of course, why wouldn’t there be?)
Chris (my wife) probably comes closest to having the longest continuous stint with Licorice Pizza as anyone. She started at the Anaheim store putting away shipments for free as a 14-year-old, got hired and became a store manager when she was barely 20. Anyway, once she found the group on FB, she started digging through old boxes of memorabilia looking for things she could post on Facebook. During the course of her search, she came across a bunch of old “notes” that I had drawn and written for her back when we were sprouts. We had a neat little white stucco “Hollywood Bungalow” in the Los Feliz area of L.A., just a couple of blocks from the Hollywood Bowl in one direction and Sunset Blvd. in the other (Dodger Stadium was only 10 minutes away on surface streets, too!) This was in the B.C. (Before Children) era and working at a record store and living in L.A. was a really cool way to waste your youth.
We often worked opposite shifts which meant we didn’t always see each other in the morning. So, before I would go to bed (while she was sleeping) I would write and draw goofy notes to her to (hopefully) make her grin in the morning. Actually, it was pretty much the same kind of junk I clutter this space up with, nonsense.
So, I thought I’d post a poem (or pome) that we ran across that’s about 30 years old. I’ve deleted some bits that I no longer find appropriate. now that I’m a wizened old coot and all…
OK, maybe it wasn’t the bestest poem I ever wrote. Still, kinda tugs at the heartsstrings don’t it? The fact remains, she married me anyway. So there.
By the way, my latest Firesign Theatre cartoon is available for viewing on It’s Just This Little Chromium Switch Here.
