The new home of "The Frank Report."

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  Redneckhigh.com. Saw it in passing.
posted at 11:43 PM

  This shout out is for my peeps in the Ventrue Directorate, yo.
This flower is for my roses in the garden; current and post.
posted at 5:51 PM

  This one goes out to a certain Caroline M who needs a bit of cheering up. The rest of you who need a smile might consider trying this.
posted at 5:08 PM

  I'm closing in on Canada at this point, racing to get there before the sun goes down, not remember anything from my Astronomy 101 class about how it gets dark later in the north. I'm eyeballing the picturesque mountain lakes and fantasizing about a quick dip but it's only a fantasy because it's currently 60 degrees out. The last time I tried something similar was when I swam out into San Francisco's (shark infested) bay after almost killing myself by attempting to climb down a sheer cliff (without gear) in order to "see the pretty beach."

When I pull up to the little customs shack at the border, I hand the guard my driver's license and am surprised that he asks me intelligent questions and compares my face with the one on the card. After a nice chat, he waves me through. The temperature immediately drops five degrees. I am in a FOREIGN COUNTRY.

Everything in Canada, for those of you who haven't been there, is way cool.

Signposts are painted white. Speedtraps are visible far in advance. Housing looks vaguely....European. Unlike homesteads in the West, Canadian homesteads out in the sticks are surrounded by tall trees and shrubs in right angles around the yard. A buffer against the wind or snowdrifts perhaps? I saw plenty of second story, blizzard friendly entrances.

McDonald's in cool in Canada. They stick a tiny maple leaf in the red marquee; a nationalization of globalization. Canadian flags are bigger and displayed far more prominently than even the newly patrotized U.S.A. Canada is cleaner. The stores are bigger and unselfconsciously ironic. For instance: Ye Royal Rug Shoppe was made in the form of a faux castle...and packed with customers! Every building, hedge and road was just far more stylized than anything else I've ever seen outside of the gay ghettos of Dupont Circle and the Castro.

The European style disconnect became more intense as I drove through the nice section of Vancouver. Big Miami-style mansion houses surrounded by New Jersey-mafia style wrought iron fences with English gardens and Norwegian style lines. I couldn't wrap my brain around the multiculturality of it all.

I passed bus stops without shelters trying hard to imagine myself standing out in snow drifts as big as dump trucks chatting merrily with my neighbors and waiting for a bus as my teeth popped like flash bulbs in the sub zero temperatures.

For a city where most of one's life must by necessity be spent indoors, there were an awful lot of parks. The one that I visited was at the end of a seedy road near the university campus bordering the bay. "Nude beach" said the signs. "In this weather?" I thought. "This I've got to see."

I got out and climbed down several hundred yards worth of steps that were carved into the rock face alongside a mountain stream that had carved equally deep pools. Ferns and moss-covered logs made canopies overhead as I made my descent. I kept waiting for the Velociraptors to lunge out of the forest and chase me into the next scene of a Spielberg movie.

The nude beach, like so much of advertising, was not what was expected. The "beach" was fields of chest high grass bordering the muddy edge of the bay. No nudity in sight. In the distance, I watched as cargo vessels from the north dumped load after load of logs into the water, for no clear purpose. But the bay, by this point, had acquired an unnatural undulating brown horizon.

The trip back uphill (where I acquired my travel passenger for the next week, "Mr. Poison Ivy") sucked the air right out of my lungs. One of the downsides of all those beautiful western vistas advertised in the brochures is that they quickly reduce every Easterner into an oxygen-sucking, wheelchair-riding cripple.

As I toured the rest of the city, I found that despite the wintry chill, people were out shirtless playing volleyball, or windsurfing in the bay with abandon. I huddled behind the closed window of my car, snuggled deep into my sweatshirt. Just watching the happy couples stroll by in tank tops and shorts made my teeth rattle.

In most cities, the "party district" is crammed into a few square, vomit-soaked blocks of downtown. Vancouver's was several miles long. Used CD's, windsurfing gear, coffee, retro clubs, poetry shops, burrito stands: you name it. This place had it. I felt like Veruca Salt in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory" I saw myself bursting into song and running down the street grabbing sunglasses, hot chai and newspapers from the vendors. "I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket, it's my bar of chocolate. Give it to me now!"

Up until this point, I thought I had seen the majority of Vancouver: sleepy, treelined, sedate, with nice parks and modest sized buildings. Then I crested the hill.

Enormous rounded towers, Tokyo style, rising up from along the shores of yet another bay with gigantic snow and fir tree covered mountains rising immediately behind all their windows reflecting the red glow of the setting sun. A dense urban core with bridges leaping out from the middle of congested plazas like dolphins and arcing over the waters. I took an offramp and descended into the center of town....

...where I quickly stumbled across the heroin addicts and whores. But what healthy and stylish heroin addicts and whores! They all looked like slightly undernourished LL Bean catalog models, glistening with flop sweat and the vibrant health of living in such pure mountain air. (Although I am unable to put a basketball into a hoop, I have an unfailing knack for finding the red light district of every city I visit.)

By this point, it was getting late, but I realized that I had stumbled across the "Amsterdam of North America." One of the coolest cities I had ever visited, bar none. And that, one night, properly dressed in eight layers of flannel, I would be back. (Did I mention that Canadians are good drivers? Divided equally between "polite and slow in the right hand lane" and "fast and competent in the left.")

So it was that carefree and star struck, I drove merrily back to the border, where I met
THE MAN.

In retrospect, I should have checked in advance to see if I would need a passport to cross the border. In retrospect, I should not have been wearing the brim of my ballcap so low over my eyes, my collar up, or let my voice get hoarse and soft from lack of liquids. I looked, for all intents and purposes, like a very nervous man who had something to hide. (Hiding something like eight kilos of heroin in the trunk, or weapons grade plutonium.)

The Man was very interested in why the name on my rental car reservation didn't match the one on my credit card or driver's license. The Man was not pleased that I didn't have a passport. The Man would have thrown me into an interrogation room, except....

I had my name change documents and tax returns with me, and thus our 15 minutes together were brief -- but we'll always have Paris.

To Be Continued
(Next: Seattle/Portland)
posted at 4:50 PM

  I was running late, so I didn't get to see the fireworks from the Mall as I normally do. Instead, I (and I highly recommend this idea to everyone local) parked along the side of I-395 along with 15,000 other people and watched the fireworks from there. Made it home in 10 minutes instead of the usual 3+ hours. It seemed more poignant this year to watch the fireworks light up behind the wall of the Pentagon where the plane crashed with both the Washington Monument and Capitol dome in the background.

I loathe this city but it's settings and moments like those that make it tolerable.
posted at 2:57 PM

  When I was first given my prescription for glasses, nine months ago, and told that they would cost $550, and after they picked me back up off the floor, I said to myself, in the immortal words of Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, "That won't do."

That vow was reinforced one week later when I attempted to remove a jammed piece of paper from the copier and discovered that I had no peripheral vision, and that seeing inside a copier required me to tilt my head back and forth like a bird contemplating a discarded frito.

That's when I decided that several months worth of macaroni & cheese ("It's the cheesiest!") was preferable to a lifetime of staring at my fingerprints on a microscope slide hovering eternally one inch away from my eyes. Even I, it seems, have limits when it comes to navel, or in this case fingerprint, gazing.

So it was that three weeks ago, I found my way enroute to "have some work done."
"You do know about the proceedure, don't you?" asked Steve in his most nonchalant voice; his setting me up for the "ewwww" factor voice.

"Sure," said I. "They just zap you with a laser for a few seconds, you feel some pressure, a slight burning smell and then you get to take a workday nap for a few hours while your eyes heal. That's what it said in the brochure."

His laughter as he drove almost sent us into oncoming traffic. "That 'brochure' leaves out a few key
details. What they do is pry your eye open with calipers, lower a scalpal down while you watch, and then you get to see the scalpal carve your eye open - - right before everything goes dark. Then they do the same with the other eye. You might want to ask for a Xanax."

Odd that that detail wasn't included in the sales pitch. Volunteering to watch as the tenderest part of my anatomy was carved up was not what I had in mind. So I became a complete basket case - a basket case wrapped in a thin veneer of cool. I had had laser hair removal done in Tijuana and I knew that if the eye laser hurt anything like that, analogous to sticking your finger into an electric socket while simultaneously plunging your other finger into an open flame, that the eye laser was going to trace a pattern across my head as I leaped from the chair. Similar to that scene in Logan's Run where poor Farah Fawcett is diced and sliced; cutting her up into Hollywood-sized career nuggets.

The doctor, after having performed over 10,000 of these surgeries, anticipates my reaction and does two very smart things. One, the assistant dilates my pupils to the size of quarters, reducing the world to a pleasant
"2001: A Space Odyssey" swirl of colors and two, hands me a xanax tablet as soon as I hand over my credit card.

If you've never had xanax before, I highly recommend it. Xanax is to neurotics what chocolate is to underloved women who have read too many romance novels.

Forty-five minutes later, I'm laying on a chilly table in a space-age lab clutching a nerf football and having retractors applied to my eyelids. Pre-xanax I was reviewing the list of possible complications over in my mind. Dire warnings that all ended with: you will need a complete corneal transplant and then you will go blind...and die. Post-xanax, I was holding the nerf in my hand in thinking: "Go long!"

The rest of the proceedure was a blur. (Har, har har! I crack myself up! Thank you ladies and gentlemen, try the fish!) Something was lowered, the lights went out, the computer counted to five, and then the lights came back on. Ditto for the other eye.
Moments later I was $2,500 lighter and with more curve to my eyeballs than when I walked in.

The only post-operative inconvenience was having to wear big, spaceman-spiff style goggles while sleeping to keep avoid rubbing them while I slept. I also learned that my inability to put a basketball into a hoop with any skill, extends to the skillset of placing eyedrops.

I would highly recommend the proceedure to anyone. Just make sure you get the free xanax.
posted at 2:34 PM

  If the Frank Report were still in its original 2 column newsletter format, this would be a sidebar section.
I have completed my Nobel Prize reading list! Took me just over a full year but I've plowed through over 98 books: fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays. I am now officially ed-u-ma-cated. One day if I'm feeling really snarky and want to try and impress people, I'll put the full list in a spreadsheet and slap it up on a web page. But for now, I feel good, I feel great and I'm ready to tackle the next book-related item on my list: The 100 Greatest Books. Alan Bloom, dictator of higher education and all things high brow, came up with a full list of the Western Canon which I flatly refuse to read as it comprises over 5,000 years of history and over 2,000 books. I want to assuage my middle class anxieties, not pursue a doctorate in literature.

I never thought I'd make it. Especially since many of the books from 1901 to 1920 are out of print and not stocked by many public libraries. An additional challenge was finding the books in English. If you want your real multi-cultural experience, this is it.

So if you've noticed that I've gained a few pounds and appear a bit paler than normal. This is the reason why.
(Update: The comments section has disappeared again. Server outage at YACCS. Looking into things.)
posted at 2:26 PM

  If you're looking for something hard yet good to read, you can't go wrong selecting from this list.

“A Massive Swelling” by Cintra Wilson (Essays)
“Barabbas” by Par Lagerkvist (Nobel Lit)
“Black Water” by Joyce Carol Oates
“Quo Vadis” by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Nobel Lit)
“Sex, Art and American Culture” by Camille Paglia (Essays)
“Soul Mountain” by Gao Xingjian (Nobel Lit)
“July’s People” by Nadine Gordimer (“)
“The Stone Raft” by Jose Saramago (“)
“The Good Earth” by Pearl Buck (“)
“Bosnian Story” by Ivo Andric (“)

Poets: Odysseus Elytis and Pablo Neruda
posted at 2:11 PM

  One of the omnipresent themes in other blogs is the use of "conversation starters" such as "When was the last time you sent a handwritten letter to someone?" Not to be outdone by any angst ridden 16-year old, here are my answers to the following popular blog questions:

"What are the last five movies you've seen?"
Minority Report, Attack of the Clones, The Grifters, Donnie Darko, Ghost World

"What are the last five books you've read?"
Egil's Saga, On the Road, Zombie, A History of Modern Thought, The Satyricon

"What were your last five major purchases (excluding food and other necessities)?"
Kismet on CD, Star Trek Episode #177(the only one I've ever bought and ever will), Fraud by David Rakoff, the July issues of National Review/Vanity Fair/Harpers, and a complete corneal overhaul (two for the price of one.)

Discuss.
posted at 1:38 PM

  with more "meat" towards the bottom.
posted at 7:28 AM

  Christopher Hitchens' article is here. Thanks to relapsedcatholic.com for the link.

"Given that, the existence of a vast pedophile ring in the United States in the twenty-first century
is something more than an affront to 'family values.' And the fact that this ring is operated by
named and senior churchmen, who continue to hold high office and to officiate at Sunday
ceremonies, is something more than an outrage.

"Alleged 'cultists' in Waco, Texas, who were only suspected of maltreating children inside
their compound, were immolated by a bombardment of federal fire. The admitted and
confessed enablers and protectors of rapists and child abusers are invited, at the most, only to
resign their high offices. And even this suggestion is something that they feel strong enough to
repudiate -- and with indignation at that."

posted at 7:28 AM

  Go to google.com. Put quotation marks around your first name and the word is. For example: "Frank is"

Frank is Carver/James A. Van Allen Professor of Physics at The University of Iowa
Frank is best known for his crowd pleasing musicals (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Civil War)
Frank is on line fashion store for clothes and accessories
Frank is also a frequent speaker at industry events such as Online
Learning and KM World.
Frank, is born in Frankfurt, Germany
Frank IS reading and posting in the forums.
Frank Is The Point Man
Frank: Is it Genuine?
Frank is so amazing it's scary!
Frank is a monster. A young powerhouse capable of extraordinary feats of mastery.
Frank is Frank
Frank is not a simple vrml human, but an integrated project
Frank is one of those three people.
Frank is in the boardrooms, the streets, and on the stage
Frank is their voice
Frank is innocent

Is there no fad too pedestrian that it will not capture my interest?
posted at 9:07 PM

  Try these:

Redneck Neighbor Blog
Cherry Pepsi Gal (at least you know what you're getting)
a linker and a thinker

posted at 8:57 PM

  Takes awhile to load if you don't have a T-1 line but Powers of 10 offers a quick and brief altered perspective on the world.
posted at 8:29 PM

  ignore this
posted at 8:08 PM

  The first thing I noticed after stepping off the plane was the fresh air. Whether this was due to the Seattle climate or the rank body odors of my fellow travellers I cannot say. The second thing I noticed was the incredible levels of detail in the floor of the airport: embedded copper dragonflies, scrollwork, and metallic geometric patterns.

If this was Newark or LaGuardia, all that class would have been dissolved down to nubs by puke, vomit, blood and crime scene tape.

The rental car company didn't want to acknowledge my special on-line discount: 10 days, at least 4,000 miles on the car, and a cost in the mid thee digits. But my steely-eyed, East Coast-hardened commuter steelness was no match for the counter folk and they caved.

Off I went with a sporty red car with only 3 miles on the odometer.

The first thing I noticed was the wind and the cold. "How odd," I thought. "Must be an unseasonable summer chill." Little did I know.

My first stop after checking into the swank Motel-6 was the Space Needle. Since all the parking around the Needle was limited to unattended honor parking boxes, and I had yet to break a $20, it was valet parking for me.

I went up. It was windy. It was cold. There were clouds. I couldn't see crap. So down I came five minutes later. (After you've done one major city tower type landmark, you've basically done them all.) I will give credit to the Tower staffers, they worked hard to get me to smile. Maybe they sensed that I had yet to wind down from East Coast mode and like a naked, crazed man holding a knife, I had to be talked to in soothing and gentle tones.

I was stuck in traffic on an off-ramp weaving it's way in, out, and under various high rises in Seattle when I realized: "Hey Frank, you're not in Kansas anymore."

Wood partitions covered with hanging ivy broke up the view between ramps. Huge conifers surrounded by ferns, moss and cascading fountains erupted from the most unlikely places. All surrounded by shiny glass towers as if this layout were perfectly normal. As if the absence of graffiti, broken glass and steaming turds was natural and not an abberation.

Casual dress seems to be as much a civic religion in Seattle as preppy dress is in DC. I thought "baggy" and "rumpled" were only fit styles for packing materials, not the uniform of downtown office workers. Out here it's ballcaps, with men and women looking like extras on the set of Dead Poets Society 2. Out there it's doo rags with everyone expressing their hair solidarity with migrant farmworkers and babuskas.

Once on the road, I felt like a Kryptonian in a world full of Earthlings. "Look! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Frank blowing by you in rush hour traffic at 80 miles an hour, zigzagging his way through congestion like a Nascar driver qualifying for the finals. Finally, I've found something that I'm really, really good at: getting from point a to point b really fast. I am a straight line given flesh.

Outside the city...well, not exactly outside the city, because the city extends 100 miles north and 100 miles north. If New Jersey had a prettier, smarter sister, the SeaTac corridor would be it. North of the city, I encountered Seattle weather. It rained. And then it stopped. It rained again. And then it stopped. Reminded me of the old days when bands of static would roll down the screen, disappear, reappear at the top and then roll down again. The rain bands were like that.

All the while, I couldn't take my eyes off the Jurassic Park style flora along the side of the highways. Every branch had a bud. Every bud had a flower. Very Victorian. Layer upon layer upon layer of detail; too busy for the eye to take in but tastefully arranged nonetheless.

"Ecotopia," I thought to myself. "No wonder these people are all enviro-wacky. The latte in my hand would be shaking with negative vibes if someone tried to spoil my little slice of paradise."

But since my little slice of paradise is a bed with three dogs in the basement, I say "chop it all down."
(just kidding).

By the time I started reaching "the woods," things were starting to take on a strange Twin Peaksy feel. Maybe it was jet lag, or the euphoria of fresh oxygen, but the trees, the trees you see, they're watching me.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep," goes the poem. "But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."

There is something about conifers that is inherently evil. Ever-green. It's not natural. Forest Primeval. Emphasis on the "evil." And these things were ev-ry-where. As much as the desert is brown, Washington was green. When I looked at the mountain tops, I could make out the thousands of little pointy tops along the ridge lit by the setting sun beyond, and they seemed to me like thousands of little teeth, of twitching little limbs from a millipede of enormous proportions. The totem spirit of millipedes, if you will.

Green stimulates thought, or so the color experts and pyschologists say, and I was suffering from a surfeit of electrochemical stimulation of the non-pharmacological kind. I could have gone off into a sweat lodgey, New Age, revelation of sorts if I hadn't started coming across The Mountain Men.

My communion with Gaia was broken up by the intrusion of Ford's great grandchildren. Broken down, buffed up, or vintage prime; trucks of every shape and size. In the back of each, a hound - nose pointed into the wind, feigning cool while contemplating the Orwellian horror of 'two legs get seat belts and air bags, four legs get...thrown from the car and ground into hamburger on the side of the road.' Each 4-wheel vehicle, the supermodels of 4-wheel vehicles, looking like they'd just rolled out of a "Ford Tough" commercial, came with it's own tall, lanky, white, interchangeable action figure. (aka "the driver")

These men had facial hair so extreme, sports drinks should have been named after them. Bushy bristles, wicked curls, cleft goatees, and bleached dye jobs, just looking at them made me want to reach for a Gatorade and a sports bike. And each one, as I zoomed past, looked at me through the same pair of color-mirrored Oakley sunglasses glittering like some 22nd century embodiment of cool. Cyber eyes. Insect eyes. Cool on any dude at $150+ a pop.

No gun racks, though. That was a blessing.
(Next stop: Canada)
posted at 7:31 PM

  I took this quiz last week and tested as a centrist, leaning towards authoritarianism. Took it again today and was smack in the middle of the Authoritarian camp. I think we can blame the results on the DC METRO. My entire commute is consumed by an inner fantasy where I go around and correct the egregious etiquette errors and fashion faux pas of my fellow commuters. Guess it's a good thing I'm not trusted with anything as serious as a French Revolution, a disgrunted peasant mob, and some unused guillotiens.
posted at 6:04 PM

 

If I were a Dead Russian Composer, I would be Dmitri Shostakovich! I am a shy, nervous, unassuming, fidgety, and stuttery little person who began composing the same year I started music lessons of any sort. I wrote the first of my fifteen symphonies at age 18, and my second opera, "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," when I was only 26. Unfortunately, Stalin hated the opera, and put me on the Enemy Of The People List for life. I nevertheless kept composing the works I wanted to write in private; some of my vocal cycles and 15 string quartets mock the Soviet System in notes. And I somehow was NOT killed in the process! And Harry Potter(c) stole my glasses and broke them! Who would you be? Dead Russian Composer Personality Test

posted at 2:06 PM

  On a lark, I decided to stay up all night before my big trip to the West Coast, because I would be “too excited to sleep.” Those of you who know the Frank well, know that there is no circumstance in which he is unable to sleep. One day there will be a “wildest police videos” segment on Fox showing Frank asleep in the upper branches of a tree, surrounded by raging flood waters as a helicopter hovers precariously overhead lowering a rope. I digress.

I arrived at the airport 2 hours early, still caught up in the 9/11 travel mindset, only to discover that they have these nifty new handy-dandy machines at the airports. Just swipe your drivers license through the slot and out pops a ticket. (Warning: It helps to have actually bought a ticket in advance for this to work.)

Off I go to the waiting area where I am treated to a full window panorama of the sunrise. I am told repeatedly that there is something uplifting in sunrises; spiritual, magical, cleansing. Mainly it just makes my eyes tired. It takes too damn long. I want a Truman Show morning. Someone yells “lights” and the production department hauls the sun over the horizon. I walk out the door and all my neighbors are already in first position, ready to reenact the daily drama.

My first inkling of danger came when I spotted the longhaired man with the guitar. Just as I was getting used to him, came a group of 12 teenagers in matching t-shirts with that annoying glow of “youthful optimism” on their faces. You know the look. The one that is slowly drained away by the combined leeches of student loans, abusive internships, lecherous bosses, failed marriages, and 3am feedings. The t-shirts were for a religious group going to Guatemala for a “noblesse oblige” field trip. Like the loaves and fishes miracle itself, the group of 12 quickly multiplied into 144. That’s when I got my second inkling that SOMETHING BAD WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

No, Kumbaya was not sung. (You were waiting for that, weren’t you? Nothing so obvious here at the Frank Report.) But much evidence was on display that yes, there is an obesity epidemic among young Americans. And two of these happy campers were in love. And separated by an empty seat. And guess who got stuck in that empty seat. Go ahead, guess.

So no breakfast for Frank. Who was unable to move his arms to lower the tray or manipulate objects in front of him. And no peace either, because the two love birds wanted to talk back and forth across Frank’s space the whole time. And no getting up for Frank to swap seats because there were carts aplenty swooshing down the aisles, and campers aplenty swooshing down the aisles, and standing up restrictions, and turbulence restrictions, and finally everyone just fell asleep with their guts resting on my forearms.

So when Southwest Airlines modestly puts forth some restrictions on seats and size I say: Hell yeah! I also say (in all fairness): This wouldn’t be a problem if you had made the seats human sized to begin with. (fast forward)

So there I am at the Houston Airport having missed my connection but much enjoying the Babylon-5esq people watching opportunities. Big belt buckles, big hair, big hats, big breasts in big t-shirts, big butts, big shuttle carts, big breakfasts, just a big, big, big buffet of bigness indicative of the fact that I was now in the TEXAS, and not only TEXAS, I was in the WEST, which has bigness writ large all over its bad self. So here I was in Brobdingnagian land, chatting on the phone with my personal IRS representative and trying to wrangle (points on the board for using the word “wrangle” in a paragraph about Texas) a Biggie-sized refund for myself out of last years slim refund pickings (points for use of “slim pickings”) when who should happen to come strolling down the concourse but a big man, a big star, a big phenomenon of the biggest wrestling league in the Universe (yes, that big!): Hulk Hogan.

And he looked exactly like he does on TV. How cool is that! I always thought his dark black beard against the bleached moustache was some type of make-up effect but it’s real. (I digress.)
So since I’m a sophisticated, urban east coast type on holiday in fly-over country, I play it cool, chatting with my personal IRS representative and sneaking sly glances out of the corner of my eye at the superstar. (Who, wisely enough, had a cell phone glued to his ear the whole time. And let me tell you, that cell phone was sending out a ~~powerful~~ invisible force field of cool - a Star Trek-level defense shield of cool that hinted at big multi-million dollar business deals with big brokers in big firms in big buildings in big cities that best not be interrupted by any dewey-eyed, bald five-year old boys with leukemia levitating out of the unisex family room and hurtling airborne towards the phone with pen and napkin in hand like a piece of lint towards a black shirt. That cell phone cool would just chew through the lesser “guilt shielding” irradiating outward from the little boy and incinerate the poor moppet on contact. The man was cool. “Shut your mouth! Just talking about Hulk.”

After my brush with fame passed, and the scene was scanned for witnesses, I quickly whipped out my calling card and began frantically dialing anyone I could find to share the news. My flight to Seattle, in comparison, was uneventful. (To Be Continued).

posted at 1:13 PM

  Since I haven't written it up yet, many of you may not know that I was recently in Seattle on business attending a personal improvement seminar. Had a great time. Highly recommend it to everyone. For those of you who are local, the instructor is Massachusetts based and can travel.

More to come in the next few days.
posted at 9:14 AM

  Between this and the recent death of the world of Barbie my little world is crushed. Wham-O, for those of you who don't know, produced frisbee's and hula hoops (among other things.)
posted at 7:41 AM

  (Please note the time, BTW) Many of you have been inquiring about my mystical "list" and all the things that I've been doing/exploring/achieving over the past year. I've tried to slap a link to every major interest, hobby, side trip, goal, or interesting experience that I've encountered in that time.

I used to berate myself for not having enough hobbies and interests. Time to leave that particular bag of guilt on the station platform. Onward and Upward!
posted at 10:29 PM

  Regions Of Mind which had an interesting link to an article entitled: "The Resilience of the Adversary Culture."

The other is One Hand Clapping, previously published as Gunner20. Didn't care for it much then, but the quality of writing has improved.
posted at 10:11 PM

  My insignificant website popped up on the list of "updated blogs" on blooger.com. The thrill, the rush, of feeling, knowing, that potentially thousands of eyeballs were logged on and could possibly be reading my scribblings right now!

Who knows where this could lead?
posted at 10:06 PM

  I was driving along to lunch today, after having skipped breakfast, lunch and dinner the day before, when I passed a man driving what was clearly the physical embodiment of his midlife crisis: a black corvette, lovingly waxed and polished as only he hoped his penis might one night be. On his head, a visor cap - currently au curant among the younger set. Over his eyes, the latest in designer eyewear.

It was clear to me that this man was in the throes of a major identity crisis. If I had the opportunity, here's what I would have said to him.

"Sir, it's obvious to us both that you're getting old and that issue frightens you, as well it should. You will never be a young, teenage buck, raging with hormones fumbling around in the back seats of fast cars with loose women. However, all is not lost. I can tell, by this very "bling! bling!" car you drive, that you are a man of means. And chicks dig men of means. You should capitolize on that. Wealth means power, and power, my friend, means sex.

So don't denigrate yourself by dressing beneath your age and station. Settle comfortablly into your new role as a rich, powerful middle aged man who has life by the throat and wants to get laid. It may not land you the cashier girl at the local multplex, but any sensible woman with her primative mating instincts in overdrive will recongize you for what you are - a good provider - and she will clean your nest, bring you oranges, and pick lice from your fur in order to have the opportunity to pass on your genes. Metaphorically speaking, of course."

That's what I would have said to him. And what I'm saying to you is (as The Rock so eloquently puts it) "Know Your Role." Peace out, yo.
posted at 9:37 PM

  I think we can all agree that surrounding yourself with people who don't "measure up" to your standards in order to make yourself look and feel better is pretty shallow. However, after surfing through blogs and diaries of various forms for the past 6-8 hours, I have to say: "Damn, I'm good. I feel great."

How can I put this delicately? There are alot of f**ked up people out there - and most of them are keeping detailed logs of their dementia and manic depressiveness with a zeal and thoroughness that would make Kevin Spacey in "Seven" drool with envy. Being able to compare where they are with where I am makes me feel pretty darn optimistic that (as the song goes) "everything's gonna be alright." I think there's a sin or clinical term for what I'm feeling right now, but don't tell me; don't break the spell.

Despair.com has a demotivation picture of a partially submerged ship sticking up out of the water. The caption reads: "It could be that your life's purpose is to serve as a warning to others." So to all you miserable, conflicted, dieting, hearbroken, lonely people out there: I wish you all the best, but d*mn you make me feel ten-feet tall.

Who would have thought that oversleeping, running late for appointments, and getting frustrated in traffic could be so blissfully normal; that despite going to the moon; curing disease, and building skyscrapers, all our attentions are focused on our own stubbed toes.
posted at 9:09 PM

  Who is not familiar with "blockbuster movies"; movies that catapult little known actors and actresses to hights of glamorous fame? What is equally known, but little spoken of, is the dark power of "rotten tomato movies"; movies so bad they can hurl a star down from the heavens to penitently walk in shame and darkness.

Supergirl is one of those movies.

Poor Faye Dunaway. Who can forget her brittle, manic energy from "Network" or her sexy, country girl charm in "Bonnie and Clyde"? Until the end of her days, she will carry "Supergirl" upon her back, like a condemned art Messiah making her way to the Golgotha of a 10-second "In Memorium" spot on a montage at the Academy Awards.

The last place I remember seeing Faye was in a short, two-minute total, series of segments in the "Thomas Crowne Affair" where she was upstaged by Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo! Her original skeleton must be twisting in its dark prison in the basement of her plastic surgeon's office in Beverly Hills.

In Supergirl, some vindictive gay hairstylist earned notches in his belt by dying poor Faye's hair shag-carpet orange and then teased it into a buffant large enough to serve as a comic strip thought balloon. Faye was furthermore done in by the folks in wardrobe who stuffed her into faux-kimonos that were channelling the op-art effects found in most bad 80's living room wall prints. Thus providing the inspiration for that perennial pop hit by "The Vapors": "I think I'm turning Japanese."

Faye's agent, who I suspect was in post-coke binge sleep deprived delirium, should have seen that putting Faye in the role of "bitter, ugly, aging, evil, post-menopausal witch" up against a young, blond bubblehead might be a bad career choice. I assume that most aging actresses have Edina Monsoon's affirmation going through their heads as they enter every casting call: "I am thin and gorgeous!"

Faye in this role was neither.

I think there was a plot and some special effects in Supergirl. I can't comment on those. I was too busy scanning the horizon for Police, Fire and EMT teams to come and rescue Faye from the car wreck that became her career ending role.

[ed: Does this satisfy your lust for Frank-styled diabtribes, oh insatiable readers?]
posted at 5:34 PM

  Apparently, I can post to the future but not to the past.
I suspect that this ties in quite neatly with higher order mathematical theories that I'm only dimly familar with.
posted at 5:17 PM

  This is a test.
This test post has been post-dated from 6/30.
posted at 5:15 PM

  I am going to experiment with post-publishing entries; which should put them into the archives.
If it strikes my fancy I may begin to back date Frank Report entries; coinciding with the actual dates when they occured.
Stay tuned.
posted at 5:14 PM

  I highly recommend that everyone take one hour out of their life to go surf on-line the whole blog/live journal/on-line diary phenomenon. It's amazing what turns up; it's like being able to peep into your neighbor's living room window or snoop through their mail without having to go through all the inconvenient (not to mention illegal) inconvenience of climbing over the fence, tipping over a trash can and putting your face up against the glass.

What I've noticed, from just a quick search is that there are an inordinate number of libertarians and animae enthusiasts on-line. Perhaps there's something inherent in those mental defects that lead to an overpowering urge to spray mental gunk all over the web. What's worse is that the libertarian and animae camps tend to interlink thus leading to ossification of the web; dividing the community into self-selected ideological groups. I, as my links will attest, am not like that, as just about everything under the sun save cannibalism and pedophilia strikes my fancy. (Although both are fascinating from a distant and purely clinical perspective.) [ed: let me know if I use parentheses too much]

As my case and point, allow me to introduce Corey. Corey is a self-described homophobe and gym rat who includes links to legal steroids on his page. Those crazy kids! What will they think of next?

Corey has provided me with a window of insight into the mind of the counter guy down at the local Orange Julius ensuring that my smoothies and fry orders will never taste *quite* the same again.
posted at 5:12 PM

  From the blog monsterman.blogspot.com. As a history major, I should know whether these are true or not, but blimey, I'm stumpered. I don't know if this stuff is true, but it makes for interesting reading:

* Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
*Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children-last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it-hence the saying, "Don't>throw the baby out with the bath water."
*Houses had thatched roofs - thick straw - piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof-hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
*There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.
*The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway, hence, a "thresh hold."
*In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and>then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite awhile - hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
*Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."
*Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. (I know that people around that time believed that tomaotes were poisonous--ed)
*Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers, a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Often trenchers were made from stale bread which was so old and hard that they could be used for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth."
*Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper>crust."
*Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."
*England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside, and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."
There is just enough truth in this to make it believable, which convinces me the whole thing is bullshit. But I don't know. Anybody got a clue?



posted at 2:04 PM

  I have discovered the subtle lure of surfing on-line for new and tantalizing tidbits to add to the Frank Report: links, quizzes, news articles etc. What is so seductive about this process is that it allows me to update the Frank Report without having to do any actual w.r.i.t.i.n.g. Which is what you're here for in the first place, yes? Give me a chance to ruminate on this (points for the use of the word "ruminate" in a post.) In the meantime, behold the new face of evil.
posted at 1:59 PM

  There's a game that was (may still be popular) among the on-line set, and along with my new matra of "I've never met a fad I didn't like," I've tried it. The game is called "Google Whacking." The goal is to enter search terms into google.com that return only one record. I've only been able to stumble across two so far (obviously because I don't have lots of free time on my hands.) To get you started, here they are:
"jose, eizaguerre"
"Blacktail Bootery, Montana"

If you happen to play and come up with a winner, please share them with us in the comments section.
posted at 12:59 PM

  for those of you who were wondering about the inspiration behind the opera, here is a link to the picture in Florence, Italy.
(Not to be confused with the one at the Getty Museum in CA, which I spent forever a) trying to find and b) trying to find an on-line or print picture of). It's almost 6 am. I should get some sleep now.
posted at 2:49 AM

  I have had many teachers in my life, both in school and out. Some of them were wonderful, some of them I didn't care for. But I respected all of them...except for one. Meet Joan M. Ross, my 8th grade teacher. She was, if I may be so blunt, a real bitch, who made my life unnecessarily difficult at a time when I was already near my breaking point. (That photo, BTW, is NOT recent. Apparently, I am not the only one touched by vanity.)

As many of you know, I've been clearing out my stockpile of baggage and unfinished business. Since Mrs. Ross was kind enough to leave her address on website, I've decided to send her a little "heart-to-heart" letter. Nothing overly dramatic like: "You ruined my life. I hate you! I hate you!" Just some sensible adult-to-adult feedback.

It's amazing the things that turn up on my "list."
Do you have any unfinished business with someone from your past? Consider getting it off your chest. Closure can be very healthy. (Disclaimer: This is not an invitation to become a stalker or go on a murder spree. Let's be real, people.)
posted at 12:02 AM