Month: June 2012

Zamboni can you recomend a movie? (Bernie)

This question comes from Fred in the Palmetto state, South Carolina.

Fred I just saw Bernie last night starring Jack Black. It is about a true story of a guy named Bernie who lived in a small town, Carthage, Texas. Bernie is loved by all. He is a funeral director,    and one who sings like an angel at the service and made the dead look so good that the living look forward to his makeup job on them.

Bernie loves the older ladies especially and they love him. Bernie did kind things to everyone, from little league teams to bringing widows gift baskets long after he’d buried their husbands. Bernie even befriends the meanest, evilest widow in town through his relentless kindness.. (played by an old disciple of Zamboni, Shirley McClaine, who’s looking very sphinxlike!) People are amazed that she warms to him, and she does, she smiles for the first time. Then things start to get weird for Bernie. And you.

Bernie is like many men I know today. Like me. We have become creatures obsessed with being nice and liked by everyone. We have become so enamored of friending the world that when we do have to stand up and flip the bird to something- we don’t. Or we do in such a scary way, we hardly know its happening.

I had a step-grandfather in Estonia who used to call these sorts of men,  frakakta shultees, which being pidgeon yiddish and estonian and esperanto is very hard to translate but means somthing akin to “men without penis and balls the size of peppercorns”…

And Fred, don’t tell the Devil I am asking, but what is a “palmetto”? Is that like a dwarf palm tree?

Dear Zamboni: If life is so short, why do we do so many things that we don’t enjoy, and so few things we do?”

This question comes from Bert laBert, out of California, age 14 (the name is fake but the person is real)..

Dear Bert, most assuredly this is a good question. Already at your young age you have discovered the unfortunate truth that there is much bullshit in life and “dues to pay” and things you have to just “suck it up” for and do or “get over with” for some better sort of destination etc and carrot and stick and all the rest of this routine..

The sad truth is this:  life is suffering and bullshit, and anything we do that is enjoyable is just a freak occurrence and will surely soon be replaced by more suffering and bullshit and then death.

Just kidding! LOL (not the death part) Seriously, our failure is not in the things we do being good or bad, but more in our inability to enjoy these things. For instance, going to the DMV sucks balls, but with a cool magazine or Led Zeppelin on the “ipod” you can be chill at the DMV rocking out to When the Levee Breaks smiling happy because you are not at the dentist.

So my young friend, change your attitude when you can, but when you have to do things that are just unavoidable (study for a final exam that you won’t even remember in 10 years, take the SAT, get a TB test etc) one does just have to “suck it up.”

Do more things you enjoy. Now. Do not put off. Bottom line is, we can choose to do what we want, but often the cooler it is, the more bumps we must take on the way to it- life is just that way.

But DO! -Because when the Levee does breaks, you can’t take it with ya. -ZAMBONI is spake!

Zamboni, where does the wind come from?

Great question, thanks for asking.

This was baffling me for many moons until I asked the wind itself. The wind said it would tell me where it came from if I were to do it a favor, acquire for it a very hard to find record, “Barry Manilow: 2 Nights Live” that it had long sought. For obvious reasons it is hard for the wind to shop on Amazon or Virgin Megastore as the wind is restless like hyper ADHD child.

I did as I was told, pausing to enjoy this record and the very unusual verson of Mandy that it contains- until finally rendering the disc up to the wind.

After the wind blew around the world a few times enjoying this music some way I do not know how, it sang these words to me:

“the wind that blows from here to California-

it never stops to turn and wonder why,

it goes..”

I agree not a very satisfying answer, but then again, maybe it’s a stupid question, do we really need to know everything?

If it sails a boat and lifts a strand of hair from a face, isn’t that enough?