GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

  Most people my age can remember where they were when JFK was shot, when the twin towers fell, and when they first came face-to-face with a pomegranate.  I was seven years old when I watched Phil Kiefer, who lived across the street, rip a pomegranate off of a neighbor’s tree and struggle to break it open.  Despite never having seen a pomegranate before, Kiefer’s excitement had me thinking it must be something very special. Eventually, Kiefer won the battle, tore off a wedge and handed it to me.    In short order I was pricked by the rind, gagged by the tannins in the pith and had my teeth gnash on the seeds. The lengths people go to overcome the ordeal of removing the seeds and avoiding permanent stains on everything they own, should signal to anyone sane that it's more trouble than it's worth.    Decades passed with me adhering to a zero-pomegranate lifestyle until I sat down to eat a dinner made by my wife’s Iranian friend Ladan (the Persian word ...

Pepsico began a major promotional campaign in 1975 for Pepsi-Cola, conducting blind taste tests with American soft drink consumers .  The highlight of the TV ads came with the unveiling of the unmarked samples, showing Pepsi to be the favorite and participants expressing a level of astonishment equal to that of the OJ verdict. The "Pepsi Challenge" and the proliferation of new rivals and various spinoffs seemed to contribute to Coca-Cola's 10% decline in market share during the early 1980s.  As a response to this downturn, New Coke launched in 1985 and to this day is considered as a marketing disaster matched only by the 1957 Edsel. With the introduction of New Coke, the original Coca-Cola with its 99 year-old recipe was no longer available in retail outlets.  The New Coke had performed well in taste tests but no one at Coca-Cola Company foresaw the backlash that unravelled.  The company received over forty-thousand written complaints (ten years prior to email)....

  LONG BEACH WOMAN IGNITES AFRICAN TRIBAL WAR  Mugumu, Tanzania - A woman from Long Beach, California is accused by local township officials of triggering violent conflicts between several Tanzanian tribes.  The Mugumu Attorney General told the Times, “There hasn’t been a white woman in Africa that’s drawn this much attention since Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” .  While touring the African bush with friends, Cheryl Carter went missing and was initially thought to have been kidnapped.  The tour group she was with contacted local authorities but search efforts carried out in villages throughout the area came up empty.   Soon after Ms Carter’s disappearance, violent clashes among local tribes began to take place with increasing frequency.  The peaceful relations between the Maasai, Hadzabe, Datoga and Sukuma tribes of the Ngorongoro Conservation area that had flourished for decades, suddenly collapsed.  It never occurred to anyone at first that t...

F.C.Nash & Co 250 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, California. Nash's was a small chain of department stores operating in Southern California for forty years until the flagship store in Pasadena burned to the ground in 1976.  The building was a total loss that soon led to the financial collapse of the total enterprise.    During the 1950's my mother managed the bookstore at Nash's in Pasadena which resulted in my growing up surrounded by lots of books.  At the time I considered looking at photos as less work than reading.  Consequently, I was especially drawn to books with pictures - the more the better.  Nearly all of the photos were black and white.  Color photographs became common in works published in the 1930's.  However, if the book dealt with people or events prior to that, there were few if any color photos to draw on.  The books with the most impactful photographs had me going back to them repeatedly.  Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl...

Museum of Jurassic Technology, upper balcony of beastiary exhibit (photo by Ryan Schude) While watching a documentary on Werner Herzog, I see him walk into the Museum of Jurassic Technology.  I stumbled on to it in the late 80s and am amused to now discover Werner considers it a treasure.  Long before Culver City was converted to a traffic vortex, I made countless visits to Jean and John's place - practically next door neighbors.  It was there in a dimly lit corner that I was first introduced to Zombie ants.   I had passed by the display several times without giving it more than a quick glance.  The display consisted of a glass window through which one could peer into a waste-basket-sized interior that appeared empty, save for a loose collection of yard trimmings. Eventually, curiosity led me back to check out the brief type-written paragraph posted at the base of the viewing window.  As soon as I read something about a carpenter ant I tried to see if ...

The cell phones I get at Walmart don't last long but getting them replaced is always a treat.  Another one gave out on me last week so I drove over to  visit Bogdan, the phone guy at the Walmart in Simi Valley.  He works in the electronics department from 11 am to 7 pm and is a dead ringer for the Romanian-born poet Andrei Codrescu.  His English is perfectly fine but it's delivered with that truncated baltic meter that omits nonessential words and puts some of the remaining words in surprising places.   When I showed up and found him busy with a customer, although there were other people working there, I waited until he was freed up.  When he finished with the other customer, I walked up to him, handed him the phone and said, "It won't hold a charge." Bogdan calmly looked it over, pressed a few buttons and then handed it back to me. He asked, "How long have you had phone?" I said, "A year......maybe less." He said, "Probably battery."...

  An hour from Seattle the ferry entered a maze of densely forested islands  that soon blocked out the horizon.  The islands made for nice scenery but you couldn't avoid feeling disoriented while weaving among them.  When the ferry started out across open water, we had our destination British Columbia as a distant flat strip in front of us and a familiar cityscape to our back.  Now that we were meandering around and about these islands, the direction where we were headed or where we'd come from was anybody's guess.  In addition to there being no landmarks, there was  no way to distinguish between the islands themselves.   We did pass by one island that stood out from the rest.  It was made up of two parallel long narrow islands, both similar in height and dense woods as the rest of the islands.  However, these two were joined at the hip by an isthmus - a flat, barren, low-level land bridge.  It ended up looking like a very larg...