GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

Image from hoarderhelpline.com For the first time in many years, Josette Buchman entered her sister-in-law’s home and discovered a fully-clothed skeleton lying face-up on a bedroom floor.  Josette was there to get some things for Rita, her blind sister-in-law who had earlier been rushed to the hospital.  The authorities indicated that the deceased had died of natural causes and was assumed to be Rita’s son Louis, who disappeared 20 years ago at the age of 29.  The police said the bedroom looked like “a garbage truck had dumped its load.” Image from wordpress.com The most well-known hoarders were of course the Collyer brothers of New York City . Homer and Langley Collyer spent decades as hermits amassing 140 tons of stuff in a four-story brownstone in Harlem.  The brothers lived together in seclusion until 1947 yet disputes with local authorities periodically drew them into the public eye and ultimately the term "Collyer" (meaning "mess") became pa...

Image from scriptmag.com When I watched Julia Child's  The French Chef  on television in 1963 I had no inkling where it might lead.  The show came along after the success of her cookbook  Mastering The Art of French Cooking,  a lengthy work aimed at demystifying classic French cooking for the American housewife.   Image from WSJ.com Thankfully the television show was nothing like the book whose recipes and detailed instructions were a real challenge.  Rather than the cooking, Julia herself was what made the television show a hit.  She appeared to be having the time of her life sipping wine, chortling away with her cartoon voice, relishing every opportunity to chop, hammer or skewer with a bit of a flourish.  Rather than a chore, making the meal was such joy for her it made you want to try it.  Along the way you'd also pick up techniques for basics like prepping vegetables or deboning a chicken but it was her love affai...

Image from delucainsight.com I asked the woman ringing up my groceries, “How can that be?” Normally I pay no attention to the check stand that displays what you owe for the items as they cross the scanner.  However this morning I did catch out of the corner of one eye the figure $15.37.  This seemed odd because I was certain I hadn’t picked out anything that would cost that much.  I looked down to see the woman lowering into a bag the six apples I had picked out. She said, “What?” I said, “Those are apples not tri-tip.” She said, “Yes dear, but those are Honeycrisp apples, $3.96 a pound.” I said, “Do they come with a prize inside?” When I had left the house to go to the market I had been instructed on my way out the door to:  “get some fruit.  Remember, I like those Honeycrisp apples.” After I paid for my groceries I walked back to the produce section and discovered that the Honeycrisp apples not only cost more that the tri-tip (on specia...

Umbeck called from Indiana yesterday.  It had been a couple of years since we last spoke.  Things are perfectly fine between us; the gap in communication is because we are both now at an age where we put off calling for fear of finding out the other has passed away.   The first time I met Umbeck was in the early 1960s when I walked into his freshman dorm room at Occidental College .  It was a demonstration of just how fiendish fate can be.  Umbeck had been paired up with Heger and the room was a testament to what happens when you throw together two all-or-nothing characters.   The Bell Young dorm rooms were typical of institutional housing.  Every room was an identical prison-cell-like cube with a window and all the charm of a cardboard box.  Umbeck and Heger managed to transform theirs into the Tiki Lounge at Don the Beachcomber. Once you pawed your way through hanging glass-bead curtains you were completely surrounded by bamboo ...

I was caught off guard the other day - Deepak Chopra sells vitamins?  The Chopra Market website that offers his 80 books also hawks an endless list of vitamins, colonics, massage oils, herbal teas and more.  How does his uncompromising message “You are what you think”, square up with a need for external supplements?  Evidently few others find this puzzling.  Paul Offit, in his book  Do You Believe in Magic? , states that Chopra’s business grosses over $20 million a year.  Chopra has accumulated immense wealth tapping into two unregulated industries (vitamins/supplements and self improvement) that together generate sales of $50 billion a year in the  USA . Chopra can thank Oprah for most of this.  After his first appearance on her show in 1993, his book  Ageless Body, Timeless Mind  sold 130,000 copies the following day.  Evidently the guests on Oprah’s show are either not vetted or the findings are ignored....

A nine-year-old boy was lying face down in the meadow.  He'd ridden that morning from Eagle Rock with his parents to Los Padres National Forest to see the wildflowers.  Los Padres borders the State's Central Valley which prior to being converted to farmland, was referred to as the "Serengetti of North America". An hour from home the boy began to catch sporadic glimpses out through the car window of bright patches that would appear at the base of the hills in the distance.  They eventually came off of the main highway and followed a two-lane road into the foothills, coming to a stop next to a blazing field of yellow that reached all the way to the horizon.   The boy had always lived in the city and was familiar only with the dull shades of green, gray and tan that cover the hills of Northeast Los Angeles year round.  He could tell the brilliant effect glowing in the meadow before him was temporary as nothing so intense could possibly be...

On 9 / 11 , Jay was living in an RV in a CVS parking lot in NE LA .  He finished his 4 morning S ’s (shit, shave, shower and shine) when the first AM rad io reports came in over KNX 1070 . He listened for a while until 10:00 AM when it was time to go to work.  He locked up the RV and walked 4 blocks on N . Figueroa past Avenue 56 where Jay tended bar at a dive called Mr. T 's. On any other day he might not have bothered to look up at all but to day his eye s were fixed on a cloudless sky which see med unnaturall y emp ty .   Jay found himself searching o verhead for aircraft and realized the daily perpetual lineup of SST s heading in t o LAX had vanished. Jay had not served in the military and never i magined he would ever see the sky as a potential source of danger.      Mr. T 's interior was a de pressing eighty -year old ex -bowling all ey , windowless and strewn with wreckage and made the original Barney's Beanery look l...