substitute

Remember the nice guy who sat there reading a lot, was a chef?

http://www.greersoc.com/juiced/7/

He's the only one in Greer's interview series who isn't annoying. Then again Greer's site is annoying, but I subscribe anyway because I've known her since 1982 and she's nice.

It takes a lot to get me on that patio now, but seeing a friend through a decade birthday makes the cut. He sure as hell doesn't look his age.

( good to see you other people too )

I managed to depress my psychiatrist today by telling him Starbucks bought out Diedrich.

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A quixotic war against whitefly; a simultaneous shrug; Woody hiding behind a newspaper. Thank you, youtube user "fleshsaturation"!

Laptop use is popular on the outdoor patio at Diedrich, especially since the free wifi went in. There's only a couple of working plugs at one end of the place, so people who want to sit elsewhere have brought in an indoor/outdoor extension cord. It usually snakes through the bushes and over to the other side and sits near a table.

And then it rains, and the end of the extension cord sits in a puddle. And then a partial solution occurs, kinda at the wrong end for a solution. Yes, I did go unplug it after I shot this.

For some folks it's not enough just to buy the F350 Super Duty truck. Or to buy the crew cab version. Or to get the "FX4 Offroad" package, lift it, and load it up with accessories. No, the important part here is causing a confrontation of some kind, using the truck, so that there can be some manhood and throwdowns and getting up in someone's grill, as they say. A good way to do this is to take two parking spots in a suburban parking lot where you don't belong, when all the other trucks are at the far end of the lot because their drivers were grownups.

D.Z. is standing outside looking uncomfortable in the cold in a windbreaker with the hood up. Enter MEDICATED BOB, who's neither totally insane or totally okay today.

D.Z. looks even more uncomfortable as MEDICATED BOB approaches him.

MEDICATED BOB: Hi!

D.Z.: Hey.

MEDICATED BOB: I haven't had a drink since Thanksgiving?

D.Z.: I haven't had one for 22 years. It's not something you brag about, it's something you do.

MEDICATED BOB: [inaudible]

D.Z.: Don't drink, take your meds, take it easy.

MEDICATED BOB exits into the coffeehouse.

D.Z.: Guys who do that shit, drinking when they're taking, whatever, Klonopin for the psychosur.. psycho.. psychosomatic? No, all fucked-up. I tell them to stop the drinking first, then switch to Xanax or something, but no drinking, with that shit. Maybe with some Valium or whatever, not with that psycho stuff. Fucked-up.

Many happy returns. I'll make a suitable donation to the Louis Reggit Foundation.

Talked to Trout at length last night. He showed me some of his photos from Vietnam, including him looking 40 at age 18, various sandbags and weapons, and the view of the landscape south of Da Nang that he looked at from his guard post.

I also saw the "welcome back" letter from Reuters giving him his job in Manhattan again, in March 1969. That didn't last.

Bob saw a lot of stuff that stays, even now. Mostly kids. "Those little black-haired kids, I still see them." He told me about an orphanage he and his partner went by a lot, run by a convent. They'd bring food over for the kids every time, huge quantities of stuff from the base. The French nuns would whack them on the head for looking at the teenaged girls, and everyone was delighted at the stolen food they brought.

One time they came by and everyone was dead and dismembered. The VC had made a point, as their guerrilla manual told them to. There were a lot of points like that made, and a lot of dismembered kids. After 30 years and lately, some happy pills Bob can tell that particular story without crying now.

Later on he and his buddy were sent into the jungle, heavily armed but not uniformed, to "fuck shit up" within certain map quadrants. They were dropped by helicopter near some people who needed to be blown up, or by boat near some people who needed to find out how well our new night sniper scope worked. A lot of "heavy shit went down", as they said.

But it's the kids he still sees. When he got back to New York he didn't last too long at Reuters. He got a job working construction because he's a big strong guy who doesn't mind picking up joists all day. And he drank for 30 years, and other things. By the time he came out west in '75, Bob was in full swing as a PTSD poster boy. A lot of other "heavy shit went down" in those years.

Bob has some advice for guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. "Paxil," he says, "therapy. Happy pills and talking. Don't drink, don't smoke. It's hard to really enjoy cocaine and heroin without a drink and a smoke. Mostly don't drink. I spent thirty years drinking and denying, but the kids didn't go away."

Bob's house up in the hills has roses and razor wire around it real tight.