November, 2009:

The Sandman’s name is Scott.

He lives on the second leg of my daily bike ride. This is my Myrtle journey (for those of you that have been not been following the Trifling Blog since my arrival in Santa Barbara) begins a mi casa, and goes to the beach and back. It takes the place of my morning run – for lots of reasons. First, when I was in high school my first love was biking. I biked to school every day. Second, I am 52 years old and my knees have given out. This means that biking is far preferable to running as an aerobic exercise.

So, 3 miles of daily run have translated into 12 miles of daily bike. But I digress.

The Sandman. Every day on the second leg of my journey – sojourn (a shameless plug for my employer: www.sojournercafe.com) I run into the sandman parked in the sand at the corner of beach and Cabrillo. Carbrillo is a street. Beach, is a big ass body of water. But I digress.

Daily sojourn. Second leg. Beach. There, that brings us back. I encounter the sandman. He has been carving sandsculptures in the same spot for over 20 years.

He and I are about the same age. Every day, I stop and put a tip in his jar. He and I talk about visual art. He smokes a cigarette that I wish I could smoke. We consider the folds of drapery and the concept of ciaro scuro in sand sculpture.

He has kids. 11 and 12 mine are older.  But kids are universal. They make us part of the same fraternity. Art does the rest. I talk to him about the movement of the sculpture. He tells me I am full of shit. Life is good. Then, I shill as a passerby looks on, and Scott tells them that his art cant exist without their tips. He needs help marketing. I am about to intervene. In the interim I look at the tourists and tell them that I have already put five bucks in the jar. And indeed I had.

So, as I sit there thinking about how I can increase The Sandman’s tips and my own….I came upon an idea that is going to require some additional research. Living sand sculpture. Stay tuned for more on that. Thanks to Cary Travanovich for the inspiration and the introduction to mime. All things are connected. All things.

Lots of love to my peeps out there. Shout out to my kids at the Milburn Stone. Hope all is good.  Peace out.

The regular readers of the Trifling blog don’t usually encounter political commentary from the owner/publisher. This is because I am typically a-political. Not that I don’t have positions or opinions, but like football, I have never developed a penchant for watching either of these spectator sports. My roommate however, as well as being a snappy dresser and fine musician, can occasionally be called upon for some pretty spectacular repartee. In the case of this submission, he was responding via email to a friend of his who is less than an adherent of the current POTUS. He was suggesting that the POTUS was disingenuous about his knowledge of and participation in the church of the right Rev. Wright. Here is my roommates unabridged response:

Having been in regular, weekly church attendance (save for a few years, Europe, etc…), albeit professionally, since the age of 17 (my first church job, while a student), I feel more than qualified to speak to the broader actualities of the “church” experience. To whit, those that deal more with social/political concerns than theological/religious ones. To assume that the many in church are there for a God fix, borders on naïveté…

I seriously doubt that Obama was a regular congregant. I would conjecture that his belonging to that specific congregation is much more of a Black/Chicago/Oprah/political/networking decision, than a traditional epiphany. Obama is rather a denizen of the black community. This and many other crucial (to any reasonable understanding of the man) aspects of his history and life are lost on most white americans, who much like their “colored” brethren, cannot see much beyond obvious pigmentation differences and lamentably misconstrue them with cultural attributes. Obama was raised by a white mother and, more specifically, white grandparents, in a predominantly white culture. All of this carping about him is nothing more than the ravings of delusional people long disenfranchised, whose pusillanimous character is easily manipulated, with fear, by the very people they should, in actuality, be bitching about.

Guess who’s coming to dinner? Bootiesatva. And unless you inventory your pets and children they are fair game. Not that he will consume them, but….he might. I know this look. It is both hunger, and not. As all looks are, it is a tell. A specter. A foreshadow. Bootiesatva has a cousin named Chipper. He has this look too. All the time. Dig it.

Me personally? I think a brutha goin through his Zappa phase. So, “woe-is-be” to any musicians that may encounter this fiddleplayer cum bel canto singer. Be ready. The visage is serious as is the man. If you haven’t been to the page: insert shameless promotion here: http://www.lunagitana.com/LunaGitana.html

And no posting featuring my roommate and childhood friend would be complete without a picture of his pit bull. Shout-out to Lucy.

Yes, she is marked very much like a milk cow. Go ahead. I dare ya.