Deniro Raging Bull

 JAKE             (to Vickie)        C'mere.    She goes to the bedroom doorway.
JAKE grabs her arm, pulls  her in, and slams the door.                  
JAKE (CONT'D)             (pushing her toward the             bed area)       
Hey, you don't say goodbye to him        like that.                  
VICKIE        What did I do?                  
JAKE             (pushing her)        You don't kiss like that. Hello and      
goodbye, that's all you do.


(The actual scene didn't play out like in the screenplay.) They improvised.

The stare that Deniro gives to Joe Pesci is priceless. About 3/5ths through the movie. The stare goes on an on. This is in the hotel room before the title fight that has been postponed. This is back in the day when movies dramatized emotion instead of reality television manufacturing emotion for our voyeuristic consumption. I'm pretty sure my grandpop, Sam, would be horrified by what is on television today. Rednecks, Italian horse cocks, junk vultures. Sam drove a truck full of chickens for decades around NH...then he sold shirts in Florida. That was good enough for him.
All credit to Scorsese and Deniro for creating this scene. I'm only pointing out one moment that is perfect.

Survivor Here I Come

Here's my submission to the Survivor series...because I DON'T WANT TO GROW UP.

Corporate Sell Out Goes Solo

If you want a new style then I recommend "Thairapy" salon in Hookset NH. Not only are they the prettiest team of hair stylists who did not shirk at the task of turning a hippie into a hunk, but they took the hippie's greasy hair, washed it with loving hands, cut it and collected it for use in another life as an oil collector. There was more grey in that hair than I like to talk about but let's hope the only hair dye I use is petroleum based. You know what I mean. Thanks Julie and Alayna (pronounced Elena)!

Welcome Home...Now Leave

The first words I heard when my feet hit the dying grass in front of my temporary apartment were, "Are you parking there long?"
A woman was shouting at me from the house I'd parked in front of.
Ah! Is this a private street? No. Is it some kind of special day where she gets to dictate who parks where? Maybe the neighborhood names a "queen for a day" or something like that. But no. It was her preference that my van be move ten feet across the street.
The insulated nature of the neighborhoods really offends me. Everyone has their own individual snow blower, their own lawn mower. Everyone picks up their own leaves. The desperate housewives tivo the soap operas and gossip about can collectors. It's like the neighborhood is full of old bags who peer out their cracked window blinds waiting for someone suspicious to show up.

"Because that white car has been there for weeks. I didn't know if it was abandoned or what," says Mrs. Nosy Parker.
I paused because shouting up to a screen window like I'm some kind of leather faced peasant with a hunchback and she is the queen of the boulevard is beneath me. Not after 5000 miles of Canadian wilderness. Who is she to ask me anything...she bought the house in May and is horrified to see a van that is older than most of the houses on the street pull up and park. So?

If she only knew how little tolerance I have for bullies trying to send all the homeless people to Rochester. My tone was laced with resentment as I locked the van and picked up my guitar.
"And?" I shout over the garbage truck rattling over the potholes. (I'm already calculating how much money it would take to get me back to Labrador.)
"blah blah blah" says the lady and I can't hear her and don't care. I shrug. In Labrador this conversation would have gone so much differently.
".....another time. So that's what I thought," she finishes.
"I'll be driving..." I begin, before I realize I'm justifying myself to a stranger. I start again, "I'm Oggy. I live there." I point with my thumb across the street. I'm coming down with some illness so I snort up some poisonous snot through my swollen throat and venomously spit on her lawn.
"Oh! Blah blah blah." says the old bag.

People can be pushed to the point where their normally rational thought process fails and they snap and open the door of their van and grab the double bladed wood chopping axe that is under their bed and also grab the freshly sharpened hatchet and then walk over to a car and yell out, "YOU MEAN THIS CAR IS IN YOUR WAY? THIS ONE?"
And as they scream, "No, that's my car," a guy could accidentally not hear it and raise the wood chopping axe and smash windshields and hoods before taking the hatchet to the upholstery and yelling, "This car? YOU WANT ME TO MOVE THIS CAR?"

And when the police/swat team comes and tasers him and the whole neighborhood emerges from their insulated cocoons of internet and cable tv to watch the crazy person be bludgeoned into submission by batons, they will think HE is the monster. They will shake their heads and agree the world is falling apart.

The neighborhood will be relieved when I'm gone. I'm sorry I dumped my piss jugs out in Nottingham because I'd love to write my name "Oggy" in uric acid on their lawns.