I’m getting comfortable here in my big, black, manly, comfortable poppa chair in my living room, after a short but expensive flight in my little airplane. I had to get some navigation equipment fixed. Having good navigation equipment makes for having a bad checking account. But having bad navigation equipment means your girlfriend probably won’t join the mile high club. For those of you who are not familiar with the complex technicalities of airplanes, the mile high club has to do with sex at 5,200 feet…a mile high. And as Big Louie says in my book, Staying Happy Healthy And Hot, “Sex is an affordable gift for the man who has everything, even a small airplane. It’s a valid way to make the earth move without having to use a shovel. It can turn a bad day into a good night.”
Setting up for the mile high club isn’t hard for a pilot. First you turn on the auto pilot, then you turn on the girl. Actually, sometimes it works back around the other way. If you’re ever watching a small plane that seems to be jiggling around in the air more than usual…it probably IS happening around the other way. As a matter of fact, if you’re riding in an airliner and you seem to be missing an attractive flight attendant or two, and you think you’ve hit turbulence…well… maybe. Why do you think they lock the cockpit door? No really?
When people find out I have an airplane, they sometimes confuse my little four seat Piper with one of those fancy biz-jets. My plane costs about the same as a fairly nice car. Those biz-jets can go for more than a hundred million dollars. But the guys who own them are usually just passengers. I get to fly my little Piper…usually with my Lady Wonder Wench in the right seat. That puts so many bubbles in my blood that I’ve been giving mosquitoes the hiccoughs. My Lady knows where the auto pilot switch is on the panel, but she also knows where the microphone button is, and so far, every time I reach for the autopilot at 5,200 feet she threatens to call Air Traffic Control and declare an emergency. So far. But as Big Louie also says, “You never know when something wonderful is going to happen.”
It’s good to have bubbles in your life. Life without bubbles is really flat. If your last bubble burst a while ago, maybe it’s time to take a few days off and have some fun. Take your bike and head for parts un-known. You’ll blow lots of bubbles into your life for each part un-known. Or learn to do cartwheels, and practice on the bus on the way to work. Of course you should start with simple workouts and work your way up. Start with ten laps of the bathtub…from side to side.
Dick’s Details, a bunch of totally un-important stuff for you to stuff in one ear, so you can squeeze the important stuff that’s making you nuts out the other ear, and you can go back to blowing bubbles.
It has always amazed me how much human guys have in common with animal guys. The smart guys in the white lab coats tell us that male fruit flies deprived of females tend to drink alcohol. See what I mean. And walruses mate in the water. Males float patiently waiting for a female to dive in. That’s pretty much how it was when I was a lifeguard at Coney Island. If the answer is Nacho cheese what is the question. You don’t know do you. It says here that some guy made a study of comic books, and came to the conclusion that Popeye the Sailor must have been 5’ 6”. Ha. I just measured him in my comic book. He’s not quite two inches. And new born babies cry in either the key of c or the key of c#. My kids all went for the c#. And let me tell you that’s sounds pretty sharp at 3AM. Oh yeah. If the answer is nacho cheese the question is what do you call cheese that isn’t yours ? Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.
Bubbles in the blood is what makes the biggest difference between life’s dreary drones, and our Louie Louie lads and ladies. (That’s in my book too if you don’t understand.) Bubbles in the blood can get you into trouble. But Americans come on bubbles in the blood naturally. “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light”…don’t tell me Francis Scott Key didn’t have some bubbles in the blood when he saw the stars and stripes flying through the gun smoke at Fort McHenry that dawn. “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death.” Serious bubbles going on there. How about “This land is your land, this land is my land.” The home of the brave and the free…and power… and magic,…and legends. Stonewall Jackson, Hank Aaron, Bogart in Casablanca…”We’ll always have Paris. We lost it until you came back. Here’s looking at you kid.” Abe Lincoln at Gettsburg…”We cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this gound. The brave men who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor powers.” That was a big time bubbles in the blood, damn the politics statement. He didn’t say the brave men who died on the side of the Union, he just said the brave men…and he meant all of them. Both sides. And speaking of politics be damned, I’ll bet you couldn’t stand at Kennedy’s grave without a some bubbles banging around inside. If you were too young to be there, you’ve seen it on TV. The solemn folding of the flag, the musket salute, the flight of jets in the missing man formation…the lead jet pulling out of the flight, screaming straight up…afterburners to the wall…do you know what that lone airplane represents ? It represents the flight of the spirit of the fallen warrior rising to meet his Maker. Bubbles in the blood. Passion. Hot, boiling, powerful positive passion.
Positive passion is out of date right now. There’s plenty of negative passion. Anger, hatred, revenge. But what about positive passion. Love, loyalty, sizzling sex. Bubbles begin when your blood starts to boil. And right now, it’s cool to be Kool. It’s smart to be cynical. People will laugh at you for being romantic, because romance is hot…it makes your blood boil…it makes bubbles that sometimes get out of control.
There are big important bubbles that take everybody’s breath away like “Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light.” And there are little every day bubbles that made a woman take such a deep breath that she was a little afraid to exhale. Her story is in the current podcst.
You should have seen her…stand up from her chair. She simply dissolved into the fantasy of beauty that had been bubbling quietly for so long in her dreams… it happened right there…in mid-air. Taking A Breath is the name of that story from my spoken word album Night Connections 3. If you like it, you can just keep the podcast, or if you want a fresh copy, just check out the Night Connections icon on the home page.
It’s the bubbles in your blood that make a difference between you and the Dreary Drones. Bubbles that can make your airplane bounce around a mile high in the sky. You can find them everywhere…just doing laps in your bathtub from side to side, or becoming beautiful so very slowly and gracefully, or spreading suntan lotion on the back of someone you love, or hitting a ping pong serve that skims the net and just clips the other guy’s edge of the table, or watching a good Texas line dance, or opening a fresh can of coffee, or letting the chord from a grand piano sink all the way inside…yeah, and even hearing your own newborn cry in the key of c#.
I hope you have enough bubbles in your blood for you to give mosquitoes hiccoughs for the rest of your life.
I love everything about bubbles! Blowing them…bathing in them…love just the sound of the word…BUBBLES
Dick – I loved the podcast. BUT – cannot resist mentioning that there is one kind of “bubbles in the blood” no one wants — the “bends” when a diver surfaces too quickly……