Burning Blondes and other Half Baked Delights

Don’t know how to preface it, so best thing to do is spit it out. My friend Ian always had a thing for blonde bitches. That’s it! And what cinched the deal for him wasn’t breasts, but if they could bake. It’d be as if they just got a new lap dog. They could make him jump hoops, rob, connive or beg, write bad checks, so on and so forth. You get the idea. Now I like fair maidens, and I like cookies but I do not form relationships with things or ideals. My friend Ian is different than me in that respect. Maybe that’s why back in the dorm days, he was known as the “muffin man”. In college, he was an English Literature major. I guess that’s why his folks, the MacMillersons, named him Ian.

Ian, actually made a living writing. He was up in the S.F.Bay area about 10 years penning articles and product reviews, mostly about all the little start-ups in the SiliconeValley, from Menlo Park to South San Jose. This went well until the dot-com bubble burst in 2000: to hell and oh well.

He worked his way back down to San Diego, where we reconnected. Now Ian writes about golf, golf clubs and courses, techniques, ProAms, you name it. And guess what? Right. He doesn’t even golf, hates it. He’s just a professional writer. He gave up on his great American novel. Instead, Ian posts weekly to a couple of lifestyle blogs he started. So if he ever gets too effervescent, I’ll tell him, "I just read your blog and can’t believe how easily you prostitute yourself just for ad pennies". I can tolerate Ian when he’s melancholy. His good writing isn’t the point, it’s his adult ADHD.

So he calls me last Saturday morning and asked if I’d attend a funeral with him. I told Ian, he looked fine last time I saw him. He asked if I’d please attend. It was for this woman he’d known. I didn’t know her. “Don’t tell me. She quit making you brownies so you killed her!”

“Damn it, Lopp. Would you come along, please?”

Services were held close by at 2pm. Ian picks me up at 1:30 and I jump in his car.

“I really don’t know why I’m here, Ian.”

“You’re here for my moral support and I’m deeply grateful for it.”

“I still don’t get it. Are you afraid of death?”

“I’m afraid of responsibility, accountability, afterlife, pre-ejaculation, you know…”

“Uh-huh.” We didn’t speak much more in the car and were there in twenty-five minutes. At the cemetery, we pulled up and parked at the little chapel, blue skies had turned to gray.

“Think they use this place on their off days for Elvis weddings?”

“Not in the mood”, he said.

We entered the building and were seated. Front and center was the mahogany casket with polished brass fixtures.

“There’s nobody in the box”, Ian said.

“How can you tell if she’s late? Is this a blonde joke?” I whispered.

“They think the fire started in the basement, she was asleep on the second floor, burning roof caved in. No house left, no teeth, incinerated”, Ian tells me.

Instead of a service, it was more like friends retelling of happier times, but Ian didn’t speak. We didn’t even sign the friendship log or whatever it was. Then when that was done, the pallbearers brought the casket to the hearse that just rolled before the chapel. Everyone got in their cars and did the caravan thing to the gravesite.

Once there, we circled the dig and wouldn’t you know it? It began to rain. Apparently, Father “you got ‘em, I’ll smoke ‘em” Joe, didn’t take to holy water much either. I couldn’t tell if he was talking real fast or speaking in tongues. Ian pointed out this stunning auburn-haired teenage girl to me. She had golden green eyes. I couldn’t tell if they were natural or contacts. “She’s the daughter of Tracy, the deceased”, he said.

Well that was that. The crane/wrench apparatus began to lower the lieu of posthumous mahogany box into the wet ground. No fires today! We got back in Ian’s car and headed west to the coast.

The rain slowed to a drizzle, like a heavy fog. We were on Mission at the beach in front of Saska’s, my favorite steak house. There was parking right in front. We entered but the bar was full. Ian and I were hungry so we took a booth next to the cocktail waitress station and just off the main dining area. I ordered a steak sandwich and he got something else. Ian said he was buying and ordered us each a tequila shooter.

“Okay Ian, I never met this Tracy gal. How’d you know her?”

“Well, back in Orange, we went to high school together. She was a good kid. She failed at about everything she attempted. And so to cheer herself up, she’d go home and bake something. Then pass that out the next day at school in whatever she loused up. All the guys were happy she’d mess up something because they’d get brownies or something.”

“I guess Pavlovian behavior is a male trait.”

“She got good at it to the point her counselor suggested she take up pastry chef courses after high school. So then, off she went to the Cordon Bleu Culinary School in San Francisco”.

“What about her parents? Are they still in Orange?”

“I asked my folks to look them up but they’re gone too.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Anyway, after I got going in Silicon Valley, I walked into a little side street bakery and there she was.”

“No kidding, the odds?”

“I think the company I did an expose on was developing an application to assist OCR into a broadcast txt file for emailing.”

“That’s like talking about 45’s replacing LP’s, boring.”

“Well that’s technology for you. Everything goes from innovation to commodity to obsolete, at warp speed.”

“So what happened with Tracy?”

“We talked. She owned that store. Bought some of her lemon bars. I ain’t the Dad of that kid you saw”, he stated.

“That was it?”

“No”, Ian says. “I went back maybe two weeks later and her shop was burned out. Gutted.”

“An accident?” I asked.

“She got a nice check from the insurance company.”

“How’d you learn that?”

“She told me. She resurfaces with a bakery shop in San Francisco’s Union Square district.”

“Upscale. Nice check. And you reestablished your lemon bar connection too.”

“I don’t think you’re getting it.”

“Please tell me!”

“A year later she’s gone again”, he said.

“Couldn’t make it in the big city?”

“Burnt out.”

“And I always thought Frisco was damp.”

“She came down to San Diego.”

“Did she start another bakery?” I asked.

“No, she got married. That’s where the kid comes from.”

“Ian, things like that do happen.”

“The remains of her husband were or what was supposed to be were in a trunk of a car that was compacted.”

“Unidentifiable?”

“Yep.”

“Insurance?”

“She got it.

“Don’t tell me. He was murdered.”

“You’re close. Somebody was probably murdered.”

“How come nobody dies of natural causes anymore?” I had to ask.

“There’s no money in that.”

“You don’t think Tracy’s dead or the husband either.”

“Right”, Ian said.

“The teenage daughter, is she emancipated?”

“No, I think she’s staying with his side of the family. But that’s something else. Did you see her come unglued or even cry a little?”

“No, but maybe she was cried out”, I responded.

“A teenage girl at mama’s funeral? No! She’s key in this.”

“How’d you come to know this recent stuff?”

“He was a part owner in a small custom putter company, out in Vista. The Koreans came up with a conceptual upgrade on their basic design. They would become obsolete in a couple of quarters and their inventory fodder for eBay.”

“So?”

“So”, Ian continued. “I wanted his side of the story for an article I was writing, called him and guess who answers?”

“The answering machine?”

“His wife, Tracy”, screams Ian.

“Was she expecting you?”

“No, but right off the bat, after over 15 years, she could tell who I was!”

“You old dog, you.”

“It ain’t funny. She’s the other partner. There’s a story here. I was supposed to be there today. You see, I never gave her my home address and look what I got.” Ian wore a black blazer with brass buttons and from the inner vest pocket pulls out an invite to the funeral.

“See”, he says, throwing it down on the bread sticks.

“Blah, blah, blah…’the spouses and significant others of Tracy’s friends are also respectfully invited’.” I couldn’t believe it. ”You passed me off as your significant other?”

I shouted at him.

“No, it’s not like that, I was hoping you’d see…”

“I see you’re completely engaged pursuing your great mystery novel at the expense of any semblance to friendship in your life.”

I could see across the table in a booth, an ancient peroxide sea hag, whiskey whisper tenor her dining mate, “They’re fighting”.

The retired pig farmer bellows back, “Couples do that, remember?”

I glared at her till she went back to eating her raw liver.

“Ian, you said you’d pick up the check?”

“Of course, want another drink?”

“Let’s get out of here.”

We headed back to Turquoise State Surf Park, near Loring St.

“I apologize. I see I’ve offended you. I felt I was being conned into seeing something orchestrated to appear as something it’s not. Even though you might think my reaction to it is creepy, I want to know the truth. And on my first step in that strange country, I’d like to think there is somebody I could trust. And who could that be if not my best friend?”

“Ian, don’t you think the FBI, the insurance cops or murder cops would have seen something by now?”

“Look, they let out convicted molesters and nobody’s watching them.”

We were in front of my condo now.

“Okay, Ian, when you get a rough draft, email it and I’ll proof it for you.”

“Great.”

“I’ll be honest.”

I got out of his car.

“That's what you do best. I'll still get the next round,” Ian said. “Nite.”

I shut the door on his Spyder and opened the one to the building. What a strange day, at least it finally ended.

Copyrighted 2010

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
3. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

Save The Tiger - the novel by Steve Shagan and John G; Alvidsen's film of it - can supply us with a really unique perspective on this concept. Shagan, a true Hollywood insider, appears to have written the novel and the screenplay concurrently, and the novel is indeed "everything about the main characters' lives from birth until their appearance in the story." Alvidsen's poetry of images is sufficient to get the main points across forcefully (this is a movie about having the midlife crisis), and the novel provides an encyclopedia of interesting background. There can't be too many movies that have remained so utterly faithful to the book that provided the source material. Here, the novelist's vision is reproduced with veritable 100% accuracy by the filmmaker, a rarity indeed.

             Pauline Kael's book 5000 Nights at the Movies is a collection of very short reviews. The entry on Save The Tiger reads thus:

             The picture asks us to weep for Harry the garment manufacturer (Jack Lemmon), who pimps for his customers so they'll give him their orders, and who plans to set fire to his warehouse so the insurance money will finance filling those orders. The picture is a moral hustle that says this high livng showoff is a victim of American materialism. Harry suffers and jabbers; the writer and producer, Steve Shagan, appears to think he has created a modern tragic hero, and he's determined to puff up the movie with wit and wisdom.