Kathi's Great Ideas

Apply Toast Directly to Incision

So I’m starting this story in the middle, because that’s where we are. The beginning was last June, when I received a breast cancer diagnosis the day before our first wedding anniversary. Don’t get me started on that, or the hot pink “My Cancer Journey” binder handed to me by a nurse practitioner whose job it was to deliver the news, or my compelling urge to hit her over the head with the binder. There’s plenty to say, but I’m not yet sure what or how. So let’s cut to the middle.

“All you have to do is show up,” Dr. Goodson advised, and I took his words to heart. I spent last summer and fall showing up at medical events of one kind or another: consultations with some of the best doctors in the bay area; space-age experimental chemotherapy treatments in a clinical trial at Stanford; festive fund-raising walks featuring marching bands playing funeral songs; diagnostic adventures involving radioactive beverages and getting shoved through claustrophobia tubes; tearful yet ultimately hopeful hairdresser appointments. Showing up was enabled by an amazing support team of helpful friends and relatives—more about that later, too.

After four months of chemotherapy, I showed up just before Thanksgiving at Davies Medical Center for lumpectomy surgery-with-a-bonus. A few days earlier I’d broken my pinkie finger tripping on a badly-maintained sidewalk in Miami, where my husband Sam and I were promoting our book and performing with the Rock Bottom Remainders. I entered the operating room wearing a splendid paper hospital gown with a blow-dryer-type attachment to keep it toasty warm and my swollen, throbbing, purple hand (hint: turns out it’s not true that “if you can move it, it isn’t broken”). Sam and my step-daughter Laura were there, and the last thing I remember before I got wheeled off to surgery was how much they looked like a couple of people who needed coffee. The next thing I remember was waking up, sort of. I say “sort of” because I had been given enough narcotics to stun a baby rhinoceros.

I am apparently quite entertaining on narcotics.

Here’s the thing: I suddenly had a huge white thing on my hand, and had a moment or two of confusion over whether the doctors had performed surgery on the wrong part of the wrong person. In time I realized they’d thrown in a helpful remedy for my broken finger while doing that other little procedure, but imagine going in for a lumpectomy and coming with a heavy bandage on your hand reaching nearly to the elbow. You might be a little confused, too. Apparently I nodded off several times, and each time when I came back to consciousness I would look at my hand with renewed bewilderment.

“They put a splint on your broken pinkie,” Sam and Laura would explain again and again. Eventually I got used to this and named the cast “Mister Winky” (later at home I asked my daughter-in-law Marissa to adorn it with a cartoon face). I can’t tell you why, but I think narcotics were somehow involved.

Then there was my enthusiasm for 17-year-old Laura’s amazing vocabulary. Whenever she said anything, such as “I have a lot of homework” or “Where’s the bathroom?” I exclaimed over her vivid and sophisticated sentence structure. “She says the best sentences!” I gushed to the nurses, over and over again. “Yes, dear,” they answered, as they pumped more morphine into the IV.

Finally, it was time to go home. But before I could leave I had to prove I could hold food down in order to qualify for the next whopping dose of painkillers I’d likely need in a few hours. Someone gave me saltines. I couldn’t eat them. Finally a deal was struck. Sam promised the nurse he would withhold the drugs until I’d proven I could eat, and they let me go. Goodbye, exotic morphine. Hello, boring vicodin.

“What would you like for dinner?” Sam asked on the way home. “How about some soup? A chicken from the deli? Chinese takeout?” he asked, naming our household regulars. “Or I could make you some toast.”

“Hey,” Laura piped up, “how about if we roll the Vicodin up in a piece of toast? Like when you have to feed medicine to your pet.”

“That girl comes up with the best sentences,” I sighed.

“Sweetheart,” said Sam, “you have to eat something. Really—how does toast sound?”

“I don’t feel like eating, but hey!” I cried. “We could apply the toast directly to my incision! That will do the trick.” Eliminating the middle-man seemed like a brilliant idea. The gales of laughter in response to my brainstorm lasted until we got home.

This blog is called “Kathi’s great ideas” for a reason. Who else brings you recipes for Manichewitz Jello shots AND points out the need for large-print shampoo bottles? If I do say so myself, I have a lot of great ideas. I truly believe that the world would be a better place if more of my ideas were adopted by the general populace, or at least by the people who make Jewish holiday treats and/or shampoo bottles.

But sometimes a great idea doesn’t have to do anything more than amuse your family during a stressful time. And sometimes that’s way more than good enough for me.

Mr. Winky

A Place for Crazy Cats and Kittens

I was delighted to see my pals Susan and Hank walk through the door at El Rio, a colorful dive in the Mission. The occasion was “Los Train Wreck’s All-Star Jam,” originally “Kathi’s All-Star Jam,” a musical event that has been occurring monthly for over eighteen years, whether the world needs it or not.

Mostly, it seems the world wants it. After a couple of hours watching an array of performers jump up onstage (a term I use loosely here as the “stage” is really just the part of the floor in front of the covered-up pool table) to sit in with my band, Susan and Hank were happy campers. “This is so much fun! I can’t believe we’ve been getting your announcements all this time and we’ve never come before,” Susan gushed.

I’ve known Susan since we went to different high schools together on Long Island. As teenagers, we perfected the art of changing from skirts to jeans on the Long Island Railroad in order to blend in with the ultra-cool locals at Café Figaro in Greenwich Village. We drove into the wilds of Westchester to see Bob Dylan perform. We tried to get in bridge-and-tunnel hippie-girl trouble and mostly didn’t. Then Susan went off to Barnard and I went to Antioch, and we got a lot better at getting into trouble. I love that we’re still friends.

But back to the jams. They began with a phone call in late December, 1991, from the guy who booked the bands at a place called the Blue Lamp. I was in a band called the Ray Price Club at the time.

Blue Lamp Guy: “Hey, I just realized that January first is a Saturday night. We’re usually closed the night after New Year’s Eve, but since the first is a Saturday the boss wants a band. Is the Ray Price Club available?”

Me: “Oh geez, everyone has gigs the night before—I don’t think they’ll want to do it. I tell you what; I’ll ask the band, but you keep looking. If you get really desperate call me.”

Blue Lamp Guy: “Um…I just did.”

So I asked the band, and everyone said no, sorry, they would be too tired/hung over/involved with family to play on New Year’s Day and that was that.

Enter pedal-steel guitarist pal David Phillips. He was game to help me pull something together, and we invited every musician we knew to come down and join the first jam of 1992. We had no idea who would show up…but it turned out quite a few musicians had nothing to do that night and were itching to get out of the house. In fact, the bartender told me they had a larger crowd for our off-night jam than they’d had for New Year’s Eve.

Here’s how it worked that night and has ever since: our house band, now called Los Train Wreck, sets up and plays for a few hours, and anyone who walks through the door can sign up to join us onstage for a song or two. We have regulars who come every month, many of whom (singers Charlie Owen and Katie Guthorn, for example) are seasoned pros—and many of whom are not. We almost always back up the renowned multiple Emmy-winner Ben Fong-Torres on a song that contains original lyrics ripped from the headlines. We’ve had a homeless-guy regular reciting original poetry to a blues riff. We’ve hosted authors Amy Tan, Dave Barry, and Matt Groening; Americana twangbanger Dallas Wayne; Sons of Champlin guitar ace Terry Haggerty; Dr. Demento favorite Tony Goldmark; Terry Garthwaite from Joy of Cooking (along with her bass-slingin’ brother David and talented niece Oona); leopard-skin-pillbox-strat hero Andrew Goberman; the female runner-up of a John Mayer sing-alike contest…the list goes on and on.

Here’s the thing: there have been more amazing musical moments than we’d have a right to expect, and many more ordinary ones. There are fewer downright painful moments than you’d think. My favorites are the folks who are shy about performing but get up and do it anyway, enabled by the big ears, fine musicianship, and expansive hearts of Los Train Wreck. But most amazing of all is that my bandmates David Phillips, Todd Swenson, Paul Olguin, Peter Tucker, and Sam Barry show up, month after month, cheerfully playing for drinks, tips, and a wink from our favorite Bad Mommies, Angie and Mandi. (They really are bad mommies.)

Here’s the other thing: we’ve been around a long time—long enough so that our friends can casually wait nearly two decades to check us out and we’re still at it—and we hope to be here for a long time yet. So dust off the chord chart to that Patsy Cline (or Beyonce, or Leadbelly, or Bonnie Raitt, or Elvis) song you used to sing in your old band (or are learning for your new band, or love to bellow in the car with the windows rolled up) and come on down. We’re here to make you sound good, the second Tuesday of every month, at a little dive in the Mission called El Rio. Sign up for a monthly reminder at www.kathiandsam.net. I dare you.

Our Dirty Laundry

Every marriage has its secrets. No matter what you think about other people’s relationships, what goes on behind closed doors, especially in the bedroom, is a mystery: distinguished college professors may revert privately to baby talk; perhaps those straight-laced church-goers attend swingers’ parties; party flirts might go home to chaste single beds in separate rooms. You just never know. But wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall—that is, as long as you could turn back into a human whenever you wanted.

Like all couples, we have our bedroom secrets. One of the deepest and most shameful concerns our laundry—and not the metaphorical dirty laundry swept under the symbolic rug, either. I’m talking about real, physical laundry. In our house, the laundry situation is out of control.

Here’s how it works. Sam is usually the one who piles the dirty clothes into a basket and takes them down to the basement, where they go through standard cycles in our washing machine. Some time later (and really, what is time but an arbitrary concept anyway?), one of us remembers to move them to the dryer, where they languish anywhere from several hours to several days. Sometime after that, they are transported back upstairs to our bedroom.

And that is when things get out of hand.

They sit there. And they sit there. And they sit there some more. We seem to have this issue with putting our clean clothes away. We’re like those people who hoard piles of newspapers, only with us it’s unfolded laundry. Days and weeks might go by in which you, as a fly on the wall, might see us pawing through knee-deep piles in order to find clean underpants and two matching socks. New loads of laundry are added to the old ones until there is nothing left in our drawers and closets—it’s all in a big messy jumble on the floor, which starts spreading out, not unlike the blob in the classic 1950’s science fiction movie.

Yesterday, at long last, we initiated “Operation Laundry.” The idea was to sort, fold, hang, and put away over a month’s accumulation (!!!!) of clean clothes, towels, sheets, pets, etc. We found “School of Rock” on TV and enjoyed Jack Black’s rock & roll hi-jinks while engaging in a marathon of sock-pairing. I found several bonus items I’d been looking for, in addition to over $30 in laundered money. It didn’t take all that long to get the job done,* it wasn’t that unpleasant…so why was this so hard to get around to? You can now actually walk from one end of our bedroom to the other without getting your legs tangled up in a T-shirt—it’s much nicer.

The question lingers: have we learned our lesson, or will we lose control of our bedroom-laundry situation and have to call in the National Guard? Is our shameful secret safely in the past?

Only the Tide ™ s of time will tell.

*though there is still one load down in the dryer…

“Shake & Bake” at the Senior Center

Just about a year ago, my mother Betty moved from her big house in Marin County to a small apartment at Alma Via, a senior community in San Francisco. We chose Alma Via for a number of reasons: the folks there were the warmest and most welcoming; they have a top-notch staff of caring professionals; the wide hallways and elegant parlor (complete with a wide-screen Skype hook-up for visits with faraway family); the fact that pets are welcome; the tasty meals served by kitchen staffers who make a point of remembering the residents’ likes and dislikes; the apparently bottomless home-made-cookie buffet in the entrance hall; and last but certainly not least, because the folks at Alma Via love to party.

That’s right—they are party animals at this senior center. The Alma Via community celebrates everything from Christmas to National Popsicle Day in grand style. Mardis Gras? Everyone dresses in purple and green. In fact “Alma Via” is Latin for “The Way of Partying.”

Today was Luau Day. Sam and I arrived in time for a grand lunch of mahi mahi and rice with pineapple cake and macadamia cookies for dessert. The residents all wore festive leis. As we were leaving, we saw an array of traditional percussion instruments and a ukulele being loaded in by strapping island men; then passed a group of teenagers adorning themselves in feathers, grass skirts, and coconut-shell bras in the lobby. One of the teenagers, in an odd incidence of coincidence, was a former piano student of Sam’s. So we decided to hang around and watch the show.

The band included a tattooed guy who could have easily been a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, several percussionists, a ukulele virtuoso (hence the ukulele), and a boom box (for some reason they needed recorded music for the Polynesian numbers—the band’s specialty was Hawaiian). The dancers were impressive (it turns out they’ve won some national competitions) and put on a cheerful and lively show.

Just visible behind the line of lovely dancers was a toddler, mimicking every move about two beats behind. The thing is she had pretty swell moves of her own, demonstrating a naturally fluid hip-swivel that you either have or you don’t, apparently from birth. She had better moves than we did, proven without a doubt when Sam’s former student dragged me up for a group-dance finale.

Not to be outdone by a four-year-old, I’ve vowed to get out my coconut bra—I think my brother-in-law Dave borrowed it, so I’ll have to get it back from him—and practice till I get some moves of my own. I’m not going to be outdone by a four year old, no matter how cute she is.

And maybe if I learn those moves I’ll get another macadamia cookie, too!

Dancing With the Star

Thanks to the efforts of our pal Leslie Levine, Sam and I spend a week each summer as guest presenters at Rancho La Puerta, a rustic spa resort in Tecate, Mexico. Rancho La Puerta is a soothing, health-enhancing refuge, offering an assortment of fitness classes, mountain hikes, yoga, meditation, and an “enrichment” curriculum, which is where we come in. We teach classes about writing and publishing all week—then on Thursday night (because this seems to happen anywhere you find Sam, me, and a piano in the same place) we host a talent show.

A typical day might include an early-morning hike in the shadow of magical Mount Kuchumaa, followed by a stretch class, circuit training, Latin Dance, and Yoga. We love our little private casita, the organic, mostly-vegetarian meals, and the respite from phones and email. Over the years we’ve come to know many of the Ranch’s long-time staff members, who welcome us as old friends.

As you can imagine, most of the Rancho campers are women of a certain age, taking advantage of the opportunity to spend a week toning up and slimming down. Sam says he sometimes feels a little out of place, but I think he looks forward to this week as much as I do. The Rancho La Puerta band (made up of staff members who are also terrific musicians) invites him to sit in on harmonica; he plays ping-pong with the staffers; he enjoys being put in various interesting positions by the cute Yoga instructors. Sam does just fine at Rancho.

My favorite class is “Dancing with Yuichi.”

“Who’s Yuichi?” you might ask. Silly you.

Yuichi Sugiyama is a Los Angeles-based performer and choreographer, a Japanese gentleman of indeterminate age. His dance class, always held on Friday afternoon, is forty-five minutes of Broadway routines, taught without Yuichi speaking a single word of English. (One evening a couple of years ago, Sam and I wandered off the premises to see the Rancho band perform in a club in downtown Tecate. To our surprise, Yuichi was sitting at the next table. We joined him for a night of drinking and conversation, most of it in big smiles and an absurd made-up sign language. The next day, everyone wanted to hear gossip about the dancer’s life—gossip I could not provide, due to the fact that I don’t speak Japanese.)

We enter the gym and clumsily follow Yuichi’s lead as he puts us through our paces: One-two-step-together-step-slide, to recorded music from Chorus Line and other familiar shows. I glance around and see twenty women in sweats and shorts—and one middle-aged white guy (guess who!), huffing and puffing to songs we sort of remember, trying to keep up. And then the magic begins…somehow, by the end of the class we’ve formed a chorus line, dancing in unison to “Hello, Dolly.” I look around the room again. We are still middle-aged women in shorts and sweats, but somehow in the mirror we’ve become the Rockettes, in sparkling top hats, tuxedo jackets and glitter tights, lustrous hair flowing, long legs kicking high. With the sole exception of Sam.

Many visitors to Rancho think the mountain has mystical, magical powers. Others swear by the transformative quality of quiet meditation, the labyrinth in the woods, or the simple pleasures of hot-rock massages.

But my magic happens in the mirror in Yuichi’s dance class, where I—along with everyone else in the room—become graceful, lithe, a dancer.

Political Intrigue at Byram Hills High

A couple of weeks ago, Sam and I went to Armonk, New York, where we attended his Byram Hills High School reunion. It was a little surprising to me that Sam wanted to go at all, since the powers that be at his school actually kicked him out, but once he made the decision to participate the reunion seemed like a great idea. I was excited because I’d be able to meet, live and in person, some of the colorful characters from Sam’s past I’ve been hearing about all these years.

One of the first people we encountered was a former assistant principal who confided in me that he was very happy to see Sam alive and well because “I didn’t think he’d make it to twenty.” Then we met Mr. Green, the teacher who, according to some, robbed Sam of the student council presidency. You can read a lot more about this event here, but suffice it to say that Mr. Green still bears some guilt about this long-ago event, and needed to get some things off his chest. He launched into a long explanation about by-laws and school constitutions and the logic that led to his unpopular decision, but anyone could tell he wanted to make amends.

The next evening we found a copy of the school newspaper for which Sam wrote in the sixth grade, long before he ran for student council president or got kicked out of high school. An eager-beaver reporter, Sam covered both politics and sports. “Hockey…series B – Chicago, four games to two over New York (sob)”: he was an analyst who really cared, proud to wear his heart on his sleeve. But his above-the-fold cover story (had there been an actual cover or fold in the stapled sheaf of mimeographed paper) was the one that caught my eye: “Should We Abolish the Electoral College?” Sam made a compelling argument for his point of view (“yes, we should”):

The remarkable thing is that over forty years later, he still feels exactly the same way.

But I wonder: had there been an electoral college at Byram Hills High School when Sam ran for student council president, might he have won and gone on to become a corrupt political official under indictment today? Perhaps that archaic institution could have saved the Mr. Green many years of guilty, sleepless nights.

Leopard-skin Pillbox Strat: Chapter Two

Last November, our house was robbed. In addition to two cars (which were found by police and returned within a few days) and a little basket filled with Sam’s beloved dollhouse furniture, we lost a lot of the music equipment we kept stored between gigs. Most of these items—a keyboard, speakers, various cords and connectors and P.A. components—were easily replaced with a check from our insurance company and a couple of trips to Guitar Center. But one unique item was gone forever: my beloved Leopard-Skin Pillbox Strat, an electric guitar with a custom-made fuzzy, fringed leopard slipcover I’d had since my days performing as Corky Cougar in the Enchanters, an eighties-era wannabe punk band.

I took this pretty hard. Not that the Enchanters never made it, that is, but the loss of the guitar. Even though I didn’t play the Strat all that often; even though I’ve never been the kind of guitar player worthy of multiple axes or personalized “signature” instruments, to me the loss was something to be mourned. But there was no point searching for the guitar. It was gone, along with the tiny chaise lounge and tea service for four. Any fool thief, even the idiots who stole our stuff, would know enough to throw away the slipcover . . . which, if you come right down to it, was the most important part to me.

I had a brief fling with a gorgeous cobalt-blue Les Paul, donated by tour sponsor Gibson Guitars, on our Remainders blast through the east coast last April (while Sam combed pawn shops and flea markets for tiny bathroom appliances). But I didn’t get to take that beauty home with me. It ended up sporting all our autographs and being presented to a tour benefactor whose donation had gone to a worthy cause, a totally appropriate circumstance that—still—broke my heart just a little. The rebound guitar, adored and lost, is still no substitute for your first true love.

Then Tuesday night some magic happened at our monthly all-star jam at El Rio, hosted by yours truly and Los Train Wreck. In walked Regular Jammer/Guitar Ace Andrew Goberman with a brand new Fender case and a cat-ate-the-canary grin. When his turn came to get up and play, he opened his case and lifted out a guitar—but not just any guitar. It looked for all the world like a Leopard-skin Pillbox Strat for the New Millennium.

No, Andrew did not find and deliver my original guitar. He found a better one, upholstered it with fuzzy leopard fabric, and added a hot pink pick guard for social relevance. It is not, strictly speaking, a Stratocaster but a “Lawsuit Perpetrator.” He played a couple of kick-ass songs on it, then—wonder of wonders—handed it to me as a gift, while Sam looked on, wondering if Andrew had any tiny tea sets in his wizard’s bag.

So I have a leopard Strat again. All it needs is about three feet of hot pink fringe and it will be perfect, or, as I like to say, will “match my underwear”. Andrew did a wonderful, generous thing for me last night, and I hope you will join me in thanking him by paying attention to where and when he has gigs, showing up, applauding loudly, and leaving lots of money in his tip jar. (You can take that literally, or read it as a euphemism about his underwear.)

Rock on.

The Best Idea Ever

I am a person who’s had a lot of self-described million-dollar ideas. There was Party Amazons, a company that specialized in jungle décor for hospitality suites at trade shows. I was the crazed woman with the clipboard and the phone glued to her ear, screaming things like “An elephant head? What am I supposed to do with just the head? We ordered a whole plaster elephant!” while Carole transported the dry ice, Lorraine artfully Krazy-glued sequins to pieces of fabric, and Audrey arranged tropical flowers. We charged a hefty fee, every penny of which was spent on renting tropical plants and plaster animals, headless or not.

Then there was “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” Records, originally created to bring the song stylings of Jessica Mitford to the world as Decca and the Dectones. Ms. Mitford’s booming rendition of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” was going to take the music industry by storm with its joyful, aristocratic charm. This release was followed by others: Stranger than Fiction featured forty authors singing their favorite songs; Potty Animal offered ten funny songs about you-know-what by Auntie Poo and the Porta-Potties; You Bug Me—songs guaranteed to annoy your parents by Tony Goldmark; several other strange and wonderful contributions to the world of popular music. Only somehow, they didn’t turn out to be that popular. Go figure.

My Manchewitz Jello shot (these were actually my daughter-in-law Marissa Goldmark’s great idea) and popsicle recipes were published on 7X7 Online during Passover, but the commercial potential just never manifested, sorry to say.

But the best idea I will ever have in my life was—and is—the Rock Bottom Remainders. During my seventeen-year tenure as a publicity escort for publishers, I met a lot of baby-boomer authors, many of whom sold six million books a week, telling me how lucky I was to play crappy little country-western gigs. So I invited a dozen of my favorites to join me in putting on one rock & roll show, it was a huge amount of fun, we are still together eighteen years later, and have raised nearly two million dollars for grass-roots charities.

One thing that happens when you get a bunch of brilliant people together is that they tend to have ideas, too. And as time went on, everyone contributed to the idea that was once all mine. One of guitar player Dave Barry’s great ideas was a guy named Ted Habte-Gabr, who stepped in as the Remainders’ manager when no one else would, and who handles all of the logistics of our annual tours.

Turns out Ted had some ideas, one of which was “interns.” These are young people who somehow apply to work for free doing things like finding the shoes we left in the hospitality suite or copying set lists or taking photos before some of us have had a chance to put on our makeup. One of the interns on our April 2010 “Wordstock” tour was a guy named Mike Medeiros, a particularly likeable fellow. Like me he’s a “PK” (no, not a Preacher’s Kid—though Sam and Dave are that kind of PK; but a Photographer’s Kid who, like me, grew up with fingers turned yellow from helping Dad with the hypo tray and participating in mad dashes on Christmas Eve getting those family photos delivered in time to give to Grandma.)

Yesterday Mike sent us a package including dozens of video clips and photos he took on tour, in addition to a brilliant and hilarious Onion-style parody of our band and activities on the road. I laughed out loud reading it, even though he obviously didn’t check his facts very well. For example, Sam would never leave a half-eaten sandwich on a table, nor did he ever appear in “Cats.” But that’s quibbling. The article titled “Stephen King Dumps Remainders for Polka Gig” alone is worth the price of admission.

Which in this case, I suppose, is having great ideas and then sharing them with others and letting them go where they will.

 

 

 

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