Christmas parody letter 2018

Ho! ho! ho! Everybody. It's Christmas time again and I hope you're feeling jolly and that your yuletide is gay. May you all be drinking eggnog, roasting chestnuts on an open fire (whatever the hell that means) and be entertained by the delightful Christmas caroling of the Knapp/Landreth family.

I checked out a Christmas movie from the library, the 1950 classic, White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. Remember in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation when Clark Griswold says, "We're gonna have the hap hap happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby danced with Danny fucking Kaye"? Well I'm watching that freakin' movie with the ol' kiddos.

Oh the things that have happened this year on the political front (because we always like to discuss politics over the holidays). Let me ask you, my fellow Kansans, haven't you often wished you lived in a place like Seattle, Washington where you can smoke dope and be a nudist and it's all legal? Well a Democrat was elected governor in Kansas and perhaps she'll see the economic and social wisdom of legalized marijuana. Wouldn't that be as wonderful as a winter wonderland? You're in your room, listening to Frampton Comes Alive on the stereo, hitting the bong and it's all legal. As regards public nudity, I don't think Kansans are ready for that, you know, our private stuff hanging out, but maybe one day.

More importantly, on the political front, Gov. elect Laura Kelly says she'll go for expanded Medicaid. Remember when Ebenezer Scrooge asked the ghost of Christmas present if Tiny Tim would live? Thanks to expanded Medicaid he will. But oh, if that scoundrel Kris Kobach were elected, the sentiment might be, "If he be like to die, he'd better do it and decrease the surplus population." But alas, Kobach is not to be governor and he can dedicate his energies to harassing Hispanics for their papers and keeping black people from voting.

But allow me to depart from this political discourse and talk about another subject from this 2018 year -- one much closer to my heart -- my family. My son, Max, has proven himself as a stage performer making his debut as a thespian in the high school play (what the hell was it called?) Anyhow, when I first saw him made up and wearing his costume, I thought, "Great, they stuck him in a clown suit." But it was original and it worked. He was comedic, had the timing, showed a knack for physical comedy with his jumps and falls and this movement from his tall, lanky body reminded me of Buster Keaton.

This year, young Max is again, on his high school wrestling team. It's hard work, the rigor of practice, making weight, the adrenaline before a match, but he's proving he can handle it. Recently in practice, let's just say he pinned a kid who needed a good sticking.

Then there's my lovely daughter, Gabby. This year, she participated in the scholar's bowl team for the middle school. In fact, she was team captain. She's in advanced placement English and all her teachers have noted that she has a gift for writing. Allow me to share with you a song she wrote about a strict math teacher at her school, named Ms. Andrews. There are certain lyrical references in the song that I need to explain to you. Students who don't get their homework done have to go to a program, held an hour before school starts in the morning, called Academic Success. Also, Ms. Andrews' brother is gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I have friends who are gay. I'm not like that guy, Vice-Pres. Mike Pence who believes in the discredited gay conversion therapy. Anyhow, the song:

Andrews Rap

Who has short black hair and teaches math?
Who isn't afraid to show kids her wrath?
It's every one's favorite teacher and mother
Not to mention her wildly homosexual brother

Everyone knows that math is hard
But Andrews makes it harder when she yells, "Give me your card."
If you forget your homework, you gotta pray
and prepare for Andrews to say:
"See ya later!"
"Prepare to meet your creator!"

If you ain't ready for algebra one
then it's academic success for you, son
'Cause along with being nearly 50 years of age
Andrews don't mind showing off her rage.
Maybe when Trump builds that border wall
Andrews will be gone and that will be all
And nobody will have to hear her call:
"get to class!
"I'm gonna beat your ___."

I have a new woman in my life, Carly. She's sarcastic with a wicked sense of humor. I love her nose ring and the tattoo of a rose on her left boob. Anyhow, Carly's brother, Ronald, had a scrotal problem, specifically a swelling of his testicles and scrotal sack. Ronald's condition was Epididymitis -- an inflammation of the long tube that rests on the testicles. Sometimes this happens to men after having a vasectomy, I mean, not every man; I had a vasectomy and I've had no trouble with my nuts, but it can happen. Fortunately he got medical help and now Ronald and his testicles are doing fine.

I'm almost outa' here, but I want you to know there's a man, a bad man who thought he could trick me into landing in California, jobless, penniless, without food, shelter, shower or toilet. As if. This man is known for hatching cockamamie schemes aimed at screwing people. His anti-social behavior, I believe, stems from unresolved childhood issues (just my armchair psychology, I know) but that's no excuse for taking evil out on people. I am not at freedom to reveal this sad, pathetic man's identity, only that he is an official with government clearance who practises peculiar and unsanitary behavior with regard to public defecation. That is all I can reveal at this juncture. I guess I could be an asshole about it, but screw it. Merry Christmas.

This is it, but I just want to say I hope we're all nicer to people in the next year. I'm pretty chill. I can eat a meal with prostitutes, tax collectors and trump supporters. I despise everything about trump and everything he stands for, but I'm willing to be your friend if you let me. I'll never excoriate you for expressing your political views on Facebook no matter how wrongheaded I may find them to be. It's your right to express your views no matter how ignorant and intolerant they may be. I'm not going to get behind a screen and call you a "fucking idiot" because there's way too much of that and it's chickenshit anyway. I only wish you peace and hope you check your testicles, or your lady parts if you're a woman.

Merry Christmas,

J. Guy

Father Christmas -- The Kinks

The Thespian Ghoul of Opera House Number 5

"He looked like a filthy flamingo," I read and fling the bastard book across the hard wood table like some hand wave over an accordion.

The damn guy sitting across from me, a friend of mine, really, just looks at me with stones in his eyes. Salvatore's Pizzeria with its coal oven baked pizza in Wichita's historic Italian district. We're there. In a neighborhood not far from the more mainline downtown district within which the city council, with their greasy-Koch Brothers-commercial real estate swipin' palms voted to gut the old building that had housed a quaint church-run coffee shop. This was against the recommendation of the city's Historic Preservation Council. Well, I dig history in much the way I love the Starlight Drive-In and this town's Little Mexico and Little Vietnam districts. The way I go for the pepperoni and dark beer and old used books absent an ISBN while my little rock n' roll is playin'.


"So you still think about your childhood friend?" he asks. "What's her name, Suzanne?"

"Yeah, I've known her since third grade. One day in science class in seventh grade, I heard this girl's voice coming from a lab table across the room. Heard her mention Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts and I thought, man, cool as life. She had a blue ribbon in her hair."

I change the subject back. "A filthy fuck'n flamingo." Now that's crackerjack description. It's from one of the greatest novels ever -- Slaughterhouse Five.

"You don't have to write like Vonnegut," Reese says. He concedes, knowing writing is the only thing I want to talk about. "I'd like to read more about that guy from Jett."

"Fuck that guy from Jett," I say and take another sip of beer. "My ex-inlaws read that shit." I pause, think and soften my tone. "I have nothing against 'em."

 "I hope you do write more because I don't want you to be 89-years-old, having a nurse lift you into a walk-in shower, and you thinking I shoulda' written that fucker."

"I probably won't make it that long," I interject. "My blood pressure's already running high."

"Life is fleeting," Reese says.

Talking about writing, or more specifically, the lack of it raises my anxiety, which accelerates my blood pressure. We're about to enter a new year and I hope it's not hell like the last one. I feel inadequate when my writing output is poor, but I feel inadequate much of the time or I have this year. Like I'm that same awkward high school student walking aimlessly down the hall. I can stand in a room full of professional people, introducing myself and telling what I do, but I wanna say, "I don't believe in this. Networking is antithetical to I and Thou relationships. I want connection. My blog isn't the norm. It's sex, drugs and rock n' roll."

The stress, the worry that keeps me from sitting my butt in a chair and writing -- it's an obstacle to creativity. That's the way the year has been. No great writing. No great TV spots on Kansas Characters, the public television show Reese and I work on.

"You're wrong, buddy," he says. "That piece you did on the opera house was damn good television." I'd reported on an old opera house in Jericho, Kansas (to the southwest on 54) and how volunteers had restored it and were doing shows there again.

"Yeah," I say. "I saw on their Facebook page, they're doing A Christmas Carol." 

"Shit, according to you, they already have ghosts in that theater," Reese says.

Reese wavers between belief and disbelief about the existence of God and the unknown. And this is a guy who went to seminary school.

"I'm not knockin' your skepticism," I say. "Hell, it's part of your charm, but I've seen things."

Beauty and heartbreak

There's a rusty red two-story building at the corner of Santa Fe and Drinkwater streets in downtown Jericho, a western Kansas of around 8,000. With its marble steps and corinthian pilasters framing its arched front doorway, the structure almost resembles a Victorian era church. Indeed, to the preservationists who fought to restore the grand performance hall, it is a temple. Yet, the Jericho Opera House -- its name cast in vampire black atop the building -- is not without its stories, a tortured history of sex and sin within its walls. What we would today call drama.

A sign in front announced the first performance to be held at the opera house in 65 years -- a production by the Jericho Theater Company of Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of my favorite of the Bard's plays. It's loaded -- witchcraft, murder, tortured souls. It was a fitting choice for a performance hall long said to be inhabited by spirits.

Georgia Fitzsimmons, the jaunty octogenarian woman who persevered against political odds to save the opera house, pointed out the two balconies in the 900-seat theater, the orchestra pit and Wurlitzer organ said to sometimes play by itself, the soft-colored mural painting of a meadow above the proscenium arch... She's a retired actress and high school drama teacher who delights in theatrical trivia. "The opera house opened in 1895," she said. "Now, later that year a couple of vaudevillians named Joe and Myra Keaton performed here with Harry Houdini in a traveling medicine show. A week later, Myra gave birth in Piqua, Kansas to a little boy you know as Buster Keaton."

She loves to drop names.

"In the early days, we had Oscar Wilde, William Jennings Bryan and John Phillip Sousa passed through," Georgia said almost in a whisper, picked up and carried by the 19th century acoustics of the structure.  "The 20th century? Jack Benny, the Marx Brothers, Ethel Barrymore -- they all performed here. Right where we're standing."

At 81, Georgia moved with the vivacity of a woman at least 30 years younger, gesturing with the force of an operatic diva. Gracile, with long silver hair tied back in a pony tail, her pink eyeglasses, T-shirt, khaki capris and red slippers, she cast a casual vibe, undefined by age. The front of her shirt featured wild cartoon drawings of a singer with a guitar, an artist's pallet, curtains and a stage. The back read, "The arts enrich communities."

"I heard this place is haunted," I said.

"It's been known to be frequented by spirits," she replied.

Georgia knew the opera house was haunted when she was a child. She sensed an abnormal presence the night she made her debut in the theater at age 7, performing a tap dance routine while a big band played Swing on a Star. By the time the theater closed in 1953, she was a veteran of its stage. And she'd ceased being afraid, having accepted the phantoms as a part of life there -- or the afterlife.

We stood there for a moment, the grand building permeated by a corpse-like quiet. All dead. Suddenly --
Slam!

"Oh Jesus!" I exclaimed.

A door backstage shut violently, then creaked open and again -- slam!

"Oh, I bet that's Mary Lee," Georgia said, as if talking about an old friend. "She wants us to know she's here."

"Is she always so volatile about it?"

"Oh, she's a little tempest, but very vulnerable," Georgia said. "She carries a lot of unresolved baggage from her mortal life."

"Baggage?"

"Heartbreak. Would you like to hear that story?" Georgia asked me.

 "Georgia," I said -- I was developing a feeling of familiarity with her. "I live for stories."

She led me across the oak floors in the front lobby to a vanilla colored plaster wall between the gentlemen's and ladies' rooms. A glass case was filled with memorabilia -- costume hats, playbills and telegrams. Above, there was a row of time gone black and white photographs -- some of celebrities with their autographs, others of local actors and musicians who had entertained on the opera house stage.

One photograph -- the year 1920 was engraved on a plaque below -- was a standout. The face of a young woman adorned in a Renaissance era dress, standing in a balcony. "That's Mary Lee McLaughlin," Georgia said, pointing to --

"My god," I said. "She's ravishing."

Her eyes were dark and yearning. Ephemeral, yet everlasting. Innocent yet sensual. Lips fierce, but fragile. Like I could see inside her soul and she was looking inside mine. We felt each other's loneliness. I desperately wanted -- needed -- to hold her. Close. Her delicate body against mine. Skin to skin. Time -- the enemy, distance -- the spoiler of hearts -- they didn't exist. her body against mine They didn't exist.

"Yeah, she was a goddess," Georgia said, breaking the spell. At the bottom of the picture, a young man bent to the ground looked up at her. He was handsome all right, but didn't command the reaction she did. I guessed correctly that they were playing Romeo and Juliet.

Georgia continued. "It was well before my time, of course, but my parents and the old timers around here said she was breathtaking on stage -- just immortal. She was a celebrity in this town and probably could've gone on to Broadway and silent pictures."

"But that didn't happen?"

"No."

I imagined all the young men wanted to marry her.

"She only loved one man," Georgia said with a kind of sorrow in her voice.

"The man in the picture?"

"Oh, I'll get to him later," she said. "It was another man." She shook her head. "Just one of those things."

"What happened to her?" I asked.