Joe Cillo

REMEMBER ME?

Look back and smile on perils past.
Walter Scott

It happens every day.  You open Facebook and find some forgotten person from long ago. My friend Barry re-discovered Gloria, his high school sweetheart there.  They both had been widowed the year before and…well, you know the rest.  They are now madly in love spending hot and heavy weekends together reminiscing about that lousy math teach who drove everyone crazy and the big mistake they made marrying someone else first.

I have not been so lucky.  The people who re-connect with me on Facebook are all part of a nightmare I prefer to erase.  They remind me that they knew me when I wore braces on my teeth and wandered through life with my head in a cloud, my feet encased in orthopedic oxfords.  I do not want to relive a time when I was ruled by parents, teachers and consensus.  Those days are past.

I can only suspect that the ones who contact me are so senile they do not remember anything more than my name. There could be no other reason.  I was not the hottest item on the block in days gone by.

Nonetheless, I fell in love with the unattainable on a regular basis and went to great lengths to let my targets know I was available.  When I look back on all of them now, I realize how desperate I was. Did I really want that short, pimply guy in my history class?  And why did my heart flutter at the sight of a boy in uniform.  Didn’t I realize that clothes cannot transform a boy into a man?

Not long ago, I got a friend request from Donny Okun who fancied me when I was nineteen and still hopeful. He was a sailor then who wore his bell-bottom trousers tight enough so I could see clearly what he had to offer. He sent me bouquets of roses every week for a month and then asked me to come with him to Canada for a night on the town.

OMG!  I was crossing the border with an honest-to-god sailor and you know what they say about sailors!!!  I threw caution to the winds and wore my most décolleté dress so he could see my equipment as clearly as I could see his.  We got in the car, I lit a cigarette and tossed the match out the window.

However, the window was closed and the flaming match ricocheted into my cleavage.  As both of us burrowed into my dress to keep me from bursting into flame, I realized all too clearly that I needed more than a pair of tight trousers to commit.

And now, this guy wants us to be friends?

I hit delete.  It was one of the wisest decisions I have ever made.

Joe Cillo

www.forallevents.com/

ART IS GOING TO THE APES

An ape cannot speak about his art
Anymore than a monkey can discuss a his digestion.
Jacques Cocteau and Lynn Ruth

In the late sixties, a gorilla won the Modern Art competition at the Detroit Museum of Art. The animals’ owner put several tubes of paint and a blank canvas in the ape’s cage.  The furry artist, whom I shall call Sybil, stomped on the tubes of paint and smeared the colors on the canvas with her paws.  After an hour, she tired of dancing and began eating the tubes of paint.  Her owner pulled the canvas out of her cage, hosed Sybil down and was amazed at the finished canvas.   It reminded him of a combination of a Jackson Pollack with a smattering of Kandinsky, a dash of Picasso and traces of Klee.  When Sybil’s masterpiece dried, he varnished it, framed it and entered it in the museum’s competition.

To his delight, the painting won first prize.  He bought a jeweled collar for Sybil, pinned a pink ribbon in her hair and brought her to the award ceremony. It was a little dicey getting her in the front door  but the owner insisted she was a service animal  He managed to keep her from molesting the guests by feeding her bananas and bit of cadmium red. When they called his name to accept the award, Sybil joined him on stage.  He told the astounded judges that it was not he who created the masterpiece they so admired.  It was his Sybil.

Years later, I took a class with the fabulously talented realistic painter Joseph Sheppard and he told me that Sybil was indeed a magnificent talent.  Indeed, he had joined her in her cage a few years after her triumph to raise money for the museum.  Together they painted a still life that hangs now in that same museum.

Evidently, gorillas not only paint, but they know what they are painting. Sister and brother gorillas Michael and Koko were taught sign language.  As a result, Koko (the artist in the family) was able to explain to her curator Dr. Penny Patterson, that she had painted a bird.

Just this past month, word is out that a zoo in North Dakota is selling the artwork of its 275 pound orangutan named Tal. His paintings are so colorful that they literally fly off the wall.  The animal’s favorite color is yellow and often he eats as much of the paint as he smears on his canvases. “Could be because it looks like a banana,” said the zoo’s curator.

There is no doubt that creativity is fundamental in the ape psyche. The animals  love using crayons, pencils and finger paint although they prefer oils they can eat. Everyone knows that children have the same propensity to eat the colors they use to paint. I believe we can learn a lot from the apes and their ability to transform their creative efforts into funds that support their favorite institutions.  I propose that we exhibit and sell all the paintings from local kindergarten classes to pay for amenities in their schools.  Think of it! We would no longer have to pay taxes to support education!  Our kindergartners would finance the system for us…and who knows?  There might be enough money left to reward the young artists with a few bananas.

Joe Cillo

www.forallevents.com/

ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?

Politeness; The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce

British men are the politest animals in the universe.  The first thing they ask you is “Are you all right?” and, if you are an innocent, you believe they really want to know. They seem so caring, so mild, so…so sweet.  But underneath that proper façade, lurks suppressed anger, aggression and hatred boiling about, absolutely aching to let off steam.  Just ask any woman over 14.  She knows.  She has seen it.  She has defended herself against it. And she has won.

Obviously, male testosterone and animal aggression are at an all time high universally in this century.  In Spain, chastity belts are a way of life. In Greece,…well…we all know what those men do to a woman. In Britain, however all that hormonal activity  is repressed and re-channeled.

That is why the crime rate for men in Britain has plummeted.  The male Brit is simply too proper for confrontation. In the UK, the very idea of murder is terribly upsetting. It is so messy.  The thought of assaulting someone on the street is repugnant to a real gentleman (and we all KNOW how correct an Englishman must appear).  It might stain your shirt or even worse…leave a bruise.

Every woman in a heterosexual partnership can testify to the passive–aggressive garbage they must ignore every day (for they too are very PC.)  For example, it is a well-known fact that a man will always call you darling before he hits you.  Always.  It is the way it is done.

The truth is that any fellow who is British in bed, will always apologize and we women know why. We watch pornography, too.   In fact, although the maternal instinct is very strong, most women would prefer that their partner was not present at the conception of their children.  They always hope for a French intervention…or even an Italian one.  Those men don’t bother with protocol.  They just get in there and get the job done.

No full-blooded Englishman ever actually leaves his wife. That explains those tortuous 40-year alliances that drag on and on plodding through rearing the children, indulging the grand kids and going on cruises to ease the boredom of it all.   A real Englishman stays with his spouse and ignores for her for so long, that she is forced to leave to preserve her sanity.  Clever fellows!  That is how THEY become the injured one.

Besides, as every male knows, it is foolhardy to walk out of a partnership until he has found himself a proper house cleaner and a hot young thing for recreation.

The fact is that English MEN have a sense of entitlement that women must accept.  They get it from their mothers.  They know how to push the right buttons to make women and children indulge them and juries excuse their behavior.

The buttons they push these days are on their smart phones and their I-pads.  Men in this country are addicted to online bullying and misanthropic tweeting. It doesn’t leave a scar.  It is not unusual for a hard working woman, to slave away for 8 hours at the office, gallop to Lidl (she knows where to find the bargains) on the way home, Hoover the house as she charges through it to the kitchen to make a healthy stir fry for the children while her partner is belching quietly and watching television in the parlor, scratching his private parts.  As she tosses the pasta into the drainer and chops the garlic, she will inevitably hear a beep from her phone, glance at it and see a picture of a hot pair of baubles with a cryptic note:  “Why aren’t yours like this?”

Women are not bothered by all this foolishness.  After all, we can multi-task.  Don’t think you guys are the only ones with secrets.  Women always have the final say when it comes to any connection with a man.  We know how to say no.

Joe Cillo

www.forallevents.com/