The (New & Improved) HYENA KITCHEN

       A friend of mine recently sent me a Harvard study on “what makes us happy in life.” Now I don’t know if he felt, for some reason, that I needed to be happier (although the great Stinky Wizzleteat song about a whale – The Happy Happy Joy Joy Song – did come to mind. “I don’t think you’re happy enough. I’ll teach you to be happy.”) or, was he merely looking out for my “social fitness” – the study’s suggested “Number One Key” to happiness achievement – as any friend would do.  Now, if the recent pandemic taught me anything, it’s that anti-social behavior is extremely beneficial and is a concept that I’ve been perfecting (or attempting) for years – therefore my “social fitness is in tip top condition – and directly responsible for my happiness.                                                             ...

    I saw an article yesterday on a prominent news website referring to the public’s inability to buy their “dream phone.”   Now I’ve often fantasized about my “dream car” and “dream home,” even once or twice about a “dream vacation.” But a “dream phone?” Seriously, this is an indicator that something is wrong with our dream society. My dream phone is one that never rings, no one has the number too, and that I can forget to turn on – or, perhaps a red reproduction of the Bat Phone, complete with glass dome – yeah, baby.   Everything else, well. . .I’m just shaking my head.                 Hello, you’ve reached me, I’m now in right now, so at the tone. . .

    When I was a young boy, we fed our family dog at 10 pm.   We would often ask her if she “knew what time it was” and with her two bark answer we’d reply, “That’s right.” Routine behavior or not, she was Corgi-smart. Soon we no longer asked, the pre-ten o’clock news announcement of “It’s Ten O’clock, do you know where your children are?” took care of it for us.   The ears piqued, followed by that two-bark note. Then she would impatiently pace back and forth, in silent anticipation as we dished out her food, then with the shave and haircut, two bits tap of the fork she’d approach. Her dish often licked clean by the time the fork reached the kitchen sink.   When I was a young boy, my father – the hardest working man I’d ever known – was asleep by 9 pm.   Every evening, after supper, he’d take to his Barcalounger, recline to watch television, and be asleep by nine.   At times, our Corgi would climb up into the crack between him and the armrest and...

 Just a quick note of blatant commercialism, the COVID anthology LOCKDOWN 2.022: Poems from the Lockdown (from Willowdown Books) is still available through Amazon.le supplies (as they say). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BFTYFN4F/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

         I recently read an opt-ed piece on CNN titled “Why Prince Harry is a Threat to a Certain Kind of Man,”: written by a Louis Staples (no relation to Mavis), a self-credited “culture writer” (whatever the fuck that is?). It caught my eye because several years ago I had started work on a book titled Unleashing Your Inner Sinatra; The De-Pussification of the American Male – which was intended to be a humorous look at reclaiming of the male ego in an increasingly humorless world. Due to the cultural climate I chose to “self-cancel” the project, but this CNN piece gave me hope that things might be changing (and perhaps all this ridiculous hype, might be of value yet).      Despite the fact that Staples took the first nine paragraphs to recap the past two month’s Netflix/tell-all hype, before getting around to his point (apparently, Cultural Writer School fosters the habit of burying the lead) – I sallied forth, in hopes that a point would ...

      H iya Cats & Kittens, Happy New Year. I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll have to say it again – big media, i.e. Rolling Stone magazine, NPR, etc., work for the interest of the record companies and not the listener, focusing on the top-forty caterwauling of the instant grat/downloaded world we find ourselves subjected to. And maybe it was always this way, but I want to think not. So when controversy rears its controversial head, we have to consider the source. Our latest music controversy, I have to categorize as White People’s Problems – the creation of issues – for issues sake – where there is no real issue. Of course, I’m talking about Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 200 Greatest Singers of All Time list – and the FACT that Celine Dion didn’t make the cut.  Okay, if you’re one of the gaggle of fans of that shipwreck/romance movie and you feel slighted because your personal songbird didn’t make the list, yet Iggy Pop and Leonard Cohen did, I feel...