GROWNUP

We’re playing Grownup tonight, Killer and I. This is what you do; you partake in pleasures that were regarded highly by the people of your parent’s generation at the time you were a kid.

So tonight; Pepper steak with garlic toast and a baked potato in aluminum foil with sour cream, chives and bacon bits, preceded by a martini or a gin and tonic, accompanied by a jammy red wine and the Dean Martin CD that I demanded she buy me as a present today. Then we’re gonna watch Valley of the Dolls and maybe eat a piece of cheesecake.

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8 MILE

Killer, our girlfriend, is, as has been noted before, a slim, lithe, refined slip of a thing who fancies the opera and likes to sip wine in moderate quantities and eat paté and brie canapés. Killer likes opera. Killer likes Schubert. Killer, with her primly pulled-back hair and her little librarian glasses and her grey stovepipe trousers. Killer, who works as a translator for bureacrats. Killer, who actually wore out our copy of the Oxford Canadian Dictionary when we at Mango Pudding Blues were foolish enough to lend it to her. Killer, who subscribes to the Globe and Mail. Killer, who likes fancy and expensive soaps and exotic teas and port wine and Broadway tunes.

Killer has a little crush on Eminem.

Yo.

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DRY SPELL

So for years we at Mango Pudding Blues have been slathering our face with buckets of wildly expensive alpha-hydroxy moisturizer. We want our face to retain its beautiful moist youthfullness forever. If we could, we would pack our face nighly into a velvet-lined cedar humidor and handle it only with white cotton gloves on.

Just lately, though, the old moisturizer, Dorian Gray brand, hasn’t been cutting the mustard. Just lately, we’ve noted the appearance of actual wrinkles around the undersides of our eyes. We are, of course, appalled. We’re staving off the worst of it with some heavy triage rich-lady cream for now, but frankly, we’re in the market for something new. Apparently, alpha-hydroxy is old. They got beta-hydroxy now. Any suggestions?

And one wonders; is the sorry state of our facial skin related to the dry spell, the arid emptiness of Mango Pudding Blues itself? Is there a shared root?

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TENSEGRITY

Tensegrity. Ephemeralization. R. Buckminster Fuller. The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Shakespeare and the invention of the soul. Fractals. Ceiling fans. Tapenade. The Gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt.

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Yes. So yesterday, after months of enduring legions of ingenious varieties of misery, we at Mango Pudding Blues were stunned when happiness made a surprise comeback in our lives. Picture this; a warm and sunny snowless Ottawa Saturday morning, and we were cruising alone on an errand run in our sleek deep green leased sedan, listening to some a cappella Belgian Pygmy doo-wop, making our way from the tanning salon to the dry cleaner, and suddenly, apropos of nothing, our feisty little heart beat its mighty wings, tore itself out of our chest and ascended swoopingly into the blue late fall sky. “Happiness!” We cried out loud. “Where you been?”

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My brother’s sushi martini: Gin and pickled ginger.

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Yeah, okay, look; we’re coming back. We might limp a little. It might be a while before order is restored. There could be hiccups. Backsliding. Sidesteps. A rough ride. We don’t know. You don’t know either. You don’t know.

But we are heartened by the few little letters we’ve received from faithful readers. We are heartened also to find ourselves linked to from nice blogs here and there. We are heartened by you.

But there’s another thing. We’ve started work on Mango Pudding Blues 3.0. And we know we’ve threatened you with this before, but this time we mean it; it is going to be by invitation only. It’s going to be exclusive, dammit. There will, one day soon (although, to be honest, not too terribly soon), be an apocalyptic shudder on the internet and this site and its predecessor will be gone, and a new Mango Pudding Blues will be born somewhere slightly different. And so if you want to come, you need to let us know. You need to sign up. You need to send us your name and your e-mail address and, if you are very very brave, your physical address. And then, if we like you, you will be notified of our new address. We are more likely to like you if you tell us who you are and why you want in. We are more likely to like you if you tell us a little secret about yourself. We are more likely to like you if you send us a little poem or a small jpeg of yourself or your favorite thing.

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