Conquering Vertigo

Ricky the Rapper

I’ve heard people claim they were country when country wasn’t cool (sort of like boasting you wear double-knit). In a similar (but better) vein, my husband knew hop was hip, before any brother ever hip-hopped.

Ricky the Rapper regularly busts the rhymes.

I’m not just Robin, I’m the “Girl with Allure,” and when I fell on my bottom, I bruised my “hiney-pahniney.”

This summer, when I dreamt I was an adopted child of mixed race, he composed – on the fly – the little “I’m a Mulatto” ditty I still can’t erase from my mind. Without revealing all the lyrics, let me just say “I like Gelato.”

Everything is fodder for the Rhyming Machine in his brain, with the dog perhaps bearing the brunt of it.
She’s not just the dog, she’s the Dog-Wadog, the Hound From the Pound, Bryn the Pin and Bryn-Tin-Tin.
She’d be the Killa from Manila if someone else had not beget that sobriquet.

The flan hit the fan, though, with the feeding “toy” we give Bryn, which Richard variously calls the Hong Kong Bong Dong Gong Song. It’s really a “Kong,” but that never achieved mind share with Ricky. What stuck, nay lodged and sunk tap roots, was “Bong.”

Richard never tried drugs, so he’s not having a Summer of Love flashback. It’s just that “Bong” resonates for him, echoes even, and so that’s what he calls it. Which is fine, charming even, until I caught it too. And so there I am, in the dog park, surrounded by dozens of playful canines, chatting with a Dog Trainer. He was interviewing me about the Hound from the Pound, how we were training her, etc.

“How much do you feed her,” he asked.
“Oh, about three Bongs a day,” was my casual reply.

Even in San Francisco, that’s a whopper.

Richard’s linguistic linguini doesn’t end with rhymes, it extends to concepts. All summer, we kept talking about going to see “An Uncomfortable Reality,” which Mr. Gore might term an inconvenient truth.

We finally saw An Inconvenient Truth Monday night, and I hope indeed it does not become a terribly uncomfortable reality. I’m helping facilitate a screening and conversation about the movie this Sunday at church.

As Episcopals in San Francisco, we’re already doing things like recycling, riding mass transit, etc. I think the challenge of this dialog in our community is taking it far beyond personal response to group action. For me, environmental stewardship is not a partisan political issue, it is a moral and spiritual imperative.

And now I’m confessin’
As my husband is pressin’
Thus endeth the lesson.

posted by Woman In Love @ 7:17 AM