LEARNING TO LOVE ALBERT HINES

So there is this chain of groceries apparently started by a Dutchman who was the Abraham Lincoln of food in the Netherlands, AH, with symbolic little hamsters I started out loathing, as they are big-toothed and grinning on all the plastic bags, but of whom(which?) I have started to feel rather fond.  This is a truly strange country, resolute in its determination to stay independent and important, no matter how much the world has changed and Holland has fallen behind in the discovering-what-the-world-is-about and what-other-countries-are-out-there department.  You cannot get a charge account at Albert Hines unless you have a Dutch bank account, and you cannot get a Dutch bank account, oh no, unless you commit yourself to a Dutch life, and you cannot commit, and so on, unless unless unless.

   I of course cannot commit to anything except possibly an asylum, as my life and my feelings are so uncertain.  I am so disappointed in my own country and what is happening or not happening there, everything dependent on how much money is being spent on what candidate where, our poor befuddled president having to take on the Koch family which is apparently even larger and richer than we imagine, and is of course pronounced Cock and that's all I'll say about that.  

     But I am, of course, a friend of Benjamin Franklin's, as well as Nick Clooney, George's dad, who had a radio show in Cincinnatti that was my favorite to do, because he was so bright and interested and always read the books when you would go on the road and do radio shows to promote your books when people still read them, and there were pages to turn.  Ben's self-writ epitaph, the one he left when he thought he might die even though he believed in reincarnation, was on the wall of the airport in Covington, Kentucky, which was where you had to fly to do the Nick Clooney show.  And it said, as I remember, I hope well

    Here lies B. Franklin, printer, food for worms.  But he will return in a new and better edition, created and edited by

                         THE AUTHOR

by which I assume he meant God, in Whom he devoutly believed, even while probably believing, even as he was shtupping the nuns in France, that that God was best manifested in himself, an egotistic concept that I'll go along with, even as today's young women likely believe it is George Clooney.

     George Clooney, as you may also know, all three of you who may have been following this blog, is also my taxi driver here in Amsterdam, as I have been fortunate enough to connect with a genuinely cute man who is truly a ringer for that filmic sweetheart, and kind of a doll in real life, too, I would suspect, having met George when he was hawking his movie, Good Night and Good Luck in New York, and finding him beyond or perhaps above gracious, actually saying to me "You're lovely," which set me up for a couple of years even beyond when it probably no longer applied. Amber, my adorable friend who worked at the hotel I stayed at when first going back to LA, and has remained a true buddy and I hope will visit me here, dated him when he stayed at the hotel where he was on location, and assured me that the dispiriting rumors about him are NOT true.  So we can relax, those of us no matter how old who want to believe there are some straight men left in the world.

      I am trying to find some sensible reason to be in Amsterdam after being unable to answer intelligently the query of the manager of the Gym downstairs, which I am joining as of tomorrow in hopes of staying alive, "What brought you to Amsterdam?" The wise-ass response, of course, "a plane."  But I would like to think it was something more.  That there is here a REASON, some energy or wisdom floating above these canals that I can benefit greatly from, and give some energy and wisdom back.

    But it is hard not knowing, though the truth is how much do any of us really know about anything, with certainty.  I don't even know where the woman is I thought I made friends with who sent me several e-mails approximating a wish to be connected, and said she was coming to lunch, so I bought all this stuff at Albert Hines, and now here it is, 1:23, and my doorbell hasn't rung, and I have all these cheeses and meats I didn't even know what they were laid out on several parsleyed and graped trays, and nobody has come.  Oh, well.  It could have been worse.  I could have been in a town where George Clooney was on location, and then he left and found somebody else, and now they were at the Villa D'este.  

    I've been there.  I think it's overrated.