2010 Tournament of Roses Parade from Bob Penn on Vimeo.

No time to tell now. At work!

But, in a couple of days, I will be uploading a brand new video from the creator of "Tray Delivery - Service With a Smile!" -- me!

I went to the Rose Parade and videotaped it. Color commentary was provided along the way. It was shot in high def and glorious mono sound.

I have been editing it for a couple of weeks and am nearly ready to release it. I think I can upload it to this blog for viewing. If not, I will provide a link to it.

It's the happiest, silliest, saddest, ugliest, messiest, most everything video you will ever see.

Stay tuned.

The assistant looks at the director with apprehension. "A script," he quietly suggests.

"That's why I hired you!" exhaults the director, eyes brightening. "Yes, go get me a script."

So the assistant looks to see what is about to fall into the public domain.

"Hmmm, he thinks. 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' might work, with Mr. Smith as an 8 foot alien," he thinks to himself. "'Some Like it Hot' might work," crosses his mind. But it doesn't have the "scope"he needs.

Then he remembers that a major film accidently lost its copyright due to a clerical error.

He opens his files and pulls out a small sheet of newspaper. He stares at the article, and smiles.

"Indians ... Aliens. Indians ... Aliens ... Dances with Aliens." His smile widens.

... from the book, "Dances With Blue Aliens: Avatar Dissected" by Bob Penn, coming in 2010.

And after four paragraphs, I realized it wasn't working. I have done the rain thing to death. Two posts in one day on the topic is probably two to many. And the third one wasn't funny, wasn't interesting, was dull. So I deleted it.

Nothing lost, believe me.

So, I do appreciate the readership today with the postings, but the entire staff of Penn's Den have an obligation to our audience not to waste their time. Our publisher, Toe Nail Books and Napkins, demands from their blogging division only the highest standards and quality from the hundreds of publications they fund. The Penn's Den must live by the same mark of excellence as its sister publications, well regarded blogs such as The Gopher Hole, Airplane Propellers and Wheels, and Wilted Salad Recipes.

No more weather posts.

Except this thought.

It's really cold out!

I mean, not just Southern California cold, but even Central California Cold!!!

I tried to go out jogging and I am NOT KIDDING, my nuts actually froze off!

A little background is needed. I did a conceptutual art piece where I pasted pine nuts onto gathered squirrel fur, and then pasted both onto poster paper. I called it, "Home for the Holidays." But when I went outside to go jogging I saw that the piece, taped onto my front door right below the "I Heart UPS" sticker, had many of the pine nuts dislodged. Apparently the cold weather played havok on the squirrel fur.

Anyway, it's COLD out. This internet tells me that it's 43 degrees out!

So I Googled "what happens when it's 43 degrees out," and look what I found. Facts:

1)lungs freeze at 51 degrees. Breathing colder air could be instantly fatal. There are dropped neighbors scattered on Michigan Avenue as I look out my window, apparently unaware of these consequences.
2)meat not only freezes at 43 degrees, but for reasons not understood, can NEVER be thawed out. All attempts to thaw meat frozen at this temperature actually deepen the freeze until absolute zero is reached and the meat shatters into its molecules. You can salvage this, however, by sprinking sugar on the molecules and selling them as Ice Cream of the Future, perhaps recouping the loss of the purchase of the meat.
3)it is impossible to listen to music on an iPod in 43 degree weather. The music becomes "sludgy" taking on a tone not unlike a badly mixed stereo recording from the 1960s. Lyrics become distorted or changed. An example:

While listening to MacArthur Park, the opus by Richard Harris, in 43 degree weather, the brillance of the lyrics were reduced to unintended meanings. Here is a transcription of what I heard, as best I could interpret through the frigid cold and that odd "sludgy" sound:

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

Needless to say, it ruined my memory of perhaps the greatest song recorded during the rock era.

So, Angelenos, stay indoors until the temperature rises and breaks us from the icy prison. I will blog as long as possible, as long as the electricity stays on and my fingers are able to strike the keyboard. As lhoje , wohifo, wohofo wofwfimwf oh no jofjoowowrj w wjorjw  wjr no!!! ojofoiojfe gaaaaaa aggghh  owrworjworjwor

Note: for those experienced umbrella users (from the east Coast), something seems wrong with this depiction.

Southern Californians, take a look at the image above. Take a hard, long look. I know it's difficult. I know you're scared. I am, too. But look anyway. Try.

This object ... this device ... this thing ...  is called an umbrella.

It's used to prevent you from getting wet. Now let me explain, since I realize that this is a bit vague.

You would NOT use it in the shower, even though you DO get wet there. And you wouldn't use it in your swimming pool, where the goal IS to get wet.

You would use it to prevent getting wet from that elusive event we call "rain."

I can see by your confused gaze that I am not explaining this well. My fault. It is hard to understand why you use a tool to prevent something which so rarely exists.

So let me step back.

Rain is a natural event, many believe, in which water, not unlike that which comes from Arrowhead bottles, falls from above and strikes the ground.

The source of that falling water is not fully understood, though through the centuries theories have emerged.

Some believe that rain results when you fail to keep your swimming pool filled to a proper level. The atmosphere senses this imbalance and corrects it by pouring water into your pool.

While this seems plausible, it seems as though it should rain more often than it does for it to be true. There are so many pools in Southern California, and some of them must be underfilled on any given day. I don't know. Part of me just can't accept this theory.

Another theory as to why it rains is simply that it's always raining all of the time, but that most of the time you can't see it happening or feel it strike you. It's not understood why the rain would "show itself" when it does. Or perhaps only certain people can see the rain all of the time, and others, myself included, can only see it occasionally. This certainly explain the variability of weather forecasting on television.

Most though in Southern California, believe that rainfall is simply a myth, a collected memory of ancient origin distorted over time through endless retelling.

I fall into that group.

But today, to my amazement, myth became reality.

What is the defense against this aerial attack? Is there no way to combat the devastation it rains (no pun intended) upon the innocent?

There is the umbrella. That's the cartoon image I placed at the beginning of this post (I dared not place an actual image of an umbrella for fear of reaction).

But what am I trying to say? I would tell you, but I would prefer my more critical persona discuss the non-use of umbrellas in Southern California.

And since the tonal change would be odd within this post, I will artificially end this post now and turn it over to a "guest" commentator who isn't afraid to say just what's on his mind.

See you in the next post ... coming soon ...

Those are great perks, and almost reason enough to call the Southland (our cute name for this rest stop between San Francisco and San Diego) home. But it's not the clincher.

I am sure that my voice would be echoed by 20 milllion sun tanned Angelenos when we all sound off in unison that the reason we live here, continue to live here, and will always live here is that it NEVER RAINS!

Never. Never ever. Not once in a while. Not once in a blue moon (which due to our cloudless skies, we can see EVERY night!). Nope. It NEVER rains here. It doesn't even get cloudy.  If there is even a cloud in the sky, the media goes on a meterological Amber Alert: "someone took the Sun! Find it and return it safely".

So I, like my fellow Southlanders, are befuddled today.

IT'S RAINING!

And they say it will continue all week!

All week! I am NOT kidding, though I wish I were! I wish to God I were!

All week.

I wish I were dead.

In a sense, I am dead. Without the sun, there is no reason to live.

The things I can't do.

Go outside. Without getting wet, or, AS BAD, COLD! That's right. Cold. It's 50 degrees here and it's also raining. A deadly one/two punch.

I can't walk my dog. He'll get wet, as I don't have a doggie umbrella for him. I can't subject him to that. I just can't.

And I can't lay out in the sun and relax. THERE IS NO SUN!

I am going to use my 1st curse ever on this blog. Children, close the browser window now.

WTF!!!

Pray for us. Keep your eyes on the sky, and hope for miracle.

But apparently I am not capable of reproducing its meager success. Lightning apparently will only appear once.

So I move forward with little to say, and hope that as I type that something will emerge.

So what's been going on during November?

Lots of furniture buying. Shower curtain buying. New 27" iMac buying. Lots and lots and lots of buying.

I am broke. At least until the next paycheck, which, fortunately is Monday.

But buying furniture for a new house, and spending all this money has left me without a nest egg.

So here's my thought.

Let's make this blog a subscription blog.

Let's say, for a rough number, that you send me, oh I don't know, $100 a month to read this blog.

What will you get in return?

Well, how about access to the super secret no one knows it exists corner of this blog where I tell all, in journal form, like a personal diary? Intrieging? Not really? OK, bad idea.

How about two tickets to any event you would like, including dinner and transportation to and from the venue*

*event limited to Pasadena, CA area, limited to high school plays, dinner not limited to but only including In and Out  Burger, point of origination for transportation designated as 1084 Michigan Avenue, Pasadena or within one block thereof.

Sounds nice, doesn't it.

Or for those who love animals, one month's free unlimited pass to walk and play with a friendly 7 month old labradoodle. Lonely during these holidays, this might just be the gift you can give yourself*

Please, someone, take me for a walk!

*awardee responsible for feeling animal and returning animal in clean state. Walks must be no less than one hour in length and must be conducted twice a day.

Hurry, act now.

Paco lives in Glendora generally on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Sundays. But of course, Paco doesn't know this. Being a dog, and not having a functional short term memory beyond 30 seconds, it's hard to know if his long-term memory imprinting engine is allowing him to process the fact that he lives in two homes.

Maybe he thinks, and I am now writing thinking as a canine might, that when he gets asked if he "wants to go into the car" that he believes that this is human speak for "jump into big box, stay, jump out of big box, where am I?" And that sometimes the answer to his question is "that place with lots of dogs" (ie: the off leash doggie park) or "that place where Kitty and Mommy are" (ie: Glendora house, where he can terrorize my cat and tear up anything not nailed down, sometimes even tearing up things which are nailed down!).

I assume that when he returns to Glendora, that all active memories of the past day(s) in Pasadena fade into doggie oblivion.

So let's concentrate on those times when he goes into the "that big box" and end ends up at "that place with lots of dogs."

What Paco would be referring to is either the Pasadena off leash dog park, or the San Dimas off leash dog park. It depends on the day. Again, it's also not clear whether he realizes that they're not one and the same.

Which brings me to the point of this entry. A critical discussion of the differences between the parks, and the wide social impact the inevitably conclusions draw.

Let's start with the San Dimas park.

San Dimas is the smaller of the two parks, physically, roughly 1/3 the size of the Pasadena park. For the dogs, there is an area for "large" dogs and one for "small" dogs.

What this means practically, is that there is an area for macho assholes who take their dogs there to fight with the other dogs, and then yell at you when you complain that their dog is beating up your dog and "hey, I don't see any blood on your dog, so I guess they're not REALLY fighting are they [you short faggot]!" This is the area for large dogs.

The area for small dogs hosts a different breed of human. In this area, only hot, single women seem to be permitted to enter with their "cute" fuzzy little balls of dogs which yip yip in loud high tones and who they think are the cutest things in the world. While the dogs are basically oversized rats with fur, the owners look like they just got off work modeling and just want someone "sensitive" to speak with while their dogs enjoy their afternoon stroll off-leash yipping their heads off and fighting with other furry rats.

So I look longingly at the small dog section, sighing at the opportunity for which I am not permitted to partake. For, so much as I would like to argue the point, there is no denying that Paco, at 57 pounds, is not technically a "small dog." And neither he, not I as the owner, are permitted in the dreamworld they call "for small dogs only."

Instead, I lead Paco into the "for large dogs only" area so I can socialize with the hardened criminals and hardened women who take their little battlestations in to toughen them up for the real world where doberman roam for blood and none dare neuter for fear of their lives!

But Paco is happy there, so I am happy too.

Now, there are two rules you MUST follow in the San Dimas doggie park.

First, if your dog, as we owners say, "poops" in the doggie park, as owner, you must clean it up and you must do it immediately. The park provides these little plastic bags for you to put your hand in one end, and then grab the poop with your HANDS. The only thing separating you from the most disgusting thing on earth is a cheap piece of recycled plastic. And you pray, and I don't care what you religion is or isn't, that this little piece of Mylar won't rip into two when you're pretending to be a human shovel.

It usually works, unless your dog decides to continue poop #1 into poop #2 after you've hand scooped up poop #1.  Because by that point you've taken your hand out the bag, reversed it so that the poop on the outside becomes the poop on the inside. And you discretely sniff your fingers, amazed that they don't smell like the horrible odor emanating from the plastic bag!

But if your dog does decide to do an encore, then you faced with the nearly impossible task of reusing a bag which contains his first effort, or walking all ... the... way ...over ... to the bag area, throwing away the first one, and then getting another one and walking ... all. ... the ...way ...back to address the sequel.

It's a difficult, and ultimately, a very personal choice.

But that's not really what I wanted to write about.

I wanted to write about humping.

The other rule in San  Dimas is that you dog CANNOT WILL NOT AND SHOULD NOT hump another dog! No exceptions. They can't hump for dominance, they can't hump for love, they can't hump even if they're humping in the wrong direction (since this is a family blog, I will just say that this rare variant of hump involves the dog attempting to hump the face of the dog. Since this type of behavior cannot be genetic, it must be the result of the dog sitting in front of the TV while owner watches Showtime After Dark and the dog simply cannot process the information!).

So what do you do if your dog is the humper. As humper-by-proxy, you immediately yell at your dog, act embarrassed, and pull your dog off of the innocent humpee. And to do this, since humping can happen unexpectedly, you must stay physically near your dog at all times. You do NOT want to be the owner who was on the other side of the park when humper goes into overdrive!

This is forbidden. Anti social. Negligent.  Even sick behavior.

So we all stay near our dogs to prevent this horiffic pseudo-simulated sex crime.

On to Pasadena.

Pasadena. The big city. Where our differences are tolerated, celebrated even at times. Green from the conservative God fearing folk at the San Dimas doggie park, I cautiously walked into the expansive Pasadena doggie park with innocent, "sure I'll take this bag to the man across the street, no problem" Paco Doodle.

 Paco, fighting it out with another labradoodle in Pasadena

I let Paco in, but I notice something strange. The dogs are here, and there, but the owners aren't near the dogs. They are there, and here, but not with their potential sex preditors.

Then it happens. Paco is the humpee. Another male dog takes Paco from the rear and embraces him in an urban dominance hump to end all humps. I watch, waiting for "owner" to run and pull off the aggressor.

But no one comes to Paco's aid.

After 30 seconds, I walk over to Paco, still trapped in the humpee position, and mutter to myself, "where's the owner?" And two feet to my right, watching the action with detached interest, I heard a voice say, "I'm the owner."

She was in her 50s or 60s, I can't tell anymore these things. She seemed quite civil, not a macho gang banger or "one of those people" as my parents used to say. Yet she seemed to calmly watch my dog get homosexually raped by her dog.

I didn't really know what to say. But she helped me out with a quick follow up. "It's natural, what they're doing. Just a test of dominance. They'd do it if we weren't looking. The dogs don't really mind and they all find a way to work it out themselves. They don't need us to help them."

But I thought, still under the influence of San Dimas, "it nasty. You know, they're 'doing it' right here in public and people can't do that and when dogs do it it looks like sort of like when people do it, so it must be the same thing and I mean come on they're having sex right here in public and since it's two males that means it's homo sex and I mean ... it's homo sex!!!"

But I didn't say a word. Because, of course, she's right.

And then I realized that everyone in the Pasadena park thought like her. That's why the owners weren't hovering over their dogs like they all do in San Dimas. In this big city park, the owners don't seem conflicted by the fact that dog humping looks a lot like human humping. And though are similarities (the detachment the dogs seem to have to the "act" is not that removed from many of our own experiences), the fact that these are a different species of mammal has not been lost on the Pasadena crowd.

I learned a lesson. I am not sure what the lesson is, so I will list a few possible lessons I might have learned and maybe we can all write Comments to vote on which one is the real lesson.

1)Pasadena is a sophisticated city with more intelligent people who understand animal behavior and don't confuse canine action with human sexuality like those those backwards farmers in San Dimas do with their sexual repression and religious rules which teach them fear and not love.

2)Pasadena is a den of sin in which the density of the population has exposed it's inhabitants to so many examples of the seemy side of life so often that they are now immune to immorality and indecency. A humping dog is nothing to a carjacking, public urination, or psychotic homeless people threatening your as you walk down the street.

3)The women in Pasadena was an abberration, her opinion in the minority, and that most people in Pasadena are just as disgusted with dog humping as their San Dimas neighbors. Further, the reason the owners don't hover over their dogs is yet to be discovered and not tied artificially to my observation. This argument is a case of bad science drawing false conclusions.

Or perhaps there is another, yet to be discovered explanation. Please let me know.

Apparently the last time I wrote was the day of the move, a couple of weeks ago. So what's happened since? Lots and lots and lots of purchases!

Things like sofas, tv stands, microwave ovens, the list goes on from here to Arcadia (sorry for the local reference but I think that making them helps me adjust to the move).

All in all, things are moving along ok, as best as could be expected. So now that I am somewhat beginning to settle down, I can again blog .

And I have been saving up some doozies ...

But nerdy considerations aside, what's next?

Unpacking. Filling the house with more furniture.

Then what?

Well, it's best answered in a song. Which I am about to write ...

What's Next?

What's next, he asked
Will it be an overflowing toilet?
Or a butterfly in the dawn?
Or a fish which comes alive in the grocery store after being frozen for days?
What's next?

What's next?
Will it be a broken toenail clipper?
Or a mislabeled lightbulb?
Or a melody which begins with a force but ultimately fails to deliver in the chorus?

We'll see
What's
Next

Whew, who would think that after all that packing and moving today that a song would flow out? They say that exhaustion is the muse to melody, and now I understand what it means.

Day one of Pasadena. What's next? Day two of Pasadena. And since I work for a bank, even if it WAS taken over by the federal government and is being held in conservancy for having 5 billion dollars of bad debt, I have Columbus Day off, a bank holiday.

Happy Columbus Day!