Directly overhead.

Europe’s suffering from a heat wave and the temperatures for the original white people have soared past 100 Celsius in some cases. I am not a racist tree alien although I think it would make an interesting script starring Keanu, Mark and Leonardo.

You really have to listen to the stuff: it’s almost 1 hours worth of the best nonsense you’ve ever heard.

What? You disagree that Europeans were the original whites? That aborigines were the original blacks? This essay should have been titled the soft racism of being a server. There are several Broken Yolk Cafe’s here in San Diego, California. I used to frequent one of them for a while until the servers asked me if I realized that I was going there everyday. They were not used to a guy who folded his hands and didn’t want anything. Made them feel a bit guilty and Catholic. One of the servers was a gentleman from Mexico. He looked white but had that … latin feel on my shoulders sort of thing. He told me his son went to Swarthmore. Another one of the college who I didn’t apply to. It’s also in Pennsylvania along with Gettysburg and Lafayette. No, no, it’s nothing like Moravian. Or Lehigh. Swarthmore is one of those super exclusive, small liberal arts colleges that is more difficult to get into than the Ivy Leagues.

I learned humility that day. Once again. It’s true we never know who or the stories of the people one runs into or gets served by. It’s strange I thought to myself: I look at the world with benevolent eyes anyway. Still knowing his kid went to a college I wanted to go to… changed my impression of him. Although he had done or said nothing else to deserve that. Perhaps that’s all meaning is: the points of common interest where our lives intersect.

Take Janet Fash for example. Someone added a T to Tarzan’s wife’s name. Jane became Janet. There is a sweet lady named Janet Yellen who was chairwoman of the Federal Reserve and then Secretary of the Treasury. Janet Sanghvi is my ex-wife. One made my money worthless and the other made me worth less. I kid, I kid. Janet and I have a lovely kid together. She still uses the car I bought for her and the phone her mother provides. Janet Fash was named New York City’s first chief female lifeguard in 1988. She’s written an interesting book “Lifeguard: A Love Story”. When she is not spending her retired life in Rincon or visiting Portugal for spiritual walks, she comes back to Rockaway Bay next to Belle Harbor. And as it so happens, I met Britton when she was living in an apartment complex overlooking the beach there.

Prolly nothing. Another case of apophenia. Trying to find meaning in patterns that are simply coincidences. Fash, 66, started lifeguarding when she was in college. Even as a rookie, she defied the stereotype of the lackadaisical teen idly twirling a whistle until something better came along.

For Fash, the job was a calling, an escape from weekday work at a Wall Street brokerage firm and then during summers off from her teaching job. She met her husband of 36 years on the beach at 106th St.; carried out rescues while pregnant; taught her two children to respect these waves.“The police called themselves New York’s Finest, the firemen were New York’s Bravest and the sanitation workers were New York’s Strongest. We called ourselves New York’s Wettest. It was a joke, but we did see ourselves as one of the city’s core public servants, even if the rest of the city didn’t always see us that way.”

I shall refrain from wet jokes.

Let them eat moist cakes!

Sorry.

Fash grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, one of seven children. When she was 10, her parents rented a bungalow on 93rd St. in Rockaway at the recommendation of one of her father’s co-workers at Con Ed.

I have worked on Park Slope, Brooklyn running a newsstand. The Con Ed joke … lol … “you’re a fucking conman!” he keeps yelling.

A “horn” is a first-year guard, subject to hazing — which, in Fash’s day, ranged from cruel to humiliating to criminal. One of her friends was forcibly stripped of her bathing suit; another was hospitalized after being slathered with toxic paint.A “bathtub case” involves a rescue before a swimmer is actually in trouble. “DFD” refers to a person who is “down for the day.”
Not to worry, “a bathtub case” is not the scene from Cloud Atlas. Nor is it a scene where one actor tries to drown another in a bathtub. Or where American Psycho emerges with the knife. Or where you lose your hair dryer. Bathtubs and movies don’t go well together for some strange reason.

Are we DFD yet? Cause I am keep going.

“I hit my head against the wall so many times,” Fash said. “It taught me a lot about writing letters and keeping people accountable.”
Ray this one’s for you.

We see Fash chasing down a guy who robbed a hot dog vendor; co-workers doing cocaine in their shack; and a band of lifeguards, known as the Justice League, investigating the longtime union boss who is the villain of the story.

That I couldn’t have predicted: a union boss and a chief lifeguard. For that love story alone I should probably get the book.

The sun was directly overhead when I started typing. It is now a bit more westward. Only by a few degrees. Cloudless day 74 degrees and perfect. I am sitting outside near the Koi Pond area. People are having picnics and visiting.

I’d watch that movie with Racist Tree Aliens. Then again, I think someday someone like them will start a new political party and say “Fuck the System!”