WE'RE GOING ON A STAKEOUT

     As sure as my name is Fanny Mae Collier I know that one of these days my daughter-in-law, Hattie, is going to get herself in a mess she can't get out of.

     One reason it's bound to happen is those nutty friends of hers, Bea Bell and Connie Palmer.  Now, Connie ain't so bad, but if you've been following our adventures in the books, Grandmothers, Incorporated, Saving Sin City, and Something's Wrong with Miss Zelda you know that Bea's got the crazy notion that she's a detective.  The lunatic imagines she sees a crime in anything that's just a little off-kilter.  Bea even went and got a private investigator's license.

     The point is Hattie thinks she has to prove that she's just as good a detective as Bea.  private detective--ha!  If you ask me, two things neither one of them know about is privacy or detecting.   

When Hattie decided to take on a "case" for a friend, I had no intention of getting involved but, you guessed it, the fool drags me in it.

     The scandalous affair that Hattie discovers will either establish her as a bona fide detective or blow up in her face.  To see how it all works out, come to our play, Stakeout.  Directed by Deborah Asante, Stakeout will be coming to the annual Indy Fringe Theater Festival in August, 2014.

     This is Fanny Collier and I'll see you at the Fringe.

THE YEAR 2012!

 A Brain Fart  by Miss Fanny

So here we are in a new year.  It’s 2012 and all I’ve got to say is Hallelujah! When you get my age you‘re just glad when you wake up in the morning, but if you really think about it I guess that we’re all are living on borrowed time.

This is a leap year, which means that there’s one extra day added to the 365 that we normally have.  Unfortunately that gives folks an additional day to act a fool this year, and I’m sure that there are plenty of them out there who will prove me right.

Last year was pretty exciting for me.  I’m sure that you heard about my good fortune.  If you didn’t that means that you having been reading our story, especially the one about how my daughter-in-law, Hattie Collier, made headlines in Las Vegas—talk about somebody acting a fool!  Of course Hattie and her two best friends, Bea and Connie, are still running around here trying to be some kind of detectives.  It’s really pitiful, since they have no idea what they’re doing, and this year they have an extra day to prove how truly crazy they are.

If you ask me, half the world has gone crazy, and a new year probably won’t improve the situation, especially since it’s an election year too.  Lord have mercy!  I can’t wait until that’s over.  In the next couple of months we’re gonna hear more lies coming from the candidates than the law ought to allow.  I’m thinking about moving to a foreign country until the election is over, and I’ll mail in my absentee vote.

Speaking of foreign countries, one of my fondest wishes for this New Year is that I won’t have to hear one more word about that royal family in England.  Didn’t America defeat that country way back when?  You wouldn’t know it the way the media here slobbers all over every little thing that the “royals” do.  Why a bunch of foreign welfare recipients who live off of the taxes of their hard working countrymen get so much attention I can’t understand.  What they need to do is make some of those princes and princesses get some jobs and then they could support that queen mother.  That ought to help the European financial crisis I keep reading about.  It seems to me that the royal family is just some sort of show case and they are about as useless as the U.S. Congress, the Kardashians, and the other so-called reality shows, including the one about the fat folks.  I’m tired of reading and hearing about all of them.

In spite of my complaints, I’m realistic and I know that there’s little hope that my wish for the year will come true. Like I said earlier, I’m just glad that I’m here to see another 365…oops, 366 days, and I’ll enjoy every one of them that the good Lord grants me.  I hope that you do too.  

This is Fanny Collier wishing you Happy Musings!

THE PERRY/CAIN TICKET: AN ELECTION NIGHTMARE

Yesterday, I couldn’t find my keys.   I said to myself,   “Bea Bell, you’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached.”  Well, I haven’t lost my head yet but I’m about to lose my mind because people just never cease to amaze me.  I don’t mean that in a good way.

The other day, during the GOP debates, Texas Governor Rick Perry stumbled when trying to name the three agencies he would cut if elected president.  The agency he could not remember was the Department of Energy, and the crowd went wild—at least the media crowd.  The lead story for almost every news program that night, and for the days following, was Perry’s memory lapse. On the television news show, Nightline, Political Director Amy Walter lamented,   “Cats get nine lives…I don’t know that candidates get that many.”

I just don’t get it.  Have you ever tried to introduce someone you’ve known for years but your mind is a total blank when you start to say their name?  Who hasn’t walked into a room and suddenly can’t remember why you walked in?  I don’t understand this need to have a president or a presidential candidate appear “presidential” or flawless.  Of course, there are moral and ethical boundaries for everyone whether they’re running for president or not, but to get fired up over a slip of memory is silly.

Herman Cain made a joke by asking, “How do you beat Obama?  You beat him with a Cain!”   Some bright reporter asked him to clarify as to whether this could be interpreted as promoting violence. Cain got testy, and rightly so, as he answered, “Herman Cain, C-A-I-N.  Do I have to connect all the dots for you?"

These are the kind of things that drive me crazy.  There are plenty of hard issues to focus on but we’ve become so pretentious that the slightest slip of the tongue is not only newsworthy, but could mean political death for a candidate.

I went to sleep last night and had the worst nightmare of my life caused either by those thoughts or the slice of Godfather’s pizza I ate just before going to bed.  I dreamed that it was 2012. The Republican and Democratic conventions were over.  The candidates had been chosen and their running mates had been picked.  Toward the middle and slightly to the left stood Barack Obama and Joe Bidden for the Democrats.  Several steps from center and off to the right were Rick Perry and Herman Cain for the Republican Tea Party!  Here’s the nightmare part.

Perry and Cain won the presidential election (sob)!  There was no particular strategy.  Perry couldn’t remember what platform he was running on, but he did recall the applause he got when defending the state of Texas as having executed 234 people, more than any other state in this nation.   He also changed his campaign slogan to HANG ‘EM HIGH!   Of course Perry could empathize with Herman Cain’s inability to remember the sexual harassments accusations against him, that’s why he picked him as a running mate. 

Perry managed to shift voter attention from jobs and the economy (how stupid) to the death penalty and smaller government. Naturally, the whole point of picking Cain was to siphon votes from Barrack Obama.  It worked.  Presto, the country wound up with 666 and the 999 plan!  That woke me up.

After thinking about the dream, I promised myself three things:   I’ll never eat pizza before going to bed again, I’ll never...  Damn!  I can’t remember the second or the third thing—oops!

Happy musings.