Lame Adventure 200: Dad’s Day and Location Scouting

When I woke at noon on Sunday, after brushing the sock taste off my teeth I called my dad out on the West Coast to wish him a Happy Father’s Day.  I also told him:

Me:  I thought I’d let you sleep in today.

He was in good form and said he received my snarky card about a lazy loafer progeny and that it amused him.  He asked me:

Dad:  Do you need money?

Me:  I’m getting by.  I’ve got my bills covered.

Dad:  Do you need money?

Me:  I need a job that pays me better or a gig that offsets this job that pays so pathetically.

Dad:  Yeah, you do.  So do you need money?

Me:  It’s Father’s Day!  This isn’t the day when the offspring hits on the father for a check!  This is your appreciation day.

Dad:  Oh.  Good point.

Later that sunny and warm afternoon when I joined Coco to location scout another YouTube music video featuring my sidekick, Greg, my father accompanied us symbolically.  I brought along this great picture of him.

18-year-old Dad as a member of the DDYC (Draft Dodgers Yacht Club aka the Coast Guard) in 1945.

When Coco and I spoke on the phone earlier, she was quite sure that she had found the perfect spot for filming and added:

Coco:  It looks beautiful at funset.

Me:  What’s that?

Coco (confused):  Funset?

Me:  What’s funset?  What the hell are you talking about?

Coco (daylight moment):  SUNSET!!!!!!!

Fortunately Coco is very used to my being hard of hearing – something I did inherit from my dad.  The location, a pier in lower Manhattan, does seem to be the perfect spot, and she’s right, it surely must look magnificent at sunset.

Lady Liberty on a beautiful Sunday in spring.

What baffled us were the many fishing rods leaning against the pier’s rails with lines dipped into the toxic brew that is the Hudson River.

Death wish fishing with fisherman on verge of collapse.

Me:  Would you eat a fish caught in these waters?

Coco:  No, never!  I wouldn’t even go kayaking in the Hudson for fear I’d somehow fall out.  The second I’d hit the water I’d die just from the shock of finding myself in the Hudson River.

Cruise ship and sail boats holding their own in the Hudson.

I took more photographs, shot a test video, but unfortunately Coco forgot to bring her singing saw so it was music-less.  To her credit, she knows my taste in modern art well, Modigliani nudes and lawn gnomes.  She did remember to bring me a miniature lawn gnome so that offset my disappointment with not hearing her play her specialty, We Will Rock You, followed with an encore of trimming a two by four piece of pine.

Miniature gnome with gnomenclature book.

Coco has been grousing about her “milky white” skin the second spring turned warm some weeks back, but when I photographed our arms side by side, it dawned on her that if I did not look so much like my dad, I could have easily been the spawn of albino rocker Edgar Winter.

Coco, looking Tahitian, in barbed wire bracelet on left and me, looking like Casper crossbred with Cheeta in Timex Indiglo on right.

The one thing I failed to inherit from my own pere is his olive skin.

Edgar Winter

As we sat on a bench talking and broiling, we noticed something that looked like it might have once been among the living floating towards us but it was still too far for us to determine if it was a dead possum or some variation of the Loch Ness monster.

Floater in mid-frame.

As dehydration and heat prostration set in, we headed back down the pier for a beverage when we saw this ferociously ugly side of this idyllic location.

"Bring out yer trash!"

Maybe the luckier people that are fishing will catch a plastic water bottle instead of an eight-finned bass with two heads and fur.

If my symbolic dad were actually with us he would surely shout:

Dad:  Don’t you two touch anything in that water!

Coco might be able to fight anything attacking us with her bracelet.

Dual purpose barbed wire bracelet -- jewelry and Hudson River water pollution slasher.

Or, my dad just might ask:

Dad:  Do you need money?