Feeding the Rich RETURNS!!! - The Blog Must Go On: March 4, 2011
Eric Parker -- self-portrait
My father recently asked me if I was going to post any more blogs, because he'd been checking in day after day and only saw Fashawn sitting there paused in front of the Hollywood sign. "If you're not going to post anymore, then you need to let your readers know," Dad said.
I've been buried in teaching. It's winter. The experiment is over. What else do I have to say? I had all kinds of excuses not to post. But this week I received an interesting message on Facebook. It came from a girl I met at a small rock and roll club six years ago while I was tooling around southern New Zealand alone. (She was beautiful, super cool, and French Canadian.) She and her friend took me in like a vagrant and fed me a homemade pizza and poured me wine while we watched Madagascar. The next day, we tried to hit the beach outside Dunedin, but the buses weren't running. We parted ways after that with a promise I would possibly visit her in Montreal some day. Which never happened.
Anyhow, she sent me a documentary called Carts of Darkness in her message and said it reminded her of me. The video is about homeless and semi-homeless men in North Vancouver who live off of recycleables they take out of neighborhood bins. In their spare time, some of these men bomb the hills of North Vancouver on shopping carts, breaking speeds of 50 mp.h. and sometimes themselves (thank the people of Canada for socialized health care). The movie reminds me of Ted Conover's book Rolling Nowhere, because it isn't about solving the problem of homlessness but the freedom and companionship, as well as the alcoholism, that can be found there. It's about the people who fascinate me the most: outsiders.
I have more posts planned. One will tie in with the early American literature course I'm teaching this semester (I will attempt to out-Glenn Beck Glenn Beck), and I will return to hunting for homeless in Tuscaloosa . . .
Part II Day 264: November 10, 2010 (the samsonite man gets called on his life)
My good friend Jefferson Beavers, who knows me better than anyone, called B.S. on my last post, saying he doesn't buy that I want to settle in Tuscaloosa, and he wants me to get over my idea of having a "normal life" (what is "normal"? he says). Jefferson knows, like the rapper Fashawn from my hometown of Fresno, that I'm a "Samsonite Man" and probably always will be:
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Editor's Note: Longtime local resident Eric Parker, and former Leucadia Pizza delivery driver around Rancho Santa Fe -- hence the blog's name -- was laid off, ran out of unemployment benefits and recently relocated to Tuscaloosa, Ala. to take a one-year appointment as an English instructor at the University of Alabama. He continues to blog and we continue to follow his posts with great interest as the Fresno State creative writing graduate, and lifetime California resident, seeks to cope with his new life in the Old South.
Parker is a 36-year-old writer. He received both his B.A. in English and his M.F.A in Creative Writing from Fresno State. He's currently volunteering at various charities to complete his feeding the rich/poor blog, while he works on his manuscripts and looks for a job teaching at a university or community college. Oh, and he paints once every five years. That picture above is a self-portrait, mixed media, 2004.
Visit his blog directly at http://networkedblogs.com/8VcTG.
Feeding the Rich Returns
Thank you!