Charles C. Cordova's Blog, page 3

For the Old Geezers of America

I just found this posted on someone else's blog who said they found it, with no author, on someone else's blog. I feel it is worth passing on, since I found myself agreeing with everything in it. Here is it:

"At sporting events during the playing of the National Anthem, Old Geezers hold their hand over their heart and sing without embarrassment. They know the words, and believe in them.

Old Geezers remember the Depression, World War II, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Normandy and Hitler. They remember the Atomic Age, the Korean Conflict, the Cold War, the Jet Age and the first landing on the Moon. Often, their sons/daughters served in Vietnam.

If you bump into an Old Geezer on the sidewalk, he will apologize to you. If you're a woman and pass an Old Geezer on the street, he will nod or tip his hat to you. Old Geezers trust strangers, and are courteous to women.

Old Geezers hold the door for the next person, whether man, woman or child.

When walking with a woman on a sidewalk, they prefer to be on the outside to make sure the lady is protected. Old Geezers assume every woman is a lady until she proves him wrong.

Old Geezers get embarrassed if someone curses in front of women and children and they don't like filth on TV or in movies. Ditto for ads for "feminine hygiene."

Old Geezers have moral courage; they don't try to "get away" with breaking the law. The only accomplishments they brag about are those of their grandchildren.

It's the Old Geezers who know our country is protected, not by politicians or police, but by the young men and women serving in the military. And Old Geezers honor them.

This country needs Old Geezers with their decent values. America needs them now more than ever. Thank God for Old Geezers!"

Comments?

Fame and Fortune Await

It is an exciting day, that day when the first printed copies of your books arrive and you prepare to hold your first book signing.

If I were thirty or forty years younger (which thankfully I am not), I would have jumped up and down and shouted, "They're here, they're here!"

However, being a mature senior citizen with a dignified sense of self-discipline, I merely turned to my wife and calmly announced, "The books have arrived."

She looked at me, smiled, and then jumped up and down and shouted, "They're here, they're here!"

After that, we each celebrated with a small glass of prune juice. Ah, the joys of approaching age seventy. As the poet (can't recall which one) said, "They are not long, the days of wine and roses...."

They may not be long, but they sure are fun while they last.

Anyway, back to the present.

In a couple of hours I will be going to JJ's Donut Shop in Monterey Park, California, to hold my first book signing and to give copies of
Coffee at JJ's to the guys whose stories I chronicle in that book.

The "boys" consist primarily of a group of men I can now proudly call my friends:

Angelo, a man who was born in Sicily shortly after World War II ended;
Albert, a slightly overweight but boisterous, happy fellow who is part of The Early Shift;
Bob, a droll individual with such a strong poker face that you can never tell when he's joking (although he usually is);
Bobby, the photographer who kindly agreed to snap a few professional images of me for publicity purposes;
Mako, a Japanese-American widower who used to be a grocer;

Mark, friendly, outgoing, always with a smile or a joke for the rest of us;
Mel, an Army Reservist who seems to usually have some kind of injury to take care of (twisted wrist, dislocated shoulder -- something);
Mickey, a fierce but funny man of Japanese-American descent;
Motorcycle Mike, who only has one mode of transportation;
Two-Legged Mike, a policeman who is spoken of in hushed whispers;

Four-Legged Mike, Mark's miniature Doberman with the heart of a lion in the body of a Chihuahua;
Nick the butcher, who doesn't come around as often as he should;
Octavio, a man with a slightly (all right, heavily) skewed vision of the reality;
Oscar, who looks strange without his mustache since he shaved it off;
Paul, a man with a seemingly endless supply of stories and the good sense to rarely repeat any of them;

Richard, as unexpectedly and genuinely funny a man as you are ever likely to meet;
Backup Richard, another man who sees things differently than the rest of us;
Robert -- gentle, quiet Robert -- who speaks softly and says "Up yours!" to any car that honks its horn as it passes by;
Rudy, serious and observant, he is a no-nonsense man with a lot of empathy for others and is part of The Early Shift;
Sandy, the only woman in the group who is a regular at JJ's, she is part of The Early Shift;

Steve, who worked for twenty years in an insane asylum, has quickly become one of my two best friends at JJ's;
Ted, known as Theodore, likes to bring his shoeshine box to the donut shop;
Teresa, whom we call "Tweezers" for no known reason, is a lovely woman who graces us with her presence far too rarely; and, lastly,
Terry, a large man who recently underwent some surgery but came through it with good grace and his sense of humor intact;
Val, a man with a great smile who because he is still working does not stay very long when he comes in for donuts and a cup of... Coffee at JJ's.

These are the men and women who come in on a more or less regular basis, and who have contributed something to the writing of Coffee at JJ's.

Now I'm going to meet them at JJ's for my first book signing. ...They'd better all show up!

Late-breaking News

Just to keep my enormously huge fan base updated, I thought I would let everyone know that the first shipment of Coffee at JJ's has left the printer's office in Tennessee and is slowly wending its way to Southern California.

Expected arrival date: late Friday afternoon January 21, 2011. This means the first copies of the book will be available for purchase on Saturday morning, January 22 at JJ's Donut Shop, starting at about 8:00 a.m.

JJ's is on the southeast corner of Garfield Avenue and Riggin Avenue in Monterey Park, one l-o-n-g block north of the 60 Freeway.

I will be hosting a huge party all morning at JJ's Donut Shop, and will sign all copies of the book. Every geezer or bitty (anyone over age sixty) will receive a free donut with their purchase of Coffee at JJ's .

Sadly, because this blog site is fairly new, it currently has exactly 0 visitors; therefore, not a whole lot of people will be aware of this first book signing (at least not through this blog post) until weeks after it has happened. But that's okay.

Progress is made a few steps at at time -- not one at a time, as many believe. Can you imagine how long it would take to reach the bathroom if you took it one step at a time?

So instead, go to www.GoodReads.com to see a list of my favorite books, one of which is Coffee at JJ's .

Or if you actually want to get a copy for yourself, you can order a copy at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble.

I'm a bit biased, but I think anyone over the age of approximately sixty will really enjoy reading Coffee at JJ's as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Til next time, let me know what you think.

Excerpts from Coffee at JJ's - Part One

All right, a few folks have asked to see an excerpt or two from Coffee at JJ's . Well, then, here you go:

From Chapter 4 (Lottery Fraud):

GREG IS COLLECTING our lottery payments. As I start to hand him my dollar he casually mentions that he was released from prison a few years earlier.

I find this hard to believe. "Really?"

He nods, but I can't tell if he's serious. He has an excellent poker face. When I ask how long he was in prison, he leans back in his chair and smiles. "They released me a coupla years ago, right after they gave me a lobotomy."

Now I know he's kidding. "What were you in for?" I ask. "Kidnapping? Extortion? Giving bad haircuts?"

Greg shakes his head. "Nope."

"Then what?"

I hand him my dollar and almost pull it back when he answers, "Lottery fraud."

***

From Chapter 5 (Group Therapy for Flatliners):

CONVERSATIONS BEGIN and end without making sense, sometimes funny, sometimes not.

Most of the guys are talkative, like Jake, Wallace and Frank, who enjoy a good long conversation. Others, like Ryan, Toshi or Lorenzo, don't usually speak unless they have something pertinent to say. Some conversations end on an unexpected note.

For instance, once in a while Toshi will come in with fresh-baked muffins that his wife has made for us.

"Hey, Toshi," Greg says when there's been a long silence. "When's your wife gonna bake us some more muffins?"

Toshi — all five feet, two inches of him — reaches between his legs and growls, "I got your muffins right here."

***

From Chapter 9 (Jake and Four-Legged Mike):

THINGS DON'T ALWAYS go right for little Mikey. "It was awful," Jakes tells us about a week later when he comes in. "Just awful." —But he is laughing as he speaks.

"What happened?" Ryan asks.

"Well, instead of going for our usual morning walk yesterday, we went in the afternoon. And when we finished our walk, Mikey and I went to the supermarket. I live right across the street from the Ralphs Supermarket on Atlantic, so I know all the cashiers there.

"And when we went up to this sweet cashier named Veronica, she saw Mikey and said, 'Oh, what a cute little doggie.' Then she bent down and picked him up so they were face to face."

"Don't tell us," says Lorenzo. "He pee'd on her."

"Naw," says Jake. "Mikey's got better manners than that. He wouldn't pee on a good-looking woman."

"So what happened?" Greg asks.

Jake starts laughing again as he says, "She's holding him up to her face and Mikey lets out this enormous sneeze! Blasted it right in her face. She was covered in dog spray. I pulled out a couple of napkins and helped her wipe off her glasses, but Jeez, you shoulda seen the look on her face."

"And what about Mikey?" Greg asks.

"Oh, he was fine. She set him down and he looked up at her like, 'Sorry about that.'"

"You gotta teach him not to sneeze on pretty women."

"Yeah," Ryan adds. "Just the ugly ones."

Jake turns serious for a moment. "To me," he says, "all women are beautiful."

"He hasn't met my mother-in-law," Greg murmurs.

***

...I guess I'll put up a few more excerpts next time. Til then, let me know what you think.

A Blog for Seniors and Those Who Can't Wait to Become One

All right, here it is: my pick for the best senior citizen blog in the whole world (or at least, it's the best blog for seniors that I have come across so far. If you like intelligent but cantankerous elderly women, you'll love:

Margaret and Helen's Blog -- this is as good as it gets for this type of blog.

Helen (of Margaret and Helen fame) writes cleverly about current topics in a unique and delightfully opinionated manner. Wish I could write as well. She has had, at this writing, more than 3,950,000 hits to her blog. Not bad for a woman who is "eighty-four years and 11 months" old.

Visit her blog. You may find yourself spending hours there, as I did. And if you want to leave a comment, do it.

I mean it. Really.

The Book Is Almost Here!

Today being Thursday, January 13, I am happily awaiting delivery from my printer (Lightning Source, Inc.) of the first copies of Coffee at JJ's , my first book as a self-published author.  ...So what's the book about? Well, I think the book's subtitle pretty much explains it:  Solving the World's Problems, One Donut at a Time.

Coffee at JJ's covers the antics of a dozen retirees as they gather at JJ's Donut Shop in Monterey Park, California. While there, they swap stories, recollections, light-hearted insults, slight exaggerations and outright lies. Being retirees, most are in their late sixties or seventies.

They have a wide variety of backgrounds, ranging from Ryan who was  in a state mental institution (as employee, not inmate), to Jake the truck driver, to Greg the pharmachist's assistant, and Toshi the rod-and-reel store owner. Altogether there are more than a dozen such men, each unique, each with his own stories.

Some are married, some divorced, two have wives who are battling cancer, and a couple of the men are widowed. Two of the men have also had heart attacks -- and I'm now that I think of it, I'm not feeling all that healthy myself.

These guys like to sit in the sun (or inside JJ's Donut Shop when the weather turns too inclement) and comment on anything and everything. They consider it "group therapy." --Or perhaps I should say "we," since I'm one of them.

Take a stroll to your nearest coffee shop and you will probably find a similar group of older men (not geezers; we prefer the term "mature") sitting around, a cup of coffee in hand, apparently doing and saying nothing. --Don't be fooled. There's a world of wit, humor and wisdom in these old men.

Remember:  inside every old man there is a young man, dazed and confused, asking, "What the hell happened? When did I get so old?"

But you should also keep in mind that inside every young man is an old geezer, patiently waiting for his turn.

You might want to get yourself a copy of Coffee at JJ's to find out what happened to this particular group of "mature" geezers.

Wanna see the Table of Contents? . . . No?  Well, here it is anyway.

1.  In the Beginning There Was Coffee -- 17
2.  First Contact (with the Geezers) -- 20
3.  Fitting In -- 25
4.  Lottery Fraud -- 29
5.  Group Therapy for Flatliners -- 39
6.  Breakfast at Goody's -- 46
7.  Romero and the Dead Girl -- 55
8.  The Early Shift -- 60
9.  Boys Will Be Boys and Men Will Be Boys -- 70
10. Two-Legged Mike -- 82
11. Jake and Four-Legged Mike -- 86
12. Ted's Bear Claws -- 109
13. Lorenzo Catches a Possum -- 114
14. Benny and Backup Benny -- 125
15. How Wallace Avoided Vietnam -- 144
16. Carlos's Judy-Doll -- 164
17. Ryan's Famous Frog Experiment -- 173
18. Frank Glows in the Dark -- 180
19. Inside JJ's -- 190
20. The Windshield Wiper Debacle -- 197
21. Chopped Chorizo -- 202
22. What Do You Guys Talk About? -- 212

Coffee at JJ's is 220 pages long and sells for $12.95. Unless you live in or near Monterey Park, California, the only place you can get a copy is by going to Amazon.com and searching on the term Coffee at JJ's. Ditto for Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com).

This book is so new that, at present, it hasn't yet received any reviews. So go ahead, order a copy and be the first to post a review. And you might post a comment here as well to let me know what you think of this merry band of social outcasts and misfits who like to stop in for a cup of Coffee at JJ's .

So Much To Do, So Much Time

Every day I make sure I do something -- something -- while I wait for the printer to run the first batch of my newly-published book, Coffee at JJ's . Yesterday, I created a one-page flyer, which I intend to place first in JJ's Donut Shop and later in other nearby business establishments that cater to the public.

From my neighborhood I will spread out farther afield as time goes by.

I've shown the owners of JJ's a pre-release copy of Coffee at JJ's and they seem enthusiastic about selling copies in their shop.

I wanted to insert an image of the flyer here; unfortunately, I don't know how to do it. There's a picture of the cover, but it's supposed to appear next to (rather than above) the text, in a separate column. Sigh. Anyway, here's the flyer's text:

Coffee at JJ'sSolving the World's Problems, One Donut at a Time by Charles C. Cordova
Don't worry what your spouse might say.Grab a cup of coffee, sit in your favorite chair,
and read about us as we discuss everything
from Greg's lottery fraudto the dead body Lorenzo found;from Four-Legged Mike's Halloween surpriseto Limburger Larry's 75-foot long hose.You can read Jake's recipe for Hot Panties Soup,how Frank almost got divorced on his honeymoon,and how Freddy the Freeloader
got his gasoline for nothing.
Most of us are in our late sixties or beyondbut we prefer being called older studs rather than geezers.If you spend a couple of hours reading about us,you'll find yourself smiling and even laughing out loudat our often outrageous, but always heart-warming stories.You'll be glad you did!
Here's a quick excerpt from Coffee at JJ's
(from Chapter 14, "Benny and Backup Benny"):
Since none of us smokes, I lean my head toward Benny
one morning when I notice the ashtray
that someone else has left."Those your cigarettes?" I ask.He glances at the butts briefly."Nope, not mine." "How can you be so sure?" He answers, "There's no lipstick on them."
Autographed copies are available inside JJ's Donut Shop.

Title: Coffee at JJ's
Author: Charles C. Cordova
Retail Price: $12.95
Trim Size: 6" x 9" x 0.5"
Page Count: 220
ISBN: 098318780
ISBN-13: 0-978-09831878-0-6
Available at Amazon.com

That's the flyer, but just because I can't make it look nice on the 'Net is not grounds for giving up, or even slowing down. I love this line: A professional in any field is the amateur who didn't quit. So I will keep on keeping on -- even if that phrase does date me.

So enough for today.

To work!

Publishing My First Book

I am sixty-eight years old. I tell you this because I have written a book. And I tell you that because my book has just been published.

It's title is Coffee at JJ's , and the subtitle says it all: Solving the World's Problems, One Donut at a Time.


ISBN: 978-0-9831878-0-8
Publisher: Wolf House Press
Binding: Trade Paperback
Trim Size: 6" x 9"
Pages: 220
Price: $12.95
Coffee at JJ's is a humorous look at the doings of a group of retired men who meet every morning at their local coffee shop. Most of us are in our late sixties. The youngest guy is fifty-eight; the two oldest are in their mid to late eighties.

But their ages or how many of them show up every morning is not as important as the fact that all of them are friends. They trade jokes, stories, and insults with equal pleasure. And generosity.

The book is now available at Amazon.com. Try it; you'll like it. And when you do, let me know.

I'd love to hear from you.

Wolf House Press Debut

With this, Wolf House Press officially commences its existence on the blogosphere. This is a rewrite of the original post, as best I can recall it. So here goes:

This is a one-man operation, the main purpose of which is to showcase the written works of its founder, editor, publisher, author, and High Mucky-Muck, Charles C. Cordova, who was known until age 18 as Carlos Villa-Lovos. From ages 18 through 40 he was called Chuck Villa-Lovos, but for the past 30 years (and. hopefully, far into the future) his name has officially been Charles C. Cordova.

These name changes were made for purely aesthetic and euphonious  reasons. Without those brave souls who have been willing to adopt a last name different from that of their father's, there would be far fewer last names in the world. And many, many more Smiths, Olsens, Garcias, O'Briens, and Wangs.

But enough about last names. Now let's talk about (tongue firmly in cheek) . . . me. Or, more specifically, about this blog's primary purpose, which is to discuss the fiction and non-fiction books of one author: myself. I recall Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass":

One's-Self I Sing
One's-Self I sing -- a simple, separate Person;Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing;Not physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the muse -- I say the Form complete is worthier far;The Female equally with the male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,Cheerful -- for freest action form'd, under the laws divine,The Modern Man I sing.
. . .Note that last line: The Modern Man I sing. More than one hundred years after those words were penned, we are still -- you and I -- the Modern Man, the Modern Woman. The word Post-Modern is ridiculous, pretentious. It is defined at PBS.org as "a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality." --Oh? Reality needs an explanation? And Colorado.edu tells us that "Postmodernism is hard to define." Clearly. All grandiose words are.

So as Arthur (in the movie of the same name) said just before getting swatted on the head,"What are your thoughts, Hobbes?"

But I have strayed too far afield from my original intent. Welcome to Wolf House Press, where straying far afield will be one of its hallmarks. As soon as I have a website, I will link here to it. Ditto for Twitter and Facebook.

One thing at a time. But in the meanwhile, please feel free to voice your comments.