Why the Unsatisfied Tiger

Hey the zipper got stuck on one of Dr. Theresa's Christmas boots, caught in some fabric. So I walked that boot up to the old town square today to see whether the folks at the boot store had a trick for getting a boot zipper unstuck. They didn't. But I was out and about, so I stopped by Square Books, natch, and good thing I did, because some evil-doer had been messing with my recommendation shelf! My recommendation shelf had been desecrated - again! - in the very center of its top shelf, by the unsanctioned placement of a dumb picture book where a dumb guy had taken pictures of his dumb dog standing on different dumb things, like a tire and a fence and a dumb trash can, I think, I didn't give it much of a look. Maybe I am overreacting! But this dog picture book was blocking a volume of Dorothy Parker! Imagine how irritated she would have been. Although she did love dogs. I placed the dog picture book back in its proper spot on the dog shelf. Then I got some coffee and settled in with some Tennessee Williams because we had seen say the first two minutes of SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH on TCM today. The title swooped at a weird angle across the screen in shrieking yellow, one hysterically large word after another, "SWEET......... BIRD......... OF.......... YOUTH." Seemed like a sci-fi bird might descend in a fury and start killing everybody! I thought it was going to snatch Paul Newman right out of his convertible! I sat there at Square Books and read the first part of the play. Ordinarily I'd say that reading a book in a bookstore is just like stealing! But I have two copies of SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH around the house here somewhere, so I think it's okay, plus, they put all those comfortable chairs all over the store, what do they expect? I got to the lines "Why the unsatisfied tiger? In the nerves jungle?" and I put down the book, thinking nostalgically that it sounded like something Elizabeth would write. I was made doubly nostalgic sitting there recalling that "Sweet Bird of Youth" was also the title of an album by the Atlanta band The Rock*A*Teens, one of my favorite bands of all time. I was also made nostalgic by being an old person, that's what we do, we think about how great everything used to be when we hung out with bands, before you were born. Yes, there is a sci-fi bird that kills everybody after all, and they call it SWEET........... BIRD.......... OF........... YOUTH