Selling My Books on the Streets of Brooklyn 3/12

It was a day of variety. It started at the dentist, where he removed one of my caps and replaced it with a temporary while the permanent is cast. They are made of porcelain, which is extremely hard. It was at least 15 minutes before he had the original off, then a few more minutes of shaving away the cavity on what's left of the real tooth. Fortunately, the root was dead, so it was annoying rather than painful.
I'd planned to set up shop just up the street from the house I grew up in, but I couldn't find a parking spot, so I went to Bay Parkway and 85th. A Russian woman picked up The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thompson, billed as an intellectual thriller in the mode of The DaVinci Code. She fanned the pages several times and said: "Bedbugs?" The only response I could think of was: "Geez, I hope not." She is the first to voice such a fear, although I've wondered if that is the reason more people don't stop. Our buildings were fumigated. It has now been suggested that the scare was a ploy of the co-op board members, who received kickbacks from the exterminators. It wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, spasiba, madam.
A Hispanic gentleman purchased the Black X-Mas DVD. I warned him that it was probably very violent and that his children shouldn't watch it. "No," he said, "no good for kids." He also took a CD, the Baha Men's sensation, Who Let the Dogs Out? Remember when that seemed to be playing everywhere? Pop culture is so fascinating. The most unlikely track sometimes becomes a huge hit. In the 60's a guy who went by Napoleon XIV rocketed up the charts with They're Coming To Take Me Away, which was soon banned from the airwaves, deemed offensive to the mentally ill. Ray Stevens had hits with A-hab the A-rab, which could be aired only on internet radio these days, and The Streak, which capitalized on the zany phase of the '70's. My least favorite, outside of those created by DJ's sampling popular songs, is Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue. I like a lot of his catalog, but that one annoyed me. Still, I believe it was his biggest hit. As the old professor, Casey Stengel, used to say about his woeful Mets team: "Amazin'."
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