Skidoo

It's funny, but I met Carol Channing once here in Dallas. I guess she lived in the penthouse of the Stoneleigh hotel for awhile in the 70's or 80's, not sure, but I met her coming down from the penthouse bar of the Anatole hotel called Nana's in the 80's. I was sort of in my Tom Waits phase at the time, and I always wore a black fedora and an old houndstooth sportcoat and a very particular style of wingtips, fluorsheim's with the brougham heel, or was it the brogue? The closest ones I can find now are the Fluorsheim Kenmoor, the long wing 3673, that is a FINE shoe, and very manly. The coat was something I dug out out of a Saint Vincent DePauls for probably 2 dollars. The hat was very fine, and I miss it. It was stolen, like most truly good hats are. Not to say I stole it, but it was stolen from me. I bought it at an American Legion resale shop just on the edge of a part of Wichita Falls, Texas which was traditionally considered deep ghetto, and still is to some extent, but the hat was brand new and in its own box, and it was magical. I had so many offers to buy that hat. I think I must have been about 18-19, and was pretty drunk, and my friends were ahead of me, so I think I was stumbling around a little and then there was Carol Channing in the elevator, and I am sort of a master of faces and really good at media figure naming as well, so I chimed right up, and said "You're Carol Channing!" She was drunk too. I think we hugged and we both got out on a floor where they were having some kind of very fancy high school dance for like a military school or something, girls in dresses, flowers, pink balloons. I finally figured out it wasn't the lobby and got back on the elevator. Listening to her sing on Skidoo, she reminds me a little of Joanna Newsome, that churlishness in her voice. Nana's always had that like 15 foot long odalisque or reclining nude over the bar, and they used to a have a pretty decent female vocalist who would come there and do Carmen McCrae numbers. Blackbird was always such a favorite in our house. Also something called Four Brothers by the Hendricks brothers? Haven't thought about it in years.