Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 01:05:01 -0500
From: Sir Vivor
Subject: BLAGUES-L: Po-ta-toe / Po-tah-toe


FROM: René Gemme
DATE:   Tue, 09 Apr 2002 13:09:53 -0400


Don came to spend a couple days with me at my place ... as usual, he 
popped some street acid someone gave him ... he wanted something to 
drink. I reminded him he left his orange juice and various alcoholic 
drinks in the fridge ... so he wandered into the kitchen, didn't turn on 
the light because he claimed acid made it possible for him to see in the 
dark -- like a cat. I could hear him opening cupboard doors, looking for 
a drinking glass. As I was a bit buzzed on weed myself, it was too much 
of an effort to tell him which cupboard the glasses were in.

A couple of months earlier I went to a friend's big pot luck 
Thanksgiving Day bash and my task was to make a big, traditional based 
yam/sweet potato casserole dish ... I had bought a huge 15 pound bag of 
yams -- but of course couldn't possibly prepare all of them, so when I 
finished I put the remaining potatoes, in their net bag, up in the 
cupboard. I was seldom home then and forgot about the unused pototoes.

Don found the potatoes when he opened the overhead cupboard they were 
in, while looking for a drinking glass. Any kind of tuber of the potato 
family, left in the dark for a couple of months, will grow long tendrils 
while seeking root space and/or sunlight, and that's what almost ten 
reminaing pounds of yams did, grew lots and lots of two to three-foot 
long tendrils. When Don opened the cupboard door in the dark, hundreds 
of long, thin white tendrils cascaded down on him. He let out a shriek 
like James Brown's opening volley in "I feel Good", but about an octave 
higher. Seonds later, he bolted out through the kitchen door, ashen, 
eyes the size of boiled eggs, still screaming and waving his arms 
franctically. Bits and pieces of severed yam tendrils were flying 
everywhere and hanging from his hair. A huge cluster had plastered 
itself to the front of his shirt, another hung from his pocket. He 
started flashing that he's been attacked by aliens hiding in my kitchen 
cabinet.

It took me two hours to get him calm enough to understand what happened. 
By then he was in a full blown "heart attack" mode, one of his frequent 
panic attacks. ... he had to be transported to the UCLA Medical Center 
at 4:30 AM where they were becoming well acquainted with him. "Back in 
town again, Mr. Vliet?" asked the intern/resident who had already dealt 
with Don on previous occasions. "What is it this time? Another heart 
attack? Or were you attacked by space aliens?"

"How the hell did he know?" Don asked me, absoutely stunned. "Is he 
psychic?"

Several times after that, when the topic came up, he asked me not to 
tell anyone that he'd been freaked out by a bag of yams. because, he 
explained, 'It's kind of embarrassing. You know what I mean?'