F. Z. Makes First Section For Something Other Than Dying

As we type this we are mere metres from the mortal remains of Mr. Zappa (or what remains of those remains) in the Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Cemetery. (Marilyn Monroe is out there moldering too.) We've never made the Baltimore/Zappa/Mencken connection before, even though we've been described as "The H. L. Mencken of The Blank Generation." (Not to be confused w/ HTML Mencken.) Other Baltimoreans (Baltimorons?) in the Just Another Blog™ Hall of Cultural Fame: John Doe of X fame, & John Waters. What a town! "Charm City," they call it. This Baltimore Sun (B. S.) story made the L. A. Times today as well, in a slightly truncated version:

In 1995, Paukstys was so determined to commemorate Zappa's creativity that he claimed to have enjoyed a personal correspondence with Zappa, whom he'd met on a visit to the United States.

We did have "a personal correspondence" w/ Frank, whom we met on a visit to Paris (France, not Texas) in the late '60s. Well, one letter, which included the lines "Your letters are emotionally disturbed and we aren't going for it," and a post script which went: "You don't know who [sic] groovy your mother is," which may amuse those who knew her. Sadly, said letter was lost to us when our entire collection of souvenirs was auctioned when we couldn't pay our storage fees. Maybe it's on e-bay™ now. So Frank's dead & getting a statue in the city of his birth, we're still alive, but suffering greatly. Who's better off?