The Man Beside the Golden Door

In those myths of the world long sought, stuff of poems, of the path, the clearing, a man at a door outlined from light within, sometimes by the lantern at his side, stands at the door and waves a lantern high, signpost of those traveling in and out of life alone.

You never see groups travel these paths. It's not an entrance to another world. As though one were not enough. It is a doll world. The voyagers, walkers, the seekers are all dolls! That's why the big sign is lit over the door.

Never Give Up On A Doll!

Come one come all.

Doll Shop Ode

Assume you locate doll by sound, not clothes mess or books, TV screaming, pillow fall. Find vicinity by cries of play, like fire engines chug or mooch, "I think I can," a thousand times, but please remain calm. Do not grab. There is trouble in that place.

When doll sheds shoes, which is not too hard, put on back. Hands, feet will move. Eye contact doll, they love to taunt that way. Smile but do not coo, that will set doll off. Locate shoe, socks under mess. Voice doll's name: "Doll Dolly Doll!" Tell not to count to twenty. Do not expect much by ten. Doll will squirm. Do not count fast. By ten, one sock appears on foot 'mid squawks of wrong. Thrown by the count tell doll repeat, but sneak other as doll boasts. At thirteen doll is winding down, put one shoe on so doll can run, even talk, the other may come late.

Ready doll transport. Dolls get tired, fall asleep. If more than one you have to carry (which we hope you have at least three). Unconscious, dolls will rest. Give nice hug and tell them bye. That is what dolls love.

Dolphy of the Coasts

Just when we thought the greensward full Lasty was called to the coast which fled downsea in ships, to train green Dolphy for the coming dives, hunts and jumps. That big heart fellow had a need of a man, to hone the bill, bounce the dolphin ball, whistle and tweet. Back and forth he goes, a beauty to behold.

Lasty last conversed the dolls who said mama, mama end to end, when boy doll Nick, who also said drink, in the midst of three grown athletes jumped sofa to table to chair, lept floors then hid in momma's arms. He cried "mama, mama" when it came for shots or when zookeepers put back on his clothes like chicken feathers on a possible cow. Lasty's dolphins were black and blue

they worked so hard to get a point. Would the marine layer clear?

In the pattern of the dust when lion and dolphin lay down to rest where before they leapt, and tucked fins at sea, the further out then in they crept, a string wound tight in day from ceramic boxes, walls and floors inset with jewels, available for a song when you lie down.

Reach Up a Hand

Lasty had been in the wild when the big pic, little pic went back to work to repair dolls broke. Idea broke, one doll said, "biology's End at hand." Another said it was "the end of man."
"Doll," Lasty said, "be good!" Not distracted by the moon bat Mars colony, Lasty's ladder saw it better. He sent up a doll. The longer you look the more you see. Reach up a hand and touch.

Eco-Doll Kabuki

After absence from sea and land Lasty got a blue eyed dolphin and a black horse flaring nostrils. The horse was stomping mad about the fate of pit pony. They used to capture Iceland ponies

and ship them to pull carts of British coal down in the mines. Horses are mad and Lasty has to have a place for dolls to live when he is done washing, feeding and training. No doll wants to live in a steam engine world after being dumped in the canal andgetting dragged through the mud with oil poured all over. Oil is a problem.

Lasty is taking the oilessness out of air which has powered the earth in its axis these years. The axis must spread, which is what the horses are for. Harness the horses up in air and pull the atmosphere. Help Send This Earth Into Space explains. There are two universes. The European Brits want to scape the dirt to other, but there are more than two. We say two so you won't think there is one. In this effort Lasty has the red king and the blue. He hopes that seeing them will be enough. If it isn't then Lasty has one more explanation. Eco-Doll Kabuki.

NAU / Denver Open

This doll out ended with 7 wins and 2 losses in an appearance in the consolation final. Denver is 918 miles each way in this eight day affair.
Not just in the Denver Open, last tournament of a long career, minus one, but the number 59 doll in the nation signed after a visit to Flagstaff where he will pursue a degree in forest dollogy.

El Paso Open

The sign says: DUST STORMS MAY EXIST!

It is a way of speaking.
It does not mean they do.
Doll scholarships may exist,
then again it may be more dust.
It can get in your eyes.
It can disturb vision.

Full rides may exist.

2A/3A Arizona Doll Championships

There is a little thing like high school and ordinary life for doll seen here with h. s. coach for three weekends of 2A/3A high school tennis championships, AP exams, term assignments, honor society requirements, last band concerts performed, prom, cutting CD's, parties, final exams next Friday before leaving for the El Paso Open the same day, just back in time for graduation before leaving for the Quiksilver [now canceled]. That is the schedule in which some change might have to occur. Sandwiched between everything else are the 2A/3A AZ State High School Championships, three weekends in a row, barely sandwiched. First Regionals, 4/24-25, just after return from the Muterspaw and turn in the hundred page Lit paper defining 100 terms. Second, Individual championships, 5/2-3, this past weekend, two matches each day, Friday, Saturday. Sat began at 7 AM, then 9:30, then off to two last minute four hour qualifying public service requirements for Honor Society, heavy lifting moving jobs, that is after a muscle strain and he has got a cold, but none of it prevents performing a dozen tunes with the next day's, Sunday, last City Jazz Concert at Symphony Hall, till 3, then reunion with old classmates, home to translate the Spanish assignment because the next day, Monday, is the AP government exam and there turn in 300 defined terms with at least ten essays (he has 16 because he worked in Vegas off court) before leaving by bus to the third state, qualifying team event near Yuma (Antelope), except he wakes Monday with a 103 degree fever, proving bronchitis, which a doll maker knows before x-rays. He takes the AP exam anyway, as a concession resolves to take a jug of cold water and a blanket even if he is unconsciousness on the drive to Yuma for the state team event where he will play twice in the 100 degree sun. As the reporter of the 2A/3A finals said,

him "playing on the 2A/3A level is like taking a howitzer to a pistol shoot."

"It is not something to be taken lightly, going pro," he said,"it's really more work than I can imagine. I've been 10 years in this game and maybe I'm getting close now." But as the trainer of Eight Belles must have thought, who broke her ankles finishing second in the 2008 Derby this weekend, thoroughbreds are fragile and need all the care anybody can invent and even then Big Brown didn't finish the race, but that's why they have doll makers, to advertise the meaning.

College coaches, pastors and parties unite in one thing: do not not go to college. Do not try to go pro. With this kind of scheduling a pro would get some rest. The recruiter was 0-0 in a futures event. Will he survive Yuma? Will doctor and coach let him go? Yes. He promises not to go to school the next day! would anyway still be in hospital. Will he go? Lasty brings up the question completely understood in its day, "did you ever look into an 0?"

The Last City Jazz Concert

Team Doll

Team Doll has an ongoing philosophy. In the midst we don't argue only about tennis. As here, Andrew's coach, a new grad himself of May 2, it's hard to know what to call him, whether guitar soloist, film maker, one who brings together opposites, so busy at the graduation he organized you'd think he was a whole committee, its stage hand, and entertainer, who gave a brief statement tongue in cheek. Maybe he will be a politician, but it is hard to find time off from schedules as tennis practitioner, computer repairman and builder, manipulator of sound and video, bending the light recovered from 12 hour shifts he works which have not yet entered into the designs of which he has so many clips to edit.Now he is an RN he would be happy to drive places he hasn't seen, a still camera in a rappin' truck. They used to say to Lasty, when they left their little blocks of incense, "keep on truckin." There are no pictures of the truck. You cannot see from the picture either the Team colors, the unshaven or the very best companionable traveller.

Catch the Sun: Muterspaw Championships, Las Vegas, 2008

To play Sat 8 AM we left at 1 AM, drove all night, crossed the space city of Hoover Dam before light, cooked at a park, warmed up at Darling and so it went. Everything about the patterns of learning that occured is written in code at the best, not even hinted at the least. We saw the best and worst, Charley's Decatur amid the smoke and digital handle pullers 7 AM Sunday, Mt. Charleston Monday, snow on the ground and the high sun. In between in the matches everything best left unsaid is unsaid. Tennis is a simple game that leaves little to say except,

Catch

the sun

between

fingers.

The sun

doesn't mind

Joy Catchers.

Las Vegas. The Eighth Muterspaw

Try to catch the sun between your fingers.

It might seem impossible.

There are all kinds of objections.

You're not allowed to do it.
Why do you have to control it?
The faint hearted cry, that's an ultimatum!
But the sun doesn't mind.
No screeches from the light. The sun shines for the bold.
This whole tournament coaches and parents raved, dolls taunted
with insults. Some used four syllable words to denigrate. How will they fit with "international studs," those thinking beings?
After you pay in advance for the clinics, they tell you all your doll life that 1) if you're good you get a full ride, which means half or none. 6 or 7 out of 10 rides go international. You want to play 4, 5 or 6 on a half ride they will let you hit with bigs.

That evasion is followed with the further counterfeit that if you play in doll college you can go pro. And we will help you go pro. We will prepare you. So of the 1000s of dolls how many go pro? 100? Not even, since it takes years to doll up, very hard work, expenses not included, and there's such a desperate need for mortgage brokers and lawyers. Doll recruiters enlist players much as the army does, with the promise of a signing bonus, something you think for nothing, but then you find they own you for four years and you owe them 20 plus hours a week, plus every weekend, travel time in season, it keeps your expenses to a minimun.

We play for its own sake, none other and enjoy catching the sun in its transit between our fingers in the mountains.It looks like the Doll Shop nobody knows. So putting aside what things are supposed to be. Down on the desert floor the action is hot, up in the mountains, Mt. Charleston, it is not. Snow was on the ground. The dolls played, filmed, cooked and cooled out.
Got it.

Frieze. Front foot and distal slope. The Western Interscholastic at Fresno

When we drove the ten hours up
the Formic Freeways of Bakersfield
to the Fresno Draw,
tall doll argued the whole way out
that plunk and runs
while learning were hard.

Mountain Doll,mind enshrouded in mist said, "maybe there's another reason."
Doll snorted,
" why do I have turn left."
Mountain said,
"it's the way to Fresno. "

This is high allegory stuff,
it deals with what distal slope
doll should do to Shape Game.

Big Game is not easy, lurches to the side of the road in trucks. To get to that side is hard. Doll circled left, snarled, growled, made truck noises in his nose, disconcerted rabbits and doves. Squirrels on top the bar of court twelve hid faces in their paws. Do not disturb the doll verse.
All these things have meaning. That was the trip way up. Once there, doll faced other dolls. It was not pretty. Why can't dolls get along? We videoed doll snorts. You can see where the eyes come out the forehead and down the nose. "Dig doll, " Mountain said, "roast undone." (If you want to talk to dolls use food.) When the oven dinged Mountain took out the roast. Tall doll got it. In case he didn't he videotaped it. Hit it off, hit off front, hit off front foot toute suite. Lasty and the dolls got home late from that trip.

This was dingy. Then they left again in the morning. Doll "hurt" its pinky turth be told, or not, which caused disappointment in a fan from internet. Sorry Illinois fan. One down, ten to go. We can't go slow. We can't go fast. What should we do. Stop rocking the boat. There is more to follow. This is a picture of doll in his pope outfit with the nimbus skewed. We hope to get that straight. Some call it the Gloria. It is Introit. Doll Destiny! Yes, there were girl dolls too.

Arizona Doll Open at Tucson

What is in doll's hands?
Used quarts of tea!
You should not frisk your dolls.
Especially when they just arrive.
But later go through their bags and pull out, here's where it gets tough, item: three long sleeve shirts. Why doesn't doll wear one? Item: 15 very smelly tenny balls. Item: 20 bars. Of what? You'd have to be a doughnut maker to know.

Once the dolls would leave their poems on the floor, leaves fallen in a wind. Later they would leave their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to rot in plastic bags. Those days are gone. Dolls used to hang their heads after close matches and lose by wild scores, now they smile and hug and win. It is not all pain. After every storm there is a calm. Dolls just need someone to lean on. This PM doll makers will be on court as usual with the doll associate driver and friend, seen here with bags and grin, he is safe to play with. No he will not admit it. He will argue about the moon. Oh no we are not done, never done with the life of dolls.

Doll Growing at the Jason Morton Classic

Senior doll demonstrates acute crosscourt, saves day.Tall doll is growing again. Precautions to take while doll is growing: put to bed without cell phones. A Stanley's Polish Sausage sandwich will also help. You may send your questions. Question:
Dear Lasty, I notice that when my doll is growing it gets disoriented. What should I do?

Dear Questioner:
Do you mean they go out to places and call home to find out where they are? Usually they are right around the corner. This also happens in the yard. Maps, directions don't help because dolls won't follow directions. It is best to let dolls talk to other dolls. That way they get to where they are going. When doll is in field you can be in contact. Keep doll phones on. Dolls will text when they around to it.
They are always able to find other dolls and dollmakers too are always able to find dolls.

To All Dollmakers

We can never be too careful with our dolls. We have a new doll out who rubs her stomach and says “I like pomes, I like pomes.” She rubs her stomach to remind us to watch out for many little poems that can be under eaten and undigested.
Little dolls can be dangerous too. We play a recording in our studio all the time. Podcasts of it are coming out by ear. Have you heard? It says, “THE BABY. THE BABY.”
This is not just a doll question. In Doll Nature, where saurian limos eat the cricket tunes, you can just imagine that mess! "THE BABY!" "THE BABY!”

Price's Sun City Junior Open and El Paso Doll Show

Tall doll played the El Paso Doll Show. He stayed at Super 8 for breakfast, then went up the mountain for lunch. Dinner too. He ate Yoga Berry with toppings extra, then Coldstone Cream. He ate burgers and fries. He ate everything. Chumley the Mole ate everything in the ground and dug a hole so deep they needed chains from the moon shot and seven fire engines to pull him out and when he got home and his mom had his dinner ready, he said, "I'm not hungry." Well tall doll played ball well. He got a trophy up to his knee. He said, "it won't fit on my shelf." I put it like this, when you've been to Waco and then to El Paso, what's next? We look into the doll future and see...Tucson!

Brazos Duck Along with Waco National Doll Open

If you think this about the Open, then read on, but once you have seen the Brazos duck please keep moving. Everyone deserves a chance at this. It was raining on the duck. It was raining on the bridges. A perfect morning among the bridges. Is it necessary to say that? Now that we see it clearly the duck is moving. It was after this sight that Lasty went back into tennis. I mean he said to his doll, look at that duck's forehead, dude and he began to coach again. Things got a lot clearer after that.

Big doll and tall doll were excited. Lasty bought them burgers and they both hoped to see where Lasty made his first dolls, right southy in the arms of mother Austin, but Big Doll had to fly. Mother Austin had invited them to the outstanding banks of her Cen-Tex Dolls, weather and schedule permitting, (tall doll went all the way to the fifth floor in search of books), but really they just ate at Martin's, visited the Adams, saw the Tower (Experimental Science had a fence around it. They finally found out about the radioactivity of the Experimental Science Buliding. He, the rabbit, was an insider in a cage. You can't get into the building anymore to see it. They have roped it off.) Then they went to Lampasas.

Lasty had had his doll oil checked and the springs and muffler adjusted; it was only then that he took his dolls to Waco where they camped among the dreamers. It thundered and was 35 when his dolls went out to play. He was busy with scarves, boots, hats and ducks. That means anoracks and turtle necks.
Lasty wrote an aphorism about it. It goes like this: Look both ways you cross.

Did they have to go to Waco darlin'?
We will all have to go to Waco sometime.
It's right on the freeway.

This outing may be a turning point in the history of the little duck. The little duck has grown up. He is now a big duck. It may be a turning point in the history of the big duck. We shall see.

A Call for Dolls

Lasty has come home from his cruise

and calls for dolls,

so many aboard ship and shore,

to come home.

If you are a doll

you might not know

you are not home.
What makes you home is

you know your father and mother.

Lasty has shopping carts for all.

And beds! Isn't it tiring

to always have to be somebody?
Isn't it tiring to always have to be right?
Especially when you can just be a doll.

A Doll for Slow Club

At this time of year Lasty gets presents for dolls. He goes out on his porch, opens cupboards, looks underneath. He is at home even when away. He was laying out doll presents to the sound of ocean clams and reefs and starfish while wrapping. It was a doll for Slow Club, slow enough to feel the air when it's still sun. He would send the doll to his friend on the great whale line. She organized dolls in the slow states. We can't tell what the present is, but it is slow. It is so slow it is a Blurtoise.

Next Day

The next day all the dolls would do was beg to go back. We got two rowboats and Lasty and I heaved, loaded the gunnnels with dolls, dogs, bears, bunnies, even lion got in the boat, in the cat section. There were birds and babies. Cat in the Hat hung over both sides. All the dolls went back to see the starfish. They were orange and bronze and lived in pools all the time. We are loading everybody back up to return to the ship now. If you don't hear from us we will be at sea.

Here Come the Dolls

The dolls scattered at first land fall. Some went inland, others stayed by the sea. I saw the little children's dolls waving their hands at the anemones. Up and down the beach they went from star fish to sea fish. The little pools of water were glad to see them and they could see themselves. They cried out to Lasty. Come see! Come see! But Lasty was far out on the rocks exploring the sea caves. He looked like bladderwack. He looked like a clam stuck to a rock. Lasty is like that, sometimes you can't see him at all.

Some dolls went to Starbuck's and furniture stores. The pine tables had some dolls on them. Everybody greeted everybody for the world is full of dolls. The chests were decorated with black and yellow and green paint sanded down in layers to show them all. It made our country dolls happy. Other dolls walked the beach, the street, climbed cliffs, sat on benches. It was a good day to be a doll. People were walking their dolls up and down. Little dog dolls, little children dolls, bicycle dolls. There was a large seagull doll that sounded like a hawk if you closed your eyes and pinched your ears closed. But then it sounded like the sea. All the dolls were pinching. "I hear it, I hear it," they said. Then they started reeling about the beach blindfolded. "I feel it, I feel it," they said. What do you feel? "I feel the earth move!" Sometimes dolls can be a pill.

They had to go get Lasty finally to calm the things down. I say they, but it was me. Working for Lasty is fun, except if you slip on the rocks. The seaweed was everywhere. Finally I got out to where he was lounging at low tide. When he looked up I thought I saw the waves. So we collected our sea dolls and our beach dolls and the little dog dolls and gulls and hawks. I noticed that some old people dolls joined us; we also picked up a lot of Wong dolls too.

The dog dolls pushed and pulled the old people dolls, shouldn't they be called senior dolls, up the steep roads of the cliffs and we all got into our buses and went into town to pick up the shopper dolls and went back to the ship. There was a big five pie party that night. The dolls caroused. Some brought out hot cars. All in all I can't wait till we sail.

The Newport Beach National Doll Open

We are aboard the good ship Lolly, rolling in the sea off Newport. My dolls are lined up in their chairs taking the air. The marine layer has cleared. The dolls are seated in order of their seeding. Today Lion is number one. He is the biggest doll of all, lays there with his head hanging off and his tail swishing. He will poke an eye at little bears, who are minding their business just in case. He plays at ten today. We hope for the best. What do the dolls play for you ask. They play for honey, which means love. Everybody plays for love even if they don't know it. The rude red lips of the ensanguinate dolls are at the other end. Less evolved, they are sputtering about themselves, but they look over sometimes at the babies and see themselves. So what happens when a doll grows up then if they see themselves in babies. I'm just a dollmaker, I don't know all the answers. One of the dolls today got his test scores back. For the first time it looks like he can be a Harvard doll, but he just wants to pet dogs. Dog biology would benefit from this. His brother wants to be a nursing doll so he can tell all the addict dolls to change their way. This too is good. It's all good. It's all good at Lasty's Doll Shop. You can see us there after our cruise. Goodbye now.

Doll Shop Closed

Lasty has taken his dolls on a cruise.

Doll Mess

What to do when dolls mess up, throw toys? Dolls can have terrible tempers. Lasty specializes in these, and why shouldn't they after all they have been through, washed up on the shore, beaten down by wind, feeling all kinds of contradiction. Even in birth the dolls experience it, not bliss, but pain, for life is pain. So what to do about doll messes. One doll will hit another. Another doll will cry, another won't eat, still another gets in real trouble, burns down somebody's doll house. That's bad.

Yes the abuses and the abused of dolls could be a book. Don't worry. According to Lasty's first premise, never give up on a doll, comes Lasty's second, which is, there is always another chance. It doesn't matter what you did. That's just the way doll life is. There is another chance and another chance and another chance. You can all love your dolls, even when they mess. Do not yell at your dolls, they are busy trying to be??? Lasty doesn't know it all, some think he makes it up as he goes. But here is the bottom line. Never give up on a doll.

Doll Up

Lasty is back from the hospitals and shelters with more dolls. There are many more. Lasty is giving a workshop this week to these dolls. It is all in song. We hope to Pod Cast it soon.

After reconstruction dolls will be challenged to see what they can do. Is there fire in their bellies? I'm kidding when I say that Lasty urges the dolls, "be a man," and "you're not hurt," but he's kidding too. It's like urging fate, "grow up will you," or saying to mountain, "move!" It sounds like Lasty's Shop is a football camp. You can shrink it down to that. Or you can blow it up to this. What you do will bite you. Or it will kiss you. What you do is what you do. This is doll teaching.

"Be a doll" is what Lasty says. But what is a doll? What, oh what, is the essence of doll. Dollness. Do you hear a lot of hammering, the washer going, Lasty singing in the background? Those are the sounds of the doll shop. Do you hear the chorus of the dolls? Mama. Mama. And more. These days they put voice box into bears. The say mama too. And parakeets with a squawk, kittens with a purr, dogs with arf. When you come to the doll shop bring your ears.

Closed

Lasty is out with his dolls.

Open

"The man behind the door, sometimes he is outside the door, he knocks. But who is the one within?" Lasty tells his wife.
She is a doll maker. He says, "I wear the inner tuxedo."
She says, "that's quite a tale."
But Lasty dresses his dolls. He washes his dolls. He does their hair. He makes them smile. He buys them little dogs for them to play with and he takes care of their dogs when the dogs get other dogs and for all we know the dogs of the dogs will get dogs.

Lasty's dolls are of all kinds. He has lots of little girl dolls. They are playing tea party. The barbies have to wear clothes. But he has dogs and bears and lions and foxes and dolphins. He has horses and seals and cats. He has Erik the Red, Raleigh, Columbus and St Branden. Lasty is pretty busy. He has to write to coaches of dolls. He has to buy doll equipment, schedule doll practices, take dolls to the track and time their runs. He has to see that dolls do their homework. But he is messy. His room is never messy. His house is never messy. Come on over to Lasty's and see for yourself. Tomorrow he may be painting dolls.

Lasty the Doll Maker.

Lasty's Rules for all Dolls.

Never give up on a doll.

Never give up on a doll.

Never give up on a doll.