Friday, September 28, 2007

Laptop Losers (9-27-07)

Just when I thought it was safe to go out into the world after dealing with Them Mailbox-Bashing Bastards, I have to report that Mr. Recluse here has been struck again by a second set of bastards. How about if we call them These New Bastards.

Now I can't prove it, (as if that's ever stopped me from popping off) but I think These New Bastards were just waiting for me to start writing a column again and going out into this wonderful world and pretending I was Julie Andrews. I knew they were out there, just lurking. Nothing else to do. No, no. Just gotta lurk. Just wait around and lurk. I think we should put all lurkers in Guantanamo. And pee on something they like.

OK, These New Bastards did not attack my mailbox. They were smarter than that. They knew if they did any mailbox-whacking, there would be a little comes-around shotgun-whacking they would have to deal with themselves. No, These New Bastards stole my beautiful MacBook Pro laptop computer. I am still sick about it. They ripped it off last Sunday night, and my guts are still grinding today. I am not lying to you. My stomach is spitting out my old ulcers and making brand new ulcers. Second-generation ulcers. The worst kind.

Here's what happened. I was returning from a Scrabble tournament in Albuquerque. (Yes, yet another Scrabble tournament. No, I'm not telling you how I did.) It was a little Friday-to-Sunday deal and I was waiting for my plane in the Albuquerque (I just like writing Albuquerque) Airport. I had two hours to kill, so I went into this airport fake-Mexican restaurant. You know, the kind with serapes all over the walls and black and gold sombreros everywhere and the sweet smell of lard and grease and taco shells and spilled Corona and guacamole that was moving. And I said to the waitress, “I'm going to say words that have never been heard in this muy malo establishamente before.” She rolled her eyes and sighed, and I said, “I'll have a tuna sandwich.”

And, of course, all this time I am keeping close watch on my laptop. It's in my carry-on bag and I have it right next to me. So I'm not completely stupid. Yet. Then I go to the United Airlines gate where my plane will be boarding and I sit down in the waiting area and I'm probably happier than maybe 80 percent of the clams I know. And then this voice comes over the speaker announcing that our flight will be an hour late. OK, I can deal with that. I'm an adult. I can handle heartbreak — I'm an LA Kings fan.

So to pass the time, I pull out my computer and surf the Net and read a couple of chapters on my e-book and even order something from eBay. I am one tech-happening dude, baby. But I guess that is where These New Bastards spotted their prey. They must have seen just how wonderful my laptop was and just how savvy its owner was. Sumbitches.

OK, now here's where the rubber hit the road. United is finally boarding our flight and just when I get to the door of the plane, the flight attendant tells me that the plane is very full and would I mind letting them store my carry-on bag. I say, “Would I mind? Uh, would I mind if you cut off my ding-dong and threw it on the tarmac?” OK, I didn't say that, but I did inquire as to how safe the bag would be. They guaranteed me that it would be safe and they gave me a claim check and said that they would hold the bag until I gave them the claim check and that they would never let the bag out of their sight. They also said they liked to date lanky guys. So, I committed stupidity.

Well, when we landed in LA, I happened to be one of the last people off the plane. When I get just outside the airplane door, I see one lonely bag leaning up against the wall. It is my bag. I go over to it. There is no attendant there. There is nobody who asks me for my claim check. There is just my damn bag and the outer compartment, where I have cleverly hidden my $2,300 computer, is zipped open like Michael Jackson's fly.

My heart sank. I reached into the open unzipped hole of hell and I felt nothing. (Kind of like in high school.) It was devastating. My laptop was gone. Some New Bastards had gotten it. I was really mad. I won't go into it here, but I did some serious yelling. All I can say is that when one baggage clerk in the main office suggested that it was “your own fault, sir” I did lose it. I yelled, “How dare you?!” along with a few other thoughtful phrases. And she actually ran out of the office we were in. I think she's still running. I hadn't even used obscenity or threatened her or anything, but I was indeed mad. I guess she got my drift and caught the first stagecoach out of Dodge.

I'm still pissed off. I have fantasies about finding out who These New Bastards are. And ripping off their ears and stuffing them up their noses and making them sneeze and pinching their noses closed and watching their ears come out the holes where their ears used to be hooked onto the sides of their heads. Yes, I am that mad.

I want to find These New Bastards. How hard could it be? There were only 60 seats on the plane. And let's assume that the two pilots and the three flight attendants didn't do it. And I know I didn't do it. And I don't think Pasadena's Mac-hating PC guru Steve Bass was on the plane. So that leaves only 54 suspects. All I need is the passenger list and I'll deputize all you readers. (Sorry, but I can't deputize you readerettes. It's too dangerous.) And we'll mount up and go after these thieving varmints.

Let's ride!

I've Got Mail (9-20-07)

You’re probably thinking this will be a column about America Online. I wish it was. No, this column is about me finally getting actual real mail, snail mail. Letters, bills, magazines, 19th century stuff.

A few months back, I was just minding my own business in peaceful, law-abiding Altadena, living life, watching Jeopardy, eating food with trans fat still in it, and then them bastards struck. I went out one morning to pick up the newspapers and the mailbox was all smashed in. It appeared that some low-life, snot-snorting, knuckle-dragging, joy-riding, mutant jerk-off had maybe gotten malt liquored up and had taken a baseball bat to my mailbox.

I thought it was probably a teen-age right of passage deal, and being the forgiving type of guy I am, or at least hope to be some day, I let it go. I repaired the mailbox and went back to my regular life of getting angry at things I have no control over. And then them bastards struck again. I go out another morning to pick up the papers and let my robe fall open to give the neighbors a thrill, and damned if the entire mailbox has been whacked off its post. It’s just lying there, whimpering to me, “Jim, my owner, help me. Help me hold your mail once again. Help me do my job. Help me be a mailbox.” It was very sad.

However, I got over the sadness pretty fast and got in the car and started driving around the neighborhood to see if I could spot a pattern of other whacked mailboxes. Well, I found a few other banged up boxes, but nothing quite as bad as mine. A couple of them looked like maybe, Juan Pierre hat hit them, but mine looked like it had been Barry Bondsed, baby. It was ugly. I think it even had growth hormones on it. I bet AOL has never had that problem.

So this time I go over to Osh Hardware and I buy this industrial strength heavy titanium metal mailbox Superman would get a hernia hitting. I mean this mailbox was tough. You could make airline black boxes out of it.

And I go back to my house in the hills of life, and I attach this new iron box to the post, after many pathetic handy-man attempts, and I’m very pleased with my new indestructible creation. I’m thinking to myself, “Smash that you smash-ass bastards!” And I smiled and I kicked a few loose stones in my driveway really hard and I yelled, “Yeah! Me, the Man!”

And then, maybe a month later, I hear Hadley, my dog, barking his watchdog, psychotic bark, about midnight, and, well, like I handle most problems, I just ignored it. He was going nuts, barking and jumping at the front door, his canineacal head was whip lashing around spewing irate dog drool all over the hallway, and me, smart human-face, was yelling at him, “Quiet! I’m watching Letterman.” And I go to bed.

I get up the next morning, brush my teeth and my tongue, and go out in the kitchen and give Hadley his water and I take my 27 pills to keep me a movin and a groovin, and I start the coffee pot and I wander out to get the papers. Well, Virginia, I could not believe what I was seeing. (Hadley, however, could believe it. He was giving me the finger with his paw.) Them bastards had not hit my mailbox at all. But they had whacked out the wooden post on which the indestructible mailbox had been expertly installed by yours truly, Mr. Handyman Face.

It was quite a scene. The entire post was in splinters. I was devastated. Really. It was just a pitiful mess out there. And I felt hopeless. Just splintered wood everywhere and the jagged edge of the post sticking up from the ground and the mailbox was crying. I was almost defeated. But I wasn’t defeated. Just almost. No, nothing defeats me. Nothing. Except, chocolate.

So I called the Altadena Sheriff’s Station and a squad car comes out and I tell him my sad story and I show him the splintered mess and he takes my name for the report and then he says, “Aren’t you the guy who writes that smoke column?’ And I say, “Well, yeah. That’s me. Do you think it’s one of my critics who did this?” And the sheriff guy says, “I don’t know, but I can’t arrest 5,000 people, sir.” Those cops are kidders.

So now I have to figure out to stop them bastards for good this time. I go to Crown City Hardware down on Allen and I buy, I’m not kidding, I buy a $375 iron post, iron mailbox combo sumbitch that I can barely lift to get in the car. I spend $375 on a mailbox! 375 dollars. It did have an Eagle on the front of it.

Then I go to the Altadena Hardware Store on that little street off Lake that I don’t know the name of, and I go in there and I ask the guy for a post hole digger. And he says, “ We don’t employ any illegal aliens in here.” (I think he was the cops’ brother.) I didn’t laugh. Eventually I bought this big five-foot iron rod thing with a sharp pointed end and a 50-pound bag of cement.

I go home and I dig a post hole two feet deep and eight inches square and I fill that sucker with instant drying cement and I put in the iron post and iron mailbox all meshed together into one anti-bat-bashing-bastards unit. And that damn instant cement lives up to its name and now that mailbox is in, baby. I mean it is in. It is strong. It is iron in cement. It is solid.

If Them Bastards get this one, I guess I’ll have to open an AOL account. Or buy a shotgun. I’m going with B.

Ship to Shore (9-13-07)

I always thought “ship to shore” had something to do with phones. Like you’re on the ship and you call someone on the shore. Even I could understand that. Simple. You don’t need to be a Mensa member to get it. (By the way, a few years back I tried to join Mensa, but they said I didn’t have what most of their members had in their IQ scores. Three digits. I responded with one digit.)

Anyway, I discovered a new meaning to “ship to shore” last year while taking a cruise. Yes, while you were working your buttooskies off to feed your sniveling offspring and ungrateful spouses and you were getting up early to go to work and fight traffic and fight halitosis and contribute something relatively positive to society, I was on a cruise ship. What can I tell you? I also own an SUV and I smoke. And you thought George Bush had a low popularity rating. I’d kill for his numbers.

This was my fourth cruise. And in all the other cruises something would always happen. And that something would be that they would have to take some old fat guy off the ship with a heart problem. It was like a damn clock. One time they had to come for some poor hump on a helicopter. They hauled his ass off and we all watched from the Promenade
Deck. It was kind of a nice break from our usual promenading without anything to see.

Another time we were in port where some native people of indistinguishable heritage were dancing or jumping or having seizures, and they hauled another old fat guy off on a stretcher. I felt bad for him, too. But mostly I felt I’m glad it’s him and not me. Mother Teresa, eat your heart out.

And the other time they came for the HHH – the Hapless Heart Hump -- with this pissy little boat called a tender and they get this latest old fat guy and they are trying to take him down the gangplank from the ship to the tender and the waves are waving and the boats are rocking and the poor sumbitch has this look on his face like “I spent 6,000 bucks for this.” It was pitiful.

Well, gangplankers and gangplankettes, you guessed it. It was your lovable, lanky, column-writing, cigar-smoking, Dodge Durango-driving, red-meat-eating buddy who would be the latest old fat guy hump sumbitch. Yes, it was my turn in the barrel. And many people were rooting for the barrel.

So how did I become this HHH? Well, it all started at dinner. Oh, and it was my birthday, too. So it was my birthday dinner I guess. (Maybe Mensa will reconsider.) We were down in the beautiful, luxurious main dining room called Bowels Revenge where we were eating our usual five course meals. An appetizer and four entrees. I pulled the waiter over and said, “I’m not bloated. Who is responsible, dammit? And everything was going fine and then my buddy, Vic Vieira, started giving me birthday pirate toasts. And we were drinking some 18 year-old scotch (instead of chasing 18-year old women) and yes, we maybe had a few too many. Or, if you were Ted Kennedy, maybe we didn’t.

Every two minutes Vic would stand up and hold his left hand over one eye and say something with a pirate accent, “Let’s drink to our favorite fat ass, Jim Larnis, or Jim Loonis, or whatever the hell that lanky peg-legged loser’s name is.” He would raise his glass, and continue, “We drink to friendship and yardarm-ass is our friend and he’s on a ship so that’s gotta be friendship, get it, Matee.” It was quite eloquent. And he’d bribe the bartender-guy to give me doubles. And geez, I may have had, oh, five or six of the suckers. And we had a little celebration champaigne and some roast beef and baked potatos with sour cream and chives and onions and bacon and butter and someone’s martini olives. It was so much food we could barely eat our ice cream sundaes. And alas, I was kind of feeling a bit heart-humpish even then. Go figure.

So we finished dinner and we were heading back to our room and I said quietly to myself, “This would be a nice night for a little vagina.” But because I stutter, God heard it a little differently and he gave me a little angina.” Hey, I forgive him. I kind of slurred my request. And between the slurring and the stuttering, hell, you gotta cut God a little slack. But somewhere there’s a guy expecting a heart attack who got lucky.

Actually, it wasn’t even angina. It was just some other heart-related, life-threatening, Gods-a-kidder, ventricular tachycardia stuff. At least that’s what the African Bush ship doctor told me. He said if my heart monitor reading got any higher they would need taller nurses to read it. (I did learn later that I had an EKG of 272 which didn’t mean much to me until I saw Tony Soprano get a reading of 242 on HBO. The wimp.)

Well, the bottom line, is that, yes, I was the poor sumbitch old fat guy hump who got hauled off the ship. They put me on a stretcher and took me down the gangplank to the waiting ambulance. And as I looked up to the Promenade Deck I saw some future heart humps up there and I waved a brave wave and one of them hollered down, “You’re interrupting our mid-afternoon-after-lunch-before dinner buffet, asshole.”

Ah, the memories.

You've Been Fast-Bagged, Son (9-6-07)

As I mentioned last week, I have taken up the manly pursuit of Scrabble. Now, I know your first thought is that playing Scrabble is not that rough of a game. OK, you’re right. It is not a physical game. The hardest thing you do is move letter-tiles around the board. There are no linebackers in Scrabble. However, Scrabble is not for sissies. (UCLA football is.)

But Scrabble can wear you down and beat you up and humiliate you and degrade you and squeeze your buttocks so tightly that you emit little whimper yelps and make you want to go Michael Vick on your Airedale. Yes, it can do that. Trust me. I’m your Scrabble Daddy.

Like last summer, not this summer, last summer, I went over to Phoenix, Arizona, in August to play in the National Scrabble Association Open Championship. You play 28 games of Scrabble in four days. That’s seven games a day for four days. Each game lasts almost exactly an hour because you have to use clocks like in chess. So that’s 28 hours of grinding your brain-guts into kidney-stone-sized pellets of puke. And then you go outside to escape the pain and mortification of Scrabble shame, and you walk out into a 118 degree pizza oven they call Phoenix. Pepperoni, this!

I think I may be getting a little ahead of myself—and at my age myself is the only one I can outrun. Just a couple quick things to help orient you to Scrabble rules. You probably haven’t played Scrabble since you were trapped at a party your spouse or spousette wanted to go to ten years ago and your teeth are still gritted so shut you drink your Starbucks lattes intravenously. Yeah, that caliber of Scrabble is called living room Scrabble. That is not professional Scrabble. In living room Scrabble you still have fun.

I play professional Scrabble. I don’t believe in no stinkin fun. Fun is for living room Scrabble sissy men. When I find fun, I take it outside, and I take off my belt and I whip that fun until it becomes embarrassed and apologizes to me for ever even thinking it was fun. That’s what I do to fun. It takes a little time, but I’m committed. And I probably will be in the future.

I use professional Scrabble words like za and qi and carex and gharri and djebel and those are just the people I play with! Nope, those are real Scrabble words my friends. And you thought I was kidding about taking the fun out of the game. No. No. I’m as serious as a blood clot, baby. And not only are the words non-funnish, but in order to be a professional Scrabble player you have to join the National Scrabble Association, and be ranked and rated, and play in tournaments and pay dues, and get newsletters, and swear allegiance to the Scrabble Players Credo “I shall learn to hate all words and all letters and hereby renounce any and all thoughts of having any fun myself or of sharing the fun of Scrabble with others.” I think I have met this challenge.

So let’s get back to Phoenix. I’m in the National Championship. I’m better than you living-room sucks already. OK, I’m not that much better than you. I am entered in Division 6 and there are six divisions. Let’s just say I’m not in the best division. I’m playing along, singing a song, and my opponent is a woman of say, 80 years old. I am not implying anything negative about her age because she is one of my peers. It’s just a fact. She is 80, she has a cane, she can’t hear, she has little black-doily eyes like Hitler’s sister, and she has that little Hitler mustache, too. Only hers has some of her lunch in it.

So we’re getting right to the end of the game and I’m leading her by 70 points or so, a pretty good lead. And then she lays down all seven of her tiles to form the word ZADDOCK. And she lays this zaddock word over a Triple Word space and she also gets a bonus of 50 points for getting a bingo with all her tiles. So she winds up with 92 damn points on one play. So the peer-aged biddy is ahead of me.

And then I turn the board around to look at the word she put down. And I see the ZADDOCK sucker there and I’m really skeptical of this fake-ass garbage, and I say real gentlemanly, “I challenge.” When you challenge in Scrabble it means you think the other player is playing a phony, and you go up to the judge and he rules on the questionable word.

Well, miss cane-holding, Hitler face, says, “You can’t challenge me. I’ve already picked my tiles out of the bag.” And I thought for a few seconds and came up with, “Uh, what!” To which she replied, “You were too slow. You should have challenged me sooner.” And I said, “Like when? The 19th century?”

Anyway, we hit the neutral button on the clock, and stopped the game, and I went up to the judge to plead my pitiful case. I told him how she played the word and before I had time to spin the board back around to look at the word and challenge her, she had already drawn her new tiles. I said that was unfair. And he agreed that it was unfair. I sobbed two sniffling tear-soaked nostril sobs. And I said it just wasn’t right and he said no, it wasn’t right and then he put his hand on my shoulder and said like a deeply-caring father, “You’ve been fast-bagged, son.”

And you thought Scrabble was a fun game.

Still Lanky After All These Years (8-30-07)

Well, hello readers and readettes. Your second worst nightmare has happened. No, Obama isn’t president. Laris is back. Cigar Smoke is back. Run-on sentences are back. Don’t spill your coffee. I don’t do wipe-ups.

So what have I been doing for nine years? (Can you believe it’s been nine fugaso years!) Yeah, I wrote my last column in August of 1998. And, as I recall, I think I told you I was leaving to write a novel and maybe do a compilation book of my old columns and generally take the time to write what I really wanted to write and finally put out some quality work. Well, I lied to you.

I haven’t written a damn word. Except for e-mails and notes to Marge (yes, I’m still married to the little woman) telling her what I want her to buy me at Ralph’s. The notes have been pretty good, though. Like sometimes I’ll ask for milk, cereal, mixed nuts, and 100-calorie popcorn packets. And Marge will comment on how nicely I’ve written the grocery request. Marge’s standards are not terribly high. She married me.

So, again, what have I been doing for nine years? Of course, I studied Italian to learn what the double hey hey fugaso meant. But other than that, I have not done much. I’ve basically spent my time getting older, fatter, and more medically challenged. I am now 66 years old. That is not a typo. That’s a pisso. But I’m a young 66. Which, I’ve been told means I’m old and immature. Hell, my kids, Mike and Casey, are 38 and 33. But, they’re a young 38 and 33. My dog, Hadley the long-headed Airedale, is even 70 in dog years. When we go for our sniff and stops now, I have to help him lift his left leg so he can pee on my shoe. He’s such a cute dog.

And I’ve gotten a little heavier. Not Al Gore heavy. But I can see it from here. My doctors wanted to do one of those stomach-stapling operations on me, but you guessed it. They didn’t have enough staples. So when I get on the scale each morning, this little voice that’s built into the scale says, “One at a time, please.” OK, that’s an old joke. Remember, not only will I lie to you, but I will use old jokes if I think I can get away with it. Like I just thought of this one the other day (or I just stole it the other day) “Do you know what the perfect woman is? She’s one part Navaho and three parts Regular Ho.” Ha, I guess you forgot just how funny I can be, huh? Nine years can’t take the humor out of me. Ten years? Maybe.

And yes, I’m going to be like every other semi-old person you know, and tell you about my medical problems. Like The Mick once said, “If I had known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” I’ve got a pretty good list going now. I’ve got hypertension, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, low self-esteem, tachycardia, sleep apnea, awake fatnea, plantar fascitiis, enlarged prostate, non-enlarged penis, a bad back, poor eyesight, man-boobs, arthritis, depression, and they recently told me I had diabetes. They said they could tell it was diabetes when my blood test came back with a high hot fudge count. Other than that, I feel damn good. What the hey, I’m basically living on house money now anyway. If I get another 20 years, great. If I don’t, I just hope there is a Baskin Robbins wherever I end up. Uh oh, I think it’s gonna melt. .



I’m not going to bore you with all the details of these ailments. Not now. In future columns I will bore you with these. Like the time last year I got pulled off the cruise ship in New Zealand with a heart problem, and had to spend a week in a Christchurch hospital. Now, that will be a boring column. Excruciatingly boring. Like a global warming seminar. You read my column, you pay the price. Nothing is free. Except, of course, The Weekly.

Other than trying to stay alive, I’ve done some semi-cool things with my time. I bought nine timeshares and am still married. I’ve become a Scrabble-playing freak going to tournaments in Phoenix, Dayton, and Homer, Alaska. Yup, wait until you hear how I was fast-bagged by that old biddy in Arizona. (I shouldn’t have kicked her cane out from under her.)

Marge and I now do two or three crossword puzzles a day, and we’re pretty damn good. And I don’t think it would be indelicate of me if I said that when I figure out a particularly difficult clue, it kind of gets Marge in the mood, if you catch my six letter word for hot-throbbing, senior-citizen, Medicare-card-burning, hanky with some arthritic panky.

And, of course, I’m still traveling a lot. I go up to Canada every winter to see some minor league hockey games. Snow and ice build character…and frostbite. I take a summer baseball trip every summer. (I’ve found that’s better than taking it in the winter. More games and it’s not as cold) And I go to boxing matches in Indian casinos where I tried to play Texas No Limit Hold ‘Em but I didn’t do as well as I had hoped. I lost so much money I would have shot myself, but alas, I had put my gun in the last pot. Sucker had an ace high flush to my facial flush.

Well, glad to be back, everybody. And remember, even after nine years, the most important thing you need to know about me, is that I’m what? I’m still lanky.