Nope, it is not easy being a sports fan. And I’m not just talking about being an LA Kings fan. (That’s being masochistic.) I’m talking about regular teams that are good and have legitimate chances of winning and they break your damn heart and you want to kill yourself and cry after you’re dead.
Like, let’s take Sept. 25. Just a couple of weeks ago. A regular Thursday. I was feeling pretty damn happy and was walking around with my head held high and my stomach held out and my arrogance was really working for me, and most of the people I know hated me even more than usual because the Dodgers had clinched their division and SC was ranked No. 1 in the country and I was more insufferable than succotash.
And then within a span of six hours SC got beat by a midget up at Oregon State and my sports joy was wiped out and I wanted to hurt panda bears and break things and cry and whine and blame and become a Beaver fan and burn the house and die. The sports gods had turned on me. In one day. In one-fourth of a day. They just couldn’t let me bask in my arrogance for a freaking full day.
I know you’re feeling my pain. Especially you UCLA fans. All I can say is thanks and, Brigham Young 59-0. I think I’m starting to recover.
The misery of being a sports fan can rear its ugly noggin in a lot of ways. Just before the Dodgers got into the playoffs I went to a game at Dodger Stadium, and I was watching Manny be Manny, and choking on a corned beef sandwich (me, not Manny) with no condiments on it, and it’s the seventh inning so we’re all standing up and stretching and singing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and this German guy behind me is talking real loud in a German accent and he’s saying, “You know, you Americans are kind of crazy. Just vat is Crackerjacks, anyway?” I am not making this up. He actually inquired as to what Crackerjacks is.
So I turned around to him and I said, “You don’t know what Crackerjacks is? You Third Reich goose-stepping swine maggot, how would you feel if I came over to one of your boot-stomping Nazi cities and saw some long stubby round brown things being grilled and I said “Just what is sausages, anyway? What would you say to that, Bratwurst Face?!”
He didn’t respond, so I said, “What if I went to one of your October gardens and watched a bunch of you suspender-sporting gazuntites all polka-ing your industrial-weight butts off and I inquired as to what you were drinking? Is zat beer?” Ah, sauerkraut this!
OK, I’m calming down.
I’m not sure how much longer I can keep being a sports fan. My blood pressure is now measured by how far blood spurts out my nose and hits the sidewalk. I’m up to being able to spurt over a hopscotch chalk outline now.
Another example of sports fan torture: I decide to go to an NFL game. It’s the first pro football game I’ve been to since the Rams left LA. So I buy three pretty pricy tickets for a Chargers game. The home opener. These tickets are not cheap. They’re on the 30-yard line, about 18 rows up. Damn good seats. So I invite my son Casey and his girlfriend Jessie to go with me.
We take the Metro down to Qualcom Stadium and go inside and sit down at our wonderful (expensive) seats, and I am smiling like I’m a pretty cool parent and Casey and Jessie should be grateful and always somehow owe me. So the game starts and we all stand up to cheer on the Chargers. Go Chargers! Kill those guys in different colored uniforms! We don’t care if they are other people’s husbands and sons. Kill them!
And then we sit down. But the fans in front of us do not sit down. I think, OK, maybe it’s some San Diego tradition to stand for the first series of plays. So we stand up and cheer. Go Chargers! Maim those brothers and uncles of other families! Make their sisters and aunts cry!
Well, those rat-bastard fans stood up for the whole game. Yes, the first 17 rows of fans all stood up for the entire game. We, being in the 18th row, had to stand up, too, and I, being a person who has been old enough to drink now for 46 years, had to stand too. I did not like this. My legs did not like this. My bones did not like this. My diabetes and hypertension were arguing. I did not like traveling for two hours and paying a lot of money to stand up for three-and-a-half hours in 90-degree heat. I did not like this. I was an angry sports fan. My cheers changed. Go Chargers! Kill the fans in front of us! After you kill them, Chargers, make their lifeless bodies be horizontal so we can see over them and see you kill Carolina Panther players like we paid for! Go Chargers!
I hate sports. I hate the horse that sports rode in on. I hate horses without riders. I hate riders without horses, who are sometimes referred to as pedestrians. I hate pedestrians. I hate pedestrians who like sports. I’m just giving up on sports and going back to what I do best.
Complaining.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
180 Degrees from Somewhere (Cigar Smoke 10-2-08)
You know what I like about life? You just never know what the hey-hey is going to happen. That’s what I like. Like the other day I get up and I go to my computer and I have this little reminder that pops up that I have to send a photo I took on my iPhone to my old friend, Jim Ludwig. He’s 20 days older than me, dammit!
I hadn’t been able to figure out how to do this until my son, Casey, showed me, and lovingly added on, “You dummy.” Anyway, I actually transferred the photo from my iPhone to my Mac and then I emailed it to Jim the Elder as an attachment. I’ll wait until the applause dies down.
Jim gets the photo and emails back to me, “Thanks, I didn’t think you’d be able to figure that out. You just learned how to use the on/off switch last year.” Jim and I have had a great friendship for about 60 years. The only other thing I have ever had for about 60 years is bowel movements.
Anyway, Jim asked me if I would like to have lunch, so I email back to him that I have a wild hair and I would like to go to an old favorite of mine from high school called Kelbo’s in Culver City. It’s a Hawaiian barbecue kind of place that had great appetizers and rum drinks and all that bullshit. I like that in a restaurant.
So Jim says he’ll check it out first and get back to me. Well, he does. And he breaks my heart and tells me that Kelbo’s is gone —it is now a gentlemen’s club. My heart comes back to life a little and I ask Jim if he thinks they offer barbecue sauce with the lap dances. Jim says, “Why don’t you let me pick out the lunch spot this time, dummy.” He and Casey must have talked.
So he finds some place in Azusa that he found on something called Yelp online. He said he tried to find a Hawaiian-type barbecue place and all he could come up with was a Thai place that specialized in barbequed country food. I told him he was the perfect guy to fix the sub-prime fiasco. So instead of going to Kelbo’s in Culver City we went to Thai Piglets in Azusa. Holy barbecue sauce. Now that’s pretty damn life, isn’t it? If that ain’t 180 degrees from somewhere, then I don’t know my compass, baby.
He comes over to pick me up in his new Prius hutmobile and I help him wind the rubber band and we start off to Azusa. Actually, I was impressed. The Prius is pretty cool. It’s part electric, part gasoline, and part sewing machine. It has this little indicator gizmo that shows you how many miles per gallon you’re getting while you’re driving. (Most of us just have our wives.) Like sometimes he’d be getting 50 miles per gallon and then he’d go down a hill and he’d literally be getting 100 miles per gallon. He averages over 40 miles per gallon. My Dodge Durango uses the Ross Perot method of fuel-use measurement. You just hear the sucking sound.
So we get to the Thai barbecue place and I ask him why he picked this fine eating establishment, and he said because somebody on Yelp said it had sticky tables. Now that’s why Jim and I have been friends for so long. Sticky tables! Yes! It’s a lot harder to knock over your iced tea.
Anyway, we’re eating our giant globs of health food and adding our own BBQ sauce to the stickiness build-up, and I look over behind Jim and there is this guy in the next booth and he has a giant plate of lettuce only. Nothing else. No tomatoes, no cucumbers, no salad dressing, just lettuce. A huge pile of lettuce on a plate. And then he just pinches up a bunch of lettuce with his fingers and starts munching. Doesn’t use a fork. Just gets his fingers full of lettuce and eats it. Ate the whole plate of lettuce. Peter Cottontail would have had an orgasm.
After we’ve eaten our giant globs of health food and added our own barbecue sauce to the stickiness build-up, we leave the restaurant and I secretly wipe my fingers on the Prius seat covers. Maybe that will knock that MPG average down a little. And then Jim suggests that we take a little ride up into the San Gabriel Mountains. I think maybe he’s going to whack me, but he’s not the Sopranos type, so I say, “Sure, nothing I’d rather do on a 95-degree day than see some dried-up parched mountains. I guess the Sahara was closed, huh?”
So we head up to the mountains behind Azusa and among other things we see a pistol range, a couple of dams, an off-road-vehicle park, an RV village and two suspicious looking guys in a Datsun. And those were the high points. Then we stop by the side of the road and Jim gets out his telescope and mounts it on a tripod and focuses it for 10 minutes and then says, “Hey look at this.” I put my eye to the scope, and I see a mound of trash in a riverbed. Jim says, “Pretty cool, huh?” I say, “Check, please.”
And then as we head back to the car, Jim finds a roll of bills on the ground. Really — 13 bucks. All ones. Just lying there in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in a rubber band. I thought maybe we should split it. I suggested that he give me the money and he could keep the rubber band in case his main Prius power-supply rubber band broke.
I was just about to tell him about life and philosophy and 180 degrees and not knowing what was going to happen when you got up in the morning, but he interrupted me, and I hate to say this, but he used a little stronger language than “dummy.” All I caught was something about a rubber-band-this related to my heritage and something with a mother-something in there with an anatomical reference. It would have made a rap group blush.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
I hadn’t been able to figure out how to do this until my son, Casey, showed me, and lovingly added on, “You dummy.” Anyway, I actually transferred the photo from my iPhone to my Mac and then I emailed it to Jim the Elder as an attachment. I’ll wait until the applause dies down.
Jim gets the photo and emails back to me, “Thanks, I didn’t think you’d be able to figure that out. You just learned how to use the on/off switch last year.” Jim and I have had a great friendship for about 60 years. The only other thing I have ever had for about 60 years is bowel movements.
Anyway, Jim asked me if I would like to have lunch, so I email back to him that I have a wild hair and I would like to go to an old favorite of mine from high school called Kelbo’s in Culver City. It’s a Hawaiian barbecue kind of place that had great appetizers and rum drinks and all that bullshit. I like that in a restaurant.
So Jim says he’ll check it out first and get back to me. Well, he does. And he breaks my heart and tells me that Kelbo’s is gone —it is now a gentlemen’s club. My heart comes back to life a little and I ask Jim if he thinks they offer barbecue sauce with the lap dances. Jim says, “Why don’t you let me pick out the lunch spot this time, dummy.” He and Casey must have talked.
So he finds some place in Azusa that he found on something called Yelp online. He said he tried to find a Hawaiian-type barbecue place and all he could come up with was a Thai place that specialized in barbequed country food. I told him he was the perfect guy to fix the sub-prime fiasco. So instead of going to Kelbo’s in Culver City we went to Thai Piglets in Azusa. Holy barbecue sauce. Now that’s pretty damn life, isn’t it? If that ain’t 180 degrees from somewhere, then I don’t know my compass, baby.
He comes over to pick me up in his new Prius hutmobile and I help him wind the rubber band and we start off to Azusa. Actually, I was impressed. The Prius is pretty cool. It’s part electric, part gasoline, and part sewing machine. It has this little indicator gizmo that shows you how many miles per gallon you’re getting while you’re driving. (Most of us just have our wives.) Like sometimes he’d be getting 50 miles per gallon and then he’d go down a hill and he’d literally be getting 100 miles per gallon. He averages over 40 miles per gallon. My Dodge Durango uses the Ross Perot method of fuel-use measurement. You just hear the sucking sound.
So we get to the Thai barbecue place and I ask him why he picked this fine eating establishment, and he said because somebody on Yelp said it had sticky tables. Now that’s why Jim and I have been friends for so long. Sticky tables! Yes! It’s a lot harder to knock over your iced tea.
Anyway, we’re eating our giant globs of health food and adding our own BBQ sauce to the stickiness build-up, and I look over behind Jim and there is this guy in the next booth and he has a giant plate of lettuce only. Nothing else. No tomatoes, no cucumbers, no salad dressing, just lettuce. A huge pile of lettuce on a plate. And then he just pinches up a bunch of lettuce with his fingers and starts munching. Doesn’t use a fork. Just gets his fingers full of lettuce and eats it. Ate the whole plate of lettuce. Peter Cottontail would have had an orgasm.
After we’ve eaten our giant globs of health food and added our own barbecue sauce to the stickiness build-up, we leave the restaurant and I secretly wipe my fingers on the Prius seat covers. Maybe that will knock that MPG average down a little. And then Jim suggests that we take a little ride up into the San Gabriel Mountains. I think maybe he’s going to whack me, but he’s not the Sopranos type, so I say, “Sure, nothing I’d rather do on a 95-degree day than see some dried-up parched mountains. I guess the Sahara was closed, huh?”
So we head up to the mountains behind Azusa and among other things we see a pistol range, a couple of dams, an off-road-vehicle park, an RV village and two suspicious looking guys in a Datsun. And those were the high points. Then we stop by the side of the road and Jim gets out his telescope and mounts it on a tripod and focuses it for 10 minutes and then says, “Hey look at this.” I put my eye to the scope, and I see a mound of trash in a riverbed. Jim says, “Pretty cool, huh?” I say, “Check, please.”
And then as we head back to the car, Jim finds a roll of bills on the ground. Really — 13 bucks. All ones. Just lying there in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in a rubber band. I thought maybe we should split it. I suggested that he give me the money and he could keep the rubber band in case his main Prius power-supply rubber band broke.
I was just about to tell him about life and philosophy and 180 degrees and not knowing what was going to happen when you got up in the morning, but he interrupted me, and I hate to say this, but he used a little stronger language than “dummy.” All I caught was something about a rubber-band-this related to my heritage and something with a mother-something in there with an anatomical reference. It would have made a rap group blush.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Not Falling Down Funny (Cigar Smoke 9-25-08)
First of all, I want you to know that I don’t think falling down is falling-down funny. No, I’m not like “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” They wouldn’t have a show if people didn’t fall down. Kids fall down, brides fall down at the altar, people fall off stages, babies fall out of cribs, seeing-eye dogs fall down. Hey, it’s falling-down funny. You might even say it’s a trip. That may be funny.
And no, I definitely don’t think old people falling down is too damn funny. You always hear about the old guy who takes a tumble and breaks a hip — and then it’s memorial service time. I think Forest Lawn sponsors broken hips. You break a hip, baby, and it’s time to cancel the subscriptions.
But because I am a what? I am a journalist. I have to report the truth. I am getting semi-old and I am starting to fall down with something my bowels aren’t familiar with — regularity. I’ve probably fallen down seven or eight times in the last year or so. I’m just here to show you what you’re in store for when you start reading Modern Maturity.
There are many different types of falls. I would classify all of them for you, but sadly I fell and hit my head and I can’t remember diddly. I think his first name is Bo, but that’s all I can recall.
It seems to me that I fall basically because I can’t stop from falling. Now, I know that sounds simple. But here’s the thing. You step on a rock or you step in a small hole, and in your younger years you just compensate for it, and your upper body muscles help you hold yourself up. But now they don’t. They’re in a rest home in Florida.
I was walking across the damn street the other day at Allen and New York, and as I got to the middle of the street, I stumbled over a little uneven section of asphalt. Just a little rise. And damned if I didn’t go down like a sack of wet rice. My upper body compensation muscles were nowhere to be seen. Bastards. I never did like them, even when I was younger.
A while back I was just walking out to get my newspapers in the morning, and I walked out of the house and got to the top of my driveway and I took a step off the walkway and misjudged where the end of the step was and I stumbled. I immediately lost my balance and was starting down the driveway completely out of control. At first I didn’t fall down, I just staggered for about 20 feet and gained some momentum, and I was gathering some serious moss, baby. I was really moving.
Finally, as I got near the street, I decided I better just go ahead and fall or I might get nailed by a trash truck.
So I did my old football roll and ate the pavement.
Didn’t really get hurt, but I skinned my knees and had to spit out some pebbly gnarly stuff. But there is a bright side: While I was on the ground, I crawled over a few feet and picked up the papers. At least I didn’t have to bend over and throw my back out and fall down again. I felt very efficient. My hips applauded.
About six months ago I was in a casino in Reno and was walking down some stairs to get some lunch. When I got down to the last three steps or so, I tripped and took a nasty spill. I fell hard on some cement floor and I was kind of stunned. As I was looking around, dazed, I saw about 50 guys watching a football game on TV and not one of those bad Samaritans came to my aid. To be fair to mankind, I was wearing an SC shirt, and I did look into the eyes of one guy who was sipping a beer, and he just looked at me, and slowly mouthed the letters “U-C-L-A.” I thought that was pretty cold.
And I don’t only fall down. I fall up, too. I am an equal opportunity faller. I was walking out to my backyard deck — and it was at night and it was dark out (who would have thought) — and I had a cigar and a lighter in one hand and two fudgicles in the other hand and an iPod and earphones clutched to my chest, and Hadley was somewhere between my feet, and damned if I didn’t miss the first step. I fell pretty hard up into other steps and landed on some ornamental damn rock.
But I was lucky. I was OK, but everything was scattered all over hell, and as I struggled to get up, I noticed Hadley was eating my fudgicles, including the wrappers and the sticks. Man’s best friend, this!
I also slipped in the kitchen last month and did the splits and my thighs split open and my tendons and ligaments fell onto the tile. Felt like it. And it’s just a matter of time before I slip in the bathtub. I know it’s going to happen. Yup, I think I’m going to buy it in the shower. I can see it. I’m going to break a hip and probably a head. And I know the paramedics (who will still have their pissy compensatory holding upper body muscles) are going to come out and I know they will say to Marge, “We can’t get the rubber ducky out of his cold dead hand.”
Have a nice day, whippersnappers.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
And no, I definitely don’t think old people falling down is too damn funny. You always hear about the old guy who takes a tumble and breaks a hip — and then it’s memorial service time. I think Forest Lawn sponsors broken hips. You break a hip, baby, and it’s time to cancel the subscriptions.
But because I am a what? I am a journalist. I have to report the truth. I am getting semi-old and I am starting to fall down with something my bowels aren’t familiar with — regularity. I’ve probably fallen down seven or eight times in the last year or so. I’m just here to show you what you’re in store for when you start reading Modern Maturity.
There are many different types of falls. I would classify all of them for you, but sadly I fell and hit my head and I can’t remember diddly. I think his first name is Bo, but that’s all I can recall.
It seems to me that I fall basically because I can’t stop from falling. Now, I know that sounds simple. But here’s the thing. You step on a rock or you step in a small hole, and in your younger years you just compensate for it, and your upper body muscles help you hold yourself up. But now they don’t. They’re in a rest home in Florida.
I was walking across the damn street the other day at Allen and New York, and as I got to the middle of the street, I stumbled over a little uneven section of asphalt. Just a little rise. And damned if I didn’t go down like a sack of wet rice. My upper body compensation muscles were nowhere to be seen. Bastards. I never did like them, even when I was younger.
A while back I was just walking out to get my newspapers in the morning, and I walked out of the house and got to the top of my driveway and I took a step off the walkway and misjudged where the end of the step was and I stumbled. I immediately lost my balance and was starting down the driveway completely out of control. At first I didn’t fall down, I just staggered for about 20 feet and gained some momentum, and I was gathering some serious moss, baby. I was really moving.
Finally, as I got near the street, I decided I better just go ahead and fall or I might get nailed by a trash truck.
So I did my old football roll and ate the pavement.
Didn’t really get hurt, but I skinned my knees and had to spit out some pebbly gnarly stuff. But there is a bright side: While I was on the ground, I crawled over a few feet and picked up the papers. At least I didn’t have to bend over and throw my back out and fall down again. I felt very efficient. My hips applauded.
About six months ago I was in a casino in Reno and was walking down some stairs to get some lunch. When I got down to the last three steps or so, I tripped and took a nasty spill. I fell hard on some cement floor and I was kind of stunned. As I was looking around, dazed, I saw about 50 guys watching a football game on TV and not one of those bad Samaritans came to my aid. To be fair to mankind, I was wearing an SC shirt, and I did look into the eyes of one guy who was sipping a beer, and he just looked at me, and slowly mouthed the letters “U-C-L-A.” I thought that was pretty cold.
And I don’t only fall down. I fall up, too. I am an equal opportunity faller. I was walking out to my backyard deck — and it was at night and it was dark out (who would have thought) — and I had a cigar and a lighter in one hand and two fudgicles in the other hand and an iPod and earphones clutched to my chest, and Hadley was somewhere between my feet, and damned if I didn’t miss the first step. I fell pretty hard up into other steps and landed on some ornamental damn rock.
But I was lucky. I was OK, but everything was scattered all over hell, and as I struggled to get up, I noticed Hadley was eating my fudgicles, including the wrappers and the sticks. Man’s best friend, this!
I also slipped in the kitchen last month and did the splits and my thighs split open and my tendons and ligaments fell onto the tile. Felt like it. And it’s just a matter of time before I slip in the bathtub. I know it’s going to happen. Yup, I think I’m going to buy it in the shower. I can see it. I’m going to break a hip and probably a head. And I know the paramedics (who will still have their pissy compensatory holding upper body muscles) are going to come out and I know they will say to Marge, “We can’t get the rubber ducky out of his cold dead hand.”
Have a nice day, whippersnappers.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
It Ain't Me Babe (Cigar Smoke 9-18-08)
I went out to the Pechanga Indian Reservation on Sept. 4 to see what they were up to at the Pechanga Resort, and damned if Bob Dylan wasn’t there for a one-nighter. So, excuse the expression, I found a scalper and I got a ticket.
I go up to the entrance and I show my ticket to the usher and he looks me over and says, “There’s an age limit. Nobody over 80.”
I said, “I’m the same age as Bobby Boy Dylan, assface.”
Then he said, “You look like a Republican to me. Why should I let you in?”
I said, “Because would a Republican use obscenity and call you assface, assface?”
I walk into the theater and I am immediately hit with an overwhelming smell of marijuana. I thought I was at a Humboldt County pot-growers convention. I said to the guy next to me, “If I wasn’t a Republican, I’d probably take a hit of ole Mary Jane, of some of that wacky weed, a little grass, maybe toke a little smoke.” He traded seats with his wife.
I’ve got a pretty good seat. I’m in the third row in the center orchestra section on the aisle. I was almost as happy as if I had taken a few drags. Then Bob and the boys come out on stage. Bob is wearing this black gaucho outfit with a flat-brimmed gaucho cowboy hat and I am expecting him to say, “Hello Pechanga.” Something like that. He doesn’t. He just starts singing. And the beat goes on.
For two-plus hours. No intermission. No segues. No patter.
I know this doesn’t mean much in hard-rock circles, but he never said one damn word to the audience the whole night! He never acknowledged that we were even there. Oh, once he smiled, but I’m pretty sure that was just pulled-pork sandwich gas.
I didn’t want much. Just an insincere greeting. Tell us about his show in Santa Monica last night. Make a drug joke. Bash Bush. Something. Anything. But nope. Bob was just too damn cool for that. For a 67-year old guy, he’s pretty damn cool. I’ll give him that. I’m 67 too, and I would have offered an insincere greeting.
So he starts singing and, yes, it’s great to hear him live. That damn mumbly voice is something. And his band was incredible, too. That place was rocking. That steady Dylan kind of driving-rhythm thing. It made me want to get stoned and have sex with two younger women at the same time, maybe a 63- and a 65-year old.
But, as incredible as the music was, I have to say that I didn’t understand many of the words. I know it’s a cliché about how he mumbles and, hell, I have five or six of his albums, and I pretty much know a lot of the words, but, hey, outside of a “Highway 61” here and “Just Like a Woman” there, I didn’t understand jack. Maybe if a guy named Jack was singing I wouldn’t have understood dylan. I don’t know.
So as I watch other people in the audience, I think they do understand the words, and it’s probably because they are using the aforementioned medicinal-use products. So I decide to go get a Margarita. I go out to the lobby, go up to the bartender, and I notice that there is a little plate of olives, so I ask the guy if he would put an olive in my Margarita. He says “No. Can’t do that.” I say, “Why?” He says “I can only give you an olive in a Martini.” I say, “OK, I’d like a Martini, but use Margarita ingredients.” He says “No.” I say “OK, I would like to buy an olive.” He says “We don’t sell olives.” I say “I’m a diabetic.” He says “I don’t care if you’re Jewish.”
So I snatched an olive off the plate and just ate it. Just damn ate it. And then I went back into the theater knowing I was now a true Dylan fan because I was a rebel and I was going to get drunk and I would be able to understand the lyrics and I would have olive breath. Life was good.
But life didn’t turn out to be that good. Dylan just stood at the keyboard all night. His black gaucho boots may have been nailed to the gaucho floor. A couple of times he did bend over, but I think his back just gave out. He stayed in that same spot all night. Never moved. All I saw of him was the left side of his face. Maybe he was trying to hide a gaucho tattoo on his right cheek. I don’t know.
And people were yelling for him to play the guitar. Pleading with him to play the guitar. But he never did, and he never acknowledged our pleading either, because I guess that would have meant he would have had to say an actual word to us. Why couldn’t he have just answered, “No!” Would one “No!” have killed his cool ass? I say “No.”
As I was driving home, I picked a little chunk of my leftover olive out of my teeth and spit it out the window. That night it was the only thing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Or as Bob would have said, “Blohhhwhen nn thaa wwwiinn.”
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
I go up to the entrance and I show my ticket to the usher and he looks me over and says, “There’s an age limit. Nobody over 80.”
I said, “I’m the same age as Bobby Boy Dylan, assface.”
Then he said, “You look like a Republican to me. Why should I let you in?”
I said, “Because would a Republican use obscenity and call you assface, assface?”
I walk into the theater and I am immediately hit with an overwhelming smell of marijuana. I thought I was at a Humboldt County pot-growers convention. I said to the guy next to me, “If I wasn’t a Republican, I’d probably take a hit of ole Mary Jane, of some of that wacky weed, a little grass, maybe toke a little smoke.” He traded seats with his wife.
I’ve got a pretty good seat. I’m in the third row in the center orchestra section on the aisle. I was almost as happy as if I had taken a few drags. Then Bob and the boys come out on stage. Bob is wearing this black gaucho outfit with a flat-brimmed gaucho cowboy hat and I am expecting him to say, “Hello Pechanga.” Something like that. He doesn’t. He just starts singing. And the beat goes on.
For two-plus hours. No intermission. No segues. No patter.
I know this doesn’t mean much in hard-rock circles, but he never said one damn word to the audience the whole night! He never acknowledged that we were even there. Oh, once he smiled, but I’m pretty sure that was just pulled-pork sandwich gas.
I didn’t want much. Just an insincere greeting. Tell us about his show in Santa Monica last night. Make a drug joke. Bash Bush. Something. Anything. But nope. Bob was just too damn cool for that. For a 67-year old guy, he’s pretty damn cool. I’ll give him that. I’m 67 too, and I would have offered an insincere greeting.
So he starts singing and, yes, it’s great to hear him live. That damn mumbly voice is something. And his band was incredible, too. That place was rocking. That steady Dylan kind of driving-rhythm thing. It made me want to get stoned and have sex with two younger women at the same time, maybe a 63- and a 65-year old.
But, as incredible as the music was, I have to say that I didn’t understand many of the words. I know it’s a cliché about how he mumbles and, hell, I have five or six of his albums, and I pretty much know a lot of the words, but, hey, outside of a “Highway 61” here and “Just Like a Woman” there, I didn’t understand jack. Maybe if a guy named Jack was singing I wouldn’t have understood dylan. I don’t know.
So as I watch other people in the audience, I think they do understand the words, and it’s probably because they are using the aforementioned medicinal-use products. So I decide to go get a Margarita. I go out to the lobby, go up to the bartender, and I notice that there is a little plate of olives, so I ask the guy if he would put an olive in my Margarita. He says “No. Can’t do that.” I say, “Why?” He says “I can only give you an olive in a Martini.” I say, “OK, I’d like a Martini, but use Margarita ingredients.” He says “No.” I say “OK, I would like to buy an olive.” He says “We don’t sell olives.” I say “I’m a diabetic.” He says “I don’t care if you’re Jewish.”
So I snatched an olive off the plate and just ate it. Just damn ate it. And then I went back into the theater knowing I was now a true Dylan fan because I was a rebel and I was going to get drunk and I would be able to understand the lyrics and I would have olive breath. Life was good.
But life didn’t turn out to be that good. Dylan just stood at the keyboard all night. His black gaucho boots may have been nailed to the gaucho floor. A couple of times he did bend over, but I think his back just gave out. He stayed in that same spot all night. Never moved. All I saw of him was the left side of his face. Maybe he was trying to hide a gaucho tattoo on his right cheek. I don’t know.
And people were yelling for him to play the guitar. Pleading with him to play the guitar. But he never did, and he never acknowledged our pleading either, because I guess that would have meant he would have had to say an actual word to us. Why couldn’t he have just answered, “No!” Would one “No!” have killed his cool ass? I say “No.”
As I was driving home, I picked a little chunk of my leftover olive out of my teeth and spit it out the window. That night it was the only thing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Or as Bob would have said, “Blohhhwhen nn thaa wwwiinn.”
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
No Time to Hate (Cigar Smoke 9-17-08)
I don’t quite know what it is, but I relate to insects and inanimate objects pretty well. I wish I had that skill with people. But I guess people don’t have enough legs or they move around too much for me. Give me a bug or something made out of metal any day. All in all, they’re pretty good companions. And, I think I have a better vocabulary than most of them.
I know I’ve written about spiders and ants and ladybugs and crickets and those balling-up sow bugs before, but this is kind of different. Let me ’splain what I mean. Every morning just before I get into the shower, it seems I have to rescue some creepy crawly or lowly creature. And, to be honest, as wonderfully humane as I am, these acts of kindness are kind of driving me a little nutso.
This morning was a perfect example. I strip down naked, look at myself in the mirror, wink like Errol Flynn, and start to get into the shower. But my eye catches this little moving object. It’s so small I don’t even think you could classify it as a bug. It was just some little creature trying to get out of the tub. The walls were too steep and too slippery, and he just kept falling back.
So I got a piece of toilet paper, and bent down and made this escape ramp. I put one end of the toilet paper right in front of the place where he should have had eyes, and I nudged his mini-butt onto the paper and guided him up the toilet paper of life.
He scurried his little ass off and disappeared into my bathroom rug. And dammit, I did feel a little better. But I don’t know why. Hey, let’s face it; this guy probably had a life expectancy of, maybe, 16 hours. They say flies only live for 24 hours, so I’m just extrapolating a little. I saved something that was going to buy the farm by the end of the day anyway.
I save five or six of these itty-bitty characters every week. I have never been thanked once. They don’t even know they’ve been saved. They truly are dumber than doornails, which, by the way, I have a relationship with, too. I often wonder what it feels like to be hammered into something. Just waiting there for the, well, for the hammer to drop, and then it does.
Sorry, I got distracted from my bug friends. Why do I save something that doesn’t know it’s being saved and will die within hours even if I do save it? I do not know the answer. Please, will some philosopher help me out? Come on, Aristotle, enlighten me. Plato, ask me a probing question. Immanuel, help me, I Kant figure it out.
And it’s not just bathtubs. The other death venue for spiders and their buddies is the sink. I go to wash my hands, and damned if there isn’t some spider trying to walk up the side of the sink. He can’t do it. He just keeps slipping. Tries again. Slips again. I thought spiders were supposed to spin webs and walk out, proud and loud. But no. They’re even dumber than the scurriers in my shower, who as we’ve learned, are dumber than doornails. (By the way, are doornails dumber than posts? I’d pay to see that fight.)
So, does spider dumbness stop me. No, Mr. Insect Rescue Man jumps right in to help them. Yes, I get another piece of toilet paper, and lead the spider to his freedom. I put him gently down on the floor, lean down even closer to him, and listen closely, hoping for a sign of recognition. Just some kind of salute of gratitude. I know they don’t speak English. Just thank me in Spiderese. Just grunt. Or spit. Would it kill you to weave a little web thank you?
Oh, I kid the insect world. But my relationship with inanimate objects is also starting to worry me a bit. I now talk to objects almost every day. Like, I am now using my iPhone all the time, and my poor little Palm Pilot is just sitting there on the counter in its little metal case and leather jacket. It literally is gathering dust. Some no-good family member wrote “Wash Me” on it the other day.
I’m putting everything on my iPhone now. I have a calendar and an address book and a bunch of other utilities and applications that I used to use my Palm for. All of them are now on the iPhone. Hell, I even have my Scrabble dictionaries on there. And I can just tell my loyal Palm TX is hurt. I can feel it every time I walk by. Maybe, it’s just me, but I think I hear this little metallic cough sometimes, and I look down, and the Palm Pilot is just a fraction of an inch from where I left it, and I think I see a little teardrop there, too. And I don’t know if I can say this without choking up, the teardrop is, well, it’s rusty. Oh, God!
It’s starting to get to me. Now, before I go to bed, I apologize to my Palm Pilot. I say stuff like, “You know, Palm Face, it’s not really you. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. I’ve changed.”
And Palm Face just lies there on the kitchen counter, and I feel this pain, this guilt, and then she says, “You don’t even charge me anymore.”
Oh, God, it just hurts so much. Maybe I’ll reconsider having relationships with people again. No, I can’t do that. I think I’ll just dump inanimate objects, and stick with spiders. They don’t hold a grudge. They die before they remember to hate you.
I know I’ve written about spiders and ants and ladybugs and crickets and those balling-up sow bugs before, but this is kind of different. Let me ’splain what I mean. Every morning just before I get into the shower, it seems I have to rescue some creepy crawly or lowly creature. And, to be honest, as wonderfully humane as I am, these acts of kindness are kind of driving me a little nutso.
This morning was a perfect example. I strip down naked, look at myself in the mirror, wink like Errol Flynn, and start to get into the shower. But my eye catches this little moving object. It’s so small I don’t even think you could classify it as a bug. It was just some little creature trying to get out of the tub. The walls were too steep and too slippery, and he just kept falling back.
So I got a piece of toilet paper, and bent down and made this escape ramp. I put one end of the toilet paper right in front of the place where he should have had eyes, and I nudged his mini-butt onto the paper and guided him up the toilet paper of life.
He scurried his little ass off and disappeared into my bathroom rug. And dammit, I did feel a little better. But I don’t know why. Hey, let’s face it; this guy probably had a life expectancy of, maybe, 16 hours. They say flies only live for 24 hours, so I’m just extrapolating a little. I saved something that was going to buy the farm by the end of the day anyway.
I save five or six of these itty-bitty characters every week. I have never been thanked once. They don’t even know they’ve been saved. They truly are dumber than doornails, which, by the way, I have a relationship with, too. I often wonder what it feels like to be hammered into something. Just waiting there for the, well, for the hammer to drop, and then it does.
Sorry, I got distracted from my bug friends. Why do I save something that doesn’t know it’s being saved and will die within hours even if I do save it? I do not know the answer. Please, will some philosopher help me out? Come on, Aristotle, enlighten me. Plato, ask me a probing question. Immanuel, help me, I Kant figure it out.
And it’s not just bathtubs. The other death venue for spiders and their buddies is the sink. I go to wash my hands, and damned if there isn’t some spider trying to walk up the side of the sink. He can’t do it. He just keeps slipping. Tries again. Slips again. I thought spiders were supposed to spin webs and walk out, proud and loud. But no. They’re even dumber than the scurriers in my shower, who as we’ve learned, are dumber than doornails. (By the way, are doornails dumber than posts? I’d pay to see that fight.)
So, does spider dumbness stop me. No, Mr. Insect Rescue Man jumps right in to help them. Yes, I get another piece of toilet paper, and lead the spider to his freedom. I put him gently down on the floor, lean down even closer to him, and listen closely, hoping for a sign of recognition. Just some kind of salute of gratitude. I know they don’t speak English. Just thank me in Spiderese. Just grunt. Or spit. Would it kill you to weave a little web thank you?
Oh, I kid the insect world. But my relationship with inanimate objects is also starting to worry me a bit. I now talk to objects almost every day. Like, I am now using my iPhone all the time, and my poor little Palm Pilot is just sitting there on the counter in its little metal case and leather jacket. It literally is gathering dust. Some no-good family member wrote “Wash Me” on it the other day.
I’m putting everything on my iPhone now. I have a calendar and an address book and a bunch of other utilities and applications that I used to use my Palm for. All of them are now on the iPhone. Hell, I even have my Scrabble dictionaries on there. And I can just tell my loyal Palm TX is hurt. I can feel it every time I walk by. Maybe, it’s just me, but I think I hear this little metallic cough sometimes, and I look down, and the Palm Pilot is just a fraction of an inch from where I left it, and I think I see a little teardrop there, too. And I don’t know if I can say this without choking up, the teardrop is, well, it’s rusty. Oh, God!
It’s starting to get to me. Now, before I go to bed, I apologize to my Palm Pilot. I say stuff like, “You know, Palm Face, it’s not really you. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. I’ve changed.”
And Palm Face just lies there on the kitchen counter, and I feel this pain, this guilt, and then she says, “You don’t even charge me anymore.”
Oh, God, it just hurts so much. Maybe I’ll reconsider having relationships with people again. No, I can’t do that. I think I’ll just dump inanimate objects, and stick with spiders. They don’t hold a grudge. They die before they remember to hate you.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
I Would Procrastinate if I Had the Time (Cigar Smoke 9-11-08)
I was going to write this column a long time ago, but, well, I put it off. And why did I do that? Because I am a procrastinator. And why am I a procrastinator? Because I am a no-good piece of useless human waste-material garbage. I think that’s pretty much what Sigmund would have said. And I think it has to do with sex and a cigar, too. Him, not me.
Oh, I kid us procrastinators. The reason this all came to the forefront of my consciousness (Let’s see Obama be more erudite than that) is because I had a slow leak in my left front tire. My tire kept getting lower and lower and I looked for a nail or something obvious, but I couldn’t find anything. So I just kept putting air in the damn thing every week.
Every day I would go out to my car and look at my left front tire and, sure enough, it would be slowly going down. I knew it would be, but I just wouldn’t get it fixed, because I am a lowly piece of procrastinating …you know what. Sometimes I would even sneak up on my tire and not look at it directly, and then turn real fast and look at it, and it was still going flat. I really did this. I think the liberals made me do it.
So every week I would have to take it to a gas station and put three damn quarters in the little air machine slot and the air machine would go on, and I would bend down and put the nozzle thing over the valve stem and I would pump air into that sucker. And it was not easy. I have a bad back (and my front ain’t that great either) and have trouble bending over. So I would have to get on my knee and get my pants all dirty and scraped and ripped. Took the chic quality right out of my polyester.
And I don’t know if you’ve put air in your tires lately, but it’s kind of a pain. You’re bent over, your pants are ruined, you’re trying to keep the nozzle on the valve stem, and it won’t quite fit right, and you’re cussing and spitting and scaring your dog. And you keep giving the air gun bursts of power and you can’t keep your fingers on the stem. And that little indicator comes up and it says you have 28 pounds in there. And somewhere deep in the back of your pre-historic mind you think there should be 32 pounds of pressure.
It is tough. I mean it. I hated it. But I did it. Every damn week. For four damn months. (I would have been the president of the Procrastinators of America Society, but they never got around to holding any meetings.) And every time I would do it, I would hate myself more. I would say to myself, “Jim, you useless piece of piss garbage, why don’t you have this tire fixed, you useless piece of crusted crud?” I would say that to myself, and my self would answer, “Because I am a useless piece of moron guts, that’s why.”
And some days when it was 100 degrees or hotter I would bend down and put air in that damn tire, and the little air machine would cut off before I could get my 32 pounds of pressure in there. So I would hang my useless sweaty head down in my hands and because my useless head was slippery with sweat my face would go through my hands and hit the pavement and I’d hit my nose on asphalt in July in Pasadena at a gas station. And then I’d go the cashier guy because I ran out of quarters to restart the air machine and he would say, “Uh, excuse me, but you have black tire smudges on your face and your nose is bleeding.”
I don’t know what kept me from getting the tire fixed. I guess I thought it would be too expensive. I didn’t want to spend more than $100 for a tire and I didn’t think they could put in an inner tube like in the old days and I could cheat the tire cost and be happy. And I didn’t want to take the time out of my busy retirement schedule. Would I have to cut back on my loafing or my idleness? Could I really afford to lose an hour of couch potato time? Would I have to answer the question, “Did you do anything today, Honey?” with a “Yes, I had my tire fixed, dear.” And then, of course, I would have wasted more time picking my wife up off the floor and taking her to the emergency room. That’s why I didn’t do it.
But last Saturday I was just driving by Just Tires over on Walnut Street and Sierra Madre Boulevard and decided to just drop in and just ask them if they could just fix it. I tell the guy I have a slow leak and he says, “Yeah, I know, but what’s wrong with your tire?” After we stop laughing, he comes out to my car, looks at my left front tire and immediately finds a nail in it. I couldn’t believe it. I had been looking for four months and couldn’t find it and he finds it instantly. He looks at me and I said, “Did you have one of your people put that nail in there?”
We go inside and I said, “I guess I need a new tire, huh?” He said, “No. We’ll just do a flat repair for $17.88 and you’ll be out of here in less than 30 minutes.”
And I was out of there in 30 minutes. It took me less than half an hour and it cost me only 17 bucks to fix a four-month-old killer problem that was destroying both my life and my pants. I never get actually happy, but I was damn close then.
So the moral of this tale is that I am no longer a useless piece of gut garbage. I am now a useful piece of gut garbage who is very, very smart and wears clean polyester pants, and if I ever have another problem I will say that I will fix it immediately — but will probably fall back on my old premise that if you ignore a problem for long enough, and if you go into full denial, the problem you are procrastinating about will probably work out somehow, and maybe the guy you owe money to will even die.
Oh, I kid us procrastinators. The reason this all came to the forefront of my consciousness (Let’s see Obama be more erudite than that) is because I had a slow leak in my left front tire. My tire kept getting lower and lower and I looked for a nail or something obvious, but I couldn’t find anything. So I just kept putting air in the damn thing every week.
Every day I would go out to my car and look at my left front tire and, sure enough, it would be slowly going down. I knew it would be, but I just wouldn’t get it fixed, because I am a lowly piece of procrastinating …you know what. Sometimes I would even sneak up on my tire and not look at it directly, and then turn real fast and look at it, and it was still going flat. I really did this. I think the liberals made me do it.
So every week I would have to take it to a gas station and put three damn quarters in the little air machine slot and the air machine would go on, and I would bend down and put the nozzle thing over the valve stem and I would pump air into that sucker. And it was not easy. I have a bad back (and my front ain’t that great either) and have trouble bending over. So I would have to get on my knee and get my pants all dirty and scraped and ripped. Took the chic quality right out of my polyester.
And I don’t know if you’ve put air in your tires lately, but it’s kind of a pain. You’re bent over, your pants are ruined, you’re trying to keep the nozzle on the valve stem, and it won’t quite fit right, and you’re cussing and spitting and scaring your dog. And you keep giving the air gun bursts of power and you can’t keep your fingers on the stem. And that little indicator comes up and it says you have 28 pounds in there. And somewhere deep in the back of your pre-historic mind you think there should be 32 pounds of pressure.
It is tough. I mean it. I hated it. But I did it. Every damn week. For four damn months. (I would have been the president of the Procrastinators of America Society, but they never got around to holding any meetings.) And every time I would do it, I would hate myself more. I would say to myself, “Jim, you useless piece of piss garbage, why don’t you have this tire fixed, you useless piece of crusted crud?” I would say that to myself, and my self would answer, “Because I am a useless piece of moron guts, that’s why.”
And some days when it was 100 degrees or hotter I would bend down and put air in that damn tire, and the little air machine would cut off before I could get my 32 pounds of pressure in there. So I would hang my useless sweaty head down in my hands and because my useless head was slippery with sweat my face would go through my hands and hit the pavement and I’d hit my nose on asphalt in July in Pasadena at a gas station. And then I’d go the cashier guy because I ran out of quarters to restart the air machine and he would say, “Uh, excuse me, but you have black tire smudges on your face and your nose is bleeding.”
I don’t know what kept me from getting the tire fixed. I guess I thought it would be too expensive. I didn’t want to spend more than $100 for a tire and I didn’t think they could put in an inner tube like in the old days and I could cheat the tire cost and be happy. And I didn’t want to take the time out of my busy retirement schedule. Would I have to cut back on my loafing or my idleness? Could I really afford to lose an hour of couch potato time? Would I have to answer the question, “Did you do anything today, Honey?” with a “Yes, I had my tire fixed, dear.” And then, of course, I would have wasted more time picking my wife up off the floor and taking her to the emergency room. That’s why I didn’t do it.
But last Saturday I was just driving by Just Tires over on Walnut Street and Sierra Madre Boulevard and decided to just drop in and just ask them if they could just fix it. I tell the guy I have a slow leak and he says, “Yeah, I know, but what’s wrong with your tire?” After we stop laughing, he comes out to my car, looks at my left front tire and immediately finds a nail in it. I couldn’t believe it. I had been looking for four months and couldn’t find it and he finds it instantly. He looks at me and I said, “Did you have one of your people put that nail in there?”
We go inside and I said, “I guess I need a new tire, huh?” He said, “No. We’ll just do a flat repair for $17.88 and you’ll be out of here in less than 30 minutes.”
And I was out of there in 30 minutes. It took me less than half an hour and it cost me only 17 bucks to fix a four-month-old killer problem that was destroying both my life and my pants. I never get actually happy, but I was damn close then.
So the moral of this tale is that I am no longer a useless piece of gut garbage. I am now a useful piece of gut garbage who is very, very smart and wears clean polyester pants, and if I ever have another problem I will say that I will fix it immediately — but will probably fall back on my old premise that if you ignore a problem for long enough, and if you go into full denial, the problem you are procrastinating about will probably work out somehow, and maybe the guy you owe money to will even die.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Rebel Without a Rap Sheet (Cigar Smoke 8-28-08)
I bet you didn’t know your little old columnist here was a serial criminal. I can’t quite believe it either, but here is what happened. I committed six crimes. Yes, six. And the whole crime spree took less than a half an hour.
I took my dog, Hadley, over to the Santa Fe Dam recreational area and, because it was early in the morning, and because nobody was there yet, and because I am a what? I am a rebel, I let Hadley off the leash, and he raised his long head in freedom and appreciation and then he raised his left leg in urination. And he peed on objects, plants, and himself. That was Crime No. 1.
Then I lit a cigar and was walking along with my freedom-loving urinating dog, and I was smoking and throwing my non-long head back in freedom, and I thought to myself, I think smoking in a park is now illegal. Crime No. 2.
Then I look back and Hadley had progressed from urination to poopation, and yes, I didn’t pick it up. I really apologize for this one. I almost always pick up after my dog. But this time I didn’t because I had just had a really severe episode of my back going out and I couldn’t bend down. I know, that’s kind of a weenie excuse, but I had visions of falling down in this deserted park and not being able to get up and having Hadley licking my face and peeing on my stomach. OK, that was Crime No. 3.
So then, as I’m walking along feeling guilty about not picking up after Hadley the Wonder Pooper, I decided to call my son, Mike, in Washington DC to wish him a happy birthday. So I whipped out my iPhone and I called him. I am what? I am modern. We were having a great talk and maybe the highlight of it was that I couldn’t believe he held his cell phone in his right hand and he couldn’t believe I held my cell phone in my left hand. Anyway, the conversation got a little animated. Not nasty, but you could see it from there. So, as we’re arguing I’m finishing up my walk with Hadley, the Excrement Warrior, and I get back into the car, and I’m still talking to Mike on my cell phone. We’re just chattering along like magpies with iPhones. And all of a sudden, it hits me: I am driving with a cell phone in California and I don’t have the damn earplug thing plugged in and I am committing yet another crime. Crime No. 4.
Now I’m feeling like I may be close to being out of control. I have committed four crimes without even blinking a damn eye. I am a bad seed, and I know I will never be close to being a good seed, and I know if I am not stopped soon I will commit another crime. And it doesn’t take long for this to actually happen.
I look down at my speedometer and I am screaming along at 30 miles an hour. I am in a California state park and the speed limit is 15 miles per hour, and I am going twice the speed limit. What can I say? Crime No. 5.
I finally get out of the park and I look over my shoulder to see if the park ranger guy is trailing my butt, but he’s out helping coyotes or something and I am free — I have fought the sheriff and I have won. Change the lyrics. I’m feeling good. Bad seed good. But my crime spree has one more crime to go to make it a serial six-pack.
I’m still talking to Mike on the phone and my cigar has burned down to the nub and the cigar label is starting to burn and so I slip off the cigar band and I’m holding it in my fingers and Hadley is jerking around with me in the front seat and Mike is still on my ass about me holding the cell phone in my left hand, and I was frustrated, and the cigar was burning into my thumb, and I acted rashly and selfishly, and yes, I tossed the cigar band out of the window. I littered. No excuse for it. Crime No. 6.
Gary Gilmore, eat your heart out.
But you’re not going to believe what happened next. I knocked over a liquor store. I told you I was a bad seed. However, I didn’t rob the liquor store. I actually drove into the liquor store and, well, knocked it over.
Hey, I was on my cell phone and Mike said only dummies and losers and old people would use their left hands to hold their cell phones, and Hadley had jumped onto my lap and I was trying to keep his left leg from going into action and I could smell my thumb burning now and, well, the steering wheel just did its own thing. Liquor store went down like Monica, baby.
Stop me before I misdemean again!
I took my dog, Hadley, over to the Santa Fe Dam recreational area and, because it was early in the morning, and because nobody was there yet, and because I am a what? I am a rebel, I let Hadley off the leash, and he raised his long head in freedom and appreciation and then he raised his left leg in urination. And he peed on objects, plants, and himself. That was Crime No. 1.
Then I lit a cigar and was walking along with my freedom-loving urinating dog, and I was smoking and throwing my non-long head back in freedom, and I thought to myself, I think smoking in a park is now illegal. Crime No. 2.
Then I look back and Hadley had progressed from urination to poopation, and yes, I didn’t pick it up. I really apologize for this one. I almost always pick up after my dog. But this time I didn’t because I had just had a really severe episode of my back going out and I couldn’t bend down. I know, that’s kind of a weenie excuse, but I had visions of falling down in this deserted park and not being able to get up and having Hadley licking my face and peeing on my stomach. OK, that was Crime No. 3.
So then, as I’m walking along feeling guilty about not picking up after Hadley the Wonder Pooper, I decided to call my son, Mike, in Washington DC to wish him a happy birthday. So I whipped out my iPhone and I called him. I am what? I am modern. We were having a great talk and maybe the highlight of it was that I couldn’t believe he held his cell phone in his right hand and he couldn’t believe I held my cell phone in my left hand. Anyway, the conversation got a little animated. Not nasty, but you could see it from there. So, as we’re arguing I’m finishing up my walk with Hadley, the Excrement Warrior, and I get back into the car, and I’m still talking to Mike on my cell phone. We’re just chattering along like magpies with iPhones. And all of a sudden, it hits me: I am driving with a cell phone in California and I don’t have the damn earplug thing plugged in and I am committing yet another crime. Crime No. 4.
Now I’m feeling like I may be close to being out of control. I have committed four crimes without even blinking a damn eye. I am a bad seed, and I know I will never be close to being a good seed, and I know if I am not stopped soon I will commit another crime. And it doesn’t take long for this to actually happen.
I look down at my speedometer and I am screaming along at 30 miles an hour. I am in a California state park and the speed limit is 15 miles per hour, and I am going twice the speed limit. What can I say? Crime No. 5.
I finally get out of the park and I look over my shoulder to see if the park ranger guy is trailing my butt, but he’s out helping coyotes or something and I am free — I have fought the sheriff and I have won. Change the lyrics. I’m feeling good. Bad seed good. But my crime spree has one more crime to go to make it a serial six-pack.
I’m still talking to Mike on the phone and my cigar has burned down to the nub and the cigar label is starting to burn and so I slip off the cigar band and I’m holding it in my fingers and Hadley is jerking around with me in the front seat and Mike is still on my ass about me holding the cell phone in my left hand, and I was frustrated, and the cigar was burning into my thumb, and I acted rashly and selfishly, and yes, I tossed the cigar band out of the window. I littered. No excuse for it. Crime No. 6.
Gary Gilmore, eat your heart out.
But you’re not going to believe what happened next. I knocked over a liquor store. I told you I was a bad seed. However, I didn’t rob the liquor store. I actually drove into the liquor store and, well, knocked it over.
Hey, I was on my cell phone and Mike said only dummies and losers and old people would use their left hands to hold their cell phones, and Hadley had jumped onto my lap and I was trying to keep his left leg from going into action and I could smell my thumb burning now and, well, the steering wheel just did its own thing. Liquor store went down like Monica, baby.
Stop me before I misdemean again!
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