Getting Clipped (Cigar Smoke 11-6-08)

By the time you read this, the election will be over. Thank God. Or, as you Democrats say, thank my secular/spiritual essence.

Because I am into self-delusion, I figure I will be happy either way. If McCain wins, I’ll just be plain old slam-dunk happy. If Obama wins, maybe I won’t have to listen to all the Bush-bashing bullshit anymore.

So, to hell with politics for now. Let’s get back to the important things in life — like deciding if you should get a pedicure. I am really having a hard time with this one. As you know, I am now in my single-digit life-expectancy period and I have a semi-serious bad back and my eyesight ain’t that good and I am as rigid and inflexible in my physical being as I am in my political thinking and, OK, maybe I’m a little lankier than I should be, so it is very hard for me to bend down to cut my toenails.
For the past year I have gone through incredible gyrations just to reach my toes and when I finally reach my toes I have to re-gyrate to cut the damn nails off. It is really tough. For a while there, I would sit down on the toilet seat (with the cover down) and reach slowly towards my feet. However, with my back problem, I know I have to keep my head straight because if I bend my neck — even just a little — as I’m reaching down, it will throw my damn back out.

So I have to kind of guess where my toenails are. With my head straight, I just glance down with my eyes to try to see where to cut. This is not easy. I usually clip a few of ’em fine. But I almost always cut into the quick on a couple of others, and it hurts and it bleeds — I know you feel my pain. Even you Democrats are probably pretty upset right now.

And I’ve tried other solutions. I’ve lain down on my back and tried to bring my feet up to my hands. I’ve put my foot up on higher solid pieces of furniture to get a better angle. I’ve asked Marge if she would mind cutting the toenails of her beloved wonderful husband who still makes her heart sing and she mentioned something about something freezing over. Oh yeah, it was hell. Hell freezing over. That was it.

So then I saw this ad in Geezer Life magazine in the “You’re Not Quite Dead Yet” section. The ad was for a long-handled pair of toenail clippers. A long-handled pair of nail clippers. Oh my secular/spiritual essence, my prayers had been answered. I could not believe there was such a product. I would have had an orgasm if I could remember what that was.

I sent for this life-saving gadget immediately because my toenails were out of my socks and heading for my shoes. When the long-handled babies finally came in the mail, I ran to the bathroom and shut the door. It kind of reminded me of when I used to read the articles in Playboy and not look at the pictures a long time ago. Anyway, I rip open the package and take these long-handled suckers out, and am expecting to get some major-league toenail-cutting relief.

But, I did not. With the long handle, you can get down to your toes easy enough, but the damn things don’t have enough leverage to actually cut the toenails. Man, it was so disappointing. I was devastated. Really. I felt hopeless. And I know Obama won’t do anything about this if he gets in. The bastard.

So now I’m deciding if I should be a girly geezerman and get a pedicure. I have never had a pedicure in my life. Hell, I have never even had a manicure. I don’t know. Is it legal to get a pedicure before you’ve had a manicure? Or, in this economy, is it even moral to get a pedicure when poor people are getting by without high definition TVs? I just don’t know.

But most of all, it’s just scary. I’m filled with anxiety and insecurity about going in for a pedicure. What do you do? Do you just sit there like in a barber’s chair? Does someone come up to you, and you say, “Just a trim, please.” Or do you say, “I’ll have the Brad Pitt cut.” What if the pedicure person has a foot fetish and finds my feet irresistible? What if she says, “From the ankles down, you’re not bad looking, gramps.”

Do they take off your shoes and socks, or do you? Do they wash your feet first? Or do they just keel over backwards when they take your socks off? Do they buff your newly cut toenails? Do they tie you to the chair and put clear toenail polish on them? Do they laugh at you? Do they point at you? Do they make toenail jokes? “This toenail walked into a bar …”

And how much does it cost for a pedicure? I have no doubledamn idea how much it should cost. I could be ripped off by a fraudulent, unlicensed, unscrupulous pedicurist. And what about tipping? Do you tip by the toe? Is that how they came up with the expression tippy-toe?

This is all too much for me. I’m going back to politics.

Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.

Barack Bizaro Obama (Cigar Smoke 10-30-08)

Well, it looks like Barack Hussein Obama has a pretty good shot at winning this thing. And if he does, more power to him. He’s run a great campaign. He beat the pants suit off of Hillary. He played the Internet like Slick Willie played the sax. I have to give the guy credit.

However, I was just wondering if a Republican candidate, who had the same qualifications and had the same questionable associations that Obama had, would have done quite as well. Why don’t we just make up a candidate and let’s call him Tommy Adolf Obama.

Tommy just came on the political scene about three years ago at the Republican National Convention. He gave an inspirational nominating speech and he was damn good looking, too. Kind of looked like a young Harry Belafonte. More charismatic than JFK on steroids. Women swooned. So did gay men. Heterosexual men considered it.

And Tommy was, of course, half black and half white. His father was black and had abandoned him, and his mother was white and had raised him and sacrificed for him and encouraged him to reach for the sky. So, it was an easy choice. He decided to call himself white.

And what qualifications for the presidency did Tommy have? He was an attorney. He used to be a community organizer in Chicago. He was a senator from Illinois with a few years experience in the US Senate. He didn’t know much about foreign affairs or the economy or running a large entity like a state or a government department or even a company. He pretty much relied on his eloquence and his coolness.

So Tommy decided to go for it. He put his name in the hat and started running for president. And damned if he didn’t do pretty well at it. The press was behind him and he was never challenged too much and nobody ever asked him any tough questions and the press pretty much trashed his primary opponents. And damned if old Tommy didn’t get the Republican nomination to lead his party against the Democrats.

The Democrats were running an experienced man who had been in the Senate for about 30 years and had served his country well in the military and this guy was well versed in foreign affairs and had actual dealings with some of the bad guys of the world. So he was pretty formidable, but Tommy never faltered.

Tommy said, “I’m younger than he is. I’m better looking than he is. And I’m more eloquent than he is. I’m even taller than he is. I’ve organized way more communities than he has. And I don’t have jaw cancer, either. What’s the problem?”

So Tommy kept running his campaign. And all the young Republican girls swooned at his campaign appearances and all the movie stars thought Tommy was cool, too, and they fought the young girls to see who could get closer to him to swoon. Tommy laughed at the pushing and shoving, and he put his arm around the shoulders of the neutral press and kept that train on the track, baby. It was truly a beautiful thing to see. Kind of like a manger with neon lights. It made his Republican religious-right base quiver with a kind of spiritual delight. Hallelujah.

Everything was going great until the Democrats started to question some of Tommy’s old associations. He had been going to a church for the past 20 years and his minister had railed against blacks and Jews and those Muslim “bastards.” And his minister, Billy Graham, who by the way, had married Tommy and his wife (who said she never really liked the country all that much), screamed out “God damned America!” It was pretty ugly. But Tommy said he never heard any of that stuff. That’s good enough for us, huh?

And then some crazy fool had the nerve to ask old Tommy about someone else in his past. A guy named Tony something who had helped him buy his house in shall we say, a non-sunny deal. Tommy had bought an expensive house in a very nice area, and Tommy had only paid one-third the fair market price that his neighbors had paid. Tommy said he made a good deal and that people should just back off. Wouldn’t be right to challenge that.

And finally Tommy had to deal with another person in his past. This guy was a former Ku Klux Klan member and when the press asked this Klan jerk-off about what he’d done, he said, “I only wish I could have done more against those people. We didn’t do enough. If only we’d had more rope.”

When they brought this up to Tommy, he said, “I was only 8 when this happened.” When the press mentioned that Tommy was in his 30s when he launched his political career in Mr. KKK’s house, Tommy was speechless. He eloquently said nothing.

The press pushed and asked Tommy why he worked on the same board that Mr. KKK worked on when Tommy was in his 40s. And Tommy Adolf Obama said, “I think I was still eight, wasn’t I?”

Just sayin.

The Big Lug (Cigar Smoke 10-23-08)

I rarely think about schlepping, unless I am the one doing the schlepping. For those of you who don’t know what schlepping is, come on over to my house. I have a few very meaningful tasks I need help with.

Like most of you, I have done a lot of schlepping in my life. I remember a long time ago when I was about 17 and my family and friends all went to the beach for a big old beach bash and weenie roast and sand in your butt-crack event.

We had three cars full of people and beach crap and we get to the beach and everyone piles out of the cars and runs to the beach to frolic. I’m a little late in getting out of the car and I am a little late in the intelligence department and I’m standing there and pitifully pleading to a bunch of deaf people, “What about the ice chest and all this stuff? I need help. Please!” They don’t even look back. They just frolic their guiltless asses down to the seashore.

So I take the ice chest out of the trunk. It’s full of, well, ice. And cans of soda. It is heavy. It is heavier than Rosie O’Donnell after eating her second KFC bucket. I wrestle the ice chest out of the trunk and then I start carrying it toward the shoreline of death, four miles away. This, of course, would be bad enough, but I am also trying to carry a handful of beach towels and two folding chairs and some swim fins and a bag of sandwiches, so I won’t have to make two trips.

I can’t finish this story. All I remember is that about a fifth of the way there, I started to sweat, and the sweat was getting on my hands and I couldn’t grip the ice chest and it kept slipping, and all the other beach crap was falling everywhere, and I felt unappreciated and ignored and I wanted to cry, but the sand in my eyes soaked up the tears so all I could do was attempt to make this pathetic little crying sound, but no sound would come out and I went blind from sweaty-sand-in-the-eye-syndrome and I hated life and hated my family and hated my frigging friends and I purposely stepped right into the middle of a little kid’s sand castle just to hear what the sound of crying was like. It was my introduction to schlepping. “Hello, schlepping.”

Schlepping replied, “Bite me, loser.”

Through the years, I have had many moments of schlepping. When my darling children were both toddlers, I schlepped all their playpens and cribs and strollers and jammies and teddy bears and toys and rockets and food jars full of squished peas and diapers full of squished pea results. I have done it all. I have schlepped where no man has ever schlepped before. If I had a nickname it would be “Schleppy.” And if I was a folk-singer and if I had a hammer I would kill Schleppy. Yes, I would keep hitting Schleppy over and over while a nice, lilting folksong melody lingered in the background.

I guess you can see I’m a little sensitive to schlepping. I thought most of my schlepping days were behind me. I was wrong. Marge, The Schlepping Master, asked me last fall if I would mind helping her Soroptimist Club at its annual auction. I said, “It’s not on a Sunday, is it?” She said, “Why, yes, it is? Why do you ask?” I started to say “NFL football” but I couldn’t get it out and just sobbed to myself and started looking for a hammer.

So I helped her at the auction. I schlepped some stuff into the house where they were holding the auction. It was pretty minor-league schlepping. Not too much crud. Nothing too heavy. And the auction went off smoothly and they made money to help out humanity and I was getting ready to go home and I noticed something strange. I was one of the only men left there. (The other men were what? They were smarter than me.)

I schlepped our stuff back to the car. And then I looked over at Marge and she had this pre-schlepping authorization expression on her face. I said, “What is it?” She said something about all the folding chairs had to be taken out to the back and there weren’t any men around except one guy who was faking a leg injury and would I be a wonderful husband and help them out. I said, “Can I be back to the house by 5:15 for the Sunday night game?”

Anyway, I schlepped for about an hour, back and forth, taking the folding chairs somewhere they weren’t, and the guy with the fake leg injury wouldn’t look directly at me, and I got all sweaty from my schlepping and on my final trip back to get my last folding chair. I was so sweaty that — and I am not making this up — my pants fell down. Just slipped right off my sweaty hips. (Calm down, ladies.)

Yup, I was standing there sweating my schlep sweat and my pants were draped around my ankles and I looked up and the fake leg guy was looking at my pants and he looked up at me and said, “What are you doing after the auction?”
I said, “I’m gonna get a hammer and kill a folk-singer. Wanna come along?”

Fist-Fighting Fun (Cigar Smoke 10-16-08)

I was just sitting around the house the other day, just feeling better than other people because I owned an iPhone, and I got to thinking about fighting. Not gang fighting or road rage fighting or shooting- each-other-with-guns fighting, just regular old fist-fighting.

Fighting for me started pretty young. When I was 5 I would go around my neighborhood and I would ask my pint-sized friends to smell my knuckles. And when they did, I would pop ‘em. Gave out a lot of bloody noses and my parents had a lot of other parents coming over to the house to find out what kind of monster they had raised.

My favorite fight as a 5-year old was with a guy named Gary Skeen. Gary and I got into it for some reason, and we exchanged a few toddler blows, and then he started to run away. Well, I chased him and he ran into his house. He thought he was safe. He was wrong. I opened the front door and ran in after him and tracked him down in his bedroom and started whaling on him.

His old man was a cop, and he just kept looking at me. He didn't stop the fight - just let me beat up his kid. And when I was leaving, our eyes met and there was a look of admiration in his eyes. Some kid had busted into his house, the house of a cop, and beat up his kid, right in front of him. I'll always remember that look.

My next memorable fist-fight was with Dale Cooper at 98th Street Elementary School. We were in the sixth grade. Dale and I were each the leaders of our own little band of peewee tough guys. Kind of like a gang, but not really. You were either with Dale, or you were with me. We ruled the sixth grade!

Anyway, one fateful day, Dale and I were playing tetherball, and it got pretty heated and down and dirty. Both of our packs of buddies were watching, and then it turned from tetherball to fistball. I don't know how it escalated, but we just started banging on each other, and as I recall, it was a pretty cool fight. About 30 kids cheering us on on the asphalt. Just throwing punches and rolling around. Both of us got bloodied up pretty good, and when some teacher broke it up, everybody booed. It doesn't get much better than that. (Note: after the fight Dale and I became best of friends. There's a message there somewhere.)

The best fight I ever got into was on high school graduation night. At our school we had a Grad Night Party at some fancy hotel in Santa Monica and we stayed out all night. So we're at this party and everybody is dancing, and this guy, Kent Smith, cuts in on somebody who was dancing with a girl I had a crush on. Kent was pretty wasted and he kind of flicked this other guy away from her and started dancing with my crush-babe who didn't know who the hell I was.

Well, being the delusional male that I've always been, I thought I could come to her rescue and take Kent's roaming paws off her (hopefully) virginal shoulders and maybe someday put my own roaming paws on those grateful shoulders. Well, I went up behind Kent, and put my right hand on his left shoulder, and started to pull him off her. He did not take too kindly to this. How do I know? Well, as I was pulling his left shoulder, he was turning and throwing his right fist at my only nose.

He clocked me, baby. Just unloaded a big right hand. Bam! And the funny thing was he didn't even know who he was hitting. He just turned and threw. My damsel-saving face just happened to be right there to be hit. Hell, it could have been Mother Teresa - he wouldn't have cared. He just put my fist-fighting ass right on the floor, baby.

Well, I cleared my head a little and I went after him. It was a great fight. Like we were in a movie. We're in this ritzy hotel and we're fighting a good even fight, trading punch for punch, and I knock him over some couch in the lobby and then I leap over the couch to jump on him and get him again. (Errol Flynn, eat your heart out.) And damned if he doesn't knock me back over the couch and everybody is making a ring around us and lamps are breaking and we're falling onto coffee tables and there was blood on our white tuxedo shirts and our cummerbunds were not covering what cummerbunds were supposed to be covering and there were spilled drinks and scared girls shrieking and drunk guys yelling and damn it was fun.

And the girl I saved was so beholden to me that she got married a few months later to a guy named Trent - because he had gotten her pregnant in a 1957 Chevy at Grad Night while Kent and I were fighting.

I Hate Sports and the Horse it Rode in On (Cigar Smoke 10-9-08)

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.

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.