I’ve always enjoyed Thanksgiving. I think it’s the best holiday of the year. You gather with your family and friends and the women do all the work and you just eat and watch football and rough up the kids a little and complain about getting fat. It’s perfect.
This year it was a little more perfect than usual. We all decided to chip in and bring various dishes so the little hostess woman of the house wouldn’t break down and cry at the end of the day. Somebody brought a great salad and this nifty bean dish with nuts and sliced almonds, and somebody else brought an incredible yam dish with three — count ’em, three — different color yams. I’m not kidding. Regular orange yams, and then white yams and purple yams. Three layers of colored yams topped off with a layer of oven-toasted marshmallows. And someone else brought an eggnog/pumpkin pie. You could hear the calories. And because I am what? I am a health addict. I brought the box of See’s Candy.
All in all, we had 12 people in the house. Plus three dogs. Our good dog, Hadley, and two rat-yappy dogs. They got along pretty well. The two yappers literally did vertical jumps right onto unsuspecting laps. They were like Air Force test planes taking off with no runway. Just straight up into the wild blue lap yonder. And Hadley, the good dog, was so tired from all the damn fun that he collapsed right in the pathway from the kitchen to the family room, and he just laid there like a canine corpse and we used him as an obstacle course all day.
Because we weren’t sure if we would get enough to eat, we started out with a few appetizers. Had some greasy salt-plastered garlic potato chips for the men, and had these Whole Foods chips made out of recycled whole-grain blue-flour tortillas from some adobe hut in some village in Guatemala for the women, and we dipped those gender- specific babies into some unisex humus. Some good eatin’ there.
Nobody got stomach cramps so we had some pistachio nuts in a giant bowl where we would just throw the empty shells back into the same bowl because some unnamed member of the family thought that the search for the next pistachio nut was “more challenging and thus more rewarding” than just picking out a pistachio from a non-shelled bowl. That person may be finding out soon what the singles scene is like.
Then somebody (probably a commie from my wife’s side of the family) brought out a platter of vegetables. Carrots and broccoli and cucumbers and celery sticks all arranged around some white loser glob of congealed crud that the humus just laughed at. All the guys tried to make the kids eat this stuff. Because we were good parents and good grandparents and because healthy children were our lives — and because some of the kids had come dangerously close to reaching into our garlic chip bag.
Then it was time to carve the turkey. And as you might expect, I am the official turkey carver for the Laris-Wood clan. I have been carving the turkey for approximately 47 years now. I think I do a pretty damn good job of it, especially now that I don’t use a live turkey. Some of those turkey screams in past years were heartbreaking.
We had a great meal! It would have made the Pilgrims proud that they had lied to the Indians and stolen their land. It was that good. Just a fantastic meal. All the regular stuff — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, the three-layered yam-marshmallow deal, green beans, homemade cranberry sauce, flakey-ass rolls, salad and something I’m forgetting. Oh yeah, the gravy. It was almost liquid this year. That spread could have fed Haiti for maybe a week.
So, after feeling guilty for a minute or two, we went back into the family room to watch our third lousy football game of the day. Detroit got wiped out in the morning, Dallas made fun of whatever a Seahawk is in the afternoon and Texas pretty much horn-hooked Texas A&M until they agreed not to use abbreviations for their school name. It was ugly. Three really bad football games for the men of America. If Bush was still president, I know this wouldn’t have happened.
With no more football to watch, we helped each other up from the sofas and waddled out to the kitchen counter for some pie. Because of the bad economy, we only had four kinds of pie to choose from — apple, pumpkin, pecan and eggnog/pumpkin. And I think they would have been pretty good to eat, too. If the “incident” hadn’t occurred.
OK, maybe I had a little too much to drink. It’s hazy, but I think I recall somebody giving me one of those pissy little energy drinks and maybe I added a little Johnny Walker energy of my own to it. And yes, maybe this happened more than once.
Anyway, all I can remember is one of my sons having this panicked look on his face, and loudly saying, “Dad, put down the automatic knife. You don’t carve pie!” And then everything went dark.
Can’t wait until Christmas.
Jim Laris is the former owner and publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Land Hunting with Jim and Lennie (Cigar Smoke 11-27-08)
For maybe the past 30 years I have had a dream of owning a little piece of land. Nothing spectacular or expensive — maybe a few acres in the country, or a spot next to a lake. Just a place of my own.
I feel like that big, thick-thinking guy Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” Lennie is always asking George, his conflicted buddy, to tell him about how they’ll find their own little piece of land someday. George always soothes Lennie with the story, but (spoiler alert) they never get there.
Oh, I have owned a regular house before, but that’s always felt more like owning a little piece of a mortgage. I want something special. Something unique. Even something funky. I’ll know it when I see it. Maybe a piece of pornography by a stream.
Everywhere I go, I’m always looking in newspapers to find just the right spot. Whenever I get to some town in Montana or Idaho or Oregon or Alaska, I immediately turn to the classifieds and start dreaming. But I never seem to find just the exact right spot — basically, because I’m cheap and don’t have the guts to act. If it weren’t for those two factors, Lennie and I would be sitting on the porch right now spitting sunflower seeds to the squirrels.
One time this real estate agent took me out to a cottage on a lake in Michigan. She asked me if I would like to make an offer. I said, “How does $40,000 sound?” She said, “It sounds like $240,000 less than the asking price.”
Another time I found this perfect, funky double-wide trailer up in some isolated town in Washington state. In the damn forest, right next to a river. And it was only $20,000. So what does your gutless land-dreaming columnist do? I’ll tell you what your favorite spineless excuse for a little-piece-of-land-dreaming, coward-ass dork does: He says he will “think it over” for a while. And he thinks it over for two weeks, and when he finally calls to buy it, the owner tells him he has sold it to a guy who didn’t think it over. For $15,000!
I would have killed myself, but luckily I had to think that over first.
I’ve been searching for something for three decades now. (Some might say I’m looking for something other than a little piece of land, like maybe a friggin’ clue.) I still search the classifieds for that idyllic place. But now, because I am what? Because I am modern, I now search the Web and have become addicted to Craigslist.
Every morning, every afternoon, every evening, I pop onto Craigslist and hunt for that perfect place. I’ve got keyboard bruises on the tips of my fingers. And I have now physically gone out on three searches that my Web-surfing fingers have pointed me to.
A couple of weeks ago, I’m on Craigslist and I hit the California button. It takes me to a screen with all the counties on it. I go to the Humboldt County button, and damned if right off the finger-searching bat I don’t find a funky place for sale out on the Samoa Peninsula, next to Arcata, where I went to school at Humboldt State.
And I mean funky. It’s a manufactured home right on the bay. The agent and I go out there, and it is so foggy we can barely read the tsunami warning area signs. I’m not making that up, dammit! My dream home was in a tsunami danger zone. Pretty cool, huh?
Because it looked so promising, we wanted to go inside, but something stopped us. The urine stench. We opened the door, and that smell rushed out like an escaped convict, baby. We took a whiff, and then we took a hike. The last thing that smelled that bad had police tape around it.
My damn dream has been jolted again. But I don’t give up. I go up the coast to Crescent City and I find this really cool house right next to the ocean at the mouth of a rushing river. It’s beautiful. Ocean waves pounding, otters and seals lounging on the sand spits and rugged rocks, and redwoods on the hills behind the house. And best of all was that my new address would be 12544 Mouth of the Smith River. Wow! Can you believe that for an address!
So did I buy my dream house? Well, the price is a little higher than I wanted, and I guess I’ll have to think it over for a while. So, I’m still getting my mail at some loser address in Altadena.
I guess you all know that in the end, George had to shoot poor Lennie. It was very sad. While he was telling Lennie the story about the little piece of land for one last time, George put a bullet in Lennie’s head.
And just before Lennie died, he turned to George and said, “Would you check Craigslist for me in the morning?”
I feel like that big, thick-thinking guy Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” Lennie is always asking George, his conflicted buddy, to tell him about how they’ll find their own little piece of land someday. George always soothes Lennie with the story, but (spoiler alert) they never get there.
Oh, I have owned a regular house before, but that’s always felt more like owning a little piece of a mortgage. I want something special. Something unique. Even something funky. I’ll know it when I see it. Maybe a piece of pornography by a stream.
Everywhere I go, I’m always looking in newspapers to find just the right spot. Whenever I get to some town in Montana or Idaho or Oregon or Alaska, I immediately turn to the classifieds and start dreaming. But I never seem to find just the exact right spot — basically, because I’m cheap and don’t have the guts to act. If it weren’t for those two factors, Lennie and I would be sitting on the porch right now spitting sunflower seeds to the squirrels.
One time this real estate agent took me out to a cottage on a lake in Michigan. She asked me if I would like to make an offer. I said, “How does $40,000 sound?” She said, “It sounds like $240,000 less than the asking price.”
Another time I found this perfect, funky double-wide trailer up in some isolated town in Washington state. In the damn forest, right next to a river. And it was only $20,000. So what does your gutless land-dreaming columnist do? I’ll tell you what your favorite spineless excuse for a little-piece-of-land-dreaming, coward-ass dork does: He says he will “think it over” for a while. And he thinks it over for two weeks, and when he finally calls to buy it, the owner tells him he has sold it to a guy who didn’t think it over. For $15,000!
I would have killed myself, but luckily I had to think that over first.
I’ve been searching for something for three decades now. (Some might say I’m looking for something other than a little piece of land, like maybe a friggin’ clue.) I still search the classifieds for that idyllic place. But now, because I am what? Because I am modern, I now search the Web and have become addicted to Craigslist.
Every morning, every afternoon, every evening, I pop onto Craigslist and hunt for that perfect place. I’ve got keyboard bruises on the tips of my fingers. And I have now physically gone out on three searches that my Web-surfing fingers have pointed me to.
A couple of weeks ago, I’m on Craigslist and I hit the California button. It takes me to a screen with all the counties on it. I go to the Humboldt County button, and damned if right off the finger-searching bat I don’t find a funky place for sale out on the Samoa Peninsula, next to Arcata, where I went to school at Humboldt State.
And I mean funky. It’s a manufactured home right on the bay. The agent and I go out there, and it is so foggy we can barely read the tsunami warning area signs. I’m not making that up, dammit! My dream home was in a tsunami danger zone. Pretty cool, huh?
Because it looked so promising, we wanted to go inside, but something stopped us. The urine stench. We opened the door, and that smell rushed out like an escaped convict, baby. We took a whiff, and then we took a hike. The last thing that smelled that bad had police tape around it.
My damn dream has been jolted again. But I don’t give up. I go up the coast to Crescent City and I find this really cool house right next to the ocean at the mouth of a rushing river. It’s beautiful. Ocean waves pounding, otters and seals lounging on the sand spits and rugged rocks, and redwoods on the hills behind the house. And best of all was that my new address would be 12544 Mouth of the Smith River. Wow! Can you believe that for an address!
So did I buy my dream house? Well, the price is a little higher than I wanted, and I guess I’ll have to think it over for a while. So, I’m still getting my mail at some loser address in Altadena.
I guess you all know that in the end, George had to shoot poor Lennie. It was very sad. While he was telling Lennie the story about the little piece of land for one last time, George put a bullet in Lennie’s head.
And just before Lennie died, he turned to George and said, “Would you check Craigslist for me in the morning?”
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Tuesdays With Hadley (Cigar Smoke 11-20-08)
My dog, Hadley, is getting pretty old. He’s about 12 now, and the lifespan for Airedales is between 11 and 14 years. So, because he’s a very smart dog, and because he uses a really big calculator with extra large paw buttons, he knows he’s pretty much a fellow single-digit traveler, much like his single-digit (in expectancy and IQ) owner.
Old Airedale Face has a few medical problems. He was born blind in his right eye, but except for the occasional clunking of his head on an unseen fence post to his right, it’s never really bothered him much. And he did break a hip when he was younger and it never healed right. But up until about six months ago, all in all, he was hanging in there pretty well.
Then things took a more negative turn. He’s got severe arthritis in his back legs and he can barely get up now. He just struggles and struggles and it’s painful to watch. I still take him on hobbles every morning, but he can’t walk far. His legs are unstable and he stops a lot. Reminds me of someone I know.
For the past few months he has not been able to control his bowel movements. He leaves us little “Easter eggs” every day now. He has his doggie bed in our bedroom and every morning we get up and expect to find more Easter eggs. And in keeping with the holiday spirit, Hadley usually gives us something to find.
And it’s not just at bedtime. Marge and I will be watching “Mad Men” on TV and one of us will smell something, and then we’ll look around and see Hadley over in the corner whistling and cocking his long head to the side, and we know it’s time to get out the Easter Basket.
A lot of times he doesn’t even know he’s going. He can be lying down, and almost defy the laws of physics. One time I was sitting on the couch and petting him, and he was licking my face from the front end and depositing on my toes from the back end. I think there’s a message there.
And sometimes he’ll just be walking along without a care in his canine world, and he will be leaving a trail of non-omelet eggs. Marge or I will be running right behind him, yelling tender love yells, and suggesting that he wait for another five seconds and do it outside. But Hadley is his own Peter Rabbit, and he defecates to a different drummer.
Well, after about a half a year of this, and after a number of carpet cleaning bills, and after a general exhaustion of our obscenity options, and after Hadley had laughed at the doggie diapers we got him, we made the decision to at least control him overnight. So we made a little dog segregation area in one of our bathrooms, and we put his bed in there, and we put in a metal gate thing to block him from doing his fecal fun on the carpet. We figured it would be easier to just pick up the eggs from the bathroom tile floor.
We figured wrong. Because Hadley’s legs were so bad, he couldn’t get any traction on the slick tile and he couldn’t get up, and because there was no lack of eggs on the said tile, well, many of the eggs became accessories to Hadley’s fur, paws, side, back, butt, stomach, haunches, toes, tail, and teeth. And maybe even worse, Hadley hated it in there.
So I did something a Republican has never done before — I went to a Home Depot. I had two custom pieces of outdoor carpet cut into the exact sizes I needed. And I bought a carpet cutter tool just to be manly. And, yes, as long as I was there, I ate one of those healthy Home Depot hot dogs.
I bring all the stuff home and here’s what I do: I put Hadley’s bed back in our bedroom so he will love us. I put the two sections of outdoor carpet over our good carpet in an L-shaped area going from his bed around our bed. I close the bedroom door, and I put up the metal gate thing on the other end of the L-shaped carpet section. We now have an Easter egg acceptance area that rocks with both canine consideration and fecal utility. It was Easter-egg-proof. Not a square inch of good carpet to be even aimed at, let alone targeted successfully.
The perfect solution — Hadley loves it, Marge loves it. I love it because I thought of it.
So last night was the first night we used it. Everything went great. Hadley did not whimper. Marge was not fumbling around with the divorce papers. Me and my snore machine were sleeping. It was beautiful.
And then we noticed that the closet door was slightly nudged in. And we gently pushed back the door. And there, lying on the only exposed six-inch area of beautiful, formerly fecal-free carpet was, shall we say, an egg of a different color. The only six inches in the entire room, and Hadley had butt-nudged the closet door to expose it. It was incredible.
Yes, Virginia, there is an Easter Bunny.
Old Airedale Face has a few medical problems. He was born blind in his right eye, but except for the occasional clunking of his head on an unseen fence post to his right, it’s never really bothered him much. And he did break a hip when he was younger and it never healed right. But up until about six months ago, all in all, he was hanging in there pretty well.
Then things took a more negative turn. He’s got severe arthritis in his back legs and he can barely get up now. He just struggles and struggles and it’s painful to watch. I still take him on hobbles every morning, but he can’t walk far. His legs are unstable and he stops a lot. Reminds me of someone I know.
For the past few months he has not been able to control his bowel movements. He leaves us little “Easter eggs” every day now. He has his doggie bed in our bedroom and every morning we get up and expect to find more Easter eggs. And in keeping with the holiday spirit, Hadley usually gives us something to find.
And it’s not just at bedtime. Marge and I will be watching “Mad Men” on TV and one of us will smell something, and then we’ll look around and see Hadley over in the corner whistling and cocking his long head to the side, and we know it’s time to get out the Easter Basket.
A lot of times he doesn’t even know he’s going. He can be lying down, and almost defy the laws of physics. One time I was sitting on the couch and petting him, and he was licking my face from the front end and depositing on my toes from the back end. I think there’s a message there.
And sometimes he’ll just be walking along without a care in his canine world, and he will be leaving a trail of non-omelet eggs. Marge or I will be running right behind him, yelling tender love yells, and suggesting that he wait for another five seconds and do it outside. But Hadley is his own Peter Rabbit, and he defecates to a different drummer.
Well, after about a half a year of this, and after a number of carpet cleaning bills, and after a general exhaustion of our obscenity options, and after Hadley had laughed at the doggie diapers we got him, we made the decision to at least control him overnight. So we made a little dog segregation area in one of our bathrooms, and we put his bed in there, and we put in a metal gate thing to block him from doing his fecal fun on the carpet. We figured it would be easier to just pick up the eggs from the bathroom tile floor.
We figured wrong. Because Hadley’s legs were so bad, he couldn’t get any traction on the slick tile and he couldn’t get up, and because there was no lack of eggs on the said tile, well, many of the eggs became accessories to Hadley’s fur, paws, side, back, butt, stomach, haunches, toes, tail, and teeth. And maybe even worse, Hadley hated it in there.
So I did something a Republican has never done before — I went to a Home Depot. I had two custom pieces of outdoor carpet cut into the exact sizes I needed. And I bought a carpet cutter tool just to be manly. And, yes, as long as I was there, I ate one of those healthy Home Depot hot dogs.
I bring all the stuff home and here’s what I do: I put Hadley’s bed back in our bedroom so he will love us. I put the two sections of outdoor carpet over our good carpet in an L-shaped area going from his bed around our bed. I close the bedroom door, and I put up the metal gate thing on the other end of the L-shaped carpet section. We now have an Easter egg acceptance area that rocks with both canine consideration and fecal utility. It was Easter-egg-proof. Not a square inch of good carpet to be even aimed at, let alone targeted successfully.
The perfect solution — Hadley loves it, Marge loves it. I love it because I thought of it.
So last night was the first night we used it. Everything went great. Hadley did not whimper. Marge was not fumbling around with the divorce papers. Me and my snore machine were sleeping. It was beautiful.
And then we noticed that the closet door was slightly nudged in. And we gently pushed back the door. And there, lying on the only exposed six-inch area of beautiful, formerly fecal-free carpet was, shall we say, an egg of a different color. The only six inches in the entire room, and Hadley had butt-nudged the closet door to expose it. It was incredible.
Yes, Virginia, there is an Easter Bunny.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Taking It In The Shorts (Cigar Smoke 11-13-08)
Well, I hate to admit it, but I’m devastated by the election. I feel raw inside. And I’m sure many of you are pretty damn concerned for me. I know you feel my pain. So I’m devastated. So be it.
I congratulate Barack Obama. I salute the guy. I think he ran the greatest campaign in American history. He kicked Hillary’s butt and took the other shoe and kicked John’s tush, too. And for the record, I think Obama is head and damn shoulders above either John Kerry or Al Gore. I would take Obama over those two stiffs any day. And I am glad that a black person has been elected president. I just wish it wasn’t this one.
So I salute Obama for his win. And he won the thing fair and square. I’m not going to whine. Yes, I feel like whining. But I am not going to go there. The guy beat us like a damn drum.
I will quibble with a few things, however. I don’t think quibbling is as unseemly as out-and-out whining. First of all, this whole change thing is disturbing to me. Not just because my guy lost. Like on election night, in his acceptance speech, Obama did a rather poor imitation of Martin Luther King when he said something like even if he personally didn’t get there, we would get there as a people.
What the hell does that mean? I’m serious. What is he talking about? Literally. Where is the “there”? I’m sure a lot of you just think I am dense, but would someone tell me in real words —without using the word hope or idealism — where does he want us to go? I really don’t know. Do you? What is on the mountaintop? And why won’t he get there? Why will we get there and he won’t? Why the drama?
Probably the most disturbing thing to me in the campaign was how Obama kept saying he would “fundamentally transform America.” I, for one, do not want America fundamentally transformed. I think America is the greatest country ever conceived and has been and remains the greatest country in the world. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have built the best country ever.
America has created the greatest democratic system of government ever known. We have championed freedom (not equality) to build the best economic system ever known. Capitalism, with all its shortcomings, has proved incredibly better than socialism. Our standard of living and quality of health care for such a large population is unprecedented. Our military has saved the world from many, many scumbag dictators and tyrants. We’re the most generous people ever to inhabit the planet, dwarfing help given by any other country. You want to change all that?
The fact that we even elected a black man to be president is the most recent proof of this. Not that I personally give a shit about race. I could care less that Obama is black. Sure, there is the historical symbolism and all that, but I would never vote for a person because of his skin color. Although I didn’t vote for Obama, I would have voted for Colin Powell a while back, and I would have voted for Condoleezza Rice this year. You know, sometimes discrimination isn’t racism.
Democrats have been pounding us on how bad we are here. How racist we are. How backward we are. Yada friggin yada. Well, over 50 million people voted for a black guy for president. Without Republicans and independents joining the Democrats and voting for him, he would have lost. You wanna change that?
Maybe now we won’t have to listen to the usual Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton blather. There’s a nice change. Maybe we can now shelve all those outdated affirmative action quotas.
You know, this change thing is growing on me.
Obama has openly said that he wants to have the Supreme Court redefine how our school system should be funded to help minorities. Wow! There’s a damn change for you. Why do we even need an executive branch of government or Congress or a Constitution or local governments?
And he advocates redistribution of our wealth. What those big words mean is that if you make $80,000 a year, he would like to take $60,000 of it and give it to three guys who haven’t worked, so everyone will be equal and make $20,000. Yes, I was exaggerating a little there, but not that much. Obama wants to change from equality of opportunity to just plain old equality. That’s a change I don’t want.
One last quibble. Obama says he wants to unify all of us in one glorious united America. Democrats and Republicans holding hands and singing John Denver songs. Pro-life church members coming over to pro-abortion advocates’ houses for nice Sunday dinners. Anti-war demonstrators throwing back a few beers with Marines. Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi dating. It’s gonna be nifty.
And while Obama was giving his inspirational and unifying acceptance speech, a large throng of Georgetown and other DC college students were out in front of the White House, mocking and jeering President Bush.
I’m feeling warm and fuzzy already.
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
I congratulate Barack Obama. I salute the guy. I think he ran the greatest campaign in American history. He kicked Hillary’s butt and took the other shoe and kicked John’s tush, too. And for the record, I think Obama is head and damn shoulders above either John Kerry or Al Gore. I would take Obama over those two stiffs any day. And I am glad that a black person has been elected president. I just wish it wasn’t this one.
So I salute Obama for his win. And he won the thing fair and square. I’m not going to whine. Yes, I feel like whining. But I am not going to go there. The guy beat us like a damn drum.
I will quibble with a few things, however. I don’t think quibbling is as unseemly as out-and-out whining. First of all, this whole change thing is disturbing to me. Not just because my guy lost. Like on election night, in his acceptance speech, Obama did a rather poor imitation of Martin Luther King when he said something like even if he personally didn’t get there, we would get there as a people.
What the hell does that mean? I’m serious. What is he talking about? Literally. Where is the “there”? I’m sure a lot of you just think I am dense, but would someone tell me in real words —without using the word hope or idealism — where does he want us to go? I really don’t know. Do you? What is on the mountaintop? And why won’t he get there? Why will we get there and he won’t? Why the drama?
Probably the most disturbing thing to me in the campaign was how Obama kept saying he would “fundamentally transform America.” I, for one, do not want America fundamentally transformed. I think America is the greatest country ever conceived and has been and remains the greatest country in the world. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have built the best country ever.
America has created the greatest democratic system of government ever known. We have championed freedom (not equality) to build the best economic system ever known. Capitalism, with all its shortcomings, has proved incredibly better than socialism. Our standard of living and quality of health care for such a large population is unprecedented. Our military has saved the world from many, many scumbag dictators and tyrants. We’re the most generous people ever to inhabit the planet, dwarfing help given by any other country. You want to change all that?
The fact that we even elected a black man to be president is the most recent proof of this. Not that I personally give a shit about race. I could care less that Obama is black. Sure, there is the historical symbolism and all that, but I would never vote for a person because of his skin color. Although I didn’t vote for Obama, I would have voted for Colin Powell a while back, and I would have voted for Condoleezza Rice this year. You know, sometimes discrimination isn’t racism.
Democrats have been pounding us on how bad we are here. How racist we are. How backward we are. Yada friggin yada. Well, over 50 million people voted for a black guy for president. Without Republicans and independents joining the Democrats and voting for him, he would have lost. You wanna change that?
Maybe now we won’t have to listen to the usual Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton blather. There’s a nice change. Maybe we can now shelve all those outdated affirmative action quotas.
You know, this change thing is growing on me.
Obama has openly said that he wants to have the Supreme Court redefine how our school system should be funded to help minorities. Wow! There’s a damn change for you. Why do we even need an executive branch of government or Congress or a Constitution or local governments?
And he advocates redistribution of our wealth. What those big words mean is that if you make $80,000 a year, he would like to take $60,000 of it and give it to three guys who haven’t worked, so everyone will be equal and make $20,000. Yes, I was exaggerating a little there, but not that much. Obama wants to change from equality of opportunity to just plain old equality. That’s a change I don’t want.
One last quibble. Obama says he wants to unify all of us in one glorious united America. Democrats and Republicans holding hands and singing John Denver songs. Pro-life church members coming over to pro-abortion advocates’ houses for nice Sunday dinners. Anti-war demonstrators throwing back a few beers with Marines. Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Pelosi dating. It’s gonna be nifty.
And while Obama was giving his inspirational and unifying acceptance speech, a large throng of Georgetown and other DC college students were out in front of the White House, mocking and jeering President Bush.
I’m feeling warm and fuzzy already.
Jim Laris is for the former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
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.
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.
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