Something Smells (Cigar Smoke 5-1-08)

OK, I’m getting tired of bad-mouthing ministers and schoolteachers. I thought I’d dip back into my well of boring drivel. It’s pretty much full most of the time.

I’m a creature of habit. I do the same damn things over and over. I go see hockey games in Canada every winter. I go to bush league baseball games every summer. I wear my same old ratty robe every dang night. I go outside and smoke my stogies after dinner, every damn day. And I wear the same darn cologne. (I’m out of D words. Doggone it.)

I have only used two brands of cologne in my entire life. Oh, sure, once I rebelliously splashed on some Brut in college and two squirrels jumped my nuts. But that’s another story. Of course, I started out using Old Spice. I’m not a commie. Every guy I knew used Old Spice. Since I was about 15, I just sprayed on some Old Spice and bounded out into the world like that happy-ass captain in the TV commercials. I think he got all the women. That pirate outfit is a damn babe magnet.

I used Old Spice for about 20 years and then for some forgotten reason I switched over to Chaps. I don’t know why. I think I just liked the name. Chaps — it fit perfectly for a lanky cowpoke such as myself. And you know what? Women liked it. I couldn’t believe it. I would walk into my office and some woman person would say, “You sure smell good.” And I’d turn around and there was no one else there. And I’d say, “You want to smell it a little closer after work?” And she’d say, “Not really, I’m going to get some for my boyfriend.” (By the way, it’s kind of funny, but most of the women I know all have the same first name: Plaintiff.)

But I swear women would always comment on my Chaps. Sometimes I’d be standing in line at the bank, and sure as Jimmy Carter is loopy, some woman would comment on my sweet smelling Chaps-doused face. Everywhere I went I got some nice feedback. Even when I went to my favorite donut place, the Chinese woman behind the counter would say, “You smell berry wood.” I think that was a compliment. But I could be terwibbly wong.

I’m sorry. I kid the Chinese. This nice donut woman was nothing like those Tibet-enslaving commie bastards in her home country.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I was running low on my supply of Chaps, so I went on the Internet to order a few bottles at half the cost of California cologne and save the taxes and feel defiant and try to stick it to Rob Reiner for screwing me on the cigar taxes, and I get on this fragrance Web site and damned if all the women on there aren’t saying great things about Chaps. They just love Chaps. I am not kidding. Even out-of-state women love Chaps.

And then I read a message in a forum post. Some woman from Maryland just casually let it slip, and it kind of jolted me. She said something like, yes, she loved Chaps, and yes, it turned her on when her husband wore it, and yes, it made her want to get out of her skivvies, and yada yada, and then she said, “Of course, it’s not Paul Sebastian.”

It’s not Paul who? Paul Sebastian? Who in hell’s bells is Paul Sebastian? Probably some pissy Frenchman with an eye-patch and a beret. So what did I do? I ordered three bottles of Chaps and one disgustingly expensive bottle of Paul Sebastian. I thought, “Hey Chaps face, you’ve been wearing Chaps for 32 years. Maybe it’s time to switch to a little Sebastian action. Maybe if it made Marge rip your clothes off, you’d remember what to do when you’re naked.”

So it came in the mail the other day and I generously splashed some on my cheeks and I walked out of the bathroom and the first one to notice me was my personal man’s best friend, Hadley. He knows that whenever I put on my Chaps, he’s probably going for a walk. He gets excited every day at the first smell of Chaps.

Well, I threw that fur ball for a doggy loop, baby. He took one whiff of that Sebastian shit and he cocked his long Airedale head, and he looked at me out of the corner of his canine-acal eye, and he did something I didn’t think dogs could do. He coughed.

I probably should have taken that as a bad sign, but I live on the what? The edge. That’s what. Danger is my co-pilot. So I went out to the kitchen and Marge was sitting at the table reading the paper, and I walked up to her and put my Sebastian-splashed face right up next to hers, raised my eyebrows twice, and said, “You notice anything different?” And she said, “I don’t know, I can’t concentrate. There’s this bad smell.”

That was cold. I paid $59 for this?! Fifty-nine bucks to be rejected and humiliated. What a sucker. What a Sebastian suck-face sucker I was. I was stunned. So I decided to get another opinion, and I went over to Starbucks and I was standing in line, and the woman next to me coughed very much like Hadley had coughed, and the guy next to her was looking at me like I was a French dude from Paree. And I said, “I used to be a pirate and a cowboy.” He didn’t say jack. He just looked through me. And reversed sniffed a couple of times. He was probably from UCLA.

And when I got to the front of the line, I was hoping for some kind of donut-lady positive response to my new cologne. And I got my order, and well, I just waited there a second. I didn’t move. And the girl behind the counter said, “Is something wrong?”

And I kind of stumbled a bit, and finally said, “Uh, I was just wondering if you, uh, smelled something?” I looked at her expectantly for some Chaps-like love.

She said, “Oh, I’m sorry sir. The restroom backed up. We’re having someone come out soon.”

I think you and I both know who that will be. Paul Sebastian.

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

Black and White (Cigar Smoke 4-24-08)

I guess Joe Hopkins, the publisher of the Pasadena Journal, didn’t like my column on the Good Rev. Wrong a couple of weeks ago. Well, I don’t know quite where to begin in my “ranting” rebuttal.

Joe and I go back a few years. When I first bought the Pasadena Weekly in 1988, I wrote a column about him putting a subhead on his paper — “The Newspaper for Black People.” Something like that. I thought he was a racist for doing that. He seemed to agree, because he stopped putting that offensive line on his paper.

And he seems to discount my reflections on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama because of my supposed profanity. Well, yes Joe, I did use a few bad words like damn and pissed-off. (Hell, I thought you liberals would like that shit.) But Joe, I’m sure you have used your column to rail against the black rappers who have used their highly hip-hopping artistic-level profanity by using the f-word, the c-word, the b-word and the n-word to degrade blacks and women. Why don’t you send me some copies of those columns, Joe?

And Joe, I don’t give a hoot (is the h-word OK?) where you go to church. Don’t give me this red herring about me wanting to tell you where to go to church. I never said that, and I don’t care what church you or Obama attends. All I care about is Obama listening to hate speech coming from the pulpit of the church he attended and doing nothing about it … for 20 years!

Which sermon did you and your other “enlightened black folks” find the most spiritually uplifting? The one where he called America the KKK of A.? Or the one where he preached that we white guys started AIDS to kill off black people? Or maybe it was the one where he eloquently moralized that white people caused the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11? Hmm? Whatever happened to the Sermon on the Mount?

And that First Amendment whining of yours. Who the hell is stopping you from speaking your mind? Nobody. You have a damn newspaper, for Christ’s sake! You just don’t like it when someone responds. Well, Joe, I’m just using my First Amendment right to call you and Obama and the Rev. Wrong on your misguided, racist comments. If you can’t stand the heat, then get out of the damn kitchen. Just call me a racist jerk in your newspaper if you like, but please, save me the whining about how I want to stop you from speaking your mind.

Yes, I said Obama’s wife was “ungrateful” because she is ungrateful. She doesn’t seem to thank anybody for her opportunity to get a good education and for her and Obama to make over $4 million. What part of “ungrateful” am I missing?

And yes, I didn’t say Hillary Clinton was “ungrateful” because, well, she isn’t. She may be a lot of things, but she has often thanked a lot of people for her many opportunities and for her and her hubby’s ability to make a tidy little $109 million over the last few years.

And Joe, of course I respected Martin Luther King. I was devastated when he was murdered. It was one of the most sickening moments of my life. I visited his memorial in Memphis and was very moved. I still get shivers. But, please don’t equate Rev. King with Rev. Wrong and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X. In my opinion, Jackson is nothing more than a publicity-hungry extortionist of businesses for mostly phony race issues. Sharpton lied about a black woman being raped and nobody gives a damn. And I don’t have space or stomach enough to tell you what I think of Farrakhan and Malcolm X. I can tell you this, though. They’re not Martin Luther King.

And what is all this bull-word calling me “Massa” Laris? Give me a break. Joe, who in the hell have I ever kept down on the metaphorical plantation? I have never tried to stifle anybody, ever. Black or white. Just because I speak my mind you think I’m trying to keep blacks down? Come on, Joe. You know that’s bullshit (hide your eyes). I’ll give you a thousand bucks if you can find any proof of me even hinting at stifling anyone’s speech. It’s ludicrous, and you should apologize. But I guess black people don’t apologize, either, huh, Joe?

If I may go a little shrinky on you here, Joe, I think you’re mainly pissed off at me because I don’t feel the adequate amount of guilt over slavery and racial prejudice that you think I should. And to be fair, you’re right. I don’t feel much guilt. I know I can’t convey how much I abhor the evils of slavery and I know that prejudice exists. And I know I’m white, and obviously, I haven’t been in you or your ancestors’ shoes. That’s how it is. I’m a white guy. Sorry.

But, I didn’t have any slaves, my parents didn’t have any slaves, their parents didn’t have any slaves. Slavery was 200 years ago. We fought the Civil War to stop slavery. Hundreds of thousands of white guys died to stop slavery. Doesn’t that count for something? Have you ever thanked us white guys who helped you attain freedom? Maybe you have. If you have, I haven’t heard about it.

I’m not naïve about the black struggle. It has been ugly. But you know what? It’s not anywhere near as ugly as it has been. And today we have black governors and black mayors and black senators, and black police chiefs and a black Supreme Court justice and a black secretary of state. That should count for something, Joe.

And maybe we’ll even have a black president. I hope it’s not this black candidate because I don’t think Obama has the chops. But I’m glad he is in the fight. A fight without any pulled punches. Let him take the damn heat, like every other candidate always has. Let the press rip him. Don’t call it a “distraction” when you are asked hard questions. We’re just trying to see what you’re made of.

The last thing we need in America is an affirmative action president.

Enough is Enough (Cigar Smoke 4-17-08)

A few weeks ago they came out with the latest assessment of our high schools. You know the one: 80 percent of kids in Detroit don’t graduate, 69 percent in Chicago, 50 percent in LA. Maybe those stats aren’t exactly right. You know me. But the point is that our schools are doing an incredibly bad job of educating and graduating our kids.

And what do the Democrats want to do to fix it? Of course, they want more money. That’s all they ever want, is more money. But more money ain’t gonna do diddly. How do we know this? Because we’ve been giving them more money for more than 50 years. You talk about a poor learning curve. I used to vote to give money for every school bond, but for the past number of years I always vote not to do it any more. Enough is enough.

In California, the Democrats have held power for over 50 years. That’s a half-century to you high school dropouts. Except for those few years when we had Reagan and Deukmejian and Wilson, the Democrats have been in control of our state and our school system, and the school system has gone down faster than Monica Lewinsky. As the guy on Jim Rome says, “Its just unbeevable.”

To me, the answers are relatively simple. But I’ve learned that simple answers are usually the hardest to employ (like our non-graduates). The first obvious problem is the teachers union. Yes, I know there are good teachers, and I sure know they have to work in horrible conditions. And most parents are part of the problem, too. But the teachers union stands out. The definition of a union is that it’s a group of people who are negotiating for their own interests. The teachers’ interests are more important than the interests of the students. To the teachers, that’s not necessarily wrong. It’s just what a union is for.

Of course, the teachers will say, as they have for 50 years, that the students’ interests come first. That’s nuts. Do you think the auto workers union thinks the car buyers interests come first? Hah. Do you think the bus drivers union strikes to help the riders? Double hah. Do you think the restaurant workers are striking to get better meals for us customers? Double hah with a yuck.

It’s a conflict of interest. Even a drop out non-graduating lump of dumbed-down dumbness can figure that one out. And the schools themselves have a similar conflict of interest. They get money based on how many students they have enrolled. Not much of an incentive there to kick out the disruptive students, huh? Fat chance that either the teachers’ union or the schools would even consider a voucher plan. It’s against their interests. Why the hell should they? They would obviously lose students to other schools. Probably better schools.

Everywhere vouchers have been tried they have been successful. Competition just makes things better. Period. It does in every other area of life. Why shouldn’t it in education? It should and it would, but the teachers and schools do NOT want this. Even though a voucher program makes the students better, it does not make things better for teachers and school systems. It’s that simple. Or that hard. Follow the money.

Another obvious problem in the school system is the discipline problem. From what I hear, most high schools have a real problem keeping the little darlings in line. All the students who want to learn are constantly being interrupted by the jerk-offs. And the teachers can’t control them because of our politically correct bullshit that doesn’t allow them to do what has to be done. The ACLU is a major contributor to this craziness with their constant harping about how many rights the students should have. That is nuts.

Why should students have all these supposed rights? They’re just kids. They’re supposed to be learning from the adults who have those rights because they’re older and smarter and have earned them. Hell, kids don’t have the right to drink until they are 21. Kids don’t have the right to drive until they are 16. Etc. Etc. So why in the hell do they have the right to wear obscene T-shirts and disrupt classes and spout off about anything their little uneducated butts want to?

It seems to me that if students disrupt a class they should be expelled. They should be sent to some other school that specializes in giving them an education in some trade like auto mechanics or plumbing or dress making or computer training. It would not be that hard to do. If they behave, they get the privilege of staying in the regular school. If they’re disruptive, they’re sent to a trade school.

The misfits will probably do better and the regular schools will be far better off. Even the teachers would be happier. It’s not that hard, folks. And if the jerk-offs disrupt the trade school, they’re gone. Let them get a job.

And why don’t our high schools just stop teaching all these unnecessary courses about gender politics and global warming and gay marriage and proper condom use and whatever else is the latest pissy social fad. Seems to me teachers and schools (and the parents) should concentrate on the basics: reading, writing, math, science. When they get that graduation rate over 90 percent, then they can add classes on why we should hate oil companies or something.

And I just heard that over 40 percent of our students are illegal aliens. And that we spend more than $10 billion a year on them. To be honest, I’m not 100 percent sure on those exact numbers. Maybe I heard them wrong. But I am sure that they are pretty close, and I am sure that that’s a lot of money. Heck, with that kind of money, maybe the Democrats and the teachers union (sorry, they’re the same organization) wouldn’t keep asking us for more money every election.

I guess that would be too simple.

The Good Reverend Wrong (Cigar Smoke 4-10-08)

I took Hadley for a walk at the Rose Bowl the other day, and on the way home I stopped at a Starbucks. The car just turned into the parking lot. I couldn’t control it.

And as I was walking in to get my coffee cappuccino de latte with two shots of caramel and one shot of vanilla/cinnamon with a jolt of whipped cream and some pumpkin syrup left over from Halloween, I noticed a news rack. There was a copy of the Los Angeles Sentinel in there and a headline read “Jeremiah the Wright Message for America.”

The only reason I didn’t throw up my café de espresso magnifico was that I hadn’t ordered it yet. What a disgusting headline. And right under it was another story headline that read “Barack Obama Shows America What It Means to Be Presidential.”

Talk about regurgitation.

When I first saw all that bullshit with the Rev. Wrong I knew Obama was dead meat. He’s done. If the Democrats don’t put a fork in that guy, they are truly self-destructive. In my humble opinion, he has no friggame of a chance to win the general election. He makes Hillary look like she has character.

The damn Sentinel is defending the Rev. Wrong for calling our country the KKK of A. They’re defending him for saying that the United States intentionally spread AIDS to kill African Americans. The Rev. Wrong rants that the United States sells drugs to black people to keep them down. The Rev. Wrong spews out conspiracy crap that we brought the Sept. 11 attacks on ourselves. He calls us the same as al-Qaida. The Rev. Wrong high-fives Farrakhan. The Rev. Wrong goes to Libya. And the Sentinel just laps it up.

Give me a frigging break. That’s journalism? I guess they just didn’t think the Rev. Wrong needed to provide any evidence for his weak-ass, bogus charges. Nope. I guess as long as he was black and pissed off, that was all they needed. Evidence is for other people. Something to back up the bullshit would be too much to ask of the Rev. Wrong. All the Sentinel needs is some frothing at the mouth. I’ll give you frothing. I just upchucked my Starbucks. Again.

And all this worship of Obama. That speech he gave on race was a good speech on race. The only problem was that the problem wasn’t race. The problem was maturity and judgment. The problem was Obama didn’t have too much of either. Obama danced around the Rev. Wrong. He turned the good reverend’s hate speech into a discussion on race. Imagine if a white politician sat in a church for 20 years — two damn decades — and the white frothing minister was in favor of the KKK and hated blacks and blamed blacks for every damn thing wrong with the country, and the white politician just sat there on his white butt and never said anything and got married in that church and had his kids baptized in that church, and he called that frother his friend and he admired him and he took the title of his book from him and he stood behind the frothing pastor because he was a good man whose words were just taken out of context. Can you imagine that?

Then imagine that if the white politician gave a speech on race relations, it would make it all better, and he would be a statesman, and would show America how to be presidential. The only thing more disgusting than the Sentinel’s take on all this is to see The New York Times and all the other mainstream media fall all over themselves in praise of the guy who wouldn’t condemn all that racist bullshit. Black racism. Yes, there are bigots on both sides, Virginia. Not that you’d know that if you read or watched most of the press.

As I said, I think Obama has no chance to win in November. Those tapes of the Rev. Wrong will be played over and over, as well they should be. Of course, it will be called a vast right-wing conspiracy and the Republicans will just be out to smear poor little Rev. Wrong-loving Obama. And then when all these people in the Midwest and South, and in rural areas, hell, basically everywhere, see all that Rev. Wrong ranting and hating America, and then you couple that with Obama’s ungrateful Ivy League-school-attending wife saying she was never proud of America until her hubby ran for president, he doesn’t have a, well, a prayer. In or out of church.

I am not a Hillary fan, but baby, she’s all the Democrats have now. And give me a break about this whining by Obama about the superdelegates. Not to sound too much like Geraldine Ferraro, but if Obama weren’t black, you would never even hear about how unfair this whole delegate thing would be. This politics business is a rough business.

So what if Obama had more votes than Clinton? It’s not about having the most (but not quite enough) votes, it’s about winning the nomination. Hell, will the Democrats really nominate a guy who will have lost all the big states: California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida? Jesus, if the Democrats didn’t have their crazy pro-rated primary system and it was a winner-take-all deal, Hillary would have won easily.

But that is how it is. Hillary has to live with that. And Obama is going to have to live with some superdelegate shit. Hey, what the hell are smoky back rooms for anyway?

So, if Obama loses the nomination, he won’t have lost it because he is black. He will have lost it because he lost it. Period. Someone else beat him. In this case, it might be Hillary.

If he loses the nomination, he should just take it like a man. If he says he lost because he was black, that won’t be true. Just as it wouldn’t be true if Hillary would say she lost because she was a woman. Nope. Not true. In either case.

The best politician will win.

In either case the Sentinel will lose.

Trivial Pursuits (Cigar Smoke 4-3-08)

While you guys were working on a Wednesday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I was, well, not working, so I went to see the “Jeopardy” king Ken Jennings at the Altadena Library. It was kind of cool. There were 79 other non-working lowlifes like myself. Some lower than others. But all of us were pretty damn low.

Yes, 80 of us were at an event that was held at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday. That’s pretty remarkable. It’s hard to get 80 people to show up on a Wednesday for gold ingot giveaways. I know, because usually it’s me and seven other losers attending an astronomy seminar or something. Hey, Uranus is fascinating, dammit.

I guess I went to see what Ken Jennings was really like and to see if he was going to dish some dirt on old Alex Trebek, the “Jeopardy” host. (By the way, I know that the title of the show “Jeopardy” has an exclamation point after it, but my spelling and grammar checker was getting so pissy on me that I’m leaving it out. I just wanted you to know that I am not so much of a Wednesday-event-attending loser that I didn’t know that there was an exclamation point there. I feel better now!!!!!!)

But Ken was disappointingly normal. He seemed to be a pretty good guy to me. He’s married and has a kid, and he bought a house with a part of his $2.5 million “Jeopardy” winnings. He was clean-cut and casually dressed and seemed pretty relaxed and regular to me. $2.5 million has a way of doing that I guess.

I had heard that he had dissed Alex on his Web site. He informed us that all of that him-not-liking-Alex hype was blown out of proportion because of a misunderstanding of something he posted on the site. He says Alex is a good guy … for a Canadian — much looser and funnier when not on the air. Says he’s a friendly, hard-working professional.

That was not what I was hoping to hear. I was hoping to hear that Alex was wearing that hand cast because he had backhanded his wife and when she cried, Alex backhanded his dog and when his dog yelped he backhanded his accountant, who was there to help him cheat on his taxes. But no. Ken likes Alex. He had nothing bad to say about him. I was shaken.

So I went to get a bottle of water at the back table and, as long as I was there, I picked up my second chocolate chip cookie. All Wednesday afternoon events have cookies — it’s the law. Then I went back to my seat. And the woman next to me saw my chocolate chip cookie and held up two fingers and shook her head in quiet disapproval. Bitch. That’s another word that could use an exclamation point!

I’m sorry. She was probably a nice lady. I was just feeling guilty for having the second cookie and even feeling guilty for even being there at all on a Wednesday while all of you were working and I was not working and enjoying life — and it was very stressful, if you like to be lied to.

Not much else went on. Ken gave us all a trivia quiz and then showed us his brand new book about trivia. (What a coincidence.) There were 25 questions. The three winners got 18 or 19 right. I got 12 right. I asked the nice lady next to me how many she got right. She showed me a finger that was not her thumb, forefinger, ring finger, or pinkie. “Only one right, huh?” I said.

Then they had a little “Jeopardy”-like game show and the winner got a copy of the book. And then Ken opened it up for questions. All the usual questions. What was Alex like? How did it feel to win so much money? I raised my hand, but Ken never called on me. I was going to ask, “Ken, since you won $2.5 million on ‘Jeopardy,’ why do you have to sell books that tell us that you won $2.5 million on ‘Jeopardy?’ Isn’t the $2.5 million enough, Ken? Ken, how about giving the book money to the starving children or cancer research or donating money to the Dodgers so we can get a decent third baseman?” Or I was thinking about asking him what the most materialistic thing was that he had bought with the money. A Corvette? A Fat Burger franchise? Elliot Spitzer’s Emperor’s Club Membership? But he never called on me. Maybe it was because my raised hand had a half-eaten cookie in it. I don’t know.

By the way, Ken’s answers were not in the form of a question — probably because the questions were in the form of a question, and that took the edge off things. As I was saying, after the questioning ended, Ken graciously sat up in the front of the room and graciously signed copies of his two books selling for a gracious total of $36. (Yes, I bought both of them.) Every time he would sign a book, he would graciously enter a number on his little calculator. If all 80 of us bought both books, he made $2,880 bucks. In one afternoon, for one hour on a Wednesday. Sheesh, that’s $2,880 an hour. Pretty good pay.

Alex: “Loser mid-week suckers.”

Ken: “Who buys two books about something they’ve already seen on Jeopardy!?”

So as I was walking out to my car, carrying both my books, and, because I am a what, I am a journalist, and I must tell the truth, except if it will help a Republican, I have to tell you that, yes, I was eating my third cookie. I know, I know. There were 80 of us there. I’m guessing they had four-dozen cookies laid out. That’s 48 cookies. And I ate three. That’s almost 4 percent of the cookies. Eaten by one person — me. That lady next to me was right. And not only was she right. She was right there, walking to her car with me.

I gave her a little toast-like gesture with my cookie. Just raised it up a little in good-natured pissiness, like a glass of wine. “Have a nice day,” I said. She gave me a second one-gun salute.

See what you’re missing on a Wednesday afternoon.

The Good Old Days (Cigar Smoke 3-27-08)

I bet you were really hoping that I would write something nostalgic about my past. Hey, your hopes are my marching orders. “I don’t know, but I been told, Laris is still writing, cause he ain’t cold.” Yet.

Now that gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon, I was remembering when I was a 16-year-old kid and I would get gas for 17 cents a gallon. Yes, 17 cents. I would fill up my 15-gallon tank for $2.55. Yes, $2.55. Ah, the good old days.

I would drive my old 1949 Ford with a dropped-in but not-bolted-down Merc engine and no carpeting or floor linings. Just a metal floor where you could see the road through the holes. And the fumes would waft up into the car and we would breathe in those wafty fumes and we liked it like that.

But then, just when we were enjoying our wafting fumes, gas prices shot up to 19 cents a gallon. We couldn’t believe it. We were outraged. We were shocked. We were Ray Stevens-incensed. I’m not kidding. We were really ticked off. I remember hunting for another station that sold it for 17 cents. But alas, there were none. It was 19 cents or stop driving. I paid the price.

And right around that time I was in the habit of eating hamburgers at a place fittingly called Hamburger Handout. They were great little burgers all greased up and ready to go. And they cost 19 cents each. We’d buy a few of those suckers and some fries and Cokes and get change back from our $2 and we’d take those handed-out burgers back to the car to flavor them with some wafted gas fumes, and life was good.

But as I would soon learn, life would not stay good. Another restaurant opened up nearby. Maybe you’ve heard of it. McDonald’s. Yes, McDonald’s opened up one of their first restaurants in Westchester on La Tijera, just up the hill from the Hamburger Handout.

Well, some buddies of mine talked me into going over there and trying out one of these new hamburgers. And I had them help me jump-start my Ford and we all went to McDonald’s. For the first time.

And you know what? Here’s what. Their hamburger cost 21 cents! We were outraged. We were shocked. Ray Stevens would have thrown up. But we were there and we were hearing all these great things about this new kind of hamburger place and so we bought one hamburger to check it out. We didn’t buy any fries or drinks. Nothing else. Just one damn burger.

And you know what? My friends actually liked it. They turned over the top bun and saw that pickle lying in that splotch of ketchup and they liked it. I kind of liked it too, but I said I would never go back because I could get a Hamburger Handout hamburger for two cents less and it had onions and lettuce and some other goop on it.

And then I made a pronouncement. I remember saying that McDonald’s would never make it. It was just a matter of time before they would go under. Nobody would pay two cents more for a hamburger. Nobody.

And you know what happened? Hamburger Handout went out of business within three months. McDonald’s hadn’t even sold its one-millionth hamburger yet. Yep, I still can’t figure it out. Fifty years later and I still can’t figure it out. If I would have put my money in McDonald’s I would now have $6 billion and could get a car with carpeting.

Ah, but we liked being poor back then. We liked figuring out how to save two cents on gas and burgers. We were so poor that they hadn’t invented dirt yet. So at least we weren’t dirt poor. All they had back then was bedrock, so we had to take little pick- axes and break up the bedrock so we could play in the dirt. But we liked it like that.

And not only gas and hamburgers were cheap. I remember driving up Highway 101 to go to Humboldt State College in 1960 and I stopped at a Motel 6. And yes, Virginia, at that time you could stay at a Motel 6 for, you guessed it, $6. You’d give the clerk a 10, and he’d give you four bucks back. Enough for dinner and a tank of gas and a dirty magazine.

But then another motel chain opened up another motel and it was called, I think, Motel 8. Now, you could get a better room (I guess they washed the roaches) for two bucks more. I don’t know. It makes me nervous just remembering it. I’m not proud of this, but I once stayed in a hotel in Hawaii a few years ago for $365. (The roaches were spotless.) Yes —do the math — I could have stayed at a Motel 6 for 60 days.

But back then we were so poor we didn’t even have water. No, I don’t mean we didn’t have access to water. They had not invented water yet. We had H and O. Yes, all we got was some sticky, globby stuff. But then finally some smart guy gave us two Hs and the rest was history. H-2-0. Oh, how we loved water. It’s probably my favorite invention. Not counting TiVo.

One last nostalgic memory (what other kind are there?) and then you can get back to your crying about $4 gas prices. I remember my mom dropping my sister and me off at the show in 1947. Yes, 1947. I was 6. Most of you were 0.

She dropped us off at a theater in Lomita. And she gave us each a quarter. The movies cost nine cents to get in. And then we had 16 cents for candy. And we stayed there all day. Eight hours. And we saw “Clutching Hand” serials and “MovieTone News” and “Flash Gordon” and 100 cartoons. And we would count down the 100 cartoons. 100, 99, 98, etc. And if they didn’t show us all 100, we would be Ray Stevens incensed even before Ray Stevens was born. And we would clap and stomp and roar and spit JuJuBees at girls and ushers.

And we liked it like that.



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

The Thinker (Cigar Smoke 3-13-08)

I was watching television the other night, and it was getting pretty late, and I was skipping through the commercials on Letterman, and then I heard this noise behind the TV set. At first I wasn't too concerned. I hear noises now and then. Some of them aren't even voices in my head. But then I heard it again. It was a little louder. And then the TV picture was gone. No picture at all. But there were those little codes in the upper left hand corner of the screen. This will become important later.

Anyway, because I had heard actual noises, I thought maybe a rat had got in there and eaten the wires. That's not too far-fetched, because earlier in the year a rat did indeed eat through our telephone wires outside. I thought maybe he was cold and wanted a midnight stack indoors. I don't know.

So I looked behind the TV set, cautiously, so as not to be rat attacked. There was not a rat. Not even a rat pellet. Just a few candy bar wrappers and some Jimmy Hoffa stuff. That was it.

So, being the thinker that I am, I said to myself, "Hey, Thinker Face, why is my TV dead?" And I answered myself, "I don't know and I don't care. I'm tired and I'm going to bed." And I did. Slept like a lanky baby.

Then, in the morning, I went back out to the family room, hoping the TV set had fixed itself. I turned it on. Same problem. The power actually went on, but there wasn't a picture. And there was this little error message from Charter that said Weak or No Signal. I've seen that before, and I have been able to figure it out. But this time, my fixes didn't work.

So then I started to feel sorry for myself and whine and curse out Charter and Samsung and TiVo and their horses. I've always found that if I don't feel sorry for myself and whine and curse, I can't fix any problem. That's always my first step. This time though, the cursing and whining didn't do diddly, except scare the doo-doo out of my dog dog. That's another story.

Then I made the rational decision to be mature. (This occurs, on average, twice a decade for me.) I was going to be mature and just think the problem through and solve it. So I said to myself, "Mature Face, think about this and try to figure out what exactly is the problem?" So I started thinking.

I thought like a pro, baby. And whenever I try to actually think, I call upon my three role models. (No, not Curly, Larry, and Moe.) I look deep deep into my brain, close to where fire and the wheel were conceived, and I try to visualize Richard Feynman (Caltech whiz) Scott Peck ("The Road Less Traveled" whiz), and Robert Persig ("Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" whiz.) If these guys can't solve a problem, well, I guess I'll just have to take a whiz.

So we all meet in my brain. Yes, it's a bit crowded, but comfortable. We throw back a few beers. Richard tells us about some babe, and Scott is still counting his money - out loud, and Robert says, "Damn, I wish I could write a frigging second book!"

And then they ask me what I've been up to. I say, "Scrabble."

OK, yes, I had to help them up. Those laughing bastards. Spilled beer all over my frontal cortex.

So, I'm sitting on the couch with these three turkeys in my head, and I look at the TV area. And I say to myself, "Just think. Just think it through." So I start thinking so hard my nose hairs are burning. And I just look at the whole, excuse the expression, picture, which, by the way, isn't there.

And then I notice something. Although the power to the TV is on, there is no power on any of the other electronic bullshit goodies I have stacked next to it. The TiVo controller is dead. The VCR player is dead. The DVD player is dead. The Bose Sound System is dead. (I wish I were dead.) No lights on at all. The lights on all four of the other systems are not on. It's darker than death in a black hole with dead batteries. That's pretty dark.

So I think. Why is the power on only the TV and not the other crud? I ask Dick and Scott and Bob what they think. They suggest, "Since you're so mature, you figure it out. Brain-ass." So I was on my own.

I got up off the couch. Went behind the TV again and looked at how the power was hooked up. And sure enough, the TV was plugged into the wall. But the other four electronic gizmos were plugged into a power strip. Not the same source of power.

I was so excited I wept quietly to myself. (I'm generally not a quiet weeper.) Then I wiped the tears away and unplugged all the stuff from the power strip and re-plugged them all into this surge protector multiple-outlet thing that came with the TV.

If my thinking had been right, I would have solved this problem. I went back out in front of the TV and I looked over at the stack of controllers and players and damned if all the little red lights weren't all on. It was beautiful. I upped the volume of my weeping.

Then I turned the TV back on. And I saw the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was a naked woman reading the Hockey News. (No, no, that was Feynman.) What I saw was that little dancing TiVo logo bouncing on the screen. And it reset the whole deal and the THX sound came booming on and life was good.

Yes, yes, my TV was working again. And more importantly, I had fixed it. Yes, me. I had fixed it. Just by thinking. I had figured it out. I was a thinker! Maybe there is a statue in my future of my still quite youthful nude thinking body with my elbow on my knee and my face resting thoughtfully in my hand.

Who would've thunk it?

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