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.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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?”
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?”
Thursday, October 16, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
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.
Like, let’s take Sept. 25. Just a couple of weeks ago. A regular Thursday. I was feeling pretty damn happy and was walking around with my head held high and my stomach held out and my arrogance was really working for me, and most of the people I know hated me even more than usual because the Dodgers had clinched their division and SC was ranked No. 1 in the country and I was more insufferable than succotash.
And then within a span of six hours SC got beat by a midget up at Oregon State and my sports joy was wiped out and I wanted to hurt panda bears and break things and cry and whine and blame and become a Beaver fan and burn the house and die. The sports gods had turned on me. In one day. In one-fourth of a day. They just couldn’t let me bask in my arrogance for a freaking full day.
I know you’re feeling my pain. Especially you UCLA fans. All I can say is thanks and, Brigham Young 59-0. I think I’m starting to recover.
The misery of being a sports fan can rear its ugly noggin in a lot of ways. Just before the Dodgers got into the playoffs I went to a game at Dodger Stadium, and I was watching Manny be Manny, and choking on a corned beef sandwich (me, not Manny) with no condiments on it, and it’s the seventh inning so we’re all standing up and stretching and singing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and this German guy behind me is talking real loud in a German accent and he’s saying, “You know, you Americans are kind of crazy. Just vat is Crackerjacks, anyway?” I am not making this up. He actually inquired as to what Crackerjacks is.
So I turned around to him and I said, “You don’t know what Crackerjacks is? You Third Reich goose-stepping swine maggot, how would you feel if I came over to one of your boot-stomping Nazi cities and saw some long stubby round brown things being grilled and I said “Just what is sausages, anyway? What would you say to that, Bratwurst Face?!”
He didn’t respond, so I said, “What if I went to one of your October gardens and watched a bunch of you suspender-sporting gazuntites all polka-ing your industrial-weight butts off and I inquired as to what you were drinking? Is zat beer?” Ah, sauerkraut this!
OK, I’m calming down.
I’m not sure how much longer I can keep being a sports fan. My blood pressure is now measured by how far blood spurts out my nose and hits the sidewalk. I’m up to being able to spurt over a hopscotch chalk outline now.
Another example of sports fan torture: I decide to go to an NFL game. It’s the first pro football game I’ve been to since the Rams left LA. So I buy three pretty pricy tickets for a Chargers game. The home opener. These tickets are not cheap. They’re on the 30-yard line, about 18 rows up. Damn good seats. So I invite my son Casey and his girlfriend Jessie to go with me.
We take the Metro down to Qualcom Stadium and go inside and sit down at our wonderful (expensive) seats, and I am smiling like I’m a pretty cool parent and Casey and Jessie should be grateful and always somehow owe me. So the game starts and we all stand up to cheer on the Chargers. Go Chargers! Kill those guys in different colored uniforms! We don’t care if they are other people’s husbands and sons. Kill them!
And then we sit down. But the fans in front of us do not sit down. I think, OK, maybe it’s some San Diego tradition to stand for the first series of plays. So we stand up and cheer. Go Chargers! Maim those brothers and uncles of other families! Make their sisters and aunts cry!
Well, those rat-bastard fans stood up for the whole game. Yes, the first 17 rows of fans all stood up for the entire game. We, being in the 18th row, had to stand up, too, and I, being a person who has been old enough to drink now for 46 years, had to stand too. I did not like this. My legs did not like this. My bones did not like this. My diabetes and hypertension were arguing. I did not like traveling for two hours and paying a lot of money to stand up for three-and-a-half hours in 90-degree heat. I did not like this. I was an angry sports fan. My cheers changed. Go Chargers! Kill the fans in front of us! After you kill them, Chargers, make their lifeless bodies be horizontal so we can see over them and see you kill Carolina Panther players like we paid for! Go Chargers!
I hate sports. I hate the horse that sports rode in on. I hate horses without riders. I hate riders without horses, who are sometimes referred to as pedestrians. I hate pedestrians. I hate pedestrians who like sports. I’m just giving up on sports and going back to what I do best.
Complaining.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
180 Degrees from Somewhere (Cigar Smoke 10-2-08)
You know what I like about life? You just never know what the hey-hey is going to happen. That’s what I like. Like the other day I get up and I go to my computer and I have this little reminder that pops up that I have to send a photo I took on my iPhone to my old friend, Jim Ludwig. He’s 20 days older than me, dammit!
I hadn’t been able to figure out how to do this until my son, Casey, showed me, and lovingly added on, “You dummy.” Anyway, I actually transferred the photo from my iPhone to my Mac and then I emailed it to Jim the Elder as an attachment. I’ll wait until the applause dies down.
Jim gets the photo and emails back to me, “Thanks, I didn’t think you’d be able to figure that out. You just learned how to use the on/off switch last year.” Jim and I have had a great friendship for about 60 years. The only other thing I have ever had for about 60 years is bowel movements.
Anyway, Jim asked me if I would like to have lunch, so I email back to him that I have a wild hair and I would like to go to an old favorite of mine from high school called Kelbo’s in Culver City. It’s a Hawaiian barbecue kind of place that had great appetizers and rum drinks and all that bullshit. I like that in a restaurant.
So Jim says he’ll check it out first and get back to me. Well, he does. And he breaks my heart and tells me that Kelbo’s is gone —it is now a gentlemen’s club. My heart comes back to life a little and I ask Jim if he thinks they offer barbecue sauce with the lap dances. Jim says, “Why don’t you let me pick out the lunch spot this time, dummy.” He and Casey must have talked.
So he finds some place in Azusa that he found on something called Yelp online. He said he tried to find a Hawaiian-type barbecue place and all he could come up with was a Thai place that specialized in barbequed country food. I told him he was the perfect guy to fix the sub-prime fiasco. So instead of going to Kelbo’s in Culver City we went to Thai Piglets in Azusa. Holy barbecue sauce. Now that’s pretty damn life, isn’t it? If that ain’t 180 degrees from somewhere, then I don’t know my compass, baby.
He comes over to pick me up in his new Prius hutmobile and I help him wind the rubber band and we start off to Azusa. Actually, I was impressed. The Prius is pretty cool. It’s part electric, part gasoline, and part sewing machine. It has this little indicator gizmo that shows you how many miles per gallon you’re getting while you’re driving. (Most of us just have our wives.) Like sometimes he’d be getting 50 miles per gallon and then he’d go down a hill and he’d literally be getting 100 miles per gallon. He averages over 40 miles per gallon. My Dodge Durango uses the Ross Perot method of fuel-use measurement. You just hear the sucking sound.
So we get to the Thai barbecue place and I ask him why he picked this fine eating establishment, and he said because somebody on Yelp said it had sticky tables. Now that’s why Jim and I have been friends for so long. Sticky tables! Yes! It’s a lot harder to knock over your iced tea.
Anyway, we’re eating our giant globs of health food and adding our own BBQ sauce to the stickiness build-up, and I look over behind Jim and there is this guy in the next booth and he has a giant plate of lettuce only. Nothing else. No tomatoes, no cucumbers, no salad dressing, just lettuce. A huge pile of lettuce on a plate. And then he just pinches up a bunch of lettuce with his fingers and starts munching. Doesn’t use a fork. Just gets his fingers full of lettuce and eats it. Ate the whole plate of lettuce. Peter Cottontail would have had an orgasm.
After we’ve eaten our giant globs of health food and added our own barbecue sauce to the stickiness build-up, we leave the restaurant and I secretly wipe my fingers on the Prius seat covers. Maybe that will knock that MPG average down a little. And then Jim suggests that we take a little ride up into the San Gabriel Mountains. I think maybe he’s going to whack me, but he’s not the Sopranos type, so I say, “Sure, nothing I’d rather do on a 95-degree day than see some dried-up parched mountains. I guess the Sahara was closed, huh?”
So we head up to the mountains behind Azusa and among other things we see a pistol range, a couple of dams, an off-road-vehicle park, an RV village and two suspicious looking guys in a Datsun. And those were the high points. Then we stop by the side of the road and Jim gets out his telescope and mounts it on a tripod and focuses it for 10 minutes and then says, “Hey look at this.” I put my eye to the scope, and I see a mound of trash in a riverbed. Jim says, “Pretty cool, huh?” I say, “Check, please.”
And then as we head back to the car, Jim finds a roll of bills on the ground. Really — 13 bucks. All ones. Just lying there in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in a rubber band. I thought maybe we should split it. I suggested that he give me the money and he could keep the rubber band in case his main Prius power-supply rubber band broke.
I was just about to tell him about life and philosophy and 180 degrees and not knowing what was going to happen when you got up in the morning, but he interrupted me, and I hate to say this, but he used a little stronger language than “dummy.” All I caught was something about a rubber-band-this related to my heritage and something with a mother-something in there with an anatomical reference. It would have made a rap group blush.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
I hadn’t been able to figure out how to do this until my son, Casey, showed me, and lovingly added on, “You dummy.” Anyway, I actually transferred the photo from my iPhone to my Mac and then I emailed it to Jim the Elder as an attachment. I’ll wait until the applause dies down.
Jim gets the photo and emails back to me, “Thanks, I didn’t think you’d be able to figure that out. You just learned how to use the on/off switch last year.” Jim and I have had a great friendship for about 60 years. The only other thing I have ever had for about 60 years is bowel movements.
Anyway, Jim asked me if I would like to have lunch, so I email back to him that I have a wild hair and I would like to go to an old favorite of mine from high school called Kelbo’s in Culver City. It’s a Hawaiian barbecue kind of place that had great appetizers and rum drinks and all that bullshit. I like that in a restaurant.
So Jim says he’ll check it out first and get back to me. Well, he does. And he breaks my heart and tells me that Kelbo’s is gone —it is now a gentlemen’s club. My heart comes back to life a little and I ask Jim if he thinks they offer barbecue sauce with the lap dances. Jim says, “Why don’t you let me pick out the lunch spot this time, dummy.” He and Casey must have talked.
So he finds some place in Azusa that he found on something called Yelp online. He said he tried to find a Hawaiian-type barbecue place and all he could come up with was a Thai place that specialized in barbequed country food. I told him he was the perfect guy to fix the sub-prime fiasco. So instead of going to Kelbo’s in Culver City we went to Thai Piglets in Azusa. Holy barbecue sauce. Now that’s pretty damn life, isn’t it? If that ain’t 180 degrees from somewhere, then I don’t know my compass, baby.
He comes over to pick me up in his new Prius hutmobile and I help him wind the rubber band and we start off to Azusa. Actually, I was impressed. The Prius is pretty cool. It’s part electric, part gasoline, and part sewing machine. It has this little indicator gizmo that shows you how many miles per gallon you’re getting while you’re driving. (Most of us just have our wives.) Like sometimes he’d be getting 50 miles per gallon and then he’d go down a hill and he’d literally be getting 100 miles per gallon. He averages over 40 miles per gallon. My Dodge Durango uses the Ross Perot method of fuel-use measurement. You just hear the sucking sound.
So we get to the Thai barbecue place and I ask him why he picked this fine eating establishment, and he said because somebody on Yelp said it had sticky tables. Now that’s why Jim and I have been friends for so long. Sticky tables! Yes! It’s a lot harder to knock over your iced tea.
Anyway, we’re eating our giant globs of health food and adding our own BBQ sauce to the stickiness build-up, and I look over behind Jim and there is this guy in the next booth and he has a giant plate of lettuce only. Nothing else. No tomatoes, no cucumbers, no salad dressing, just lettuce. A huge pile of lettuce on a plate. And then he just pinches up a bunch of lettuce with his fingers and starts munching. Doesn’t use a fork. Just gets his fingers full of lettuce and eats it. Ate the whole plate of lettuce. Peter Cottontail would have had an orgasm.
After we’ve eaten our giant globs of health food and added our own barbecue sauce to the stickiness build-up, we leave the restaurant and I secretly wipe my fingers on the Prius seat covers. Maybe that will knock that MPG average down a little. And then Jim suggests that we take a little ride up into the San Gabriel Mountains. I think maybe he’s going to whack me, but he’s not the Sopranos type, so I say, “Sure, nothing I’d rather do on a 95-degree day than see some dried-up parched mountains. I guess the Sahara was closed, huh?”
So we head up to the mountains behind Azusa and among other things we see a pistol range, a couple of dams, an off-road-vehicle park, an RV village and two suspicious looking guys in a Datsun. And those were the high points. Then we stop by the side of the road and Jim gets out his telescope and mounts it on a tripod and focuses it for 10 minutes and then says, “Hey look at this.” I put my eye to the scope, and I see a mound of trash in a riverbed. Jim says, “Pretty cool, huh?” I say, “Check, please.”
And then as we head back to the car, Jim finds a roll of bills on the ground. Really — 13 bucks. All ones. Just lying there in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in a rubber band. I thought maybe we should split it. I suggested that he give me the money and he could keep the rubber band in case his main Prius power-supply rubber band broke.
I was just about to tell him about life and philosophy and 180 degrees and not knowing what was going to happen when you got up in the morning, but he interrupted me, and I hate to say this, but he used a little stronger language than “dummy.” All I caught was something about a rubber-band-this related to my heritage and something with a mother-something in there with an anatomical reference. It would have made a rap group blush.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Not Falling Down Funny (Cigar Smoke 9-25-08)
First of all, I want you to know that I don’t think falling down is falling-down funny. No, I’m not like “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” They wouldn’t have a show if people didn’t fall down. Kids fall down, brides fall down at the altar, people fall off stages, babies fall out of cribs, seeing-eye dogs fall down. Hey, it’s falling-down funny. You might even say it’s a trip. That may be funny.
And no, I definitely don’t think old people falling down is too damn funny. You always hear about the old guy who takes a tumble and breaks a hip — and then it’s memorial service time. I think Forest Lawn sponsors broken hips. You break a hip, baby, and it’s time to cancel the subscriptions.
But because I am a what? I am a journalist. I have to report the truth. I am getting semi-old and I am starting to fall down with something my bowels aren’t familiar with — regularity. I’ve probably fallen down seven or eight times in the last year or so. I’m just here to show you what you’re in store for when you start reading Modern Maturity.
There are many different types of falls. I would classify all of them for you, but sadly I fell and hit my head and I can’t remember diddly. I think his first name is Bo, but that’s all I can recall.
It seems to me that I fall basically because I can’t stop from falling. Now, I know that sounds simple. But here’s the thing. You step on a rock or you step in a small hole, and in your younger years you just compensate for it, and your upper body muscles help you hold yourself up. But now they don’t. They’re in a rest home in Florida.
I was walking across the damn street the other day at Allen and New York, and as I got to the middle of the street, I stumbled over a little uneven section of asphalt. Just a little rise. And damned if I didn’t go down like a sack of wet rice. My upper body compensation muscles were nowhere to be seen. Bastards. I never did like them, even when I was younger.
A while back I was just walking out to get my newspapers in the morning, and I walked out of the house and got to the top of my driveway and I took a step off the walkway and misjudged where the end of the step was and I stumbled. I immediately lost my balance and was starting down the driveway completely out of control. At first I didn’t fall down, I just staggered for about 20 feet and gained some momentum, and I was gathering some serious moss, baby. I was really moving.
Finally, as I got near the street, I decided I better just go ahead and fall or I might get nailed by a trash truck.
So I did my old football roll and ate the pavement.
Didn’t really get hurt, but I skinned my knees and had to spit out some pebbly gnarly stuff. But there is a bright side: While I was on the ground, I crawled over a few feet and picked up the papers. At least I didn’t have to bend over and throw my back out and fall down again. I felt very efficient. My hips applauded.
About six months ago I was in a casino in Reno and was walking down some stairs to get some lunch. When I got down to the last three steps or so, I tripped and took a nasty spill. I fell hard on some cement floor and I was kind of stunned. As I was looking around, dazed, I saw about 50 guys watching a football game on TV and not one of those bad Samaritans came to my aid. To be fair to mankind, I was wearing an SC shirt, and I did look into the eyes of one guy who was sipping a beer, and he just looked at me, and slowly mouthed the letters “U-C-L-A.” I thought that was pretty cold.
And I don’t only fall down. I fall up, too. I am an equal opportunity faller. I was walking out to my backyard deck — and it was at night and it was dark out (who would have thought) — and I had a cigar and a lighter in one hand and two fudgicles in the other hand and an iPod and earphones clutched to my chest, and Hadley was somewhere between my feet, and damned if I didn’t miss the first step. I fell pretty hard up into other steps and landed on some ornamental damn rock.
But I was lucky. I was OK, but everything was scattered all over hell, and as I struggled to get up, I noticed Hadley was eating my fudgicles, including the wrappers and the sticks. Man’s best friend, this!
I also slipped in the kitchen last month and did the splits and my thighs split open and my tendons and ligaments fell onto the tile. Felt like it. And it’s just a matter of time before I slip in the bathtub. I know it’s going to happen. Yup, I think I’m going to buy it in the shower. I can see it. I’m going to break a hip and probably a head. And I know the paramedics (who will still have their pissy compensatory holding upper body muscles) are going to come out and I know they will say to Marge, “We can’t get the rubber ducky out of his cold dead hand.”
Have a nice day, whippersnappers.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
And no, I definitely don’t think old people falling down is too damn funny. You always hear about the old guy who takes a tumble and breaks a hip — and then it’s memorial service time. I think Forest Lawn sponsors broken hips. You break a hip, baby, and it’s time to cancel the subscriptions.
But because I am a what? I am a journalist. I have to report the truth. I am getting semi-old and I am starting to fall down with something my bowels aren’t familiar with — regularity. I’ve probably fallen down seven or eight times in the last year or so. I’m just here to show you what you’re in store for when you start reading Modern Maturity.
There are many different types of falls. I would classify all of them for you, but sadly I fell and hit my head and I can’t remember diddly. I think his first name is Bo, but that’s all I can recall.
It seems to me that I fall basically because I can’t stop from falling. Now, I know that sounds simple. But here’s the thing. You step on a rock or you step in a small hole, and in your younger years you just compensate for it, and your upper body muscles help you hold yourself up. But now they don’t. They’re in a rest home in Florida.
I was walking across the damn street the other day at Allen and New York, and as I got to the middle of the street, I stumbled over a little uneven section of asphalt. Just a little rise. And damned if I didn’t go down like a sack of wet rice. My upper body compensation muscles were nowhere to be seen. Bastards. I never did like them, even when I was younger.
A while back I was just walking out to get my newspapers in the morning, and I walked out of the house and got to the top of my driveway and I took a step off the walkway and misjudged where the end of the step was and I stumbled. I immediately lost my balance and was starting down the driveway completely out of control. At first I didn’t fall down, I just staggered for about 20 feet and gained some momentum, and I was gathering some serious moss, baby. I was really moving.
Finally, as I got near the street, I decided I better just go ahead and fall or I might get nailed by a trash truck.
So I did my old football roll and ate the pavement.
Didn’t really get hurt, but I skinned my knees and had to spit out some pebbly gnarly stuff. But there is a bright side: While I was on the ground, I crawled over a few feet and picked up the papers. At least I didn’t have to bend over and throw my back out and fall down again. I felt very efficient. My hips applauded.
About six months ago I was in a casino in Reno and was walking down some stairs to get some lunch. When I got down to the last three steps or so, I tripped and took a nasty spill. I fell hard on some cement floor and I was kind of stunned. As I was looking around, dazed, I saw about 50 guys watching a football game on TV and not one of those bad Samaritans came to my aid. To be fair to mankind, I was wearing an SC shirt, and I did look into the eyes of one guy who was sipping a beer, and he just looked at me, and slowly mouthed the letters “U-C-L-A.” I thought that was pretty cold.
And I don’t only fall down. I fall up, too. I am an equal opportunity faller. I was walking out to my backyard deck — and it was at night and it was dark out (who would have thought) — and I had a cigar and a lighter in one hand and two fudgicles in the other hand and an iPod and earphones clutched to my chest, and Hadley was somewhere between my feet, and damned if I didn’t miss the first step. I fell pretty hard up into other steps and landed on some ornamental damn rock.
But I was lucky. I was OK, but everything was scattered all over hell, and as I struggled to get up, I noticed Hadley was eating my fudgicles, including the wrappers and the sticks. Man’s best friend, this!
I also slipped in the kitchen last month and did the splits and my thighs split open and my tendons and ligaments fell onto the tile. Felt like it. And it’s just a matter of time before I slip in the bathtub. I know it’s going to happen. Yup, I think I’m going to buy it in the shower. I can see it. I’m going to break a hip and probably a head. And I know the paramedics (who will still have their pissy compensatory holding upper body muscles) are going to come out and I know they will say to Marge, “We can’t get the rubber ducky out of his cold dead hand.”
Have a nice day, whippersnappers.
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
It Ain't Me Babe (Cigar Smoke 9-18-08)
I went out to the Pechanga Indian Reservation on Sept. 4 to see what they were up to at the Pechanga Resort, and damned if Bob Dylan wasn’t there for a one-nighter. So, excuse the expression, I found a scalper and I got a ticket.
I go up to the entrance and I show my ticket to the usher and he looks me over and says, “There’s an age limit. Nobody over 80.”
I said, “I’m the same age as Bobby Boy Dylan, assface.”
Then he said, “You look like a Republican to me. Why should I let you in?”
I said, “Because would a Republican use obscenity and call you assface, assface?”
I walk into the theater and I am immediately hit with an overwhelming smell of marijuana. I thought I was at a Humboldt County pot-growers convention. I said to the guy next to me, “If I wasn’t a Republican, I’d probably take a hit of ole Mary Jane, of some of that wacky weed, a little grass, maybe toke a little smoke.” He traded seats with his wife.
I’ve got a pretty good seat. I’m in the third row in the center orchestra section on the aisle. I was almost as happy as if I had taken a few drags. Then Bob and the boys come out on stage. Bob is wearing this black gaucho outfit with a flat-brimmed gaucho cowboy hat and I am expecting him to say, “Hello Pechanga.” Something like that. He doesn’t. He just starts singing. And the beat goes on.
For two-plus hours. No intermission. No segues. No patter.
I know this doesn’t mean much in hard-rock circles, but he never said one damn word to the audience the whole night! He never acknowledged that we were even there. Oh, once he smiled, but I’m pretty sure that was just pulled-pork sandwich gas.
I didn’t want much. Just an insincere greeting. Tell us about his show in Santa Monica last night. Make a drug joke. Bash Bush. Something. Anything. But nope. Bob was just too damn cool for that. For a 67-year old guy, he’s pretty damn cool. I’ll give him that. I’m 67 too, and I would have offered an insincere greeting.
So he starts singing and, yes, it’s great to hear him live. That damn mumbly voice is something. And his band was incredible, too. That place was rocking. That steady Dylan kind of driving-rhythm thing. It made me want to get stoned and have sex with two younger women at the same time, maybe a 63- and a 65-year old.
But, as incredible as the music was, I have to say that I didn’t understand many of the words. I know it’s a cliché about how he mumbles and, hell, I have five or six of his albums, and I pretty much know a lot of the words, but, hey, outside of a “Highway 61” here and “Just Like a Woman” there, I didn’t understand jack. Maybe if a guy named Jack was singing I wouldn’t have understood dylan. I don’t know.
So as I watch other people in the audience, I think they do understand the words, and it’s probably because they are using the aforementioned medicinal-use products. So I decide to go get a Margarita. I go out to the lobby, go up to the bartender, and I notice that there is a little plate of olives, so I ask the guy if he would put an olive in my Margarita. He says “No. Can’t do that.” I say, “Why?” He says “I can only give you an olive in a Martini.” I say, “OK, I’d like a Martini, but use Margarita ingredients.” He says “No.” I say “OK, I would like to buy an olive.” He says “We don’t sell olives.” I say “I’m a diabetic.” He says “I don’t care if you’re Jewish.”
So I snatched an olive off the plate and just ate it. Just damn ate it. And then I went back into the theater knowing I was now a true Dylan fan because I was a rebel and I was going to get drunk and I would be able to understand the lyrics and I would have olive breath. Life was good.
But life didn’t turn out to be that good. Dylan just stood at the keyboard all night. His black gaucho boots may have been nailed to the gaucho floor. A couple of times he did bend over, but I think his back just gave out. He stayed in that same spot all night. Never moved. All I saw of him was the left side of his face. Maybe he was trying to hide a gaucho tattoo on his right cheek. I don’t know.
And people were yelling for him to play the guitar. Pleading with him to play the guitar. But he never did, and he never acknowledged our pleading either, because I guess that would have meant he would have had to say an actual word to us. Why couldn’t he have just answered, “No!” Would one “No!” have killed his cool ass? I say “No.”
As I was driving home, I picked a little chunk of my leftover olive out of my teeth and spit it out the window. That night it was the only thing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Or as Bob would have said, “Blohhhwhen nn thaa wwwiinn.”
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
I go up to the entrance and I show my ticket to the usher and he looks me over and says, “There’s an age limit. Nobody over 80.”
I said, “I’m the same age as Bobby Boy Dylan, assface.”
Then he said, “You look like a Republican to me. Why should I let you in?”
I said, “Because would a Republican use obscenity and call you assface, assface?”
I walk into the theater and I am immediately hit with an overwhelming smell of marijuana. I thought I was at a Humboldt County pot-growers convention. I said to the guy next to me, “If I wasn’t a Republican, I’d probably take a hit of ole Mary Jane, of some of that wacky weed, a little grass, maybe toke a little smoke.” He traded seats with his wife.
I’ve got a pretty good seat. I’m in the third row in the center orchestra section on the aisle. I was almost as happy as if I had taken a few drags. Then Bob and the boys come out on stage. Bob is wearing this black gaucho outfit with a flat-brimmed gaucho cowboy hat and I am expecting him to say, “Hello Pechanga.” Something like that. He doesn’t. He just starts singing. And the beat goes on.
For two-plus hours. No intermission. No segues. No patter.
I know this doesn’t mean much in hard-rock circles, but he never said one damn word to the audience the whole night! He never acknowledged that we were even there. Oh, once he smiled, but I’m pretty sure that was just pulled-pork sandwich gas.
I didn’t want much. Just an insincere greeting. Tell us about his show in Santa Monica last night. Make a drug joke. Bash Bush. Something. Anything. But nope. Bob was just too damn cool for that. For a 67-year old guy, he’s pretty damn cool. I’ll give him that. I’m 67 too, and I would have offered an insincere greeting.
So he starts singing and, yes, it’s great to hear him live. That damn mumbly voice is something. And his band was incredible, too. That place was rocking. That steady Dylan kind of driving-rhythm thing. It made me want to get stoned and have sex with two younger women at the same time, maybe a 63- and a 65-year old.
But, as incredible as the music was, I have to say that I didn’t understand many of the words. I know it’s a cliché about how he mumbles and, hell, I have five or six of his albums, and I pretty much know a lot of the words, but, hey, outside of a “Highway 61” here and “Just Like a Woman” there, I didn’t understand jack. Maybe if a guy named Jack was singing I wouldn’t have understood dylan. I don’t know.
So as I watch other people in the audience, I think they do understand the words, and it’s probably because they are using the aforementioned medicinal-use products. So I decide to go get a Margarita. I go out to the lobby, go up to the bartender, and I notice that there is a little plate of olives, so I ask the guy if he would put an olive in my Margarita. He says “No. Can’t do that.” I say, “Why?” He says “I can only give you an olive in a Martini.” I say, “OK, I’d like a Martini, but use Margarita ingredients.” He says “No.” I say “OK, I would like to buy an olive.” He says “We don’t sell olives.” I say “I’m a diabetic.” He says “I don’t care if you’re Jewish.”
So I snatched an olive off the plate and just ate it. Just damn ate it. And then I went back into the theater knowing I was now a true Dylan fan because I was a rebel and I was going to get drunk and I would be able to understand the lyrics and I would have olive breath. Life was good.
But life didn’t turn out to be that good. Dylan just stood at the keyboard all night. His black gaucho boots may have been nailed to the gaucho floor. A couple of times he did bend over, but I think his back just gave out. He stayed in that same spot all night. Never moved. All I saw of him was the left side of his face. Maybe he was trying to hide a gaucho tattoo on his right cheek. I don’t know.
And people were yelling for him to play the guitar. Pleading with him to play the guitar. But he never did, and he never acknowledged our pleading either, because I guess that would have meant he would have had to say an actual word to us. Why couldn’t he have just answered, “No!” Would one “No!” have killed his cool ass? I say “No.”
As I was driving home, I picked a little chunk of my leftover olive out of my teeth and spit it out the window. That night it was the only thing “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Or as Bob would have said, “Blohhhwhen nn thaa wwwiinn.”
Jim Laris is the former owner/publisher of the Pasadena Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
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