I really hate to write this column. It’s kind of like exposing the secrets of a magician. But, for some dark reason, I have decided to do it. May my lanky soul burn somewhere south of heaven.
When you are a semi-lanky guy such as myself, you develop ways to make sure that you will always have access to the five food groups: chocolate, cinnamon rolls, cookies, chips, and candy. (I can’t believe they all start with the letter “C.” Eerie.)
Anyway, over the past seven decades I have honed my hiding skills down to a damn professional and razor sharp point. I challenge other lanky lugs out there to meet this level of deceit and disgust.
So what are some of my deceitfully disgusting tricks? Let’s say I have been out shopping and I bring home the groceries and Marge, my wife and food group cop, just happens to be standing out in the kitchen when I haul the bags in from the car. As I am complaining about how hard it is and how much of an imposition it has been for me to even have to shop in the first place, and that a real woman would have done the grocery shopping like she had promised in her wedding vows, I am secretly plotting on how I am going to hide the package of Oreos without Marge catching on.
So I take all the stuff out of the grocery bags and put them away, and then I throw the empty bags into the trashcan and I go out and watch a football game on the tube. Did you see my slight of hand? I am really slimy. You see, one of the empty grocery bags was not quite empty. It had one Oreos package hiding in it. And as soon as the Food Police went back to the other part of the house, I retrieved it and hid it again. In the freezer. Under the frost-covered package of green beans.
I told you this column would not be pretty. You are seeing a side of me that is even uglier than the regular side of me you see. I’m sorry. I just expose my faults to make you guys feel better about yourselves. Other than journalism, it’s my life.
Another disgustingly cunning trick I use is to repackage the groceries when I get out to the car in the Ralphs parking lot. I’ll put the three Snickers bars and the package of assorted sour Jelly Bellies into the same bag with all of Archie the Dog’s dog food. And then when I get home, I take out all the groceries, put them away, right in front of Marge like I am a decent honorable person, and then I take the bags of dog food items out to the laundry room and stack the dog food on the counter. And then (even Archie thinks this is lower than dog doo doo) I take out the Snickers bars and the Jelly Bellies and I bury them in the 10-pound bag of dry dog food, way down under the kibbles, close to the rat turds.
Sometimes when I’m just returning from running some errands or coming back from a Kings game or something, I will stop and buy, say, some Jalapeno lemon Chipotle salsa lime chili chips or maybe some Red Vines, or maybe both, and when I get home, I come in the house like I’m not the cunning sneak-ass low-life lanky loser that I am, and I’ll give Marge a coming-home peck on the cheek, and I’ll throw my jacket on the chair like a casual galoot. And yes, my jacket will have the aforementioned food groups stashed in the zippered pockets. I know. What kind of galoot would do such a thing? My kind.
I’ve got other equally nauseatingly tricks. If I go out to get the morning paper when we are at a motel on a trip, occasionally, (OK, a lot of the time) I will have a Holiday Inn cinnamon roll rolled up in my copy of USA Today. And I have been known to unwrap certain food group items early so as not to bother Marge with all that crackling paper noise at night when we’re watching TV.
I guess the worst, most pitiful thing I have ever done to sneak something healthy to eat was when I put some peanut M&Ms in the onion dip. Yeah, I put a huge glob of dip in the bowl, and I buried the M&Ms at the bottom. And then I would take a cucumber slice and dive for an M&M and put it in my mouth, nobody the wiser, and then I would lick the onion dip off, wait a few seconds, to clean my palette, and then eat the M&M to experience its essence of true chocolate.
I’m feeling uneasy even talking about these lanky secrets. I hope Marge doesn’t read this column and start checking the freezer and the dog food bag and the bottom of onion dip bowls. It would destroy me. Do they have a self-help group for this? I sure hope so.
I wonder if I went to their meetings if they would check my jacket pockets.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
The Headless Columnist (Cigar Smoke 10-7-10)
Hey, what have you guys been up to? I’ve been sitting on Mr. Right Buttock and Mr. Left Buttock trying to remember what the symptoms are for shingles and rickets. I don’t think I have either of those maladies, but I never can remember what they are, and I always look up their meanings, and then I forget what the hell they mean. This cycle has been going on since 1974. And you thought you had problems.
Anyway, I was thinking there might be a new disease called shickets when Marge said, “What are we going to do for our 20th anniversary?” And I said, “When is it?” And that’s when the shickets hit the fan. No, no. I’m just kidding. Even I’m not that dumb. I said, “Honey Pumpkin Snuggle Face, what do you want to do?” And she said since it was our 20th anniversary she was thinking of China. And I said, “You want to go to China?” And she said, “No. Maybe you could go. On a slow boat. I know a good travel agent.”
I was kind of hurt so I mentioned that our marriage had outlasted my first marriage, which had lasted a measly 15 years. And that if she dumped me now, it would probably take me at least five years to fool someone else into matrimonial bliss, and then I would have to try to stay married to them for 25 years to break the record, but to do that I would have to live until I was 100 to make that happen. And I’d probably get shingles or rickets and not make it.
Anyway again, Marge sighed that getting-heavier-every-year-of-marriage sigh and out of nowhere said, “Why don’t we go to Cabo? I’ve never been to Cabo.” And I said, “Isn’t Cabo in Mexico, Sweet Snookums Smore’s Face?” She sighed so loudly over this question that she scared Archie the Airedale and he actually moved, something he rarely does.
I cautiously mentioned that I thought Cabo had not been moved lately and could very well still be in Mexico and I gently asked if she knew that the drug lords and the corrupt cops and the bought-off military thugs were fighting for the right to cut the heads off of arrogant gringos such as myself and myself’s spouse. She said she knew all that but she was remembering when we went down to Ensenada a number of years ago and had that incredible grilled lobster and then went into this little crummy bar and we were the only ones in the place (except for the health department inspectors) and that we drank Margaritas and washed them down with Dos Equis before the Most Interesting Man in the World was even born.
Just that one never-ending sentence brought back a lot of memories. God, I remember stumbling out of the bar and going back to our room in a flirty-frolicking kind of way and falling onto the bed and asking Marge if she would like to have the most earth-shattering, temple-busting, sweaty sexy sex she’d ever had, or would she like to make love to me. And I remember when she said, “Neither.” And I remember watching her go into the bathroom and I remember how daintily she hugged the toilet and recycled the margaritas and the Dos Equis. Ah, the memories.
So I was getting a haircut the other day and I mentioned the Cabo idea to my barber, Steve, who is of Mexican heritage and has owned a Chihuahua and has been known to pull back a few Tecates when he wasn’t butchering someone’s hair. (I kid my barber of Mexican descent.) And Steve said something like, “Hey, Cabron de Stupido, I’m Mexican and I won’t go down there. After they cut your head off they’re going to put it on a big stick and roast it over a burning trash barrel while they sing La Cucaracha.” And then he said in his entrepreneurial way, “And, of course, without your head, you wouldn’t be coming in as often to get haircuts.”
I related this thoughtful information to Marge, but she still wants to go. So, we are going down to Cabo, dammit. And we’re going to have fun, or as they say in Baja, “Vaya con Dios, and get el liquored uppo,” and we will celebrate our 20th anniversary and look death right in its cowardly eye and spit a tequila worm in its cowardly face and step on its cowardly toes and laugh loud like bajanian bonteros or Antonio Banderas and then run like hell and shoot back at them over our shoulders.
And you know what were going to do for our 25th anniversary? Well, I found out for you. I asked Marge and she said those three little words (plus one extra word) I love to hear, “How about North Korea?”
Anyway, I was thinking there might be a new disease called shickets when Marge said, “What are we going to do for our 20th anniversary?” And I said, “When is it?” And that’s when the shickets hit the fan. No, no. I’m just kidding. Even I’m not that dumb. I said, “Honey Pumpkin Snuggle Face, what do you want to do?” And she said since it was our 20th anniversary she was thinking of China. And I said, “You want to go to China?” And she said, “No. Maybe you could go. On a slow boat. I know a good travel agent.”
I was kind of hurt so I mentioned that our marriage had outlasted my first marriage, which had lasted a measly 15 years. And that if she dumped me now, it would probably take me at least five years to fool someone else into matrimonial bliss, and then I would have to try to stay married to them for 25 years to break the record, but to do that I would have to live until I was 100 to make that happen. And I’d probably get shingles or rickets and not make it.
Anyway again, Marge sighed that getting-heavier-every-year-of-marriage sigh and out of nowhere said, “Why don’t we go to Cabo? I’ve never been to Cabo.” And I said, “Isn’t Cabo in Mexico, Sweet Snookums Smore’s Face?” She sighed so loudly over this question that she scared Archie the Airedale and he actually moved, something he rarely does.
I cautiously mentioned that I thought Cabo had not been moved lately and could very well still be in Mexico and I gently asked if she knew that the drug lords and the corrupt cops and the bought-off military thugs were fighting for the right to cut the heads off of arrogant gringos such as myself and myself’s spouse. She said she knew all that but she was remembering when we went down to Ensenada a number of years ago and had that incredible grilled lobster and then went into this little crummy bar and we were the only ones in the place (except for the health department inspectors) and that we drank Margaritas and washed them down with Dos Equis before the Most Interesting Man in the World was even born.
Just that one never-ending sentence brought back a lot of memories. God, I remember stumbling out of the bar and going back to our room in a flirty-frolicking kind of way and falling onto the bed and asking Marge if she would like to have the most earth-shattering, temple-busting, sweaty sexy sex she’d ever had, or would she like to make love to me. And I remember when she said, “Neither.” And I remember watching her go into the bathroom and I remember how daintily she hugged the toilet and recycled the margaritas and the Dos Equis. Ah, the memories.
So I was getting a haircut the other day and I mentioned the Cabo idea to my barber, Steve, who is of Mexican heritage and has owned a Chihuahua and has been known to pull back a few Tecates when he wasn’t butchering someone’s hair. (I kid my barber of Mexican descent.) And Steve said something like, “Hey, Cabron de Stupido, I’m Mexican and I won’t go down there. After they cut your head off they’re going to put it on a big stick and roast it over a burning trash barrel while they sing La Cucaracha.” And then he said in his entrepreneurial way, “And, of course, without your head, you wouldn’t be coming in as often to get haircuts.”
I related this thoughtful information to Marge, but she still wants to go. So, we are going down to Cabo, dammit. And we’re going to have fun, or as they say in Baja, “Vaya con Dios, and get el liquored uppo,” and we will celebrate our 20th anniversary and look death right in its cowardly eye and spit a tequila worm in its cowardly face and step on its cowardly toes and laugh loud like bajanian bonteros or Antonio Banderas and then run like hell and shoot back at them over our shoulders.
And you know what were going to do for our 25th anniversary? Well, I found out for you. I asked Marge and she said those three little words (plus one extra word) I love to hear, “How about North Korea?”
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Yard House (Cigar Smoke 9-23-10)
I was sitting on the end of the couch last Friday night and Marge said, “Do you want to go out tonight?” And I said, “Can I take the couch with us?”
So we decided to help out the local economy and grab some dinner and check out the new ArcLight Theatre in the Paseo de Plaza de Weirdo de Layouto in semi-beautiful downtown Pasadena. I love making online reservations to overpriced movies, and then strolling past the lines of non-online user losers and smirking at them over my shoulder as I waltz by with my officially printed letter-sized bar code document. Besides sitting, it’s my life.
But before we get to the theater we have to eat, and before we eat, we have to navigate the plaza to get to the restaurant area. So I do what I always do: I get on an elevator or escalator purely by chance and go up to the supposedly correct floor and then I walk out in the plaza to always determine that I am standing across from the restaurants with a chasm between me and the restaurants and no way to get there. I curse to myself. I curse to Marge. I curse for the honey-covered-ant-hill death to the guy who designed this place.
Eventually, we are in the restaurant section, and Marge suggests that we eat at The Yard House. I don’t want her to know, but I don’t exactly know what a Yard House is. I know what a yard is. I know what a house is. I know what a house with a yard is. But I do not know what a Yard House is.
So I say to Marge, “Sure, I love eating at yard houses. It’s three times as good as eating at The Feet House and 36 times better than eating at The Inch House.” Her laughter rocks the plaza.
We go inside and the waitress looks at me and my companions, my drooping eye bags and my Caucasian hair and suggests that we might be more comfortable eating outside on the empty, chilly patio, behind a concrete column, far, far away from the regular customers who we wouldn’t want to mislead and have them think they have stumbled into a rest home.
We are sitting down, looking over the menu, and then we notice at the table next to us that they have three giant, and yes, yard long glasses of ale or lager or some damn beery thing. They’re happier than three Democrats spending a Republican’s estate tax money.
When the waitress comes over to take our order, I ask Marge if she would like a yard of malt liquor or a yard of Bud Light. She says she would like a yard of duct tape and a yard of trade-in credit for a new husband. The waitress curls her lip in appreciation, and I say, “Just bring her a yard of Riesling and I’ll have a yard of nachos and a yard of guacamole and a yard of Beano.”
An hour later, we go into the ArcLight to see the No. 1 movie of the day — “Inception.” I really wanted to see this movie. I loved the director’s “Memento” of a few years back, and it just looked like it would be intellectual and flashback fun to figure out, kind of like “Pulp Fiction,” which is probably my favorite movie of all time. (So, yes, I am kind of commie in this regard using the word intellectual in public.)
We settled into our bitchin ArcLight center-ass seats right in the middle of the theater with our yard of popcorn. And then the movie started, and then the explosions started, and then people were walking up sides of walls and streets were coming apart and turning perpendicular to reality, and guys were chasing and beating and shooting other guys and acting terrified and it was like a video game for training psychopaths but, thank God, it was only a dream because they all had wires sticking out of their heads and then the dialogue was so frigging weird that I was hoping it was a dream, too.
We saw about 40 minutes of this and I realized that there was still another two hours of big-screen entertainment ahead of us and that there wasn’t going to be an intermission so we could make a civilized escape like we did when we went to see that “Sweeny Todd” piece of barber garbage at the Music Center.
So, I leaned over and whispered to Marge, “Do you really give a shit if somebody gets inside somebody else’s dream?” Marge said, “Uh, no I don’t. I don’t give a yard of piss about this whole premise.” I hugged her shoulders, and said, “Nobody has ever said premise to me before. I love you. Let’s blow this joint.”
As we were clambering over these two guys sitting next to us, one of the guys says, “Are you leaving?” And I could tell he was being pissy about it like we were just too old and too square to get this kind of hip, modern movie. So I said, “Cut the shit, Theatergoer! I could get in your dream in a flash, and make you go see “Dinner With Schmucks” with us next weekend.”
And then I accidentally spilled the remaining two feet of popcorn on his “Inceptional” lap. He said, “Why in the hell did you do that?” “Do what?” I said, “You must be dreaming.”
So we decided to help out the local economy and grab some dinner and check out the new ArcLight Theatre in the Paseo de Plaza de Weirdo de Layouto in semi-beautiful downtown Pasadena. I love making online reservations to overpriced movies, and then strolling past the lines of non-online user losers and smirking at them over my shoulder as I waltz by with my officially printed letter-sized bar code document. Besides sitting, it’s my life.
But before we get to the theater we have to eat, and before we eat, we have to navigate the plaza to get to the restaurant area. So I do what I always do: I get on an elevator or escalator purely by chance and go up to the supposedly correct floor and then I walk out in the plaza to always determine that I am standing across from the restaurants with a chasm between me and the restaurants and no way to get there. I curse to myself. I curse to Marge. I curse for the honey-covered-ant-hill death to the guy who designed this place.
Eventually, we are in the restaurant section, and Marge suggests that we eat at The Yard House. I don’t want her to know, but I don’t exactly know what a Yard House is. I know what a yard is. I know what a house is. I know what a house with a yard is. But I do not know what a Yard House is.
So I say to Marge, “Sure, I love eating at yard houses. It’s three times as good as eating at The Feet House and 36 times better than eating at The Inch House.” Her laughter rocks the plaza.
We go inside and the waitress looks at me and my companions, my drooping eye bags and my Caucasian hair and suggests that we might be more comfortable eating outside on the empty, chilly patio, behind a concrete column, far, far away from the regular customers who we wouldn’t want to mislead and have them think they have stumbled into a rest home.
We are sitting down, looking over the menu, and then we notice at the table next to us that they have three giant, and yes, yard long glasses of ale or lager or some damn beery thing. They’re happier than three Democrats spending a Republican’s estate tax money.
When the waitress comes over to take our order, I ask Marge if she would like a yard of malt liquor or a yard of Bud Light. She says she would like a yard of duct tape and a yard of trade-in credit for a new husband. The waitress curls her lip in appreciation, and I say, “Just bring her a yard of Riesling and I’ll have a yard of nachos and a yard of guacamole and a yard of Beano.”
An hour later, we go into the ArcLight to see the No. 1 movie of the day — “Inception.” I really wanted to see this movie. I loved the director’s “Memento” of a few years back, and it just looked like it would be intellectual and flashback fun to figure out, kind of like “Pulp Fiction,” which is probably my favorite movie of all time. (So, yes, I am kind of commie in this regard using the word intellectual in public.)
We settled into our bitchin ArcLight center-ass seats right in the middle of the theater with our yard of popcorn. And then the movie started, and then the explosions started, and then people were walking up sides of walls and streets were coming apart and turning perpendicular to reality, and guys were chasing and beating and shooting other guys and acting terrified and it was like a video game for training psychopaths but, thank God, it was only a dream because they all had wires sticking out of their heads and then the dialogue was so frigging weird that I was hoping it was a dream, too.
We saw about 40 minutes of this and I realized that there was still another two hours of big-screen entertainment ahead of us and that there wasn’t going to be an intermission so we could make a civilized escape like we did when we went to see that “Sweeny Todd” piece of barber garbage at the Music Center.
So, I leaned over and whispered to Marge, “Do you really give a shit if somebody gets inside somebody else’s dream?” Marge said, “Uh, no I don’t. I don’t give a yard of piss about this whole premise.” I hugged her shoulders, and said, “Nobody has ever said premise to me before. I love you. Let’s blow this joint.”
As we were clambering over these two guys sitting next to us, one of the guys says, “Are you leaving?” And I could tell he was being pissy about it like we were just too old and too square to get this kind of hip, modern movie. So I said, “Cut the shit, Theatergoer! I could get in your dream in a flash, and make you go see “Dinner With Schmucks” with us next weekend.”
And then I accidentally spilled the remaining two feet of popcorn on his “Inceptional” lap. He said, “Why in the hell did you do that?” “Do what?” I said, “You must be dreaming.”
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Nat King Cole Speaks Chinese (Cigar Smoke 8-26-10)
OK, I was doing something very out of the ordinary the other night. I was sitting on the couch watching TV. Usually I’m out volunteering for charities or out trying to save the environment. But on this particular night, I was just sitting there watching “Hung,” and trying to explain to Marge that the title was not in reference to the first name of an Asian gentleman.
Anyway, we are watching the show and out of nowhere we hear some Chinese guy speaking in Chinese. I said, “Marge, do you hear that?” Marge said, “Hear what, Couch Potato Face?” I knew it was hopeless, but I said, “There is some Chinese guy speaking in Chinese on our English-speaking television set, that’s what.” And Marge said, “What?” Variations of this conversational exchange went on for 14 minutes.
Before I continue with this TV tale, I must tell you that what I am about to relate to you is the damn truth. I know I have had the tendency to maybe fudge the truth a little in some of my past columns. But there is no truth-fudging here, baby. I is speaking da truth, so help me secular somebody.
I must correct something already. Before we started hearing the Chinese guy speaking Chinese, we did not hear anything at all. The sound had gone deader than an overweight doornail. No sound at all.
So I fiddled with the remote and I fiddled with the TiVo box and I fiddled with the Charter box, and I would have fiddled with my fiddle if I had a fiddle, but I couldn’t get the sound to go on. And just at that time, we started to hear the Chinese guy Kung Powing in Chinese.
It made me exclaim to Marge, “Holy communist plot, what is happening?” Marge had decided to ignore me and was reading her Kindle, but that didn’t stop me from talking to her. (Many of our most rewarding conversations have occurred while she was ignoring me.)
I inquired as to how could the sound be in Chinese. I thought maybe we had accidentally set the language to Chinese like you can set it to Spanish or subtitles. So I clicked through the settings and discovered that there are no Chinese settings, which I liked, but it didn’t help me figure out what was going on.
So then, with monumental effort and appropriate cursing, I got up off the couch and went over to the TV and refiddled with the boxes and then got up on our little step stool and checked out the speakers. I figured sound comes out of speakers so maybe I flipped some speaker switch, although I was doubtful that had made it go into Chinese instantly.
And then (I am not kidding you) the sound went into Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs. At least it was in English. Nat King Cole singing “Oh Holy Night” in commie would have killed me. So I yelled at Marge, “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” She said, “What are you hearing?” I said, “I am hearing Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs.” She said, “Hmm. Are the bats in your belfry flapping their wings?”
So I went back to the end of the couch to think this thing through. Should I call Charter? Well, I would probably get some Indian techie guy and when I told him I was hearing Chinese coming out of my TV and then it switched to Nat King Cole, he would hold his hand over the speaker of the phone, and turn to his buddy in Bombay and laugh his tandoori-ass laugh and regain his composure and ask me, “Sir, vat is a Nat King Cole?”
I didn’t call. I just sat there. Weeping. And wondering what Richard Feynman would do. I speak to Richard quite often. After a while I heard Richard say, “Maybe you could just figure it out, Ass-wipe? It’s not rocket science. It’s only Nat King Cole Chinese science.”
So damn it, I did figure it out. Yes, sound does come out of speakers. But it has to come from somewhere. So I asked Richard where it came from, and Richard told me to buzz off because he was trying to rest peacefully, being dead and all.
Then I went up to the control boxes and hunted for the sound source. And damned if I didn’t find it. Get this. We had a Bose sound system, which we hadn’t been using, stacked between our Charter box and our TiVo box, and the Charter box had slightly moved a little and had fallen onto the Bose on/off button. It had turned the AM/FM tuner on. That was where the Chinese was coming from. And then when I fiddled with things, I must have nudged the damn Bose system into the CD mode and that’s when old Nat King Cole started singing his Christmas carols to make me think I was going insane and make me weep.
I looked over at Marge, who was still reading her frigging Kindle. I said, “Richard and I are going out to that dive on Colorado Boulevard to look for some babes.” She said, “When you get back, could you fix the TV. I didn’t know Nat King Cole was Chinese.”
Anyway, we are watching the show and out of nowhere we hear some Chinese guy speaking in Chinese. I said, “Marge, do you hear that?” Marge said, “Hear what, Couch Potato Face?” I knew it was hopeless, but I said, “There is some Chinese guy speaking in Chinese on our English-speaking television set, that’s what.” And Marge said, “What?” Variations of this conversational exchange went on for 14 minutes.
Before I continue with this TV tale, I must tell you that what I am about to relate to you is the damn truth. I know I have had the tendency to maybe fudge the truth a little in some of my past columns. But there is no truth-fudging here, baby. I is speaking da truth, so help me secular somebody.
I must correct something already. Before we started hearing the Chinese guy speaking Chinese, we did not hear anything at all. The sound had gone deader than an overweight doornail. No sound at all.
So I fiddled with the remote and I fiddled with the TiVo box and I fiddled with the Charter box, and I would have fiddled with my fiddle if I had a fiddle, but I couldn’t get the sound to go on. And just at that time, we started to hear the Chinese guy Kung Powing in Chinese.
It made me exclaim to Marge, “Holy communist plot, what is happening?” Marge had decided to ignore me and was reading her Kindle, but that didn’t stop me from talking to her. (Many of our most rewarding conversations have occurred while she was ignoring me.)
I inquired as to how could the sound be in Chinese. I thought maybe we had accidentally set the language to Chinese like you can set it to Spanish or subtitles. So I clicked through the settings and discovered that there are no Chinese settings, which I liked, but it didn’t help me figure out what was going on.
So then, with monumental effort and appropriate cursing, I got up off the couch and went over to the TV and refiddled with the boxes and then got up on our little step stool and checked out the speakers. I figured sound comes out of speakers so maybe I flipped some speaker switch, although I was doubtful that had made it go into Chinese instantly.
And then (I am not kidding you) the sound went into Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs. At least it was in English. Nat King Cole singing “Oh Holy Night” in commie would have killed me. So I yelled at Marge, “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” She said, “What are you hearing?” I said, “I am hearing Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs.” She said, “Hmm. Are the bats in your belfry flapping their wings?”
So I went back to the end of the couch to think this thing through. Should I call Charter? Well, I would probably get some Indian techie guy and when I told him I was hearing Chinese coming out of my TV and then it switched to Nat King Cole, he would hold his hand over the speaker of the phone, and turn to his buddy in Bombay and laugh his tandoori-ass laugh and regain his composure and ask me, “Sir, vat is a Nat King Cole?”
I didn’t call. I just sat there. Weeping. And wondering what Richard Feynman would do. I speak to Richard quite often. After a while I heard Richard say, “Maybe you could just figure it out, Ass-wipe? It’s not rocket science. It’s only Nat King Cole Chinese science.”
So damn it, I did figure it out. Yes, sound does come out of speakers. But it has to come from somewhere. So I asked Richard where it came from, and Richard told me to buzz off because he was trying to rest peacefully, being dead and all.
Then I went up to the control boxes and hunted for the sound source. And damned if I didn’t find it. Get this. We had a Bose sound system, which we hadn’t been using, stacked between our Charter box and our TiVo box, and the Charter box had slightly moved a little and had fallen onto the Bose on/off button. It had turned the AM/FM tuner on. That was where the Chinese was coming from. And then when I fiddled with things, I must have nudged the damn Bose system into the CD mode and that’s when old Nat King Cole started singing his Christmas carols to make me think I was going insane and make me weep.
I looked over at Marge, who was still reading her frigging Kindle. I said, “Richard and I are going out to that dive on Colorado Boulevard to look for some babes.” She said, “When you get back, could you fix the TV. I didn’t know Nat King Cole was Chinese.”
Saturday, August 14, 2010
It's Ironic, Isn't it? (Cigar Smoke 8-12-10)
Do you know what the word irony means? Oh, sure, you think you know what it means. Hey, I thought I knew what it meant. But try saying just exactly what irony means in one short sentence so that even someone like me who has a two-digit IQ can understand. OK, I’m waiting. I’m not hearing any short sentences. I don’t have all day here, folks, I’m writing a damn column.
You can’t do it, can you? You know what it means, but you can’t actually say what it means. I feel your frustrated, pissy little pain. Well, I am going to quell that pain (and your thirst, if quell shouldn’t be used with pain) and tell you what the dictionary says.
As per the Encarta World Dictionary found on my word processor, irony is “something that happens that is incongruous with what might be expected to happen, especially when this seems absurd or laughable.”
Hey, that is exactly right. Those dictionary guys are pretty happening, huh? That is exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. And because I know you couldn’t either (you’re probably still stuck on incongruous), I have decided to do yet another public service and help you semi-lowlife ingrates out with an example of irony, which hopefully will stick in your minds. So in the future, if someone asks you what irony is, you can say that you knew this jerk-off columnist guy and you can tell them a little story filled with irony and little else.
As you may recall, I informed you in my last column that I had accidentally backed up into another car. Well, in this week’s column, I am going to inform you that I have backed up into a boat. No, I wasn’t in a car when I hit the boat. I was in a boat when I backed up into the other boat. And why did I back up into another boat? Well, I did it just so I could help you remember what irony is. That’s the kind of guy I am. Selfless.
Altruistic. And a vocabulary-enchancing giant.
Here’s the deal. I bought an old boat to go with my hovel up in Oregon, and the boat needed, shall we say, a boatload of repairs. The motor wouldn’t run, the batteries were dead and there was no reverse gear. And I needed to have a kicker motor mounted, too, for safety reasons. As in, if you are out on the open seas and your first psycho motor goes out you can use your kicker to get your sorry ass back in to land to be able to watch future episodes of “Mad Men.”
So I had the work done. (That noise you hear is my wallet weeping.) Everything is supposedly cool, so a friend of mine and I decide to take her out for a little test cruise. And because I was interested in you learning the meaning of irony, we thought it would be safer if we just used the kicker motor and stayed in the harbor before we headed out to sea and probable death.
The kicker motor started up on the second pull. Mike was at the tiller and I shoved the boat out from the slip, hopped on board like Errol Flynn and we were off. Mike puts the outboard in first gear and off we go. Until he tried to turn the outboard, and he discovered the boat guys had not mounted the outboard motor correctly. And he couldn’t turn.
So he yelled, “Start the main motor and get us out of here!” I jumped into the captain’s seat, turned the motor on and immediately threw it into gear. I floored that sucker. It really took off. Kind of too bad it was in reverse.
So, in two days, I had backed into a car and a boat. (Don’t take me to an airport.) Mike inquired as to just what my reasoning was to have put it into reverse. I told him that my Pasadena Weekly readers were the most important things to me, and that I needed to show them what irony meant with some concrete example that they could use in the future, and that my personal safety, credibility, pride and being referred to as a dangerous, dumber-than-a-donut-hole driver were just not that important to me.
If I wouldn’t have tried to be safe and prudently decided to just take the boat out into the harbor instead of risk going out to sea, and if I hadn’t spent $479 to fix that frigging reverse gear, I would not have been able to use that frigging reverse gear to slam it into frigging reverse and back into that boat with expensively paid-for full reverseness.
Ironic, isn’t it?
You can’t do it, can you? You know what it means, but you can’t actually say what it means. I feel your frustrated, pissy little pain. Well, I am going to quell that pain (and your thirst, if quell shouldn’t be used with pain) and tell you what the dictionary says.
As per the Encarta World Dictionary found on my word processor, irony is “something that happens that is incongruous with what might be expected to happen, especially when this seems absurd or laughable.”
Hey, that is exactly right. Those dictionary guys are pretty happening, huh? That is exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. And because I know you couldn’t either (you’re probably still stuck on incongruous), I have decided to do yet another public service and help you semi-lowlife ingrates out with an example of irony, which hopefully will stick in your minds. So in the future, if someone asks you what irony is, you can say that you knew this jerk-off columnist guy and you can tell them a little story filled with irony and little else.
As you may recall, I informed you in my last column that I had accidentally backed up into another car. Well, in this week’s column, I am going to inform you that I have backed up into a boat. No, I wasn’t in a car when I hit the boat. I was in a boat when I backed up into the other boat. And why did I back up into another boat? Well, I did it just so I could help you remember what irony is. That’s the kind of guy I am. Selfless.
Altruistic. And a vocabulary-enchancing giant.
Here’s the deal. I bought an old boat to go with my hovel up in Oregon, and the boat needed, shall we say, a boatload of repairs. The motor wouldn’t run, the batteries were dead and there was no reverse gear. And I needed to have a kicker motor mounted, too, for safety reasons. As in, if you are out on the open seas and your first psycho motor goes out you can use your kicker to get your sorry ass back in to land to be able to watch future episodes of “Mad Men.”
So I had the work done. (That noise you hear is my wallet weeping.) Everything is supposedly cool, so a friend of mine and I decide to take her out for a little test cruise. And because I was interested in you learning the meaning of irony, we thought it would be safer if we just used the kicker motor and stayed in the harbor before we headed out to sea and probable death.
The kicker motor started up on the second pull. Mike was at the tiller and I shoved the boat out from the slip, hopped on board like Errol Flynn and we were off. Mike puts the outboard in first gear and off we go. Until he tried to turn the outboard, and he discovered the boat guys had not mounted the outboard motor correctly. And he couldn’t turn.
So he yelled, “Start the main motor and get us out of here!” I jumped into the captain’s seat, turned the motor on and immediately threw it into gear. I floored that sucker. It really took off. Kind of too bad it was in reverse.
So, in two days, I had backed into a car and a boat. (Don’t take me to an airport.) Mike inquired as to just what my reasoning was to have put it into reverse. I told him that my Pasadena Weekly readers were the most important things to me, and that I needed to show them what irony meant with some concrete example that they could use in the future, and that my personal safety, credibility, pride and being referred to as a dangerous, dumber-than-a-donut-hole driver were just not that important to me.
If I wouldn’t have tried to be safe and prudently decided to just take the boat out into the harbor instead of risk going out to sea, and if I hadn’t spent $479 to fix that frigging reverse gear, I would not have been able to use that frigging reverse gear to slam it into frigging reverse and back into that boat with expensively paid-for full reverseness.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Looking Back On It (Cigar Smoke 7-29-10)
You know what sound you don’t want to hear? The sound of silence? No. You can’t hear that anyway. The sound of senility. That’s the sound you don’t want to hear.
I may have heard it the other day. I was tired of all the damn beauty and scenic stuff up here in Oregon, so I went to a Rite-Aid to do some ordinary shopping, and I purchased some necessities — wine, beer, ale, hard liquor, malt liquor and Peanut M&Ms.
And life was good. I sauntered — yes, sauntered — out to the car and placed my purchases on the seat and unwrapped a Look candy bar I forgot to mention I had purchased because I hadn’t had one for 37 years. And I took the first bite of that dark Look bar chocolate and that white gooey, chewy center and it brought back childhood memories of overeating and precursors to Type 2 Diabetes. Life was good.
Then I started the car. I looked to my left and saw some dummy coming the wrong way down my parking lane, and I wrenched my back trying to give him the finger while eating my Look bar. Very, very painful. Then I put the car into reverse, looked out to my right and saw no cars, and started to back out of my parking spot. Then I heard the sound — that sickening sound of metal hitting metal — and I knew I had either backed into a car or hit a chubby pedestrian wearing a suit of armor.
Yes, Virginia, I had backed into a car. Are you happy, Virginia? And that sound of metal going into metal is just so damn jarring. It just jars you into reality. And I’ve always tried to avoid reality. But that metal-ass sound of metal running into other innocent metal just got to me. It was just so damn real.
I dropped my head to my chest in senior citizen resignation and was irritated that I had to leave my Look bar with one bite out of it in the car while I faced the metal music. I get out of the car and the first thing I hear is some guy’s enraged voice yelling, “Sonny, you just bought yourself a Dodge!” Well, although I was pleased that anyone would call me “sonny,” I really didn’t want to buy his Dodge. It was all dented up.
I asked him, “Where did you come from?” And he said, “I was born right here in Brookings, dammit.” (I thought to myself, this would be a good time to play a little poker, if this guy only had a full deck.) I said, “No, I mean where did your car come from, other than Detroit?”
He said he had just turned after that dummy came through going the wrong way. And I told him that is probably why I didn’t see him. But I inquired as to why he didn’t honk at me if he saw me backing out. He enquired as to my parentage. It turned out to be a short conversation.
We exchanged information. I gave him my name and address and insurance details. He gave me the remaining piece of his mind. As I was driving off, I told him to call me if he had any questions. I don’t think he heard me. He was stretched out over his car and had both arms fully extended like he was trying to contact some demon god and was pounding both of his palms down onto his hood. It was pretty loud. And he may have caused more damage to his car than I did.
When I got back to my hovel, I called my insurance agent. I told her I had lost control of my car and had driven through an orphanage and would she like to speak to one of the surviving nuns? I kid my State Farm agents. She asked me if I got the other party’s driver’s license number. No. Did he have insurance? I don’t know. Is your head hooked on to your neck? Lemme check.
She asked me if anyone was injured. I said no. She said that was good. I said to tell that to the four people who were killed. She said I shouldn’t joke about car accidents and suggested I switch to GEICO. I said I would, but I don’t like lizards. She said that it wasn’t a lizard. I said yes it was.
After listening to a series of rather heart-breaking sighs, I asked her if there was anything else she needed from me. She thought for a few seconds and said, “What have you learned from all this?”
Hell, I don’t know. “To finish your Look bar before backing up?”
I may have heard it the other day. I was tired of all the damn beauty and scenic stuff up here in Oregon, so I went to a Rite-Aid to do some ordinary shopping, and I purchased some necessities — wine, beer, ale, hard liquor, malt liquor and Peanut M&Ms.
And life was good. I sauntered — yes, sauntered — out to the car and placed my purchases on the seat and unwrapped a Look candy bar I forgot to mention I had purchased because I hadn’t had one for 37 years. And I took the first bite of that dark Look bar chocolate and that white gooey, chewy center and it brought back childhood memories of overeating and precursors to Type 2 Diabetes. Life was good.
Then I started the car. I looked to my left and saw some dummy coming the wrong way down my parking lane, and I wrenched my back trying to give him the finger while eating my Look bar. Very, very painful. Then I put the car into reverse, looked out to my right and saw no cars, and started to back out of my parking spot. Then I heard the sound — that sickening sound of metal hitting metal — and I knew I had either backed into a car or hit a chubby pedestrian wearing a suit of armor.
Yes, Virginia, I had backed into a car. Are you happy, Virginia? And that sound of metal going into metal is just so damn jarring. It just jars you into reality. And I’ve always tried to avoid reality. But that metal-ass sound of metal running into other innocent metal just got to me. It was just so damn real.
I dropped my head to my chest in senior citizen resignation and was irritated that I had to leave my Look bar with one bite out of it in the car while I faced the metal music. I get out of the car and the first thing I hear is some guy’s enraged voice yelling, “Sonny, you just bought yourself a Dodge!” Well, although I was pleased that anyone would call me “sonny,” I really didn’t want to buy his Dodge. It was all dented up.
I asked him, “Where did you come from?” And he said, “I was born right here in Brookings, dammit.” (I thought to myself, this would be a good time to play a little poker, if this guy only had a full deck.) I said, “No, I mean where did your car come from, other than Detroit?”
He said he had just turned after that dummy came through going the wrong way. And I told him that is probably why I didn’t see him. But I inquired as to why he didn’t honk at me if he saw me backing out. He enquired as to my parentage. It turned out to be a short conversation.
We exchanged information. I gave him my name and address and insurance details. He gave me the remaining piece of his mind. As I was driving off, I told him to call me if he had any questions. I don’t think he heard me. He was stretched out over his car and had both arms fully extended like he was trying to contact some demon god and was pounding both of his palms down onto his hood. It was pretty loud. And he may have caused more damage to his car than I did.
When I got back to my hovel, I called my insurance agent. I told her I had lost control of my car and had driven through an orphanage and would she like to speak to one of the surviving nuns? I kid my State Farm agents. She asked me if I got the other party’s driver’s license number. No. Did he have insurance? I don’t know. Is your head hooked on to your neck? Lemme check.
She asked me if anyone was injured. I said no. She said that was good. I said to tell that to the four people who were killed. She said I shouldn’t joke about car accidents and suggested I switch to GEICO. I said I would, but I don’t like lizards. She said that it wasn’t a lizard. I said yes it was.
After listening to a series of rather heart-breaking sighs, I asked her if there was anything else she needed from me. She thought for a few seconds and said, “What have you learned from all this?”
Hell, I don’t know. “To finish your Look bar before backing up?”
I Got Your Friendly Right Here(Cigar Smoke (7-15-10)
You know, I try to be friendly. I really do. I am not quite as much of a pissy turd as I make myself out to be in this here column. (See, I added the “here” in that last sentence to show off my folksy, friendly side.)
The reason I am bringing up all this friendly stuff is that I am now taking a much needed break from my stressful retirement so I can vacation up in Oregon for a month, and it’s a state law to be friendly up here. I mean to tell you, everybody is friendly. It’s a little eerie. But I am trying my best to adapt to this foreign environment, and if it doesn’t kill me, I should be friendlier when I come back to LA.
You notice it right away. I go into a Fred Myers grocery and everything-else-ever-manufactured store and the checker is talking to someone a few people up the line from me. She knows the woman. The woman is in her 60s. The checker went to elementary school with her. Yes, I now know that their old schoolmate, Johnny Dayton, just got kicked out of the American Legion hall for something I think she called “non-wife fondling.”
The next woman gets to the checker and they start chatting. Nothing quite as chat-worthy as Johnny Dayton’s sexploits, but they do give the gossip tidbits the necessary time to fully flesh them out. I am just kind of standing there, acting like I think this friendly shit is OK, and it’s getting harder and harder to fake it.
After five full minutes of staring at my four non-moving items on the conveyor belt, I give them my LA hurry-up cough. I cough a few times. Cough. Ahem. Cough. They both glance at me. I know they want to tell me to take a Menthol Luden’s and insert it in a body opening that is not my mouth, but they just smile at me. The bitches.
Finally, the lady hands the checker a copy of the latest National Enquirer, and says, “Jeez, that Al Gore would be quite a load, wouldn’t he?” And the checker says, “Looks like a little global squirming going on.” I crack just the beginning of a smile at these remarks and they look at me again. I apologize for listening in on them with a lame hands-up sissy gesture.
I get to the checker and say, “Hi.” She says, “Can’t talk now. I have customers behind you.”
I probably shouldn’t have told you that first anecdote first, because the people are generally just friendly, and they don’t usually say mean things to us potential Luden’s users. Like I was in a restaurant and the waitress came over and said, “What’ll it be, darlin’?” And I said, “Did you call me darlin’, darlin’?” And she adjusted her apron, and said, “Why, yes, darlin’, I did call you darlin’, darlin’” (I was going to say, “But you never even called me by my name” but I knew she wouldn’t get the reference. Neither will you. So that’s why I didn’t say it.)
Everybody is friendly. They take time with you. They appear to maybe even like you. They have faking sincerity down to a science. The gas station attendant fills up my tank and tells me about the salmon run. The bookstore owner walks me to the book section I need and personally wipes the dust off the row of books I will look at. The frame-store owner sells me the cheaper picture frame because he thinks it will work better for me.
And a couple of days ago I had a guy come out to give me a bid for a fence I’m building for my dog, Archie the Airedale. And this guy was so nice I thought he had the wrong house. He was nicer than Pat Boone, baby. He called me “sir” so many times I thought I had been promoted to corporal. And then the next day, I go out on the dock to just walk around and I notice a guy standing there with a rod and reel and I look at him like I sort of know him, but I’m puzzled and he finally says, “Yeah, it’s me, the fence guy! Wanna go fishing?”
“It’s me, the fence guy. Wanna go fishing?”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would have heard that in LA. It’s just too damn friendly for city slicker talk. But I do have mixed emotions on all this friendly stuff. I know they will eventually find out I’m not really all that friendly and then I will be rejected and continue on with my lonely, unfulfilled, tragic walk-through life.
So I tentatively said something to the fence guy about his choosing me to go fishing with. I said, “Do you really want to go fishing with me?” And he kind of looked at me like that was a bit too touchy-feely, and said, “Yeah, sure, you look like a good guy.” And I smiled my manly hug-smile and he continued. “And my buddies are all working today. And, by the way, you think, maybe you could buy the bait?”
The reason I am bringing up all this friendly stuff is that I am now taking a much needed break from my stressful retirement so I can vacation up in Oregon for a month, and it’s a state law to be friendly up here. I mean to tell you, everybody is friendly. It’s a little eerie. But I am trying my best to adapt to this foreign environment, and if it doesn’t kill me, I should be friendlier when I come back to LA.
You notice it right away. I go into a Fred Myers grocery and everything-else-ever-manufactured store and the checker is talking to someone a few people up the line from me. She knows the woman. The woman is in her 60s. The checker went to elementary school with her. Yes, I now know that their old schoolmate, Johnny Dayton, just got kicked out of the American Legion hall for something I think she called “non-wife fondling.”
The next woman gets to the checker and they start chatting. Nothing quite as chat-worthy as Johnny Dayton’s sexploits, but they do give the gossip tidbits the necessary time to fully flesh them out. I am just kind of standing there, acting like I think this friendly shit is OK, and it’s getting harder and harder to fake it.
After five full minutes of staring at my four non-moving items on the conveyor belt, I give them my LA hurry-up cough. I cough a few times. Cough. Ahem. Cough. They both glance at me. I know they want to tell me to take a Menthol Luden’s and insert it in a body opening that is not my mouth, but they just smile at me. The bitches.
Finally, the lady hands the checker a copy of the latest National Enquirer, and says, “Jeez, that Al Gore would be quite a load, wouldn’t he?” And the checker says, “Looks like a little global squirming going on.” I crack just the beginning of a smile at these remarks and they look at me again. I apologize for listening in on them with a lame hands-up sissy gesture.
I get to the checker and say, “Hi.” She says, “Can’t talk now. I have customers behind you.”
I probably shouldn’t have told you that first anecdote first, because the people are generally just friendly, and they don’t usually say mean things to us potential Luden’s users. Like I was in a restaurant and the waitress came over and said, “What’ll it be, darlin’?” And I said, “Did you call me darlin’, darlin’?” And she adjusted her apron, and said, “Why, yes, darlin’, I did call you darlin’, darlin’” (I was going to say, “But you never even called me by my name” but I knew she wouldn’t get the reference. Neither will you. So that’s why I didn’t say it.)
Everybody is friendly. They take time with you. They appear to maybe even like you. They have faking sincerity down to a science. The gas station attendant fills up my tank and tells me about the salmon run. The bookstore owner walks me to the book section I need and personally wipes the dust off the row of books I will look at. The frame-store owner sells me the cheaper picture frame because he thinks it will work better for me.
And a couple of days ago I had a guy come out to give me a bid for a fence I’m building for my dog, Archie the Airedale. And this guy was so nice I thought he had the wrong house. He was nicer than Pat Boone, baby. He called me “sir” so many times I thought I had been promoted to corporal. And then the next day, I go out on the dock to just walk around and I notice a guy standing there with a rod and reel and I look at him like I sort of know him, but I’m puzzled and he finally says, “Yeah, it’s me, the fence guy! Wanna go fishing?”
“It’s me, the fence guy. Wanna go fishing?”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would have heard that in LA. It’s just too damn friendly for city slicker talk. But I do have mixed emotions on all this friendly stuff. I know they will eventually find out I’m not really all that friendly and then I will be rejected and continue on with my lonely, unfulfilled, tragic walk-through life.
So I tentatively said something to the fence guy about his choosing me to go fishing with. I said, “Do you really want to go fishing with me?” And he kind of looked at me like that was a bit too touchy-feely, and said, “Yeah, sure, you look like a good guy.” And I smiled my manly hug-smile and he continued. “And my buddies are all working today. And, by the way, you think, maybe you could buy the bait?”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)