I just got the word that my column will only run once a month. It used to run every week until they cut it back to twice a month, and now its only once a month. It’ll probably be cut down to one sentence a month soon. But I can live with that. I can write a 1,000-word sentence easy.
It kind of reminds me of when this guy was in the army and his parents were killed in an auto accident, and then the sergeant had all his troops line up, and he asked anyone who still has both their parents to step forward. And this one guy steps forward, and the sergeant says, “Not so fast, Johnson.”
Anyway, I’m going to keep writing as if I’m not an orphan yet. But don’t worry — I’ll try not to make the columns any more meaningful than before.
So I go into the hospital the other day to have a colonoscopy. I’m getting to that age where they recommend this procedure be done on a daily basis. I had done the prepping very well the previous evening and I was emptier than Barney Frank’s head. I mean, there was nothing in there, baby.
I get into my hospital gown with the open back and I walked up to the nurse and she said, “Ah, geez. Tie that thing.” So I did, and as we walked down the pre-op area, I noticed that there were about 15 other presumably empty-bowelled people lying in their beds waiting for the grim reamer. I thought I would lighten it up a bit, so I said, “Hey guys, why don’t we all be butt-ies?” I really emphasized the “butt” in butt-ies to ensure the forthcoming mirth. The mirth is still forthcoming. Nobody laughed. Not one butty out of 15 butties laughed.
So the nurse put me in a bed and I had this warm sheet on me and me and my tushie felt all cozy. She asked me if
I had eaten anything this morning. I told her just some pizza and a couple of Snickers bars. She did what all women do: ignored me.
I asked her if this was going to hurt. She said, “Not me.” And then she gave me the sedative and I went semi-beddy bye. I was just awake enough to feel the intrusion of my nether region and was able to gasp in desperation at the violation of my soul and dignity and buttmobile.
When I came to, the doctor told me everything had gone well. I asked him if he if found anything, and he said, “No, except for the three peanut M&Ms and the corn nuts.” Finally, the mirth had arrived.
And then he showed me this X-ray picture of my colon. And he told me it looked great. I asked him if we were looking at the same picture.
Then he said he would like to see me and my colon again in 30 years. I told him I would be about 100 then. So he asked, “How about 20 years?” I said, “Doc, I probably won’t make it to 90, either.”
I suggested he see me again in five years. His face went ashen and he pleaded with me. “I just can’t look at that thing in five years. They don’t pay me enough.” So we compromised on 10 years. God, I hope I’m still here then. I’m going to put a little lily in there to cheer him up.
Anyway, I’m recovering from the colonoscopy and from the trauma of the doctor’s bedside honesty, and I’m lying down on the couch watching television, and I turn on “Men of a Certain Age,” which is one of my favorite shows. And what is the theme of the show? The theme of the show is about three guys having colonoscopies. I am serious. Check it out.
But because they are more creative than I am, and because they may possibly have more photogenic butts than I do, they decide to go on a three-day weekend to Palm Springs, where they can combine having fun with their buttmobile procedures. They do a little gambling, they check out the babes, they go to a steakhouse and get in a big barroom brawl that cements the bonds of their friendship. Did they invite me? No. The bastards.
So then they all go into the hospital and they try to make their nurses laugh, but their attempts are just as futile as mine. And then they have their colonoscopies and they reflect on the meaning of life and they bond even more by fusing all three of their butts into one gigantic butt, and music played and life was good.
And I felt alone on my couch watching three nice-looking masculine butts fuse into one even better manly butt and I was depressed because I hadn’t gone with them to Palm Springs even though they had one empty seat in their car. But they did finally cheer me and my colon up.
One of the guys says to one of the other guys, “You know, even after the colonoscopy, you’re still full of shit.”
I bet the nurse would have laughed at that one.
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of The Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Christmas Memories Flooding In (Cigar Smoke 12-30-10)
As I’m writing this the rain is falling on my head like a song. The only problem with that is that I am inside my house. Hey, it’s been quite a rainstorm, huh?
But as I sit here at my desk, something else is flooding in: Memories of a Christmas past.
In 1964 I was living up in Northern California in a little town called Arcata, in Humboldt County. I had just gotten married and I was 23 years old. My wife was getting her teaching credential at Humboldt State College and I was working on the green chain at Pacific Lumber Co., out on the Samoa Peninsula.
And that December we lived in this dumpy, upstairs apartment which we climbed up to on dark, shaky, unlit stairs. The main thing I remember about the place was that it had linoleum floors that were coming up at the sides of the rooms and I thought we would be the first people ever eaten by bad floor covering.
But that wasn’t the scariest part of living there. From our window on the second floor, we could look out and see our neighbors across the street. And our neighbors just happened to own a mortuary. And sometimes at night, when we turned off our lights to go to bed, we would hear suspicious noises and we would go peek out the window and we would see these shadowy figures carrying rolled up carpets or blankets with something heavy in them.
I am not kidding you here. (Would I lie to you?) We were absolutely certain that these guys were doing something evil. Stephen King evil. And Stephen hadn’t even started writing yet. The weirdest thing was that sometimes they would carry these rolled-up carpets into the mortuary and sometimes carry them out of the mortuary. We were sure they were dead bodies, or on the way to being dead bodies.
It was really scary. One time I was so scared I whispered to Sue, my then wife, “Honey, maybe you better go down there and check this out?” She tried to backhand me with the flashlight she was holding, but the rising linoleum knocked her off balance. Ah, the memories.
Anyway, I was working out at the lumber mill that Christmas season and I learned one of the many life lessons that I torture my kids with to this day. We were working very, very hard. And the green wood would come down the conveyer belt (the chain) and we would wrangle it off the line and stack these 20-foot boards onto pallets. Grueling, tough work.
And we would all bitch about how much work there was to do. We didn’t think those boards would ever stop coming down the chain. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. And then one day there were no boards on the line. We couldn’t believe it. We were all so damn happy.
Lots of yelling and relief until the next day. That’s when the foreman told us that, since there wasn’t any more work to do, he had to fire all of us. And he did. On the spot. Two weeks before Christmas. So I always tell my kids … ah, you know what I tell them.
And right after I got fired from my job, it started to rain. I mean, it rained. Hard. For weeks. And the water kept building up and the flood level kept rising and the bridges started to get washed out and thousands of dead cows were all floating in the Ferndale Valley and, boys and girls, we were right in the middle of what they call a 100 Year Flood.
And it was really something. We were isolated up there in Arcata. Completely cut off from most everything and everybody. And we couldn’t travel at all that Christmas. Just hunkered down in Humboldt County. Me crying and Sue just telling me to shut the hell up.
But it was kind of fun, too. We didn’t have hardly any of the Christmas shopping hassle and we didn’t need to make up any lame excuses for not seeing certain relatives, and school was out for Christmas vacation, and I could pretend that Sue would make me pot roast dinners and ask if there was anything else she could do for her man, her lord and master.
And I remember we went out to buy a Christmas tree and, of course, there weren’t any trees on the lots due to the flood. So we actually went up into the forest and cut down some scraggly little sucker and brought it home. This was one hideous tree, baby. It was just waiting for somebody to write a book about it — “The Ugly Christmas Tree That Nobody Wanted Unless There Was a 100-Year Flood and Maybe Not Even Then.”
But we liked it, dammit. We decorated it with beer can pull tabs and uneaten pizza crusts and strange shapes we crafted out of aluminum foil. I think Sue even painted a few eggshells with her toenail polish and hung those. (Now you know why I married her.) Ah, the memories.
I hope you all have great Christmas memories, too. Even you commies.
But as I sit here at my desk, something else is flooding in: Memories of a Christmas past.
In 1964 I was living up in Northern California in a little town called Arcata, in Humboldt County. I had just gotten married and I was 23 years old. My wife was getting her teaching credential at Humboldt State College and I was working on the green chain at Pacific Lumber Co., out on the Samoa Peninsula.
And that December we lived in this dumpy, upstairs apartment which we climbed up to on dark, shaky, unlit stairs. The main thing I remember about the place was that it had linoleum floors that were coming up at the sides of the rooms and I thought we would be the first people ever eaten by bad floor covering.
But that wasn’t the scariest part of living there. From our window on the second floor, we could look out and see our neighbors across the street. And our neighbors just happened to own a mortuary. And sometimes at night, when we turned off our lights to go to bed, we would hear suspicious noises and we would go peek out the window and we would see these shadowy figures carrying rolled up carpets or blankets with something heavy in them.
I am not kidding you here. (Would I lie to you?) We were absolutely certain that these guys were doing something evil. Stephen King evil. And Stephen hadn’t even started writing yet. The weirdest thing was that sometimes they would carry these rolled-up carpets into the mortuary and sometimes carry them out of the mortuary. We were sure they were dead bodies, or on the way to being dead bodies.
It was really scary. One time I was so scared I whispered to Sue, my then wife, “Honey, maybe you better go down there and check this out?” She tried to backhand me with the flashlight she was holding, but the rising linoleum knocked her off balance. Ah, the memories.
Anyway, I was working out at the lumber mill that Christmas season and I learned one of the many life lessons that I torture my kids with to this day. We were working very, very hard. And the green wood would come down the conveyer belt (the chain) and we would wrangle it off the line and stack these 20-foot boards onto pallets. Grueling, tough work.
And we would all bitch about how much work there was to do. We didn’t think those boards would ever stop coming down the chain. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. And then one day there were no boards on the line. We couldn’t believe it. We were all so damn happy.
Lots of yelling and relief until the next day. That’s when the foreman told us that, since there wasn’t any more work to do, he had to fire all of us. And he did. On the spot. Two weeks before Christmas. So I always tell my kids … ah, you know what I tell them.
And right after I got fired from my job, it started to rain. I mean, it rained. Hard. For weeks. And the water kept building up and the flood level kept rising and the bridges started to get washed out and thousands of dead cows were all floating in the Ferndale Valley and, boys and girls, we were right in the middle of what they call a 100 Year Flood.
And it was really something. We were isolated up there in Arcata. Completely cut off from most everything and everybody. And we couldn’t travel at all that Christmas. Just hunkered down in Humboldt County. Me crying and Sue just telling me to shut the hell up.
But it was kind of fun, too. We didn’t have hardly any of the Christmas shopping hassle and we didn’t need to make up any lame excuses for not seeing certain relatives, and school was out for Christmas vacation, and I could pretend that Sue would make me pot roast dinners and ask if there was anything else she could do for her man, her lord and master.
And I remember we went out to buy a Christmas tree and, of course, there weren’t any trees on the lots due to the flood. So we actually went up into the forest and cut down some scraggly little sucker and brought it home. This was one hideous tree, baby. It was just waiting for somebody to write a book about it — “The Ugly Christmas Tree That Nobody Wanted Unless There Was a 100-Year Flood and Maybe Not Even Then.”
But we liked it, dammit. We decorated it with beer can pull tabs and uneaten pizza crusts and strange shapes we crafted out of aluminum foil. I think Sue even painted a few eggshells with her toenail polish and hung those. (Now you know why I married her.) Ah, the memories.
I hope you all have great Christmas memories, too. Even you commies.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Giving Thanks for a Shotgun Christmas (Cigar Smoke 12-16-10)
Hello everyone this Christmas season. Or as we say here in the United States, hello everyone this holiday season where it would probably kill us if we said the word Christmas without some kind of qualifier. Yes, I can still be pissy during this time of year. Pissy knows no season.
By the way, do you think Muslims would protest if we said they shouldn’t celebrate Ramadan because it offended four people in the United States? Just wondering. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
I’m just going to write a shotgun column this time. Shoot from the hip or shoot from the lip. There’s just going to be some shooting, but you won’t know where it’s coming from. Duck.
We had a really nice Thanksgiving at our house. We like to celebrate an old tradition (as opposed to a young tradition) by all sitting down at the Thanksgiving dinner table and giving thanks for all we have, and then taking a brief pause to sample the wine and then wait to see who will be the first one to ask my two sons, Mike and Casey, who are 41 and 36, why they aren’t married yet. Man, it’s heart-warming. I get shivers.
We’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. And no, we don’t care about their feelings. At first, we just hinted at it, and we’d say, “Would everyone who is a normal person and is married please stand up.” And they would be the only two people sitting, and we’d point at them and mock them and laugh at them and call them sissies and they would just look at us and say something defensive like, “It’s my life, Fuddy Duddy Face,” or, “pass the gravy.”
We tried everything over the years. Becoming more vicious each year. One year my son-in-law, Michael, said that if you were an unmarried man over the age of 30 in Alaska, Eskimos would put your “sorry asses” on a raft and push you out to sea and shoot at you with flaming arrows dipped in goat piss as you drifted away.
And another year, my daughter-in-law, Anh, who is Vietnamese, suggested that in her country men who weren’t married by a certain age were poked with large sharp sticks with poison tips and when the wounds got all bloody and filled with pus the elders would walk over to the unmarried losers and hit them right in the nose with the butt of a rifle.
We all put down our wine and clapped.
Personally, I tried to use guilt. I’m pretty good at making my sons guilty. I’ve had a lot of practice. A couple of years ago I asked them if they could hear that sound. And they said,
“What sound?” I said, “The sound of your mother crying. The sound of the teardrops hitting the hardwood floor and splashing up as your mother sits on an old wooden chair with splinters in her semi-aging buttocks while listening to a Pat Boone record.” We’re still waiting for their response.
I’ve taken some pretty good shots at ‘em, too. I remember back in 2004 I asked them if they actually liked being with a different, young, beautiful, teddy-wearing vixen who used birth control pills, and not settling down and having a bunch of rug rats so their father could finally be happy with life and live out his few remaining single-digit years with the sound of little pitter-pattering feet to soothe his sick and dying soul. “How selfish can you be,” I yelled! “Still gotta a ways to go, Pops,” one of the losers answered.
This year, after exhausting our arsenal of fear and guilt, all of us married good people had a secret meeting to plan our strategy. We decided to insult their manhood and try to humiliate them and even traumatize them, if that’s what it took. The vote was 8-0. Of course, I was the one who had to implement the plan. Somehow Mike, the older non-married loser, got wind that something was up and he didn’t come to dinner this year. So I had to try it on Casey alone.
Excuse me, I started, “Would any so-called man who is not married yet and has erectile dysfunction problems please share them with us? We are here to be supportive, and we know with the right drug and an understanding mate, you can solve this problem. Would that unmarried person please stand up now, and we will call them Ed (as in E.D.) to make the conversation flow a little easier?”
There was a silence for a long time. Then the silence was broken. No, it was not by a tear hitting the floor. It was the sound of a ball of mashed potatoes hitting the forehead of a never-to-be grandfather.
By the way, do you think Muslims would protest if we said they shouldn’t celebrate Ramadan because it offended four people in the United States? Just wondering. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone.
I’m just going to write a shotgun column this time. Shoot from the hip or shoot from the lip. There’s just going to be some shooting, but you won’t know where it’s coming from. Duck.
We had a really nice Thanksgiving at our house. We like to celebrate an old tradition (as opposed to a young tradition) by all sitting down at the Thanksgiving dinner table and giving thanks for all we have, and then taking a brief pause to sample the wine and then wait to see who will be the first one to ask my two sons, Mike and Casey, who are 41 and 36, why they aren’t married yet. Man, it’s heart-warming. I get shivers.
We’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. And no, we don’t care about their feelings. At first, we just hinted at it, and we’d say, “Would everyone who is a normal person and is married please stand up.” And they would be the only two people sitting, and we’d point at them and mock them and laugh at them and call them sissies and they would just look at us and say something defensive like, “It’s my life, Fuddy Duddy Face,” or, “pass the gravy.”
We tried everything over the years. Becoming more vicious each year. One year my son-in-law, Michael, said that if you were an unmarried man over the age of 30 in Alaska, Eskimos would put your “sorry asses” on a raft and push you out to sea and shoot at you with flaming arrows dipped in goat piss as you drifted away.
And another year, my daughter-in-law, Anh, who is Vietnamese, suggested that in her country men who weren’t married by a certain age were poked with large sharp sticks with poison tips and when the wounds got all bloody and filled with pus the elders would walk over to the unmarried losers and hit them right in the nose with the butt of a rifle.
We all put down our wine and clapped.
Personally, I tried to use guilt. I’m pretty good at making my sons guilty. I’ve had a lot of practice. A couple of years ago I asked them if they could hear that sound. And they said,
“What sound?” I said, “The sound of your mother crying. The sound of the teardrops hitting the hardwood floor and splashing up as your mother sits on an old wooden chair with splinters in her semi-aging buttocks while listening to a Pat Boone record.” We’re still waiting for their response.
I’ve taken some pretty good shots at ‘em, too. I remember back in 2004 I asked them if they actually liked being with a different, young, beautiful, teddy-wearing vixen who used birth control pills, and not settling down and having a bunch of rug rats so their father could finally be happy with life and live out his few remaining single-digit years with the sound of little pitter-pattering feet to soothe his sick and dying soul. “How selfish can you be,” I yelled! “Still gotta a ways to go, Pops,” one of the losers answered.
This year, after exhausting our arsenal of fear and guilt, all of us married good people had a secret meeting to plan our strategy. We decided to insult their manhood and try to humiliate them and even traumatize them, if that’s what it took. The vote was 8-0. Of course, I was the one who had to implement the plan. Somehow Mike, the older non-married loser, got wind that something was up and he didn’t come to dinner this year. So I had to try it on Casey alone.
Excuse me, I started, “Would any so-called man who is not married yet and has erectile dysfunction problems please share them with us? We are here to be supportive, and we know with the right drug and an understanding mate, you can solve this problem. Would that unmarried person please stand up now, and we will call them Ed (as in E.D.) to make the conversation flow a little easier?”
There was a silence for a long time. Then the silence was broken. No, it was not by a tear hitting the floor. It was the sound of a ball of mashed potatoes hitting the forehead of a never-to-be grandfather.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Life is Good (Cigar Smoke 11-18-10)
Sometimes don’t you feel almost guilty when everything just seems to work out right? Man, I have been on a roll here lately. Yeah, the last 69 years have been awesome.
OK, that’s probably a little too macro (and sappy) to be believable. Let’s get down to the micro. For the last week or two, everything I do is golden. It all started when I got a parking ticket over on South Lake Avenue when I went to the Souplantation for lunch. I park my car. I pay the parking fee at the meter with my credit card. I put the salad and muffins and bread and cookies on the tray. I eat the muffins and bread and cookies and dump the salad. I go back out to the car and there is a ticket on my windshield.
Sumbitch. (No, that’s not the happy part.) I decide to fight the ticket, so I write this heart-breaking letter to the city of Pasadena, sincerely informing them that I did indeed pay the ticket and I had used my credit card and the meter showed me a big OK after I slid it and I thought I was a good citizen. I told them there was no way I would cheat them and not pay, and I mentioned that maybe I was an orphan, and that they shouldn’t worry that I was the only person to get polio since 1973, and that I was an LA Kings fan.
Well, in a couple of days I received a short letter informing me that I did not have to pay the ticket. I, of course, yelled, “Yes,” to the gods and did an end zone dance that would have made Terrell Owens pee in his pants. Was my luck changing?
Yes, it was. I go down to serve jury duty and they sadly informed me that my services were no longer needed. I told them that they were the second governmental entity in two days that had done right by me and I asked if it was appropriate for me to kiss someone. Maybe a young intern who had just celebrated her 18th birthday. They suggested I send them a note.
On the way home from the courthouse I stopped for gas and as I was filling up I see a promotion to get a $50 Dining Card if you buy 100 gallons of gas. I say, “Sheeeit, Big Fella, you gonna buy 100 gallons of gas anyway, huh?” So when I get home I go on the Internet and sign up for a Mobil Exxon card and in a few days they send me the card, and they also send me a $50 Dining Card ahead of time. And they say I will receive a second $50 Dining Card after I buy the 100 gallons of gas. Yes, that sound you just heard was me clicking my heels. Life is good. Maybe Randy Newman wants to go to Sizzler with me.
So now, as long as I am on the Internet, I decide to go into my American Airlines account to see about my upcoming trip to Cabo, and they have this little note asking me if I would like to print my boarding pass right now and save time at the airport. How can one guy be so lucky. This is America.
I go out to the kitchen to tell Marge about my good fortune and she tells me that on Friday night we are going to a play and having dinner. (OK, my luck had to run out sometime.) I said what is the play about, Peachy Lips? She said, “About a font.” And then I said maybe the dumbest thing I have ever said, “Which font?” And Marge just looked at me cooler than Tony Soprano talking to a fish and said, “Futura.”
And you know what? The play was actually good! I couldn’t believe it. I enjoyed a play about a font. I was all set to fake liking it, but I didn’t have to pretend. My luck had just gotten a second wind, baby. And then we went to La Luna Negra on Green Street and ate these incredible sinful shrimp tapas and carnita tapas and bacon pork tapas and had margaritas and dipped bread into this oily olive stuff. Pinch me.
The next day, after squeezing the residual oil out of my cheeks, I decided to press my luck and tried to install that new Apple TV box. You know, that little attachment where you can now stream TV shows and movies and music and photos to your TV set. My record with installing things is similar to the record of the French army in warfare. But with my recent streak of good things happening, I went ahead.
And — hold on to your shorts, Aunt Bessie — I did it! I hooked the HDTV cable to the TV, I hooked up audio wires, I put in Wi-Fi codes, I figured out the remote, I got a FLICKR account, I uploaded my photos, I did it all. And it worked!
I am one happy bandito, baby. Getting ready to go to Cabo tomorrow and maybe toss back a few Cabo Wabo Tequilas and toast my run of good luck. Damn, I just hope this little streak makes it past the head-lopping-off part in Mexico. Ole!
OK, that’s probably a little too macro (and sappy) to be believable. Let’s get down to the micro. For the last week or two, everything I do is golden. It all started when I got a parking ticket over on South Lake Avenue when I went to the Souplantation for lunch. I park my car. I pay the parking fee at the meter with my credit card. I put the salad and muffins and bread and cookies on the tray. I eat the muffins and bread and cookies and dump the salad. I go back out to the car and there is a ticket on my windshield.
Sumbitch. (No, that’s not the happy part.) I decide to fight the ticket, so I write this heart-breaking letter to the city of Pasadena, sincerely informing them that I did indeed pay the ticket and I had used my credit card and the meter showed me a big OK after I slid it and I thought I was a good citizen. I told them there was no way I would cheat them and not pay, and I mentioned that maybe I was an orphan, and that they shouldn’t worry that I was the only person to get polio since 1973, and that I was an LA Kings fan.
Well, in a couple of days I received a short letter informing me that I did not have to pay the ticket. I, of course, yelled, “Yes,” to the gods and did an end zone dance that would have made Terrell Owens pee in his pants. Was my luck changing?
Yes, it was. I go down to serve jury duty and they sadly informed me that my services were no longer needed. I told them that they were the second governmental entity in two days that had done right by me and I asked if it was appropriate for me to kiss someone. Maybe a young intern who had just celebrated her 18th birthday. They suggested I send them a note.
On the way home from the courthouse I stopped for gas and as I was filling up I see a promotion to get a $50 Dining Card if you buy 100 gallons of gas. I say, “Sheeeit, Big Fella, you gonna buy 100 gallons of gas anyway, huh?” So when I get home I go on the Internet and sign up for a Mobil Exxon card and in a few days they send me the card, and they also send me a $50 Dining Card ahead of time. And they say I will receive a second $50 Dining Card after I buy the 100 gallons of gas. Yes, that sound you just heard was me clicking my heels. Life is good. Maybe Randy Newman wants to go to Sizzler with me.
So now, as long as I am on the Internet, I decide to go into my American Airlines account to see about my upcoming trip to Cabo, and they have this little note asking me if I would like to print my boarding pass right now and save time at the airport. How can one guy be so lucky. This is America.
I go out to the kitchen to tell Marge about my good fortune and she tells me that on Friday night we are going to a play and having dinner. (OK, my luck had to run out sometime.) I said what is the play about, Peachy Lips? She said, “About a font.” And then I said maybe the dumbest thing I have ever said, “Which font?” And Marge just looked at me cooler than Tony Soprano talking to a fish and said, “Futura.”
And you know what? The play was actually good! I couldn’t believe it. I enjoyed a play about a font. I was all set to fake liking it, but I didn’t have to pretend. My luck had just gotten a second wind, baby. And then we went to La Luna Negra on Green Street and ate these incredible sinful shrimp tapas and carnita tapas and bacon pork tapas and had margaritas and dipped bread into this oily olive stuff. Pinch me.
The next day, after squeezing the residual oil out of my cheeks, I decided to press my luck and tried to install that new Apple TV box. You know, that little attachment where you can now stream TV shows and movies and music and photos to your TV set. My record with installing things is similar to the record of the French army in warfare. But with my recent streak of good things happening, I went ahead.
And — hold on to your shorts, Aunt Bessie — I did it! I hooked the HDTV cable to the TV, I hooked up audio wires, I put in Wi-Fi codes, I figured out the remote, I got a FLICKR account, I uploaded my photos, I did it all. And it worked!
I am one happy bandito, baby. Getting ready to go to Cabo tomorrow and maybe toss back a few Cabo Wabo Tequilas and toast my run of good luck. Damn, I just hope this little streak makes it past the head-lopping-off part in Mexico. Ole!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Lanky Secrets (Cigar Smoke 10-21-10)
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.
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.
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.”
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