You know it wasn’t until I was 29 that I learned that not all women in bars are named Security. I would go into a place and sit down next to a beautiful (or any breathing) young woman, and I would look at her, and raise my eyebrows alternately, right, then left, then right again, and I’d let her catch a glimpse of my money clip with the two twenties in it hiding the ones, and I would order a Chivas rocks with a splash of 7-Up, and I would say, “Hi, would you like to have the wildest night of clothes-ripping, sweat-dripping sex you’ve ever had, or would you like to go out with me?”
And then, when she paused and gaped at me, I would introduce myself, “My name is Jim. What’s yours?” And she’d always say, “Security.” And I would say, “Hi, Security. This is really uncanny. You’re the fifth woman I’ve met this week with that name. What are the odds?”
But I digress. But before I digress, I would like to inquire if I can officially digress before I have actually started doing something? How can I digress when I’m not doing anything? If I had started my column, and then I mentioned meeting all the lovely Securities I once knew, that would be OK. That would be true digression.
Anyway, I am not digressing now. I am just continuing on with my column and entering into a completely new subject. The digression is now over, or to be more accurate, the digression never really started.
Do you guys have problems with rats, gophers and squirrels? Well, your favorite digressing columnist does. We have rats in our garage. And it is not pretty. These little rotten rodents are everywhere. We find rat droppings on the floor and on the shelves and on our car. They’ve gnawed holes in boxes and are making nests in old clothes. I think I can hear them laughing, too.
At first, I tried to get rid of them myself. I bought some of those deadly rat spring-traps and hired a guy from Gold’s Gym to pull back the iron bar things, and I baited the traps with peanut butter, and yes, the traps all went off, but I didn’t catch any rats. Nope, I just hear them spitting out PB now. You ever hear a rat go pa-tui. And then laugh. It’s not a good sound.
Then I took out my old .22 rifle and staked out the garage. And when I finally saw one of those little brown-faced PB-suckers, I pulled off a round. I missed, but the ricocheting bullet was kind of entertaining. It bounced off an old cook pot and then glanced off a lamp and then off a sand wedge into one of my seven coolers. I felt like I was in a Road Runner cartoon. So, for safety’s sake, I put on a hockey helmet and fired off a few more shots. Didn’t get any rats, but at least all those storage boxes know who’s boss now.
And get this: we have squirrels that are bad-asses, too. About a month ago, we were having trouble with our TV reception, so we call Charter and the guy comes out and checks some stuff, then goes outside and looks at the wire coming into the house from the garage roof, and says, “You guys got squirrel problems.”
“You mean those cute little bushy-tailed, buck-toothed critters who sing Christmas songs?” I said.
“No,” he said, “Those are chipmunks, dumbass. You got squirrels eating your wires. See up there?” And sure enough, the little varmint vandals had eaten clean through the wires, preventing us from getting our daily allowance of reality programming. (I think Marge showed them where the wires were.)
By the way, and this is a legitimate digression, have you ever seen a squirrel go poo-poo?
I have not. I have seen rats leave rat pellets. I have seen every other kind of animal leave their calling cards. I have seen my dog, Hadley, leave mounds that should have been illegal. But I have never ever seen a squirrel even so much as hunch over, let alone leave evidence of television wire coating in their scat or whatever those little squirrel suckers call it.
And now — as if the rats and the squirrels weren’t enough — we have been invaded by gophers. They are in our backyard. Holes everywhere. So we had the gardener try to (don’t tell PETA) drown them with the hose. Didn’t work. Then we got Orkin out here and they put poison down in their little gopher tunnels. Didn’t do diddly. I called Bill Murray and asked him to bring his “Caddyshack” dynamite, but I haven’t heard back from him. Bastard.
So what could I do? I got out my .22 again, and I was lying prone on the grass like Gordon Liddy humping Mrs. Liddy, and I had the rifle pointed right at the gopher hole just waiting for one of the dirtbags to raise his little pest head, and then I heard something. It was very faint at first. I could barely hear it. Then it got a little louder and I leaned closer to the hole. And I swear on my mother’s tattoo, I heard a gopher say in his little gopher voice, “Got any peanut butter?”
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Fishing Trip (Cigar Smoke 9-17-09)
Well, I haven’t had my morning cigar yet (I’ll pause for you to retch) so I am feeling a little too healthy. And that always makes me grumpy. But I have had my coffee, so I am not shouting, “You lie!” at anyone we know.
Anyway, at this exact time just two weeks ago, I was not stomping around being grumpy or yelling at weasels or anything. Why? Because I was up in Oregon, just mellowing out, enjoying clear water and trees and seagulls, and fishing for salmon. And you know what I discovered? I discovered another human being just as grumpy as I am. Sometimes the lord works in mysterious ways. (I think the lord is grumpy, too. I think he may be ticked off that I used a lower case “l” on his title.)
So who is this fellow grump? I don’t want to use his real name. Let’s just call him Mike Harrington who used to go to Humboldt State College and now lives in Beaverton, Ore. OK, Mike knew I was scouting around to buy a boat, so he suggested I come up to God’s country (note the uppercase “G”) for a fishing trip in his kick-ass jet-powered sled boat, if I had the guts — which he doubted I did, because he had known me earlier in my life, and was pretty sure I was the inspiration for the term “gutless wonder.”
I laughed my insincere laugh of repressed spit, and said, “Give those salmon suckers a head’s-up, because the Altadena Assassin is on his way.” Mike said, “Laris, it’s only a fishing trip — relax.” I said, wiping some non-repressed spit that escaped to my chin, “Assassins never relax. The SAA (Salmon Assassins of Altadena) won’t let us.”
Anyway, I get up to Portland, and Mike picks me up at the airport and says, “Couldn’t get a cab, huh?” And we drive to his house in the trees, and we get there and his delightful wife, Shirleen, asks me if the Salmon Assassin would like a BLT. I did one quick karate-slashing move and said, “Kwaa!” (meaning “yes” in Tai Quando. I’m hoping Tai Quando is a martial art and not a Chinese province.)
After a nice evening of watching TV, eating a Costco ice cream bar and listening to Mike grump about his Oregon Ducks getting their little duck clocks cleaned by Boise State, I asked him what he thought about the Duck uniforms. His face got red and his head started to expand and two of his pimples popped, and he said, “They have frigging feathers!” I suggested that they might use them to fly away. He suggested that I might do the same.
Eventually, I asked, “What time do we have to get up tomorrow morning?” Without even a pause, he said “Five.” “Five a.m.?” “Yes, 5 A.M.!” I mentioned that the mouth of the Columbia River, where we were headed, was only about an hour-and-a-half away, and maybe we could sleep in a little. He mentioned that I was the most sissy Salmon Assassin he had ever met.
We get to the river, we launch the boat and we start heading for the place Mike says the salmon will be. He says the tide will be coming in around 12:30 or 1 p.m., and that’s a perfect time to catch ’em. I calmly and affectionately say, “Mike, you dumbshit, do you know it is now only 6:30 in the morning? Mr. Dumbshit, it is 6:30 right now. The fish are showing up at 12:30. What are we going to do for SIX hours!” He says, “Troll.”
So we did troll for six hours. And we did a few other things, too. Between trolls, Mike would maneuver the boat at high speed so it would bounce up in the air and come down on the waves dramatically wrong and wrench my back in serious spinal-disc premeditated pain. I asked him why he would do this to a fellow Humboldt Lumberjack, and he said, “Feathers.”
Then he started to put on some sunscreen and I asked what number he used. And he said, “Number 2.” I said, “Were they out of number 1?” He smirked and tried to hit another wave wrong, and I said, “You know, that sun shit goes up to, maybe number 54, or something. Number 2 is about as effective as, say, water. Air is number 1, water number 2.”
Well, after trolling our asses off, we did catch a salmon. One 22-inch salmon. And we had to throw back a big 15-pounder because it didn’t have a tag on its dorsal fin. The Salmon Assassin was not happy.
The only other fun thing that happened, if you don’t count all the nature stuff, was that Mike took a leak into a half- full apple juice container and then said, “Better not drink the top half, fish face.”
Well, we kind of made up after a while and went out to dinner. And because we’d been using his boat, I offered to pay for the meal. That’s just the kind of assassin I am. And I told my inadequately sun-screened buddy he could have whatever he wanted on the menu as long as it wasn’t one thing: expensive.
Anyway, at this exact time just two weeks ago, I was not stomping around being grumpy or yelling at weasels or anything. Why? Because I was up in Oregon, just mellowing out, enjoying clear water and trees and seagulls, and fishing for salmon. And you know what I discovered? I discovered another human being just as grumpy as I am. Sometimes the lord works in mysterious ways. (I think the lord is grumpy, too. I think he may be ticked off that I used a lower case “l” on his title.)
So who is this fellow grump? I don’t want to use his real name. Let’s just call him Mike Harrington who used to go to Humboldt State College and now lives in Beaverton, Ore. OK, Mike knew I was scouting around to buy a boat, so he suggested I come up to God’s country (note the uppercase “G”) for a fishing trip in his kick-ass jet-powered sled boat, if I had the guts — which he doubted I did, because he had known me earlier in my life, and was pretty sure I was the inspiration for the term “gutless wonder.”
I laughed my insincere laugh of repressed spit, and said, “Give those salmon suckers a head’s-up, because the Altadena Assassin is on his way.” Mike said, “Laris, it’s only a fishing trip — relax.” I said, wiping some non-repressed spit that escaped to my chin, “Assassins never relax. The SAA (Salmon Assassins of Altadena) won’t let us.”
Anyway, I get up to Portland, and Mike picks me up at the airport and says, “Couldn’t get a cab, huh?” And we drive to his house in the trees, and we get there and his delightful wife, Shirleen, asks me if the Salmon Assassin would like a BLT. I did one quick karate-slashing move and said, “Kwaa!” (meaning “yes” in Tai Quando. I’m hoping Tai Quando is a martial art and not a Chinese province.)
After a nice evening of watching TV, eating a Costco ice cream bar and listening to Mike grump about his Oregon Ducks getting their little duck clocks cleaned by Boise State, I asked him what he thought about the Duck uniforms. His face got red and his head started to expand and two of his pimples popped, and he said, “They have frigging feathers!” I suggested that they might use them to fly away. He suggested that I might do the same.
Eventually, I asked, “What time do we have to get up tomorrow morning?” Without even a pause, he said “Five.” “Five a.m.?” “Yes, 5 A.M.!” I mentioned that the mouth of the Columbia River, where we were headed, was only about an hour-and-a-half away, and maybe we could sleep in a little. He mentioned that I was the most sissy Salmon Assassin he had ever met.
We get to the river, we launch the boat and we start heading for the place Mike says the salmon will be. He says the tide will be coming in around 12:30 or 1 p.m., and that’s a perfect time to catch ’em. I calmly and affectionately say, “Mike, you dumbshit, do you know it is now only 6:30 in the morning? Mr. Dumbshit, it is 6:30 right now. The fish are showing up at 12:30. What are we going to do for SIX hours!” He says, “Troll.”
So we did troll for six hours. And we did a few other things, too. Between trolls, Mike would maneuver the boat at high speed so it would bounce up in the air and come down on the waves dramatically wrong and wrench my back in serious spinal-disc premeditated pain. I asked him why he would do this to a fellow Humboldt Lumberjack, and he said, “Feathers.”
Then he started to put on some sunscreen and I asked what number he used. And he said, “Number 2.” I said, “Were they out of number 1?” He smirked and tried to hit another wave wrong, and I said, “You know, that sun shit goes up to, maybe number 54, or something. Number 2 is about as effective as, say, water. Air is number 1, water number 2.”
Well, after trolling our asses off, we did catch a salmon. One 22-inch salmon. And we had to throw back a big 15-pounder because it didn’t have a tag on its dorsal fin. The Salmon Assassin was not happy.
The only other fun thing that happened, if you don’t count all the nature stuff, was that Mike took a leak into a half- full apple juice container and then said, “Better not drink the top half, fish face.”
Well, we kind of made up after a while and went out to dinner. And because we’d been using his boat, I offered to pay for the meal. That’s just the kind of assassin I am. And I told my inadequately sun-screened buddy he could have whatever he wanted on the menu as long as it wasn’t one thing: expensive.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Remote Possibilities (Cigar Smoke 9-10-09)
You know, this may sound kind of unimportant. But then again, remember whom you are reading. (My grammar checker put that whom in, sorry.) Anyway, this is who speaking again. Yes, I’m on first, too.
Because I am a what? I am a man. Therefore, I am in charge of the remote control. It is my life and I would die for it. Do not try to take the remote out of my clutching fingers. Do not even think of trying to remove my remote. It will be a decision you and your next of kin will regret. It is my remote. Don’t touch it. Unless you just bought my TV from my craigslist ad. Then you can touch my remote, because it is actually your remote then. And I would never touch another man’s remote.
I know, most of you think of the remote problem as a guy thing. And I guess it is. Like not asking for directions or thinking about sex every four seconds. OK, every three seconds. But there is a hidden, huge responsibility of being in charge of the remote. If you are man enough to seize the remote, you must be man enough to use it for the benefit of your woman, your TV mate, your Vast Wasteland-watching partner. In other words, you have to choose some pretty good shows if you want to have the, excuse the expression, remotest chance of pleasing your Poopsie Pie.
And believe me, if your Poopsie Pie is anything like my Poopsie Pie, pleasing her is a challenge. It is tough. And I really work at it. And, of course, I have TiVo, too. And no, it’s not the old one-show recording TiVo. No, it is the new two-banger baby that let’s you record two shows at once or you can watch one show and record the other while you’re watching or you don’t have to watch the two shows you’re pretending to watch and it will still record stuff you don’t want to see. It is beautiful.
Every night after we eat dinner, we head for the family room to watch a little TV. Marge isn’t really a TV kind of person. Generally, she just likes to read her Kindle, and pretend she’s married to someone else who is also reading a Kindle. But sometimes she has very strong feelings on not being able to see anything good on TV. She’ll say something like, “Ah geez, I’m not watching that.
I just can’t watch that. Isn’t there anything else on? I just can’t watch it! That is awful. I cannot watch that! No, I can’t watch that!” And I’ll say, “Are you saying you can’t watch that?”
And then because I happen to have the remote in my hand and under my complete control, I hit the Now Playing button on the TiVo and I show Ms. Poopsie Pie a long list of previously recorded television favorites for her viewing enjoyment. And usually, because I am a wonderful TV mate, I suggest a preview of our television plans for the evening. I’ll say, “OK, first we’ll see a “Jeopardy!”, then we can either see a new “Monk” or an old “Law and Order.” She’ll jump in and say, “I don’t like ‘Monk’ anymore. It was OK at first, but I can’t watch it anymore. He makes me nervous. And how many times have I told you that I only like “Law and Order” with a colon after it, like “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” or “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.” Then I suggest that I could maybe put something like a remote control device in another colon if she doesn’t like the shows I pick, and she thinks that I am mean-spirited and gross and goes back to her Kindle and pouts.
Then I’ll start watching some show I like because she’s reading her Kindle and she’ll glance at it and say, “Is that all that’s on?!” Then I’ll gather my mean-spirited and gross self, and say, “Poopsie Pie, you wanna see a “Seinfeld?” She’ll say, “No.” “How about a replay of the Kings-Montreal Stanley Cup playoff from 1993?” “No!” “OK, how about a ‘Big Brother?’” And she closes her eyes, opens them, and says, “If you watch another one of those ‘Big Brother’ episodes, I will shoot your lame-ass stupid dead body and get the neighbors to help me stuff you into a suitcase and then I will mail you to myself and when you arrive I will stab you through the outside of the suitcase with a Japanese sword and then open the suitcase and pour kerosene on the pieces of your body and then light up a cigarette and drop the burning match into the kerosene and dance around the flames.”
“I guess you don’t care which houseguest is getting evicted huh?”
Hey, I really do try to find shows she will like. Poopsie Pie’s pleasure is my life. I want her to be happy. I want her to be fulfilled. I take my remote control obligations seriously. I just don’t TiVo for fun. No, I TiVo to be a serious remote control guy. I TiVo to save my marriage. I TiVo for my country. I TiVo to find shows with colons!
I think I may have found something. “Hey, Honey Poopsie, you wanna see this new reality show? It has a colon. ‘Octomom: The Formative Years’.”
Because I am a what? I am a man. Therefore, I am in charge of the remote control. It is my life and I would die for it. Do not try to take the remote out of my clutching fingers. Do not even think of trying to remove my remote. It will be a decision you and your next of kin will regret. It is my remote. Don’t touch it. Unless you just bought my TV from my craigslist ad. Then you can touch my remote, because it is actually your remote then. And I would never touch another man’s remote.
I know, most of you think of the remote problem as a guy thing. And I guess it is. Like not asking for directions or thinking about sex every four seconds. OK, every three seconds. But there is a hidden, huge responsibility of being in charge of the remote. If you are man enough to seize the remote, you must be man enough to use it for the benefit of your woman, your TV mate, your Vast Wasteland-watching partner. In other words, you have to choose some pretty good shows if you want to have the, excuse the expression, remotest chance of pleasing your Poopsie Pie.
And believe me, if your Poopsie Pie is anything like my Poopsie Pie, pleasing her is a challenge. It is tough. And I really work at it. And, of course, I have TiVo, too. And no, it’s not the old one-show recording TiVo. No, it is the new two-banger baby that let’s you record two shows at once or you can watch one show and record the other while you’re watching or you don’t have to watch the two shows you’re pretending to watch and it will still record stuff you don’t want to see. It is beautiful.
Every night after we eat dinner, we head for the family room to watch a little TV. Marge isn’t really a TV kind of person. Generally, she just likes to read her Kindle, and pretend she’s married to someone else who is also reading a Kindle. But sometimes she has very strong feelings on not being able to see anything good on TV. She’ll say something like, “Ah geez, I’m not watching that.
I just can’t watch that. Isn’t there anything else on? I just can’t watch it! That is awful. I cannot watch that! No, I can’t watch that!” And I’ll say, “Are you saying you can’t watch that?”
And then because I happen to have the remote in my hand and under my complete control, I hit the Now Playing button on the TiVo and I show Ms. Poopsie Pie a long list of previously recorded television favorites for her viewing enjoyment. And usually, because I am a wonderful TV mate, I suggest a preview of our television plans for the evening. I’ll say, “OK, first we’ll see a “Jeopardy!”, then we can either see a new “Monk” or an old “Law and Order.” She’ll jump in and say, “I don’t like ‘Monk’ anymore. It was OK at first, but I can’t watch it anymore. He makes me nervous. And how many times have I told you that I only like “Law and Order” with a colon after it, like “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” or “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.” Then I suggest that I could maybe put something like a remote control device in another colon if she doesn’t like the shows I pick, and she thinks that I am mean-spirited and gross and goes back to her Kindle and pouts.
Then I’ll start watching some show I like because she’s reading her Kindle and she’ll glance at it and say, “Is that all that’s on?!” Then I’ll gather my mean-spirited and gross self, and say, “Poopsie Pie, you wanna see a “Seinfeld?” She’ll say, “No.” “How about a replay of the Kings-Montreal Stanley Cup playoff from 1993?” “No!” “OK, how about a ‘Big Brother?’” And she closes her eyes, opens them, and says, “If you watch another one of those ‘Big Brother’ episodes, I will shoot your lame-ass stupid dead body and get the neighbors to help me stuff you into a suitcase and then I will mail you to myself and when you arrive I will stab you through the outside of the suitcase with a Japanese sword and then open the suitcase and pour kerosene on the pieces of your body and then light up a cigarette and drop the burning match into the kerosene and dance around the flames.”
“I guess you don’t care which houseguest is getting evicted huh?”
Hey, I really do try to find shows she will like. Poopsie Pie’s pleasure is my life. I want her to be happy. I want her to be fulfilled. I take my remote control obligations seriously. I just don’t TiVo for fun. No, I TiVo to be a serious remote control guy. I TiVo to save my marriage. I TiVo for my country. I TiVo to find shows with colons!
I think I may have found something. “Hey, Honey Poopsie, you wanna see this new reality show? It has a colon. ‘Octomom: The Formative Years’.”
Thursday, August 13, 2009
One More Time (Cigar Smoke 8-13-09)
OK, I know many of you are saying to yourselves, “This jerk-off is, as always, redundantly challenged and why the double hey hey does he have to tell us again of his redundancy.” Well, all I can say is, I would not be redundant if I didn’t try to explain.
Yes, I tend to over-explain things. Like just the other day I was coming home from a Scrabble tournament in Dayton, Ohio (not to be confused with Dayton, Sweden), a tournament in which I modestly must report to you that I kicked some serious old-lady butt. Of course, if any of the old ladies happen to read this and have their panties in a bunch at my using the term “old ladies” there is a good chance they will put bricks in their purses and Arte Johnson my old geezer ass. But, I digress. However, digression is a higher form of over-explaining, and if I had the time, I would over-explain why that is.
Anyway, a particularly noteworthy over-explaining incident occurred one morning when I went out to eat breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I had just taken a shower and, as is my wont (I always wanted to say that), I seemed to be perspiring quite a bit. Kind of like Lake Erie is quite a bit wet. Serial sweating is in my genetic code. This guy sweats after a shower. Yes, that noise you hear is God chuckling.
I don’t know what it is but I have always had this problem. Even when I was younger, before HDTV, I would take a shower and then dry off and get dressed and head off to work. And then, as regular as a damn soaked clock, I would start to sweat about 15 minutes later. Like clockwork, in 15 minutes I would be soaking wet. My shirt would be sticking to my body. My chest hair would be praying for a lifejacket.
I only bring this sweating problem up because you will need to know this information to follow my coming over-explaining.
OK, back to the restaurant. I go in and they seat me at a nice table. The waitress comes over and she hands me the menu and then she secretly glances down at my sopping shirt, and says hesitantly, “What can I get you?” I say, “A beach towel.” She does not laugh. I kind of thought it was funny. She’s just looking at me, not saying a word. So I tried again, “Maybe you could get me a blow dryer and a couple of sponges.” If she’s gonna laugh at that one, it will be in the future.
Now, here is where the over-explaining hits a higher gear. I know I should have just shut the hell up, ordered my eggs and hash browns and just let it go. But I have a problem. I’m me. So I tell her that I always sweat in the morning after taking a shower. I can’t help it. It’s just a Laris man trait. My dad always sweated like hell and my son, Mike, is carrying on the tradition of looking disgustingly drenched quite well, too.
She just looked at me and didn’t say a word. I don’t think I was actually scaring her, but she looked, shall we say, very alert. So I tried to reassure her, “Just because I am all wet with sopping sticky sweat doesn’t mean I’m an escaped murderer who chopped up nuns and ate them with Tabasco sauce, or just because my chest hair is matted down to my shirt like a pack of wet crippled spiders doesn’t mean I am a sex pervert who just drooled over a Britney Spears You Tube video eight times?” No, it just means I just had a shower and my pores are going postal. That’s all.
She didn’t answer me. She walked away silently and a rather big gentleman waiter guy came over and said, “Order something.”
Anyway, I finished my breakfast. The hash browns were a little damp and had one renegade chest hair in them, but I enjoyed the meal. Then I went out to the airport to fly home to Altadena. Did you know that you cannot tell someone you’re from Altadena without adding on, “Yeah, it’s just a little above Pasadena.”
I get on the plane. I sit down. I do not want to over-explain ever again. Then the lady sitting next to me happens to mention hair spray for some reason. And, incredibly, I had just been thinking about hair spray. (I had finished my quantum physics book.) So I said, “Could you please tell me which is stronger, Maximum Hold or Ultimate Hold?” She didn’t answer me. She just moved slightly farther away from me. I think she was the waitress’ sister.
But that didn’t stop me. “I kind of lean toward Ultimate Hold myself, but then again Maximum Hold has some things going for it, too. I mean, they do have maximum-security prisons, don’t they? I’ve never heard of an ultimate-security prison, have you? But then again, say you are looking for a mate and you find a guy and you go home to tell your friend about him, you wouldn’t say he’s the maximum. No, you wouldn’t say that — he would be the ultimate dreamboat, wouldn’t he?”
I noticed my seatmate had hit the attendant button, so I just ended the conversation quickly by saying, “The hairspray people could solve it really easily by just coming out with Infinity Hold, the bastards.”
Yes, I tend to over-explain things. Like just the other day I was coming home from a Scrabble tournament in Dayton, Ohio (not to be confused with Dayton, Sweden), a tournament in which I modestly must report to you that I kicked some serious old-lady butt. Of course, if any of the old ladies happen to read this and have their panties in a bunch at my using the term “old ladies” there is a good chance they will put bricks in their purses and Arte Johnson my old geezer ass. But, I digress. However, digression is a higher form of over-explaining, and if I had the time, I would over-explain why that is.
Anyway, a particularly noteworthy over-explaining incident occurred one morning when I went out to eat breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I had just taken a shower and, as is my wont (I always wanted to say that), I seemed to be perspiring quite a bit. Kind of like Lake Erie is quite a bit wet. Serial sweating is in my genetic code. This guy sweats after a shower. Yes, that noise you hear is God chuckling.
I don’t know what it is but I have always had this problem. Even when I was younger, before HDTV, I would take a shower and then dry off and get dressed and head off to work. And then, as regular as a damn soaked clock, I would start to sweat about 15 minutes later. Like clockwork, in 15 minutes I would be soaking wet. My shirt would be sticking to my body. My chest hair would be praying for a lifejacket.
I only bring this sweating problem up because you will need to know this information to follow my coming over-explaining.
OK, back to the restaurant. I go in and they seat me at a nice table. The waitress comes over and she hands me the menu and then she secretly glances down at my sopping shirt, and says hesitantly, “What can I get you?” I say, “A beach towel.” She does not laugh. I kind of thought it was funny. She’s just looking at me, not saying a word. So I tried again, “Maybe you could get me a blow dryer and a couple of sponges.” If she’s gonna laugh at that one, it will be in the future.
Now, here is where the over-explaining hits a higher gear. I know I should have just shut the hell up, ordered my eggs and hash browns and just let it go. But I have a problem. I’m me. So I tell her that I always sweat in the morning after taking a shower. I can’t help it. It’s just a Laris man trait. My dad always sweated like hell and my son, Mike, is carrying on the tradition of looking disgustingly drenched quite well, too.
She just looked at me and didn’t say a word. I don’t think I was actually scaring her, but she looked, shall we say, very alert. So I tried to reassure her, “Just because I am all wet with sopping sticky sweat doesn’t mean I’m an escaped murderer who chopped up nuns and ate them with Tabasco sauce, or just because my chest hair is matted down to my shirt like a pack of wet crippled spiders doesn’t mean I am a sex pervert who just drooled over a Britney Spears You Tube video eight times?” No, it just means I just had a shower and my pores are going postal. That’s all.
She didn’t answer me. She walked away silently and a rather big gentleman waiter guy came over and said, “Order something.”
Anyway, I finished my breakfast. The hash browns were a little damp and had one renegade chest hair in them, but I enjoyed the meal. Then I went out to the airport to fly home to Altadena. Did you know that you cannot tell someone you’re from Altadena without adding on, “Yeah, it’s just a little above Pasadena.”
I get on the plane. I sit down. I do not want to over-explain ever again. Then the lady sitting next to me happens to mention hair spray for some reason. And, incredibly, I had just been thinking about hair spray. (I had finished my quantum physics book.) So I said, “Could you please tell me which is stronger, Maximum Hold or Ultimate Hold?” She didn’t answer me. She just moved slightly farther away from me. I think she was the waitress’ sister.
But that didn’t stop me. “I kind of lean toward Ultimate Hold myself, but then again Maximum Hold has some things going for it, too. I mean, they do have maximum-security prisons, don’t they? I’ve never heard of an ultimate-security prison, have you? But then again, say you are looking for a mate and you find a guy and you go home to tell your friend about him, you wouldn’t say he’s the maximum. No, you wouldn’t say that — he would be the ultimate dreamboat, wouldn’t he?”
I noticed my seatmate had hit the attendant button, so I just ended the conversation quickly by saying, “The hairspray people could solve it really easily by just coming out with Infinity Hold, the bastards.”
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Ten Damn Good Years (Cigar Smoke 7/30/09)
Wow! I can’t believe the Pasadena Weekly is 25 years old. (That’s 475 years old in regular peoples’ ages, not counting the blood, sweat, cigarette ashes, grime, tears, ink stains, and pulled stress muscles and torn aortas.) I guess the paper had been around for four or five years before we bought it in 1988. Those guys did a nice job of getting it off the ground and then they sold it to my ex-wife, who owned another newspaper, and discovered that owning two papers at the same time was kind of like being one of Michael Vick’s dogs. So, after she stopped crying, she sold it to Marge and me and we had it for exactly 10 years. After a decade of forehead-vein popping, we sold it to the commie LA Times in 1998. Hey, I kid the commies. But, of course, I took the commie’s money. It’s just as green as environmental causes.
And then the Times sold it and it turned over a couple more times and the new publishers have put life and spirit back into it and the Pasadena Weekly lives. I am glad it has survived and I wish it many more years of good journalism and good times.
Anyway, the 10 years we owned it were 10 pretty damn good years. I think we took the paper in a new direction — a direction most people still haven’t quite figured out. I like to think the direction was up. But whatever, I think we definitely put our stamp on it. And I was proud to be associated with the professional people we had. We had such a great staff and we all worked our flabby buttocks so hard that eventually we had firm buttocks and we had so much fun doing it, it was like it was illegal. I’ll always remember it and always be grateful for the best 10 years of my life. OK, so it took off 10 years at the end of my life — who needs 80 to 90?
I’d like to go down memory lane a little ways. However, I’m not going to talk about what was actually in the paper for those 10 years because I’m semi-senile and I don’t quite remember a lot of it, and because, of course, I’m a shallow person who tended to get extra happy when we had big issues where we sold a lot of ads. And who wants to hear about ad sales? Except me.
I remember enjoying just going into the office every morning. I loved the routine. I would unlock the door, punch the code into the security alarm system (many times accurately), turn on all the lights, get a good feeling just looking out at all the empty desks, most of which I had literally assembled, and then going into the break room and starting a pot of coffee and checking the refrigerator for any uneaten leftover sandwiches or other goodies. I particularly liked to remove the little signs that said “Do Not Eat This!” on them. I would remove the signs, eat whatever was in the little white Styrofoam box, and then put the “Do Not Eat This!” sign on another Styrofoam box that contained something I didn’t want to eat. Oh, the memories.
One time some enraged Styrofoam box person stormed into my office and screamed, “Laris, did you eat the last half of my French dip sandwich? Please don’t tell me you ate it! Please don’t tell me you would stoop that low.” I had to fess up. I remember telling her that, no, it wasn’t me, but I did happen to see Fred Bankston (my ace ad rep) in the coffee room earlier and I couldn’t be sure but I thought I had heard the squeak of Styrofoam. Last I saw her she was heading for the ad department. I probably should have taken the stapler out of her hand.
Speaking of ad reps, one day I remember walking into the ad department and a new sales rep was, and I’m not making this up, standing on her desk, pounding a nail into the wall with the heel of her shoe. Another time I was eating lunch with an ad rep I had to let go, and as we were eating I noticed there was blood running down her lip into her food. She was so tense she was biting her lip and tongue and she wouldn’t open her mouth to talk to me. I didn’t know what to do. Check, please.
On the editorial side, I would pick up the phone and there would be a string of obscenities that even made me blush. No introduction, no hello, no nothing. Just obscenities. And finally after a while, he would stop for breath, and I would say, “Hi, Isaac. How you doing?” Yes, Councilman Isaac Richard was expressing his opinion. And then I’d hear someone standing at the front of our office singing the National Anthem at the top of his lungs. Some guy named Roy who had brought his bike up to our office was belting out a pretty good rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Oh, I miss it all. I especially miss all the great people who worked for me. Thank you everybody. Thanks for your hard work. Thanks for the fun. Thanks for the memories. It was truly a special time.
Here’s to another 25 years for the Pasadena Weekly!
And then the Times sold it and it turned over a couple more times and the new publishers have put life and spirit back into it and the Pasadena Weekly lives. I am glad it has survived and I wish it many more years of good journalism and good times.
Anyway, the 10 years we owned it were 10 pretty damn good years. I think we took the paper in a new direction — a direction most people still haven’t quite figured out. I like to think the direction was up. But whatever, I think we definitely put our stamp on it. And I was proud to be associated with the professional people we had. We had such a great staff and we all worked our flabby buttocks so hard that eventually we had firm buttocks and we had so much fun doing it, it was like it was illegal. I’ll always remember it and always be grateful for the best 10 years of my life. OK, so it took off 10 years at the end of my life — who needs 80 to 90?
I’d like to go down memory lane a little ways. However, I’m not going to talk about what was actually in the paper for those 10 years because I’m semi-senile and I don’t quite remember a lot of it, and because, of course, I’m a shallow person who tended to get extra happy when we had big issues where we sold a lot of ads. And who wants to hear about ad sales? Except me.
I remember enjoying just going into the office every morning. I loved the routine. I would unlock the door, punch the code into the security alarm system (many times accurately), turn on all the lights, get a good feeling just looking out at all the empty desks, most of which I had literally assembled, and then going into the break room and starting a pot of coffee and checking the refrigerator for any uneaten leftover sandwiches or other goodies. I particularly liked to remove the little signs that said “Do Not Eat This!” on them. I would remove the signs, eat whatever was in the little white Styrofoam box, and then put the “Do Not Eat This!” sign on another Styrofoam box that contained something I didn’t want to eat. Oh, the memories.
One time some enraged Styrofoam box person stormed into my office and screamed, “Laris, did you eat the last half of my French dip sandwich? Please don’t tell me you ate it! Please don’t tell me you would stoop that low.” I had to fess up. I remember telling her that, no, it wasn’t me, but I did happen to see Fred Bankston (my ace ad rep) in the coffee room earlier and I couldn’t be sure but I thought I had heard the squeak of Styrofoam. Last I saw her she was heading for the ad department. I probably should have taken the stapler out of her hand.
Speaking of ad reps, one day I remember walking into the ad department and a new sales rep was, and I’m not making this up, standing on her desk, pounding a nail into the wall with the heel of her shoe. Another time I was eating lunch with an ad rep I had to let go, and as we were eating I noticed there was blood running down her lip into her food. She was so tense she was biting her lip and tongue and she wouldn’t open her mouth to talk to me. I didn’t know what to do. Check, please.
On the editorial side, I would pick up the phone and there would be a string of obscenities that even made me blush. No introduction, no hello, no nothing. Just obscenities. And finally after a while, he would stop for breath, and I would say, “Hi, Isaac. How you doing?” Yes, Councilman Isaac Richard was expressing his opinion. And then I’d hear someone standing at the front of our office singing the National Anthem at the top of his lungs. Some guy named Roy who had brought his bike up to our office was belting out a pretty good rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Oh, I miss it all. I especially miss all the great people who worked for me. Thank you everybody. Thanks for your hard work. Thanks for the fun. Thanks for the memories. It was truly a special time.
Here’s to another 25 years for the Pasadena Weekly!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
A Good Use of Tarp Money (Cigar Smoke 07/16/09)
OK, I am sitting on my deck in paradise. OK, it’s not paradise, it’s only Oregon. But I like to pretend it’s paradise because it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to paradise and I’m, as they say, getting on in years. In fact, in a lot of ways, I’ve pretty much gotten on and have almost arrived. And like wisdom and growing old gracefully, paradise has eluded me.
Anyway, I’m sitting on one of two pretty nifty recliners that I have given new life to. They are brand damn new recliners that were in the house, but I wanted a sleeper-sofa for my imposing houseguests, and these two beautiful recliners would
no longer fit in my hovel.
So, I thought about selling them on Craigslist, but I was afraid I would be killed by a sex murderer, so then I considered bartering them for a four-year supply of donuts, but then it hit me. I needed some comfortable places to sit on my deck. I needed to recline properly, like a man of leisure loafing in paradise, and feel the smooth, soft feel of expensive indoor fabric on my idle outdoor buttocks.
But, of course, my wife, Marge, the little woman, my better half, the yin to my yang, the chow to my mein and the toodle to my loo, tactfully mentioned that it rains in Oregon every 45 minutes and that maybe I could come up with another idea that wasn’t “totally whacked.” I said, “Does whack have an H or not?”
Well, I thought over the whole rain-ruining-nice-indoor-fabric issue for a while and concluded that I could somehow outsmart the rain, the fabric and the little woman. I just needed to think it through. Of course, that immediately presented another dilemma. I don’t think that well. And I’m impatient. Not the best of exactas, my friends.
So, I get on the Internet and Google outdoor furniture covers and re-upholstering and rainproof fabrics and Do Hooters Girls Like Owls (sorry, that was not a recliner-related search) and I come up with a number of solutions. And some of them would actually work well, except for a couple of things. They’re too damn costly. (And I’m too damn cheap.) And it would take too long to get them. (And I’m too damn impatient.) And redundant.
So then I say to myself, so what if it rains on the recliners. They’ll get wet, big deal. All I have to do is buy a raincoat and rain pants and I could sit on the wet recliner chair in my wet raincoat and rain pants and life would be good. Damp, but good.
But I do not do that. For some reason the word “whacked” seems more appropriate than it did earlier and I’m feeling like the little woman, the yin master, just might hose Mr. Yang down with a fire hose if I carried out this plan.
So, I rethink it. And as I’m rethinking, the little woman, the Jacko to my lantern, says, “You know, even if you sit on a wet recliner in your wet pants, the recliner will eventually rot from being wet and fall apart and be all shredded up and the springs will stick into your idle buttocks and the recliner will smell like an embalmer’s
T-shirt and our neighbors will laugh openly at you. And when they’re tired of laughing at you, they will mock you. You know that, don’t you?” I replied, “Of course I do, Little.” (It always pisses her off when I call her by her first name when we argue.)
So, I pop over to this big hardware/army surplus/espresso-latte place they have up here. And I buy a couple of nice-looking tarps (That’s a phrase you’ve never seen before, huh?). And I come back to my deck and I put a khaki-ass green, rainproof tarp over each little delicate flower of a recliner and violà, paradise has been rehabbed. It really turned out well. They’re featuring it next month in Better Homes and Hovels.
It’s perfect, baby. When it’s sunny, I just pull the flap back on the tarp and drape it over the back of the recliner. And me and my buttocks sit down on nice indoor-quality fabric that we enjoy and that we both deserve, and when it rains we just drop the flap back down and tell the rain to kiss our tarps.
So far it has worked great. I just sit there in paradise, smoking rum-flavored cigars, listening to my iPod and have Lyle Lovett tell me “if I had a pony and I had a boat, I would ride my pony on my boat,” and I’m snacking on a few cherries and, OK, maybe wiping my cherry-stained fingers on the nice inside fabric of my recliner every once in a while to keep myself neat and presentable. And, OK, there are a couple of cigar-ash holes on one of the arms on one of the recliners — but hey, you can’t worry about everything.
And it really doesn’t matter that much. When I’m through with a reclining session in paradise, I just stand up, brush off any recliner arm ashes, look for any renegade cherry pits hiding down between the cushions and then I do what? I tarp it, baby. I just flip the flap down. Tarp money well spent.
And then I leave paradise and I go inside the hovel and I say to the Goldie of my locks, the French of my dip, the three little words she loves to hear: “Where’s the remote?”
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Anyway, I’m sitting on one of two pretty nifty recliners that I have given new life to. They are brand damn new recliners that were in the house, but I wanted a sleeper-sofa for my imposing houseguests, and these two beautiful recliners would
no longer fit in my hovel.
So, I thought about selling them on Craigslist, but I was afraid I would be killed by a sex murderer, so then I considered bartering them for a four-year supply of donuts, but then it hit me. I needed some comfortable places to sit on my deck. I needed to recline properly, like a man of leisure loafing in paradise, and feel the smooth, soft feel of expensive indoor fabric on my idle outdoor buttocks.
But, of course, my wife, Marge, the little woman, my better half, the yin to my yang, the chow to my mein and the toodle to my loo, tactfully mentioned that it rains in Oregon every 45 minutes and that maybe I could come up with another idea that wasn’t “totally whacked.” I said, “Does whack have an H or not?”
Well, I thought over the whole rain-ruining-nice-indoor-fabric issue for a while and concluded that I could somehow outsmart the rain, the fabric and the little woman. I just needed to think it through. Of course, that immediately presented another dilemma. I don’t think that well. And I’m impatient. Not the best of exactas, my friends.
So, I get on the Internet and Google outdoor furniture covers and re-upholstering and rainproof fabrics and Do Hooters Girls Like Owls (sorry, that was not a recliner-related search) and I come up with a number of solutions. And some of them would actually work well, except for a couple of things. They’re too damn costly. (And I’m too damn cheap.) And it would take too long to get them. (And I’m too damn impatient.) And redundant.
So then I say to myself, so what if it rains on the recliners. They’ll get wet, big deal. All I have to do is buy a raincoat and rain pants and I could sit on the wet recliner chair in my wet raincoat and rain pants and life would be good. Damp, but good.
But I do not do that. For some reason the word “whacked” seems more appropriate than it did earlier and I’m feeling like the little woman, the yin master, just might hose Mr. Yang down with a fire hose if I carried out this plan.
So, I rethink it. And as I’m rethinking, the little woman, the Jacko to my lantern, says, “You know, even if you sit on a wet recliner in your wet pants, the recliner will eventually rot from being wet and fall apart and be all shredded up and the springs will stick into your idle buttocks and the recliner will smell like an embalmer’s
T-shirt and our neighbors will laugh openly at you. And when they’re tired of laughing at you, they will mock you. You know that, don’t you?” I replied, “Of course I do, Little.” (It always pisses her off when I call her by her first name when we argue.)
So, I pop over to this big hardware/army surplus/espresso-latte place they have up here. And I buy a couple of nice-looking tarps (That’s a phrase you’ve never seen before, huh?). And I come back to my deck and I put a khaki-ass green, rainproof tarp over each little delicate flower of a recliner and violà, paradise has been rehabbed. It really turned out well. They’re featuring it next month in Better Homes and Hovels.
It’s perfect, baby. When it’s sunny, I just pull the flap back on the tarp and drape it over the back of the recliner. And me and my buttocks sit down on nice indoor-quality fabric that we enjoy and that we both deserve, and when it rains we just drop the flap back down and tell the rain to kiss our tarps.
So far it has worked great. I just sit there in paradise, smoking rum-flavored cigars, listening to my iPod and have Lyle Lovett tell me “if I had a pony and I had a boat, I would ride my pony on my boat,” and I’m snacking on a few cherries and, OK, maybe wiping my cherry-stained fingers on the nice inside fabric of my recliner every once in a while to keep myself neat and presentable. And, OK, there are a couple of cigar-ash holes on one of the arms on one of the recliners — but hey, you can’t worry about everything.
And it really doesn’t matter that much. When I’m through with a reclining session in paradise, I just stand up, brush off any recliner arm ashes, look for any renegade cherry pits hiding down between the cushions and then I do what? I tarp it, baby. I just flip the flap down. Tarp money well spent.
And then I leave paradise and I go inside the hovel and I say to the Goldie of my locks, the French of my dip, the three little words she loves to hear: “Where’s the remote?”
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
In the Fast Lane (Cigar Smoke 7-2-2009)
’m a pretty law-abiding kind of guy. I usually follow the rules. I bring my library books back on time. I don’t litter. And I only give the finger to old Asian-American drivers. If I was a fruit, I guess I would have to be a peach.
However, I do have one semi-glaring criminal tendency. I get a lot of speeding tickets. I don’t think I’m an unsafe driver. I’m not reckless. I don’t drive under the influence of anything except backseat drivers. I don’t weave in and out of traffic at 90 miles an hour with my right arm around a “big, nasty redhead” and use the lover’s knob to change lanes. No, I don’t drive like that. But I admit I have been known to drive a little faster than the speed limit. I guess I just have a lead foot. Some would say a lead head.
As I have mentioned a while back, I used to even budget for speeding tickets when I went on vacation. Yup, we’d head out for Colorado, or New Mexico or Nevada or Montana, and I’d allocate a damn 150 bucks to pay off the speeding fines, and that was usually pretty accurate. And I remember once being with my kids, Mike and Casey, just before we drove into Arizona, and I said, “You watch, I’m going to get a damn ticket.” Two minutes later I see the red lights flashing from behind a billboard, and I said, “Daddy never lies.”
Another time I was with Casey up in Canada, and we’re cruising through Manitoba after seeing a minor league hockey game in Brandon, and I didn’t even know we went through some tiny-ass town. I hear a siren and the Mountie guy with the cool hat stops me and is kind of incredulous and all I remember is I couldn’t figure out the kilometers-per-hour to the miles-per-hour ratio thing. He just kept shaking his head and I think he mentioned something about Americans are a-holes, eh.
I can also recall a couple of other out-of-state ticketing adventures. One time I was in Wyoming, Red Rock or Green Rock, some Rock city place, and a Rock cop guy pulls me over and gives me a ticket for going 27 in a 25 MPH zone. Two miles over the limit! I don’t call that speeding. I call that a reason to cry.
And once my 39-year-old son, Mike, was driving with me in Utah, and I just let him take the wheel because I thought finally he was old enough to drive, and he got a ticket faster than Obama can change his mind. It was fast, baby. And although I was dizzy, I was able to tell him, “I’m proud of you, son, you’re the Lead-Foot Loin-Springer I had always hoped for.”
And I’ve had three, count ’em, 1-2-3, speeding tickets right here on Altadena Drive heading south just before New York Drive. It’s a 35 mph zone, and it seems harmless enough. But you’ve got momentum from going downhill and you’re just cruising at about 40 or so. You’d have to be a sissy or a commie to go slower. I knew I had a problem when, after the third ticket, the cop comes up to me and says all cheery-like, “Hi, Jim.” Yes, he called me by my friggoni first name. Jim. He called me Jim.
My latest brush with the law happened just last week. I was coming down Lake Avenue from Altadena. I wasn’t speeding speeding, but I was regular speeding just a bit. The speed limit was 35 and I was, maybe, doing 40 to 45. Just fast enough to make me feel slightly better than the other drivers, but not unsafe in my own Mensa mind.
Then I looked to the right and my eyes met the eyes of a motorcycle cop. And in that split second of eye contact I instinctively tried not to look guilty and the copper instantly noticed my guilty-ass fake-not-guilty look and kind of pulled his helmeted head back just a little and eyeballed me even harder. And then I, of course, to confirm my guilt, hit the brake like the dumb-ass lead-footed speeding nitwit that I am and will always be.
As soon as I touched the brake and the cop saw me slow down, he knew he had my worthless butt in his Protect and Serve hands. (Now, there’s an image!) So he guns his bike and whips out behind me, and I see him in my rearview mirror, and his red lights go on, and I cuss myself out, and eventually pull up to the curb right in front of the McDonalds near Orange Grove. “You want fries with that citation, loser?”
The copper comes up to my window and says, “Do you know why I stopped you?” I said, “Because I have a bad Facebook photo?” He said, “You look worse in person,” and informed me that I was going 50 in a 35 zone. I offered that I was going 40, tops. He then inquired if I had ever heard the expression “Going like a bat out of hell.” I said I had heard of that expression, but this here particular bat-mobile I was driving was barely going fast enough to get out of purgatory.
He had no sense of humor. He gave me the speeding ticket. And since I couldn’t see any excruciatingly bad old Asian drivers around I gave him a kind of proxy finger. I kept it below the window so as not to hurt his feelings.
Even though I’m a speeder, I’m always considerate of others.
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com
However, I do have one semi-glaring criminal tendency. I get a lot of speeding tickets. I don’t think I’m an unsafe driver. I’m not reckless. I don’t drive under the influence of anything except backseat drivers. I don’t weave in and out of traffic at 90 miles an hour with my right arm around a “big, nasty redhead” and use the lover’s knob to change lanes. No, I don’t drive like that. But I admit I have been known to drive a little faster than the speed limit. I guess I just have a lead foot. Some would say a lead head.
As I have mentioned a while back, I used to even budget for speeding tickets when I went on vacation. Yup, we’d head out for Colorado, or New Mexico or Nevada or Montana, and I’d allocate a damn 150 bucks to pay off the speeding fines, and that was usually pretty accurate. And I remember once being with my kids, Mike and Casey, just before we drove into Arizona, and I said, “You watch, I’m going to get a damn ticket.” Two minutes later I see the red lights flashing from behind a billboard, and I said, “Daddy never lies.”
Another time I was with Casey up in Canada, and we’re cruising through Manitoba after seeing a minor league hockey game in Brandon, and I didn’t even know we went through some tiny-ass town. I hear a siren and the Mountie guy with the cool hat stops me and is kind of incredulous and all I remember is I couldn’t figure out the kilometers-per-hour to the miles-per-hour ratio thing. He just kept shaking his head and I think he mentioned something about Americans are a-holes, eh.
I can also recall a couple of other out-of-state ticketing adventures. One time I was in Wyoming, Red Rock or Green Rock, some Rock city place, and a Rock cop guy pulls me over and gives me a ticket for going 27 in a 25 MPH zone. Two miles over the limit! I don’t call that speeding. I call that a reason to cry.
And once my 39-year-old son, Mike, was driving with me in Utah, and I just let him take the wheel because I thought finally he was old enough to drive, and he got a ticket faster than Obama can change his mind. It was fast, baby. And although I was dizzy, I was able to tell him, “I’m proud of you, son, you’re the Lead-Foot Loin-Springer I had always hoped for.”
And I’ve had three, count ’em, 1-2-3, speeding tickets right here on Altadena Drive heading south just before New York Drive. It’s a 35 mph zone, and it seems harmless enough. But you’ve got momentum from going downhill and you’re just cruising at about 40 or so. You’d have to be a sissy or a commie to go slower. I knew I had a problem when, after the third ticket, the cop comes up to me and says all cheery-like, “Hi, Jim.” Yes, he called me by my friggoni first name. Jim. He called me Jim.
My latest brush with the law happened just last week. I was coming down Lake Avenue from Altadena. I wasn’t speeding speeding, but I was regular speeding just a bit. The speed limit was 35 and I was, maybe, doing 40 to 45. Just fast enough to make me feel slightly better than the other drivers, but not unsafe in my own Mensa mind.
Then I looked to the right and my eyes met the eyes of a motorcycle cop. And in that split second of eye contact I instinctively tried not to look guilty and the copper instantly noticed my guilty-ass fake-not-guilty look and kind of pulled his helmeted head back just a little and eyeballed me even harder. And then I, of course, to confirm my guilt, hit the brake like the dumb-ass lead-footed speeding nitwit that I am and will always be.
As soon as I touched the brake and the cop saw me slow down, he knew he had my worthless butt in his Protect and Serve hands. (Now, there’s an image!) So he guns his bike and whips out behind me, and I see him in my rearview mirror, and his red lights go on, and I cuss myself out, and eventually pull up to the curb right in front of the McDonalds near Orange Grove. “You want fries with that citation, loser?”
The copper comes up to my window and says, “Do you know why I stopped you?” I said, “Because I have a bad Facebook photo?” He said, “You look worse in person,” and informed me that I was going 50 in a 35 zone. I offered that I was going 40, tops. He then inquired if I had ever heard the expression “Going like a bat out of hell.” I said I had heard of that expression, but this here particular bat-mobile I was driving was barely going fast enough to get out of purgatory.
He had no sense of humor. He gave me the speeding ticket. And since I couldn’t see any excruciatingly bad old Asian drivers around I gave him a kind of proxy finger. I kept it below the window so as not to hurt his feelings.
Even though I’m a speeder, I’m always considerate of others.
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com
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