OK, I was doing something very out of the ordinary the other night. I was sitting on the couch watching TV. Usually I’m out volunteering for charities or out trying to save the environment. But on this particular night, I was just sitting there watching “Hung,” and trying to explain to Marge that the title was not in reference to the first name of an Asian gentleman.
Anyway, we are watching the show and out of nowhere we hear some Chinese guy speaking in Chinese. I said, “Marge, do you hear that?” Marge said, “Hear what, Couch Potato Face?” I knew it was hopeless, but I said, “There is some Chinese guy speaking in Chinese on our English-speaking television set, that’s what.” And Marge said, “What?” Variations of this conversational exchange went on for 14 minutes.
Before I continue with this TV tale, I must tell you that what I am about to relate to you is the damn truth. I know I have had the tendency to maybe fudge the truth a little in some of my past columns. But there is no truth-fudging here, baby. I is speaking da truth, so help me secular somebody.
I must correct something already. Before we started hearing the Chinese guy speaking Chinese, we did not hear anything at all. The sound had gone deader than an overweight doornail. No sound at all.
So I fiddled with the remote and I fiddled with the TiVo box and I fiddled with the Charter box, and I would have fiddled with my fiddle if I had a fiddle, but I couldn’t get the sound to go on. And just at that time, we started to hear the Chinese guy Kung Powing in Chinese.
It made me exclaim to Marge, “Holy communist plot, what is happening?” Marge had decided to ignore me and was reading her Kindle, but that didn’t stop me from talking to her. (Many of our most rewarding conversations have occurred while she was ignoring me.)
I inquired as to how could the sound be in Chinese. I thought maybe we had accidentally set the language to Chinese like you can set it to Spanish or subtitles. So I clicked through the settings and discovered that there are no Chinese settings, which I liked, but it didn’t help me figure out what was going on.
So then, with monumental effort and appropriate cursing, I got up off the couch and went over to the TV and refiddled with the boxes and then got up on our little step stool and checked out the speakers. I figured sound comes out of speakers so maybe I flipped some speaker switch, although I was doubtful that had made it go into Chinese instantly.
And then (I am not kidding you) the sound went into Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs. At least it was in English. Nat King Cole singing “Oh Holy Night” in commie would have killed me. So I yelled at Marge, “Are you hearing what I’m hearing?” She said, “What are you hearing?” I said, “I am hearing Nat King Cole singing Christmas songs.” She said, “Hmm. Are the bats in your belfry flapping their wings?”
So I went back to the end of the couch to think this thing through. Should I call Charter? Well, I would probably get some Indian techie guy and when I told him I was hearing Chinese coming out of my TV and then it switched to Nat King Cole, he would hold his hand over the speaker of the phone, and turn to his buddy in Bombay and laugh his tandoori-ass laugh and regain his composure and ask me, “Sir, vat is a Nat King Cole?”
I didn’t call. I just sat there. Weeping. And wondering what Richard Feynman would do. I speak to Richard quite often. After a while I heard Richard say, “Maybe you could just figure it out, Ass-wipe? It’s not rocket science. It’s only Nat King Cole Chinese science.”
So damn it, I did figure it out. Yes, sound does come out of speakers. But it has to come from somewhere. So I asked Richard where it came from, and Richard told me to buzz off because he was trying to rest peacefully, being dead and all.
Then I went up to the control boxes and hunted for the sound source. And damned if I didn’t find it. Get this. We had a Bose sound system, which we hadn’t been using, stacked between our Charter box and our TiVo box, and the Charter box had slightly moved a little and had fallen onto the Bose on/off button. It had turned the AM/FM tuner on. That was where the Chinese was coming from. And then when I fiddled with things, I must have nudged the damn Bose system into the CD mode and that’s when old Nat King Cole started singing his Christmas carols to make me think I was going insane and make me weep.
I looked over at Marge, who was still reading her frigging Kindle. I said, “Richard and I are going out to that dive on Colorado Boulevard to look for some babes.” She said, “When you get back, could you fix the TV. I didn’t know Nat King Cole was Chinese.”
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
It's Ironic, Isn't it? (Cigar Smoke 8-12-10)
Do you know what the word irony means? Oh, sure, you think you know what it means. Hey, I thought I knew what it meant. But try saying just exactly what irony means in one short sentence so that even someone like me who has a two-digit IQ can understand. OK, I’m waiting. I’m not hearing any short sentences. I don’t have all day here, folks, I’m writing a damn column.
You can’t do it, can you? You know what it means, but you can’t actually say what it means. I feel your frustrated, pissy little pain. Well, I am going to quell that pain (and your thirst, if quell shouldn’t be used with pain) and tell you what the dictionary says.
As per the Encarta World Dictionary found on my word processor, irony is “something that happens that is incongruous with what might be expected to happen, especially when this seems absurd or laughable.”
Hey, that is exactly right. Those dictionary guys are pretty happening, huh? That is exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. And because I know you couldn’t either (you’re probably still stuck on incongruous), I have decided to do yet another public service and help you semi-lowlife ingrates out with an example of irony, which hopefully will stick in your minds. So in the future, if someone asks you what irony is, you can say that you knew this jerk-off columnist guy and you can tell them a little story filled with irony and little else.
As you may recall, I informed you in my last column that I had accidentally backed up into another car. Well, in this week’s column, I am going to inform you that I have backed up into a boat. No, I wasn’t in a car when I hit the boat. I was in a boat when I backed up into the other boat. And why did I back up into another boat? Well, I did it just so I could help you remember what irony is. That’s the kind of guy I am. Selfless.
Altruistic. And a vocabulary-enchancing giant.
Here’s the deal. I bought an old boat to go with my hovel up in Oregon, and the boat needed, shall we say, a boatload of repairs. The motor wouldn’t run, the batteries were dead and there was no reverse gear. And I needed to have a kicker motor mounted, too, for safety reasons. As in, if you are out on the open seas and your first psycho motor goes out you can use your kicker to get your sorry ass back in to land to be able to watch future episodes of “Mad Men.”
So I had the work done. (That noise you hear is my wallet weeping.) Everything is supposedly cool, so a friend of mine and I decide to take her out for a little test cruise. And because I was interested in you learning the meaning of irony, we thought it would be safer if we just used the kicker motor and stayed in the harbor before we headed out to sea and probable death.
The kicker motor started up on the second pull. Mike was at the tiller and I shoved the boat out from the slip, hopped on board like Errol Flynn and we were off. Mike puts the outboard in first gear and off we go. Until he tried to turn the outboard, and he discovered the boat guys had not mounted the outboard motor correctly. And he couldn’t turn.
So he yelled, “Start the main motor and get us out of here!” I jumped into the captain’s seat, turned the motor on and immediately threw it into gear. I floored that sucker. It really took off. Kind of too bad it was in reverse.
So, in two days, I had backed into a car and a boat. (Don’t take me to an airport.) Mike inquired as to just what my reasoning was to have put it into reverse. I told him that my Pasadena Weekly readers were the most important things to me, and that I needed to show them what irony meant with some concrete example that they could use in the future, and that my personal safety, credibility, pride and being referred to as a dangerous, dumber-than-a-donut-hole driver were just not that important to me.
If I wouldn’t have tried to be safe and prudently decided to just take the boat out into the harbor instead of risk going out to sea, and if I hadn’t spent $479 to fix that frigging reverse gear, I would not have been able to use that frigging reverse gear to slam it into frigging reverse and back into that boat with expensively paid-for full reverseness.
Ironic, isn’t it?
You can’t do it, can you? You know what it means, but you can’t actually say what it means. I feel your frustrated, pissy little pain. Well, I am going to quell that pain (and your thirst, if quell shouldn’t be used with pain) and tell you what the dictionary says.
As per the Encarta World Dictionary found on my word processor, irony is “something that happens that is incongruous with what might be expected to happen, especially when this seems absurd or laughable.”
Hey, that is exactly right. Those dictionary guys are pretty happening, huh? That is exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. And because I know you couldn’t either (you’re probably still stuck on incongruous), I have decided to do yet another public service and help you semi-lowlife ingrates out with an example of irony, which hopefully will stick in your minds. So in the future, if someone asks you what irony is, you can say that you knew this jerk-off columnist guy and you can tell them a little story filled with irony and little else.
As you may recall, I informed you in my last column that I had accidentally backed up into another car. Well, in this week’s column, I am going to inform you that I have backed up into a boat. No, I wasn’t in a car when I hit the boat. I was in a boat when I backed up into the other boat. And why did I back up into another boat? Well, I did it just so I could help you remember what irony is. That’s the kind of guy I am. Selfless.
Altruistic. And a vocabulary-enchancing giant.
Here’s the deal. I bought an old boat to go with my hovel up in Oregon, and the boat needed, shall we say, a boatload of repairs. The motor wouldn’t run, the batteries were dead and there was no reverse gear. And I needed to have a kicker motor mounted, too, for safety reasons. As in, if you are out on the open seas and your first psycho motor goes out you can use your kicker to get your sorry ass back in to land to be able to watch future episodes of “Mad Men.”
So I had the work done. (That noise you hear is my wallet weeping.) Everything is supposedly cool, so a friend of mine and I decide to take her out for a little test cruise. And because I was interested in you learning the meaning of irony, we thought it would be safer if we just used the kicker motor and stayed in the harbor before we headed out to sea and probable death.
The kicker motor started up on the second pull. Mike was at the tiller and I shoved the boat out from the slip, hopped on board like Errol Flynn and we were off. Mike puts the outboard in first gear and off we go. Until he tried to turn the outboard, and he discovered the boat guys had not mounted the outboard motor correctly. And he couldn’t turn.
So he yelled, “Start the main motor and get us out of here!” I jumped into the captain’s seat, turned the motor on and immediately threw it into gear. I floored that sucker. It really took off. Kind of too bad it was in reverse.
So, in two days, I had backed into a car and a boat. (Don’t take me to an airport.) Mike inquired as to just what my reasoning was to have put it into reverse. I told him that my Pasadena Weekly readers were the most important things to me, and that I needed to show them what irony meant with some concrete example that they could use in the future, and that my personal safety, credibility, pride and being referred to as a dangerous, dumber-than-a-donut-hole driver were just not that important to me.
If I wouldn’t have tried to be safe and prudently decided to just take the boat out into the harbor instead of risk going out to sea, and if I hadn’t spent $479 to fix that frigging reverse gear, I would not have been able to use that frigging reverse gear to slam it into frigging reverse and back into that boat with expensively paid-for full reverseness.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Looking Back On It (Cigar Smoke 7-29-10)
You know what sound you don’t want to hear? The sound of silence? No. You can’t hear that anyway. The sound of senility. That’s the sound you don’t want to hear.
I may have heard it the other day. I was tired of all the damn beauty and scenic stuff up here in Oregon, so I went to a Rite-Aid to do some ordinary shopping, and I purchased some necessities — wine, beer, ale, hard liquor, malt liquor and Peanut M&Ms.
And life was good. I sauntered — yes, sauntered — out to the car and placed my purchases on the seat and unwrapped a Look candy bar I forgot to mention I had purchased because I hadn’t had one for 37 years. And I took the first bite of that dark Look bar chocolate and that white gooey, chewy center and it brought back childhood memories of overeating and precursors to Type 2 Diabetes. Life was good.
Then I started the car. I looked to my left and saw some dummy coming the wrong way down my parking lane, and I wrenched my back trying to give him the finger while eating my Look bar. Very, very painful. Then I put the car into reverse, looked out to my right and saw no cars, and started to back out of my parking spot. Then I heard the sound — that sickening sound of metal hitting metal — and I knew I had either backed into a car or hit a chubby pedestrian wearing a suit of armor.
Yes, Virginia, I had backed into a car. Are you happy, Virginia? And that sound of metal going into metal is just so damn jarring. It just jars you into reality. And I’ve always tried to avoid reality. But that metal-ass sound of metal running into other innocent metal just got to me. It was just so damn real.
I dropped my head to my chest in senior citizen resignation and was irritated that I had to leave my Look bar with one bite out of it in the car while I faced the metal music. I get out of the car and the first thing I hear is some guy’s enraged voice yelling, “Sonny, you just bought yourself a Dodge!” Well, although I was pleased that anyone would call me “sonny,” I really didn’t want to buy his Dodge. It was all dented up.
I asked him, “Where did you come from?” And he said, “I was born right here in Brookings, dammit.” (I thought to myself, this would be a good time to play a little poker, if this guy only had a full deck.) I said, “No, I mean where did your car come from, other than Detroit?”
He said he had just turned after that dummy came through going the wrong way. And I told him that is probably why I didn’t see him. But I inquired as to why he didn’t honk at me if he saw me backing out. He enquired as to my parentage. It turned out to be a short conversation.
We exchanged information. I gave him my name and address and insurance details. He gave me the remaining piece of his mind. As I was driving off, I told him to call me if he had any questions. I don’t think he heard me. He was stretched out over his car and had both arms fully extended like he was trying to contact some demon god and was pounding both of his palms down onto his hood. It was pretty loud. And he may have caused more damage to his car than I did.
When I got back to my hovel, I called my insurance agent. I told her I had lost control of my car and had driven through an orphanage and would she like to speak to one of the surviving nuns? I kid my State Farm agents. She asked me if I got the other party’s driver’s license number. No. Did he have insurance? I don’t know. Is your head hooked on to your neck? Lemme check.
She asked me if anyone was injured. I said no. She said that was good. I said to tell that to the four people who were killed. She said I shouldn’t joke about car accidents and suggested I switch to GEICO. I said I would, but I don’t like lizards. She said that it wasn’t a lizard. I said yes it was.
After listening to a series of rather heart-breaking sighs, I asked her if there was anything else she needed from me. She thought for a few seconds and said, “What have you learned from all this?”
Hell, I don’t know. “To finish your Look bar before backing up?”
I may have heard it the other day. I was tired of all the damn beauty and scenic stuff up here in Oregon, so I went to a Rite-Aid to do some ordinary shopping, and I purchased some necessities — wine, beer, ale, hard liquor, malt liquor and Peanut M&Ms.
And life was good. I sauntered — yes, sauntered — out to the car and placed my purchases on the seat and unwrapped a Look candy bar I forgot to mention I had purchased because I hadn’t had one for 37 years. And I took the first bite of that dark Look bar chocolate and that white gooey, chewy center and it brought back childhood memories of overeating and precursors to Type 2 Diabetes. Life was good.
Then I started the car. I looked to my left and saw some dummy coming the wrong way down my parking lane, and I wrenched my back trying to give him the finger while eating my Look bar. Very, very painful. Then I put the car into reverse, looked out to my right and saw no cars, and started to back out of my parking spot. Then I heard the sound — that sickening sound of metal hitting metal — and I knew I had either backed into a car or hit a chubby pedestrian wearing a suit of armor.
Yes, Virginia, I had backed into a car. Are you happy, Virginia? And that sound of metal going into metal is just so damn jarring. It just jars you into reality. And I’ve always tried to avoid reality. But that metal-ass sound of metal running into other innocent metal just got to me. It was just so damn real.
I dropped my head to my chest in senior citizen resignation and was irritated that I had to leave my Look bar with one bite out of it in the car while I faced the metal music. I get out of the car and the first thing I hear is some guy’s enraged voice yelling, “Sonny, you just bought yourself a Dodge!” Well, although I was pleased that anyone would call me “sonny,” I really didn’t want to buy his Dodge. It was all dented up.
I asked him, “Where did you come from?” And he said, “I was born right here in Brookings, dammit.” (I thought to myself, this would be a good time to play a little poker, if this guy only had a full deck.) I said, “No, I mean where did your car come from, other than Detroit?”
He said he had just turned after that dummy came through going the wrong way. And I told him that is probably why I didn’t see him. But I inquired as to why he didn’t honk at me if he saw me backing out. He enquired as to my parentage. It turned out to be a short conversation.
We exchanged information. I gave him my name and address and insurance details. He gave me the remaining piece of his mind. As I was driving off, I told him to call me if he had any questions. I don’t think he heard me. He was stretched out over his car and had both arms fully extended like he was trying to contact some demon god and was pounding both of his palms down onto his hood. It was pretty loud. And he may have caused more damage to his car than I did.
When I got back to my hovel, I called my insurance agent. I told her I had lost control of my car and had driven through an orphanage and would she like to speak to one of the surviving nuns? I kid my State Farm agents. She asked me if I got the other party’s driver’s license number. No. Did he have insurance? I don’t know. Is your head hooked on to your neck? Lemme check.
She asked me if anyone was injured. I said no. She said that was good. I said to tell that to the four people who were killed. She said I shouldn’t joke about car accidents and suggested I switch to GEICO. I said I would, but I don’t like lizards. She said that it wasn’t a lizard. I said yes it was.
After listening to a series of rather heart-breaking sighs, I asked her if there was anything else she needed from me. She thought for a few seconds and said, “What have you learned from all this?”
Hell, I don’t know. “To finish your Look bar before backing up?”
I Got Your Friendly Right Here(Cigar Smoke (7-15-10)
You know, I try to be friendly. I really do. I am not quite as much of a pissy turd as I make myself out to be in this here column. (See, I added the “here” in that last sentence to show off my folksy, friendly side.)
The reason I am bringing up all this friendly stuff is that I am now taking a much needed break from my stressful retirement so I can vacation up in Oregon for a month, and it’s a state law to be friendly up here. I mean to tell you, everybody is friendly. It’s a little eerie. But I am trying my best to adapt to this foreign environment, and if it doesn’t kill me, I should be friendlier when I come back to LA.
You notice it right away. I go into a Fred Myers grocery and everything-else-ever-manufactured store and the checker is talking to someone a few people up the line from me. She knows the woman. The woman is in her 60s. The checker went to elementary school with her. Yes, I now know that their old schoolmate, Johnny Dayton, just got kicked out of the American Legion hall for something I think she called “non-wife fondling.”
The next woman gets to the checker and they start chatting. Nothing quite as chat-worthy as Johnny Dayton’s sexploits, but they do give the gossip tidbits the necessary time to fully flesh them out. I am just kind of standing there, acting like I think this friendly shit is OK, and it’s getting harder and harder to fake it.
After five full minutes of staring at my four non-moving items on the conveyor belt, I give them my LA hurry-up cough. I cough a few times. Cough. Ahem. Cough. They both glance at me. I know they want to tell me to take a Menthol Luden’s and insert it in a body opening that is not my mouth, but they just smile at me. The bitches.
Finally, the lady hands the checker a copy of the latest National Enquirer, and says, “Jeez, that Al Gore would be quite a load, wouldn’t he?” And the checker says, “Looks like a little global squirming going on.” I crack just the beginning of a smile at these remarks and they look at me again. I apologize for listening in on them with a lame hands-up sissy gesture.
I get to the checker and say, “Hi.” She says, “Can’t talk now. I have customers behind you.”
I probably shouldn’t have told you that first anecdote first, because the people are generally just friendly, and they don’t usually say mean things to us potential Luden’s users. Like I was in a restaurant and the waitress came over and said, “What’ll it be, darlin’?” And I said, “Did you call me darlin’, darlin’?” And she adjusted her apron, and said, “Why, yes, darlin’, I did call you darlin’, darlin’” (I was going to say, “But you never even called me by my name” but I knew she wouldn’t get the reference. Neither will you. So that’s why I didn’t say it.)
Everybody is friendly. They take time with you. They appear to maybe even like you. They have faking sincerity down to a science. The gas station attendant fills up my tank and tells me about the salmon run. The bookstore owner walks me to the book section I need and personally wipes the dust off the row of books I will look at. The frame-store owner sells me the cheaper picture frame because he thinks it will work better for me.
And a couple of days ago I had a guy come out to give me a bid for a fence I’m building for my dog, Archie the Airedale. And this guy was so nice I thought he had the wrong house. He was nicer than Pat Boone, baby. He called me “sir” so many times I thought I had been promoted to corporal. And then the next day, I go out on the dock to just walk around and I notice a guy standing there with a rod and reel and I look at him like I sort of know him, but I’m puzzled and he finally says, “Yeah, it’s me, the fence guy! Wanna go fishing?”
“It’s me, the fence guy. Wanna go fishing?”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would have heard that in LA. It’s just too damn friendly for city slicker talk. But I do have mixed emotions on all this friendly stuff. I know they will eventually find out I’m not really all that friendly and then I will be rejected and continue on with my lonely, unfulfilled, tragic walk-through life.
So I tentatively said something to the fence guy about his choosing me to go fishing with. I said, “Do you really want to go fishing with me?” And he kind of looked at me like that was a bit too touchy-feely, and said, “Yeah, sure, you look like a good guy.” And I smiled my manly hug-smile and he continued. “And my buddies are all working today. And, by the way, you think, maybe you could buy the bait?”
The reason I am bringing up all this friendly stuff is that I am now taking a much needed break from my stressful retirement so I can vacation up in Oregon for a month, and it’s a state law to be friendly up here. I mean to tell you, everybody is friendly. It’s a little eerie. But I am trying my best to adapt to this foreign environment, and if it doesn’t kill me, I should be friendlier when I come back to LA.
You notice it right away. I go into a Fred Myers grocery and everything-else-ever-manufactured store and the checker is talking to someone a few people up the line from me. She knows the woman. The woman is in her 60s. The checker went to elementary school with her. Yes, I now know that their old schoolmate, Johnny Dayton, just got kicked out of the American Legion hall for something I think she called “non-wife fondling.”
The next woman gets to the checker and they start chatting. Nothing quite as chat-worthy as Johnny Dayton’s sexploits, but they do give the gossip tidbits the necessary time to fully flesh them out. I am just kind of standing there, acting like I think this friendly shit is OK, and it’s getting harder and harder to fake it.
After five full minutes of staring at my four non-moving items on the conveyor belt, I give them my LA hurry-up cough. I cough a few times. Cough. Ahem. Cough. They both glance at me. I know they want to tell me to take a Menthol Luden’s and insert it in a body opening that is not my mouth, but they just smile at me. The bitches.
Finally, the lady hands the checker a copy of the latest National Enquirer, and says, “Jeez, that Al Gore would be quite a load, wouldn’t he?” And the checker says, “Looks like a little global squirming going on.” I crack just the beginning of a smile at these remarks and they look at me again. I apologize for listening in on them with a lame hands-up sissy gesture.
I get to the checker and say, “Hi.” She says, “Can’t talk now. I have customers behind you.”
I probably shouldn’t have told you that first anecdote first, because the people are generally just friendly, and they don’t usually say mean things to us potential Luden’s users. Like I was in a restaurant and the waitress came over and said, “What’ll it be, darlin’?” And I said, “Did you call me darlin’, darlin’?” And she adjusted her apron, and said, “Why, yes, darlin’, I did call you darlin’, darlin’” (I was going to say, “But you never even called me by my name” but I knew she wouldn’t get the reference. Neither will you. So that’s why I didn’t say it.)
Everybody is friendly. They take time with you. They appear to maybe even like you. They have faking sincerity down to a science. The gas station attendant fills up my tank and tells me about the salmon run. The bookstore owner walks me to the book section I need and personally wipes the dust off the row of books I will look at. The frame-store owner sells me the cheaper picture frame because he thinks it will work better for me.
And a couple of days ago I had a guy come out to give me a bid for a fence I’m building for my dog, Archie the Airedale. And this guy was so nice I thought he had the wrong house. He was nicer than Pat Boone, baby. He called me “sir” so many times I thought I had been promoted to corporal. And then the next day, I go out on the dock to just walk around and I notice a guy standing there with a rod and reel and I look at him like I sort of know him, but I’m puzzled and he finally says, “Yeah, it’s me, the fence guy! Wanna go fishing?”
“It’s me, the fence guy. Wanna go fishing?”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would have heard that in LA. It’s just too damn friendly for city slicker talk. But I do have mixed emotions on all this friendly stuff. I know they will eventually find out I’m not really all that friendly and then I will be rejected and continue on with my lonely, unfulfilled, tragic walk-through life.
So I tentatively said something to the fence guy about his choosing me to go fishing with. I said, “Do you really want to go fishing with me?” And he kind of looked at me like that was a bit too touchy-feely, and said, “Yeah, sure, you look like a good guy.” And I smiled my manly hug-smile and he continued. “And my buddies are all working today. And, by the way, you think, maybe you could buy the bait?”
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Have an Enlarged Prostate? Urine Big Trouble. (Cigar Smoke 7-1-10)
OK, I know this problem doesn’t affect most of you small-prostated people and all of you non-prostated female people, but for us enlarged-prostated guys, it’s, well, it’s a pisser.
We now have something we officially think about more than sex. Yes, urination is now the king. It passed thinking about sports without looking over its shoulder, and now has taken over the top slot in old guy thoughts.
I’ll be on the end of the couch watching the World Cup (I’m kidding, of course) and I’ll get up and Archie the Airedale will instantly get up in anticipation of something fun, and I will head off to the bathroom, and Archie will sink down in disappointment. Ten minutes later I will get up off the couch and Archie the Mensa Airedale will again jump up to follow me down the hall for some serious fun, only to be crushed again when I go into the bathroom.
This goes on, maybe 30 times a day. Marge tells me this is the only way I get any exercise, and that I am keeping Archie in great shape, too. I mention that a little spousal abuse would be a pretty good workout, too, but I don’t have time for that. I have to go pee.
A bigger problem with this damn enlarged prostate deal is that it doesn’t just happen at home where I have access to a toilet bowl that cringes when it sees me coming. No, it happens everywhere. I will be in the car and my enlarged friend will rear its pissy head and I will have to find a bathroom — fast. So I have had to scout out all the places I can shoot into that have a public bathroom that I can borrow without looking like a homeless guy who molests orphans.
My two favorite water-delivery holes are at McDonald’s and Starbucks. At McDonald’s I take the side entrance, and while everyone else is ordering Big Macs and Quarter Pounders and some psycho is getting a salad, I am slipping into the unlocked bathrooms to feel good about myself and think life is worth living for a few short precious moments. It makes me happy just writing about it. Oh, excuse me a second, I have to go pee.
I’m back. The second great place to pee is at Starbucks. Their bathrooms are always at the back of the store, and you can walk in like you’re a real customer with the intention of buying an over-priced cup of coffee and nobody will give you any grief if you stop at the bathroom because they are even more health conscious than the AMA. You can go tinkly-poo and pop back out to your car without buying anything and life is semi-good.
One time a manager at Starbucks saw me coming out of the bathroom as I was heading for the door and he looked at me funny. I knew he was thinking, “Who the hell washes their hands after they have their coffee?” So I preemptively said, “Left my wallet in my car. Be right back.” When I got to my car, I looked back, and he was still looking at me. So when I drove past him I yelled out the window, “Left my wallet at home. Be right back.”
But at least I am not the only guy to have this problem. Most of my non-commie buddies seem to be going through the same thing. A friend of mine came to visit a few weeks ago, and when I came to the door, I was about to say, “Hey, Big Guy, what’s happening?” and he flew right by me and said, ‘I have to pee!” Hadn’t seen the guy in two years. When he came out of the bathroom, he said, “Sorry, I just couldn’t wait.” I told him to shut the hell up, I had to go pee.
We sat down to shoot the shit. “Hey, Dribbles, where you been peeing lately?” “Oh, lot of cool places, Mr. Tinkle. I’ve just discovered grocery store bathrooms hidden back behind the produce section. Those are pretty cool.” “Yeah, those are OK. But if you really want to have some fun, I like to jump those Dutch door gates and burst past an old Chinese woman in a donut shop and use the bathrooms that aren’t supposed to be there.” “Yeah, wish I had the guts.” “You always were a wuss.”
“Hey Dribs, you got any good urine puns?” “If you have an enlarged prostate, urine good company.” “I guess urine old hand at these puns, huh, MT?” “Yup, don’t stand in the hall, baby, because when I have to pee, urine the way.”
Oh, the fun we had. We laughed so hard we had to pee — into our Depends.
We now have something we officially think about more than sex. Yes, urination is now the king. It passed thinking about sports without looking over its shoulder, and now has taken over the top slot in old guy thoughts.
I’ll be on the end of the couch watching the World Cup (I’m kidding, of course) and I’ll get up and Archie the Airedale will instantly get up in anticipation of something fun, and I will head off to the bathroom, and Archie will sink down in disappointment. Ten minutes later I will get up off the couch and Archie the Mensa Airedale will again jump up to follow me down the hall for some serious fun, only to be crushed again when I go into the bathroom.
This goes on, maybe 30 times a day. Marge tells me this is the only way I get any exercise, and that I am keeping Archie in great shape, too. I mention that a little spousal abuse would be a pretty good workout, too, but I don’t have time for that. I have to go pee.
A bigger problem with this damn enlarged prostate deal is that it doesn’t just happen at home where I have access to a toilet bowl that cringes when it sees me coming. No, it happens everywhere. I will be in the car and my enlarged friend will rear its pissy head and I will have to find a bathroom — fast. So I have had to scout out all the places I can shoot into that have a public bathroom that I can borrow without looking like a homeless guy who molests orphans.
My two favorite water-delivery holes are at McDonald’s and Starbucks. At McDonald’s I take the side entrance, and while everyone else is ordering Big Macs and Quarter Pounders and some psycho is getting a salad, I am slipping into the unlocked bathrooms to feel good about myself and think life is worth living for a few short precious moments. It makes me happy just writing about it. Oh, excuse me a second, I have to go pee.
I’m back. The second great place to pee is at Starbucks. Their bathrooms are always at the back of the store, and you can walk in like you’re a real customer with the intention of buying an over-priced cup of coffee and nobody will give you any grief if you stop at the bathroom because they are even more health conscious than the AMA. You can go tinkly-poo and pop back out to your car without buying anything and life is semi-good.
One time a manager at Starbucks saw me coming out of the bathroom as I was heading for the door and he looked at me funny. I knew he was thinking, “Who the hell washes their hands after they have their coffee?” So I preemptively said, “Left my wallet in my car. Be right back.” When I got to my car, I looked back, and he was still looking at me. So when I drove past him I yelled out the window, “Left my wallet at home. Be right back.”
But at least I am not the only guy to have this problem. Most of my non-commie buddies seem to be going through the same thing. A friend of mine came to visit a few weeks ago, and when I came to the door, I was about to say, “Hey, Big Guy, what’s happening?” and he flew right by me and said, ‘I have to pee!” Hadn’t seen the guy in two years. When he came out of the bathroom, he said, “Sorry, I just couldn’t wait.” I told him to shut the hell up, I had to go pee.
We sat down to shoot the shit. “Hey, Dribbles, where you been peeing lately?” “Oh, lot of cool places, Mr. Tinkle. I’ve just discovered grocery store bathrooms hidden back behind the produce section. Those are pretty cool.” “Yeah, those are OK. But if you really want to have some fun, I like to jump those Dutch door gates and burst past an old Chinese woman in a donut shop and use the bathrooms that aren’t supposed to be there.” “Yeah, wish I had the guts.” “You always were a wuss.”
“Hey Dribs, you got any good urine puns?” “If you have an enlarged prostate, urine good company.” “I guess urine old hand at these puns, huh, MT?” “Yup, don’t stand in the hall, baby, because when I have to pee, urine the way.”
Oh, the fun we had. We laughed so hard we had to pee — into our Depends.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Smelling Assaults (Cigar Smoke 6-17-10)
I got up the other morning the way I get up every morning. I’m lying on my right side and I have somehow dislodged my attractive C-Pap machine mask and matching designer tubing, and my head is hanging over the edge of the bed. And then I feel a nose on my face and I open my eyes and there is Archie the Airedale, wagging his big, squirrelly tail like a damn outboard propeller. At least one of us is happy.
And then I pet his big-ass Airedale head a little and he comes in closer and puts his nose right next to my mouth. And then you know what he does? He takes a whiff of my morning breath and he backs off. Yes, he actually takes a step backwards, staggers a little and turns his head to the side.
I am not kidding. He is repulsed by my morning breath! OK, I get that. Many people have been repulsed by my morning breath. Marge, a few unlucky women companions, an ex-wife, Boy Scout tent mates, golfing buddies, nurses, sleep clinic personnel. But, hey, it really frosts me when my dog, Archie the Psycho, turns away from me.
Archie does not turn away from, well, other dogs’ butts. Nope, nothing better than taking a whiff of Rover’s rear end. I take him to the dog park and he seeks out butts. He runs from one butt to another. Sniffing like there’s been a jailbreak. He likes the smell of dog butts.
And he seeks out piles of certain things that were formerly in said dog butts. And he sniffs the bejabbers out of those, too. If he had arms, he would wave over his dog buddies. “Hey, get a whiff of this steamer, Rinty.” I know he would. I am sure of it.
I have seen my wonderful dog actually put his discerning nose into dead animals that have lower forms of life crawling in them. I have seem him nose-nudge something that used to be alive. I have wiped things off his nose that would scare chemical hazard teams. And his tail would be spinning.
And yet. And double yet, he has to turn away from only one thing in life: my morning breath.
He just can’t take something that smells that bad. Nope. Worse than dog butts, dog butt results, and worse than mounds of decaying animals with worms in them. Nope, just can’t quite take old Mr. Laris’ morning breath. Sumbitch. I oughta see
how he barks tilted.
OK, I am trying to calm down. Give me a second. OK, OK, I’m ready. After that morning breath episode I decide to take him to the dog park anyway. Even though he doesn’t deserve it. Yes, I am just that wonderful and forgiving.
So we get in the car and I stop at the 7-Eleven for some coffee and a breakfast object so I can enjoy something while I watch Archie smell some new buttmobiles (and not be repulsed.) By the way, do you know why I like to eat at 7-Eleven? Because of their motto: Our Food Will Kill You Just a Wee Bit Slower Than AM-PM Food. Hey, that’s good enough for me.
Anyway, I get my Styrofoam cup of Brazilian bold coffee and I take it out to the car and I put it on the closed cup holder area. Yes, usually I have the cup holder lid open and I put the coffee in the cup holder. Not that day. I get in the car and I turn to tell Archie that I still think he’s a sumbitch, and I nick the edge of the cup, and it falls on my lap. And I spill some lava java on my pants and my thigh inside my pants. Holy scorched skin. That was hot.
But it was not over. As I am picking up the coffee cup I knock the lid off and all the rest of the coffee spills on my inadequately Polyester-covered flesh. I let out this murderous scream. A really loud urgent scream. Nobody responded. (I think they thought I was just eating the food.)
Archie just looked at me and sniffed his own butt.
I jump out of the car and brush off the coffee that hasn’t quite scalded me yet. I take a long defeated breath, and I get back into the car. I scream again. I had sat down in a puddle of still incredibly hot coffee that I had not cleaned up from my first spill. Yes, I had done a three-banger. Scalded myself three times in three different places in less than a minute. This time I got my right butt cheek. Only my wallet saved my other buttock.
With an even more defeated and resigned sigh, I tell Archie that I have to go back into the 7-Eleven to get another cup of coffee. Archie sniffs a couple of times. I think he can smell my burning butt cheek. And he says to me, “Uh, while you’re in there, you think, maybe, you could pick up some Scope?”
And then I pet his big-ass Airedale head a little and he comes in closer and puts his nose right next to my mouth. And then you know what he does? He takes a whiff of my morning breath and he backs off. Yes, he actually takes a step backwards, staggers a little and turns his head to the side.
I am not kidding. He is repulsed by my morning breath! OK, I get that. Many people have been repulsed by my morning breath. Marge, a few unlucky women companions, an ex-wife, Boy Scout tent mates, golfing buddies, nurses, sleep clinic personnel. But, hey, it really frosts me when my dog, Archie the Psycho, turns away from me.
Archie does not turn away from, well, other dogs’ butts. Nope, nothing better than taking a whiff of Rover’s rear end. I take him to the dog park and he seeks out butts. He runs from one butt to another. Sniffing like there’s been a jailbreak. He likes the smell of dog butts.
And he seeks out piles of certain things that were formerly in said dog butts. And he sniffs the bejabbers out of those, too. If he had arms, he would wave over his dog buddies. “Hey, get a whiff of this steamer, Rinty.” I know he would. I am sure of it.
I have seen my wonderful dog actually put his discerning nose into dead animals that have lower forms of life crawling in them. I have seem him nose-nudge something that used to be alive. I have wiped things off his nose that would scare chemical hazard teams. And his tail would be spinning.
And yet. And double yet, he has to turn away from only one thing in life: my morning breath.
He just can’t take something that smells that bad. Nope. Worse than dog butts, dog butt results, and worse than mounds of decaying animals with worms in them. Nope, just can’t quite take old Mr. Laris’ morning breath. Sumbitch. I oughta see
how he barks tilted.
OK, I am trying to calm down. Give me a second. OK, OK, I’m ready. After that morning breath episode I decide to take him to the dog park anyway. Even though he doesn’t deserve it. Yes, I am just that wonderful and forgiving.
So we get in the car and I stop at the 7-Eleven for some coffee and a breakfast object so I can enjoy something while I watch Archie smell some new buttmobiles (and not be repulsed.) By the way, do you know why I like to eat at 7-Eleven? Because of their motto: Our Food Will Kill You Just a Wee Bit Slower Than AM-PM Food. Hey, that’s good enough for me.
Anyway, I get my Styrofoam cup of Brazilian bold coffee and I take it out to the car and I put it on the closed cup holder area. Yes, usually I have the cup holder lid open and I put the coffee in the cup holder. Not that day. I get in the car and I turn to tell Archie that I still think he’s a sumbitch, and I nick the edge of the cup, and it falls on my lap. And I spill some lava java on my pants and my thigh inside my pants. Holy scorched skin. That was hot.
But it was not over. As I am picking up the coffee cup I knock the lid off and all the rest of the coffee spills on my inadequately Polyester-covered flesh. I let out this murderous scream. A really loud urgent scream. Nobody responded. (I think they thought I was just eating the food.)
Archie just looked at me and sniffed his own butt.
I jump out of the car and brush off the coffee that hasn’t quite scalded me yet. I take a long defeated breath, and I get back into the car. I scream again. I had sat down in a puddle of still incredibly hot coffee that I had not cleaned up from my first spill. Yes, I had done a three-banger. Scalded myself three times in three different places in less than a minute. This time I got my right butt cheek. Only my wallet saved my other buttock.
With an even more defeated and resigned sigh, I tell Archie that I have to go back into the 7-Eleven to get another cup of coffee. Archie sniffs a couple of times. I think he can smell my burning butt cheek. And he says to me, “Uh, while you’re in there, you think, maybe, you could pick up some Scope?”
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Not Stacking Up (Cigar Smoke 6-3-10)
I noticed something about my behavior the other day that I thought I would share with you. I still buy a lot of books. Yep, even with the Internet and e-books and the Kindle and the iPad and the Nook and the Cranny, I have ignored these pissy little fake books and I continue to buy real books. Why? Because I am a good American and I want to help out the economy and actually hold a big, heavy hardbound book bought from Vroman’s in my hairy-knuckled hands and just lean back and smell the new-book ink. (I’ll wait for the applause to die down.)
And even though my pinko wife, Marge the Commie, has drifted over to the other side and now reads almost all her books on the Kindle, I still hold out for decency and apple pie and wrongheaded stubbornness. Sometimes when she’s not paying attention, I try to jam her Wi-Fi connection to our home network by running around the living room in my boxers waving an old antenna and tying aluminum foil to Archie’s collar. So far it hasn’t worked very well, except we have noticed a drop in Jehovah’s Witnesses in the neighborhood.
OK, I know you’ve been dying to ask me just what books I have been reading. Well, I am going to tell you that, but first, I have to make a little confession. Although I continue to buy a lot of books, I have noticed that I am not reading a lot of books. What I am doing is stacking a lot of books. I am a really good stacker of books. I love to stack books. It’s just so cool. It makes you look really intellectual and the chicks love the long stack.
And the art of stacking is pretty easy. I learned it in only a few days. Once I caught on to the trick of putting one book on top of the other and continuing that, I pretty much knew how to stack.
So what books do I have in my stack? What books am I not reading but have purchased to help me give the impression to houseguests that I read a lot? Is that what you want to know? OK, here’s the list of my perfectly stacked, and as of now, unread or just barely partially read, books:
“Animals Make Us Human,” by Temple Grandin
“The Wagon,” by Martin Preib
“Perfectly Reasonable Deviations,” by Richard P. Feynman
“iPhone: The Missing Manual,” by David Pogue
“The Quants,” by Scott Patterson
“The Last Empty Places,” by Peter Stark
“Going Rogue,” by Sarah Palin (I bought this to just piss off people)
“Open,” by Andre Agassi
“The Poker Bride,” by Christopher Corbett
“Hollywood Moon,” by Joseph Wambaugh
“Mao: The Unknown Story,” by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
“The Book of Genesis Illustrated,” by R. Crumb (By the way, did you know that when you spell check R. Crumb, the spellchecker gives you “rectum?” Try it yourself.)
Now, if I had actually read those books, I may have had an outside chance of being a somewhat interesting person. But, as you now know, I have only stacked these books. But I think I have stacked them very well. I put the large, R. Crumb oversized coffee table book on the bottom and then put the giant-ass 800 page Mao monster on top of that one, and so on, up to the shortest one — “The Wagon,” only 167 pages. Pretty damn good stacking, huh? What if I had put “The Wagon” on the bottom of the stack and created an unwieldy stack? What you have still respected me? Would you have let me stack around your children? I doubt it.
Although I am a damn good stacker, and I think my stacking would stack up to any book stack I know of, I have felt a little guilty about not actually reading the books. At first, I didn’t quite know how to remedy the situation. Oh sure, I could have actually read the books. But that’s pretty time-consuming.
So I decided to buy an iPhone app to help me read more. I hit up iTunes and clicked on the Apple App Store and damned if I didn’t find an app to help me read more. It was called Read More. (That Steve Jobs is something, huh?) So, even though I couldn’t stack it, I bought the Read More app to help me read more. (They didn’t have a Stack More app.)
And, get this: You enter all the books you are reading in this Read More app, and then when you actually start reading a book, you start a timer! Then, when you finish a reading session, you stop the timer. That way you can go from book to book and keep track of exactly how many pages you have read and you’ll know your official pages per-hour reading rate.
But, hell, I already knew how many pages of each book I had read. Zero. And I knew my official reading rate. Zero. And I already knew what people thought of me. A number less than one. So I wasted my money on this damn Read More app. But at least I could stack my iPhone, which had my Read More app in it, up on my stack of books. It’s the perfect size to be on top of a stack.
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
And even though my pinko wife, Marge the Commie, has drifted over to the other side and now reads almost all her books on the Kindle, I still hold out for decency and apple pie and wrongheaded stubbornness. Sometimes when she’s not paying attention, I try to jam her Wi-Fi connection to our home network by running around the living room in my boxers waving an old antenna and tying aluminum foil to Archie’s collar. So far it hasn’t worked very well, except we have noticed a drop in Jehovah’s Witnesses in the neighborhood.
OK, I know you’ve been dying to ask me just what books I have been reading. Well, I am going to tell you that, but first, I have to make a little confession. Although I continue to buy a lot of books, I have noticed that I am not reading a lot of books. What I am doing is stacking a lot of books. I am a really good stacker of books. I love to stack books. It’s just so cool. It makes you look really intellectual and the chicks love the long stack.
And the art of stacking is pretty easy. I learned it in only a few days. Once I caught on to the trick of putting one book on top of the other and continuing that, I pretty much knew how to stack.
So what books do I have in my stack? What books am I not reading but have purchased to help me give the impression to houseguests that I read a lot? Is that what you want to know? OK, here’s the list of my perfectly stacked, and as of now, unread or just barely partially read, books:
“Animals Make Us Human,” by Temple Grandin
“The Wagon,” by Martin Preib
“Perfectly Reasonable Deviations,” by Richard P. Feynman
“iPhone: The Missing Manual,” by David Pogue
“The Quants,” by Scott Patterson
“The Last Empty Places,” by Peter Stark
“Going Rogue,” by Sarah Palin (I bought this to just piss off people)
“Open,” by Andre Agassi
“The Poker Bride,” by Christopher Corbett
“Hollywood Moon,” by Joseph Wambaugh
“Mao: The Unknown Story,” by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
“The Book of Genesis Illustrated,” by R. Crumb (By the way, did you know that when you spell check R. Crumb, the spellchecker gives you “rectum?” Try it yourself.)
Now, if I had actually read those books, I may have had an outside chance of being a somewhat interesting person. But, as you now know, I have only stacked these books. But I think I have stacked them very well. I put the large, R. Crumb oversized coffee table book on the bottom and then put the giant-ass 800 page Mao monster on top of that one, and so on, up to the shortest one — “The Wagon,” only 167 pages. Pretty damn good stacking, huh? What if I had put “The Wagon” on the bottom of the stack and created an unwieldy stack? What you have still respected me? Would you have let me stack around your children? I doubt it.
Although I am a damn good stacker, and I think my stacking would stack up to any book stack I know of, I have felt a little guilty about not actually reading the books. At first, I didn’t quite know how to remedy the situation. Oh sure, I could have actually read the books. But that’s pretty time-consuming.
So I decided to buy an iPhone app to help me read more. I hit up iTunes and clicked on the Apple App Store and damned if I didn’t find an app to help me read more. It was called Read More. (That Steve Jobs is something, huh?) So, even though I couldn’t stack it, I bought the Read More app to help me read more. (They didn’t have a Stack More app.)
And, get this: You enter all the books you are reading in this Read More app, and then when you actually start reading a book, you start a timer! Then, when you finish a reading session, you stop the timer. That way you can go from book to book and keep track of exactly how many pages you have read and you’ll know your official pages per-hour reading rate.
But, hell, I already knew how many pages of each book I had read. Zero. And I knew my official reading rate. Zero. And I already knew what people thought of me. A number less than one. So I wasted my money on this damn Read More app. But at least I could stack my iPhone, which had my Read More app in it, up on my stack of books. It’s the perfect size to be on top of a stack.
Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.
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