Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Dancing with an appliance
I found myself alone last night and in the mood for a sexy dance. What is one to do? I asked my lesbian lawyer, but she and her “partner” and let me stop right here and say how much I hate the word partner. I have never had a partner in my life.
Let me trace back on the various romantic interests I have had in my life. I have had wonderful lovers, I have had a person or two of interest, I have had a stalker who started out fun and ended up scary, I have had sexual encounters that should have remained that but grew into something more complicated, but certainly not a partner, I had a marriage, but that was not a partner, I even had a complicated relationship with a stick for a while, but we were not partners, we were recreational abstractions.
Partners? You know who has partners? Lesbians. That’s right I said it and my lesbian attorney can sue me if she wants, but I am sick and tired of lesbian attorneys stealing words that “normal” people need to use in regular normal people conversation. Partner? I wonder if my lesbian attorney continues to excel at the law firm Feinberg, Wienstein, Feinstein and Shmerg and they ask her to join their esteemed ranks, will she become, what a lover? A buddy? No, she will be a Partner. Dammit, lesbians unite and stop stealing words that are necessary in the business world.
I was in need of a serious dance last night and me, being without my partner, dammit, my fiancé – me being alone, I had to search high and low for a dance partner. Eureka I said when I saw my 100 year old Eureka Vacuum cleaner sitting, dusty in the corner of the empty living room, because god knows, not a single one of my numerous children would recognize it, nor would they know how to engage it in any of its variety of uses. Not my children. Sadly, neither would I, which is why our floors look a little like a rough and abused area of Homs Syria right about now.
That said, the Eureka moment did lead to a very nice dance. The vacuum was nice enough to let me lead and lead I did. The video was shot by my lesbian lawyer, so don’t expect much, but suffice to say, it should never be shown in public.
When a dance in required, a person should dance though. Dance is important to a well rounded life. Unlike, say, bitter lesbian lawyers.
Let me trace back on the various romantic interests I have had in my life. I have had wonderful lovers, I have had a person or two of interest, I have had a stalker who started out fun and ended up scary, I have had sexual encounters that should have remained that but grew into something more complicated, but certainly not a partner, I had a marriage, but that was not a partner, I even had a complicated relationship with a stick for a while, but we were not partners, we were recreational abstractions.
Partners? You know who has partners? Lesbians. That’s right I said it and my lesbian attorney can sue me if she wants, but I am sick and tired of lesbian attorneys stealing words that “normal” people need to use in regular normal people conversation. Partner? I wonder if my lesbian attorney continues to excel at the law firm Feinberg, Wienstein, Feinstein and Shmerg and they ask her to join their esteemed ranks, will she become, what a lover? A buddy? No, she will be a Partner. Dammit, lesbians unite and stop stealing words that are necessary in the business world.
I was in need of a serious dance last night and me, being without my partner, dammit, my fiancé – me being alone, I had to search high and low for a dance partner. Eureka I said when I saw my 100 year old Eureka Vacuum cleaner sitting, dusty in the corner of the empty living room, because god knows, not a single one of my numerous children would recognize it, nor would they know how to engage it in any of its variety of uses. Not my children. Sadly, neither would I, which is why our floors look a little like a rough and abused area of Homs Syria right about now.
That said, the Eureka moment did lead to a very nice dance. The vacuum was nice enough to let me lead and lead I did. The video was shot by my lesbian lawyer, so don’t expect much, but suffice to say, it should never be shown in public.
When a dance in required, a person should dance though. Dance is important to a well rounded life. Unlike, say, bitter lesbian lawyers.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Texting while driving and water sports
We are a gang of idiots and by we, I mean us, all of us, you and me and those people over there, yes, them.
That’s exactly why we have laws, because we are too damn stupid to control ourselves, we need parents to slap our wrists and remind us we are too damn stupid to control ourselves, lest we burn our hands on the hot flame of danger.
When I was pulled over this morning I immediately checked my speed, because I am very careful about how fast I go on highways. There was a time that I liked to drive incredibly fast in small sports cars that could drive incredibly fast. Not anymore. I am older and slower. My reflexes dulled by years of abuse of one sort or another.
There is a new law in my state. You can no longer text while driving. Again, because we are too stupid to do more than one thing at a time. We need big brother to step in and tell us when and when we can’t do things. I may be able to text and drive, but the good lord sweet Jesus knows that you are not. Stupid people are barely able to manage breathing and walking, so we can’t allow them to try and drive and text at the same time.
“Yes officer, I was wondering why you might be pulling me over, since I was not speeding.”
“Looked like you were texting, the new law went into effect last month and we are pulling people over to remind them that it is now illegal to text while driving. License and registration please.”
“I did not realize the law was now in effect.”
“Not realizing a law is not in effect does not allow you to disobey it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean then?”
“I just was unclear when the law was actually going into effect.”
“Did you plan to curtail your texting after the law was in effect then?”
“Of course.”
“License and registration.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll need to see your cellphone too sir.”
“I’m sorry?”
There’s a few things in life that people should not have to share. I was once at a zoo with a few of my young children and we were watching the giraffes as they slowly were walking around their pen. They are strikingly lovely creatures and we were close enough that we could really get a sense of their majesty. The female giraffe turned her back to us and after a few seconds she lifted her tail and began to pee. This was no big deal, I raised my children right, they knew that animals had bodily functions just like they did, peeing was natural. Then the male giraffe leaned his giant neck down, and stuffed his enormous giraffe face right into his girlfriends peeing giraffe vagina area and she pee’d all over his face for a good 20 seconds. The kids and I stood there stunned. My brain went numb, the kids jaws just hung wide open, my youngest daughter looked from the giraffe with his face slathered in female giraffe urine to me, her completely dumbfounded father and back again to the water sport loving giraffe and back to me, her completely beside himself father until she finally asked what the giraffe was doing and I stood there in silence until her older, much wiser sister said, “he’s probably checking to see if she is ready to make a baby.”
“Really?” The youngest daughter asked her sister.
“Yes, that’s how he can tell. She will have a certain smell.”
“Is that true daddy?”
Oh shit, don’t drag me into this was my first thought. “Yes, I think he is checking to see if she is secreting hormones.”
“Did mommy do that?”
“We should go look at the monkeys now.” With any luck, they would just be banging away and I would have nothing else to say for the rest of the day.
The officer explained to me that he needed to see my phone because he would check to see the time of my last text, he needed to note that in on the citation.
“Well, what if I just agree that I was indeed texting?”
“Is there something you don’t want me to see?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Sir, we have to note the time of your last text, in case you want to fight the ticket.”
I handed over the phone, with a bit of disgrace. Of course, the problem I had with handing over the phone was that I had not only indeed been texting but I I had indeed been sending unruly images of one sort of another.
When the officer returned with the ticket and my phone he had some sort of smirk on his face. He handed me the ticket and my phone. He said I could send the ticket in and a magistrate would just accept my guilty plea via mail and send me a standard charge. I asked if he had any idea what that charge would be and he said he did not.
“If he saw those pictures, I would guess it would not be much,” he said, smiled and walked away.
I was willing to pay the fine. I was willing to accept the fact that I had broken the states new law to keep people from texting while driving. Did I really have to put up with a police officer mocking my sexting inadequacies? I made a mental note to only text pictures of water sport loving giraffes from now on, just in case.
That’s exactly why we have laws, because we are too damn stupid to control ourselves, we need parents to slap our wrists and remind us we are too damn stupid to control ourselves, lest we burn our hands on the hot flame of danger.
When I was pulled over this morning I immediately checked my speed, because I am very careful about how fast I go on highways. There was a time that I liked to drive incredibly fast in small sports cars that could drive incredibly fast. Not anymore. I am older and slower. My reflexes dulled by years of abuse of one sort or another.
There is a new law in my state. You can no longer text while driving. Again, because we are too stupid to do more than one thing at a time. We need big brother to step in and tell us when and when we can’t do things. I may be able to text and drive, but the good lord sweet Jesus knows that you are not. Stupid people are barely able to manage breathing and walking, so we can’t allow them to try and drive and text at the same time.
“Yes officer, I was wondering why you might be pulling me over, since I was not speeding.”
“Looked like you were texting, the new law went into effect last month and we are pulling people over to remind them that it is now illegal to text while driving. License and registration please.”
“I did not realize the law was now in effect.”
“Not realizing a law is not in effect does not allow you to disobey it.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean then?”
“I just was unclear when the law was actually going into effect.”
“Did you plan to curtail your texting after the law was in effect then?”
“Of course.”
“License and registration.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll need to see your cellphone too sir.”
“I’m sorry?”
There’s a few things in life that people should not have to share. I was once at a zoo with a few of my young children and we were watching the giraffes as they slowly were walking around their pen. They are strikingly lovely creatures and we were close enough that we could really get a sense of their majesty. The female giraffe turned her back to us and after a few seconds she lifted her tail and began to pee. This was no big deal, I raised my children right, they knew that animals had bodily functions just like they did, peeing was natural. Then the male giraffe leaned his giant neck down, and stuffed his enormous giraffe face right into his girlfriends peeing giraffe vagina area and she pee’d all over his face for a good 20 seconds. The kids and I stood there stunned. My brain went numb, the kids jaws just hung wide open, my youngest daughter looked from the giraffe with his face slathered in female giraffe urine to me, her completely dumbfounded father and back again to the water sport loving giraffe and back to me, her completely beside himself father until she finally asked what the giraffe was doing and I stood there in silence until her older, much wiser sister said, “he’s probably checking to see if she is ready to make a baby.”
“Really?” The youngest daughter asked her sister.
“Yes, that’s how he can tell. She will have a certain smell.”
“Is that true daddy?”
Oh shit, don’t drag me into this was my first thought. “Yes, I think he is checking to see if she is secreting hormones.”
“Did mommy do that?”
“We should go look at the monkeys now.” With any luck, they would just be banging away and I would have nothing else to say for the rest of the day.
The officer explained to me that he needed to see my phone because he would check to see the time of my last text, he needed to note that in on the citation.
“Well, what if I just agree that I was indeed texting?”
“Is there something you don’t want me to see?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Sir, we have to note the time of your last text, in case you want to fight the ticket.”
I handed over the phone, with a bit of disgrace. Of course, the problem I had with handing over the phone was that I had not only indeed been texting but I I had indeed been sending unruly images of one sort of another.
When the officer returned with the ticket and my phone he had some sort of smirk on his face. He handed me the ticket and my phone. He said I could send the ticket in and a magistrate would just accept my guilty plea via mail and send me a standard charge. I asked if he had any idea what that charge would be and he said he did not.
“If he saw those pictures, I would guess it would not be much,” he said, smiled and walked away.
I was willing to pay the fine. I was willing to accept the fact that I had broken the states new law to keep people from texting while driving. Did I really have to put up with a police officer mocking my sexting inadequacies? I made a mental note to only text pictures of water sport loving giraffes from now on, just in case.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Craigslist poetry
I think it’s time to start a new feature, let’s call it the brilliance of Craigslist. Today, we follow a conversation completely from a series of Craigslist postings regarding, I think, someone who can’t get a response for a car that is for sale, the conversation, like all things Craigslist, begins in the middle of this posters drug runoff.
Poster 1 Under the title LIERS – “really sick of all the fucking assholes on here posting vehicles on here and are to fucking IGNORANT to return e-mails or a phone call.”
Response #1 titled Ignernt Liers – “maybe your intellect is driving them away”
Response#2 titled Ignernt liers – “my guess is theys done gets eated by some rock rylers, they done did.”
So ends todays foray into the brilliance and poetry that is Craigslist.
Poster 1 Under the title LIERS – “really sick of all the fucking assholes on here posting vehicles on here and are to fucking IGNORANT to return e-mails or a phone call.”
Response #1 titled Ignernt Liers – “maybe your intellect is driving them away”
Response#2 titled Ignernt liers – “my guess is theys done gets eated by some rock rylers, they done did.”
So ends todays foray into the brilliance and poetry that is Craigslist.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Whining Dingoball
Only on presidents day could a talking Barbie Doll release a video where she reads a script with heavily edited words and images and sounds come together to mean something to someone and everyone can remember how close this once great country came to electing a complete moron to higher office.
Ladies and gentlemen I applaude you for sending Sarah D (the D stands for Douche) Palin back to Wasilla.
Ladies and gentlemen I applaude you for sending Sarah D (the D stands for Douche) Palin back to Wasilla.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Valentines Day chat
I met Franklin Delano Goldfarb online about four years ago. It was a chat room dedicated to people who were addicted to online chatting. You could log in and meet with other people who had somehow become addicted to anonymous interaction with unknown persons from around the globe.
FDG2007 logged on and said hello four years ago and almost immediately we were friends. We had so much in common, from Apple Computer love to all things Anime. It was all on the sly, Franklin at first told me he was a woman, a 26 year old woman in Moscow Russia. That was a minor lie, I had told Franklin my name was Becky, a hermaphrodite from Yugoslavia, using a computer powered by fire flies and magnets.
People lie all the time on the internet and especially in chat rooms, but when you are trying to find a connection, especially online, at some point you have to tell the truth. After a few weeks of a developing awkward lesbian relationship, Franklin began to come clean, at first admitting he was a he and then finally typing the words I had long suspected, “I have to work hard to spell all those words wrong, I am not that stupid.”
I knew it. No one I had ever met could spell “Friendly” “Frankly” so consistently. I did a smiley face and said there was something I needed to come clean about myself, but before I could type anything, Franklin wrote that he knew I was not in Yugoslavia, that I did not have a computer being powered by fire flies and that I was not a young woman, still breast fed by my over zealous communist aunt and Bolshevik stalwart Linda, no he had surmised I was a normal guy somewhere in America.
Which I kind of was, although how normal could anyone be who thought they could get away with pulling a fast one pretending to live in Yugoslavia with a computer powered by fire flies, fed mostly on breast milk, etc?
I think it was internet pioneer Al Gore who once said you can fool some of the people most of the time, and most of the people some of the time, and all of the republicans all of the time, but you can’t pretend to be a Yugoslavian hermaphrodite for too long before people realize you are probably in your moms basement, half naked.
That Al Gore, he really needs to get a job.
Franklin Delano Goldfarb was born in Venice, at least according to his Facebook account. If you believe Tumblr, he was actually born in Las Feliz, which is close enough, so we are probably talking about the same person. Google pegs FDG as being born somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, but then again, no one trusts Google for anything since Google continues to suggest that my dear friend Brando Cal-Meesvian the Third is still ruling the kingdom of Smerg.
I did a quick Bloomberg fact check on Franklin Delano Goodfarb and discovered that he had indeed never served on the board of CitiBoink, which I also discovered was not a business, although I think it should be. If I had a CitiBoink card I would most certainly expect them to fuck me out of my money in monthly service charges.
As I dug deeper into the life I had presumed to be the truth of my online friend Franklin Delano Goldfarb I was shocked to find out that almost all of it was untrue. Not only was he not born in Venice, he did not attend Beverly Hills Nocternal Institute for Vampire Studies, nor did he graduate from the Divine Miss M School of Medicine and Handbags, and of course he was never the producer of Conan. I went back and checked his profile on Blankstare, it had been changed and his picture was different, he was now an African American woman named Showanda. Something was up. I logged into Smank.Com and checked his status there, he was not online, but I checked his Smank profile, that one had also been changed. Smank listed him as “a liberated lesbian named Beth.” Ironic, since my own attorney was a liberated lesbian named Beth. A pattern was starting to show itself.
All the lies started to make sense. Which is always a bad sign, because if someone is going to lie about their education, their higher education and their employment, chances are they are also going to lie about important stuff like their diet and choices in clothing. That much I know to be a fact.
I was going to fly to Los Angeles to check all this out myself, but honestly, planes scare me and if I can’t get all the information I need on an internet liar from the internet, then it is probably information I won’t need anyway.
I knew Google was compromised, but I was unsure what other search engines existed, such was the power that Google has over me and my internet searching capabilities. I sat at my computer for a good 12 minutes wondering what I should do. Finally I picked up my phone and dialed my good friend police detective Becky Moscowitz.
“Please tell me this is not Google related.” She started out almost immediately.
“Well, not officially.”
“Good, what’s the problem.”
“I have an online friend who may have been lying to me.”
“So?”
“Yes, well, I am not sure what sort of crime that falls under.”
“Online lying? Oh, that is a death penalty offense?”
“Seriously?”
“No stupid. It’s not a crime. It’s a lie. Get over it. What did this liar lie about? Penis size?”
“Gross. No, education, employment, you know, life stuff.”
“So? Who cares? If I remember correctly, sometimes you claim to be a woman in upper Sanguine, or something.”
“Lower Yugoslavia.”
“Whatever.”
“Well, we have been chatting for a long time.”
“I thought you we in some sort of rehab for internet chatting.”
“We met online, in an internet rehab chat room.”
“Are you retarded?”
“Is that an official police question?”
“Possibly. I think it’s a crime to be retarded, online and pretending to be a hermaphrodite from Yugoslavia.”
“How did you know?”
“Franklin Delano Goldfarb? You will fall for anything. Happy Valentines Day.”
FDG2007 logged on and said hello four years ago and almost immediately we were friends. We had so much in common, from Apple Computer love to all things Anime. It was all on the sly, Franklin at first told me he was a woman, a 26 year old woman in Moscow Russia. That was a minor lie, I had told Franklin my name was Becky, a hermaphrodite from Yugoslavia, using a computer powered by fire flies and magnets.
People lie all the time on the internet and especially in chat rooms, but when you are trying to find a connection, especially online, at some point you have to tell the truth. After a few weeks of a developing awkward lesbian relationship, Franklin began to come clean, at first admitting he was a he and then finally typing the words I had long suspected, “I have to work hard to spell all those words wrong, I am not that stupid.”
I knew it. No one I had ever met could spell “Friendly” “Frankly” so consistently. I did a smiley face and said there was something I needed to come clean about myself, but before I could type anything, Franklin wrote that he knew I was not in Yugoslavia, that I did not have a computer being powered by fire flies and that I was not a young woman, still breast fed by my over zealous communist aunt and Bolshevik stalwart Linda, no he had surmised I was a normal guy somewhere in America.
Which I kind of was, although how normal could anyone be who thought they could get away with pulling a fast one pretending to live in Yugoslavia with a computer powered by fire flies, fed mostly on breast milk, etc?
I think it was internet pioneer Al Gore who once said you can fool some of the people most of the time, and most of the people some of the time, and all of the republicans all of the time, but you can’t pretend to be a Yugoslavian hermaphrodite for too long before people realize you are probably in your moms basement, half naked.
That Al Gore, he really needs to get a job.
Franklin Delano Goldfarb was born in Venice, at least according to his Facebook account. If you believe Tumblr, he was actually born in Las Feliz, which is close enough, so we are probably talking about the same person. Google pegs FDG as being born somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, but then again, no one trusts Google for anything since Google continues to suggest that my dear friend Brando Cal-Meesvian the Third is still ruling the kingdom of Smerg.
I did a quick Bloomberg fact check on Franklin Delano Goodfarb and discovered that he had indeed never served on the board of CitiBoink, which I also discovered was not a business, although I think it should be. If I had a CitiBoink card I would most certainly expect them to fuck me out of my money in monthly service charges.
As I dug deeper into the life I had presumed to be the truth of my online friend Franklin Delano Goldfarb I was shocked to find out that almost all of it was untrue. Not only was he not born in Venice, he did not attend Beverly Hills Nocternal Institute for Vampire Studies, nor did he graduate from the Divine Miss M School of Medicine and Handbags, and of course he was never the producer of Conan. I went back and checked his profile on Blankstare, it had been changed and his picture was different, he was now an African American woman named Showanda. Something was up. I logged into Smank.Com and checked his status there, he was not online, but I checked his Smank profile, that one had also been changed. Smank listed him as “a liberated lesbian named Beth.” Ironic, since my own attorney was a liberated lesbian named Beth. A pattern was starting to show itself.
All the lies started to make sense. Which is always a bad sign, because if someone is going to lie about their education, their higher education and their employment, chances are they are also going to lie about important stuff like their diet and choices in clothing. That much I know to be a fact.
I was going to fly to Los Angeles to check all this out myself, but honestly, planes scare me and if I can’t get all the information I need on an internet liar from the internet, then it is probably information I won’t need anyway.
I knew Google was compromised, but I was unsure what other search engines existed, such was the power that Google has over me and my internet searching capabilities. I sat at my computer for a good 12 minutes wondering what I should do. Finally I picked up my phone and dialed my good friend police detective Becky Moscowitz.
“Please tell me this is not Google related.” She started out almost immediately.
“Well, not officially.”
“Good, what’s the problem.”
“I have an online friend who may have been lying to me.”
“So?”
“Yes, well, I am not sure what sort of crime that falls under.”
“Online lying? Oh, that is a death penalty offense?”
“Seriously?”
“No stupid. It’s not a crime. It’s a lie. Get over it. What did this liar lie about? Penis size?”
“Gross. No, education, employment, you know, life stuff.”
“So? Who cares? If I remember correctly, sometimes you claim to be a woman in upper Sanguine, or something.”
“Lower Yugoslavia.”
“Whatever.”
“Well, we have been chatting for a long time.”
“I thought you we in some sort of rehab for internet chatting.”
“We met online, in an internet rehab chat room.”
“Are you retarded?”
“Is that an official police question?”
“Possibly. I think it’s a crime to be retarded, online and pretending to be a hermaphrodite from Yugoslavia.”
“How did you know?”
“Franklin Delano Goldfarb? You will fall for anything. Happy Valentines Day.”
Monday, February 13, 2012
The Karma Posse
I was a hundred miles from nowhere. My little rental car never needed gas, which was a good thing, it was late at night and I would not find a station for 200 miles, not that I was looking.
Instead I found a diner and I stopped and went in. There was an older gentleman sitting slumped over a cup of coffee at the counter and a young couple at a back table and that was it. A portly waitress called out that I could take any seat I wanted. There was a table, alone, near a window, looking over the empty parking lot. I sat down and opened my Ipad and checked to see if there was a Wifi connection. There was not.
The waitress came over, handed me a menu and asked if I wanted something to drink. Water and coffee I said and she was gone. Soon enough both beverages were sitting in front of me. I ordered a bison burger and shuffled through the music on the Ipads collection. Sometimes when I’m sitting alone in a diner I have time for reflection, but since I had been driving for hours, already too much reflection time, I needed distraction. That’s when the man with the haircut and glasses sat down across from me.
First, my bison burger was delivered and I took a bite, my water was refilled, I told the lumpy waitress everything was perfect and she was gone. I was chewing my second bite and the man in dark trousers and a white dress shirt slid into the seat across from me. He was white, thin, wearing horn rimmed glasses and looking me directly in the eye. He smiled as I chewed my mouth full of bison burger.
“How are you?” He asked.
I finished chewing. I took a sip of water. I realized there had been no movement in the parking lot outside of the window to my left. You get out into the deep country and the only way people travel, especially at night, is by car. Seems like the mystery man would have had to have driven into the parking lot below me to enter the diner. I would have to ask him about that.
“Where did you come from?”
“Not from around here, you?”
“Astrologically I’m an Scorpio.”
“The burger looks good.”
“If you’re here to steal my burger, that’s not happening. I’d be happy to buy you one, but I’d appreciate it if you got your own table.”
“Not that hungry friend.”
“Not sure I’m your friend.”
“Well, I’m here to help.”
There are few things in life one does not want to hear. “We found a tumor.” Might be one of them. For me, “I’m here to help” has always led to a lot of trouble.
The last time someone actually muttered that phrase to me, we ended up married and five children later, divorced. Here to help my ass.
I took another bite of my bison burger and looked the mystery man in the eye. He smiled.
“I’m with a group called the Karma Posse” he said. I slowly chewed my burger. I nodded. “Pretty simple really, when you think about it, we all rely on karma in some form or another to keep the world in balance. Bad drivers, people who hurt children, neighbors who steal garden implements and the guy who takes all the donuts at work functions.”
I cleared my throat. “So you guys beat up donut eaters?”
“I did not say that?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“We are very serious. Very secret. We keep the balance.”
“So after something bad happens and someone says, karma will get them?”
“We are that karma.”
“And you just happen upon people in diners?”
“Sometimes. How do you think karma works?”
“So what are you asking of me?”
“A name and an instance. Who do you know that has caused an imbalance.”
I took another bite. My mind raced for a few minutes. One of the worst things about not having any short term memory is that when something incredibly important happens in your life, or to a loved one, to a friend or worse, to a Harvard educated lesbian attorney, chances are it will not be remembered. When an episode that would require some karmic balancing does happen, chances are it has slipped into my mindless ether. Is there anyone I can think of who needs a visit from the karma posse? I did not think so.
“I can’t think of anyone.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. I can’t think of anyone who has caused any sort of karmic imbalance.”
“Impossible. We do this, a lot. Never have we found someone who could not quickly name many people who needed something. Even a bike rider who ran a red light. Some people have lists.”
“Not me. I like bike riders.”
“It was an example.”
“Yeah. No. Not a single karmic injustice.”
“Impossible.”
“Seriously.”
“You’re telling me you can’t recall a single incidence, a dry cleaner who lost a shirt, a driver who flipped the bird, an ex-lover who took your cat.”
“Oh, now that you mention that.”
“Ah hah, an ex took your cat?”
“No, but I wish my ex had taken my cat. I think she has a urinary tract infection.”
“Think. There has to be some Karmic injustice in your life.”
“Well, I was driving today and saw about 7 state workers, all wearing those terrible loud glow in the dark vests standing around holding shovels, while one guy with a broom seemed to be doing all the work. The guys with the shovels were chatting, smoking and joking around, the guy with the broom was cleaning up all this mess.”
“That’s it, that is your karmic injustice? Lazy state workers?”
“Best I can do.”
“If lazy state workers were the sole job of the Karma Posse, we would be busy 24-7, no we don’t repair the silly karma troubles of the barely employed.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I just don’t recall anything else.”
“Finish your burger, I’ll be right back.”
He got up and walked out into the empty parking lot and appeared to be placing a phone call on his cell. I focused on my burger. I don’t understand why more people and places do not work with bison.
I looked out into the expanse of the parking lot and it was again empty.
Instead I found a diner and I stopped and went in. There was an older gentleman sitting slumped over a cup of coffee at the counter and a young couple at a back table and that was it. A portly waitress called out that I could take any seat I wanted. There was a table, alone, near a window, looking over the empty parking lot. I sat down and opened my Ipad and checked to see if there was a Wifi connection. There was not.
The waitress came over, handed me a menu and asked if I wanted something to drink. Water and coffee I said and she was gone. Soon enough both beverages were sitting in front of me. I ordered a bison burger and shuffled through the music on the Ipads collection. Sometimes when I’m sitting alone in a diner I have time for reflection, but since I had been driving for hours, already too much reflection time, I needed distraction. That’s when the man with the haircut and glasses sat down across from me.
First, my bison burger was delivered and I took a bite, my water was refilled, I told the lumpy waitress everything was perfect and she was gone. I was chewing my second bite and the man in dark trousers and a white dress shirt slid into the seat across from me. He was white, thin, wearing horn rimmed glasses and looking me directly in the eye. He smiled as I chewed my mouth full of bison burger.
“How are you?” He asked.
I finished chewing. I took a sip of water. I realized there had been no movement in the parking lot outside of the window to my left. You get out into the deep country and the only way people travel, especially at night, is by car. Seems like the mystery man would have had to have driven into the parking lot below me to enter the diner. I would have to ask him about that.
“Where did you come from?”
“Not from around here, you?”
“Astrologically I’m an Scorpio.”
“The burger looks good.”
“If you’re here to steal my burger, that’s not happening. I’d be happy to buy you one, but I’d appreciate it if you got your own table.”
“Not that hungry friend.”
“Not sure I’m your friend.”
“Well, I’m here to help.”
There are few things in life one does not want to hear. “We found a tumor.” Might be one of them. For me, “I’m here to help” has always led to a lot of trouble.
The last time someone actually muttered that phrase to me, we ended up married and five children later, divorced. Here to help my ass.
I took another bite of my bison burger and looked the mystery man in the eye. He smiled.
“I’m with a group called the Karma Posse” he said. I slowly chewed my burger. I nodded. “Pretty simple really, when you think about it, we all rely on karma in some form or another to keep the world in balance. Bad drivers, people who hurt children, neighbors who steal garden implements and the guy who takes all the donuts at work functions.”
I cleared my throat. “So you guys beat up donut eaters?”
“I did not say that?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“We are very serious. Very secret. We keep the balance.”
“So after something bad happens and someone says, karma will get them?”
“We are that karma.”
“And you just happen upon people in diners?”
“Sometimes. How do you think karma works?”
“So what are you asking of me?”
“A name and an instance. Who do you know that has caused an imbalance.”
I took another bite. My mind raced for a few minutes. One of the worst things about not having any short term memory is that when something incredibly important happens in your life, or to a loved one, to a friend or worse, to a Harvard educated lesbian attorney, chances are it will not be remembered. When an episode that would require some karmic balancing does happen, chances are it has slipped into my mindless ether. Is there anyone I can think of who needs a visit from the karma posse? I did not think so.
“I can’t think of anyone.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. I can’t think of anyone who has caused any sort of karmic imbalance.”
“Impossible. We do this, a lot. Never have we found someone who could not quickly name many people who needed something. Even a bike rider who ran a red light. Some people have lists.”
“Not me. I like bike riders.”
“It was an example.”
“Yeah. No. Not a single karmic injustice.”
“Impossible.”
“Seriously.”
“You’re telling me you can’t recall a single incidence, a dry cleaner who lost a shirt, a driver who flipped the bird, an ex-lover who took your cat.”
“Oh, now that you mention that.”
“Ah hah, an ex took your cat?”
“No, but I wish my ex had taken my cat. I think she has a urinary tract infection.”
“Think. There has to be some Karmic injustice in your life.”
“Well, I was driving today and saw about 7 state workers, all wearing those terrible loud glow in the dark vests standing around holding shovels, while one guy with a broom seemed to be doing all the work. The guys with the shovels were chatting, smoking and joking around, the guy with the broom was cleaning up all this mess.”
“That’s it, that is your karmic injustice? Lazy state workers?”
“Best I can do.”
“If lazy state workers were the sole job of the Karma Posse, we would be busy 24-7, no we don’t repair the silly karma troubles of the barely employed.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I just don’t recall anything else.”
“Finish your burger, I’ll be right back.”
He got up and walked out into the empty parking lot and appeared to be placing a phone call on his cell. I focused on my burger. I don’t understand why more people and places do not work with bison.
I looked out into the expanse of the parking lot and it was again empty.
Friday, February 10, 2012
The dogs sex change operation
I got an early morning call from the Vet Vet around 10, which is not nearly as early as I thought it was. I answered on the seventh ring.
“Hi Vet Vet.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“If you installed that hidden web camera like I suggested you would know that already, wouldn’t you.”
“Now is not the time for joking.”
Vet Vet is a former Green Beret who served our country in two tours in Afghanistan as both a soldier and a dancer in USO shows, plus a tour in Iraq, solely as a dancer, but still, it was war time and I did no service at all. When Vet Vet returned from the war he got a degree in Veterinary medicine, thus the double Vet Vet name. Plus both Gren Berets and Veterinarians are not known for their sense of humor.
“When is the time for joking, cause you should call back then.”
“Seriously, I have some unfortunate news.”
“Please don’t tell me my dog is dead.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your dog is dead.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“She died in surgery.”
“She was in surgery?”
“Sex change surgery, you didn’t know?”
“Well, I always knew she was more butch than bitch, but I did not know of her plans for a change in positions.”
“Well, she came in yesterday.”
“She came in by herself.”
“No, she came with her lover.”
Yeah, her lover. Oh, I could tell you all about her “lover”. You know, if Rick Santorum needs a poster couple for everything wrong with gay marriage and the gay lifestyle and the gay everything, it would be my dog and her long time lover Momma Kitty. First of all, I am not sure how committed Momma Kitty is to either her long term lover or to actually the whole gay lifestyle, having birthed no less that 16 children while “committed” to her long term lover, my recently deceased dog.
I guess now is not the time to complain, plenty of time after the funeral.
“So what you are saying is, my dog came in and demanded a sex change and you did the surgery.”
“Of course not, we did some initial counseling weeks ago.”
“Counseling? You counseled my dog?”
“Well, I gave her some treats, and I showed her pictures of the various types of implants, she didn’t seem to pay much attention. She finished the treats, then she licked herself for a while. That was about it.”
“That’s my dog.”
“Well, that was your dog. She’s gone now.”
“Probably in doggy heaven right now.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. There is no such thing as doggy heaven. Trust me, if there is a heaven and hell, god does not waste space on dogs and cats, and if he has space for dogs and cats you can bet your last dollar that he does not want a sexually confused lesbian Australian Shepard prancing around with a prosthetic penis.”
“Harsh.”
“Just being honest.”
“Well, thanks for that.”
“So, what would you like me to do with the body?”
“Right. Well, certainly you should donate her organs to charity.”
“Already done.”
“And her fur to doggy cancer patients.”
“We did that the minute the cat unplugged the respirator.”
“And I guess you could donate her collar to a dog at the Humane Society.”
“That’s very thoughtful.”
“I’m sorry, did you say something about the cat unplugging the respirator?”
“Yeah, oh, right. Yeah, the cat pulled the plug, we think it was probably an accident. You know how, when a cat gets really black out drunk they do these crazy things like unplug respirators and things like that?”
“Yeah, sure, that shit happens all the time around here.”
“Sure, same here. So, we had installed the dogs new penis and she was just recovering and the cat comes stumbling in the surgery room and is completely wrecked on vodka and high as a kite on cat nip and she’s all over the room, pissing on gear and meowing like I’ve never heard. Then she just starts unplugging everything.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, my cell phone rang, I walked outside to talk for a minute.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, it’s weird, the reception is, like 10 times better outside.”
“That makes sense.”
“Anyway, when I came back in, the cat was passed out and your dog was dead.”
“Completely understandable.”
“So.”
“Yes?”
“About the bill?”
Then my phone went dead. Bad reception goes both ways I guess.
“Hi Vet Vet.”
“Are you sitting down?”
“If you installed that hidden web camera like I suggested you would know that already, wouldn’t you.”
“Now is not the time for joking.”
Vet Vet is a former Green Beret who served our country in two tours in Afghanistan as both a soldier and a dancer in USO shows, plus a tour in Iraq, solely as a dancer, but still, it was war time and I did no service at all. When Vet Vet returned from the war he got a degree in Veterinary medicine, thus the double Vet Vet name. Plus both Gren Berets and Veterinarians are not known for their sense of humor.
“When is the time for joking, cause you should call back then.”
“Seriously, I have some unfortunate news.”
“Please don’t tell me my dog is dead.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your dog is dead.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“She died in surgery.”
“She was in surgery?”
“Sex change surgery, you didn’t know?”
“Well, I always knew she was more butch than bitch, but I did not know of her plans for a change in positions.”
“Well, she came in yesterday.”
“She came in by herself.”
“No, she came with her lover.”
Yeah, her lover. Oh, I could tell you all about her “lover”. You know, if Rick Santorum needs a poster couple for everything wrong with gay marriage and the gay lifestyle and the gay everything, it would be my dog and her long time lover Momma Kitty. First of all, I am not sure how committed Momma Kitty is to either her long term lover or to actually the whole gay lifestyle, having birthed no less that 16 children while “committed” to her long term lover, my recently deceased dog.
I guess now is not the time to complain, plenty of time after the funeral.
“So what you are saying is, my dog came in and demanded a sex change and you did the surgery.”
“Of course not, we did some initial counseling weeks ago.”
“Counseling? You counseled my dog?”
“Well, I gave her some treats, and I showed her pictures of the various types of implants, she didn’t seem to pay much attention. She finished the treats, then she licked herself for a while. That was about it.”
“That’s my dog.”
“Well, that was your dog. She’s gone now.”
“Probably in doggy heaven right now.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. There is no such thing as doggy heaven. Trust me, if there is a heaven and hell, god does not waste space on dogs and cats, and if he has space for dogs and cats you can bet your last dollar that he does not want a sexually confused lesbian Australian Shepard prancing around with a prosthetic penis.”
“Harsh.”
“Just being honest.”
“Well, thanks for that.”
“So, what would you like me to do with the body?”
“Right. Well, certainly you should donate her organs to charity.”
“Already done.”
“And her fur to doggy cancer patients.”
“We did that the minute the cat unplugged the respirator.”
“And I guess you could donate her collar to a dog at the Humane Society.”
“That’s very thoughtful.”
“I’m sorry, did you say something about the cat unplugging the respirator?”
“Yeah, oh, right. Yeah, the cat pulled the plug, we think it was probably an accident. You know how, when a cat gets really black out drunk they do these crazy things like unplug respirators and things like that?”
“Yeah, sure, that shit happens all the time around here.”
“Sure, same here. So, we had installed the dogs new penis and she was just recovering and the cat comes stumbling in the surgery room and is completely wrecked on vodka and high as a kite on cat nip and she’s all over the room, pissing on gear and meowing like I’ve never heard. Then she just starts unplugging everything.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, my cell phone rang, I walked outside to talk for a minute.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, it’s weird, the reception is, like 10 times better outside.”
“That makes sense.”
“Anyway, when I came back in, the cat was passed out and your dog was dead.”
“Completely understandable.”
“So.”
“Yes?”
“About the bill?”
Then my phone went dead. Bad reception goes both ways I guess.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Parenting advice - Stay home
For a variety of reasons I ended up being a somewhat stay at home dad, not the least of which reason was that is was part of my parole agreement.
Staying at home with children is not nearly as much fun as generations of women make it out to be. All those stories I had heard about drunken afternoons with the kids blindly watching hours of Disney movies on the flat screen would never come to fruition. Almost every stay at home mother I met prior to becoming a stay at home father would brag about the free time, the dance lessons (with some sardonic winking thrown in for good measure) the hours of tennis lessons (again with the sardonic winking) and a reminder that every afternoon, you could sit the kids down to endless hours of video movies while you “got your drink on.”
I would almost always ask these stay at home moms, “really, that is what life is like for a stay at home mother?”
Every single one of them would nod and say, “yes, absolutely. If you stay at home and raise your children, you will see for yourself. You will have more free time than you could ever imagine. Almost every afternoon we all get together and play bridge and drink margaritas.”
I think the word I am looking for right here is hoodwinked.
See, I signed up for the whole stay at home gig thinking of those afternoons of drunken excess, and all those hours of winking at tennis lessons or something like that, or just learning to sardonically wink, heck even accomplishing that would be a big step up for me. In the matter of what seemed like hours I had over a dozen of my very own children, some of them springing miraculously from my very own loins, some from a woman I knew named Becky.
Becky hated kids just a little less than I did, so she kept her day job working undercover with the Federal Government. I stayed home, purchased cases of fine whiskey online and every Disney DVD I could find. That first day with me alone with 7 of the children, we all had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, cleaned up the house, went for a nice long walk to the beach, came home and drew pictures of secret agent mommy, had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, tried to catch a bird in a shoe box, finger painted for 12 minutes, went to the park and played an especially brutal game of soccer, came home in time to cook dinner and never got around to watching any of those movies or drinking any of that fine whiskey.
The next day I think Becky gave birth to twins and we all went bike riding. Days like those passed into months, then years. We played, we cooked, we built forts and airplanes, planted gardens and swam like dolphins. Decades passed. The Disney movies got watched at some point, the Whiskey never did get opened, sadly.
My daughter Shlumpy asked me this morning why I was not a doctor and I told her that I was thrown out of medical school. Then she asked why I did not go to another medical school. I said I was busy raising the schmucks. She asked what a schmuck was and I explained that she and her brothers and assorted sisters were.
“So, what you’re saying is, if not for us kids, you’d be a doctor?”
“No, I was thrown out of medical school. What I’m saying is, if not for you kids, I’d have a fully funded 401K.”
“I sense a little bitterness in your lack of long term financial planning.”
“Not at all. You know, I think it’s true, when people are old and dying they never wish that they spent more time at the office.”
“No, are you saying they wished they’d spent more time with their kids?”
“Oh, I would have said reapplying to medical school, but spending time with kids, sure, that’s a good answer.”
“So, when you are dying, you will be saying, thank god I got to spend all that time playing and painting and bike riding and swimming and dancing with those wonderful and creative kids?”
“No, I think I’m going to be saying, try to remember the license plate number of the car that just hit me, try to remember the license plate number of the car….”
Staying at home with children is not nearly as much fun as generations of women make it out to be. All those stories I had heard about drunken afternoons with the kids blindly watching hours of Disney movies on the flat screen would never come to fruition. Almost every stay at home mother I met prior to becoming a stay at home father would brag about the free time, the dance lessons (with some sardonic winking thrown in for good measure) the hours of tennis lessons (again with the sardonic winking) and a reminder that every afternoon, you could sit the kids down to endless hours of video movies while you “got your drink on.”
I would almost always ask these stay at home moms, “really, that is what life is like for a stay at home mother?”
Every single one of them would nod and say, “yes, absolutely. If you stay at home and raise your children, you will see for yourself. You will have more free time than you could ever imagine. Almost every afternoon we all get together and play bridge and drink margaritas.”
I think the word I am looking for right here is hoodwinked.
See, I signed up for the whole stay at home gig thinking of those afternoons of drunken excess, and all those hours of winking at tennis lessons or something like that, or just learning to sardonically wink, heck even accomplishing that would be a big step up for me. In the matter of what seemed like hours I had over a dozen of my very own children, some of them springing miraculously from my very own loins, some from a woman I knew named Becky.
Becky hated kids just a little less than I did, so she kept her day job working undercover with the Federal Government. I stayed home, purchased cases of fine whiskey online and every Disney DVD I could find. That first day with me alone with 7 of the children, we all had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, cleaned up the house, went for a nice long walk to the beach, came home and drew pictures of secret agent mommy, had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, tried to catch a bird in a shoe box, finger painted for 12 minutes, went to the park and played an especially brutal game of soccer, came home in time to cook dinner and never got around to watching any of those movies or drinking any of that fine whiskey.
The next day I think Becky gave birth to twins and we all went bike riding. Days like those passed into months, then years. We played, we cooked, we built forts and airplanes, planted gardens and swam like dolphins. Decades passed. The Disney movies got watched at some point, the Whiskey never did get opened, sadly.
My daughter Shlumpy asked me this morning why I was not a doctor and I told her that I was thrown out of medical school. Then she asked why I did not go to another medical school. I said I was busy raising the schmucks. She asked what a schmuck was and I explained that she and her brothers and assorted sisters were.
“So, what you’re saying is, if not for us kids, you’d be a doctor?”
“No, I was thrown out of medical school. What I’m saying is, if not for you kids, I’d have a fully funded 401K.”
“I sense a little bitterness in your lack of long term financial planning.”
“Not at all. You know, I think it’s true, when people are old and dying they never wish that they spent more time at the office.”
“No, are you saying they wished they’d spent more time with their kids?”
“Oh, I would have said reapplying to medical school, but spending time with kids, sure, that’s a good answer.”
“So, when you are dying, you will be saying, thank god I got to spend all that time playing and painting and bike riding and swimming and dancing with those wonderful and creative kids?”
“No, I think I’m going to be saying, try to remember the license plate number of the car that just hit me, try to remember the license plate number of the car….”
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Parenting advice - playing favorites
As a parent you should never play favorites, that is key. It’s not true, but it is key. I recently wrote how Becky#7 was my all time favorite daughter for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she moved out at age 16.
By far my least favorite child would be Roscoe, but he is everyones least favorite everything. He lies, he cheats, he steals and he kicks really hard. He is the meanest 7 year old I have ever met, I hate him and he hates me and right now we are both in counseling because I can’t stand being around him and he has promised to kill me fist chance he gets. That’s exactly what he told the police when I called them a couple of weeks ago, right to the officer, “first chance I get, gonna kill that son of a bitch” is what the officer wrote down in the official report.
Roscoe is certainly my least favorite son. Then again, when you have 17 children, some of them are just not going to be very nice. Barcelona Becky has been a handful from day one. First, I should explain her name. Her mother was a promiscuous flight attendant working international routes in the 90’s. While we were married, she had three children by four different fathers, you do the math. While I had been hog swangled into raising these miscreants as if they were my very own, for the most part, it has been painfully obvious that none of them are even faintly related to me in either temperament, personality or musical aptitude.
Barcelona Becky is more plotting terrorist than loving daughter. She was a sweet girl of 4 the first time she hit me with a gardening implement. At 7 she almost killed me with a well placed wine glass, a can of bug spray and a 16th century dagger. By the time she was 10 she had managed to shackle me to a moving lawnmower add a burning tank of gasoline strapped to my leg and somehow convince the neighbors dog to “fetch” me. As a teenager she would return from girls school in Switzerland intent on my death. We would spend weeks avoiding one another, until I would find myself driving her to the airport, and she would grab the steering wheel, pulling us into oncoming traffic, or worse. She was, to say the least, a handful, but always fun to be around, which is why I always have enjoyed her company, at least from a safe distance.
Barcelona Becky spent the Hasidic Holidays with us last weekend. She lit the candles and cooked the stale meats as is the tradition, although I am pretty sure it is a stinky tradition that she is making up as she goes along, because I Googled both Hasidic Holidays and stinky meat tradition and nothing at all came up. I was going to confront her, but in the past, confronting Barcelona Becky has only led to pain and hospitalization.
Rule number one with my daughter Barcelona Becky, never, under any circumstance, eat anything she has cooked. I have become an expert at avoiding even getting anything close to my mouth, for fear that the poison she is using could be inhaled as well as ingested. At the point where we are all seated at the dining table, and just as we are about to take our first bite, I will point out something on the ceiling, or a bird outside the window, just as I was about to take that first bite, and I will flick the bite onto the floor, where our latest dog will happily gobble it up. Generally at that point, I sit back and watch. Nine times out of ten, within about 60 seconds, the dog wobbles to the center of the dining room, foams at the mouth for a few minutes and then, dramatically, dies.
Right about then Barcelona Becky usually clears the table and we all go to our respective rooms. Hasidic Holidays are indeed a strange ceremony. Truth be told, the way we celebrate the Hasidic Holidays is not all bad, because once a year we do end up getting a new dog, which is kind of nice.
For whatever reason my therapist has recommended that I start going to bars and dance clubs that cater mostly to transvestites. I bring this up because Barcelona Becky was reading my super private journal during her Hasidic Holiday tradition of “invasion of privacy time,” which has usually meant damaging her brothers and sisters sense of decency in past years, but this year, it was my ultra-secret diary that became part of a macabre show and tell.
Instead of bringing me shame, as was her ultimate goal I am sure, I invited Barcelona Becky to a club downtown that has become popular with the transvestite crowd. She agreed and I knew that this would be a turning point in out father/daughter relationship. You never know going into some sort of major event how it might change you, but when you are stepping into an unknown and unplanned scene, you do know it will affect you, just not exactly how.
Many years ago my young daughter Salamander Egghead and I were in New York City and there was a show at the Museum of Modern Art. A collection of original art from Berlin, all created after World War 2. As we walked thru the various galleries you could see how the battles and the conflicts had worn on the peoples souls, how it had affected the artists and how even in their inspired art they were still filled with shame and personal disgust, it was disturbing and sad. My daughter and I were unprepared for the emotional turmoil the show would put us through and as we walked out of the museum we were both in tears, holding hands, feeling the power that heartfelt art can bring down upon you if you have an open heart and a willing eye.
Saturday night Barcelona Becky and I drove the Club Wanker and parked in a far off lot. We walked together, me dressed mostly in dark blue because I am going thru my dark blue period, while Barcelona Becky was dressed in garish bright pink polka dots against a bright green background. If we were not going to a club that was welcoming to transvestites I was not sure I would be excited to be seen in public with my own daughter. She reached out and grabbed my hand as we crossed the road to the entrance of the club. She had not held my hand since I walked her to the bus in second grade.
I paid the doorman 20 dollars and we were inside. Part of my therapy is just to be near men dressed as women. There is something inside my head that does not understand this culture. My therapist, Dr. Benzo Meesvian, believes (wrongly, ironically enough) that when people are afraid of something, they should force themselves to do it. When I told Dr. Meesvian that I was afraid of transvestites, he immediately ordered me to go to a “tranny bar.” There I was, standing with Barcelona Becky in the largest gathering of men dressed as women in the Northeast. I took a deep breath. The music was loud, the perfume disgusting. I looked around, a lot of men who looked like men dressed as women, and I leaned into Barcelona Becky and I said, “I have to go.”
We were out of there as if someone had lit a fire in my ass.
Later at a diner I could not tell her why I was so ill at ease. She said this, “why do you think you have to be at ease with everyone?”
“I don’t.”
“But you went to that bar. You went because some quack therapist said you should confront your fears.”
“I don’t fear transvestites.”
“They make you uncomfortable.”
“Or something.”
“Do you want to wear a dress dad?”
“If I wanted to wear a dress, I would.”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe trannies just freak you out.”
“OK, So?”
“So what. We are allowed to be freaked out over whatever we want.”
“I should share this with Dr. Meesvian.”
“Yeah, yeah, you should share that with your quack doctor, that and a punch in his stupid fucking face.”
That right there, that moment, that brilliance is the reason Barcelona Becky is my favorite daughter. That and she paid for dinner.
By far my least favorite child would be Roscoe, but he is everyones least favorite everything. He lies, he cheats, he steals and he kicks really hard. He is the meanest 7 year old I have ever met, I hate him and he hates me and right now we are both in counseling because I can’t stand being around him and he has promised to kill me fist chance he gets. That’s exactly what he told the police when I called them a couple of weeks ago, right to the officer, “first chance I get, gonna kill that son of a bitch” is what the officer wrote down in the official report.
Roscoe is certainly my least favorite son. Then again, when you have 17 children, some of them are just not going to be very nice. Barcelona Becky has been a handful from day one. First, I should explain her name. Her mother was a promiscuous flight attendant working international routes in the 90’s. While we were married, she had three children by four different fathers, you do the math. While I had been hog swangled into raising these miscreants as if they were my very own, for the most part, it has been painfully obvious that none of them are even faintly related to me in either temperament, personality or musical aptitude.
Barcelona Becky is more plotting terrorist than loving daughter. She was a sweet girl of 4 the first time she hit me with a gardening implement. At 7 she almost killed me with a well placed wine glass, a can of bug spray and a 16th century dagger. By the time she was 10 she had managed to shackle me to a moving lawnmower add a burning tank of gasoline strapped to my leg and somehow convince the neighbors dog to “fetch” me. As a teenager she would return from girls school in Switzerland intent on my death. We would spend weeks avoiding one another, until I would find myself driving her to the airport, and she would grab the steering wheel, pulling us into oncoming traffic, or worse. She was, to say the least, a handful, but always fun to be around, which is why I always have enjoyed her company, at least from a safe distance.
Barcelona Becky spent the Hasidic Holidays with us last weekend. She lit the candles and cooked the stale meats as is the tradition, although I am pretty sure it is a stinky tradition that she is making up as she goes along, because I Googled both Hasidic Holidays and stinky meat tradition and nothing at all came up. I was going to confront her, but in the past, confronting Barcelona Becky has only led to pain and hospitalization.
Rule number one with my daughter Barcelona Becky, never, under any circumstance, eat anything she has cooked. I have become an expert at avoiding even getting anything close to my mouth, for fear that the poison she is using could be inhaled as well as ingested. At the point where we are all seated at the dining table, and just as we are about to take our first bite, I will point out something on the ceiling, or a bird outside the window, just as I was about to take that first bite, and I will flick the bite onto the floor, where our latest dog will happily gobble it up. Generally at that point, I sit back and watch. Nine times out of ten, within about 60 seconds, the dog wobbles to the center of the dining room, foams at the mouth for a few minutes and then, dramatically, dies.
Right about then Barcelona Becky usually clears the table and we all go to our respective rooms. Hasidic Holidays are indeed a strange ceremony. Truth be told, the way we celebrate the Hasidic Holidays is not all bad, because once a year we do end up getting a new dog, which is kind of nice.
For whatever reason my therapist has recommended that I start going to bars and dance clubs that cater mostly to transvestites. I bring this up because Barcelona Becky was reading my super private journal during her Hasidic Holiday tradition of “invasion of privacy time,” which has usually meant damaging her brothers and sisters sense of decency in past years, but this year, it was my ultra-secret diary that became part of a macabre show and tell.
Instead of bringing me shame, as was her ultimate goal I am sure, I invited Barcelona Becky to a club downtown that has become popular with the transvestite crowd. She agreed and I knew that this would be a turning point in out father/daughter relationship. You never know going into some sort of major event how it might change you, but when you are stepping into an unknown and unplanned scene, you do know it will affect you, just not exactly how.
Many years ago my young daughter Salamander Egghead and I were in New York City and there was a show at the Museum of Modern Art. A collection of original art from Berlin, all created after World War 2. As we walked thru the various galleries you could see how the battles and the conflicts had worn on the peoples souls, how it had affected the artists and how even in their inspired art they were still filled with shame and personal disgust, it was disturbing and sad. My daughter and I were unprepared for the emotional turmoil the show would put us through and as we walked out of the museum we were both in tears, holding hands, feeling the power that heartfelt art can bring down upon you if you have an open heart and a willing eye.
Saturday night Barcelona Becky and I drove the Club Wanker and parked in a far off lot. We walked together, me dressed mostly in dark blue because I am going thru my dark blue period, while Barcelona Becky was dressed in garish bright pink polka dots against a bright green background. If we were not going to a club that was welcoming to transvestites I was not sure I would be excited to be seen in public with my own daughter. She reached out and grabbed my hand as we crossed the road to the entrance of the club. She had not held my hand since I walked her to the bus in second grade.
I paid the doorman 20 dollars and we were inside. Part of my therapy is just to be near men dressed as women. There is something inside my head that does not understand this culture. My therapist, Dr. Benzo Meesvian, believes (wrongly, ironically enough) that when people are afraid of something, they should force themselves to do it. When I told Dr. Meesvian that I was afraid of transvestites, he immediately ordered me to go to a “tranny bar.” There I was, standing with Barcelona Becky in the largest gathering of men dressed as women in the Northeast. I took a deep breath. The music was loud, the perfume disgusting. I looked around, a lot of men who looked like men dressed as women, and I leaned into Barcelona Becky and I said, “I have to go.”
We were out of there as if someone had lit a fire in my ass.
Later at a diner I could not tell her why I was so ill at ease. She said this, “why do you think you have to be at ease with everyone?”
“I don’t.”
“But you went to that bar. You went because some quack therapist said you should confront your fears.”
“I don’t fear transvestites.”
“They make you uncomfortable.”
“Or something.”
“Do you want to wear a dress dad?”
“If I wanted to wear a dress, I would.”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe trannies just freak you out.”
“OK, So?”
“So what. We are allowed to be freaked out over whatever we want.”
“I should share this with Dr. Meesvian.”
“Yeah, yeah, you should share that with your quack doctor, that and a punch in his stupid fucking face.”
That right there, that moment, that brilliance is the reason Barcelona Becky is my favorite daughter. That and she paid for dinner.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Feckless commentary
Even though all the important stuff gets posted on the other blog in a much more professional and educational format, this blog keeps chugging along, keeping drunks and other assorted addicts alert and smiling. How do I know this? I get email, lots and lots of email. Most of them begin and end with, "we wants to make stupid comments anonymously again."
Sooner or later the masses always win, which is why gays will never legally marry anywhere in the United States of my America and why today of all days, the open season of banality of all sorts has once again been opened. Or something.
So jump on it Billy Bob. Feel free to cuss and scream and say all those naughty things that have been suffering there at the ends of your finger tips.
Comments ahoy.
Sooner or later the masses always win, which is why gays will never legally marry anywhere in the United States of my America and why today of all days, the open season of banality of all sorts has once again been opened. Or something.
So jump on it Billy Bob. Feel free to cuss and scream and say all those naughty things that have been suffering there at the ends of your finger tips.
Comments ahoy.
Parenting advice - Pick the right name
The key to raising a child has nothing to do with the right diet, getting a good nights sleep, comforting music playing at the right time or even picking the right partner to breed with. No, the key to raising a child is choosing the right name.
When our first son was born my first wife and I agreed we would name him Jupiter. Let me set the record straight, I agreed we would name him Jupiter, my first wife was passed out after being in labor for three days straight and receiving no less than 17 epidurals. Her parents had flown in for the birth and when the beautiful and perfect Jupiter was wheeled into the viewing room I walked out and greeted my mother in law and she asked me excitedly if we had selected a name for her new grandson and I told her we had agreed on Jupiter, but I think she caught the unease in my voice because she pounced.
“Oh don’t be silly, what is his name?”
I paused. I thought his name really would be Jupiter, but we had yet to officially put his name on anything and right there in that moment she had used some super power that only a mother in law possesses and the name would never again be Jupiter.
She began, “imagine his childhood, children would rhyme stupider with Jupiter and he would return home from school crying.”
Yes, I thought, you have already won the argument.
“I think we are going to go with Baby Jesus.” I told her, with a newfound strength of conviction. I was not looking for a fight, I just had this image in my head that at some point I would be flustered by some dumb thing my son would be doing in the back seat of a car at some point 10 years in the future and I would turn to him and in a tone of total contempt, I would just slowly say, “J-e-s-u-s, what is wrong with you?”
“Are you just going to play games? What is his name?”
Again with the Mother in law mind game jujitsu. Her own daughter passed out in the maternity ward and I am pressing for a proper name with a woman who seemingly had my tiny little brain wrapped around her wrinkled, arthritic finger. I looked over at her husband, who looked at me and shrugged, he knew what it must be like to have this woman in complete control.
“I think we will stick with a traditional name, Mason Pomagranite.”
I walked back to the maternity ward before she could change my mind. My wife was coming out of her birthing coma and a nurse had handed her Jupiter, Jesus or Mason. We ended up going with a completely different name, one her mother approved of and one I kind of ended up liking, but the lesson I took away from the entire negotiation was how important the choice of a name really is.
The joy of having numerous children is the ability to test names and personalities associated with certain names. My daughter Edsel is boring and not a lot of fun. My son Bozo is hysterical. Names are important.
Something we never saw coming was the profitability of naming rights.
That part is true. If you want to make some quick cash and you are going to have 17 children, feel free to sell off some of the naming rights to some of your offspring. When baby Nike was born people were appalled, but I had 20 grand in my pocket. When slow and flabby Microsoft started to walk, People Magazine had him on the cover and I had stock options to cash in. Of course, there is always a downside. First rule of selling naming rights? Always get paid up front. I learned this the hard way with sweet little baby Enron.
My fifth and sixth sons are both named Jupiter, and to be honest one is actually stupider than the other, which means that Mother in Law number one was actually right. Jupiter is stupider.
When our first son was born my first wife and I agreed we would name him Jupiter. Let me set the record straight, I agreed we would name him Jupiter, my first wife was passed out after being in labor for three days straight and receiving no less than 17 epidurals. Her parents had flown in for the birth and when the beautiful and perfect Jupiter was wheeled into the viewing room I walked out and greeted my mother in law and she asked me excitedly if we had selected a name for her new grandson and I told her we had agreed on Jupiter, but I think she caught the unease in my voice because she pounced.
“Oh don’t be silly, what is his name?”
I paused. I thought his name really would be Jupiter, but we had yet to officially put his name on anything and right there in that moment she had used some super power that only a mother in law possesses and the name would never again be Jupiter.
She began, “imagine his childhood, children would rhyme stupider with Jupiter and he would return home from school crying.”
Yes, I thought, you have already won the argument.
“I think we are going to go with Baby Jesus.” I told her, with a newfound strength of conviction. I was not looking for a fight, I just had this image in my head that at some point I would be flustered by some dumb thing my son would be doing in the back seat of a car at some point 10 years in the future and I would turn to him and in a tone of total contempt, I would just slowly say, “J-e-s-u-s, what is wrong with you?”
“Are you just going to play games? What is his name?”
Again with the Mother in law mind game jujitsu. Her own daughter passed out in the maternity ward and I am pressing for a proper name with a woman who seemingly had my tiny little brain wrapped around her wrinkled, arthritic finger. I looked over at her husband, who looked at me and shrugged, he knew what it must be like to have this woman in complete control.
“I think we will stick with a traditional name, Mason Pomagranite.”
I walked back to the maternity ward before she could change my mind. My wife was coming out of her birthing coma and a nurse had handed her Jupiter, Jesus or Mason. We ended up going with a completely different name, one her mother approved of and one I kind of ended up liking, but the lesson I took away from the entire negotiation was how important the choice of a name really is.
The joy of having numerous children is the ability to test names and personalities associated with certain names. My daughter Edsel is boring and not a lot of fun. My son Bozo is hysterical. Names are important.
Something we never saw coming was the profitability of naming rights.
That part is true. If you want to make some quick cash and you are going to have 17 children, feel free to sell off some of the naming rights to some of your offspring. When baby Nike was born people were appalled, but I had 20 grand in my pocket. When slow and flabby Microsoft started to walk, People Magazine had him on the cover and I had stock options to cash in. Of course, there is always a downside. First rule of selling naming rights? Always get paid up front. I learned this the hard way with sweet little baby Enron.
My fifth and sixth sons are both named Jupiter, and to be honest one is actually stupider than the other, which means that Mother in Law number one was actually right. Jupiter is stupider.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Parenting advice - picking favorites
My daughter Becky number seven is my favorite of all my children. I know, you are never supposed to admit that any single child is your favorite and me, a man who has upwards of 17 children by god knows how many different mothers, it becomes insane to not have at least one or two favorites along the way.
I actually get asked all the time, how can I be a great father like you? When I am asked that, my first response is always and I mean ALWAYS, are you being sarcastic? Then, when they claim they are being genuine, I still treat it as though they are being sarcastic, because while I am a better father than some fathers, I am a much worse father than most.
That said, Becky#7 has and will always be my favorite because she seemed to inherently understand that I had a deeper level of parenting going on than just getting dishes done, getting the fields plowed, the sheep sheered, the jet washed, waxed and cleaned, the tractor polished, the snow removed, the chickens plucked and the milking of our dairy cow Miss Daisy taken care of every morning before six. No, those chores were the easy part, as was the expectation of a grade of A in every class except physical education, because lord knows, there has never been a member of our genetic grouping that could even run, much less run fast.
Becky#7 realized that my almost constant humiliation was part of what would make her a huge success. I would wake her at 5AM with the recording of me saying such inspiring things as “hey stupid, you think Miss Daisy is going to milk herself?” or on somedays, my recorded voice would boom over the house loudspeaker system, “attention losers, yes, all of you, get out of bed, it’s 4:30 on a Saturday, you have slept enough, time to clean the toilets and deal with Miss Daisy, you know you fat headed morons, she is not going to milk herself.”
When I had the first few children, any number of my first wives would buy these books, you know the titles- Raising Einstein, Bringing Healthy Kids into a Loving World, You Too Can Raise an Undamaged Young Person, oh there were hundreds of books and all of them were written by an ever growing group of bozos and idiots. I would read the first few chapters, skip the rest and tell which ever wife had purchased it that it was a wonderful read and I was really going to work on – whatever.
Everyone one of these parenting books all fell into the same category, if you want to raise a happy human, be nice. Yeah, I got that part, but you know what? I wanted an adult who would not put up with too much shit, and there was not a book titled – “so you don’t need a trophy when you come in third place?” In fact, everything I learned about successful parenting came from the books written by capitalisms titans. Lee Iococa led Chrysler out of its first bankruptcy and into a resurgence that was unexpected and incredibly profitable. In his autobiography, he said his father used to wake him by urinating on his face. Until he was 27 his father referred to him only as Piss Face. Roland Fietman created Amazon.com, but not until moving out of his parents house, a house where he was often ridiculed, called a loser for anything and everything he attempted and told every single night of his life, “good night, loser, if you die in your sleep, we will just bag you up and throw you in the garbage with the other useless trash. We hate you.”
As if to prove his parents wrong, Roland has created three great businesses, beyond Amazon, he also started Freds Homestyle Bagels and Yummy Bagel Sauce and invested heavily in Morty’s Fake Noses, which has unfortunately not always sold well, but has made him more money that most people would imagine. Success has been Rolands way of showing his parents that escaping from all that ridicule and humiliation was a good thing.
What I took away from these and almost every other autobiography written by a business titan is this; kids raised by loud, drunken and abusive parents strive to prove their loud drunken abusive parents wrong. Kids raised by free wheeling hippies end up all in touch with their feelings and everything, but in the end, they all end up with the ability to grow high grade marijuana, sing folk songs that make hardly any sense and get a night school law degree and sell out in their late 30’s.
Not my kids. That was why I installed the loud speaker system. They never got new clothes, when one of my daughters wanted a new dress one time for something called a prom, I said “pretty girls get new dresses, when you get pretty, you come back and we can talk.” Yeah, I know, it goes against every word in every book I have ever read in any parenting book any of my wives ever purchased for me or my 17 children. I say, so what? Creating the next generation of business mavericks is much more important that a happy childhood. You don’t believe me, as Sal Blankman, CEO of Goldfarb Investments, but until age 17, known around his house as “fat ass”.
Blankman wrote a long winded article for Forbes last year, “Growing up Blankman” in which he moaned about the injustice of growing up not only Kosher, but Christian, Muslim and illiterate by choice. His parents were non-conformists who thought that raising children was better left to chance. As a rebellious teen Blankman found a way to get accepted to Harvard, earning 3 degrees and a Fullbright. His parents disowned him. They are my kind of parents. Stick to your guns elder Blankmans.
It was actually Becky#7 who finally figured out a way to get Miss Daisy to milk herself and it is that kind of ingenuity that comes from hardship and years of waking at 4 in the morning. Sure, some of my children are behind bars, a couple of them are still jailed in Baghdad in Abu Gharib, and at least one is on the lam in Mexico, married to a ruthless drug cartel boss known as Burrito Bill, but my attitude is, I did the best I could.
In the end, as parents, that really is what we strive to do. Say what you will about loud speakers and constant haranguing, insults, demeaning and loud obnoxious asides, in the end, Becky#7 found a way to teach a dairy cow how to milk herself and that alone is something of a miracle.
I actually get asked all the time, how can I be a great father like you? When I am asked that, my first response is always and I mean ALWAYS, are you being sarcastic? Then, when they claim they are being genuine, I still treat it as though they are being sarcastic, because while I am a better father than some fathers, I am a much worse father than most.
That said, Becky#7 has and will always be my favorite because she seemed to inherently understand that I had a deeper level of parenting going on than just getting dishes done, getting the fields plowed, the sheep sheered, the jet washed, waxed and cleaned, the tractor polished, the snow removed, the chickens plucked and the milking of our dairy cow Miss Daisy taken care of every morning before six. No, those chores were the easy part, as was the expectation of a grade of A in every class except physical education, because lord knows, there has never been a member of our genetic grouping that could even run, much less run fast.
Becky#7 realized that my almost constant humiliation was part of what would make her a huge success. I would wake her at 5AM with the recording of me saying such inspiring things as “hey stupid, you think Miss Daisy is going to milk herself?” or on somedays, my recorded voice would boom over the house loudspeaker system, “attention losers, yes, all of you, get out of bed, it’s 4:30 on a Saturday, you have slept enough, time to clean the toilets and deal with Miss Daisy, you know you fat headed morons, she is not going to milk herself.”
When I had the first few children, any number of my first wives would buy these books, you know the titles- Raising Einstein, Bringing Healthy Kids into a Loving World, You Too Can Raise an Undamaged Young Person, oh there were hundreds of books and all of them were written by an ever growing group of bozos and idiots. I would read the first few chapters, skip the rest and tell which ever wife had purchased it that it was a wonderful read and I was really going to work on – whatever.
Everyone one of these parenting books all fell into the same category, if you want to raise a happy human, be nice. Yeah, I got that part, but you know what? I wanted an adult who would not put up with too much shit, and there was not a book titled – “so you don’t need a trophy when you come in third place?” In fact, everything I learned about successful parenting came from the books written by capitalisms titans. Lee Iococa led Chrysler out of its first bankruptcy and into a resurgence that was unexpected and incredibly profitable. In his autobiography, he said his father used to wake him by urinating on his face. Until he was 27 his father referred to him only as Piss Face. Roland Fietman created Amazon.com, but not until moving out of his parents house, a house where he was often ridiculed, called a loser for anything and everything he attempted and told every single night of his life, “good night, loser, if you die in your sleep, we will just bag you up and throw you in the garbage with the other useless trash. We hate you.”
As if to prove his parents wrong, Roland has created three great businesses, beyond Amazon, he also started Freds Homestyle Bagels and Yummy Bagel Sauce and invested heavily in Morty’s Fake Noses, which has unfortunately not always sold well, but has made him more money that most people would imagine. Success has been Rolands way of showing his parents that escaping from all that ridicule and humiliation was a good thing.
What I took away from these and almost every other autobiography written by a business titan is this; kids raised by loud, drunken and abusive parents strive to prove their loud drunken abusive parents wrong. Kids raised by free wheeling hippies end up all in touch with their feelings and everything, but in the end, they all end up with the ability to grow high grade marijuana, sing folk songs that make hardly any sense and get a night school law degree and sell out in their late 30’s.
Not my kids. That was why I installed the loud speaker system. They never got new clothes, when one of my daughters wanted a new dress one time for something called a prom, I said “pretty girls get new dresses, when you get pretty, you come back and we can talk.” Yeah, I know, it goes against every word in every book I have ever read in any parenting book any of my wives ever purchased for me or my 17 children. I say, so what? Creating the next generation of business mavericks is much more important that a happy childhood. You don’t believe me, as Sal Blankman, CEO of Goldfarb Investments, but until age 17, known around his house as “fat ass”.
Blankman wrote a long winded article for Forbes last year, “Growing up Blankman” in which he moaned about the injustice of growing up not only Kosher, but Christian, Muslim and illiterate by choice. His parents were non-conformists who thought that raising children was better left to chance. As a rebellious teen Blankman found a way to get accepted to Harvard, earning 3 degrees and a Fullbright. His parents disowned him. They are my kind of parents. Stick to your guns elder Blankmans.
It was actually Becky#7 who finally figured out a way to get Miss Daisy to milk herself and it is that kind of ingenuity that comes from hardship and years of waking at 4 in the morning. Sure, some of my children are behind bars, a couple of them are still jailed in Baghdad in Abu Gharib, and at least one is on the lam in Mexico, married to a ruthless drug cartel boss known as Burrito Bill, but my attitude is, I did the best I could.
In the end, as parents, that really is what we strive to do. Say what you will about loud speakers and constant haranguing, insults, demeaning and loud obnoxious asides, in the end, Becky#7 found a way to teach a dairy cow how to milk herself and that alone is something of a miracle.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Republican candidates super bowl picks
Life on the road with republican candidates running for president can become sort of a fraternity, if you wanted to join an all white, wealthy, boring, satanic worshiping, wife swapping fraternity. Actually now that I think about it, life on the road traveing with the republican candidates has been kind of fun.
I thought it would be interesting and easy to ask the candidates about their plans for the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in America, which makes it the seventh biggest sporting event in the world, right behind several soccer matches, a swim meet in Germany, a surfing competition in Australia and Bolshoi summer ballet tryouts. That is all true.
I dialed Ron Paul because he is always the easiest Republican candidate to find. The tiny congressman was napping under a tree in Sprinkly Goose Texas, his hometown. He answered on the 14th ring. He had handed me his cell number when we were hanging out in Iowa a few months ago. Suffice to say we did not part as friends and he has held a grudge against me when I publicized the true gossip that the elderly tiny candidate enjoys a concoction of meth, cough syrup and Viagra.
“This is Ron Paul.”
The rest of this can be found when it is published in "Dancing with Mannequins and Idiots" in June, 2012.
I thought it would be interesting and easy to ask the candidates about their plans for the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is the biggest sporting event in America, which makes it the seventh biggest sporting event in the world, right behind several soccer matches, a swim meet in Germany, a surfing competition in Australia and Bolshoi summer ballet tryouts. That is all true.
I dialed Ron Paul because he is always the easiest Republican candidate to find. The tiny congressman was napping under a tree in Sprinkly Goose Texas, his hometown. He answered on the 14th ring. He had handed me his cell number when we were hanging out in Iowa a few months ago. Suffice to say we did not part as friends and he has held a grudge against me when I publicized the true gossip that the elderly tiny candidate enjoys a concoction of meth, cough syrup and Viagra.
“This is Ron Paul.”
The rest of this can be found when it is published in "Dancing with Mannequins and Idiots" in June, 2012.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Competing with Stalin
It bothers me to admit it, but I am a competitive jerk. I am not proud of it. It actually brings me great shame. I have a lifetime of bad examples I could share.
When I was a young man I would come home from school and go to my neighbors house almost every day and challenge my friend Stalin to a game of basketball. Stalin was the only child of ironic hippies, which are officially the very worst kind of hippies, if you ask me. Mr and Mrs Lennon only had the one child and for whatever stupid reasoning they used when he was born, Stalin was the name they selected, that’s right, Stalin Lennon.
He was roughly my age, my height and my skill level. We were both about equal players, which meant that as far as winning any single game would go, cheating would become a key element, and injuries. As we grew he became a better natural athlete than I, but I became a more brutal player, so that kind of balanced out.
Stalin and I would play through most injuries. When I had a cast on my foot from a broken bone, we played Horse for 2 months, loser had to make the other a peanut butter and banana sandwich. The sandwich quickly became the punishment for losing and the winners trophy. For at least 3 years after that I grew fat on Stalins inability to hit the three point clutch shot.
It became like a ritual. I would get home, walk over the Stalins house, sweep off the basketball court, he would come out huffing and puffing with threats of court domination and we would play some calm warm up games and then we were on. Usually it was a game of 21, winner had to beat the other by 4 points and each basket only counted as one point. The games could go into the 60’s because you had to win by four baskets and we played each other as if our lives depended upon it. We called the obvious fouls, but mostly we played tough, aggressive, hurtful basketball.
College came and Stalin went, I stuck around our home town for another year, hanging out with this girl I knew. I was gone the next year, but we would see each other some summers for a while, and when we did one of us would challenge the other to a game, sometimes for money, sometimes just to see who could beat the other. We still played as if the game was the most important in the world, and at the time, I guess it was.
Stalin got married at some point, I moved to New York, he moved to Denver, I moved to Alaska, he changed jobs and was then in Chicago, I ended up in Seattle, his wife left him for a woman and he left Chicago for Birmingham and every few years, miracles would happen and we would be in a gym somewhere, older, slower, fatter, in ill-fitting shorts and new shoes and flabby midsections and a new ball and we would play. Now when I would elbow him he would call the foul.
A few years ago I was living on Lookout Mountain in Los Angeles and there was an elementary school about a half mile down the hill from me. Stalin showed up with a broken leg and a former model named Patrice. His claim was that he was injured, but if I was desperate for a game, she could play me. She was a little taller than I was, but then, most everyone is. She also weighed about 90 pounds. I bet Stalin dinner at winners choice that I would mop the court with the bimbo. Bet on.
We drove down to the school, Stalin too hobbled to walk. Short story, Patrice was all false advertising. I was lucky to have made a basket. I think the final score was 21-3. To make matters worse, she trash talked me the entire game and to make matters even more worse, she was one of those light weight women who could eat like a horse. I think dinner cost me 750 dollars.
I picked Stalin up at the airport yesterday. I told him on the phone, if he had a limp, a cast or any other obvious defects we would just leave him there. He bounded out of the airport and jumped in the car. We drove to my house and the entire trip was the most disgusting trash talking one could imagine. It had been years since either of us had played a game of basketball, but the way we were bad mouthing one another, you would have thought we not only played daily, but hated one another.
“You wear a dress to play tomorrow?”
“Nah, you always looked best in a skirt. Hey, you gain weight?”
“Yeah, bout half as much as you.”
“Seriously, since you started going to AA you look a lot healthier.”
“I was gonna say, you can hardly see the Botox scares anymore.”
“As fat as you are, you should stop taking Viagra.”
“Your boyfriend would cry.”
“Already does.”
“Speaking of ugly mistakes, you still married?”
“Did the appeal go thru on the child sex abuse charges?”
“Understand you’re working on the Gingrich campaign.”
On it went, until we reached my house, had dinner and I plotted for a game that would be the end all of basketball revenge games.
There is a small gym near our house and the next morning Stalin and I were there, warming up at opposite ends of the court. His shots were clanging off the metal rim, mine swishing right thru the net. I walked down to his end, said we should get underway and he smiled.
He pulled off his sweat top, revealing an official Los Angeles Lakers jersey and a shaved chest. That’s right, a completely shaved chest. Not sure what neighborhood you grew up in, but in my little Jewish neighborhood in Southern California, when boys got chest hair, and the Jewish boys in my neighborhood got lots and lots of chest hair, they were proud of it, shirtless proud, bragging proud, incredibly stupid proud. The idea of removing chest hair for any reason was obscene.
He caught my look. “What’re you lookin’ at?”
“What the hell happened to you? Got a date with Lance Bass all of a sudden?”
“You got a problem if I did?”
“Don’t think he’d be worth shaving your chest is all I’m saying.”
“Have to have a procedure on Friday. Thought I’d help out with some manscaping.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah, little work on my ticker.”
“You don’t tell me this?”
“Need to know basis.”
“Game of basketball gonna kill you?”
“If it does…”
“Not a bad way to go.”
We played. I beat him, 26 - 22. I thought about letting him win. Somewhere around the point where he was ahead 2 points to my 1, and then I forgot about that thought and rampaged him. It’s a game and I am a competitive dick. Everyone knows it. I’m not proud of it.
We walked off the court. I told him I was going to let him win and he smiled, “no you weren’t.”
“I know, right?”
“Play to win.”
When we were kids we had this saying, play to win, which was our constant refrain during any game we played, chest, a running match and every basketball game we ever played, even all those horse games when I had a cast on my broken foot. If it was worth playing, we should play to win. I admire Stalin for a lot of things, not the least of which is that he, like I, takes competition very seriously, and he and I both play to win and right after we drop the competitive jerk stuff and go out for a beer, a pizza, a drink or a date with Lance Bass. After all, it’s fine to be competitive and all, but in the end, it’s just a game.
When I was a young man I would come home from school and go to my neighbors house almost every day and challenge my friend Stalin to a game of basketball. Stalin was the only child of ironic hippies, which are officially the very worst kind of hippies, if you ask me. Mr and Mrs Lennon only had the one child and for whatever stupid reasoning they used when he was born, Stalin was the name they selected, that’s right, Stalin Lennon.
He was roughly my age, my height and my skill level. We were both about equal players, which meant that as far as winning any single game would go, cheating would become a key element, and injuries. As we grew he became a better natural athlete than I, but I became a more brutal player, so that kind of balanced out.
Stalin and I would play through most injuries. When I had a cast on my foot from a broken bone, we played Horse for 2 months, loser had to make the other a peanut butter and banana sandwich. The sandwich quickly became the punishment for losing and the winners trophy. For at least 3 years after that I grew fat on Stalins inability to hit the three point clutch shot.
It became like a ritual. I would get home, walk over the Stalins house, sweep off the basketball court, he would come out huffing and puffing with threats of court domination and we would play some calm warm up games and then we were on. Usually it was a game of 21, winner had to beat the other by 4 points and each basket only counted as one point. The games could go into the 60’s because you had to win by four baskets and we played each other as if our lives depended upon it. We called the obvious fouls, but mostly we played tough, aggressive, hurtful basketball.
College came and Stalin went, I stuck around our home town for another year, hanging out with this girl I knew. I was gone the next year, but we would see each other some summers for a while, and when we did one of us would challenge the other to a game, sometimes for money, sometimes just to see who could beat the other. We still played as if the game was the most important in the world, and at the time, I guess it was.
Stalin got married at some point, I moved to New York, he moved to Denver, I moved to Alaska, he changed jobs and was then in Chicago, I ended up in Seattle, his wife left him for a woman and he left Chicago for Birmingham and every few years, miracles would happen and we would be in a gym somewhere, older, slower, fatter, in ill-fitting shorts and new shoes and flabby midsections and a new ball and we would play. Now when I would elbow him he would call the foul.
A few years ago I was living on Lookout Mountain in Los Angeles and there was an elementary school about a half mile down the hill from me. Stalin showed up with a broken leg and a former model named Patrice. His claim was that he was injured, but if I was desperate for a game, she could play me. She was a little taller than I was, but then, most everyone is. She also weighed about 90 pounds. I bet Stalin dinner at winners choice that I would mop the court with the bimbo. Bet on.
We drove down to the school, Stalin too hobbled to walk. Short story, Patrice was all false advertising. I was lucky to have made a basket. I think the final score was 21-3. To make matters worse, she trash talked me the entire game and to make matters even more worse, she was one of those light weight women who could eat like a horse. I think dinner cost me 750 dollars.
I picked Stalin up at the airport yesterday. I told him on the phone, if he had a limp, a cast or any other obvious defects we would just leave him there. He bounded out of the airport and jumped in the car. We drove to my house and the entire trip was the most disgusting trash talking one could imagine. It had been years since either of us had played a game of basketball, but the way we were bad mouthing one another, you would have thought we not only played daily, but hated one another.
“You wear a dress to play tomorrow?”
“Nah, you always looked best in a skirt. Hey, you gain weight?”
“Yeah, bout half as much as you.”
“Seriously, since you started going to AA you look a lot healthier.”
“I was gonna say, you can hardly see the Botox scares anymore.”
“As fat as you are, you should stop taking Viagra.”
“Your boyfriend would cry.”
“Already does.”
“Speaking of ugly mistakes, you still married?”
“Did the appeal go thru on the child sex abuse charges?”
“Understand you’re working on the Gingrich campaign.”
On it went, until we reached my house, had dinner and I plotted for a game that would be the end all of basketball revenge games.
There is a small gym near our house and the next morning Stalin and I were there, warming up at opposite ends of the court. His shots were clanging off the metal rim, mine swishing right thru the net. I walked down to his end, said we should get underway and he smiled.
He pulled off his sweat top, revealing an official Los Angeles Lakers jersey and a shaved chest. That’s right, a completely shaved chest. Not sure what neighborhood you grew up in, but in my little Jewish neighborhood in Southern California, when boys got chest hair, and the Jewish boys in my neighborhood got lots and lots of chest hair, they were proud of it, shirtless proud, bragging proud, incredibly stupid proud. The idea of removing chest hair for any reason was obscene.
He caught my look. “What’re you lookin’ at?”
“What the hell happened to you? Got a date with Lance Bass all of a sudden?”
“You got a problem if I did?”
“Don’t think he’d be worth shaving your chest is all I’m saying.”
“Have to have a procedure on Friday. Thought I’d help out with some manscaping.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah, little work on my ticker.”
“You don’t tell me this?”
“Need to know basis.”
“Game of basketball gonna kill you?”
“If it does…”
“Not a bad way to go.”
We played. I beat him, 26 - 22. I thought about letting him win. Somewhere around the point where he was ahead 2 points to my 1, and then I forgot about that thought and rampaged him. It’s a game and I am a competitive dick. Everyone knows it. I’m not proud of it.
We walked off the court. I told him I was going to let him win and he smiled, “no you weren’t.”
“I know, right?”
“Play to win.”
When we were kids we had this saying, play to win, which was our constant refrain during any game we played, chest, a running match and every basketball game we ever played, even all those horse games when I had a cast on my broken foot. If it was worth playing, we should play to win. I admire Stalin for a lot of things, not the least of which is that he, like I, takes competition very seriously, and he and I both play to win and right after we drop the competitive jerk stuff and go out for a beer, a pizza, a drink or a date with Lance Bass. After all, it’s fine to be competitive and all, but in the end, it’s just a game.
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