The Twelve Daze of Christmas

Now someone please tell me I am not the only human defect who confused the "Twelve Days of Christmas" as ENDING on Christmas. As it turns outs, only the partridge gets given on December 25th and the gift giving continues right on through to January 5th of the following year. Not only is this expensive, but the Christmas tree needles have already cannonballed their way to the carpet and the New Years' resolutions have gone up in smoke by that time. So, I am here to do what, oh, say, millions of other people before me have done, which is to dissect this song and figure out what all the excitement is about.

On the First Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: A partridge in a pear tree.

There are a few things wrong here. A wobbly, bulbous bird in a tree that couldn't survive the harsh winter to begin with is a gift? From my TRUE love? My TRUE love would provide me with cooked partridge with a nice pear glaze, substitute prime rib for partridge, and give me a little rub and tug under the covers. THAT is TRUE love. Damn bird. Another mouth to feed.

On the Second Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Two Turtle Doves

What on God's green earth is a turtle dove? Talk about your paradoxes. It's on par with a breakdancing sea sponge. Don't I already have a partridge? Now I have three birds all fighting for territory and waiting to poop in my morning cereal? Will there be mating involved? Because if there is, I'll have two for sale - cheap, the following day.

On the Third Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Three French Hens.

What is it with these damned birds? Was this song written by genetically-engineered super cows trying to get us to not eat beef? How will I know they were French? Would they have accents? Berets? Would a bill have been passed to call them "Freedom" Hens? Wait, it gets worse...

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Four Calling Birds.

Well, let's just open a bird sanctuary, why don't we. Should be called the 12 Days of Audubon Song. Do they call on little cell phones? Are they on a good calling plan? Should I wait until off-peak hours to answer them? Should I put them in a steel cage match with the partridge, doves and hens and let them have some sort of Battle Royale for the right to be my future dinner?

On the Fifth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Five Golden Rings

I don't know bout you, but jewelry was never my strong suit, and unless you are a pimp, multiple Super Bowl winner, or mafioso, two rings should be your maximum - and one of those had better be a wedding ring. As for women? This is their favorite part of the song, that's why there's such the pause and emphasis on FIVE GOL-DEN RINNNNNNNGS!. Great. She gets gold and I get poultry.

On the Sixth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Six Geese a-Laying

At least someone is getting some action, but all that means is more freaking birds. At least I can get good market value for them. Omelets on the house.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Seven Swans a-Swimming

Good. Keep on swimming. Don't worry about the private hell my life has become with all these birds (and rings) multiplying with each day.

On the Eighth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Eight Maids a-milking.

For some reason, I just get this idea that Brigham Young himself wrote this part. If they're milking, they've just given birth, and with squawking birds and piles of golden rings towering over my head, eight is too many for me. If I was a caliph, maybe, but, I'm just a working-class idiot, and my seed bill has just taken a severe hit.

On the Ninth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Nine Ladies Dancing

Finally! A day for me! No birds, eggs, rings, milking ladies, just some good old-fashioned women dancing round that ol' brass pole. Is this the shortest day or does it just seem that way? Hell, I'll bring some of those Golden Rings to get me into the Champagne Room. Hey, plenty of Kev to go 'round!

On the Tenth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Ten Lords a-Leapin'

Um........um....... Between you and me? Leaping Lords, particularly of the British import, brings visions of limp-wristed theater actors and artists who have been knighted singing, "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way..." with all kinds of pirouetting and frolicking.

On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Eleven Pipers Piping

Depends what they are smoking in those pipes. Then again, they could be pan-flutes and then I'd have to kill my entire menagerie in a homicidal rage while Zamfir covers Kenny G's "Songbird".

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Twelve Drummers Drumming.

Let me tell you something, after the birds, eggs, rings, new mothers, strippers, prancers, and assorted pipes, why not form my own drum circle? I can cover myself in bear grease, adopt the manners of a wild animal, howl at the moon and kill what I eat.

Think I'll start with the partridge.


Merry Christmas, everyone.

Book 'em!

After being wonderfully pestered by friends and foes alike, I have decided to join the world of publishing. So what if it's a self-published doo-dad, it's still a book and it's mine - ALL MINE! In this book, I'll scale Everest, end communism, and kill off Harry Potter, if I want to.

So, there I was, staring at letters on a page and they stared back. They had that lean, hungry look, like teenagers after a few hours in the basement. I figured if Ernest Hemingway, Charles Manson, and Socks the Cat could write a book, why not me? So, I sat down, typed a few lines, basically re-wrote comedy as we know it, became fabulous, and still had a losing football team.

I finally put together 30 or so stories for your reading pleasure. The first round of books are going to family and best friends. The second round will go to anyone who would like one - which could be done within a month if I get enough orders. It costs me $15.00 per book, so, send something if you can, but if not, just consider it a gift from me. And do me a favor - share it with others. They, too, may finally enjoy humor the way it was meant to be - dressed up with a big gut, not dumbed down in a cummerbund.

Please contact me at rhinokev19702@yahoo.com for all book requests and questions!

Movin' Out

I just moved into a new place a few days ago. The place where I was living was about as cozy as living in a broom closet with an oily engine manifold that shoots waves of maggots at you every five seconds. So, naturally, any change from that would be an improvement, right? Right?

Well, maybe not so much, but I have myself to blame. You see, I have accumulated an epic amount of junk over the years - none of which I am proud - to the point where there is no room for me. There's my junk and then there's me, and guess who is winning the war? So, taking a page out of Alexander's book, with one clean stroke (CLEAN stroke), I eliminated whole chunks of junk. I took it like a man: I cried, peed my pants, threw a tantrum, drank heavily, and set myself on fire. You see, comportment is important to me.

Truth be told, most of the things should have been discarded long ago - things like cassette music tapes, VHS movies, and my paltry collection of sports awards. I'm a pack rat, so sue me. Sure, you say, a pretty simple exercise to John Q. Normal. Well, normal ain't me, because I will be getting rid of over 1,500 video and cassette tapes. The only way I can legitimize trashing all of it is that I had this crap in storage for about a year without ever feeling the need to access it, so into the buzz saw it goes.

I have a bad back, so I hired a team of movers. You might have heard of some strange names in the moving business. Me? I had my choice of "Hungry Student Athletes" (none of which were athletes - good guys, though, "Starving Student Athletes," and "Near Death Student Athletes" moving companies. I figured the "Near-Death" folks wouldn't do so well with the heavy lifting and my corpse-burying skills are, admittedly, on the wane, so I chose the first company. Quality people, all of them, but what I really needed was an interior decorator. I ended up doing more heavy lifting, shifting, and moving than I have ever done in my life. I'm pathetic. If I just didn't gather so much "stuff" (thank you, George Carlin), I wouldn't need so much room - and this hombre needs a LOT of room.

I did not need movers as much as I needed a SWAT team of interior decorators. I lifted, shifted, and moved more garbage than I should have been legally allowed. I can tell you this: once I become a homeowner again (I'm sharing a house right now), that's it, game-over, man. I will love there and die there because I have maybe one more good move left in me - that's it! And when I do slither off this morbid coil, don't hang around too long for the reading of the will and the distribution of possessions because there won't be any. I'll live like a hermit, snaring silverfish off the walls and drinking dew from the morning grass - and I CERTAINLY will not need to throw away 1,500 of anything to clear my house, because I'll be having a little ceremonial fire to dance naked around to celebrate the fact that I finally stopped being belonging to the things that belong to me

Was it Something I Said?

"Was it Something I Said?" Don't take that as a question, but rather as a reference. You see, after surreptitiously sneaking my "KISS - ALIVE II" album into the house as my first album purchase, Richard Pryor's "Was it Something I Said?" was the second album, and included a multitude of subterfuges and counter-intelligence to get it in the door. You see, I have been a fan of comedy ever since I can remember. I was too young for Lenny Bruce, but caught the wave of George Carlin, Cheech & Chong, and Monty Python. Comedy, for me, was about fart jokes and belching "Hail to the Chief." My older brother, Dave, and I, weaned ourselves on our parents' collection of albums from the 1960s - of which was Bill Cosby's classic, "I Started Out as a Child..." Funny was funny, whether it was from Redd Foxx, Freddie Prinz or Carol Burnett.

All of which brings me to Richard Pryor. Richard was the first person to really use language that awed us, offended us, and truly pissed us off. Like Carlin, he dared to take our thoughts and put them in front of our faces for us to confront. You weren't "black," - you were a "nigger." You weren't "white," - you were a "honky." Because that's how we saw each other, and, in fact,that is how many of us saw ourselves when we were looking upon ourselves honestly. Richard Pryor didn't just walk through the last door of comedy. He detonated it, and the shards are still flying around today, from Chris Rock to Joe Rogan to Ralphie May.

The cover of "Was it Something I Said?" showed Pryor being burned at the stake by a group of hooded Klansmen. Richard was never one to tiptoe through the tulips when he could stomp through them with cleats. It was shocking, the skits were racially charged, it was an affront to every decent sense you could muster up.

It was also damned funny.

But, Richard Pryor did more for me than just make me laugh. His divisiveness (and yes, he could be divisive), showed me that blacks and whites were indeed not cut from the same cloth, that there were differences beyond skin color. Back then, a black kid was no different to me than a red-head or a fat kid or a tall kid. He was just a kid. I never knew people divided themselves against each other in this fashion before. I had a friend,named Steve Jennings, who was about 6'8" when he was 12, and was (and probably still is) black. His family, along with Tony, Laurie, and Ann, were some of my best friends. Steve was probably my first friend. Anyway, we were watching our friend, Ray, being chased by a black kid named Omari. Ray was/is white. Steve and I were laughing and shouting insults to them both. Then I said something I'll never forget, to Omari:

"Hey, Ovaltine! That's enough!"

The chasing eventually ended, everyone laughed, but Steve turned slowly to me and said "I heard what you said. You called him Ovaltine." I didn't know what to say. To me, it was as innocent as saying, "Hey stinky!" or "Hey jerkface!" - or more to the point, "Hey fatty!" or "Hey shrimp!" But, it didn't matter. The words were out there and I couldn't take them back. Worse yet, Steve, who had to grow up with the sort of stigma I couldn't even imagine, seeing as they were the only black family in the neighborhood when they moved in the same time we did, probably now saw me as less of an innocent friend and more of a typical white person. I meant no harm by it,but it stuck with me just the same. Then,I started thinking of all the terrible things I had said all in the name of friendship without knowing how much damage I was doing:

"You're not really black. You act more like a white person."

"There are niggers and there are blacks. You're not a nigger, just black."

"Why don't you listen to any music by white bands?"

Do I forgive myself? Well, yes and no. Yes, because I had not been poisoned by honestly knowing how much those words can hurt someone else. On the other hand, I do not forgive myself, because no matter where those words came from, they still hurt a friend - a good friend. A friend I really miss a lot sometimes.

Richard Pryor passed away this weekend, and his death brought with it a terrible loss for me personally. Without Richard Pryor to show us, front and center, without euphemisms and without white-gloving it, to force us to face the ugly truth of racism - even if he used comedy to deliver it to our doorsteps, this planet has lost a true genius. Was he a good man? Not all the time? Did he make mistakes? Often. Was he guilty of racism himself? That's for others to decide. Right now, I hope he is at God's side, strolling that funky stroll of his, asking God:

Richard: "Was it something I did that got me here?"

God: "No, my son"

Richard: "Was it what I believed that got me here?"

God: "I am afraid not."

Richard: "Was it Something I Said?"

God: "You're damn right it was."

Winter Blunderland

We're now a few footsteps into the month of December and I have to admit how much I hate the cold. It's not Canadian cold nor is it the cold of the morning-after-the-night-before stare of your significant other when you pulled the old "ding-dong" bit with your mother-in-law's breast after doing shots with your wife's cousin. No, it's just really the first "unpleasant" cold of the year. I walked outside to commune with nature on my way to get a coffee and saw it there, plain as a monkey head in the collection plate - snow. It wasn't much snow, but, it was if Mother Nature was spray painting a warning telling me, "Hey, Sparky, I'm still in charge around here."

It's not that I hate snow. Just keep it off my roads and out of the hands of adolescents when I'm driving down the street. There was a time when snow was the answer to all of my prayers. Now, you folks who have lived your entire lives in warm weather, you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Please skip to the next story, have a laugh, and leave a complementary compliment. Snow was much more than frozen ice crystals. It meant Santa was coming, Christmas specials and egg nog. Remember hearing about the "Storm of the Century" that was predicted to come five to six times per Winter? Remember gathering around the static-y radio or the fuzzy television screen just dying on every word of the news anchor until the weather-person showed you the local map that had "48+" covering your area. All you cared about was waking up the next morning and listening for the school closings. No matter what school you went to, it was always the last school announced, or, you tuned in just after they announced your school and had to wait until the next. All the surrounding schools were off and your school was going to open "one hour late". Life was not fair! Dad had off, so he was in his robe reading the sports page and asking, "So, want to go sledding today? Oh, that's right, YOU have to go to SCHOOL today!" and laugh that evil Dad-laugh before flipping to the comics to see what Marmaduke was up that today.

There was always a kind of giddy edge to going out to play in the first real snow. Mom would wrap you up in long underwear, three pairs of socks, t-shirt, regular shirt, sweater, pants, snow pants, gloves, ski mask, hat, shoes and boots. Then, after she would buckle than last piece of sharp metal buckle, you told her you had to go to the bathroom.

Once you made the jail break into the white cold world of the outdoors, a specific truth hit you smack in the face like a neighbor’s snowball - it’s freaking cold out here! If you fell down, you stayed down until the Spring thaw. Nothing could get you back on your feet. You also had to beware what type of show was on the ground. Now, the Native Americans in Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest may have 100 different words for "snow" - we have two: "Packable and unpackable". Packable meant you could make snowballs easily, which meant more chance for trouble and more chance for getting bombarded by your friends. You can also build a snowman more easily in Packable snow. Now, this leads me to a point in my life of which I am not proud, but, my buddy, Ray, and I used to go tearing through the neighborhood at 10 p.m. with aluminum baseball bats and beat the tar out of the well-constructed snowmen in the community of Greentree. It wasn’t our best moment, but, it sure as hell was fun. Anyway, back to the snow. The unpackable snow was worthless. You couldn’t form a proper snowball, it didn’t harden on the streets to play hockey or tag rides on. Tagging rides was when you ran up to a car, grabbed its bumper, and let the car drive you all over town. It was illegal and highly dangerous - which is why it was probably so much fun.

For some reason, there were some mothers in the neighborhood who made their kids wear mittens instead of gloves. I never could figure this out. You couldn’t do anything in mittens and ended up with frostbite because you always took your mittens off for snowball fights, building forts and doing battle with the Dark Lord. And it was impossible to hold a baseball bat.

Nowadays, snow is just a nuisance. We can telecommute to work (some of us), have to shovel the driveway, sidewalk, and God-knows what else, according to whatever civic association to which you belong, and you have to drive in that stuff. And it’s not just you that you have to worry about; it’s that yahoo with the bald tires and rear-wheel drive careening maniacally into your lane that you have to worry about. There’s salt deposit, slush, dirty windows…the list goes on and on.

But still, I get that first shiver of excitement whenever I see the first real snowfall of the year. It takes me back and I want to make some hot chocolate and sit by the static-y radio again.

Don’t you?

A First for Everything

I was reminded today of how great firsts are in life. There's nothing quite like the first time you try something, no matter how mundane or marvelous. It's a first impression, that, more or less, will last with you an entire lifetime. There's the first boyfriend or girlfriend, the first innocent kiss in the garage, the first hand-holding, the first grade, the first time you had your training wheels taken off your bike. Firsts can also be a drag, such as the first time someone knock you in the jaw, the first time you lose a tooth, the first zit, the first time you discover there is no Santa, the first real break up. Of course, then you can look forward to your first car, your first REAL date (accompanied by your first REAL kiss), and some other firsts that I am sure our parents would rather not want to know about us. Getting to first base, the first man and woman, the first state of Delaware (my home state, thank you), the first colored major league baseball player, the first woman in space, this first paragraph - all tremendous firsts in our private and public lives. Everything has a first.

However, I am not here to talk about any of that. I am here to indulge you, and myself, into some firsts that REALLY matter when it comes to the little pleasures in life, because, after all, isn't that what life is all about - the little pleasures? Little pleasures like opening up a carton of Breyer's ice cream, busting out the ice cream scooper with the little flippy thing, starting at one end, and smoothly skimming the surface from one end of the carton to the other. A frozen vanilla fudge curl arcing and folding into itself, slowly and erotically before being plunked down into your bowl. That first taste of ice cream that sets your taste buds ricocheting in all directions deciding, in panic mode, "Just what the hell flavor is this, anyway!?!?" before the red alert dies down and a murmur ripples through your taste buds, "It's ok, folks, it's vanilla fudge". Then, your taste buds do the Snoopy Dance.

Don't even try to deny it. It's with everything. How awesome is it to be the first to break the creamy surface of a freshly-opened jar of peanut butter? That first bowl of cereal on Saturday morning? That first cup of cawfee? That first bite of pizza or the first chomp on a carefully-crafted Dagwood sandwich? For the smokers and drinkers out there, you don't need me to tell you just how toe-curling that first drag from the first cigarette from a fresh pack is or that first whip-back of whiskey or beer (or both) after a long week of reattaching that ass you just worked off.

How many of us love the smell of a new car and driving it for the first time? Ok,hands down. How many of us have had a father or grandfather who would thump you in the head for reading his newspaper before he did. Hmmm, same number of hands. It's not like the news was going to change, but he had to be the FIRST to read it.

The fact is that you can never really go home again, according to some famous white person whom I never took the time nor energy to remember. That first year in the dorms or your first apartment; that first rinky-dink house with ideas of making it look like an adult lived there, the first holiday you hosted, the first time you had the girls over for margaritas and gossip or the guys over for burgers and the football game.- or both over for poker night.

Remember the first time you went to Walt Disney World or other similar vacation destination? Going back may have been fun, but it just wasn't the same anymore. Remember turning 10, then 13, then 16, 18, and 21? Great years since you were first A) in double digits, B) a teenager, C) legal driving age, D) an official adult, and E) legal drinking age. After that, it's 30, 40, 50. and ever-increasing, vanity-thieving landmarks. And, sadly, more and more of us have had the pleasure of walking down the aisle more than once - and although those first marriages that ended in divorce were not necessarily happy circumstances, I'll wager that the marriage day itself was like no other.

I dream of a day where computer chips, manufacturing by ultra-smart monkeys, will be implanted into our brains to make us feel like everything we do and experience feels like the first time we ever had that particular experience. Gone will be the disappointment and the yearning. Gone will be the deja vu. How about that? Every kiss will feel like the first, every ball game you attend will be just like when your uncle or aunt took you, and every time you re-read my essays, you'll be moved to heights of ecstasy.

Yeah, that'll be a first.

Season's Grievings

'Tis the season to be jolly. Actually, not many people would appreciate being called "jolly" since it infers a negative image when said person is naked, but there is no doubting the Holiday season is nigh. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Tet, or any other number of late-year holidays, there is one immutable truth: we cannot wait until it is over.

Oh sure, there's the whole Peace on Earth and Good Will Towards Men thing, but those are arbitrary concepts. What's peace to one person may be subjugation to another. If some ding-dong cuts in front of me at the check-out counter, peace is the last thing on my mind. I'm going to cut his throat with my Border's Rewards card, carry his head to the Lady's Auxiliary who do the volunteer gift-wrapping and settle in at Bugaboo Creek for two-inch-thick slab of prime rib afterwards. And the whole Good Will Towards Men not only completely eliminates women from the sentiment, it also makes it impossible for me to enjoy my steak since my Border's card would be bloodless.

I think the whole concept for celebrating the Holiday season late in the year is to keep us from going insane while making us go crazy. Now follow me here. It is a well-known fact that light, especially sunlight, produces a chemical reaction in our brains that releases endorphins that make us happy. Well, wouldn't you know the Winter Solstice falls within the same week of those holidays? We need light during that time. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day (in terms of sunlight) in the whole year! Don't believe me? Go to Sweden or some other country that rises above the Arctic Circle. Their suicide rate is almost at lemming-level and all the kids are into Death Metal music. They're not just producing world-class hockey players and chewy licorice fish, they're trying desperately to keep their sanity.

Now, for those of us in the Western world, the holidays are a time to set every angle ablaze with red, green, blue, orange, yellow, and white lights. Sure, it's pretty, but there's an evil below the surface. Those lights on the tree aren't for decoration, they're for keeping us wobbly-eyed and sedated. Decorating the house? It's to keep the kids from unsheathing the Ginsu blades from the knife block in the kitchen and doing in Mom and Dad. And who here hasn't had a relative who grabs the family and tosses them into the station wagon or mini-van and goes on a driving tour of the neighborhoods looking at how some people have more illuminated clutter on their lawn than Pee Wee Herman. Every self-loathing father on the block secretly clenches his teeth when he passes the Anderson's house because they ALWAYS have the most lavish and classy light display. Mom doesn't help when she coos, "Oh, honey, look at what the Andersons have done THIS year!" It takes all the discipline of a trappist monk to keep Dad from careening into a snowbank, kicking out the family, and going back to torch the Andersons' house.

To rip off an idea from Northern Exposure, the Holiday season is a festival of lights, which is really just a festival of life itself. It's affirming, comforting and brings us warmth. It's the tree in the morning, all glittering and majestic. You may have seen the tree every day for a week or so before that, but on Christmas Day, it's at it's most vibrant. It's almost as if it knew today was THE day. The Menorah, solemn and celebratory, dignity in the candles, fireworks, and memorial fires of our ancestors and family, both past and present. Light is a celebration. Light both hides and exposes our grieving. Light is all this and more.

Light is Life

I'm not too cynical to enjoy the finer elements of the holiday season, but it is fair to say that if the grand Holiday Season was held in June, during the Summer Solstice, I doubt we'd get all bunched up about it from a secular standpoint, especially since the holiday season has been co-opted from religion by Buck McDollar. But, I'll leave that rant for another time. It's December, I have some shopping to do, and I have my trusty Borders Rewards card ready to go.

Home Cookin'

I was a child of the 1970s. Sure, I was born in the 1960s, but the decade that formed my wonderful self was the decade of polyester, Match Game, and Star Wars. That also meant I was subjected to some of the most interesting meal items of the past 100 years. Some of these items pre-date the seventies and some stretched into the 80s and beyond. Still others died out completely, but, in the ever-incestuous culture we live in, some food ideas have experienced a rebirth in much the same way elephant flares, Marcia Brady hair, and wannabe Grateful Dead Heads have slithered their ways back onto the AOL Welcome page.

BREAKFAST

Let's start with breakfast, where most of us used to begin our day. Back then, it was basically cereal with names like SUGAR Pops, SUGAR Frosted Shredded Wheat, and the king of all boastful cereal names - SUPER SUGAR Crisp, with the lovable SUGAR bear. And why wouldn't he be lovable? After all, he had that cool, smoky voice, hipster half-stoned gaze, wore that kick-ass blue turtle neck sweater, and of course wore no pants. He wasn't just pushing cereal on hyperactive kids, he was pushing animal porn. Throw in Porky Pig and Donald Duck and you'd have an x-rated version of Animal Farm. But, back to the cereal. It seemed each commercial claimed their cereal was loaded with "8 essential vitamins and minerals" and was a "part of this balanced breakfast." The balanced breakfast would show half a grapefruit, unsweetened juice, some unbuttered wheat toast, and maybe a handful of blueberries. I never knew anyone who ate all of that crap. The kids I knew filled up a bowl of Trix, Apple Jacks or Frosted Flakes, over-poured the milk, and with all the skill of a Wallenda, navigated their way in front of the television to watch Scooby-Doo. If you were a boy, you did all of this in your underwear.

The more enterprising among us would find a way to bug our parents for a slice of cake, some cinnamon sticky buns, or some other quickly-decaying dessert left to harden overnight when your folks' Pinochle game breached the midnight hour the night before. The right amount of nagging usually did the trick. Go too far and you got backhanded. Yeah, that was still in vogue back then. After breakfast, your mother threw you outside so she could A) get some peace, B) make you burn off the sugar, and C) watch her soaps.

LUNCH

For the sake of argument, let's not include the conveyor belt cafeteria food served in school. In fact, let's just stick to summer and weekend lunches, because, and let's be honest here, the school cafeteria lunch is a subject unto itself.

Lunch was a pretty straightforward affair. It was usually peanut butter and jelly, tuna fish, or lunch meat - usually baloney. We can all thank that damned Oscar Mayer commercial ("My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R...") for roughly 30%-40% of our lunches back then. We were also big on deviled ham, Spam, and something called fluffernutters, which sounds like the name of a stagehand on a porno movie set but was actually just peanut butter and brain-shivering marshmallow cream. Now, some kids were particular about how their sandwiches were cut. The ones who didn't care, had theirs cut into four squares. The cool kids had theirs cut club-sandwich style into four triangles. Their bigger kids just went for the single cut into two halves, and the weenies always wanted their crust cut off. But, there was one thing we ALL agreed on: potato chips in the sandwich was the ONLY way to go. Toss in a few Oreos, Nutter Butters or yummy Keebler chocolate doo-dads, and you were a lazy blob until dinner rolled around. Then,mom threw you outside again or you watched reruns of The Flintstones, Gilligan's Island, or The Brady Bunch.

DINNER

Dinner was more than the third meal of the day. Dinner was a ritual. Some would call it "supper" but in our house, it was dinner, with a capital DIN. That's right, it could get downright noisy and boisterous with three boys at the table. Mom could have been part of the U.S. Olympic cooking team while Dad could have captained the Big Pork Chop stare-down squad. I really didn't appreciate the effort and taste of stews, roasts, stroganoffs, au gratin potatoes (or as we called them, "rotten au gratin"), stewed tomatoes on macaroni and cheese, and assorted casseroles. Fondue was big, as was BLT night and breakfast night where pancakes, eggs and bacon ruled the roost and there was Dad, methodically slicing his Jersey tomatoes with every meal.

We were an iced tea family, but not the kind made from the sugary powder. Nope, we had this convoluted, mad-scientist formula for making iced tea that involved photosynthesis, the alignment of the planets, and the sacrificing of an annoying neighbor, of which we had many. It tasted awful. The only way my Mom and I could stand it was to drench it in Minute Maid concentrated lemon juice. I put so much lemon juice in my tea that a black hole would form on my uvula.

DESSERT

We weren't a big desert family, but when there was dessert, it was a big to-do. Large hunks of cake and pie and teetering stacks of cookies. For holidays, mom would make ambrosia, which I hated. Separately,I like each ingredient, but, combined, coconut doesn't jive with marshmallows and those tiny Mandarin oranges creep me out in any language. Of all things I do miss, though, it was ice box cake, which my grandmother made. It was simple: a rectangular pan with a crust of graham crackers, about 2 inches of chocolate pudding, then topped with another layer of graham crackers. Chill. Serve into squares and top with an Alpine-size wallop of Kool-Whip. Die with a smile on your face.

Wow. I never really realized how much I have missed ice box cake, or those meals with my family.

Hell, I even miss the rotten au gratin potatoes.

Be a Man!

So, I settled in for the evening to expand my cultural palette by watching some bone-snapping, pupil-dilating, testosterone-boiling professional hockey. Of course, it wasn't on any of the sports channels - instead, it was on OLN (that's the Outdoor Life Network for you 'slickers). Even worse, it wasn't even on OLN like it was supposed to be, but I'll get back to that in a sec.

The OLN is a unique color in the television spectrum. It plays host to the Tour de France, the Boston Marathon and Survivor: Crab Nebula. It also boasts a roster of multiple animal hunting, tracking, and killing shows. This is not a network for vegans. You won't find Moby's Watercress Cook-Off or commercials for Mahatma Gandhi burgers (the "Gand-wich" is a real mover at patchouli-scented festivals). Pick a random time of the day, turn on OLN and you'll inevitably see some once-breathing animal hanging upside down ready for gutting, stuffing, and/or mounting. It's a chest hair network. Watch an hour or so of it and feel your canine teeth stretch and throb like vampiric stalactites. Watch two hours of it, and get ready to eat your meat raw. Watch three hours or more of it and your penis grows five inches. For this reason, I recommend women watch no more than two hours' worth of OLN.

Getting back to the more civilized programming of professional hockey, OLN provides National Hockey League (NHL) coverage every Monday and Tuesday evening. Me? I'm a hockey fan - I've been one all my life. I remember the Broad Street Bullies that were the Philadelphia Flyers of the mid-1970's, I've watched Wayne Gretzky from his first NHL game until his last, I've seen scoring go up down and now back up again. I witnessed the majesty of a Stanley Cup parade. I played it in summer, taping bricks to both sides of my stick blades and stickhandling a tennis ball across a root-laced lawn, I played it on video, banged the hell out of the garage door with the orange Mylec ball, played it in the basement, got the snot beat out of me by the larger Catholic school kids while still beating them on the scoreboard. If a big kid wanted to punch me, I would duck, but if that bigger kid's even BIGGER brother tried to cross-check me during a game, I'd put my stick between his legs and knock his ass hard onto the cement. I was a skinny, scythe-wielding bringer of street hockey death and my Air-Flo stick had more notches on it than a totem pole violently hacked by Crispin Glover.

I sit down with my sandwich and iced tea and wouldn't you know it? OLN is running a Ted Nugent reality show - something called "Wanted: Ted or Alive". Now, I can get down with "Cat Scratch Fever," "Double Live Gonzo," and "Wango Tango" and other prom-theme anthems of Mr. Nugent's rock and roll days, but I had hockey on my mind. Then, a strange thing happened. I started watching it. And watching it. Then I realized it was a freaking marathon - and I was enjoying it! Hell, I was hooked. Now, good old Ted swings from a different branch on the tree of life. He's from Detroit and has never smoked, never drank, never did drugs - he just rocked and rolled. For that, he was dubbed "The Motor City Madman" with such mood-setting lyrics as "...pretend that your face is a Maserati..."

Well, good old Ted had he had these five people skinning deer, killing and eating chickens, getting plastered with paint balls, being human scarecrows. One guy allowed himself to be shaved bald, another idiot kept dropping his pants and playing the token bad-ass, one girl quit, another girl kept crying - but bless her, she kept at it, and another gal was a Xena warrior with a heart of champion gold. I'm not that big a fan of Ted's music, and his politics are polarizing, but the man sure as hell is entertaining and could probably arm a militia big enough to take down Eastern Canada - or at least Nova Scotia. He's a force of nature...would have made a hell of a hockey player.

On this show, there was so much blood, so much violence, so much sacrificing - hell, I might as well HAVE been watching a hockey game. I must have viewed at least three hours of it.

I'd better stop here. My teeth are sharpening, I crave raw meat, and if I write any more, well, the ladies? - they'll come a-knockin'.

No Composite, No Return

I took some time away recently to get some things in order. Sometimes, even the most enjoyable things in life, such as trimming ingrown toenails, explosive diarrhea, and competitive back-zit popping lose all of their organic romance. You have to step away, toss out the old soy sauce packets in the fridge from the local Chinese delivery shop, finally stack those nickels on the dresser and finally put the toilet paper roll on the spool.

The truth is, I had to reload. Sure, there are always things to write about if you're interested in writing about whether to put the salt shaker to the left of the pepper shaker, how best to do battle with a large spider while showering, or how I lost over 11,000 Roll-Over minutes when I changed my wireless phone plan. That's right, 11,000 frigging minutes! Actually, doing battle with the spider would have made a fun story.

See, our lives are composites of all we see, smell, think, blah, blah, blah and how we burn that fuel towards making our psychic engines sputter along. I simply had nothing in the tank. Oh, I could have thrown some sub-standard bone to my reading audience (both of you), but that would have been as welcome as a beer-fart during an afternoon tea at a Red Hat Society meeting. It's not that there is a dearth of topics to write about. Hell, I could write an ordinary story of walking across a river of lava on the charred corpses of festival mimes and probably even make THAT funny. That's part of the triumvirate of comedy jello: Mime jokes, the outrageous Southern preacher voice, and complaining about the opposite sex. There's always room in one's routine for any and all of those.

I've been having to give blood a lot lately. Apparently, it's a delicacy in some parts of Eastern Europe (I'm looking at you, Transylvania). I've had roughly 10 bath tubs full of blood drawn from me in the past month with needles about as thick as Arby's straws. Apparently, "You might feel a little pinch" is Transylvanian for "You didn't by chance have any garlic recently?" as a smooth-domed, walrus-mustachioed, barrel-chested man in a leopard-skin singlet crashes down on my arm with a 500-lb. mallet so hard that he leaves his feet upon the descent. I have so many holes in my arm that it looks like I had a whole army of drafting compasses River Dancing on my forearms.

First of all, walking into one of those labs holds about as much joy and whimsy as seeing your grandfather naked in the shower - with your grandmother. You walk in with what amounts to other pathetic bastards like yourself, all coughing, sniffling, and playing the "I wonder what disease SHE has" game amongst themselves. The thoroughly uninterested desk clerk hurls the sign-in clipboard at me and tells me to sign in while asking if I had been there before. I say, "Lady, I've been here longer than you have over the past month, don't you recognize me?" She probably doesn't because when I walk into the lab, I'm all pink and rosy and when I leave I look like a cigarette-ash sculpture of Keith Richards.

You might be wondering, "What's the deal with all these tests? Are you dying?" Of course I am. We all are, but, not for a while. To make a long story short, the blood work has detected what was wrong and I'm hunky-dory now. However, when you are being shuttled between this doctor and that lab and this specialist and that pharmacist, you kind of just want to stay home, turn on the National Geographic channel and watch animals kill each other rather than sit perpendicular and slap humorous thoughts out of my head and onto my computer. When something keeps you so focused that you practically ignore all that swirls around you, you lose your composite self and become a singular, iconic slab of meat. Now that I've been able to move my DEFCON to a safer level, I am ready to return to the multi-level idiocy for which I am loved and loathed.

So, put on your Tony Orlando and Dawn records, take down my ribbon, and give me a kiss, a hug, a smile, a handshake, high-five, ceremonial bow, salute, pinch, punch, slap, kick, or set me on fire...

I'm home again.

Beat the Clock

It's coming up on that time of year again. Yep, it's only a few days away. You know what I'm talking about - cooler temperatures, crisp falling leaves, costumes, decorated pumpkins. That's right, it's Daylight Savings Time again.

No, it's not the sweet-and-sour DST of the Spring where we lose an hour. It's the woolly-sock comfort of gaining an extra hour. Ask anyone about DST (except for those iconoclasts in Arizona and parts of Indiana), and they'll say "Yep, we get an extra hour of sleep." No one ever says, "Hey! An extra hour of daylight! Let's all detail the car or paint the fence!" We are creatures of comfort and nothing is quite so comforting as prying open a bloodshot eye with the rest of your face buried in the pillow and thinking, "Hot damn! I still have another hour!" It's not like we get any real use out of that hour. Most of us will still get up and kick-start our bodies into action. We'll make the coffee, read the paper, take up residence in the bathroom for a while, flip through the channels on TV, take a few stabs at the crossword, have more coffee, go back into the bathroom and then realize you pissed away most of your Sunday. As usual.

Like a lot of people, I always set my clock ahead. For some reason, we think we're cheating our Circadian Rhythms and buffering in that extra time to make us feel we have a jump start on our day. Give me a break. Some people take that opportunity to squeeze out a few extra minutes of shut-eye...and promptly end up falling into a deep sleep, waking up in a spastic panic and rushing to work with their hair in a ponytail or smothered in styling gel because they didn't have time to shower. Others realize the literal translation that five minutes was supposed to bring and can quickly (and subconsciously) do the math that 6:00 am actually equals 5:55 am. What recourse do these junior varsity math team wizards have? Why, set the clock ahead by TEN minutes, of course. Feeling slightly superior with 10 extra minutes to their day, they don't realize that their lives are one constant deja vu (forgive the lack of accents, but my laptop doesn't speak French).

Being one of those clock-setter-ahead-ers, I thought I'd take it to the next level. Every time I moved the clock, unplugged it or the power went out because nature hates me and battered me with a violent storm, I would keep setting the clock ahead a little bit more. And a little bit more. And even more, until, after a year, my clock was ahead by two hours and thirty-seven minutes (seriously). Yet, I STILL compensated in my brain when I woke up, saw the clock read 9:15 and almost automatically calculated that it was 6:38. I kept setting it so far ahead that I traveled through time. As of this writing, I am currently living in the distant future. Please send me $1,000 and I will provide you with stock tips, winning lottery numbers and the next several World Series winners. Supermodels only, please.

Usually, there will be some knucklehead at work who will claim, "I just got used to setting my clock ahead - now we have to turn our clocks back again!" and chuckle that annoying self-satisfied chuckle that only the A-List sycophantic brown-nosers can give. It's enough to make you want to set them on fire and light a Cuban cigar off their burning bodies. But that would be wrong. After all, Cuban cigars are still illegal in this country.

I never could quite get the hang of the future ramifications of DST. Let me explain. When pondering what effect setting my clock back another hour would provide, I'm stumped. I have loads of questions. Will the mornings be darker? Lighter? Will it be pitch black when I leave the office now? Will the local vampire community have extended dining hours? Do I look fat in these jeans?

You have probably noticed that I seamlessly transitioned from calling "Daylight Savings Time" to the more economical "DST". You probably also noticed that DST sounds like something a sailor would come home with after a year at sea with monthly visits to the flesh pots of Thailand:

Sergeant: "Say, private,* I hear you have a nasty case of DST"

Private: "It's nothin', Sarge. Got some ointment for that."

Major: "Maybe you should have kept your privates private, private."

Private: "It's nothing major, Major."

Captain: "That's admirable, private. Still, you should see a specialist for that discharge."

Private: "For something so petty?"

Colonel: "You could be a carrier, son"

Private: "Will you be able to get someone to sub for me?"

Admiral: "Replacing privates is our business, son...in general."

* - No, I have no idea how military ranks work in the Navy

And what about those stores that are open 24 hours a day when there's an extra hour to account for? Do they have to close for an hour? Hell, if it's late night and I'm in my pajamas with my fuzzy slippers on and a bloodlust for a heavily-blistered chili dog, I'm not going to want to spend 60 minutes yelling at the cashier to open the damn doors while he grabs his crotch and shakes it at me, making comments about the circumstances of my birth. No, I'll just haul my carcass back to the house, get back in bed, set the clock ahead five more minutes, and go to sleep.

For another hour.

Soldier of Fortunes

Bear with me, readers - I have no idea where this is going to go. First of all, let me thank all those yahoos out there who bought Power Ball lottery tickets. If it wasn't for your fastidiousness (hope I'm using that word properly) and desperation, I might have been having paltry $100 million fantasies instead of the more robust $340 million fantasy that I wrestled with for a handful of days. If you're like me - and God bless you if you are - you queue up with other shifty-eyed citizens when the jackpot breaks the $100 million membrane. A lot of people buy their tickets in convenience stores, supermarkets, or off the big sweaty Lottery Fairy. Me? I go to the local newsstand-cum-gigantic-humidor. Normally, this place would be replete with itchy middle-aged men who pretend to find interest in magazines with such titles as "Civil War Pumpkin Carving," "Heavy Metal Pan Flute," and "Condensed Stories of Rickets Survivors". What everyone knows is that they're just trying to see how long they can hold out before letting out a rebel yell and barreling towards the adult magazine rack. Why go through this whole charade? Embrace your perversion! Stride mightily and purposefully towards your super-glossy, thick-stock pages of smut. Let the other customers think, "Now HERE is a man with direction and a clear vision. THIS guy lives by his own rules." Yeah, and he probably still plays Dungeons & Dragons, but 15 seconds of fleeting respect is about as much as he can reasonably expect each month. I never buy lottery tickets with the expectation that, hey, SOMEONE has to win - why not me? Sure, and SOMEONE has to be the first to hump a whale's blow hole, but it sure as hell is not going to be me. I only buy tickets when it's an intoxicatingly large jackpot. I'm not buying a chance to win - I'm buying a dream, or to be more exact, the RIGHT to dream. The right to dream of super-cool power boats, gargantuan houses and acres and acres of naked women. Could I instead put that effort into being industrious, thrifty and organized? Sure, but, spending $10 once or twice a year is much easier.

So, there I am, waiting behind the enterprising guy who has a list of "his" numbers - you know, the numbers he plays for every lottery, no matter what the size? Somehow, this modern-day Euclid has calculated that the gods of random chance have pre-ordained his inevitable jackpot if he just keeps his hands on the wheel every night the ping-pong balls are dropped. Let me put this gently: You have just as good a chance of winning if a stoned baboon hurled handfuls of warm dung at a giant bingo card and used those numbers. It's not like counting cards at the Black Jack table, watching for the lip-twitch of a slightly toasted businessman with a pair of Queens, or calculating the probability if the Redhead at the Roulette Wheel is a crumpler or a folder. Yet, there are people out there convinced that they have the system beat. Hell, there are lottery junkies so addicted that even past winners are still known to play the numbers. And how about the people in the office - you know, 50 people in the office chipping in $5 a piece, everyone from Darlene the receptionist to Frank in Accounting to Marci in Marketing going in on a jackpot, that, should they win, might net them each 500 bucks once the money has been split up. And should they win a substantial amount, who is going to bother to show up for work the next business day? Oh sure, you'll get the people who return to pick up the photographs of their spotty teenagers, their "special" pens and their "I Hate Mondays" coffee mugs, but other than that, they're busy booking flights to get their flabby pale bodies on a stretch of hot sand quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson". What if this was a vital utility office such as a gas company in the middle of Winter? What if it was a garbage-collection company? What if it was the local phone sex company? I'll tell you what - it would be anarchy, dear citizen. Anarchy.

Personally, I think lotteries and other games of chance are loaded pistols in the hands of a nation full of Bubbas if the proper perspective isn't maintained. Gambling is an addiction and if you have to ask yourself if you might be a gambling addict, then you probably are. For those of us who are not addicted to gambling, have a bit of perspective and realize that, well, you just might be a loser every time you play. Don't take it personally. There's not an Angel of Gambling who peers down at you through the toes in his sandals and says "This ain't your day, Butch" as he's chomping on a ratty cigar and hurling lightning bolts of bad luck your way. Meanwhile, you're cashing in savings bonds to maniacally scrape the silver coating off yet another serrated rectangle of chance with your lucky buffalo-head nickel.

I am a consumer of Coca-Cola products. I am not doing a commercial for them unless they want to offer me an oil tanker full of money, and even then, they wouldn't risk the profitability of their company by having a clown like me advertise for them.

But, I digress...

Coke runs contests constantly. Lift the cap and win the panhandle of Florida, have a disease named after you or get to punch out the actor or actress of your choice. Millions of prizes! One in three wins! Let me tell you something, I have NEVER won anything from these so-called contests. I'd have a metric ton of soda caps saying "Drink Coke - Play Again" while some lucky bastard out there is up to his pucker in winning caps. Yet, for all of my indignant posturing, I can let it go and focus on more important things, like the NEXT contest, the NEXT $100 million jackpot, the NEXT winning hand.

After all, I'm a man with direction and a clear vision. I live by my own rules. And will you look at that - it's time for Dungeons & Dragons.

Full Mental Jacket, Part II

I feel an obligation to deliver a Part II to the previous entry. It kind of dovetails nicely with the fact the last story was a "Part I" so it's not much of a stretch. So, put on your beanie-coptors, grab a big hunk of chocolate, and take my hand as we venture back into Best Buy.

Breaking away from the CD section of the store, the cacophonic beat of some third-rate white rapper pounding a nuclear-sized concussion into my coconut, I make for the movie section. The first thing I do is shimmy over to the new releases. There they are, regal and over-wrapped, in military-style regimentation. Impressive. Borderline spellbinding. Of course, the aisles are so narrow that you couldn't fit a police chalk outline of Shelley Duvall on the floor. The video game section shares the other side of the aisle and there is always some intense, doughy pre-teen blocking the way. I try to navigate around the Strait of Round, so I can get a full view of my DVD troops. Nine times out of ten, I punt. Ice Cube doing a children's movie? I'll pass. Another gore-fest featuring idiot teens fresh from a Benetton ad? Um, no. Another pretentious period piece from Merchant Ivory extolling the virtues of class while attempting to decry those very same class systems? Pass the hemlock. Plus, the price for a new release is 20-some-odd-dollars. Hell, if I wait for a few weeks, I can pick up the same movie in the "3-for-$25" bin at Blockbuster video. Why I even bother to go to the New Releases section is beyond me. I'm 50% Italian, 50% Irish - 100% idiot.

I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many movies I own. Suffice to say, it's far more than 1,000. I was able to survive the shift from VHS to DVD, but, should another medium become the preferred method of movie viewing, I'm sunk. I'll go down railing at the gods and their unconscionable hubris, scooping up DVD players by the armload so I can still enjoy my dear, precious movies while the rest of the world is flying around town in their George Jetson hovercars.

But, I digress...

I am the perfect fool when it comes to marketing DVDs. For example, let's just say a movie called "Summer Camp Orgy" - you know, the PG-13 version, comes out on DVD. I buy, it, enjoy it, love the extras, can recite a few memorable lines on my buddy's answering machine, and watch it on a rainy Saturday morning. Then, the studio comes out with "The Director's Cut" - with FIVE EXTRA MINUTES OF FOOTAGE! Or, perhaps, they proclaim it's the UNRATED version - the type they COULDN'T show in the theaters. Now, ladies out there, let me give you an obvious lesson in male behavior. When it comes to movies, "UNRATED" = there's a chance of seeing boobs in the movie, or if there are already boobs in the movie, there is the chance we will see....MORE boobs - or at least an ass crack. We'll gladly shell out the $39 to get the 3-DVD version, two discs of which are filled with such useful extras as interviewing Lourdes, the Mexican food service lady, the story board of the white-knuckle chess match between rival camp counselors, and the Mandarin Chinese subtitles. Then, we'll get home, order up an artery-hardening pizza, draw the shades, swirl the ice cubes in our Big Gulp and put the DVD in. Midway through the movie, we realize that the extra footage was NOT of the female counselor's changing room or the all-female skinny dipping session, complete with slow-motion camera work. No, the extra footage was of the nerdy kid falling into the toilet or a few throwaway quips from the wisecracking cook in the cafeteria. Somewhere, Satan is laughing so hard that he ends up crapping in his fur.

There's been a romanticism associated with vintage television - and not-so-vintage television programs. If it was on the tube in the past, it will end up in a DVD boxed set, invariably containing interviews with whatever surviving cast members talking about "what a joy" it was to work with the other members of the cast. What monkey dung. We all know the backstabbing and espionage that went on. Alcohol and drug abuse, tantrums about who had a bigger dressing room or trailer, who had more lines. For once, I want to see some straight dealing on these DVD interviews:

Actress A: "We had our differences. I really don't think it affected our performances. Well, maybe hers."

Actress B: "I hated her. She was such a bitch."

A: "Well, now that I think about it, I think she had a vestigial tail. Oh, and her hair? If she didn't dye it every week, she'd be grayer than a week-old pot roast in a hobo's armpit."

B: "Did you ever smell her breath? It smells like baboon ass. She also has hair on her nipples. We used to call them hairy-olas."

A: "Would I work with her again? Sure, why not. I am confident we can get past our differences for the fans."

B: "Depends. How much?"

Gee whiz. Can't wait for the commemorative DVD collection of Fish, Cop Rock, and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? Nothing like instant nostalgia to keep you living in the not-so-distant past. Now, shows put out a season on DVD right after the season ends. It's kind of like a band putting out a Greatest Hits album just months after their debut.

He: "Honey, remember that first episode of "Executive Privilege"?"

She: "You mean the debut episode we watched two hours ago?"

He: "Yeah, that was great."

There are so many decisions to make, too. Full-screen versus letterbox widescreen. Do I really want to be able to see the grubby townspeople in the margins of the screen? Can I deal with those annoying black bands at the top and bottom of the picture? Then again, maybe I'll just read a book. It's relaxing, entertaining and practical.

And if its really good, maybe they'll make it into a movie.

Full Mental Jacket, Part I

Something happens to me every pay day. I get this Herculean rush to go to the nearest electronics store and fondle all the light-blinking, sound-emitting gewgaws I can lay my paws on. Stereos, phones, MP3 players, televisions, recording devices, portable thingies and so on. Show me a combination DVD player, cell phone, toast-maker and I'm fantasizing in the bathroom stall at work just how complete my life would be with one of those beauties in my hands. But, it doesn't end with electronics, my friends. You see, I am one of the more obsessive music and movie collectors of our time. And here is where we begin our journey.

I'll invariably stroll into the nearest Best Buy store, drunk with a freshly-restocked bank account. The sliding doors welcome me like an old friend and caress me with promises of eternal ecstasy. In the movie "Full Metal Jacket," a character named Private Payback says:

"That's because you don't have the stare. The thousand-yard stare. It's like you can see...beyond."

Damn straight. There I was, standing threateningly in shorts and a windbreaker, dramatically pausing near the carts like a Tyrannosaurus eyeballing a shallow tank of overfed seals. Forget the fact that seals most likely were not around in the Triassic Period - I was a man with blood on his fangs after a few gullet-loosening burps. I decided to be systematic in my approach. Now, this is important because it's the one thread that connects me with my withering attachment to humanity in these situations. Casually, I circle the cardboard display of whatever new special-edition DVD they're shoving into our mitts. I lean in and give it a sniff, trying to locate any evidence of Julia Roberts, Jim Carrey or Sandra Bullock. Luckily, there was no trace of any of them, and I loosened my grip on the emergency vial of penicillin I carried with me. With reptilian cool, I scan the $9.99 mini-kiosks for movies that beg to be added to my personal stash. This is all a preliminary ruse - sort of like looking at the "lite" section of the menu when you know you aren't leaving the restaurant without a few bones from a porterhouse left spinning on the plate.

I drop all pretense and hit the CD section - I'll cover DVDs another time. Immediately, all albums (yes, I still call them "albums") I had listed in my mind as must-haves systematically disappear from my memory. I'm stuck in the music tar pits, surrounded by some of the worst selections of music in one of the darkest and least impressive eras of creative performance in recorded history. Pasty nancy-boy guitar bands with gratingly whiny singers who are as alien to proper usage of the bass guitar as Homer Simpson is to a salad fork. And when it isn't wimpy "rockers" cluttering up the shelves, it's the Colorform blonde dingbats who are as overproduced and over-processed as Healthy Choice brand lunchmeat. Let us also not forget the thundering static of idiot bands whose only attribute is to play as fast and loud as humanly possible, shouting 3rd-grade lyrics, wearing all black clothing, soul patches, and tattoos as if that is supposed to prove how tough they are. Doesn't anyone remember melody? And speaking of lack of melody, rap music, for all of its social worth, has dissolved into bragging how much Cristal champagne they have in their "cribs," how much "bling" they have on their "grill" and how much "talent" they have. Amazing how boastful these performers can be about talent when they haven't picked up a musical instrument in their lives.

Perhaps you have seen the mushrooming "Essentials" industry in the music section of your favorite store. You know the ones I'm talking about: The Essential Billy Joel, The Essential Earth, Wind & Fire, The Essential Bonnie Raitt. They're "essentially" "Best of..." collections featuring the hits AM radio and easy-listening, white bread adult-contemporary FM stations keep on life support. As I was perusing the "Essential Neil Diamond/Alabama/Sade" CDs, I came across - are you ready for it? - "The Essential Iron Maiden". Well, color me constipated. Since when did speed-metal gargoyles like Iron Maiden qualify for the wire racks that have only known the shadows of khakis and fanny packs?

Frustrated by the bitch-goddess of my failing memory, I end up weaving my way through the aisles like a blind orb spider, touching and sensing anything that might leap off the shelf, into my cart, and change my life. Instead, I pick up a Cream album, turn it over, rejoice at the song list, then toss it back into the bin in disgust because "White Room" isn't on it.

Maybe I'll wait for "The Essential Cream".

Voyeur to the Bottom of the See

I was watching a local sports program this morning, gnashing my teeth over the coverage of yet another loss by my team when I heard it. It's a phrase with a few variations but all spoken in that same patronizing tone:

"We want to warn you that the next scene could be disturbing."

Then, they roll film on some poor athlete who gets broken in two, with half his torso flung one way and the other half tossed in the opposite direction. Then they show it again. And again. And again, but even slower. Now for the view from the opposing sideline. Ok, how about the super-slow motion camera where you can see the compound fracture ripping out of the poor guy's sock like fragments of bamboo? How about from the quarterback's helmet cam? The blimp camera? The camera mounted on the jiggling breasts of the busty redhead on the all-important drill team?

You see what I'm getting at. They slow it down, spot-shadow it, magnify it, then bring in experts who either proclaim it's a good thing it was a clean break or solemnly declare that "it will be a miracle if he can even walk, pet his dog, or pick up his infant daughter anymore. That's right, just milk the currency of tears out of the collective eyes of the viewing public, you ratings-whore vampires.

But can you really blame them? They're just giving the public what it wants - or, more to the point, what it thinks it wants. Oh heavens no, you don't want to be the only nimrod hovering around the company coffee station who didn't see the latest horrific sports injury, police shootout or live panda birth. Why do people want to see this stuff? Because news is entertainment. Don't let anyone try to tell you any differently. This nonsense is important because you were told it was important, and, damn it, you WILL conform. Hey! Hotshot! Eyes over here! Look at me when I'm talking to you! See this? This is worthless garbage, but we're calling it news, so you have no choice but to call it news, too. And don't get any fancy-schmancy ideas about thinking for yourself and switching over to the other news channels, because they'll have it on, too.

Who in their right mind gives a rat's hemorrhoid about who was seen smooching who behind the dumpster at the Super-K? Jane Hollywood is sporting a new hairdo? Let's drop our collective dinner forks and slam dance our way through our family members to gawk at the television like Deliverance-area mountain men witnessing the extra-terrestrial invasion of aliens who look like a race RuPaul impersonators. Are peoples' existences so empty and void that they have to live vicariously through the lives of people who wouldn't piss on your baby if it was on fire? These are the same people who squeeze into the audience chairs on the Jerry Springer Show like lard-filled condoms, are experts at everything, and speak with that annoying head and finger thing. Their heads are whipping and gyrating like they're trying to mix cake batter with their chins while their stubby index fingers look like they're trying to re-trace the flight path of a drunk and slightly-retarded moth tethered to a porch light.

This is our America. This is us. It is who we are, collectively, to people outside our borders and to a generous number of people inside our borders. We have a bloodlust for tragedy and misfortune. And it's not relegated to television. Hell, the Internet is a septic ocean of misfortune. There's none of this "there by the grace of God go I" involved. It's more like, "ewww, that's gross! Disgusting. Ugh, how could something like that happen? Let me just look at it for another 45 minutes, talk about it for another three hours, and spend the rest of the weekend becoming an expert in the field." Aim high, graduate!

Hands up, who has slowed down to look at an accident by the side of the road? Pretty much all of you. Screw that - ALL of you have. I also used to, but I stopped after I thought about it. First of all, what the hell am I going to be able to do about it? Do I really want to see mangled bodies dragged out of the tangled wreck? Do I really want to see the blood and carnage? What if it is someone I know? Am I really going to help the situation by shouting "Oh my God!" and careening into the guard rail? Aren't I taking my eyes off the road and increasing the chance of another accident? And yet, even though all of these trespasses would qualify you for the gilded jackass badge for your uniform, it is still somewhat understandable, to some degree. What's worse is when a rubbernecker enacts one of these sins ogling a person who is pulled to the side of the road,to change a tire, get a speeding ticket or scrimshaw an image of the Virgin Mary on the jawbone of a whale.

In my mind, I have effectively eliminated half of this country's population. Please, oh please let me be God for fifteen minutes. Just think of the time saved standing in line at the food court after I would be done. Better seats at the ball game, fewer people to snake my bid in the last 30 seconds on eBay and closer parking.

Oh yeah, and fewer rubberneckers when I'm on the side of the road working on my whale bone.

Steppin' Up

There is a price to pay for doing a good job at work. Sometimes it's the longer hours or the derisive sniping of peers. Other times it's the weight of carrying home the extra ink on the paycheck or moving into a higher bracket of beer brand purchase. It's the Great American Work Ethic, and it just might raise its ugly head in a cubicle or corner office near you.

Everyone remembers their days in the trenches at work. For me, I did credit card collections straight out of college. I was young, stupid, and in desperate need of beer money. Some people couldn't hack it, and it was a grind. The reward was a monthly incentive that kept your appetite whetted until the following month where you could break your back for the chance of a heavily-taxed monthly bonus. But, life isn't always so colorful under the rainbow. Pretty soon, you start thinking of a career - maybe with that very same company that waved that bonus in front of your snout like a sadistic seal trainer. Maybe, just maybe, there was a place for you...in management.

The very thought is both exhilarating and frightening - kind of like a blind date that your friend sets you up with without the words "...but, he/she has a great personality." Do you have the onions to make it in management? Will you be friendly and loved by your people, who have everything from screen savers to bobble head dolls to wood carvings at their desks - all in your likeness? Or will you be the cold, calculating, miserable piece of dry rot so bent on bullying your charges into submission that Ebenezer Scrooge himself would say, "Dude, chill!" These are the very same people who pulled off their masks upon promotion to reveal the sinister, bile-spewing insect they hid so well when they were taking their lunch breaks with you. Either that, or they wore their boss's ass like a clown's nose. It always amazed me that these people, who have achieved such lofty positions with the company, are so utterly blind, deaf and dumb to these scheming weasels when they promote them that The Who hasn't written a rock opera about them (for those of you reaching for a sip of Diet Coke or Fuze, I am referencing The Who's rock opera, "Tommy" about a blind, deaf, and dumb boy who...um, nevermind).

However, not all promotions to management are to manage others. Let's face it, there are people out there who do a great job but just don't want to deal with the administrative hassles of having people report to them. People calling in sick, hung over, or dead, juggling vacation schedules, dealing with errors in paychecks, and about a billion other things to turn you into a raging alcoholic. I've managed people before, and it's quite rewarding when you can help people achieve things they never thought they would be able to achieve, but I prefer to squat in my own machine-gun nest with my peers in a staff position.

Which finally brings me to the point of this whole thingamabob.

The people in the trenches are THE most important people in the company - an ANY company, for that matter. Without the worker bees, there ain't no honey for the hive, and no honey means no end-of-year bonus. I work in what passes as a city in this shoe box of a state and I have to park in a garage that my company generously pays for, which is nice. However, with growth in the company comes growth in the garage, which means that the staff-level dingbats like me were bumped from the Ferris Wheel. My company was good enough to find the closest available parking garage for me and my 30-some-odd fellow emigrants and pay for parking there. They considered distance, safety and availability, all of which were fine by me - until I went there this morning.

First of all, this garage is so far away, that I had to clone myself and set up a relay team every quarter mile. It's uphill the ENTIRE way from the garage to my office, which should provide hours of laughter when the snow is up to my honey sack. I had to hire out a team of Sherpas to help me scale the 45-degree angle of the road outside the garage. I saw mountain goats taking the gondola to the top of the hill. And on those days when it's cold, windy and rainy? Forget about it. I'll have to leave for work at 7:00 - P.M., that is, the previous night, to get there in time for work the next day. By the time I'd get there, I would have written a journal and sold the rights, missed several class reunions, and have a ZZ Top beard. I should have been suspicious when I saw a dozen hospitality tents set up from the garage to the office. So, someone slapped a number on my back, splashed Gatorade in my face and called a paramedic to shadow my every step. Wait, it gets better. The old garage had a very sensible layout. It was circular; you drove the loop and if it was packed, you took the ONE ramp to the next level and so on. This new place is the latest in Dada architecture. It's like M. C. Escher had a particularly horrifying nightmare and drew up the layout of this place. Ramps criss-cross into oblivion, levels change from 2 to 3 without actually going up or down a ramp, elevator or set of stairs, and your car magically disappears and reappears like those cheap hidden coin boxes your cousin used to play with all the time. A toddler walking through the marketplace in Bangladesh working on a Rubik's Cube would have an easier time navigating his way through the crowd than I would if I parked in the first spot on the other side of the guard-arm.

Which brings me to the safety issue. I am not saying it's a bad neighborhood. I am sure that plenty of decent, honest, God-fearing people know someone who has survived going through this neighborhood in a police escort. It's Autumn now, so it is getting dark earlier - and it's really dark on that street. Remember how it was like fumbling for that light switch in the basement when you were a kid? Try fumbling for that light switch for several blocks, where the only light is reflected off the cold steel of a switchblade or a gun. I guess it's all an incentive for everyone to get into shape - or increase attrition.

So, remember, when you're moving up that corporate ladder, know the risks of success.

And watch your step.

A Glutton for Punishment

I live a cursed life. No, there is no tattoo that burns like a million suns on my backside during the Solstice, nor do people burst into flames once I get close to them (although I know a few who would volunteer for that instead of getting closer to me). You see, I am a sports fan. Not only that, but I am the most leprous of sports fans - I am a Philadelphia sports fan. A glutton for punishment.

For those not in the know, being a Philadelphia sports fan means a life of eternal sacrifice and self-immolation. In the Bible, Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. If a Philadelphia fan's significant other was turned into a pillar of salt, he or she would break out the margarita glasses. If the Greek titan, Prometheus, was a Philly sports fan, and ritualistically had his liver torn out of him every day by a giant, mutant bird of prey, he would say, "Yeah, yeah, just keep it down in the fourth quarter."

And now, a brief history lesson...

You do not have to be a sports fan to appreciate the suffering of the Philadelphia sports fan. You just have to be a person filled with a Herculean capacity for compassion - either that or a sadistic bastard. Not to bore you with statistics, but for a major four-sports (football, baseball, hockey and basketball) city, no one knows heartache and heartbreak like my fellow Philadelphia fans. No major championships in well over 20 years. You figure that, over a period that spanned close to 90 team championships, that your team would stumble onto at least ONE championship - even by accident. And don't give me that garbage about Red Sox and Cubs fans being the scions of sports suffering.

Bull.

Chances are, if you are a Red Sox fan, you are also a fan of the other team sports in that area. Let's see...hmm...how about the New England Patriots and their daisy chain of recent Super Bowl wins? What about the Boston Celtics and their habitual run of championships from the 1960s through the 1980s? Cubs fans? Two words (well, actually, five words): The Bears and the Bulls. More than animals in the stock market zoo, they have combined for seven championships in the last 20 years. Not bad for teams who share the same fan base as the Cubs. And besides, the White Sox have suffered just as long as the Cubs but you never hear their fans bitching. However, I do get a bit of satisfaction out of the fact that the White Sox are also from Chicago.

We Philadelphia fans live and die with our teams. We cheer the misfortune of visiting athletes, we start brawls in the stands when we see a fan wearing the jersey of another team, and yes, our mayor (and future governor) started a snowball hailstorm at Veteran's Stadium directed at the Dallas Cowboys as they retreated in horror to their locker room one cold winter day. But, just give us a damned championship and I am sure each and every one of us would atone for our sins towards other fans and sing "Rainbow Connection" while shoving a beer and burger into their hands in the parking lot. Sure, we booed Santa Claus over 30 years ago, but he was a poor tackler. Yeah, we threw batteries at various opposing outfielders, but at least they were Duracell. And hey, maybe we jumped the glass during the hockey game to get after Tie Domi in the penalty box, but it was only to strangle him a little bit - and who among us couldn't do with a little larynx massage?

We know agony. It's like a thick wooly blanket on a cold, blustery day. We suffer more than a Jewish woman whose son just opened a Red Lobster or an Italian mother whose daughter makes a better sauce than she does. It's a ritual, passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, like cufflinks and sepia-colored photos of immigrant relatives we have no emotional connection to whatsoever. A glimpse into an exchange in a South Philly row house:

Father: "Son, it's time we had a talk"

Son: "But Dad, I'm too young for the sex talk."

Father: "No, this is more important than that. You're what, four or five years old now?"

Son: "Eight"

Father: "Eight. Right. Listen, it's about time you became a man. You love football and baseball and hockey, don't you?"

Son: "Sure. They're a lot of fun."

Father: "Silence! They are NOT fun! They are not supposed to be fun! They are bitch goddesses of the season. They will rip out your heart, make you impotent and RUIN your life, but yet, you cannot look away. You must keep watching. You MUST tie your personal happiness to the success of your teams. In other words, you MUST be miserable for the rest of your life! Pack it in, kid! Fun's over!"

Son: "Sooooooo...Mom's not coming back, is she?"

It's grown from a slightly uncomfortable nuisance to a full-fledged apocalyptic locust storm. You could cover me in naked Playboy Playmate nymphomaniacs, and, until we get a championship, I'll still say, "Can we wait until halftime?" I care more about the balls and strikes on the lead-off batter than matching up my Lotto numbers. I'm more concerned about the Power Play than I am about paying my power bill.

Some day, when the planets realign, the messiah returns, and our insect masters force us into building their adobe pyramids, a Philadelphia sports team will accidentally win a championship. It might take the forfeiting of games by every other team in the league, a nationwide influenza epidemic or a cataclysmic cloud of indifference among other athletes, but, the odds just HAVE to eventually fall in our favor sometime.

Don't they?

And when they do, I can finally get this damned tattoo removed from my ass.

"So, Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?"

I once had a friend, years ago, who told me she never had to go to an interview in her entire life. She inherited a ass-load of money from her grandmother, bought a gym, sold it, and now dabbles in real estate. Never worked for anyone but herself, if you can say she ever really worked a day in her life. She was - and probably still is - oblivious as to what an honest day's work actually feels like. And to not know how to go through an interview, well, that's one of those teeth-gritting rituals the rest of us love when it's over - sort of like visiting that one crazy aunt who loves gossip, watches cheesy talk shows and wears a lethal amount of cheap, flowery perfume.

Everyone remembers when they went on their first interviews after finishing whatever level of schooling they completed. Guys in ties borrowed from dad sitting uneasily in generic waiting room chairs, Adam's apples bobbing up and down like a possessed super ball; young women in their one dark business suit they received as a graduation present, hair as conservatively pressed as necessary, practicing to themselves over and over about how they want to be "a team player" and anxious to express their plans to eventually get their Master's degree.

I remember when I went on my first "serious" interviews. It wasn't like those knucklehead summer jobs where the questions went something like:

Manager: "So, do you do drugs?"

Applicant (lying): "No, sir"

Manager: "Are you sure?"

Applicant (still lying): "Yes, sir"

Manager: "Can you handle a mop? Can you work weekends? Can you get here on time? Are you planning on leaving at the end of the summer? Are you willing to be humiliated by me every day?"

Applicant (to self): (Man, I wish I had some drugs right now)

Back then, all you really cared about was getting enough money for gas, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and maybe a dime bag of reefer (back when you could still buy a dime bag). Life was all about the weekend, who was having a party when their parents went away and finding creative ways to call in sick when you partied too much the night before. Today, it's about paying off the credit cards, paying for day care and fighting the urge to break into your 401k to give you some financial breathing room.

I remember some of those early "serious" interviews. I'd be sitting there, whipping out impressive-sounding answers, maintaining eye contact, and always remembering to ask questions at the end - all by the book. What was really going on in my mind was:

"I wonder if there are any hot chicks who work here?"
"The pay here better not suck."
"Man, the receptionist has a great rack."

For some people, holding interviews is an unpleasant little piece of business that takes them out of the rhythm of their day. I've seen some people put off the applicant so they could finish their lunch so their soup doesn't get that awful "skin" on the top. I've seen others hold off an interview so they can finish giving little kissy noises on the phone to their a) partner, b) children, c) dog. Then, they bring the applicant in and promptly eviscerate them.

And don't you just love the assembly line questions you get? It's like the interviewer puts absolutely no effort into the process - kind of like my writing. Stop me if you've heard these before. I added some suggested responses:

"What would you say is your biggest weakness?" ("Falling asleep in the bathroom stall so that I have toilet paper holder marks on my face, cruising the Internet for dirty jokes, borderline sexual harassment")

"What's the difference between the words "Manager" and "Leader"? (The spelling)

"Where do you want to be in five years?" (Setting you on fire and throwing you off the roof of the building and then river-dancing on your parking space)

It's nice to be the person interviewing the applicants, but it's a shame you can't say what you REALLY want to say; something along the lines of "This is the worst resume I've ever seen" or "You're pissing me off. Just say you don't know the answer or I'm going to put your head through the wall." Usually, you have a pretty good idea if that person is a good fit in the first five minutes, but you allow that person the luxury of either talking themselves into or out of an opportunity. Most of the time, the person you hire isn't someone who blows you away as much as someone who doesn't suck as much as the other candidates.

But, no matter how many interviews you conduct, you know that, eventually, you will be sitting on the other side of the desk again and breaking out the same awful answers that you yourself endured so many times before. After each response, you think to yourself sarcastically, "Well, that didn't make me sound TOO much like a horse's ass" or "Yep, that's it. I'm getting drunk tonight." Was it worth it? Was jumping through all those hoops, filling out all those forms and turning your resume into a masterpiece of creative fiction worth all of that when you finally land that job?

Ask me in five years. Apparently, that's where I want to be.

Bar None

One of the guys in my office had a going away party thrown for him at a local bar this past Friday. The bar isn't actually a bar, to be exact. It's one of those multi-purpose thingamajigs that has a proper bar, dance floor, private club, arcade and deck where bands like REO Speedwagon, Loverboy and the remaining members of Blue Oyster Cult play to crusted-over baby boomers with ponytails, earrings and at least one NASCAR sticker on their vehicle (the men) or winners with acid-washed jeans, tobacco-stained fingers and cheap whore-shoes (the "women"). Anyway, it was a nice little get together. People letting their hair down just a little, talking about work and then turning around and complaining that all anyone does outside of work is talk about work.

We were out on the deck. It is done up in some sort of fake-me-out Polynesian motif with thatched roofs over the island bars, dime-store surfboards and loads of beer posters and advertisements with sun-blasted blondes in bikinis. It went well with the hard cement we were standing on and stools that look like they came from your parents' basement decades after they stopped throwing "cool" adult parties. It gave a nice view of the river - an unobstructed view of the wildlife, majestic marsh grass and weekend mafia hits floating downstream. It was a bit warm and the humidity brought the alcohol flush right to the surface of your skin.

I'm not much of a drinker, but I did find the constitution to power down a couple of White Russians (shut up!). I don't drink beer, wine or hard liquor. I used to, but I lost my taste for them - kind of like my Summer of the Peppers. I told you about that in an earlier story and if I didn't, you can wrestle with the uneasy shifting of feet that comes with feeling like an outsider. The drinks weren't bad, but they tasted a little weak. I basically paid an arm and a leg for what amounted to a melted coffee milkshake. But, since I go out drinking about as often as the spaceships from Mars land on the Harvest Moon (what, didn't get the memo?), I figure what the hell. It's either this or spend my money on food, gas or Internet porn.

There is a phenomenon out there in the world of bars and nightclubs. I never understood it, even though I, personally, experienced it firsthand. For some reason, people - mostly females - oh hell, almost all of them are female - look at bartenders like they are rock stars. I blame the movie "Cocktail" for creating these ridiculous images. Actually, there are probably a thousand things to blame on that movie. Googly-eyed idiot women fawning all over bartenders, flirting with them and then actually having the low self-esteem to BRAG to their friends that they have a date with one! Hey, I'm not saying this out of jealousy - I used to be a bartender! And what's more, I used to be the one with all the easy leg being thrown my way. It was easier than spotting zits on a teenager.

Now, this next part you are not going to like, ladies: Bartenders talk. If you are looked at as a cheap, easy woman by a bartender (and all it takes is sleeping with one), you are looked at as a cheap, easy woman not only by every bartender in that establishment and other nearby establishment, but by every guy and most girls who frequent those places. Why? Because bartenders talk. Go on one date with a bartender and you might as well break out the glittery "I'm a Whore" shirt. Sad but true. Bartenders are NOT rock stars, they are not noble, and there is nothing sexy about being one or dating one. I had been one for years, I've dated female bartenders. Unless you can take being looked at like a slut by everyone in the bar or club, find yourself someone else to flirt with.

Anyway, back to the fun. There was a knock-off reggae band opening up for the main act. They played all the reggae songs you know. Know how I know that? Because EVERY knock-off reggae band plays the same damned songs. Sure, it works for the bloated businesswomen and the khaki-slacked businessmen, both of whom wouldn't dare introduce anything slightly different to their musical palates, but for people who have even a slightly remedial love of music, you'd rather go bobbing for urinal cakes in a public toilet than have to hear yet another reggae version of "Hot, Hot, Hot!" The main act was a local band that has been around for a handful of years and has its own loyal fan base. You know the type of "band" I'm talking about - a bunch of tousle-haired post-college grads who imitate the annoying formulaic styles of the day, adding as much whiny vocal as humanly possible and dress so non-trendy that they actually are uber-trendy. They do lame covers of lame bands like Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, or other identical-sounding lame bands and have groupies who are both hotter than anyone in the band deserves and also about 15 years older than the oldest member of the band. Reflected glory is a mental disease, good citizen. Fling them into the Twinkie van and behind the bars of the nuthouse for a decade or so.

I'm not against drinking or going to bars - I just don't do it very much anymore. To each his (or her) own. I would have hoped that things might have changed since I was a regular customer. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you don't. And yet, in every bar that you go to, you are bound to find about a dozen examples of everything I just explained above.

Bar none.

Isn't That Cute?

I observed a conversation the other day between a man and a woman. Actually, she was talking and he was listening. Come to think of it, he was pretending to listen. I'm a man, and I can always tell when one of my brothers of the species is pulling the old clenched-jaw, glazed-eye stare while reviewing highlights of last week's football game in his head. She made the fatal mistake of saying to him, "Look, I just got pictures of my little dog! Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen?" See, ladies, unless we are rabid dog enthusiasts, we couldn't care less about your little dogs, and even those men who are fans of dogs certainly aren't going to give a damn about your little rat-dog.

We're men. We HATE "cute".

"Cute," to us, is reserved for women's backsides or sardonic responses to idiot co-workers changing the letters on our computer keyboards. As men, we are conditioned to capture, kill, and eat "cute". See that little deer over there? The fairer sex may give that ever-annoying cry of "awwwwwww" while men are thinking what we were created to think: "Mmmm, venison".

It was funny watching that conversation because I could see him casting his eyes about for someone - anyone - to rescue him from a painful encounter. Panic can set in if you don't have the wherewithall to drift off into football scores, fantasy duels with fire-breathing dragons, or sex with super models. Often, a guy will have the following thoughts going through his head in such a situation:

"She must be on the Olympic Talking Team"
"I wonder what she looks like naked."
"Do I have to poop or just fart?"

We speak different versions of the same language. For example, women may actually refer to a certain room of a house as a parlor. For men, it's a living room. And in that parlor, there may be a sofa. Men don't own sofas. We own a couch. And on that sofa, a woman might enjoy a cocktail - while we drink booze. Women might bawl during an AT&T commercial while we reserve the right to get slightly misty at the end of Field of Dreams.

This is nothing new. The history of differences between men and women is as old as the divvying up of fig leaves in Eden. Both genders have survived this long so I guess something works. Don't get me wrong, there are men who just "adore" kittens, shopping, and gossip and there are women who are rabid sports fanatics, love movies with explosions, and are addicted to pornography. However, in general, a woman should not be surprised when she wants to show you dozens of pictures of her puppy's first bath and you recoil in horror. Would she be as enthusiastic about sudden-death overtime?

That's a mistake we both make. We figure that if WE find it interesting then others should find it interesting. We look at women as if they should respond as men do and vice versa. Women aren't bitchy - they're just women acting like women have always acted. Men are not immature - we're just acting like men have always acted. Who is to say men are immature? Women? That is beyond ridiculous and just plain stupid. Women are bitches? According to whom? Men? Who are we to say when women "act like men" they are bitches? We both have gender-bashing blood on our hands and we are both equally guilty.

However, we should not deride our differences, in fact, we should celebrate them. That certainly doesn't mean we can't cross over to the other side and indulge in what the opposite sex typically enjoys. Just let the other person voluntarily cross that bridge and don't try to drag him or her by their hair to your side. The next time I am cornered with a girl wanting to show me pictures of her stupid little dog and ask "isn't that cute?," I'll dig out an old Bob Gibson baseball card and ask her, "Look, in 1968, wouldn't you say Gibson's ERA was one of the modern era's most impressive pitching records?" It might bring the conversation to a thankfully brief halt.

Then, while watching her walk away, I can lower my gaze slightly and say, "yep, that sure is cute."

Tele-bitchin'

It's time to take another pitchforked lunge at a common enemy. That enemy is television. It sure as hell is common and it is my enemy. Time was when you could flip on the tube and be treated to any number of decent television programs. We didn't have cable, VCRs, or...

...hold it a second. No time for meandering. Here is my beef: There are too damned many pretty people on television. I was driving around and decided to get a bite to eat at a local hash-sling joint. When I dine alone, I want something to read. Hell, when I dine with others, sometimes I'd rather have something to read. I went to the convenience store to pick up some harmless piece of periodical nonsense. The selection was slim. I read the newspaper earlier that day, so my choices were either hot rod magazines with a vacant blonde bending over a souped-up Chevy, stupid teen girl magazines with the Queen of the Idiot Clowns, Jessica Simpson, on the cover, or Entertainment Weekly (EW). When faced with choosing the lesser evil, you still choose evil. My evil was EW.

I cruised into the restaurant and into the thoroughly uninteresting booth by the window. To my horror, when I looked at the cover of the magazine, it was the Fall Television Preview DOUBLE issue. Just think, I could have been looking at chrome manifolds or learning about where Nick likes to be scratched. So, I took several deep breaths and opened it up.

I was expecting bad. What I saw was worse. Is it me or is every non-reality show about cops, doctors, lawyers or sitcoms where the father is a freaking idiot, the wife is the corner-of-the-mouth voice of reason, and the multiple wise-cracking kids are thoroughly unfunny? I don't know about you, but the last people I want to be rubbing elbows with at the strip club as we're doing body shots off of dancers are cops, doctors or lawyers. I am sure there are some of each who are certified hell-raisers, but, in general, I'd much rather hang out with guys who don't have a professional code of ethics - and I especially don't want to throw in my lot with people who continually BREAK their codes of ethics when they're off the job.

And where in God's name are the ugly people? See, this was my problem with "Friends." I need to see ugly people on a show for me to buy into it even a LITTLE bit. That's why M*A*S*H, Cheers and Northern Exposure worked for me. Ugly people. Not vomit-inducing ugly, but at least not the kind that people would be fantasizing about while they're in the bath tub.

All the men on television now have to be steely-eyed, slightly-unshaven, muscular hunks. All the women have to be tall, leggy, sexual bitches who always "get what they want." EVERYONE! Even the ugly people are several levels more attractive than you or I could ever dream to be. I can see the pitch meetings, "It'll involve a family of lawyers/cops/doctors. One will be the rebel, another the practical joker, still another the straight-laced one with a dark secret, and the fourth will be the strong, sensitive one. Oh, and of course, they have to all be drop-dead gorgeous."

How breathtakingly boring.

I want to think that television studios are complete jackasses for continually putting garbage like this on the airwaves, but, they're just sating the appetites of an even more idiotic American public. Yes, the American public is full of complete idiots who watch shows like this. Then again, if the networks just went with good programming and didn't try to pander to the lowest common denominator by emphasizing story over aesthetics, then...

...get a hold of yourself, man! You're talking nonsense! We all know that will never happen. Fully 75% of those beautiful people have zero talent whatsoever. They could always earn some scratch by hiring themselves out as mannequins for cut-rate dry goods stores. At least we could buy into believing that

Commercials for these shows are a joke, too. The MTV-style editing is annoying and unnecessary. It's not new or cutting-edge anymore, and it does not heighten our desire to watch the show. If anything, it turns us off from ever wanting to tune in. Sometimes there is a too-serious-to-be-taken-seriously voice-over person who cannot possibly buy into what he's saying and the whole thing wraps up with the ensemble cast all copping that laughable "tough-guy" and "tough-chick" pose. You know the one where they pull the arrogant bitch-face and dramatically cross their arms like it is supposed to impress us. Wow.

Can't we just have a show where people look like us - stupid, ugly and out of shape? Well, besides game shows, that is. Mr. (and Ms.) Television Studio Executive, America is only as stupid as you make us, and right now, you are the Prometheus of stupidity-as-entertainment in America. If every act of destruction is indeed an act of creation, then please destruct us with a little more class.

(I actually held back in my rant, otherwise I could have really been ugly.)

(But then, I'd never get to be on TV.)