I'm a slob.
No, I'm not one of those beer-commercial bozos who champions his maleness by going to the grocery store in his pajama bottoms, scratching rude parts of his body and unleashing wave after wave of lunch meat belches so foul they part the hair of the person ahead of him. Instead, I'm the guy who slowly devolved into waking up amongst the McDonald's wrappers, ATM receipts and orphaned pen caps asking, "Where did all this crap come from?" Hey, I'm not proud of it. I survive amongst it, I manage around it, but I'm surely not proud of it. I am anything but metrosexual. The closest I come to being Metro is the fact I've seen Fritz Lang's classic movie, Metropolis, a half dozen times. Toss in the fact I've taken public transportation to and from New York City and enjoy the occasional bagel with my coffee and you have the sum total of anything in my life even remotely resembling "Metro."
Why am I telling you this? For the obvious fact that I went clothes shopping today. Wait, let me amend that. I bought a shirt and a pair of khakis. I don't "shop" - I buy. I see something I like and buy it. No trying it on, no waiting around for sales, no driving around to different stores to compare prices. Nope. It's get in, get out and go the hell home.
"Will you just get on with the damned story?!?!?!?!?!"
Yeah, ok. So, there I was in the store, and I'm sizing up some polos when an odd thing happened. I noticed that the only shirts I was even considering were dark. I asked myself why that was. Then it hit me. I'm not buying shirts for how they look; I'm buying shirts based solely on their ability to cover up food stains.
A little history here:
I am the world's messiest consumer of food. I'm a full body-contact eater. If you can cook it, I can wear it. I am the unofficial record holder for the greatest variety of foods worn in a lifetime. Now here's the part where you chime in and say, "Well, I always seem to be wearing white when I have pasta and I never fail to get some little spots of sauce on me." Amateur. I wore a personal pan pizza WITH crazy bread down the front of my shirt. I got french toast in my hair. And once, I ended up with the entire Country Buffet salad bar in my front pocket - even in the useless little mini-pocket. One day at work, a co-worker came up to me and said, "Hey, Chief, you've got some mustard on your shirt." I looked all over and couldn't see anything. "No, it's right there." He pointed to my shoulder. I looked over and there it was. How the hell did I get mustard on my shoulder? ON MY SHOULDER! Like Sherlock Holmes, I reconstructed my lunch. I had a ham and cheese sandwich on a kaiser roll. Apparently, when I bit into the sandwich with the force of a 100-megaton bomb, a fissure in the top part of the roll opened up just enough to allow a stream of mustard to gracefully arc its way into the air and crash land onto my shoulder. I have ruined more shirts, trousers, suits, ties - you name it - than any 10 people you could name. You're probably asking, "What are you, a complete idiot?" No, I'm still paying on the installment plan.
Anyway, back to the clothing store. Look, I know I'm nowhere near the shape I was in the salad days of my life, but the clothes racks were so close together I felt like I was stuck in the gears of some evil puppet master's voodoo clock while trying to navigate my way through the store. I'm not joking. Had it not been for the sales staff, I'm sure I would have been taken down in the 20% Off aisle and by daybreak my bones would be whitening beneath the Dockers display.
All in all, though, I seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. No more buying clothes for their style. For me, it's function over form, and that function is to not be walking through the hallways at work with the soaked-in remains of an errant spoonful of chili in the shape of Greenland visible on my chest.
I must say, I like the new shirt. I just put it on and it fits, so I'm happy and all is right with the world.
Hey, gotta run. The pizza's here.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Raisin D'Etre
When I was about 11 or 12, I bit into a Chocodile.
Not familiar with Chocodiles? Basically, they are Twinkies covered in that industrial chocolate only Hostess knows how to make. And they are good. Damned good. But, on this occasion, after I bit into this particular Chocodile, I was met with a spectacular, mouth-gasming...nothing. No cream. Nuttin'. Nada. "That's odd," I thought. So, in typical Bobby Brady fashion, I shrugged my shoulders and went in for another bite. Again nothing. By now I was a good 1/3 of the way through my treat and the sugary, brain-shocking cream was nowhere to be found. I ate my way all the way through that damned thing and the scoreboard read:
Bogus Chocodile - 1
Unhappy Boy - 0
I was steamed. I didn't have enough money to buy another Chocodile, but even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered. Someone was going to have to pay. So, I broke out the #2 pencil, a sheet of lined paper and went to work writing the company a letter saying how displeased I was to have been duped out of my cream filling. I mentioned that since I was so young, if they planned on having me as a customer into my disposable income years they had better hop to it and right this wrong. About a month later, I received a letter from the company apologizing for the error along with a coupon for a free box of any Hostess product I wanted from my local store. Justice was served, birds were chirping, and songs of "Kumbaya" spread across the land.
The Chocodile story was actually the last thought that came to my head as I sat down to write this, however, but in the grand scheme of things, I suppose I didn't skid off tangent as much as I originally thought. It all started the other day when I picked up a pack of Raisinettes. There I was, happily chowing down on a box when I noticed than one of my Raisinette pebbles didn't have a raisin in it! It was void of raisin! It was a raisinless, anti-raisin, raisin-lacking Raisinette! I was crushed.
Immediately, I started to go through my mental Rolodex in hopes of finding other food disappointments to help me put this whole charade into perspective. I thought about how befuddled I was as a youngster when I found a Cheerio inside a box of Franken Berry. I'd look at it like a primate eyeballing a radio knob, periodically sticking it in my mouth and pulling it out to see if it was edible. I was certain that the Cheerios silo didn't cross streams with the Franken Berry silo, so I chalked it up to aliens and popped that sucker into my mouth.
Don't tell me you don't get the same mental hiccup when you order the Whopper Jr. meal and find an onion ring in your french fries. You stare at it, try to communicate with it, reason with it, all in all ignoring the fact that it probably just fell into your fries while under the heat lamp. If you ordered onion rings, you'd just shoot it into your maw before you could say "Jack Robinson." Of course, it's inevitable in the reverse scenario that you would find a renegade french fry in your order of onion rings and resume your ballet of primitive head tilts.
It's probably no surprise to you that I, like many Earthlings, enjoy the occasional packet of M&Ms. Yeah, yeah, I know I mentioned Raisinettes earlier, but put away the floss and the clucking tongue for five minutes, ok? Anyway, back to the M&Ms. The M&M thing is usually divided into two camps - those who prefer plain and those who prefer peanut. I'm firmly entrenched in the Plain M&Ms tent. However, from time to time, I'll get a wild hair up my cinnamon ring for Peanut M&Ms. Now this next part is for the Plain M&Ms folks since the Peanut M&Ms people are already very familiar with what I am going to say. There is a certain way to eat Peanut M&Ms, and that is to bite into the candy around the middle and gently chew the chocolate around the peanut and lift, leaving the exposed, denuded peanut half. Then, you chew the remaining chocolate off the peanut and flick the goober into your mouth. Pretty simple, right? Well, it is. And I am certain the world's population of Peanut M&M eaters would be happy eating their candy until rapture if it wasn't for one thing. That's right, you guessed it - the booger peanut. You know what I'm talking about, partner. It's that one sort of dark peanut that, when you bite into it, all sorts of terrible nastiness overwhelms your mouth. You're reaching for napkins, wiping your tongue on the sleeve of your shirt, swallowing fire - anything to get that knee-buckling taste out of your mouth. At that point, the party is over, the keg is kicked, and you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. It's the food version of farting on the first date.
But, let's not give ALL the grief to George Washington Carver's favorite legume. Does anyone remember Upton Sinclair? Anyone? No? Oh, ok, you in the back there.
"Um, he wrote that song "Upton Girl" for Billy Joel or something?"
"Sit down."
Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle," which, while taking on such topics as Socialism and poverty, he tells of meat packing factories where animal parts and people (PEOPLE!) fell into the tanks and were sold to the unsuspecting public. The book came out in 1906 and since that time the Food & Drug Administration has done a better job of keeping Chuck from being Ground Chuck. Why am I telling you all this? I am telling you this because every time I bite into a damn sloppy joe, I inevitably find something small and bony NOT named Kate Moss bouncing between my molars. It's stultifying (go ahead, grab your dictionary; I'll still be here) and gives me the full body gross-out shake. After that, who wants to go tucking into the rest of the sandwich? And dammit, I LOVE sloppy joes...at least until I get to the shin bone or whatever the hell it was I bit into. Ever have chicken salad? Great stuff, huh? How about when you hit that piece of rubbery gristle or whatnot? I've given the biggest girlish yelps when I hit that sandbar in my sandwich. Not only is the sandwich ruined, but, I'm walking away from the chips and the pickle spear, as well.
It's just as well. None of the foods I mentioned above have any real nutritional value. Some of them have negative nutritional value, as far as I'm concerned. But, hey, if I didn't eat sloppy joes, Franken Berry and Raisinettes at least at some point in my life, then you wouldn't have such neat stories from me. I need SOMETHING to write about.
After all, it's my Raisin d'etre.
Not familiar with Chocodiles? Basically, they are Twinkies covered in that industrial chocolate only Hostess knows how to make. And they are good. Damned good. But, on this occasion, after I bit into this particular Chocodile, I was met with a spectacular, mouth-gasming...nothing. No cream. Nuttin'. Nada. "That's odd," I thought. So, in typical Bobby Brady fashion, I shrugged my shoulders and went in for another bite. Again nothing. By now I was a good 1/3 of the way through my treat and the sugary, brain-shocking cream was nowhere to be found. I ate my way all the way through that damned thing and the scoreboard read:
Bogus Chocodile - 1
Unhappy Boy - 0
I was steamed. I didn't have enough money to buy another Chocodile, but even if I did, it wouldn't have mattered. Someone was going to have to pay. So, I broke out the #2 pencil, a sheet of lined paper and went to work writing the company a letter saying how displeased I was to have been duped out of my cream filling. I mentioned that since I was so young, if they planned on having me as a customer into my disposable income years they had better hop to it and right this wrong. About a month later, I received a letter from the company apologizing for the error along with a coupon for a free box of any Hostess product I wanted from my local store. Justice was served, birds were chirping, and songs of "Kumbaya" spread across the land.
The Chocodile story was actually the last thought that came to my head as I sat down to write this, however, but in the grand scheme of things, I suppose I didn't skid off tangent as much as I originally thought. It all started the other day when I picked up a pack of Raisinettes. There I was, happily chowing down on a box when I noticed than one of my Raisinette pebbles didn't have a raisin in it! It was void of raisin! It was a raisinless, anti-raisin, raisin-lacking Raisinette! I was crushed.
Immediately, I started to go through my mental Rolodex in hopes of finding other food disappointments to help me put this whole charade into perspective. I thought about how befuddled I was as a youngster when I found a Cheerio inside a box of Franken Berry. I'd look at it like a primate eyeballing a radio knob, periodically sticking it in my mouth and pulling it out to see if it was edible. I was certain that the Cheerios silo didn't cross streams with the Franken Berry silo, so I chalked it up to aliens and popped that sucker into my mouth.
Don't tell me you don't get the same mental hiccup when you order the Whopper Jr. meal and find an onion ring in your french fries. You stare at it, try to communicate with it, reason with it, all in all ignoring the fact that it probably just fell into your fries while under the heat lamp. If you ordered onion rings, you'd just shoot it into your maw before you could say "Jack Robinson." Of course, it's inevitable in the reverse scenario that you would find a renegade french fry in your order of onion rings and resume your ballet of primitive head tilts.
It's probably no surprise to you that I, like many Earthlings, enjoy the occasional packet of M&Ms. Yeah, yeah, I know I mentioned Raisinettes earlier, but put away the floss and the clucking tongue for five minutes, ok? Anyway, back to the M&Ms. The M&M thing is usually divided into two camps - those who prefer plain and those who prefer peanut. I'm firmly entrenched in the Plain M&Ms tent. However, from time to time, I'll get a wild hair up my cinnamon ring for Peanut M&Ms. Now this next part is for the Plain M&Ms folks since the Peanut M&Ms people are already very familiar with what I am going to say. There is a certain way to eat Peanut M&Ms, and that is to bite into the candy around the middle and gently chew the chocolate around the peanut and lift, leaving the exposed, denuded peanut half. Then, you chew the remaining chocolate off the peanut and flick the goober into your mouth. Pretty simple, right? Well, it is. And I am certain the world's population of Peanut M&M eaters would be happy eating their candy until rapture if it wasn't for one thing. That's right, you guessed it - the booger peanut. You know what I'm talking about, partner. It's that one sort of dark peanut that, when you bite into it, all sorts of terrible nastiness overwhelms your mouth. You're reaching for napkins, wiping your tongue on the sleeve of your shirt, swallowing fire - anything to get that knee-buckling taste out of your mouth. At that point, the party is over, the keg is kicked, and you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. It's the food version of farting on the first date.
But, let's not give ALL the grief to George Washington Carver's favorite legume. Does anyone remember Upton Sinclair? Anyone? No? Oh, ok, you in the back there.
"Um, he wrote that song "Upton Girl" for Billy Joel or something?"
"Sit down."
Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle," which, while taking on such topics as Socialism and poverty, he tells of meat packing factories where animal parts and people (PEOPLE!) fell into the tanks and were sold to the unsuspecting public. The book came out in 1906 and since that time the Food & Drug Administration has done a better job of keeping Chuck from being Ground Chuck. Why am I telling you all this? I am telling you this because every time I bite into a damn sloppy joe, I inevitably find something small and bony NOT named Kate Moss bouncing between my molars. It's stultifying (go ahead, grab your dictionary; I'll still be here) and gives me the full body gross-out shake. After that, who wants to go tucking into the rest of the sandwich? And dammit, I LOVE sloppy joes...at least until I get to the shin bone or whatever the hell it was I bit into. Ever have chicken salad? Great stuff, huh? How about when you hit that piece of rubbery gristle or whatnot? I've given the biggest girlish yelps when I hit that sandbar in my sandwich. Not only is the sandwich ruined, but, I'm walking away from the chips and the pickle spear, as well.
It's just as well. None of the foods I mentioned above have any real nutritional value. Some of them have negative nutritional value, as far as I'm concerned. But, hey, if I didn't eat sloppy joes, Franken Berry and Raisinettes at least at some point in my life, then you wouldn't have such neat stories from me. I need SOMETHING to write about.
After all, it's my Raisin d'etre.
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