"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.)

Essence of Style

I have had some interesting conversations about my writing style. I think it's funny that anyone thinks I have a style at all. Writing came to me almost by mistake, and, like a lot of people who are brutally honest about their creative endeavors, I don't regard myself very highly. However, I don't take that as a burden. I take it as a freedom. I tried copying the writing styles of many different writers - everyone from Ernest Hemingway to Alexander Pope to Nathaniel Hawthorne to Edgar Allen Poe to Bill Bryson to Andy Rooney. It was a fun exercise to see if I could try to capture the essence of their styles. I also realized that I could not truly write like any of them to fool the public, but it helped me shake off the nettles of what I thought writing should be. I decided that, hey, I don't WANT to write like them. It would be like toiling in obscurity as a tribute band to some pop music star with nothing but the pity and disdain of my friends as a receipt for my efforts.

As I have mentioned before, I was told to "just write, young man!" Just sit my ass down and start typing. Something worthwhile will eventually come blasting out of your fingers. So I did. I sat my ass down and just started writing. I like to call it "Improv Writing." Just take the smallest shade of an idea and run naked with it. Some have told me that it goes against the convention of structured or proper writing. Well, that's kind of my point. It's NOT supposed to be like anything else. I also am thoroughly convinced that many, many people out there write in the same fashion. How refreshing! It's exciting to whip your literary steed into a full gallop and then just get the hell out of the way and let it go wherever it wants to go.

I once had a professor in college by the name of W. D. Snodgrass. It was Poetry 351 or something, and you had to submit works to be able to be accepted into the class in the first place. Personally, I cannot stand poetry - never could. But, I took it for two reasons: 1) I needed it for my English major, and 2) I wanted to explore ALL disciplines of writing in order to improve myself as a writer. Confused? Let me paint it this way: I cannot stand rap music. I won't share my reasons, but it's probably not what you think they would be for a white, 40-ish male. Yet, I think rap is important for music as a whole. Without rap, music would still have a much more narrow sluice into our lives. I am not much for modern music, but some of the modern music I do like owes a debt to the expansion of the canvas that rap has created.

Now, back to the wonderfully-named Mr. Snodgrass.

Do you remember those scientists that Gary Larson used to draw for his outstanding comic "The Far Side"? well, he looked like that. Tall, bald on top, with a mesmerizing shock of grayish-white hair that circled his head like a thick, bushy reef. Stately spectacles, gloriously full beard, corduroys, and he drove a wood-paneled station wagon to boot. Plus, he had a booming voice that commanded respect and conveyed compassion at the same time. He was a force of nature. Oh, and he also happened to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1959 for "Heart's Needle". This man came to the classroom with credentials. Yet, none of that impressed me as much as something he said on the first day of class. My words won't do him justice, but, to paraphrase, he hit us with this:

"If you do all of the assignments and complete them on time, you will get a B in my class...I am not here to tell you if your poetry is good or bad. I am only one man with one opinion. I am not one to judge whether something is good or not."

It went something like that. Now, writers are some of the most egotistical, back-stabbing, jealous people on this planet. Well, that pretty much goes for most people in any artistic profession. But, here was a frigging Pulitzer Prize-winning poet sublimating his well-earned chops for the betterment of a classroom of people who can't wait to get back to their dorm rooms and binge drink themselves into the morning. He didn't just impress me as a professor, he impressed me as a man, and I've never forgotten what he did for us, and for me.

It was being armed with that message that really helped propel me to write more frequently. I am not a writer. I am a man who writes. I don't care if I write a hundred books, I will never be a writer. Writers generally have a clue, or a concept, of what they are doing. Some write the endings before they write the beginnings of their books and just find ways to connect the wires in between. I just sit down and start typing. Where the story goes is completely up to the story itself. This piece here started with just a shadow of an idea. For the cynics and critics out there, here is a free shot at me.

I've always wanted to meet regularly with like-minded people for a sort of Improv-Writing workshop. Each meeting would have assignments to be completed at the meeting. For example, if there are six people in the group, everyone suggests one noun. That's six nouns, total, for those of you scoring at home. The assignment? Write a paragraph or two that contains all six nouns. Or maybe a poem with all six, or a song. Maybe get into groups of two and write a skit that contains all six nouns. Read them in front of the group and everyone votes on the best. Nerdy? Sure. But, one person's Improv-Writing group is another's Renaissance Festival or Drum Circle. Hey (hey), you (you), get offa my cloud.

So, if you have an idea, no matter how big or how small, for God's sake, write it down. Does it matter that no one else may see it? Does it matter that it may only be one sentence long? Photographs and videos capture moments in time - visual moments in time, a time that will never grace this good Earth ever again. Once it's experienced, it's already passed. Images are the hearts of memory. The documented words that you put to paper, computer screen, or whatever your chosen conveyance may be, is the essence of the soul of memory. Never miss a chance to put both to work for you. And do it with style.

Yours.

Tom, Dick and Harry Potter

I might have mentioned before that I am not a big fan of fiction. If I haven't, I am now. It's always nice to read about constructed and contrived characters and circumstances, but I'd much rather see it on the big screen while munching on criminally large handfuls of Raisinettes. I've always found facts much more interesting than anything that could spring from the imagination of a writer - no matter how talented that writer is or was. The fact that some of the most bizarre things have actually occurred, and cannot be dismissed with a wave of the remote control, well, it makes my short hairs dance.

Now that we're sweeping the crumbs of my preamble off the table, I'm going to reverse field 180 degrees. Why? Well, because I can. Also, because I am human, I am a living, breathing hypocrite whose actions counteract my beliefs from time to time to serve my short-term interests. What is the source of this paradigm-in-the-rough? Harry Potter. There. I've said it. Harry freaking Potter. I am a fan. A big fan. A really big fan. Not a really, really big fan, but fan enough to know the difference between Diagon Alley and Privet Drive. The stories are extremely well-written, the characters are well-developed (and continue to develop in impressive, yet logical, style), and the atmospheres J.K. Rowling has created, well, who among us who have read the stories and/or watched the movies hasn't imagined taking up residence at Hogwarts in some capacity? To those muggles on the outside looking in who have no idea what I am talking about, go and watch one of the movies, or, better yet, pick up one of the books. If you lack the childlike imagination to immerse yourself in either the books or the movies, I pity the cynicism that has co-opted your minds.

However, I come not to braise those Caesars, but to serve them on toast points with a Hollandaise sauce. If I was a child and reading the ballast-heavy novels or watching with moon-eyed wonder the spectacle of a Harry Potter movie at the cinema, I would have completely bought into the fantasy of REALLY being able to cast spells, fly, and have cute little Hermoine Granger rob me of my lunch money. It would be slightly similar to when Dungeons & Dragons came out when it was cool - for all of about three months - to show up at your friend's house with a pouch of 20-sided dice, a homemade sword and Rick Wakeman's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" album under your arm. You'd spend the evening arguing that there was no way your +3 arrow didn't kill the bugbear since you had the "initiative" and were able to get off two hits per round. To this day, I have no idea what a bugbear is; however, introduce one in a Harry Potter story and I'm naming my first three kids "Bugbear."

One thing that I'll never be able to get past, however, are when our heroes are walking through dark, strange places with sheets of cobwebs in their way. And it's not just in the Harry Potter stories. Look at any classic horror movie where someone just HAS to investigate the vampire's basement - spider webs are everywhere, like some sort of silky, sticky gauntlet. Our heroes think nothing of ripping through the webs to get to their obsessive destination. Me? I walk into a spider web in the morning on the way to work and I break into what can only be described as a combination of demonic possession and St. Vitus's Dance. To the casual observer, I look like a water bug in a popcorn machine, arms flailing, swatting at my head, and praying out loud that the spider in question, which probably weighs less than half a gram, won't spin me into a cocoon and steadily suck me dry by the time my co-workers are reaching for their second cups of coffee. If you want to really get to know someone, there are three ways to cut to the chase: see them naked, watch them throw up, or observe them when they walk into a giant spider web. Of course, if you see all three of these actions at the same time, legend has it that you can look into their soul.

But, I digress.

Ever lose yourself in a story where you emerge wanting to fight space aliens, rip off the clothes of an imaginary lover, or make the world's best egg salad sandwich*? It's pretty intoxicating. Dog-earring a chapter or walking out of the nuclear chill of a movie theater can put a powerful glide in your stride. Your mind races along, levitated by still-smoldering thoughts of tan-chested Latin lovers or charred carcasses of alien invaders. You not only want to read or see more of it, you want to become part of the story. Hell, you want to BE the story. It's heady and dizzying, bringing you to heights of intellectual, spiritual, and primal orgasm. Blood pumping, teeth gritting, toes curling... Lines have blurred, you are one with the story. Dry throated and sweaty-palmed, the ecstasy of synergy overwhelms your senses...

...then a telemarketer calls and you're left cold and void, an empty husk of the salacious person you were just moments earlier. Reality has a way of knocking your dork into the dirt. Good books, like good movies, can make us revisit those passions over and over again. I used to read "The Catcher in the Rye" every year and I have probably watched "The Godfather" often enough to emcee an OCD convention. It is only the book that grabs me by the pleats that bears rereading. Almost always, for me at least, that book is a work of non-fiction. It is a rare piece of literary confection that keeps me coming back for more. You can have your tired Tom Sawyers or your pulp private dicks - I'll take my Harry Potter every time.

* - All apologies to "What's Up Tiger Lily?"

Special Delivery

Don't ask. It was a wonderful day in my world. I'll spare you the sex and violence and just tell you that my car broke down. I've taken it to the same place several hundred times over the past four months and something is always going wrong. It's worse than chasing the March Hare down the rabbit hole - more like trying to grab liquid mercury with boxing gloves. My car is the heavyweight champion of mechanical malingerers - so why is it me that ends up with the headaches?

I came home and dealt with this latest unfortunate expense in the only way I knew how. I took a nap. It was one of those guilt-free naps where you know you have nothing to do later that day other than check the scores on ESPN, order a pizza, and maybe change the toilet paper roll. Speaking of ordering pizza, that's exactly what I did after I peeled myself off the bed. I saw a commercial where they put an entire side of beef on a pizza - and you can get the other side added for $2 more. Seeing as the only contributions I made to the food nutrition pyramid so far today were some chips and something called a watermelon cocktail while my car was getting a shiatsu, I decided to put a bullet into the chamber and called my local franchised pizza chain. I gave my order and address and repeat my name about a dozen times ("Um, that's "K" as in "kinky", "E" as in "edible", "V" as in "virginal flesh"..."). They seldom ask me again after I spell it out like that. I don't eat onions, mushrooms or peppers. I just don't. Sure, I may have French onion soup, but at least the onions don't taste like onions there. Something about the texture and acrid spray of a freshly-crunched onion ranks a few slots below ipecac for me. Peppers? Well, there was a summer - one summer - where I went on a pepper-eating binge. Came out of nowhere. I was gobbling jalapenos and guzzling hot sauce like I was competing for a position on the Olympic team. Then, I met a habanero. My eyes watered and I wiped them with my fingers. They swelled shut like walnuts. Summer of the Pepper was over. As far as mushrooms are concerned, I won't eat anything that grows naked in cow feces without the benefit of a skin or husk - especially not fungus that grows naked in cow feces.

Now, for pizza toppings I do like, well, color me carnivorous. The Flesh-Eaters Pizza definitely appeals to me. It has everything the average American glutton could want: steak, ground beef, pepperoni, chicken, mutton, lobster, bacon, fried cuttlefish, ass...pretty much any once-breathing animal tissue. However, I'm not a big sausage fan (insert sophomoric snicker here). Those little caraway seeds, or whatever the hell you call them, are disgusting. Biting into one of them tastes like that piece of chicken that was lodged between your molars over the weekend. You know the one that you tried to dislodge with your tongue several hundred times but couldn't, so you used pen caps, envelope corners and elastic from a tube sock to pry it loose. I always have to watch myself when I tell the girl taking my order to "hold the sausage" when I order the Flesh-Eaters Pizza in case she makes a call and two goliaths in dark suits come banging down my door and make me register as a sex offender.

My success rate for ordering hovers around 75% - that is to say that my order gets screwed up about 25% of the time. I'm not sure if I am above or below the national average, but feel free to conduct your own study. 90% of the time the order is snafu-ed by, you guessed it, onions, mushrooms and/or peppers. It gets to the point where I have to say when I am ordering, "Yes, I'd like to order the enormo-pizza with ham and black olives but no onions, mushrooms or peppers because I am allergic and it will cause me to die a little. Then, I would have to sue your company, and you personally, so that you will only have enough money to fashion clothes out of dryer lint. Now I'm going to put my attorney on the line to get a statement." Sometimes you have to play hardball to get what you ordered.

And talk about quick delivery! "Yes, we'll be there in 45 minutes to an hour - or however long it takes for our driver to stop by his girlfriend's apartment, get a quick handjob and bong hit and finally make it to your house as the sun starts peeking over the horizon." By this time, your hunger has taken hold of you and you're no longer a thinking, rational human being - you're an eating machine. Cheesesteak is cold? Hell with it. French fries soggy? No problem. Pizza cheese whipped violently to one side of the pie so that it resembles the face of a Dick Tracy villain? Dealt with. As the great philosopher,Socrates once said, "Pizza is like sex - when it's hot it's good. When it's cold, it's still good." I always was a sucker for the classics.

I'm sure the life of a delivery person is a bit interesting. You get to travel, eat for free, and have interesting people shove guns in your face. Also, let us not forget the bountiful opportunities to have mammoth-chested hot girls answering the door naked and telling you they don't have money for a tip but asking if there is anything they can do in place of one. Now, if food delivery people don't have that carrot on the stick, I've been watching the wrong movies. It's not a bad way to make a few extra quid if you need the money or just have a jones for driving fast and helping yourself to someone else's french fries. Just keep your tank filled, your muffler noisy and your music loud.

And keep it out of the shop.

It's a Jungle Out There

"I have a dream..."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I had one, too. Last night. No, it wasn't as unifying or noble as the great Dr. King's, but it rousted my psychic antennae just the same. Whereas I believe MLK, Jr. was referring more to a daydream, since they are less prone to the rogue crackling synapses than an according-to-Hoyle REM dream, I am referring to the surreal McCoy. Sure, I've had the dreams with the floating gazebos, talking squirrels and gothic Eastern European castles that house an unseen evil. I've also had the pleasure of the universal reveries of:

- Being back in school. This one is always a crowd-pleaser. You are back in high school or college. You forgot your locker combination, you don't know if you have the right textbooks, you have a test in God-knows-what subject in five minutes...and, you're buck-ass naked. Let the good times roll.

- Being in your underwear or completely naked. I was going to type "nude," but there is a quasi-elegance to the word "nude" that "naked" just doesn't possess. You don't really notice you're naked until someone in your dream points it out. Then, you rapidly attach whatever palms and arms you can over the naughty bits and shrink down to reduce as much surface area as possible. You end up looking like Pete Rose crouched over home plate or Quasimodo with a hernia. But, beware, ladies, you have more areas to cover and you simply do not have enough hands, so you sacrifice your hineys (yep, that's how I'm spelling it) to the leers of the faceless men whose eyeballs have descended upon you. Having underwear on in those situations doesn't really help much and the embarrassment meter is pinned to "mortified." Nudists and exhibitionists tend to get a free pass here.

- The flying and falling rigmarole. Stop me if you've had one or both. That's what I thought. 'Nuff said.

My laptop sits conveniently about an arm's length away from my bed. I wanted to write an email to someone but I was feeling a bit testy, so I decided to cool off first by sneaking 40 winks. Since it was near the end of the prime time television schedule, 40 winks became a full-fledged Sleep-a-palooza, complete with requisite drooling, heavy machinery snoring, and sleep lines etched so deeply in my face they resembled wood-cut art. I woke up, sent my email and went back to sleep. That's it? Yep, that's it...except that it wasn't. I woke up to realize that I only dreamed I sent that email. I shook off the cobwebs, gave myself one of those "oh, you kid" laughs, and really sent the email. Well, I'd like to say it ended there, but it didn't. Turns out, yep, that THAT was a dream, too, and now I was REALLY awake. So, I sent the email, only to wake up and find... Well, I am sure you can see where this is heading. This happened about 7-8 times last night and each time I was DAMNED sure I sent that email.

By the time I actually woke up, looking like Mr. Heat Miser and feeling like a living, breathing practical joke, I decided to go on the back deck and drink in the cool night air to clear my senses. It was dark. Most things are at 5 AM. But, it was a dead dark, like I wasn't supposed to be there, like I had wandered into the Dexter Lake Club with Boone, Otter and Flounder. I looked up at the sky, and in between thick, cottony spears of nimbus clouds were the stars, regal and aloof. They weren't twinkling benignly as they seem late at night. No, these were morning stars, before the dawn. They were crisp and bold, with sharply-defined patterns and disciplines. Over there, Orion, stoic and confident - a prima donna. Right there are the Seven Sisters, gossiping and giggling at the audacity of my curious gaze. Way over there is Cassiopeia, matronly and dignified, sort of like the Maggie Smith of the skies. They were watching me as intently as I was them. It was a John Ford sky, a Sergio Leone sky. It was brusque, heartless and immediate...and it was magnificent.

It was the first day of September, well, technically the second day, and the heat waves had eased off the pedal a bit. However, the humidity was the smart-ass kid brother to the bully, so even 82 degrees felt miserable. This particular morning, however, I found both the heat and humidity asleep at the wheel. It was actually a tad nippy. I mean it wasn't burn-the-sofa cold, but in contrast to the recent weather, it was a jolt. I'm out there in my bare feet, mindful of carnivorous splinters and large spiders with many-angled legs. I saw this one spider earlier in the week crawl across the deck with all the subtlety of a belching cab driver at a Barbara Cartland book club meeting. Each leg seemed to have more angles than a schizophrenic grifter as it came barreling across the deck. It was huge. If enough people saw it, there would be legends spun about it at the local bait and tackle shop. a festival in its honor, complete with virgin sacrifices, and ultimately, a skip-rope rhyme fashioned around the beast:

"Big ol' spider was on the deck
Big ol' spider made me a wreck
It's big and hairy with big brown fangs
How many legs below it hangs...
One...two...three..."

Now, I'm no expert on spiders, and my double-dutch shoulder ain't what it used to be, but, I know mean and nasty when I see it. I'm standing there with an empty iced tea bottle in my hand, ready to strike, when the spider stops, looks at me and says, "We both know you're not going to do anything with that bottle. Just step back, chill out, and no one has to get hurt, cupcake." He had me. I was stuck. Bastard.

Well, getting back to last night, I didn't think to turn on the porch light, and whereas I could see the stars better, I couldn't see all the creepy little nasties scurrying past my feet. I was a sitting duck. Spiders have fangs, some insects have wings, rhinos have horns, heck even the platypus has a poison spur behind its heal. We have nothing. We're just soft pink creatures with no natural defense except the ability to offend others with a well-worn insult by Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Forget about what you read about Hiawatha or Davy Crockett killing a bear at an age that a human being's feet cannot even reach the floor when sitting on the toilet. Forget about Samson overpowering the lion or S.D. "Special Delivery" Jones wrestling Andre the Giant. They're animals. They have natural physical weapons for attacking and defending. We have nothing except our brains and the all-too-useful knowledge of remembering to zig-zag when being chased by a crocodile. I don't care if you have buns of steel, abs of iron or a crotch of diamond. It doesn't matter if you are a hardbody or a champion bodybuilder. You're nothing in the world of nature. WE are nothing. In the animal kingdom, we're the wobbly balsa end-table in the sitting room amongst the solid oak, marble and rich Corinthian leather. If another species suddenly developed the advanced ability to think, reason, and mix a decent martini, we're done. Finished. Count your tips and head for the door because we suddenly became obsolete.

After all that heavy-duty thinking, I began to teeter a bit and decided to try finishing off the rest of the sleep I thought I was getting. So, I said good night to the stars, stepped gingerly around imaginary giant spiders, and went back inside. I opened the bedroom door, saw my bed smiling at me like a long-lost lover and I nodded knowingly.

I laid down, reached over, sent the email, and went back to sleep.

A Resonance of Emerald

I took a stroll outside the office today to burn off some mental energy. Although it was in the low 80s, the humidity made it feel a dozen degrees warmer. The air was dense and intrusive. It was like breathing through thick cotton gauze. The city was coming out of its curl as people navigated their way through the miasmatic morning, cardboard coffee cups guiding their every step. Across the way, a pair of daredevils were cleaning the windows on the 10th floor of a 30-story building with the casual ease of a couple of retirees enjoying a lazy game of chess in the park. Cigarette butts and ATM receipts rollicked and swirled against the curve of the curb as clumps of middle-aged women graciously collided at the double doors while complaining that their respective weekends were "too short."

I spent that time just kicking along, contemplating everything and nothing at all. Sometimes, just trying to come up with something to think about is laborious - especially when you go back into the office and realize that you just wasted a perfectly good time-wasting opportunity. And at that moment, something on the ground caught my eye. It was something that made me look twice and I stared at it while my brain flipped through my mental Rolo-Dex until I found a close match. It was a shimmering emerald color, but I could see it subtly expand and contract - and then twitch! My mind was still processing this new data when my mouth grabbed the reins and I blurted out, "It's a hummingbird!"

Have you ever seen a hummingbird in person? It's quite a vision. Emily Dickinson once described it as a "resonance of emerald/a rush of cochineal" - and I think that explains it nicely. Watch one of those little suckers hip-hop from one flower to another, wings motoring in a blinding buzz so fast that it appears to levitate. At first glance, it looks like a large bug, and indeed, it is no bigger than a cicada, though not nearly as menacing. When you do spot one, it's inevitable that you call, "Honey, come here, you gotta see this!" without once taking your eye off of it for fear that you will look back and your special little moment has taken wing elsewhere, leaving you with a bubble of enchantment lodged in your throat. Seeing a hummingbird will crease a smile on the coldest of faces.

This little fellow was just sitting on the asphalt, seemingly oblivious to the concrete and steel garden of the city. He was a chubby little bird about the size of a cotton ball, with wings splayed yet drooping to the ground. He looked like a character out of some children's book. Something along the lines of "Herbie the Hummingbird Goes to the Big City," his face cocking this way and that as if he saw something new with each twitch. I couldn't tell if he was injured or just taking five, but he would waddle an inch or two, quiver his wings a bit, tick-tock his head, and repeat this every now and again. He was well out of the path of walking traffic, so there was no chance of being accidentally stepped upon. I bid myself adieu and went back into the office.

Lunch time rolled around and I decided to go visit my new little friend. He was in the grass now, but seemed to be foundering. Still, I couldn't see any visible signs of injury. I'm not an animal expert, but he looked in good health - just winded, like he flew into a window and needed a while to shake off the cobwebs. I spent some time with him before going of to get a sandwich. I met a co-worker on the way back and my attention was diverted until I was sitting back at my desk and realized I never checked on my little buddy. I decided to go visit him later that afternoon and jack-knifed myself back into my work.

At about 3 PM I took the elevator down to check in on our little visitor. He wasn't there. I looked all over, making sure to watch my every step. His feathers had blended coolly into the green of the grass and he never made a peep the entire time I had known him. I thought that maybe a cat had seen him and snatched him up without even breaking stride. Maybe he tried to do too much too fast and fell into the sewer grate. I couldn't bear to think of my little buddy, helpless and alone in the dark, with all that is nasty and loathsome in the recesses of the underground. This happy, plucky little bird, shimmering and precious possibly being set upon by beings it would not understand. A true innocent.

But, part of me wants to believe that my tiny friend marshaled his energy and burst into the air, wings hammering into the humidity, hovering for a moment and then zipping along - ever mindful of navigating his way out of the city with his needle-like bill guiding his every move. I'll still go by that spot where I met my little friend and remember with a smile the brief moments we had together. I hope that I can see him again tomorrow.

But, even more so, I hope I do not.

A Matter of Convenience

I woke up today with a keen sense of nothing. I had the day all set out in front of me like a freshly stocked wedding buffet - before the bride's drunk uncle started picking through the bacon weiners. I had nothing to do and all day to do it. So, I threw myself out bed and started running. I decided to just hop in the car and let the day come to me. After grabbing a paper at the news stand and a slow death of a breakfast at a franchise restaurant, I decided to mosey on over to the regional convenience store.

Now, I'm not talking about 7-11 stores - I'm talking about those regional convenience stores that make out-of-towners question incredulously , "You mean you don't have a/an where you live?" Kind of makes you feel like you should apologize or plan a family vacation around it next year just so you can scratch it off the "Places I Need To Visit" list currently yellowing and curling under the "Hang in there, baby" cat magnet on your refrigerator. These are the same people who would ask if you've had a REAL beef tongue sandwich because "you haven't tasted real beef tongue until you've had some of OUR beef tongue - Texas style!" Personally, being french-kissed by my entree would appeal to me as much as slow dancing with my proctologist before being put under. That ain't sexy.

But, I digress.

I am an iced tea fiend. No, I don't have to register with local authorities when I move into your neighborhood - well, at least not yet, but my obsession with Arizona Iced Tea borders on the sexual. If I have less than 10 bottles in my fridge, I get the night sweats. I noticed that the good people at Arizona make many different types of iced tea: Ginseng, Sweet Tea, Green Tea, etc. I can understand that, but then they go too far. Orange tea? Peppermint tea? Coffee-flavored tea? Who drinks this superfluous nonsense? I only drink the lemon-flavored tea, yet, whenever I go to a convenience store, inevitably all of that fringe tea is clogging up the shelf space and my beloved lemon tea is out of stock. I am not a violent man, but at moments like that I would gladly teach the laws of supply and demand at gunpoint to the store manager.

So, I go into the local convenience store for my iced tea. I buy four bottles for $5.96. The cashier says, "That'll be $5.97, hon." I stall just long enough to give her one of those "Still working on that GED, aren't you?" looks. I give her a $10 bill and she gives me four singles and five pennies back. I felt like I stepped into some sort of parallel universe where Spock has a beard and I'm half expecting Candid Camera's Allen Funt to come bounding out of the display of tortilla chips saying, "We'd thought it'd be funny if..."

Ever have that one store you always go to as if you cannot avoid going in there? There's always that one person working the register that you hope you never get. It's either that leering borderline sex offender who tries to sniff the ladies and asks if they have a boyfriend, or it's the heavily-painted, turbo-smoking, good ol' gal who is so starved for romance that she just has to drop some sort of quasi-sexual comment every time she rings you up. Then, she'll erupt into a wheezing, semi-asthmatic trailer park backfire of a cough. She'll hand you your change with that "Call me sometime" desperate look in her eyes while you're high-stepping it out of there like a drum major on fire.

I would really hate skipping that store, though, because they have everything. There's a deli, iced coffee, and even a place to get hot dinners. Hell, I heard that next year they are putting in a mosh pit, birthing center and Cirque Du Soleil. In the future, you'll walk in the door and through some sort of laser membrane that will determine that you need cough drops, dry dog food and a jelly donut - and, magically, those items will be waiting for you at the cash register. Smoker? Marlboros waiting for you. Caffeine addict? Piping hot cup of joe. Man who still lives in his mom's basement? Wrestling magazine. Full service at full scale. Yet, I know I would have one question while visiting that convenience store of the future:

Why wouldn't I ever have condoms waiting for me at the register?

She Blinded Me With Science Fiction!

I always wanted to write a really super-terrific science fiction story. Something with cool weapons, freakishly grotesque aliens, and a protagonist who saves the universe from some tragic demise at the last second. Oh yeah, and he gets to bang some gorgeous extraterrestrial Vargas Girl on the hood of her Astro-Glider. Ahem.

The biggest obstacle with writing a science fiction story, besides the fact I have zero scientific knowledge of anything in the known universe, is that I can't stand science fiction. Everything seems to hinge on the word "somehow" - as in:

"Somehow the space-time continuum morphed into a cosmic boomerang. We are exactly one second in the past. Everything is deja vu."

"Somehow, when we passed through that anti-matter membrane, I became a Republican"

"Somehow, the Glorks are able to curve natural light but they panic when they see themselves in the phosphorous lights in the bathroom mirror."

Those are some pretty major plot lines pivoting on the whimsy of a conditional "somehow." Need a way to see through the hyper-structure of a fortress made from Orionum? No sweat, invent an alien that specializes in seeing through cosmic polymers. Want to bathe your dashing hero in his boldest aura? Have him battle a thousand Wonks with nothing but a Gravity Staff and good old American know-how. He has to be American. Even if he is from some far-flung galaxy, he will exhibit all the fine noble qualities of the idealized American hero that probably has never existed. All this of course happens while having a brunette borne of a thousand Frank Frazetta wet dreams clutching helplessly to his leg or hiding behind a boulder ready to whack a baddie on the head with her space sandal and then complaining that she broke a nail. Women not named Sigourney Weaver generally are in science fiction for the purpose of comic relief and showing their jugs when they slide into the hydro-therapy tank clutching a glass of creamy mint-green gloop.

My Dad is a big time science fiction addict, as is my older brother. Having to sit through Star Trek every evening in the early to mid-1970s listening to Captain Kirk's Morse code delivery and having to look at a Vulcan who looked like the love child of Moe Howard and Count Dracula was enough to convince me that the world of science fiction could do without me, thankyouverymuch. Still, science fiction does pretty much provide a writer with a canvas much broader than he deserves.

I sure hope the future isn't as cold, metallic, and antiseptic as science fiction depicts. Whatever happened to blue jeans? Ain't nothing more comfy than a pair of 501s. If cotton no longer existed, you would think that some egghead would have invented some sort of synthetic replacement. Makes sense that if a crew consisting of a stoic captain, renegade pilot, bureaucratic hanger-on, ice queen science officer, wise-cracking mechanics and some sort of alien mascot are setting the controls for the heart of the sun that they could at least have some buttonflys in the cargo hold. That's what the future needs, trucker wallets, tube tops and Chuck Taylors instead of the shimmering metallic jump suits, gravity boots and facial jewelry.

Now, you may paint me as a hypocrite for saying I enjoyed Star Wars. When it was released, it was like nothing ever seen on the big screen and yet it was so very familiar. For those who do not remember when Star Wars came out, you just do not understand the angle here. Star Wars worked because the story was straight out of the loins of Akira Kurosawa and John Ford. It was an old fashioned cowboy movie in a galaxy far, far away. It didn't rely on overly-contrived ideas that the actors themselves were probably secretly loathing:

"Dear diary. We shot the space delegation meeting scene today. Must fire agent. All sense of self-respect vanishing. Hope they have muffins at the food service table tomorrow..."

Still, I'd like to try my hand at writing a good science fiction story. I know I have it in me. I just have to make it happen.

Somehow.

The Green Bowl

Ever go through your life knowing someone without REALLY knowing who they are? It happens. Sometimes it happens without you knowing about it. Other times, you try and try and try, but you never really break through. And, sadly, sometimes, it is too late.

I had a dream the other night about my grandmother. Don’t ask me what it was about, but I have been having Grandma dreams recently. A few nights ago, I found myself leading a group of people through a gauntlet of woods, underbrush, and treacherous rock-hopping when we happened upon my grandmother’s house, which was mysteriously set up in the woods. Mysterious because my grandparents lived in Chester, Pennsylvania, which is a blue-collar foothill of Philadelphia. The only thing that would have even closely resembled woods in that neighborhood was an old gnarled tree that had blasted its way through the brick sidewalk and stood sentry in front of their house like some giant mutant broccoli. I remember the bark on that tree used to flake off rather easily, like a hard-boiled egg shell. Hey, when you are a 10-year-old kid at your grandparents’ house for the weekend, you take the fun where you can get it.

Anyway, when me and my band of merry men and women arrived at this mysterious house in the woods, the place was overgrown with vines inside and out. I remember thinking, as I was standing alone in the cramped little kitchen, that I really missed my grandmother.

My grandmother was named Adeline, or "Addie" as my grandfather would call her. She came over on the boat with her family and eventually met my grandfather. They married, had two kids and lived a nice middle-class lifestyle. She had bad eyesight and used to wear these big round glasses that looked like telephoto lenses. I put them on once, looked up and I could swear that I could see Neptune. Those glasses were so thick and powerful that I feared for my grandma’s life when she went out in the sun. I think I have a logical answer to all those spontaneous combustion cases: check the glasses and their proximity to an ambient light source.

Anyway, in the early 1980’s, my grandfather passed away. It was sad. No, it was devastating. He was the first grandparent to pass away and I didn’t take it well. I also noticed something. I noticed that I didn’t REALLY know who he was. Sure, holidays, cookouts, and family get-togethers provide the opportunity, but sadly, most of the memories of my grandfather have come second-hand or in a scurrying fashion after he had a stroke a little while before he passed. One particular moment I recall was when I was at my Aunt and Uncle’s house after my grandfather had his stroke. I had witnessed a man close to my grandfather’s age die right in front of me in a parking lot that summer, so I was ripe with the realities of mortality. My grandfather and I were in the kitchen alone talking about baseball. Then, he reached down to tie his shoes. He couldn’t. He tried again. And again. And again, to no avail. Finally, he looked up at me and said, his eyes moist with frustration, "I know HOW to tie my shoelaces, but my hands just won’t DO it." That shook me then and it shakes me know. His mind was functioning, but his motor skills were now stripped. It left him feeling helpless. It left me feeling helpless as well.

My grandmother kept on keeping on. She was a dynamo. You could never be in her kitchen. She was the maestro, an artiste, a simple woman with a cooking IQ of 300. She never complained about making you whatever you wanted at whatever time of day or night as long as you finished what you ordered. To this day, I have no idea how an 80-pound kid like me was able to inhale three steak sandwiches in one sitting - after dinner, no less, while she was playing Keno with the neighbors.

While she could whip up obscure Italian dishes with odd-sounding names, the holidays are where she REALLY shined. In many Italian families, Christmas Eve Dinner is almost as big as Christmas Dinner. We ate well. Very well. Everything was homemade and perfect. I would help her make raviolis in the basement. I’d mix the ricotta (the secret ingredient was cinnamon) and knead the dough. We’d run it through the press until the pasta was thin enough for raviolis and then scoop the ricotta, fold the dough over and crimp them with the crimper. She was always patient with me and never measured a thing. She was a culinary black belt.

I could go on and on about the wonderful memories of my grandmother. Like, how she turned off the Nat King Cole and let us put our new Kiss records on the hi-fi and then dance with us in the living room. Well, as long as Grandpop was not in the house. How we would weed her garden and go to lunch together. How she would teach me obscure card games and play until late. How scary that house was at night….

I remember always eating from this ceramic green cereal bowl. It was just a regular bowl, mind you, but it was my favorite. It was always in the cabinet to the left of the sink. Second shelf. If there was one object in that house that I would identify with my grandmother, it was her bringing me a bowl of pre-sweetened cereal in that bowl and letting me fill it up as often as I liked and at any time of the day or night. I can still hear the spoon clanking off the rim of the bowl when I was done. It rang like a fire bell.

In that dream I had the other night, I was in the kitchen while everyone else was parading throughout the rest of the house. Someone appeared next to me and asked what I was looking for. I didn’t know what to tell him because I didn’t really know. But, I was positioned to the left of the sink and looking on the second shelf for something that was no longer there. I now know what it was.

It was that green cereal bowl.

I miss you, Grandma.

Writer's Blog

I can't say that writing is difficult for me, but having the inspiration to write can sometimes be analogous to making yourself hungry while watching an auto mechanic make sausage or trying to catch some sleep after doing a dozen beer bongs of espresso. Now, before the Meatmakers Mechanics local union comes blitzkreiging to my door and flipping over the economy cars on my street, let me qualify it by saying that said sausage-making would be before the Lava soap scrubbing. Now that I've over-explained myself, I just wanted to say that my muse has been AWOL for the past six weeks. To the sarcastic Earthlings among us, they might say that my muse is Godot and I'm confusing a good scratch for inspiration and naivete for talent.

Good point.

A person much groovier than me once said "Just write!" and everything will take care of itself. I have taken my own advice and produced spectacular works of nonsense. Once the writing starts, my mind just ejaculates all over the page and I'm left exhausted, hungry, and slightly ashamed. Half of the time, I'm agonizing on whether to use the word "occasion" because I don't know whether there is one "s" or two, and I'm too damned ignorant to look it up. I have rewritten entire stories because of a phantom "s". It's like the mailman hiring out a hang glider to deliver the mail to a house because of a "Beware of Dog" sign. By the time I've finished, I feel like someone asked me how the weather is outside and I ended up explaining the Doppler Effect, isobars, and the best conditions for planting winter wheat. Sometimes, "It's a bit warm," suffices nicely.

I was an English major in college and a world-class fraud of an English major at that. Never one to put effort into anything in those days, I cut every corner, skimmed every surface, and took every shortcut available. But, I did it the right way: In my Shakespeare class, I found that the newly-refurbished library just so happened to have every Bard play on videotape - courtesy of PBS - and "The Taming of the Shrew" is much more enjoyable when you can watch John Cleese playing Petruchio instead of reading the 20-lb. Pelican Edition of Shakespeare's works that was so big you could iron a shirt with it. I always sat in the front row, asked a lot of questions early on, and basically hung in there for the first month until I was able to get the rhythm of my professors and know what kinds of questions they would be prone to ask on quizzes and exams (hey, it really worked). Then, I would study pretty much only what I expected would be on the tests. Worked like a charm. However, the most effective tool in this most effective tool's tool bag was ego. I always found that if you went to visit your professors during their office hours, called them up about an assignment, invited them out for nachos and beer with the other schemers like myself, then a C became a B and a B became an A rather quickly. Does it work for all professors? Hell no; however, when you are taking Nordic Saga and Myth and Great Irish Writers, there is an excellent chance that the professor is ecstatic anyone is taking more than a passing interest in something that, at that age, generally remained only a passing interest.

In my Shakespeare class, a particularly worthless girl ratted me out to the professor when she saw me watching "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the media room of the library instead of reading it. Quickly summoning all the cleverness the Dark Lord had bestowed upon me, I explained to the professor that I was using the video to augment my studying since there was no stage direction in the textbook and I could not tell whom was addressing whom (yeah, that's probably not correct). I told him that we should have a night, each week, where the class could get together at the library and watch Sir Laurence Olivier on the fields of Agincourt or Bob Hoskins' Iago prance around in unsightly tights. Everyone loved the idea, including the professor, well, everyone except the worthless girl, who refused to stoop to my level. Then again, she doth protest too much. Go ahead and work out the tense and conjugation on your own time.

It was said that William Shakespeare never once "struck a word." In other words, he never once edited himself, which is quite an accomplishment since I'm reaching for an eraser halfway through a grocery list. Of course, we cannot prove that any more than we can prove that Siddhartha didn't make underarm fart noises while sitting under the Bodhi Tree or that Jesus came up with a kick-ass barbecue sauce in his mid-20s. It's just one of those things that has passed into legend without the bothersome burden of something silly - like proof, for instance. There are those who insist that Shakespeare wrote the King James Bible. Nice work, if you can get it. I am sure competition existed between writers of that era:

Wm. Shakespeare: "I say, Mr. Donne, how are you keeping on these days?"

John Donne: "Oh, splendid! Splendid! Just finished up a wonderful masterpiece of metaphysical poetry. It's called "The Flea" It should keep lazy college students busy many centuries from now. And what, pray tell, have YOU done lately, William?"

WS: "Um, er, I wrote the new bible."

JD: "Oh."

WS: "Well, it's been nice, John. There's a sale on neck ruffles and they so rarely carry my size. Toodles." (walks away)

JD: "Oh, yeah, well...of course." (Shouting after him) "William be not proud!"

Is it any surprise that the names Shakespeare and Superman both begin with the letter "S"? Then again, there are those who say that William Shakespeare, The Writer, never even existed, that he was just a struggling actor/playwright who had all of these magnificent works accredited to him. The Playwright and the Pauper, if you will - and even if you won't. Could you imagine a young William Shakespeare being pulled aside by a trench-ruffled stranger and handed "The Two Gentlemen of Verona":

WS: "What would this be, kind sir?"

Trench-Ruffled Stranger: "Oh, just a little something I threw together. I'll keep supplying you with plays and such and you can keep the fame, fortune, and adulation throughout eternity."

WS: "To what do I owe this honor?"

TRS: "You owe it to the fact that I am a complete and total idiot. Here, stuff these in your pockets, too."

WS: "What are these?"

TRS: "Sonnets. 14 lines. Iambic pentameter, A-B-A-B scheme...yadda, yadda, yadda. Look, you've got to be an idiot to pass this up."

WS: "...or not to be. When will you have another play for me?"

TRS: "I'm going to be busy for a while. Helping this guy with something called "The Flea". I'll contact you when I'm finished. Deal?"

WS: "As you like it."

Centuries later, we salute and curse that chance meeting. So, here's to you, Mister Trench-Ruffled Stranger. It's because of you that we have Commedia Dell'Arte imitating life, keep Kenneth Branagh from being on the dole, and learned how to use the pause button on our VCRs and DVD players to see a young Olivia Hussey's teenaged breasts in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

Hey, nudity in the classics is worthy of any occasion.

Well, I guess I was able to hang glide around my writer's block. Now, I'm exhausted, hungry, and a bit ashamed.

I Have Met the Enemy - And He Is Lunch

I was face-to-face with one of the meanest, nastiest, ugliest things on the planet. Then I ate it. Of course, you probably realized already that I had some Alaskan King Crab. Great food if you a) like seafood, and b) are permitted to eat shellfish according to your religion or doctor. There I was, doing battle with this long, spiny giant sea spider and it set me to thinking: What the hell am I doing? I am sure there are swarthy he-men, who, when they see a spider in the bathroom, make an Olympic-sized leap onto the toilet lid (provided the seat is actually down) and start screaming like the housekeeper on the old Tom & Jerry cartoons. That’s basically what crabs are - sea spiders without the menacing fangs but, instead, equipped with nasty pincers.

Ok, before some of you start rifling through your "Animals of the World" encyclopedias in order to point out the fact I could be stupid enough to compare crabs and spiders, I say this to you: Shut yer yap and write your own story! Besides, there is an arachnid known as the crab spider and that’s good enough for me (and yes, there are camel spiders, wolf spiders, and probably poodle spiders somewhere on this planet, but I'm not eating camels wolves, or poodles today). They both have eight legs and both are eaten around the globe. Don't believe me? Take a few hours and fly to Indonesia or the Amazon jungle and watch the locals chow down on tarantula. I am not suggesting you strap on the feed bag when you see a spider on your porch, but, hey, couldn't be any worse for you than a cheese steak sandwich.

When my order came to the table, they had to deliver it in a wheelbarrow. That sucker was huge. Legs were dangling over the edge like medieval weapons. They were long, and covered in spikes. The damned thing was about the size of a foreign car and equally as threatening. I knew I was in for a fight. I fastened my chain mail gloves, lowered my welder’s mask and went to work. The restaurant provides you with various Inquisition torture devices and a jackhammer. The shell was thick and stubborn - not unlike a teenager’s skull. I lined it with plastic explosives, and with all the grace of a humpback whale, did a back flip under the table behind me. Tables, chairs, and wait staff were thrown 50 yards and a nice-sized hole was punched through the wall, but at least the shell was loosened. I unfolded my napkin and set it on my lap. After all, I didn't want to cause a scene. I took the crowbar, and with the help of the local motorcycle gang, pried that sucker open.

Inside was a labyrinth of chambers that would scare a Minotaur. There are all these levers to pull and cavities to hunt and peck through just to be able to get a chunk of crab meat. For those of us who eat crabs, you know about the "goop" you have to sand-blast away, along with a marine biologist’s treasure of organs and such. The cartilage is sharper than an infant’s fingernails, and you end up needing to have a paramedic nearby to bandage you up by the time you've finished. The next time you see a mummy walking out of a seafood restaurant, you'll know he had crabs for dinner. Of course, the real prizes in this culinary punishment are the legs. Nothing but pure, unspoiled crab meat. It’s your bonus for the self-mutilation you went through earlier. There’s only one problem - you have to break the legs open first. You start by ripping them off the shell. The spines dig themselves into your palms so it looks like you shook hands with everyone at the Cactus Family Reunion. If you don't own a pair of the aforementioned chain mail gloves, pay a college intern to do it for you. They're used to pain and it would probably only cost you a pitcher of beer. Restaurants will provide you with some drawn butter, which is specially extracted for you from the depths of the old butter swamp. It’s rich, tasty, and thick enough to stop a cannonball. One taste and the veins in your arm raise up to form "S.O.S." But, you're eating king crab legs, so the punishment can be rationalized.

Of course, you get other food with your sea spider, but it’s not really necessary. The corn of the cob is a garnish and the mashed potatoes are just there to anchor the plate. By the time you have finished conquering your enemy, enough time has passed to shave again and wake the bartender.

I am sure the first person to eat a crab or lobster was urged to do so on a dare. So, let us turn back the clock to the time of ancient man. We'll call him Og. One day, Og is cruising the beach for chicks with his buddies, Ook and Larry, when they come upon a crab.

Og: "Grunt!" ("Hey, what the hell is that?")

Ook: "Snort! Growl" ("Looks to me like some sort of sea spider.")

Larry: "What?" ("Snarl")

Og: "Grunt. Snarl. Grunt." ("It looks nasty.")

Ook: "Howl!" ("Hey, Larry, I dare you to eat it.")

Larry: "What?" ("Snarl")

Ook: "Roar. Growl." (Hey, Og, I double dare YOU to eat it.")

Og: "Howl. Roar." ("What? Are you nuts?")

Ook: "Yip" ("I double DOG dare you!")

Og: "Woof." ("Dammit! Why is it always me? When we found those poison ivy leaves, you double dog dared me to wipe my bottom with them. And when you sent me to drink milk from that female mammoth, you KNEW it was a male. You could have at least told me before I finished. And now…this. Well, this is the last time!")

Larry: "I'll get the drawn butter." ("Unk.")

So, the next time you come across something foul, scary and dangerous, take a tip from our friend Og. Today’s monster is tomorrow’s lunch.

.

The Wind in My Sales

Today, I had lunch with the man who fired me. Not too many people can say that, and even fewer would admit to it. So why am I admitting to it? Well, because it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I love my current job, so, all is well now. But, a while ago, I was a salesman for a recovery firm. I think I had some overblown title such as Account Executive, or some such nonsense, offering "financial management solutions." Looking behind the curtain, you would have known that I was a telemarketer for a collections agency. Now, know this about me - I am the last person you want selling your product. Sales people are born, or hatched. You either are wired with that strand of DNA or you are not. I was not. In fact, sales people bug the bejeesus out of me. All of that handshaking and buttering up may work for the guys in the sports jackets and ties or women in their blazers and scarves, but for a ragged lump like me, I was stuck after "hello." It’s not that I performed poorly, it was that I just didn't like it. But, with the inconvenience of paying for food and a place to lay my weary coconut at the end of the day, my hand was suspiciously void of trump cards.

If you think doing collections is a tough gig, try doing sales for collections. There are a few necessary steps to take:

1. Surgically remove all traces of ego. This applies only to people not born with the gift of sales, who know no humility and have no conscience. You're a piece of meat. An easily replaceable piece of meat.

2. Develop a thick skin. It’s one thing to deal with potential customers (called "leads") who yell at you, threaten bodily harm, or just flat-out hang up on you, it is quite another to have your sales manager publicly execute you in front of your peers. When this happened, the skies rained fire, locusts swarmed around your work station, and the sound of eight pairs of horse hooves thundered through the office. It was enough to make the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross, look like an episode of the Teletubbies.

3. Sharpen your knives. You might like your co-workers. Hell, you might have a few beers with them, be their Secret Santa, or fool around with one of their sisters in the laundry room at a weekend barbecue. You probably also have one or more co-workers that you want to gun down in cold blood every time they say, "So, are you working hard or hardly working?" But, imagine having a whole office of people that you generally think you like who are thinking, "You're going down!" behind their reptilian grins. Because, folks, in the world of high-pressure sales, the strong not only survive, they are the first to rip the meat off the carcass off the sales people who are struggling. If thoughts translated to actions, a sales office would resemble a horde of machete-wielding cannibals fresh off a hunger strike.

Phone reports were kept and analyzed to see who was pulling their share of the load. I was always at the top of the list. If I was going to get bludgeoned in the morning meetings, it would not have been for lack of activity. I averaged about 120 calls a day and about five hours’ worth of actual talk time. I also averaged about two ulcers and five to ten suicide thoughts per day. Getting around secretaries who heroically screened your calls was always a good time, if you are into masochism. If you could avoid that, maybe you would have the fortune of cursing at the voice mails of your leads. Very rarely would you get to talk to a live body. It made you feel like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, and that some catastrophic virus had leveled all of humanity outside of your office. Many a time I thought, "And here I could have been delivering pizzas." And why not? Free food and the ability to travel.

But that is how it goes in that environment. You either cut the mustard or you eat mustard sandwiches. Whenever you see a job advertisement for a sales position, it almost always trumpets, "Make up to $100 million! Be your own boss! Last year, our top sales rep made enough money to buy a South American country!" The interview process is fairly selective:

1. "Did you spell your name right on your resume?"
2. "Do you even have a resume?"
3. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Um, four?"

"Two. Close enough. You can start now."

And that’s it. They plug you into a computer, toss a phone book at you and say, "Go, get ‘em, Tiger!" Heads poke around corners of Herman Miller furniture to size you up and then you slowly begin to decay. When a lead finally does give out some business, you rocket out of your chair, run to the sales manager’s office like a kid who’s just lost his first tooth, take a knee, and slaughter a pig as a sacrifice to your boss. He pats you on the head, tosses you a petrified piece of hard candy, then lets you kiss his ring, before you go skulking back to the low hum of your computer. That is when you realize the business your client gave you filed for bankruptcy at the height of the Ottoman Empire and he was just trying to get you to stop bugging him. When you did land a debtor who was still in business, chances are they only owed $300. The collector who has to collect that account would take the form, fold it into an origami swan, staple it to you chest, and light it on fire.

Some agencies pay you just enough to keep you off the bread lines, saying that the real money was in the commissions. In my entire time in that office, I never saw one commission check. And it wasn't just me. The other cold-callers did not get any commission checks while I was there, either. You had to generate a certain amount of money in fees, and then you would get a certain percentage of the fees above that threshold. I might as well have been trying to juggle applesauce.

I had enough. When my boss let me go, he did me a huge favor. I could sleep late, collect unemployment, and make as many sandwiches with free government cheese as I wanted.

It went well with the mustard.

.

The Iconoclast of the Mohicans

I'm at odds with this world. Oh sure, every person with a teenaged past can say the same thing, like how they were misunderstood, lonely, or living with the shame of a 5 - 10 stretch for arson on their record. My diametric opposition to this world is far less colorful. It’s not that I intentionally puff out my chest, tap the world on its broad shoulders and snort, "What are YOU lookin’ at, chief?" No, I'm far more passive aggressive than that. You see, there aren't many earthlings like me, and if there are, they sure do a damned good job of forgetting to mail me invites to their biker brawls, skinny dipping parties, and box socials. I guess I am what you would call the Iconoclast of the Mohicans.

It all started when I was young, because that’s usually where the entrance is. I have an older brother. We'll call him "Dave," since that is his name. Dave is seventeen months older than me, or, if you prefer to rank according to graduation, two years my senior. Dave, or David, as he was known back then, was a cyclone of an infant. Subtlety just wasn't part of his M.O. Loud, energetic, and aggressive, he dove headlong into whatever tickled any of his five senses. Smell something good? Let’s grab for things on the stove. Hear a song he likes? Played the damned record until the grooves were smoking. Saw a package of cookies? Jumped on it like a frothing hyena. I was probably too young to understand, but, after seeing the ass-whuppins administered to my older brother, I tended to take a more low-key approach. Using my powers of human-to-cookie psychic ability, I would wait until no one was near the kitchen. Then, I would send coded messages to the package of Oreos in the pantry.

"Monkey balls make great ornaments."

"It’s a cold day for pontooning."*

That was the signal to slide the chair to the pantry, open the door, stand on the chair, and slowly PEEL back the cellophane to get to that rich cookie goodness. No crinkling of the package and no sloppy execution. It was a military-style cookie-d’etat. The cupcakes on the next shelf trembled. I was a sneaky kid and I ruled. I knew then that I was destined for a different path than my gloriously force-of-nature brother. But, I was just getting started.

As the 1960s coughed and hacked their way into the 1970s, I started to take a bigger interest in the broadness of my surroundings. Anyone who tells you the hippies were firehosed away at the end of the previous decade obviously never attended the seemingly weekly parties held at my house. An endless string of groovy people floating in and out of the house, lots of suede and macramé, and Moody Blues albums were par for the course. Every now and again, Dave and I would slide down the stairs on our rumps, on step at a time, in our Scooby-Doo pajamas and peer around the corner at the mellow being manufactured in the living room. Occasionally, we would encounter a zombie-eyed hippie on his way to or from the bathroom. He'd ask my brother what he wanted to be when he grew up, and Dave, being the painfully honest person he was would say, "I wanna play drums!" or "I wanna play baseball!" Then, the hippie would turn to me:

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Older"

This would invariably blow the hippie’s mind and he’d go back to the party and start seeing faces in the turquoise of the kiln-fired ashtrays.

It kind of went like that for years. Putting ketchup on bologna and cheese sandwiches, switching to shoot my hockey stick left-handed because my father said I had to do it right-handed, and sleeping under the coffee table after dinner.

It’s not that I ever consciously went out of my way to be a weird kid. It just came naturally. I honestly didn't see the big deal. Various lectures, medications, and emergency psychoanalysis sessions in Vienna notwithstanding, it was just who I was. My freak flag was flying high and my family was shunned by the neighbors.

I guess I can agree that the actions and events of our childhood go a long way towards shaping us into the horrible creatures we are today. We develop all kinds of weird self-rituals and biases. For example:

* - When I see an accident by the side of the road that all the rubberneckers just HAVE to see, I purposely look away. Oh sure, I might drive into the bumper in front of me, into a ditch, or into a backyard barbecue, but I am NOT going to rubberneck.

* - The radio. I hate the freaking radio. I hate what passes as music on the radio. I hate smarmy, smartass DJs, stiff traffic copter reporters, and commercials - really LOUD, annoying commercials - for local car dealerships. There is always some damned lame guitar solo and flat soda lyrics grunted by a faded 80s hair-band singer. Or, perhaps there is some idiot screaming that all of their "last year’s inventory must go!" in a voice that sounds like it’s coming from the strained vocal chords of a low-fiber carnival barker.

* - And let me lay this jive on you. I love the cold. Give me cold weather over that unimaginative hot weather nonsense any day. I've talked to many people who have said, "When I go on MY honeymoon, I'm going to , Hawaii, or some beach in Mexico." Wow. The beach. Hot, unmerciful sunburn, that nasty back-of-the-knee sweat, and other jerk-off Americans who are JUST LIKE YOU! I don’t know about you, but, I'd much rather try something imaginative, like an Alaskan cruise, a trip to Ireland or New Zealand, or making a fort out of couch cushions, watching movies with explosions, and answering the door naked when the pizza arrives. Granted, you'd want your significant other with you for that last one, otherwise, you'd be living my typical weekend. But, back to the cold. I run the air conditioner in the Winter. I drop the thermostat on that sucker so far that the carpet crunches under my feet. I like the feel of permafrost under my sheets and snapping icicles off the bathroom spigot because, let’s face it folks, there ain’t nothin’ like sleeping in cool weather. I want to see my breath collect in a threatening maelstrom while I'm in bed. I want to wrap myself up tighter than a Cuban cigar rolled on a sweet virgin’s thigh and cook hotter than a 3 a.m. jazz combo hopped up on goofballs. But get that damned snow off my streets and sidewalks. I like cold weather, but I freaking hate snow.

So, you see, I'm a little different. I'm not your sweet cup of Chamomile or a floppy-earred puppy. And, I'm not changing for you or anyone else. In the words of the great philosopher, Paul Reubens: "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."

So, the next time you see me, either on the street, online, or on C.O.P.S., just think of me while you're in your car, listening to the radio while driving past an accident and dreaming of hot, sunny beaches.



* - All credit to Trace and the gang at MST3K

The Even Further Adventures of Dude Totally - Private Guy

I clomped down the narrow stairwell. The railing was like an over-baked breadstick, and about half as sturdy. I wove my way through the corridor like a fat man at the buffet at closing time. Boxes, broken toys and leprosy-ridden, cast-off furniture ganged up on me, daring me to pass. I burst through the front door and into the heavy air of the city night.

I slouched around the corner, and there she sat, waiting for me like a jealous girlfriend. It was my motorcycle. I call her Sally. I might treat my liver like it's my last day on Earth, but, Sally is Daddy's little girl. Rich, buttery leather and enough sparkling chrome that when I ride it through the city, it looks like the Star of Bethlehem making it's way down the street. I kick-started her and wrapped my gloves around her handles. She rumbled and purred as if to say, "I've missed you". I gave her a few quick revs and I could feel her chassis quiver. I gently lifted her kick stand and glided out into the street.

The air was humid and putrid. It felt like I was riding through a giant cube of sweaty, tasteless gelatin and immediately, my armpits went into overdrive. Great, here I am on my way to meet Ms. Molly and I'm going to end up smelling like a beer fart. If it wasn't for the cheap thrills Sally was giving me, I might have turned around and changed clothes, but since I hadn't done laundry in a month, I don't think showing up in sweats and a "Beaver Patrol" t-shirt would have scored me any points.

Not that it mattered. As I turned onto 8th Street, I thought, "Now what is this broad doing with me? How did she find out about me?" And why me? There are a million other gum shoes out there in the big city who would've taken a crack at a dame like this, pocketed the 10 large, and would have held her off with "I'm still working on a few leads." Maybe she thinks I'm a patsy. Yeah, that's her angle. A pro would have sniffed her out while a schlub like me was just trying to get a peek at her bra through the buttons on her blouse.

Who knows? Maybe she was one of those women who read the Penthouse Forum and is into freaky weirdness. Maybe she's one of them there bored, rich broads who wants to bump uglies with a rodeo clown - in full makeup, no less. I came to a red light and pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a dramatic snap of my Zippo, and took hurricane-force drag. Nah, she can't be into that weird stuff. Although, my buddy Slappy once told me he met a woman who made ice cubes out of toilet water and liked having pies thrown in her face during sex. And here I thought I was a big Three Stooges fan.

The Ridgeway was only about 10 more blocks away and I could feel once-proud parts of me begin to shrivel. I had a lump in my throat the size of a baby's head. Sally seemed to guide me in the right direction, reassuring me that everything was going to be all right. Once I hit Ridgeway Drive, I took a left. I could see the diner through the sidewalk steam which slowly unfurled itself like a freshly-woken genie.

I pulled into the parking lot. It was half-empty or half-full, depending on your perspective on life. I slowly guided Sally over the crackling gravel and around the blood-sucking shards of glass. I parked her against the wall, a few feet down from the section where an armada of drunks had obviously been emptying their bladders since the 1940s. I lit another cigarette, because I didn't know what else to do. A few heroic tugs on the cancer stick and my courage came roaring back like a teenager with a big brother. That's when I smelled her. It was unmistakable, like the smell of your grandmother's house. She was close. REAL close, like she'd be watching me all along.

I picked the underwear out of my crack and eased my way towards the door of the diner. I yanked open the door, which gave almost no resistance, and it went crashing against the wall. I stood there in my newly-minted disgrace with the eyes of the haut couture set eyeing me like a dancing epileptic. I swept what was left of my cool into my pockets and jammed my hands in after it. I walked to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a Faberge egg salad. The waitress picked at her mole and said, "Honey, if we had Faberge eggs here, I wouldn't have to pick my cigarettes out from the urinals." She was a sweet old broad. Could probably open beer bottles with her eyelids. Then, that smell again, and I hear her voice...

"Mr. Totally, how nice of you to come."

(On the next episode of "DUDE TOTALLY - PRIVATE GUY"):

"I thought I told you to come alone, Mr. Totally"

"I usually do"


.

The Further Adventures of Dude Totally - Private Guy

I looked through my closet for something to wear. You never can get the stench of barrel grime, stale Pabst, and the sweat of millions of years of evolution off your body. I decided to dress sharp to distract her eye and confuse her senses. I picked a bright red shirt - just the right color to match my devastating lips, and I grabbed a white tie to match the makeup I couldn't scrape from my face even if I used a belt sander.

I looked in the mirror that hung like a convicted felon on the lonely side of my bedroom. Not bad. Not pin-up material, but if it was last call and I had bad eyesight, I could see any number of prostitutes giving me the once-over. I slicked back my hair so that it looked like I was yanked out of a vat of hot caramel by my neck, paused in mid-comb and pulled a Fonzie.

"Ayyyyyy"

That's the stuff. It was getting dark, and I could see the bubbles that rippled along the hastily-applied joyless wallpaper of my bedroom. It looked like a teenager's face. I looked at my watch and grunted. Then I looked at it again because I realized I never took note of the time. It was 8:00. I still had some time. So, with all the grace and style of a man walking around completely dressed from the waist up and wearing only boxers and black socks from the waist down, I pounced towards the scotch.

I realized that I didn't have any ice cubes, so I took out my shoe horn and scraped the frost that had collected around the perimeter of the inside of the freezer. There was only enough room for a fudge bar, and if I had the money, I would have had one in there. Then I remembered I had almost five grand burning a hole in my mattress. I looked over my shoulder at the bed, straining under the weight of approximately two tons of change. The box spring looked like an open hot dog bun and the wrought-iron frame was twisting itself into the kind of painful smile a kid makes when he's soiling his diaper.

I filled my glass with scraped frost and poured myself a stiff one. I took a sip and I could taste the freon in what was now a scotch Slurpee. I stood regally, with a hand on my hip, like a grotesque David Niven impersonator and thought of Molly. What was she doing right now? Was she splashing expensive oils and soaps all over that race course of a body, or was she waddling from the toilet to the linen closet with her underwear at her ankles because there was no more toilet paper on the roll?

Maybe she had forgotten about me. Nah, not a broad like that. Dames like that don't give clowns like my five grand just to drink scotch in their underwear and play air guitar to "Black Magic Woman." No, she had more sinister plans.

I downed the rest of my drink, took a bite out of the day-old slice of pizza and headed for the door. Minutes later, I returned, put my trousers on, filled my pockets with cough drops, ATM receipts, and pen caps and started back towards the door. I caught a reflection of myself in that mirror and I about crapped my pants since I thought it was someone else. The bed creaked like an old man's knees, and I heard the whistle of a bolt shooting from the bed frame as it lodged itself into the wall. That was the sign it was time to leave. I cracked my knuckles and set my jaw. It was time to do something stupid.

(On the next episode of "DUDE TOTALLY - PRIVATE GUY"):

"Forgive me for not standing up, Mr. Totally, but it's not polite to wag your finger in a woman's face"

"That's not my finger"


.