I just watched the first episode of “Boot Camp”. It was GREAT!
SIR YES SIR!!!
That is all.
Monthly Archives: March 2001
Overheard on the Train
“I’m sorry, could you sit somewhere else?”
“Why?”
“You’re sitting on my wife, sir.”
“Whatever.”
“Did you pay to get on this train?”
“Actually, I fell out of a helicopter and landed on the platform.”
“That would explain the open fractures.”
“This is Jarvis. Doors open on the left at Jarvis.”
“Jarvis was the Avengers’ butler.”
“That’s nice, honey.”
“Alfred is Batman’s butler.”
“Hmm.”
“The Fantastic Four didn’t have a butler, but their mailman was named Willie Lumpkin.”
“All right.”
“Richie Rich’s butler was named Cadbury, but Richie Rich wasn’t a superhero.”
“Okay.”
“Unless you count being the world’s richest kid as a super power.”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t.”
“I want a divorce.”
“Mommy, should I trust the government?”
“How the fuck should I know? Eat your fruit roll-up.”
“[Current Fox News in the Morning co-anchors] David Novarro and Tamron Hall are a good-looking pair. However, unlike [previous Fox News in the Morning co-anchors] Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano, they aren’t fucking each other.”
“What did you think of the Oscars the other night?”
“They were great! I won Best Supporting Actress.”
“Wow! Enola Gay Harding! Can I have your autograph?”
“This car smells like poop.”
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It is my brother Tim’s birthday today. He is 23. Hooray!
This is his web page. Go look at his Hearts scores!
One
Sean “Puffy” Combs was acquitted today of all charges. That was a close one, folks! I shudder to think at what the state of crappy hip-hop music might have become had Puffy been sentenced to hard time! Prison would have hardened him, though, and he would have come out with a lot more cred. And possibly a second facial expression. Prison may have been the pick-me-up his career needed. Of course, now I am a target of the east coast rap mafia.
Two
I finally got cable installed today. It is currently three-thirty in the morning, and I am watching “Three Amigos!” on A&E. It’s art AND entertainment!
Jill says hello
She waved, but not to say hello; she was trying to get me out of her way. Uncomprehending, I stood there like a lump, jaw slack, gears turning in the skull, trying to figure out if I knew this girl. She didn’t even try to warn me again – bumped hard into my right shoulder, practically knocked me to the ground.
Perhaps I was asking for it, but I was irritated nonetheless. “Where’s the fire?” I yelled as she continued down the trail towards the setting sun.
“Pardon,” she muttered, without stopping or turning around. She disappeared into the brush as quickly as she had appeared – leaving crushed twigs and grass, and me, in her wake.
I didn’t see her again until almost a year later – although I had learned from neighbors that her name was Jill and that she lived about a mile down the road. We ran into each other – only figuratively this time – at the market. She was carrying a large basket full of potatoes; I was carrying a chicken.
“Afternoon,” I said as I approached her. She looked up at me curiously. “You probably don’t remember me, but –“
“I remember you,” she said. “You’re the fella what I almost knocked down a year ago. Sorry ’bout that.”
“Where were you going in such a hurry?” I asked.
“I was trying to make it home by curfew,” she said. “I get in a lot of trouble if I’m out too late.”
“I hope you made it.”
“I seem to remember I did.”
We shared a smile.
I formally introduced myself. She already knew who I was, in much the same way that I found out who she was. I had figured correctly that she was about five years younger than me. I looked at her face and her hair and her eyes and thought about how I’d never seen anything like her before. I asked if I could take her to dinner. Her response was that she was three months married.
Embarrassed and disappointed, I made up an excuse to leave – in the process forgetting to do the task which brought me to the market in the first place – and began the long trudge home.
I only saw her once more, seven years later – although it was a rather one-sided experience, it being her funeral. She died while birthing her fourth child. The whole town came out to the funeral, as she apparently had become very active in the community and in the church. I had moved away some years earlier, and now had a wife and child of my own, but we were in town when it happened. Her husband – who turned out to be a good man – saw that I was one of the largest men there and asked for my help as a pallbearer.
It was winter and a recent snow had just melted, and as we carried the casket through the cemetary I slipped on a dark patch of ice, falling backward but retaining my grip, thus jerking it out of the hands of my fellow pallbearers and bringing it crashing down on me. I broke my right leg and was unconscious for three days.
After I was carted off to the hospital, Jill was committed to the ground without further incident.
A couple of decades later, my oldest son wed Jill’s fourth child, a daughter. Jill’s widower and I became great friends. He never remarried.
I died a few years afterwards, just after my second grandchild was born.
I hope I never get this pessimistic:
Hello. I am an idiot who stays up late for no good reason. Nice to meet you. This is my wife, Frieda. She continues to diet even though she’s ten pounds below her desired weight. My son, Norbert, sitting over there on the couch, tells girls that he is in love with them on the first date. And my daughter, Ariadne, is busy at the bookshelf making sure all the spines are flush with one another. Yes, it’s just the four of us. My job at the balloon factory keeps food on our table, but it’s really Frieda’s successful pet photography business that brings us the finer things in life. So we’re doing okay. You should drop by for dinner sometime. I make these killer burritos that Frieda won’t eat because the’re fatty, and Norb won’t eat because he’s allergic to bean paste, and Ariadne will only eat if she can dip them into a small glass bowl of ketchup. Anyone else who can appreciate my cooking is always welcome. Hey, maybe you and me could play a few holes tomorrow. Let me know, I’ll see if I can get the guys to come along.
An interesting conversation
I’m in a foul mood right now. It’s a Saturday night kind of foul mood. I’m just sitting on my duff at the south end of my couch staring at my laptop, with my cat by my side and a big bottle of (root) beer on the table. My life is completely static. Every weekend is the same. Today I changed the pace a bit by tidying up my place a bit and organizing all my papers, but I was disappointed when I realized that no catharsis would come of it. I want to be “on the move”. Damn it, I want an itinerary. Perhaps tomorrow after work I’ll stop by Big Lots and see if I can’t pick one up.
Anyway, early this afternoon I’m gabbing away on the phone, just a-shootin’ the shit with my friend Mandy, when suddenly I get another call. We’re at the end of the conversation, so we say bye and I switch over. The following is a transcript of the conversation to the best of my memory:
Me: Hello?
Some Guy: Waaazzzzzzzzuuuuuuupp!!
Me: Uh…
Some Guy: Waaaazzzzzzzuuuuuupppp!!
Me: Who are you and what do you want?
Some Guy: You know who this is. Just listen very carefully… Waaaaaazzzzzzzuuuuuuppppppp!
Me: You’re going to have to give me another hint, I’m afraid. This “waaazzuup” business is not doing it for me.
Some Guy: Come on. You know who this is, just guess. None of this hint bullshit. Guess.
Me: Dad?
Some Guy: Dad?! [laughs] No, I ain’t your dad! Come on! You know me! I’m your friend.
Me: Are you a friend from Chicago?
Some Guy: Yeah! No more hints. I know who you are!
Me: Who do you think I am?
Some Guy: That doesn’t matter! You’re guessing who I am.
Me: Well, I have no idea.
Some Guy: Did you go to Harvard?
Me: No, I went to Northwestern.
Some Guy: I went to Harvard. I couldn’t go to Northwestern because it was too stupid. So I went to Harvard where all the actual smart people go.
Me: Oh, yeah? What was your major?
Some Guy: Criminal justice.
Me: That’s an undergrad major?
Some Guy: Yeah, and after I graduated, I went to law school to become a big fancy lawyer.
Me: And are you now a big fancy lawyer?
Some Guy: Nah, I dropped out. Now I’m just a big fat cop!
Me: That’s too bad.
[silence]
Some Guy: Hey, are you gay?
Me: Not to my knowledge. Why do you ask?
Some Guy: Not to your knowledge? [laughs] I’m gay. Do you have a problem with faggots?
Me: Not at all.
Some Guy: I have a problem with faggots.
Me: And you’re gay?
Some Guy: Yes.
Me: That must put you in quite a bind.
Some Guy: Tell me about it.
[silence]
Some Guy: Hey, is this [reads my phone number]?
Me: Yup.
Some Guy: Do you have a roommate or anything?
Me: Nope. I live alone.
Some Guy: I see. Thanks for your time. [hangs up]
Books I have read recently that I recommend:
Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? by Martin Gardner
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature by Neal Pollack
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Shrub by Molly Ivins
Go to!
There was an earthquake in Seattle today. Not a cultural earthquake, like when Nirvana and Pearl Jam hit it big, but an actual, geological, seismological earthquake. It’s official: the west coast is dropping off into the ocean. Once the tectonic plates stop shifting, Los Angeles and San Francisco will be one giant city, but Oakland, oddly, will have become part of Japan. Tectonic plates are a funny thing. I did an oral presentation on them in English class in seventh grade. (The assignment was give an oral presentation on a topic of our choosing, and I flipped through our encyclopedias until I found something interesting.) I believe I prepared a visual aid which featured little pieces of cardboard sliding around on other pieces of cardboard. It was very intricate and fascinating and proved to my classmates that I was wise beyond my years. However, my grade was marked down somewhat for peppering my speech with too many “um”s, “uh”s, “like”s, “okay”s, “y’know”s, and “well, shit”s.
Years later, that teacher was moving onto the empty lot in my neighborhood where my parents always took the dog to poop. It was my mom, I think, that had walked ol’ Homer the basset hound to the lot, and was waiting for him to squat in his comical dog fashion, when my (long-since former) teacher drove by, apparently doing some sort of “drive-by”, and warned my mom not to have our dog poop there anymore. Well, can’t say I blame her. I think that one summer, possibly right after seventh grade, I mowed this teacher’s lawn once or twice, probably with some other classmates. She was an interesting lady. She was like sixty and she regularly rode a hog. She is largely responsible for my impeccable grammar and spelling, about which I remain mildly obsessive-compulsive to this day. It was also her class in which I first discovered my incredibly short attention span and utter lack of patience. Also I discovered my classmate Pam, who had big boobs. Couldn’t find any pair bigger in Honors classes, no ma’am. Kickstarted me into puberty, she did.
Ah, but that year it was Erin with whom I shared my first kiss. She was not yet womanly in body, but she was womanly in spirit. Well, not really. But we did share one very romantic day at King’s Island (back before it was rechristened “Paramount’s King’s Island” or so I recall), and on the ride home we held hands and she rested her head on my shoulder, and that entire trip was the longest sustained case of butterflies I had ever had, only interrupted every few miles or so by the driver, who was the mother of one of our friends who was also in the car, who would yell “Hand check!” and make everyone hold their hands up. This was probably more of a protection for her own daughter, who had a boy there herself, but we all played along. Another time I went along with her to a youth group meeting at her church, where we watched some movie about the Rapture (possibly called “The Rapture”), which featured the song “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”, notable because I heard it covered several years later by some purported “Christian pop music” act. I can say that that is the only date I’ve ever been on which resulted in the fear of God. (As opposed to the fear of the girl’s parents… that came much, much later.) Ah, Erin… she moved away at the end of that year. I have no idea now where she is or who she has become, or if she ever got the braces off, or if she’s realized she looked much cuter with her glasses on than with her contacts in. Perhaps she is married now, as all of my past girlfriends, with one notable exception, have tied the knot with some guy or another, and why should she be different?
I think Pam is married now also. Last time I saw her, her boobs were still fairly large, but as I had grown a foot taller and dozens of pounds heavier, and had a modicum of “experience”, they no longer seemed all that impressive. Truly, there is no going back.