THINGS I THOUGHT WERE TRUE IN YOUTH THAT IT TURNS OUT AREN’T OR PROBABLY AREN’T

I gave a great deal of thought to things when I was a little kid, much moreso than I do now.  These days I can barely be called upon to concentrate on pouring myself a bowl of cereal, but as a child I was privy to a special combination of free time, solitude, and total lack of knowledge about basically everything that lent itself well to deep and fanciful (though only in hindsight, as at the time I was more than willing to accept my own thoughts as gospel; why would my own brain lie to me?) speculation.  Though I suspect my impending child will be as unwilling to share his innermost thoughts as I was in youth, I look forward to hearing or observing or severely invading his privacy to find out what he thinks about the objects and people surrounding him.  What their deal is, what they do and why they do it.  Because I can’t think of anything better to write about and I don’t feel like doing the laundry or washing dishes or preparing food, here are some things I once thought were the case that time and other people who claim to know better (or, as I like to call them, “life ruiners”)  have since proven otherwise.

- There are four parts to a day: morning, afternoon, safternoon, and night.  My mom is one of those people who really emphasizes the letter “s” when she talks, so whenever she said “this afternoon”, I heard it as ”the safternoon”, which I took to mean the part of the day that lasts from approximately 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM.  If she said “in the afternoon”, I felt that was in reference to 2:30-5.  Then the final “Sesame Street” broadcast of the day came on, which heralded the official beginning of night.  I think I was aware that there was no Santa Claus before I knew that “safternoon” was not a real time anywhere except in my brain. 

- Basements are called “cellahs” and I have an Auntie Lawna.  Once again, my family’s folksy speech impediment - or accent, if you like - had led me astray.  Now I knew that a car was not really a “cah” and a “hoss” was in fact a “horse”, thanks entirely to public television, but no one on “Sesame Street” ever had occasion, at least on the episodes that I’d seen, to discuss cellars or my Auntie Lorna, so up until the fifth or sixth grade, I played action figures in the cellah and thanked my Auntie Lawna for my birthday present.  Hell, I still call her Auntie Lawna.  It’s too late to change it now.  She looks more like a Lawna anyway. 

- Sitcoms are entirely improvised by the cast; Gary Coleman is a GENIUS.  One time me, my brother Justin, and my cousin Mandy decided to play “Diff’rent Strokes” and attempted to bring an episode of the then-popular program to life, thankfully not in front of an audience of any kind.  The kids on “Diff’rent Strokes” were able to toss off one-liners left and right, to the immediate and dependable approval of the studio audience.  How hard could it be?  I got to be Arnold (Coleman); Mandy, evidently not a Dana Plato fan, chose to be Arnold’s wheelchair-bound friend, Kathy; I don’t remember exactly what role we gave Justin, maybe the annoying redheaded kid?  I have a hard time time believing we would have thought it sensible to saddle him with the role of Willis, to say nothing of Conrad Bain.  Whatever the case, this well-meaning exercise in futility really revealed to us the sheer breadth of the wit and talent of these esteemed performers, because the jokes I was coming up with were absolute shit.  Bad enough to be embarassing even to the none-too-sophisticated comic sensibilities of your average second grader.  Just complete and total garbage.  The one “joke” I remember: I guess we decided that the plot of this thing would be that Arnold wasn’t doing so well in his science class, where they were learning about the solar system, and Kathy was going to try to tutor him, with ostensibly riotous results, leading to this classic exchange:

KATHY: Arnold, what is the Milky Way?

ARNOLD: That’s when I pour milk on the ground on the way to school!

KATHY: Ar-noooold!

Although, to be fair, I went back and tried to watch “Diff’rent Strokes” a couple years ago on Nick at Nite, and to my surprise my material really didn’t suffer all that much by comparison. 

- Boy Scouts end their meetings by hiking together and singing about the sunset.   I had a passing interest in the Boy Scouts in youth, but only from an observational standpoint.  Though like any rurally-raised boy I daydreamt of such rugged pursuits as hewing saplings with hatchets and hauling a shiny brook trout out of the fishin’ hole at Robert’s Rock to the raucous approval of less-successful onlookers, the reality of activities such as tying “bowline” knots and “going outside” simply overwhelmed me, though inwardly I lamented my lack of savvy and drive in this area; the Junior Woodchucks always looked like they were having a good time, and their woodland smarts seemed to get them out of a good number of scrapes.  I even had a subscription to “Boys’ Life” magazine, and I read and reread each issue cover to cover, particularly “Scouts in Action”, a grim, fact-based illustrated account of a Scout thinking quickly in a dangerous situation, usually something terrible like a house fire or a car crash.  It looked like a neat way to be.  I just wasn’t it. 

As it happened, there was a big, official-looking Scout campground/convention area just a few miles from where we lived, which makes enough sense given that where we lived was the woods, and more than once while driving by we would see a Scout leader tromping along the ditch, walking stick in hand, leading an orderly line of hale and hearty lads down the road, as ideal and Norman Rockwellian of a Scouting sight as you’d ever want to behold.  It always seemed to be nearing the end of the day when we’d see the line of hiking Scouts, and though they were probably all just yammering amongst themselves, it appeared to me as though the Scouts were singing.  It came to me that they were probably singing a song called “Look at the Sunset”, which was particularly noteworthy that evening.  At that very moment, my dad, who was driving, actually said “Look at the sunset”, which confirmed my theory.  It was then settled in my brain that every night, the scouts sang a song that went “Look at the sunset/look at the sunset/look at the sunset/Sun sun sun suuuuuuuuun”.  On those evenings when the sunset wasn’t so impressive, it then followed that they would amend the lyrics accordingly to “There is no sunset/there is no sunset/there is no sunset/Wah wah wah waaaaaaaah”.  This gets stuck in my head ALL the time.

- Gelflings are real,  and they are extremely loyal friends.  Like any kid, I had several pop culture related obsessions growing up, and foremost among them was “The Dark Crystal”.  I still love it to pieces.  Whenever a new film medium is introduced (e.g. Blu-ray, most recently), “The Dark Crystal” is usually the first movie I buy, to ensure that I own it in the form of the most pristine footage possible.  When I’m driving to work and I’ve forgotten my sunglasses, I rarely fail to crack myself up by shielding my eyes and cursing The Great Conjunction.  My best friend circa 1982, Brian, shared my nerdy entertainment interests.  Anything involving “Star Wars” or Muppets was already held in our highest esteem, thus inserting Muppets into a squalid sci-fi universe couldn’t help but blow our minds in every way imaginable, which is why “Return of the Jedi” remains my favorite of the Star Wars trilogy.  I will not tolerate arguments that Ewoks ruined ROTJ, because they are cute, nor that there are actually six movies in the Star Wars series, because you’re totally making that up.  Anyway, somewhere in the world there’s an audio cassette of Brian and I earnestly discussing the possibility – nay, probability – that gelflings, the elfin species that protagonists Jen and Kira (whom I wanted to have sex with but didn’t know it at the time) belong to, were real beings that wanted desperately to befriend us but didn’t know where we lived. 

I remember coming up with a scenario in the course of recording this tape where I encountered Jen, and offered him a “Meat Treat”, which was a silver packet of dehydrated meat snacks that I thought sounded tasty and was something that should exist in real life, but when Jen took one of the treats and put it in his mouth, it turned out it was a bouillon cube, and he made a face and said “Bleah!”  I remember thinking this was hilarious.  How a boullion cube found its way into the nonexistent packet of dehydrated meat snacks that I offered to a gelfling in the midst of a fictional anecdote, I may never know. 

- Another term for “penis” is “rubber”.

On the playground in fifth grade, talking about penises was nothing new, but now kids were mentioning something called “rubbers” (heretofore nothing more than an antiquated synonym for boots in my innocent Christian mind) in tandem with their usual dick discussions.  Knowing of no good reason why anyone would need to put anything on their schlong, I assumed “rubber” was just one of the many new and exciting terms for “penis”.  So lunchtime rolls around, and wanting both to get a laugh and showcase my newfound savvy in the crass vocab department, I proudly proclaimed to Brian and anyone else fortunate enough to overhear my hilariousness: “This lasagna tastes like castrated rubber!”  Brian gave me a sidelong glance somewhere between pity and concern and whispered something to whoever else was sitting with us, then calmly and patiently explained to me that a rubber and a penis are not one and the same.  He went on to define the object of a rubber in what I assume was accurate detail, although I don’t remember a word of it because frankly what he was describing was so foreign and unlikely that I simply tuned it out and made a mental note that in the future, to prevent further confusion and humiliation, I would simply state that the lasagna tastes like castrated penis and leave it at that.

- My mother’s best friend is a missionary named Elsa Pelsa Bumblebee.  Growing up, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned numerous times, my family was quite religious, or tried their best to be.  Our church as a rule was very supportive of missionaries, holding weeklong events where missionaries were invited to speak and present slideshows of their endeavors.  I have very positive memories of these events.  The missionaries were unfailingly kind and interesting to listen to (plus I’m a sucker for a good slideshow, and theirs were always top-notch), and they always brought interesting artifacts and sometimes even exotic foods for us to try.  While there were most assuredly times that I approached church with an often deadening sense of dread and obligation, and though it hasn’t been something I’ve returned to as I’ve aged, there were many aspects of the tradition that provided me with comfort and fun, and the missionary conferences are something I look back on with hazy fondness. 

So with missionaries being as prevalent as they were in our churchgoing experience, and with prayer being a old habit by now, it followed that we would be expected to pray for the missionaries.  I liked this notion, both because of the idea that my prayers could help the missionaries, and because it was a lot easier to rattle off a list of predetermined names that it was to come up with fresh nightly material to present to the giant man who lived in the sky and decided our fates.  I adjusted my prayers accordingly. 

Right around this time, my mother had the opportunity to reconnect with an old school chum named Elsa.  I still don’t know her last name, but an offhand comment made by either Mum or Elsa herself led me to believe that her full given name was “Elsa Pelsa Bumblebee”, which I blandly accepted as fact, no questions asked.  What made me think she was a missionary remains unclear, to myself or anyone involved, but for no earthly reason I can presently conjure, I dutifully added her to my roster of missionaries to pray for every night: “Please bless the Bracketts, the Broughs, the Bumblebees, the Duffields…” I’d worked it out so that it was alphabetical – easier to remember.  It wasn’t till much later that Mum deigned to inform me that not only were the Bumblebees not missionaries, they were not even Bumblebees.  I remember finding it a bit irresponsible of her to allow me to waste my valuable prayer time on people that weren’t even missionaries, to say nothing of the fact that I’d been blithely imploring God to “bless the Bumblebees”, a phrase that in the end meant virtually nothing to anyone.  Sure, he’s God and he knew what was going on the whole time, and I’d like to think he had a sense of humor about it, but jeez.  Way to embarrass me in front of God, Mum.

- Redd Foxx said the dirtiest things that anyone has ever heard.  It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that this one might be true.  But I wouldn’t know, because I have still never seen “Dirty Dirty Jokes”.

My Uncle Rick, who owned two VCRs and was therefore the most amazing person I had ever known, was a voracious movie renter/watcher/dubber.  He had a vast collection of illegally duplicated videocassettes, 3 to a tape on 6-hr SLP speed, that he kept in a tailor-made bookcase at the camp he rented every summer in Surry, Maine, on one of my favorite bodies of water, Toddy Pond.  He labeled and numbered all of his tapes, and affixed manila sleeves with library-style “date due” index cards in them onto every one, allowing him to keep track whenever fellow camp renters and friends wanted to borrow them.  He took it all very seriously, and I found this to be very good thinking on his part.  There was nothing more important or worthy of praise than an extensively catalogued and handsomely presented collection of pirated videocassettes.  When visiting the camp, in lieu of swimming, which I didn’t know how to do anyway, or fishing, which was boring and gross, I would often wander into the living room and just stare in awe at this beautiful display of filmic possibility and attractive organization, venturing to take a single volume at a time down from its shelf and wondering at the titles: “The Gauntlet/Sophie’s Choice/Volunteers”, perhaps, or “Commando/Haunted Honeymoon/Old Yeller”.  There was never any attempt to follow a theme on these tapes.  It all depended on whatever three movies happened to look good to Uncle Rick at whatever Mom n Pop joint or gas station he elected to rent them at. 

When it came to movies, Uncle Rick was gloriously cavalier as to what he allowed us to watch.  At our house circa 1988, anything rated R was strictly forbidden.  My parents didn’t even allow themselves to watch R movies at the time.  But at Uncle Rick’s, we got to see great stuff like the aforementioned “Commando” and the “Alien” movies, and it being vacation and all (and because they probably wanted to see some of these movies too) my parents relaxed and let us get away with a sin-ridden flick or two.  I even got to learn about the concept of rape from Uncle Rick’s movie library – thanks, “Rolling Vengeance”!  But when it came to “Dirty Dirty Jokes”, even Uncle Rick had to draw the line.  “You guys ain’t watchin’ this one,” he said. 

My mind reeled at the concept of a movie so dirty (“dirty” – right there in the title!) that it gave even storied vulgarian Eric Stover pause.  To even hold the tape itself felt like a defiance against God.  Redd Foxx hosted it.  I’d heard of him and knew him to be dirty.  And Andrew “Dice” Clay was also in it, according to Uncle Rick.  This only boosted my already excruiciating curiosity.  My friend Clint, an avid sinner and owner of many dirty comedy tapes, spoke highly of him. 

WHAT WAS ON THIS TAPE?  What dirty stuff did they talk about?  What hellish-afterlife-guaranteeing jokes were foisted on the unsuspecting audience by these devils of comedy?   I never did get to see it – a “no” from Uncle Rick was understood to be binding – but lying on my cot that night, while Uncle Rick watched “Dirty Dirty Jokes” and thereby booked himself a future lifetime appointment with The Worm That Dieth Not, I tried to come up with the dirtiest thing imaginable, an act so vile that asking Jesus to come into your heart a million times wouldn’t wash away its damage.  Jesus would actually vacate your heart upon its realization.  He would have no choice. 

To my mind, the only thing dirty enough for Uncle Rick to forbid its viewing by minors that Redd Foxx and Andrew “Dice” Clay could do would be to introduce the program by putting their arms around each other and spiritedly singing a song with the following lyrics: “Well, we’re a-pissin’ and a-fartin’ and a-fuckin’ and a-shittin’ and we’re lovin’ every minute!”  I could think of nothing in the world that could possibly be dirtier than to welcome viewers to a comedy show by singing that unspeakably vile song.  I remember actually trying to convince my brother that this was what they did on “Dirty Dirty Jokes” and this was the thing that made it so dirty, emphasizing that “the really dirty part” was that they were “lovin’ every minute”, because while none of us are without sin, to find joy in such actions is an abomination.  Anyway, that song has an actual tune to it, and it’s super catchy.  I sing it in the shower a lot.  It’s right up there with another song I invented to dissuade my brother from purchasing a Van Halen tape because it was way too dirty, as evidenced by one of their more profane hits, “I Take a Shit in the Potty and I Pee With My Dink”. 

That story probably would have been more exciting if it had ended with me embarking on a covert ops mission to sneak into Uncle Rick’s screening of “Dirty Dirty Jokes” and either have my mind blown or walk away bitterly disappointed and jaded.  Unfortunately I was a very obedient child. 

That’s all of ‘em.  I was pretty much right on about everything else.

THE FACT THAT I COULDN’T IMMEDIATELY REMEMBER HOW TO LOG INTO MY BLOG SPEAKS POORLY FOR MY CURRENT DEDICATION TO SAME.

I wish I could tell you that I’ve spent the past month and a half cultivating a surplus of rollicking material to bestow upon my modest readership, but mostly I’ve been using Flickchart.  Also moving to a new apartment and accompanying my wife to ultrasound appointments.  But mostly using Flickchart.  I. Can’t.  Stop. 

I have never been addicted to anything this badly.  I love randomized, simple (most of the time) choices and agonizingly gradual organization.  And I love thinking about movies, far more than actually viewing them.  It has not gotten old for me at all, and unfortunately my fondness for the site is preventing me from accomplishing anything remotely creative on my part.  Not to say that I ever spent a great deal of my time composing sonnets or designing groundbreaking websites, but shit, I used to put up a blog entry now and then.  I don’t say this to blight Flickchart or to wish it away – if the site ever folded, I’m fairly certain I’d embark on a new lifestyle of wandering the streets, hygiene long neglected, entreating strangers to allow me to fellate them in exchange for presenting me with a tiny poster of “Ulee’s Gold” alongside another tiny poster of “Caddyshack 2″, and that’s after I’d finally stopped convulsing and vomiting uncontrollably – but of late I do wish I liked it a little less.  Scolding a thing for being so in tune with your personality and desires: what’s the right adjective for that? 

Anyway, the baby is still fine, and I don’t know if I’ve even mentioned this yet, but it has a penis, thus assuring him the ability to more easily urinate in his parents’ faces while they are changing him as well as ensuring him a decent job once he leaves our home, which will hopefully take place immediately following the celebration of his 18th birthday, an event I feel will be most efficiently expedited by frisbeeing the Xbox 1080 game we graciously gifted to him out onto the front lawn, then rapidly changing the locks and responding to his subsequent knocks and pleas with noncommital phrases such as “quien es?” and “No comprendo”. 

Regarding the future face-pissing-into, as I understand it there are miniscule tents available in baby penis camping equipment stores everywhere that you can place atop Junior’s junk to curtail an eyesocket brimming with errant weiner-ade, also known as “pee-pee teepees”, a brand that I doubt does much to assuage continuing Native American bitterness over that whole “stole your land” thing, but in the long run is probably better than calling them, say, ”Snookums Dong Chapeaus”, or “Stop Pissing in My Fucking Face, You Goddamned Son of a Bitch”. 

Whiz through that, smart guy!  I really don’t like it when babies urinate into my face, so I’m encouraged by the existence of the Pee-pee Teepee.  I think it’s probably a better solution than my previously planned and in hindsight rather knee-jerk reaction of spastically defecating on his chest in retaliation and leaving him there to think about his insolence and filthy habits while I go into the next room to mumble profanities to myself and use Flickchart.  The Pee-Pee Teepee: I’m for it.  Quality products for a quality, if frequently disgusting, world. 

Despite all my talk of crapping on and bellowing obscenities at him, I can’t wait to finally meet this kid.  My feelings on the whole thing have gone from shock, to numbness, to deluded numbness, to actually forgetting we were having one, to remembering we were having one and panicking, to disbelief, to somewhat accepting justification, back to panic, to curiosity, to grave concern, to drinking, to forgetting we were having it again, to soul-searching, to amusement, to nagging worry, to mild excitement, to extreme excitement, back to panic, and now finally optimistic curiosity with a twinge and a half of panic, and that seems to be about where it’s levelling out, which is good.  I have visited friends who recently had triplets (!), so I can now say that I’ve held an infant without dropping  it into a pen full of ravenous pigs or driving a pencil through its fontanelle.  I even sucessfully provided said infant with sustenance via a bottle, and supported his head, no thanks to his seemingly vestigial neck.  Is there something pregnant moms could eat that might result in less worthless baby necks?  It’s like a strand of cooked spaghetti scotch-taped to a candlepin bowling ball.  I’m just saying there’s room for improvement.  He could potentially decapitate himself simply by vigorously disagreeing with something.  Is there no special neck-bolstering baby food available for purchase?  I’ve done no research on any of this, barring when I google “pee-pee teepee”.  That’s literally all I’ve done to prepare myself for this journey. 

Near the end of my drive home from work tonight I had to stop and help an elderly British man jumpstart his jalopy.  He actually walked out into the road, waving his hands, to get me to stop, which was wise of him given that my first instinct when approached by strangers, particularly elderly ones, is to do whatever it takes to extricate myself from their field of vision, half-smiling apologetically as if to say “I’d love to help you, but I seem to be moving very rapidly in the opposite direction”.  But I could not avoid this man without striking him with my vehicle, so I powerlessly allowed him access to my car battery, and to his credit he both had jumper cables and knew how to use them, possessions and qualities I lacked.  He dithered and jiggered his way to a newly functional vehicle, was nice enough not to club me to death with a tire iron while nattering on about the Queen and tea biscuits, and I got to feel good about helping an old man against my will.  It helped a lot that he was British; it made him seem more like a cartoon person, which sort of put me at ease, even during those desperate few minutes while I tried to make it seem like it was the car’s fault that I couldn’t figure out how to pop the hood.  Everything about the whole scenario was so foreign to my normal day that I’m almost guaranteed to have a weird dream about it tonight. 

A short one for tonight to ease back into it.  I will forge ahead, Flickchart and prenatal concerns be damned!

PICK A NAME, ANY NAME

Some snow finally fell out of the sky onto the ground and the cars and stairs and everything.  It was easy to deal with and nice to see.  It isn’t cold outside at all, and the town looks as Christmasy as a mill town possibly can.  I made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, with cheddar jack Cheezits on the side; the ultimate in cozy meals. 

I watched a “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ episode (“Horrors of Spider Island”, which served to further the very correct theory that the awesomer the title, the poorer the film) and an almost-entertaining 1976 thriller about God possessing people’s brains and telling them to shoot people (entitled, appropriately enough, “God Told Me To”) while Annie promptly fell sound asleep for several hours after eating my dangerously relaxing repast.  Now we’re intermittently gaping dumbly at “60 Minutes” in HD.  Not a program that cries out for high definition, but boy, these people’s foreheads look fantastic. 

The tree is assembled and displayed, and in spite of its spindly fakeness it adeptly cheers up the room.  I’m drinking a lot of ginger ale.  My wife bought her first pair of maternity jeans yesterday.  They have a built-in, flesh-hued girdle sort of attachment that I confess I’m a bit jealous of.  It seems snugger and less cumbersome and pinchy than a belt.  Belts are stupid.  I want girdle jeans. 

Suitable names for the baby continue to be elusive.  I almost feel like we’ll have to look at the baby once it’s out and the right name will magically make itself apparent, like how our cat Archie just ”looked like an Archie”.  I don’t know.  We certainly don’t want to add to the inundation of Logans and Madisons currently overtaking day cares across the nation, but then again I don’t necessarily want to shy away from a name we like simply because it happens to be popular at the moment.  At the same time, I can’t abide giving the child a name that, while probably a fine name in theory, happens to be shared by someone I hated growing up; this condition eliminates a depressing number of possibilities. 

Names can make or break a kid.  Looking at books or websites dedicated to lists of baby names just makes me want to name the baby something ridiculous/hateful like “Walmart Gonads” to get back at him/her for putting us through the irritating and seemingly impossible task of coming up with a word and accompanying sound that lets everyone know who they are for the rest of their life.  My brother-in-law claims to be in favor of letting the child name themselves once they’re old enough to comprehend the act of naming.  This isn’t an unintriguing idea, but I find the child’s lack of a name annoying now, and the kid isn’t even out here yet.  Not to mention we’d run the risk of ending up the proud parents of Spongebob Stover.  At least it’s not “Logan”. 

Here’s some other winners the geniuses out there are naming their poor sap babies according to BabyCenter: Cash (Not only a depressing name for a child, but it’s more popular than “Jeremy” this year; I can’t help but take offense [then again you can't exchange Jeremy for goods and/or services, or at least probably not very quality ones]), Xander (No no no, America!  That is not your child!  That is the annoying guy from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”!   The TV is not the place to get a name for your baby!  You didn’t see people back in 1992 naming their kid “Urkel”, did you?  And “Urkel” is both a less annoying name AND character than Xander!  I would be happier, America, if  “Urkel” were the 141st most popular name in this country right now, but no, that distinction belongs to ”Xander”!  “Spongebob” probably really is on this list somewhere…I will not be surprised, I truly will not….Xander…grr…), Joaquin (No, you can’t have that name for your baby either, America.  That’s just for that one dude.), Londyn (I just purposefully shit my pants right this second to make a point about what a terrible name that is, that’s how much I hate that name.  You can’t just cram a letter “Y” in there and think you’re special.), Lyric (or Lyrrhyck, somewhere on the list I’m sure; anyway, P.U., am I right?), Talon (Naming your child after a bird’s hand qualifies you as a horse’s ass! [insert Phyllis Diller laugh here]), Maverick (Now you have to name your next child Goose; happy now?), Princess (I didn’t know people could give birth to kitties!  That’s adorable!), Peanut (Babycenter seems confident that this is actually the 652nd most popular name bestowed upon defenseless babies in American in 2009.  So either the website lacks credibility or the country does.  Or my whimsy tolerance is at an all-time low.  At any rate, fuck you all.), Remington (This list is full of pip-pip-cheerio names like this.  Why does everyone want their child to aspire to preppiness?  Did preppies stop being assholes at some point without my knowledge?  Do I know anything that is happening at all, anywhere?), Maxton (That’s not even anything.  That’s a random prefix paired with a random suffix.  Miketopher, anyone?  Frankvis?), Analise (I know this is a time-honored name that’s been around for generations now, but that word is basically “anal lice”…hey everyone, meet my lovely baby girl Buttbugs…), New (As a rule you don’t want a name that becomes closer to a cruelly ironic joke with each passing second; also, that’s not a name, that’s a fucking adjective)…the list, I’m sad to report, goes on.

Take a name like “Stanley”.  A fine name.  Not one we’re considering for our own child, but a perfectly acceptable, meat and potatoes kind of name.  Afternoon, Stanley.  How’s that new riding lawnmower treating you?  Glad to hear it.  Take care, Stanley.  That’s the kind of comforting, low-on-unnecessary- personal-details conversation you can have with a guy named Stanley.  It’s a name.  It works.  Guess where “Stanley” falls on Babycenter’s list.  Guess.  1031.  One thousand and thirty one.  Behind Maverick.  Behind Xzavier (not a typo).  Behind Peanut.  Behind Not, My, and The! 

Not!  My!!  THE!!!!

I don’t know, maybe this list is inaccurate, although I’m pretty sure BabyCenter is the online place to go for baby information, for whatever that’s worth.  In looking at these names, which obviously somehow aren’t considered silly and embarrassing to everyone given that kids are really getting named this stuff, it strikes me that it doesn’t take long to feel like an old person in this country.  Every few years everything seems to change just enough to make you uncomfortable, and you lash out and call everything stupid simply because it isn’t what you’re used to.  That’s a natural enough progression, and a less frightening explanation than what I really think/fear, which is we’re all turning into insane, thoughtless cartoons without even realizing it. 

On an unrelated note, we only get two channels on our TV at the moment, one of which is The CW, and I just got to watch “Cheaters” for the first time tonight.  Nice to meet you, new favorite show!

IT’S BEEN AWHILE

So I’m sittin’ around, watching “Redbelt” on Netflix instant viewing.  It’s good.  Just ate some wings from the Hannford “wing bar” and a salad with fat-free Italian dressing.  Tasty.  General Tso’s flavored wings and honey-fried wings.  Both shredded yellow cheese and cubed white cheese on the salad.  What’s especially good is the combination of Italian dressing, cheese, and a dried cranberry placed on a cucumber slice.  Everything is fine right now.  It hasn’t been cold or snowy outside.  The baby is the size of an apple and it has a heartbeat that sounds like a lightsaber.  I have a pint of Americone Dream in the freezer, just waiting for me to lay waste to it.  Riding out the end of a reasonably restful Thanksgiving break, during which I ate a great deal of good food (I am related to good cooks) and enjoyed spending time with my family.  I ate blueberry pie and coconut cream pie, both of which I assure you were even tastier than you’re imagining them right now. 

What else?  Moving to a new place come January.  Nothing special lookswise, but it has two bedrooms, is in a calm environment, and includes high-speed Internet, cable, phone, and heat within the rent price, which isn’t drastically more expensive than what we’re currently paying.  Planning on getting rid of our current cumbersome and saggy couches and replacing them with something that can successfully provide both comfort and support.  Ditto with our shit bed.  Christmas is coming up.  I don’t feel a whole lot concerning that.  It’ll come and go, and we’ll no doubt have a nice time.  We’ll get things and give things. 

Everything is starting to feel different.  Without really being able to verbalize the sensation to my satisfaction, I can only tell you that the knowledge that one is about to introduce a child into their life feels something like suddenly caring about everything and nothing all at once.  The act of classifying items and concepts as “important” or “unimportant” is very much in the former camp.  Though as of yet it rarely stops me from engaging in same, I am more aware now when an activity that I’m in the process of engaging in is a waste of my time, from the most general of standpoints.  Time seems to be passing even more quickly than before, and yet I am more cognizant of the moment.  I hear myself a bit more clearly when I talk, especially when it comes to idle chitchat, in the act of which I seem to be more able than usual to forgive myself comments that are inane or flat out untrue (or quite possibly both), and yet in these moments I have felt myself actually wincing with embarrassed disbelief in mid-utterance.  I am able to pick up a belonging – a paperback from a bookshelf, for example – and within seconds discern whether or not it is something that needs to remain in my possession.  I can recognize a voiced opinion – good, bad, or indifferent – as just that, and not a hurtful, deadening blueprint for later action and trains of thought on my own part.  Recognition is a start. 

Because I don’t want to sound or be crazy, I don’t think the act of fertilizing an egg and thereby creating an organism that will eventually develop into an alternately intrusive and poignant little person whose hopeful happiness and continued existence both depend on a steady siphoning of ones time and finances magically or scientifically enhances ones sense of self.  It probably just follows that a huge, unfamiliar change of this magnitude tends to lead to a lot of sitting back and grasping for perspective.  That’s a disappointingly level-headed explanation that I privately reject because I’d like to believe that life is more of a fairy tale than that, but for the sake of a coherent blog let’s go ahead and assume that it’s valid.  Big changes lead to big feelings which potentially lead to big changes in another direction.  Whatever the cause, and whether it prompts me to evolve (however tentatively) or not, these feelings and perceived realizations are useful to me.  They feel positive, and the normally unquashable tendency to deflate them with humor or out-and-out denial via fear or embarrassment has become more of a selectively permeable membrane than a big, grey, retarded wall.  My hope is that this encouraging if vague aura is something that will either linger or intensify upon the actual birth of my son or daughter (still no word on that yet), and isn’t the type of thing that will crawl back up my asshole and suffocate once I’m looking down at and struggling to contain/rationalize the helpless alien wriggling in my unaccomodating arms. 

So what about the rest of you guys or gals who’ve had kids?  You feel anything weird while you were expecting?  Concentrate on the weirder aspects of the experience, if you could.  The joy upon birth is a given and thus less interesting to hear about.  I’ll thank you to keep your commonplace happiness to yourselves!  You don’t necessarily need to respond if you’d prefer not.  It’s just that the act of conceiving a child has turned me into a superhero and I’d like to discuss that with someone. 

“Redbelt” just ended.  A solid effort.  I found it admirably unselfconscious for a David Mamet movie, except for whenever Ricky Jay or Joe Mantegna were talking, but I guess those guys had to be in it so people didn’t forget that David Mamet wrote it.  Chipolte Egalitarianism was excellent in the lead role, and somehow managed to make both leadership and principles seem neither boring nor lame.  Tim Allen, in an unexpected turnaround of events, managed to disgrace neither himself nor the entire human race in his supporting role.  I have nothing whatsoever against Tim Allen in the grand scheme of things; I am only saying derogatory things about him because this is the Internet and I am writing about Tim Allen.  That doesn’t seem fair.  I’m sorry, Tim Allen.  You did a good job in “Redbelt”.  I’ll now post a picture of something having to do with “Redbelt” because who wants to look at a big pile of words?

All glib glazing aside, if you like fighting and writing, you could do a lot worse than “Redbelt”.  Storywise, the basic deal is that the guy in the poster who just reduced that other guy to a crumpled heap of bruises and gi is a noble sensei who gets himself into a tragically awkward situation through a series of well-intentioned actions that all go horribly wrong, and he must extricate himself from the resultant unpleasantness without compromising his morals or integrity while looking tough and handsome throughout.  This being David Mamet, people say “fuck” and interupt each other’s sentences with fair frequency, but not to the point where it’s ridiculous.  Refreshingly few scenes play like the following:

MIKE: See, the thing is -

BOB: I know.

MIKE: No, look, the thing, the fucking thing -

BOB: It’s fucked.  It’s a fucked-up thing.

MIKE: What you need to see, to understand here, is this thing, which is fucking all of us, me and you both…

BOB: It’s fucking us both, and Charlie too…

MIKE: Fuck Charlie.

BOB: Fuck Charlie?

MIKE: What did I say?

BOB: You said fuck Charlie.

MIKE: I know what I fucking said. 

BOB: You asked me what you said.  I’m just saying what you said.

MIKE: What I said – and what I’m saying to you here, what I’m saying, Bob, is this thing, this fucking script, was written by David Mamet. 

BOB: I know it.  I know.

MIKE: David fucking Mamet.

BOB: I know.

In fact, the characters who take up the majority of the screen time in “Redbelt” could be easily confused with characters who do not happen to appear in a film written by David Mamet, and to that end I hereby congratulate David Mamet for not writing like himself all the time.  And there’s even a few good scenes of people kicking each other, so there you go with that. 

So to sum up, having a baby is weird, and “Redbelt” is a decent flick.  Thanksgiving break is almost over, meaning that I will be expected to get up at a certain time tomorrow and drive to a building that is not my home where I will remain for several hours for the purpose of accomodating future commerce for myself and my wife.  You can only be so happy about that kind of thing (The driving to and remaining inside the building that is.  Commerce I like. ).  Time to cling to the remaining shreds of my protracted weekend, by which I mean time to go use Flickchart.  I hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving and we’ll do this again soon.

HEY EVERYONE, I WATCHED TWO MOVIES!

My desire to blog is not great, lately or now.  I don’t attribute this to anything other than the fact that sometimes writing doesn’t sound like fun.  You know what is fun?  Watching movies and drinking coffee.  You know what else is fun?  Flickchart.  If you spend more time reflecting on your opinions of movies and what you’ve gleaned from watching them than you spend actually watching them (which is no small amount of time in and of itself), and you haven’t looked at Flickchart yet, well, you might as well bid sayonora to your friends and divorce your spouse now and save yourself a lot of unnecessary pain and non-Flickchart-using time, cause you’re gonna be on this website for the rest of your life.  I’ll just leave it at that.  It just occurred to me that my blog production lag kicked in right around the time I discovered Flickchart.  I assure you, this is no coincidence.  I have never encountered a site more attuned to my obsession with movies and lists than Flickchart.  It’s also an excellent timekiller, an attribute I value as I really want these next nine months to whiz by so we can skip past weeks of considerable spousal pain and discomfort and get right to the moment when our child, Flickchart Stover, is born. 

In other news, I am fat.  This seems to stem from a lifetime of eating food.  Seriously, go to the store, buy some food, eat it, and then try not to get fat.  It’s impossible!  Other news I have for you is that our car is being a shitheel again.  We are probably going to have to buy a whole new car.  The 2002 Nissan Sentra is the worst product ever put on this earth.  I really hope someone out there is considering buying one of these horrible cars for whatever reason and then through some act of God manages to see this blog and is then suitably deterred from purchasing it.  My theory on cars is that when you put a key into their ignition and turn it, the car should start.  Unfortunately, my theory on cars differs greatly from that of the makers of the 2002 Nissan Sentra.  Replacing the battery has not helped.  Taking it to a few different mechanics has not helped.  What I have learned from this irritating experience is that buying used cars is for suckers.  Either buy ‘em new or buy ‘em dirt cheap from some dude, but that middle ground will just break your heart, and soon you have monthly payments going towards a giant paperweight for your lawn.  Used car dealers are unreliable: you heard it here first!  I wish our car had a throat so I could slit it and give it a Colombian necktie, and a family so I could make them watch.  Our 1997 Subaru station wagon with over 200,000 miles on it is an infinitely superior automobile.  It responds to things like keys and gasoline.  We are really not asking a lot of our vehicles here, only that they propel us from place to place.  Oh well, live and learn, or, failing that, bitch fruitlessly about it on the Internet.  On a more positive note, having dealt with the 2002 Nissan Sentra, I can safely say that our impending offspring will have to go to immeasurable lengths to prove itself either as expensive or as disappointing to us as this car has been.  Urinate in my face while I’m trying to change your diaper, Junior!  Thoroughly coat my favorite sweatshirt in fetid, milky barf!  Deplete my bank account and withhold gratitude!  Conjure missives the likes of which parenthood has yet to comprehend, but the fact remains, Junior, that you are not, and could never hope to be, the 2002 Nissan Sentra, and for that simple fact alone, my precious angel, Daddy loves you very much already. 

This past Sunday my wife went to the always-excellent Big G’s to meet up with friends for unreasonably sized omelets, so that afforded me some solitary mannish time to squander upon such unproductive pursuits as pouring inexpertly brewed coffee down my esophagus and firing up a few in no way acclaimed motion pictures on my Xbox, which is equipped with Netflix instant viewing, my new favorite thing in the world other than Flickchart, The Statler Brothers, and defecating.  There’s nothing like having the house to yourself, a rare circumstance I will no doubt be cherishing even further and less frequently in the near future, so I made sure to queue up the seediest and least-competently produced gems available to me, preferably something rife with fumblingly conveyed lesbianism.  As such, my first choice was 1970’s “Just the Two of Us”. 

“Just the Two of Us” (which also goes by the far more ridiculous and thus way better title of “The Dark Side of Tomorrow”) turned out to be a fairly coherent and relatively sensitive look at the difficulties and insecurities inherent in being a lesbian in late-sixties-era suburbia, with passable acting, tastefully shot love scenes, and a clear desire to frame its put-upon protagonists as well as the issue of homosexuality in general in an open-minded and understanding light.  Imagine my disappointment. 

Easily the best “hauntingly sensitive love story” you’ll see this year, the film focuses on Denise (the hovering brunette) and Adria (the prone blonde).  Both are housewives who spend most of their time lying around in sparsely if modly furnished homes, provided to them by husbands who are always either working or telling their wives to stop bitching at them for working all the time.  They’re way too busy funding flourescent orange ottomans and ornate aspic molds to be able to blow a load or two into their pert and willing wives.  So one thing leads to another, and soon enough Denise and Adria are engaging in such sapphic pastimes as ordering fruit salads at local cafes, taking a spin on a merry-go-round, and finally, riding horses while holding hands, which is not only cloying but unsafe at best. 

Anyway, we do get some boobs but it’s nothing to write home about, which is too bad since I was really looking forward to writing up a detailed description of the softcore lesbian porn I’d been watching in my wife’s absence and mailing a hard copy to my folks.  It’s all very tenderly done.  The situation starts to get out of hand when it becomes apparent that, while Denise seems to be coming to terms with both the fact that she may be a full-on lesbian and legitimately in love with her newfound companion, Adria is just experimenting and would like to be free to continue cavorting with weiner-owners as well, and not necessarily her husband.  It gets awkward, a lot of people get hurt, and dagnabbit if I didn’t get into the whole thing.  I really wanted it to work out for these crazy kids.  The two leads (particular Elizabeth Plumb, whose only other credit according to IMDb is something called “The Psycho Lover”, as Denise) are adequate enough, the cheap sets are a brand of late-60’s faux chic that never fails to appeal to me, there’s a couple of ingratiatingly dippy hippie tunes, and best of all it’s only 74 minutes long.  Neither lesbianism nor exploitation are done a lasting disservice by “Just the Two of Us”. 

Next on the agenda, in an ongoing and thus far unsuccessful quest for lurid, ineptly lensed, objectifying entertainment, I fired up the 1982 classic “Butterfly”, starring your favorite actress and mine, Pia Zadora.

A inarguable trailblazer in the redneck incest thriller genre, “Butterfly”, much like “Just the Two of Us” before it, surprised me by engaging me in an at least passingly unironic fashion from start to finish.  Better still, it didn’t skimp quite so much on the boobs and butts, and at no point did it attempt to make a statement, other than “Look, Pia’s naked again!” 

In a nutshell, “Butterfly” is the story of a nymphette who comes back to her hometown and starts hitting on every male that crosses her path, including her estranged dad, played by Stacy “Mike Hammer” Keach.  Being a backwoods type of feller, Keach feels some unfortunate urges, but also being an upstanding, churchgoing man, he resolves to resist her overt passes and tendency to sashay about the cabin in various stages of undress and reclaim his role as the sorely needed father figure in her thus far tragic life.

As you can see, all does not go according to plan.  Give the guy a break!  It’s Pia Zadora!  What are you gonna do, not hump her in a cave? 

Anyway, I’m not gonna go into the details, more out of an inability to follow the needlessly convoluted plot than out of concern for spoiling a film that you’re most likely not going to bother watching, but it turns out they’re not really father and daughter after all, so in the end the masterminds behind “Butterfly” get to have their graphic incest cake and eat it too.  As an added treat, we have Orson Welles, finally obliterating the very last ounce of acclaim and goodwill he garnered from “Citizen Kane” as an ornery judge who alternately denounces and drools over Pia’s sultry lawbreaking. 

I have a newfound appreciation for Orson Welles, thanks to the Dean Martin Variety Hour DVDs my wife got us for our recent anniversary.  Listening to him speak, it’s hard not to imagine that Kelsey Grammar cribbed a fair amount of his Frasier Crane schtick from Welles.  Here, watch him regale you with the story behind and the content of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and try not to enlist. 

I also watched “Phantasm”, “The Poseidon Adventure”, and the original Terry O’Quinn version of “The Stepfather”, but they were all reasonably well-made and as such aren’t worth commenting upon.  Anyway, it was nice to take a day and just watch a bunch of dumb movies.  I have to go eat two loaves of garlic bread now to make them go away because I didn’t count on the smell of the garlic ruining the life of my spouse, whose pregnancy has endowed her with upsetting but not uninteresting super-smell powers, an ability that unfortunately will not help her out a whole lot after I’ve eaten the garlic bread either, if my digestive history is any indication.  Oh well, goodnight ladies and germs!

HOLY CRAP, I’M HAVING A BABY!

I had sex with my wife and it resulted in an impending and significant financial burden!  Son of a bitch! 

It’s true, my wife and I are having a baby!  I know, I know, we’re not special.  Lots of people have had babies.  I mean, look around at all the babies.  Everyone is pretty good proof that people have babies sometimes.  To us, however, it feels like we’re the first couple ever to embark on this tender journey of pooping and destitution, and to say the least we’re equal parts thrilled and shell-shocked. 

This baby will be invading my personal space sometime in late May, if all goes according to “plan”.  Not long ago, news such as this would have destroyed me emotionally.  I would have run screaming into the woods.  Once there, I would have sat down on the least wet stump I could find (after carefully inspecting it for silverfish) and cried, keening and blubbering long into the night.  Then I would have started feverishly looking around for the checkerberry plant (gaultheria procumbens), because it’s the only plant I know of that you can eat in the wild.  It smells like gum, and tastes like gum mixed with a bad-tasting plant.  From there, it’s hard to say what I would have done next.  The plan never extended beyond identifying and masticating checkerberry. 

But it was time to procreate or get off the pot.  Actually, from what I understand it’s best to get off the pot and then procreate.  Toilet procreation seems unsanitary and hard.  That’s a little joke, you can laugh at it or not laugh at it.  The ball’s in your court on that one.  Anyway, I’d say these days I’m about 44% ready for a child, and that’s way more ready than I’ve ever been in the past.  I think it’ll be fun to see what it does, what it thinks is funny, whether or not I stop calling it “it” once its sex has been established.  There are books I should probably be reading that purport to tell me how to deal with my new child and what to expect in general but frankly I’d rather snap my own neck than look at any of that stuff.  Besides, I already know many things about babies. 

RULES FOR BABIES:

1) Do not drop the baby on the floor. 

2) Do not put the baby in the stove.

3) Do not allow the baby to operate a motor vehicle, no matter how much it cries.

4) Do not put the baby in a “Perfect Plex”.

5) Do not throw the baby at people you don’t like.

6) Do not get the baby a tattoo.  He may think “Handy Manny” looks badass on his bicep right now, but it’s not gonna do them any favors later on when they’re trying to get laid. 

7) Do not lie down next to the baby and begin screaming, flailing, and shitting your pants to “see how it likes it”. 

8 ) Do not (or try not to) vomit directly onto the baby’s crotch upon unsealing its dung-encumbered diaper for the first time. 

9) Do not call the baby unkind names.  If you must attack your baby with words, create cuter substitutions for the usual vulgarity.  I plan on gently lambasting my child with the terms “chicken dinner” and “steak sandwich”.  For example: “What I paid for these diapers could have funded a bargain-priced Wii game, ya little chicken dinner!” or “You’ve ruined my life, you fucking steak sandwich!”

10) Do not make your baby go to a psychiatrist, no matter how messed up they seem. 

11) Introduce your baby to the work of Bob Newhart at an early age, that they might be more fully indoctrinated into the subtle nuances of his style of humor. 

12) If you and the baby are indoors and the house suddenly catches on fire, do not defenestrate the baby. 

13) Do not abandon the baby on someone’s doorstep with a saccharine note attached to his onesie.  That’s hokey.

14) Do not allow the baby access to your Netflix queue. 

15) Do not “pants” the baby in the middle of the mall and encourage bystanders to laugh and point.

16) Do not try to force episodes of “Arrested Development” on the baby.  If it’s meant to be, the baby will discover and learn to enjoy this fine program on its own.  The more you pressure it, the more it will resent the show on the basis of your badgering alone, however well-meaning you may be.  Just give it time. 

17) Ditto for “The Wire”. 

18) If your fantasy football team loses, do not defenestrate the baby.

19) Set a good example for your baby by behaving in a calm and respectful manner at all times, being careful not to use coarse language and to always display an unselfish and empathetic attitude.  Plus don’t beat your wife with the baby. 

20) If your baby disrupts your slumber with loud crying, don’t call the police on them. 

21) Do not “punk” your baby.

22)  When reading aloud to your baby, avoid the works of Joyce Carol Oates.  Babies HATE Joyce Carol Oates.  Nope, not even “We Were the Mulvaneys”.

23) Do not let your mom teach your baby to call Target “Tar-jay”, like it’s a fancy French store.  She didn’t invent that joke.  Stop letting her think that she did.

24) Do not teach your baby to share.  There’s no money in it.

25) Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Drain the tub as you normally would, then put the baby up for adoption.

26) Do not extinguish cigarettes on your baby’s fontanelle.  Buy an ashtray!  Jesus!

27) Do not try to get your baby interested in the stuff that used to be on TV when you were a kid.  It will only hurt your feelings when your baby inevitably fails to exhibit the same enthusiasm for “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” that you once held. 

28) I know you don’t like doing it yourself, but do not make the baby mow the lawn.  It won’t do a good job.  Your lawn looks bad, you look bad.  It’s just a bad scene all around.  There’s usually a neighborhood kid that’s looking to make a few bucks.  Look around for handmade notices tacked in the entryway of your local store.  Honestly, you’re better off in the end just leaving the baby out of it.

29) Do not dropkick the baby into a yawning crevasse. 

30) Do not make your baby pay rent.  It breeds contempt. 

See?  I got babies down.  Whatever the case, it’s sure to be an alternately rewarding and horrifying ride, and I’m looking forward to the end result.  Because right now my wife is barfing into the toilet every two seconds and making me drive out into the night to purchase pickles, peaches, and chocolate milk.  So for both of our sakes, pray to whoever you might pray to that the next nine months go by quickly, as my wife isn’t big on puking and I’m not a fan of running errands. 

Well, I’m off to enjoy a fitful night’s sleep interspersed with vivid dreams of babies either electrocuting themselves or tearfully confronting me about why I didn’t try harder in school so I could get a better job that would afford them cooler toys, better food, and more stylish clothing.  Night!

THE PAPA POST

My grandfather, whom my brother and I called Papa, passed away back in 2002, and I was one of the people who got up and spoke at his funeral.  I told a couple stories and cracked a couple jokes.  It was about what you’d expect.  Nothing terribly heartfelt.  It seemed to go over well enough with the audience, which as always was what I was shooting for.  My Uncle Rick thanked me for providing some needed comic relief, especially since he and most of my cousins had all busted out crying at the podium mid-speech, despite the fact that they too had delivered material that was predominantly amusing. Even at his own funeral, Papa wasn’t the kind of guy who inspired a serious speech.

Despite the generally positive reaction, every now and then, usually while lying in bed not being able to get to sleep, like tonight, I’ll rewrite the speech in my head, and take myself back to the summer of 2002, to the podium at First Baptist Church in Bangor, and try to come up with something that actually did the guy justice.  Nothing overly profound or climactic.  Just stand up there and let that church full of people (and it was PACKED, there had to have been a couple hundred people in there) know how much I liked the guy, and loved the guy, and would miss him.

Talking about people I actually care about is a horrendous ordeal.  It makes me feel embarrassed and disgusting.  Conjuring up a genuine sentiment about a relative or friend is about as appealing to me as the idea of seeing that same relative or friend stripped and beaten in the street, screaming fruitlessly for help.  I can get started on a better speech for Papa, but it never amounts to anything I’m satisfied by.  All I can do is remember stuff and describe it.

I have a lot to thank Papa for, not the least of which being my very existence, in a roundabout way. Wanting desperately to get Bart, his shiftless son who spent most of his time smoking cigarettes and repeatedly washing his hands, out of his house, Papa decided to set him up with one of the receptionists at the Armour Factory (the company responsible for Treet, a generic Spam knockoff you’ve probably made fun of at your local supermarket), the depressing building where Papa worked pretty much his entire life.  Papa asked the pretty and personable young woman if she liked bowling, one of Bart’s few interests.  She replied that she had nothing in particular against it.  Papa went home that night and told Bart that there was an attractive bowling fanatic named Anne at the Armour Factory who wanted to go out with him.  A bona-fide date was set (probably by Papa), and Bart surprised everyone by sweeping Anne off her feet with his not-too-shabby bowling skills and self-effacing wit, and within a few short months he had proposed to her, by that time having apparently gotten over the fact that she didn’t know a 7-10 split from a 7-11 convenience store.  So through an intricate web of subpar potted meat production and bowling-based deception, yours truly came into being, and it’s all thanks to the late great Edwin Wesley Stover.

I always envied the way my grandfather behaved around people.  It was always the same.  Whether the person he was talking to was a stranger or someone he’d known all his life, those people were both talking to the same Ed Stover.  What you saw was always always, unfailingly,what you got.  Being that I was related to the man, I fancied in the past that I possessed a little of that quality myself.  But I don’t think I do.  By and large, I am a different person around everyone I know.  I figure out what makes you laugh (which is one of the few things I’ll readily admit to being decent at: instantaneous sense-of-humor recognition) and I do and say those things whenever you’re around, with varying degrees of success. And that’s what I do, almost exclusively.  If I can’t get you to laugh every now and then, I’m not going to be particularly comfortable around you, and we probably won’t end up being very good friends. Papa didn’t care, though.  He said the same stuff to everybody, they liked it or they didn’t, and that was that.  Maybe it was an attitude he’d been honing his whole life, and had pretty well nailed by the time I entered the picture.  Whether that’s actually the case or not I’ll never know, but it’s a comforting thought.  Something to shoot for.  In the back of my mind, though, I know it came naturally to him.

Papa’s first wife, Betty (Granny to us), was a round woman who was boisterous in everything she did. She laughed loud and cried loud, yelled loud when you made her mad, screamed loud when surprised. She was loud.  My grandfather was gangly and on the frail side, and somewhat resembled popcorn magnate Orville Redenbacher.  They were a funny-looking couple.  I guess grandparents are just innately funny, in the long run.  It’s difficult not to remember them fondly, because (for me anyway, but I suspect it’s the same for most) you tend to associate them with the holidays.  Happy times.  That’s when they turn up, toddling down the driveway toward you with endearingly goofy smiles and arms outstretched.  They’re pretty good about getting you something relatively big and expensive off your Christmas list (even if they do have a hard time finding it at the mall), they know your date of birth better than you do, they let you stay up late and spoil your dinner, and they always seem extremely, almost unaccountably, happy to see you.  They want to know how school is, what you’re learning, if you like it or not, and your vague and disaffected answers appear to both fascinate and delight them. It’s nice, but it’s also a little annoying and creepy.  These are old people, after all.  It’s a bewildering relationship, the oldest members of the family cautiously making themselves known to the most recent additions.  People on their way out pausing briefly to wish the new people the best of luck.  How could they ever even begin to make sense to each other?

When I was around 8, which would have made my brother 4, my mom came into the living room and told us that Granny was dead.  We were probably playing with action figures.  It’s all we ever did back then.  I had known that Granny was sick, and had been warned in advance of this possibility, so this news didn’t come as much of a shock.  Mum went on to say that it was worse than just that, though.  I asked if her head had fallen off.  Not to be funny or gross or anything.  It was simply the only circumstance I could think of that was worse than “just dying”.  I get the feeling that Mum wasn’t too psyched to have to fill us in on the details, but she knew we weren’t complete dummies and that we’d eventually glean from overheard conversations that Granny had intentionally taken well above the recommended dosage of whatever medication they had her hopped up on, and killed herself.  Papa returned from Shop N Save to find his wife of 47 years floating lifelessly in the bathtub.

Think of that.  This is the love of your life, the person who knows you better than anyone else, the person who liked you so much that they agreed to spend every single remaining second of their life with you, you of all people, and you come in the house, and you call out to them, you tell them the store was all out of the cereal they wanted, so you had to get the generic kind, you hope that’s all right. They don’t say anything back.  You say their name again.  Nothing.  Maybe they’re asleep.  You go upstairs, saying their name again on the way up.  Still nothing.  You check the bedroom.  Nope.  Would they have gone outside?  Or to visit someone?  They didn’t mention any plans, but you’re not always the best listener.  Maybe they left a note on the table.  You’ll have to go downstairs and check.  While you’re up here, though, you might as well go to the bathroom…

To this day I don’t what Granny had been diagnosed with, whether it was mental or physical or what. I’ve never thought to ask anybody, and really, what could it possibly matter now?  From what I understand, though, it was the medication itself that was taking her mind, or at least that’s what my family seems to think, and I have no reason to doubt them.  Granny loved her family, and if necessary would have successfully engaged in hand-to-hand combat with battalions of army tanks for us without giving it a second thought.  And though he annoyed her daily with the ridiculous things he said and did, she loved her husband.  Wherever she went after she died (if that’s how it works), Granny arrived there confused and pissed off.  It hadn’t been her idea to do that.  Something bad got hold of her brain, it did what it did, and in the end there probably wasn’t much anybody could have done to prevent it.

My dad was out picking something up at the store or something when my mother got the call, and when he pulled into the driveway Justin and I each grabbed a couple toys and went to our respective rooms. I don’t remember if Mum told us to do this or not, but I know that I didn’t actually see my dad crying.  I just heard it.  Actually, first he yelled SHIT! and then there was some high-pitched sobbing.  He sounded just like any kid I’d ever heard crying, and for me at the time this was the probably the worst part of the entire experience.  Unless you hate them and you’ve just caved their heads in with a bat after years of abuse and neglect, a parent crying is about as bad as it gets, soundwise.  As I recall it’s the only time I’ve ever heard Dad cry, thank God.

For a few months following Granny’s death, we moved in with Papa at his house on Essex Street in Bangor.  I’m not sure whose idea this was, but it actually made the situation worse, and we only ended up staying there a month or so.  It was especially hard on Justin, because he was just starting kindergarten, and to have to do that in a big city school must have been pretty daunting, especially coming from a town with less than 80 people in it.  I believe he actually missed the first day of school because he ran off and hid behind the barn when the bus showed up, screaming and crying and hurling his new backpack into the field.  Bangor is no one’s idea of a metropolis, but we’d grown up in the middle of the woods, quite literally, and for us any locale sizable enough to boast a grocery store, let alone a mall, was big time.  I myself had to start fourth grade at Fruit Street School, and I have no idea how I successfully got myself from class to class.  I had never seen that many kids in one building.  I’d been previously attending a Christian school that had a grand total of about 30 kids, so Fruit Street was giving me panic attacks on a daily basis.  On my first day of fourth grade a little black kid sat next to me on the bus, and I was petrified.  I’d never seen one in real life.  Thankfully the kid looked almost exactly like Webster, which made communicating with him easier, and we became fast bus seat pals.  I seem to recall we had similar green raincoats, so that might have given us something to talk about.  My teacher, Mrs. Ingalls, was very understanding about my situation, and I remember one day in class she gave me a little handwritten note of encouragement that had an “I’m Proud” sticker on it, a kind gesture that I made sure to conceal instantly from potential onlookers.  She had terrible breath but seemed like a good teacher, certainly better than anyone at the Christian school, which I learned later in life was operated entirely on a volunteer basis.  My large and newly multi-cultural homeroom was certainly intimidating, but seeing as how I was the only one in my class with one of those awesome orange four-color pens, I had little trouble making friends.

At first I’m sure Papa was glad to have the company, but in the end an entire family invading his limited living space probably did little to alleviate his stress.  Though we were all trying to be good sports, and the change of scenery was intriguing at first, the sudden upheaval was too much for Justin and I to bear without complaints and freakouts, and Papa absolutely despised our dog, Lucy, who had a skin disease of some sort and rarely came when called. It wasn’t meant to be, and though all four of us had been guilty at one time or another of whining about the lack of anything whatsoever to do in Maxfield, we were all desperate to return.  Home’s home.

Not long after we moved into the Bangor house, however, I have a standout memory of milling around in Papa’s living room by myself.  Everyone else was outside or upstairs.  There was an unfamiliar fat little notebook on the endtable by the couch, and (even as a child being the type of person to rifle through other people’s belongings) I picked it up and leafed through it.  The words “Dear Betty” were not what I expected to see.  One time in the mail we had gotten a flyer from some foundation trying to stop people from clubbing baby seals, and I opened it up, expecting a few cute Ranger Rick type pictures and instead getting an eyeful of gory baby seal heads that kept me up nights for about a week straight.  “Dear Betty” kind of felt like that, that hot and mean little stomach squeeze you get when you see some unexpectedly graphic footage on the news, or when a severely deformed person brushes past you in a department store.  I pretty quickly recognized the book as Papa’s diary, written in the form of letters to Granny.  He was writing his way through everything.  Question marks were, unsurprisingly, the prevalent form of punctuation.  There were apologies in there for things he’d done and said to make her mad, situations and information I knew nothing about, then or now.  But mostly he just told her what he’d done that day.  He’d mowed the lawn or he’d picked some blackberries or he’d talked to Uncle Rick about this or that.  The boring day-to-day stuff she was missing out on.  He was keeping her up-to-date, and I’m sure she read every word of it, if that’s how it works.

I read more than I should have and then set it back down before someone could come in and catch me snooping.  Though I couldn’t have told you why at the time, I felt like I should not have done that, should not have seen those words.  Throughout the duration of our stay, that little book remained on the endtable, and I didn’t look at it again.  I’ve never talked to anyone about it, but I imagine someone other than me must have taken a look at it out of curiosity (respecting the privacy of others is historically not a trait Stovers can lay claim to), or maybe even actually discussed it with Papa.  But I’ve never heard it mentioned.  Part of me wishes I would have brought this up when I was talking at his funeral.  I don’t know why.  It’s not the greatest anecdote in the world.  At any rate it probably would have been better than the story I did tell, which was about how when I was three or four I ate some of Papa’s Ben-Gay one time, mistaking it for an interesting new brand of toothpaste, then descended the stairs and nonchalantly announced to everyone: “Well, I just ate some Ben-Gay”.  Not having prepared the speech beforehand, it was the first thing that came to mind, and I ran with it as best I could.  I believe I also told a story about how this one time that Papa laughed really hard because I somehow managed to pour Tab on my Count Chocula.  Real poignant stuff. 

As I see it, that little book, which I should not have looked at but am glad I did, revealed to me doddering old Papa, with his suspenders, socks pulled up to his knees, and puffy trucker hat barely resting atop his head, as an actual person, a human being.  He thought about people and worried about things.  He liked certain TV shows better than others, and occasionally out of nowhere a disturbing moment from his childhood would come to mind for no good reason.  Certain smells would remind him of the most unexpected things.  There was probably something he’d wanted to accomplish as a young man that for one reason or another had never panned out.  People he’d had important conversations with had died.  And years and years ago he’d been going through his daily motions in an oblivious haze, wondering what he could possibly say to make that Betty Smart girl give him the time of day.  Would she go with him to see a show, or take a ride in his jalopy, or accompany him to the soda fountain, or sock hop or whatever dippy crap people did back then?  And would she marry him, and would his job make him enough money to afford the house, and would their first kid come out okay, and what should he talk to the kid about, and should they have another one, and can they afford to feed two kids, and would they all get along, and should he get a new car or just get this one fixed, should they get the kids a dog, are they doing okay in school, should he help them with homework or let them figure it out on their own, not that he knows how to do the homework any better than they do, but still, isn’t that what a father does, and should they have another kid, and am I doing this right, and did I do the right thing, and am I even really here?

It’s a fortunate person that can get close to their grandparents. I can’t say that I ever really did. I saw them on holidays and at infrequent outdoor barbecues, and as I got older my excitement to see Papa and tell him all about the rides we’d gone on at the Bangor State Fair gradually became awkward hugs at Thanksgiving and increasingly incoherent phone calls around Christmastime.  I was always happy to see him, but there was never a whole lot to say.  Small talk has never been my forte, and when that type of communication became the norm, I said less and less.  If he were alive now, I still probably wouldn’t be able to think of much to talk about with him.  Thinking back, though, whenever we’d go visit Granny and Papa, they never seemed to gab a whole lot.  Maybe it was a different story when they didn’t have company, but if memory serves, they were doing a lot of sitting around, watching TV or reading.  But later on, Granny hadn’t been dead a month, and Papa had almost filled up a good-sized notebook.  So I don’t think it’s ever that you don’t have anything to say.

It’s got to be weird for a person when their kid has a kid.  It’s a pretty monumental occasion for all concerned.  There’s a minimum of five lives invested in this situation, five very different people stuck with each other and all of them beginning something new and terrifying and amazing, and when you get down to it, none of them really have any idea what they’re doing.  Ten eyeballs, all equally wide.  I never gave it much thought before, but Papa and Granny were both probably really happy when I was born, and probably pretty weirded-out as well, at the very thought of Bart reproducing.  Naturally I assume that all conversations stop once I leave the room, and everybody just kind of watches TV and hangs out until I come back to talk to them again, but who knows?  Maybe that night I was born, lying in bed Papa and Granny talked about me, and wondered aloud about Bart’s suitability for the considerable task of not accidentally killing a child. Could be they just sat around and talked about how funny “Mary Tyler Moore” was that particular night.  I just like to imagine them hanging out with each other, enjoying each other’s company, being whoever they were once all the kids left, and it was back to just the two of them, in that house, surrounded by everything there was to say and remember.

The last conversation I clearly remember having with Papa was at my cousin Shawn’s wedding.  He was with his second wife Jody at the time, and he had recently fallen down in the garden and hurt his foot (something he did rather often), so he was hobbling around on crutches.  I went up to him and gave him a hug and told him he looked like he’d seen better days.  “I know,” he said.  ”Jody’s been beating me”. Funny guy, that Papa.

Ben-Gay tastes like pennies, if you were wondering.

 

THE CHRONICLES OF VARNEYA

Hello.  I thought it would be a nice idea to have a drink of coffee at 8:12 in the evening on a worknight so now here I am all hopped up on hot bean sediment sluice with no place to go.  Not a lot is going on.  That isn’t true – every day a lot goes on, I either just don’t feel like putting it into words or I’m concerned that you won’t find any of it interesting or funny.  Someone got fired at work today, that’s something that happened.  Sadly, it was not me.  There’s no story to it.  The person just kept not coming to work, and it resulted in firing.  A pretty direct cause and effect situation.  I’ve been laboriously grunting a whole lot of boiling dungmilk into the toilet lately, and my diet is not markedly different from usual, so that’s another development.  None of these are very nice things that are happening.  My dad died.  Not really, but he is struggling with an ingrown toenail, and probably wants death to some degree, eternal slumber being preferable to hardship of any kind.

Oh, I own an Xbox now.  This is a machine that allows you to murder cartoons all night long.  It is 100% about killing people.  It is bad dirty fun.  I am not good at playing Xbox games but I am having fun repeatedly perishing and occasionally managing to haphazardly bludgeon a foe to an ignoble death through no real fault or skill of my own, just repeatedly pushing a button until someone is dead, usually me but sometimes another guy who just walked up to me and started hitting me for no reason.  Xbox is a lot like middle school.  I probably shouldn’t have bought it.  I wonder what serial killers think of first person shooters.  I bet they disdain them.  I still like the Wii better – I just think it has a better attitude – but the Xbox does appeal to that part of me that likes to fantasize about being hired by God (after being blessed with the power of invincibility) to kill the entire human race in whatever manner I see fit, kind of a Noah’s Ark situation but instead of a flood you got me walking around eradicating people with improvised weapons, then raiding their pantry and going through their personal belongings.  I hope this happens someday.  I think I’ve earned this right.

Recently I also went to Walmart and purchased myself a collection of Ernest films/commercials for five dollars.  Only the absence of chaw prevents this action from being the most redneck thing I could possibly have thought of to do that day.  The two movies included in the set are “Ernest Goes to Africa” and “Ernest in the Army”.  Somehow I haven’t actually watched those yet, and I cannot be called upon to provide a suitable response as to why.  I mean, jeez, I want to see both of those movies really bad, and I’ve never seen either of them.  Why don’t I just watch them?  I must really hate myself.  I did watch the commercials, however, and they were a delight.  I like Jim Varney.  I had a poster of him in my childhood bedroom for many years.  I bought it at Ames.  Here, watch this Ernest commercial.  If you don’t like it, then I am sorry to have to inform you that you stink.

I don’t know why I have to live in a world where “Hey Vern, It’s Ernest” is not on DVD.  That is really the only thing that I find bad about this planet.  Otherwise, everything is great!  Have you ever had corned beef hash?  That stuff is delicious!  And walking downtown on a nice day with your best girl?  Tops in my book!  But then you come home to watch something from your otherwise impressive DVD library, and what’s this?  No “Hey Vern, It’s Ernest”?  You might as well drop kick your best girl off a cliff and go petition Congress to outlaw corned beef hash, and the hell with that nice day; what does “nice day” even mean?  I couldn’t even find anything from the show on YouTube, which makes absolutely no sense.  I couldn’t have been the only one taping every episode, meticulously editing out the commercials.

That’s one thing I miss about the VHS age: taping stuff off TV and the exciting tension inherent in “taking out the commercials”.  Finger on the pause button, ready for the telltale fade to black.  Could you perform a seamless edit, or would a fleeting but jarring second or two of a “Kibbles N Bits N Bits N Bits” commercial muscle its way onto your tape? And when the show or movie comes back from commercials, would you catch it just in time or would you lose a line or two to either poor reflexes or a slow-to-reawaken VCR?  Ah, why can’t we return to the olden days, when nothing worked and nobody got what they wanted?

Oh well, the $5 Ernest set I got from Walmart is a decent substitute in lieu of “Hey Vern”.  I’m sure Ernest finds a lot of humorous hijinks to get into in the army, to say nothing of Africa.  It’s a shame Varney died before being able to star in “Ernest Goes to Papua New Guinea”.  I think we all would have enjoyed that.  ”Vern!  The neighboring tribe accepted my offer of taro in exchange for one of their leaner pigs, but now they’re makin’ me mutilate my penis in a ritualistic trial to prove my manhood!  This vacation sure isn’t workin’ out like I planned, knowhutimean?”

As proof positive of Varney’s invaluable contribution to society, look at what happens when someone else tries to be Ernest.  It just shouldn’t be done.

I don’t want to say too much bad stuff about this guy.  He’s trying his best.  I actually find him a little frightening, though.  It’s like when they try to get new voices for Bugs Bunny or Kermit the Frog.  Such good intentions, but no one likes it.  It would not be markedly less disturbing for me if they devised a cyborg type of situation out of Jim Varney’s corpse and simulated his voice via computer.  In fact, that’s a good idea.  I’m going to do that tomorrow.  I don’t really feel like filming commercials, though.  Maybe I’ll just come over to each of your houses and annoy you with it.  ”Hey Vern!  Doin’ the dishes?”  ”Hey Vern!  Tryin’ to sleep?”  ”Hey Vern!  This your mom?”  ”Hey Vern!  What else is on?”  Clearly there are no sentences so airtight they cannot be somehow improved by preceding them with “Hey Vern!”, and I’m grateful that Jim Varney realized this.

This is a pretty typical Ernest clip that I like simply for the idea that some people at a TV channel were sitting around trying to think of how best to advertise their local news program and eventually all agreed that Ernest P. Worrell was the ideal spokesperson.  If only “Meet the Press” had been as open-minded as that.

Couldn’t you just watch these all night?  Don’t you wish you could jam a laptop into your brain so you didn’t have to look at trees and cars all day and instead could just watch nothing but Ernest clips for the rest of your natural days?  Wouldn’t that be better than lousy conversations with morons about crap you don’t care about?  I really do like Jim Varney, and I’m very sorry that he passed away.  I read in some magazine (I believe it may have been a recent issue of “Misinformed Dipshit”)  that Larry the Cable Guy is the Ernest for the modern age.  That’s like calling Hitler the Jesus for the modern age.  It’s just not accurate.  In a Funny Showdown, Ernest would destroy Larry the Cable Guy, and it would be an event for the ages.  Ernest would be carried out on an ornate throne by an adoring crowd, like C3PO and the Ewoks in “Jedi”, and Larry the Cable Guy, in tears, would strip down to his briefs onstage and slap himself in the face until he died, his bloated face an unrecognizable purple blob, mewling indistinct vocalizations that may or may not be the word “mommy”.  This fallen world would be repaired.  Ernest would get a new prime time show.  People would get along better in general.  The health care thing would work itself out.  No probs for anyone.  Adios, probs!

As you age and get into different types of televised or musical entertainment, you encounter new famous personalities who strike some sort of chord in you, and you seek out their work and champion them in enthusiastic conversations with peers at parties, and it’s all well and good.  But the people who entertained you when you were little, they’re the only famous folks who stay with you to any real degree, I think.  They caught you at a time when wonder was unquashable, when you really felt like people on TV were actually aware of you, and maybe you could meet them and be friends and they’d act just like they do on TV.  Mr. Rogers, “Weird” Al, the Muppets, Chunk from the Goonies, Pee-Wee Herman, Bo and Luke Duke…there are many people in real life to whom I haven’t connected nearly as well to as some of these.  Maybe that just means I need to work on my social skills.  I dunno.  I guess I just miss buying into it.  Knowhutimean?

To a lot of people, he’s a back-pocket reference to have on hand whenever the subject of dumb movies or second-rate comedians happens to come up, and honestly you wouldn’t have to watch a lot of his material to see why that might be the case.  Be that as it may, I would have liked to have met him, shake his hand and say thanks, I always liked you.

CRAPPIN’ ONE OUT

My new downstairs neighbor has evidently just purchased himself a new stereo, and judging from the booming bass notes currently jabbing their way through our floor and funkily fisting us, he appears eager to inform everyone within a 12 mile radius of this uninteresting fact.  This would be more aggravating if he were blaring, say…I don’t know.  I don’t know what loud bands are currently in vogue.  Wow, I have no idea.  I was going to say Slipknot.  I believe Slipknot have not been anywhere near anything approaching a limelight since 1997.  Is loud music still being recorded?  Korn, anyone?  No?  Anyway, in the past hour or so he has treated us to deafening broadcasts of “A Horse With No Name”, “Time After Time”, and “Say You Say Me”.  I don’t know whether to laugh or relocate.  Guy knows how to party.   Right now I find his otherwise benign presence just aggravating enough that I sense that I may soon be mentally thanking him for acting as the impetus to leave the arguable comforts/inarguable thrift of this unremarkable little apartment for at least somewhat greener pastures, perhaps a modest-sized house in a quiet town that smells less like boiled dinner, and that we can afford without having to sell all of our beloved electronics or fellate retired millworkers for pocket change.  I love this cheap little dump, but like the man said, we need a place for our stuff.  At any rate, our new neighbor’s only real missives thus far are smoking smellily outside of our window, blaring the soft hits of the 70’s 80’s and today, and having loud, incomprehensible conversations with friends and passerby, which are kind of fun to eavesdrop on but surprisingly difficult to follow along with.  It doesn’t help that the neighbors he replaced were kind enough to rarely be home, so his constant vocal and olfactory presence suffers mightily by comparison.

As is often the case, I have nothing pressing to share with anyone; just felt like it had been awhile.  It’s extremely hot in this neck of the woods of late, which renders yours truly even more listless than normal.  Now that it no longer heralds a three-month period of blissful if sweltering inactivity, I have very little use for summer and look forward to the three quadrants of the year that don’t find me sprawled in front of an inadequate fan, sun-stunned and sopping with unearned perspiration.  Is there anywhere that’s autumn all the time?  I get as sick of people complaining about the weather as the next guy, so that’s more than enough of this nonsense, but I’m hotter than a hoot n’poot is all I’m trying to get across.  Thank the good Lawd for pink lemonade.  I am busily funneling it into every pore and orifice in the hopes of eventually being able to subsist entirely on fruity sweat.  I’m tired of having to exchange money for flavorful drinks.  It’s time to live off the fat of the land, or, failing that, it’s time to suckle an off-putting amalgam of artificial citrus and dissolved chlorides out of my forearm.

Anything else I can bitch fruitlessly and entertainmentlessly about?  I think that’s all I got.  Shoot, I got a new John Prine DVD to watch, a fresh paycheck trembling in my bank account just itching to be blown on what my father would call “riotous living”, and a nearly full 2-liter bottle of pink lemonade to deplete, not to mention a darling spouse on the couch opposite who allows me the luxury of championing all that is boring and frivilous in the world and a relatively new pair of sweat shorts that can proudly lay claim to being the finest summertime pajamas it has ever been my pleasure to clad my genitals and buttocks with.  I got it made in the shade, were there in fact shade.  I got it made in the ceaseless stultifying radiation.  I got it beat in the heat; how’s that, then?  I can’t carp too much, or oughtn’t.

If you like vodka and you don’t mind and perhaps welcome a quick-to-judge cashier thinking you’re Liberace in a pink tutu and a George Michael tee-shirt with a penis in your ass, you should try Smirnoff Passion Fruit flavored vodka, or perhaps a more expensive and well-made variation thereof put out by a more reputable company if you’re one of them uppity money-havers.  I for one was surprised, as I have long turned to the Smirnoff line of vodkas on the numerous occasions where I have not wanted or been able to cough up for Ketel One but can’t bring myself to stoop (literally) to Popov or Five O’Clock or any number of brands of substandard, medicinally delicious swill, but I’ve never been one to cry “Merciful heavens, this Smirnoff is at once ambrosial and thirst-quenching!  Pour all of it into my mouth at once!”  Smirnoff is decent bee-minus hooch; will neither rock your world nor ruin your evening; the Mary Higgins Clark of vodka.  Wanting to drink a few nights ago but not wanting the usual, I opted for the unknown and risked a foofy fifth of Smirnoff Passion Fruit vodka, came home and half-and-halfed it with my old friend pink lemonade, and was more than pleased at the agreeable fusion.  If you like pink lemonade and unmanly tipsiness, you’ll find the above concoction to be time and money well spent.  I’m finding that to be the case this very minute, as a fatter of mact!  Hic!  Working on a second-rate Foster Brooks routine; how ya likin’ it so far?

THINGS YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN ABOUT FOSTER BROOKS:

- Who he is.

- He gave up drinking in 1964 to win a ten-dollar bet.

- He did not become famous until the age of 57, living (well, dead actually) proof that one needn’t hurry anything.

Speaking of Foster Brooks and others of his era and ilk, we’ve been deriving a considerable amount of enjoyment these days watching episodes of “The Dean Martin Show”, which my wife was smart enough to purchase directly from Guthy-Renker in commemoration of our 2nd anniversary.  Low-rent comedy has fast, through no conscious planning or intent on our part, become a staple of our anniversary rituals.  For our first anniversary we went to see “Step Brothers” in the theater; for our second we got “Cops and Robbersons” from our local library and viewed it at home.  Wow, seeing that in print makes it seem a lot sadder.  Anyway!  Now we have ten DVDs chockablock with slapdash skits, woozily crooned numbers fresh from the mothballs, and more harmlessly rambunctious yuksters from a bygone era than you can shake a stick at.  Such timeworn icons as Jimmy Stewart, Bob Newhart, Dom Deluise, Lucille Ball, Orson Welles, Victor Borge, Ruth Buzzi…the list goes on and on.  Furthermore, it would seem that every couple of months we’ll get a new one in the mail, which we can keep or send back or more likely misplace or forget we have it and buy it whether we like it or not, just like the good old days of BMG and Columbia House.  It’s a throwback from several angles, that much is certain.  As is to be expected and hoped for, there’s plenty of Rat Pack action on display.  Just watch these natty professionals swing on this snappy tune!

Ring a ding dang barnacle doodilybop jubblycats!  That’s how you do it!  I love this clip and these guys.  Snappin’ away in their suits, with the good-natured ribbing and spot-on harmonies most of us couldn’t find with a floodlight but they can belt out in their sleep.  I know you’re always hearing about how cool Frank and Dean and those guys were, but dammit!  Look at them!  So relaxed, effortless, funny, eager to entertain but not letting you see them sweat.

Here’s another one I like from the Dean Martin Show with Jimmy Stewart showcasing his cache of piss-poor impersonations:

Well, now that you got me posting videos here, let’s end it on a horribly depressing note with this clip of Jimmy S. reading a poem about his late dog, Beau, on the “Tonight Show” with good ol’ Johnny Carson.  It’s something you may have seen on a clip show or talk show retrospective of some sort on the Biography channel or whatever, but it’s worth revisiting.  Stewart’s poetry is as aw-shucks simplistic as you would imagine, with subject matter and a rhyme scheme that wouldn’t be out of place in a third grade classroom, but it’s remarkable how the air in the room changes as the poem progresses.  At the outset, it’s clear that the audience believes it’s being treated to a humorous little poem a la Shel Silverstein or Ogden Nash, but right around the 2:12 mark things start to get heavy.  An old man reading a poem about his dog…why yes, I’ve cried at this…

You’re unlikely to encounter this sort of thing on television anymore without the effect being marred by pretension or irony.  Say what you will about the Internet, but it’s keeping a lot of the good stuff alive.

Fare thee well.

SLUMBER CONCERNS

Boy, I have absolutely nothing to write about right now.  It’s never a good idea for me to just hit “New Post” and start typing whatever, but what good did a good idea ever do anybody?  You still die penniless and alone.  That’s the bottom line. 

How about we talk about my shitty bed?  Yes, the riotously uncomfortable rectangle of agony that my wife and I find ourselves struggling to balance our bodies upon each and every evening.  Our bed sucks maggot-riddled dung out of the weathered rectum of William S. Burroughs’ putrid corpse.  This doesn’t make trying to sleep on it any easier, believe you me.  How our bed managed to rob William S. Burroughs’ grave is mind-boggling in and of itself, but you try relaxing on a rickety boxspring that’s constantly in the act of administering analingus to a decaying beatnik.  I’m trying to tell you that I don’t have a nice bed. 

Buying a bed is a big deal, and we’ve been putting it off for a long time.  We actually slept on the floor for upwards of two years before “lucking” into the ramshackle nightmare we currently retire to when hay-hitting time draws nigh, and part of me would like to throw our current bed out the window and go back to that stage of life.  I don’t wanna go to the bed store.  I don’t wanna talk to a bed salesman.  I don’t wanna pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for something that doesn’t emit interactive computerized images.  Plus what do we do with the old bed when the bed store guys bring the new bed?  Are the bed store guys gonna take it for us?  And what of these bed store guys?  Do I have to say stuff to them?  Do I have to give them ten dollars?  Is that enough?  Will they want twenty dollars?  I don’t want them to have twenty dollars.  I want that money for me.  Are they gonna say bad stuff about our apartment when they get back in the truck?   I don’t want them to do that.  That hurts my feelings.  And what if we spend eight googolplex dollars on a bed that turns out to suck even grosser shit out of an even deader person’s asshole?  At least when you sleep on the floor you don’t have all these frightening quandries to deal with.  No money needs to change hands, no strangers need to be contacted.  It’s just you and the floor. 

Why do so many facets of life improvement require that you speak and surrender income to people you’ve never met before and have no reason to trust?  The bed salesman only wants to take my money.  Whether or not I get a good night’s sleep is immaterial to the expansion of his bank account.  I worked hard for that money.  All the bed salesman did was happen to gain access to a building with a bunch of beds in it.  I would be comfortable paying twenty-five dollars for a bed, and iffy but begrudgingly agreeable about forking over fifty.  I understand that beds cost more than twenty-five dollars and this is befuddling and unacceptable to me. 

I am also worried about having to dispose of our current bed once and if we get a new one.  If the terrifying bed laborers don’t elect to carry it out of our apartment, what then?  We cannot have two beds; that is insane.  We cannot lift the mattress and boxspring ourselves and carry them downstairs to the car, then transport them to a suitable disposal site; that is hard.  The only thing I can think of to do is make some kind of art out of it, like chop it up with an axe and maybe pour some paint all over it and call it “Consumerism” or something.  That could take up space in that area of the room in front of the closet currently occupied by dirty clothes, and then we could squash all the dirty clothes under the new bed, which is nice because then you just wake up, reach your arm underneath the bed, and pull out your outfit for the day.  All right, now that I have a plan, it’s probably time to take the bed-buying plunge.  After all, beds don’t buy themselves.  They don’t have any money because no one will hire them in this economy. 

Well, what beds are there for me to buy?  Let’s Google some beds!

Say, that’s a pip of a bed!  And if you get thirsty for orange juice in the middle of the night as I tend to do, you can just convince your partner to help you rock the thing back and forth until you’re rolling down the hall into the kitchen, slick as you please!  That featureless endtable isn’t doing anyone any favors, though.  Also plants don’t belong in the bedroom, or for that matter in the house.  They require assistance to continue living.  You think I need that shit on my conscience 24-7?  I’m trying to relax on my bed!

Oh jeez!  Oh, ah ha haaah!  Oh no!  This guy’s bed is a cheeseburger!  That’s certifiable.  Makes you wonder if he goes to McDonald’s and orders tiny beds to eat!  That thing is probably pretty cozy for people who don’t have any women.  Like being eaten by a giant bottom with cheese in it every night.  Can you take the pickle slice out and use that for a pillow, I’m wondering right now?  It’s a little fun to think about the day this guy moved into his new apartment, and one of his new roommates walks by his room on the way to the bathroom and happens to see through the slightly ajar door that the new guy is setting up a giant cheeseburger bed, whistling with homey contentment.  I bet that guy peed really fast so he could run back to the living room and tell the other roomie about the cheeseburger bed.  And that was only the beginning!  Man, that Andy certainly was a character.  Whatever happened to him? 

Hey, I like this!  Putting aside the yucky fake wood look of the exterior, I could sleep nicely in a shallow padded box with a staircase.  Plus apparently there’s speakers in this thing so you can mellow out to soothing tunes which course through your prone body while you set about taking the A-train to Snoozetown.  That “Tonight I Need Your Sweet Caress” song would feel sexily relaxing in this bed, I bet.  (Jesus, I think about that song all the time.  Why?  It doesn’t benefit me.)  Dude, you could totally get baked and put some Pink Floyd in this bed and lie down and be like awwwwwwwwwww shit dude. 

I’m not even completely sure what’s happening in this picture, but I laugh every time I look at it.  The look on that gentleman’s face tells me that is exactly what he’s always wanted in a bed, and now that he finally has it he will live out the remainder of his days in pure, unkillable bliss.  We can learn a lot from this man if only we could open our hearts, souls, minds, and other openable things we probably have that only this guy with the fucked up tree bed seems to know about.

This is a snazzy, space-saving concept in theory, but what happens when you’re tippity-typing away at your laptop, putting the finishing touches on a “tweet” that succintly manages to both inform and entertain, and something unhooks on your fancy ceiling bed and crashes down and FUCKING KILLS YOU?  What then, Mr. Bed Version of Frank Lloyd Wright?  I still think this is pretty cool, but I couldn’t get any real computing done under that thing while in such constant awareness of my own mortality. 

Heh.  I guess I can understand the desire to want to make a badass bed, but that is the most approachable skull and crossbones I’ve ever seen.  That skull is genuinely happy to make your acquaintance.  “How are you doing today?” asks that skull.  “I hope your day is going as swimmingly as my own.  Would you like to come to my house and play a fun board game and have some good-tasting snacks?”  That’s the skull of someone who just found out that a package they’ve been waiting for from Amazon came in the mail.  There is no death or danger in that emblem, just contentment and goodwill, and those are superb qualities to have in a bed, I should think.  Yes, I think this is the bed for me.  Wrap it up, bed peddler (beddler?), I’ll take it. 

There you go.  Six pictures and 15-20 lame bed jokes.  Don’t ever say I never gave you nothin’.