The Best Bar. Ever.

Congratulations, Chris, for winning the Name the Best Bar contest! Although it wasn’t really fair, because he’d heard the story before. It just never occurred to me that people actually listen when I tell things to them. He’ll get his prize, but his punishment is to have to hear the whole long-winded story again from the beginning – and it’s a doozy of a one, I tell you what.

Some years ago (and just you never mind how long, precisely) I worked for a company called Hear Music. Started as a mail-order catalog, grew to a small chain of stores, eventually even started up a label of our own. You may know them now as The Sound of Starbucks. Unfortunately, I got off that train before it hit the gravy. But that’s a story for another time.

We thought we were on a mission, we Hear Music folks. To save the music industry from itself, while bringing good music back to the good folks who want to hear it – whatever their ages, and wherever their tastes might tend to lie. Hence (cough-cough) the name. As in: Hear the Music, Don’t Just Buy the Hype.

It didn’t work. Not really. But that, too, is a story for another time.

The story that I want to tell right now is about a particular trip a bunch of us Hear Music folks took to the Second City, when we were opening a store on Rush Street there. It’s closed, now, but anyhoo…

I was excited to get to go to Chicago for work, all expenses paid. I’d been there once before, when I was sixteen years old, and I liked it plenty – but back then I was with a whole gang of other sixteen-year-olds, and we were chaperoned. Quite honestly, I spent most of my time in the ballroom of the Conrad Hilton, pretending to be charmed by an a cappella Southern Gospel barbershop quartet (again, another story for another time). Finally, I had a chance to go back and, although I’d be working diligently during the days and into the evenings, my nighttimes would be more or less my own.

And there’s a lot of Music to be Heard in the Windy City.

Now, you know those whispered legends you hear about jobs where going to work is fun, you are best friends with all your coworkers, and you really believe in what it is you’re trying to accomplish? Well, there really is such a thing, and that Hear Music job was it. So when I said “my nights would be my own,” what I really meant was “after work, we would all be going out together.” But “I would insist on choosing our destination.” Because I was not going home without setting foot in Buddy Guy’s.

The place is actually called Legends, and it had only been open for about five years at that point. I’d wanted to go since I heard of its existence, and now that we were actually in Chi-town, wasn’t nobody going to keep my ass away. I informed my co-workers, they were all in, and we were off.

I’ve never held it against Buddy Guy personally, but it was atrocious. I mean, I could have put up with the swishes of blue neon, or the tasteless beer selection, or even the elbow-to-elbow crowds – I could have put up with all of that and more, even loved it as part of the character of the place, if only the music had been good. And for all I know a lot of people probably thought it was. Lots of people do seem to like the Fabulous Thunderbirds, although for the life of me I can’t fathom the reason why. White blues leave me cold, is all I’m saying. (And no, you don’t have to be white to play white blues – and no, you don’t have to be black to play real blues. But yes, Mr. Clapton, I’m also talking about you.)

It just so happened, however, that the boy I had a crush on from the office liked the Thunderbirds. A lot. And since he was so obviously perfect in every way, I figured I must be missing something. So I tried. We pushed through to the bar, ordered beers in sign language (because even the bartenders couldn’t hear over the din), then stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the crowd, attempting to not goose or be goosed by the people in front of us or behind. For almost a full half-hour I stood there – or, in other words, the length of two interminable songs – nursing my warm, green bottle of tasteless beer and trying to find something to like about this overheated frat-party.

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that this was December, and there wasn’t even room enough to take our coats off? Everyone was sweating – and by everyone, I mean everyone. There was a fug in the air that I could literally taste.

Again, I would like to point out: these are all things I can put up with. I’m not such a prude that I expect all my entertainment to be sterile and Disneyfied. I can embrace the fug, find a way to turn the Rolling Rock to my advantage, if the show is worth it. But this one weren’t.

So I waited politely for the last lick of that endless second song, snapped my fingers in half-hearted applause while pulling with my other hand on the sleeve of my nearest office-friend. “I’m sorry I dragged you here!” I shouted in his ear over the how-can-they-love-this roar. “But I’m leaving! I can’t stand this for one more second or I’ll—”

He turned away. I thought he either hadn’t heard me or was miffed that I would bail on them so soon after being the one who got them into this in the first place. But it turned out he was just telephoning my message down the line. As soon as it came back to him, he bent down and hollered in my ear “We’re right behind you! Go!”

And so I went. Pushing through a sea of sweaty armpits as a thousand fists got raised in salute to the mock-blues that was cranking to life again under the neon sign. I held my breath and pushed and shoved and body-slammed people on my way to the door. I didn’t care. I was never going to be back here, anyway.

When we could finally see the sidewalk, we paused to regroup. There was a bit of room there by the exit, and a bit less noise, so we stopped there and conferred, and decided we weren’t ready to go back to the hotel just yet. We were in Chicago, damn it, and we wanted to do something. Something that would rinse the fug taste from our mouths, the white-blues slick from our assaulted ears. But what? If Buddy freakin’ Guy had let us down, what chance did we possibly have of figuring something else out on our own?

Just then my boss, god bless him – without announcing to any of the rest of us his plan – did probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen a person do. He walked up to the bouncer – a gigantic, jarheaded, Dolph-Lundgren-looking, well, bouncer, for crying out loud – and, with a room-encompassing wave of his gangly arms, said:

“We hate this. Where should we go?”

That bouncer, god bless him, nodded his head one time and then – also without a word – hailed us a pair of cabs. Opened the doors for us, piled us in, stuck his head in the window of the first one and, with two firm slaps on the roof like he was patting a horse’s rump, said:

“Take ’em to Kingston Mines.”



It felt like a speakeasy.

The cabby pointed us to a barred-over window where we paid our cover charge and got waved in through an unmarked door* to a yawningly-empty room. The long bar stretched back into dark, nothing recesses, and the whole place looked as though it had been busted moments ago and rapidly evacuated. Chairs pushed back from tables, an extraordinarily large number of half-full trash cans placed around, stomped-on, still-smoking cigarette butts dotting the floor.

Huh. Well, at least the music was decent, even if it was coming through the speakers, and the stage itself was as empty as the rest of the spooky place.

We bellied to the bar and ordered a round of beers. Glanced up at the TV. Noticed that the music on the stereo seemed to sync up to the video that was playing: a wizened old black dude I didn’t recognize, dressed head to toe in black leather – cowboy hat, tie, jacket, pants, boots, the works – playing bottleneck on a steel guitar that had obviously seen its share of days. TV wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for, but we sat there quietly a little while, wiggling our elbows, breathing in the scent-story of a whole new fug, and appreciating the fact that this music at least seemed to have some soul behind it. Then the song ended, and real, live applause erupted from an invisible crowd.

Wait. What?

Turned out there was a whole looking-glass bar – just like this one, only opposite – on the other side of the wall behind the bar. Leather-cowboy-blues-dude was not on video, he was on live feed, and his sound had not been piped in, it had just been drifting through. We picked up our beers and followed the applause-sounds to the doorway that we’d failed to notice on our way right freaking by, and there it was:

The Best Bar. Ever.

I seem to remember that waitresses came around with buckets of assorted beers, and you picked what you wanted or just took what was left, but I might have made that up. I do know for a fact that the plethora of trash cans strewn about were for smashing beer bottles into when they were empty. I know for sure it was crowded enough that we were lucky to find ourselves a table – which we did only because not everyone had bothered to sit down – but that it still felt plenty roomy in there between the elbows. And I’ll never forget how the air was at the same time reverent and relaxed, as if everybody in there knew just exactly how good Cowboy-blues-guy was. They knew it, and – through the murmur, the Marlboro-haze and the (still-present, but now-tolerable) fug – he knew they knew it, without everyone feeling the need to close their eyes and bob their heads in an attempt to out-appreciate each other.

We sat there about an hour, smoking cigarettes and smashing empty beer bottles and generally feeling like we’d been going there our entire adult lives. Wishing we could go there for the rest. Until suddenly, Cowboy-leather-blues Dude ended yet another perfect song, said “Thank you very much” in a voice that we could hardly hear because he didn’t bother to say it in the mike, and put down his guitar. The audience gave him a whoop and a holler, picked up their beers and cigarettes, and shuffled off into the other room.

Still unclear of the concept, we stayed put – in the rapidly-evacuated room with the exceedingly large number of half-full trash cans and the cigarette butts on the floor – but we weren’t alone this time. Maybe we weren’t alone the first time, either, maybe we just hadn’t noticed the group or two of people in the dark recesses who knew exactly what was going on but had reached the point in their evenings when staying put seemed like the best idea. There was, after all, no reason to pick up and move. Because soon enough the tv sets in this room flickered to life, and we and the shadow-audience watched on them as the next band – who’d been setting up and sound-checking while we were all appreciating Cowboy Dude – kicked off the next set from the looking-glass stage.

I don’t know how long we stayed, or how many times we passed through the looking glass that night. We were told the music went till 4:00 a.m. (and 5 on Saturdays), so I’m pretty sure we didn’t close the joint. We did still have work to go to in the morning, after all.

Speaking of work: what in the hell were we thinking, a bunch of music writers and retailers and A&R folks, not writing down Cowboy-Blues Dude’s name? Maybe it was the same mentality that stops me taking pictures on vacation (or used to stop me, anyway) – that idea of just wanting to enjoy the moment, not bring it to a screeching halt in an attempt to put it away for later. Whatever our reasons, though, be they blissfulness or drunkenness or just plain stupidity, I do wish now that I knew who he was. But I don’t. I’d never heard of him before that night, and – as far as I know, at least – I’ve never heard him since.

I’ve googled Kingston Mines, though. They definitely exist. So at least the whole thing was not a looking-glass inspired dream.





*At least that’s how I remember it. Kingston Mines looks different than I remember now, but I don’t know if that’s due to their recent remodel or if I made up in my head the part about the speakeasy-entrance. At any rate, the rest of my memories check out, so you can trust that everything I say after we go through the door is true.

We're Docked!

Not quite, One Dog.
Not quite.

One Dog and One Friend are heading down to Connecticut tomorrow, to where they will live. But tonight we all are here, and I am home.

We have a winner in the Name the Best Bar contest -- although it never occurred to me someone out there would actually know. I am the Worst Contest-Thrower, Ever.

I'm fweeping wate tomorrow (remind me, some other time, to tell you why I spell it that way), but when I do log on I'll tell you all kinds of things, including the Best Bar In Chicago story.

Which has nothing to do with This Particular Cross-Country Trip.

Are We There Yet?

Not far now, One Dog. Not far, now...

You know how, like, you have your first kid, and you take a lot of pictures, and you talk about him all the time, you wash the food before you let him put it in his mouth? And then you have your second kid, and you get a little less diligent about the documenting, a little less strict about the five-second rule? And then you have your third kid, and she gets to play with knives and has to survive off of whatever everybody else dropped on the floor?

That's what being on the road is like. The first day, you really care. You're all wide-eyed, full of everybody-ought-to-do-this awe and all you can talk about is poop and pee. You take a lot of pictures, think up all manner of pithy commentary.

By day six, you don't know what day it is, what time it is, and you don't really so much care. You look at the clock, realize it's 5:46 p.m., you haven't even thought yet about stopping for the night, and you better get on the horn with AAA and find yourself a room. They (and let's god bless them, by the way) help you to discover that there is not a single hotel for the next 120 miles that will open its doors to One Dog, so you resolve to drive on a little farther.

To Batavia, New York.

It smells like cow poo in Batavia. This is nothing new, it has pretty much smelled like cow poo for the last 1200 miles, but there doesn't appear to be a restaurant in town. Cows and poo -- and, for some reason, about eighty-nine hotels -- seem to pretty much be the local industry.

But then you inquire of the hotel receptionist, and she hands you a map. Turns out there is a restaurant or two, you just have to go a little further off the highway (forgive yourself: you're not used to going that far off the highway. Not anymore, at any rate.).

So you look through the list, and you think about a few things. You think about the fact that you're wearing your Patriots jersey still, and whether or not you want to walk into a sports bar in New York. You think about the notion that your husband is from Dublin, and whether or not you want to know what an Upstate Irish Pub might turn out to look like. You think about whether you ever, ever, ever again want to eat at Applebee's.

Then you take a deep breath, and you go to Margarita's.

And do you know where it turns out you can get the best Mexican food north of the Rio Grande?

Batavia, New York.

Who would'a thunk it?

I Don't Like Chicago-Style Pizza

There. I said it.

Good thing we're getting the hell out of Dodge.


P.S. I'm wearing my Pats jersey again today. And, even if I don't have to, I am going to pee in Indiana.

Dude, I Smoked Up and Forgot!

We saw Harold & Kumar last night, in the biggest, scariest shopping mall I've ever experienced.

It was disgusting -- the movie, I mean, not the mall -- and when it was over, I wanted nothing more than to get to kiss Kumar.

Still not a lesbian, apparently.

We did zoo and aquarium today, but we didn't realize quite how far out of the city we were staying, or quite how bad Chicago traffic is on a Saturday afternoon. We had to come back to the hotel to take One Dog out for #1 (happy, Leslie?), and we really don't see ourselves going all the way back in again tonight. So Best Bar Ever is off of the agenda for this trip.

Also, in case you haven't noticed, we're not really hitting any of your suggested pee stops (there's #2, Leslie!). We didn't realize quite what a schedule we'd assigned ourselves, and we really just haven't had the time. I should never have declared that contest in the first place, and I'm sorry. In my defense, however, you-all weren't exactly giving me off-the-highway suggestions like I asked for. South Dakota, for example? Honey, please.

So let's start over, shall we? Good. For those of you intrepid enough to be reading this on Saturday (and for those of you interested enough to be reading this far back come Monday), I hereby REVISE AND UPDATE THE CONTEST!

See if you can guess which Chicago bar is the Best Bar Ever. I will give you two hints:

#1. I worked for Hear Music when I (we) "discovered" it.
#2. I put "discovered" in quotes because it is famous enough without me, in the proper circles.

This is hard, so there's no limit on number of guesses. Play! Google! Research! Guess!

We still have five states to go, I will pick up something special at a truck stop for the winner -- or, as always, failing a winner, then the one who makes me laugh.

I Fwep Wate!

Well, not really late, but until the alarm went off at 6:39 (I swear I set it for 7:00, I don't know what's going on with that). So I don't have time for a proper post. Here's a rundown:

1. We're not in Indiana this morning like I said we'd be. We're in Chicago. I'm wearing my Patriots jersey anyway, because I still haven't forgiven them for the @$#%$! "Superbowl Shuffle." Which is still really stupid, by the way.

2. You're right, Green Fairy, it is windy out there -- with actual, meteorological gusts of air, and not just a bunch of blowhards mouthing off. It's also forty degrees colder than it was in Nevada yesterday, which One Friend believes makes it actually cold. One Friend doesn't know from cold, however. She will learn.

3. Speaking of which, this is at least the third time I've been to Chicago, but the first it's been warmer than 0 degrees while I was here. I'm excited to be able to stand on Lake Shore Drive for longer than thirty seconds without my fingers dropping off and clinking to the pavement.

4. We're doing aquarium and zoo today. It's what we do if we have time wherever we go, because it's what we both wanted to be when we grew up. One Friend wanted to swim with the fishes, and I wanted to speak sign language with gorillas. Dreams die, what can I say? But at nearly forty years of age, we're still pressing our noses 'gainst the glass. That's got to count for something. Right?

5. If we have time and energy afterwards, we're going to the Best Bar Ever. Whether we go there or not, I'll tell you the story of how I learned about that fabulous place next time I post.

Happy Draft Day!

Ho to Rowe

Ever since I left Boston, I've had nothing to read. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

I don't know if you realize what a hardship this is for me. Aside from the entire day in planes and airports (where I actually did have my Sunday Times, and Juno, to keep me occupied), and aside from the ten hours each day in the car (where I actually have One Friend and One Dog), I pop awake at 6:18 every morning, because that's what time my alarm's set for back home (don't ask). This would not be so bad for the up-and-at-'em's of being on the road, but unfortunately that's Eastern Standard Time. As we've been changing time zones, I've been managing to stay in bed closer and closer to the actual sunrise, but still: I've been up whole marathons -- charity marathons -- ahead of One Friend every morning.

Not a thing to read. No. Thing.

It's not like I haven't been looking. But you can't get books at truck stops, because of course we're all happier with truckers keeping both eyes on the road. And the only newspaper you can rely on getting -- sorry: the only "newspaper" you can rely on getting -- is USA Today. I'm already eating too much fast food, thank you. I don't want my brain to go all lard-ass on me, too.

(I'm not quite sure how reading nothing is better than reading USA Today, but I'm sure it is.)

And I can't even turn on the TV in the mornings lest I wake up Sleeping Beauty over there. (Who, for those of you who've read the post below, is indeed still Sleeping. It is now 7:54, the storms have blown away. I've been back to bed for an hour and given up on the idea; I've showered (but not shaved) and lotioned myself and gotten dressed. Now here I am again, and still my One Friend gently sleeps.)

So last night we pulled into Colfax, Iowa, after driving 620 miles in ten hours from Cheyenne, Wyoming. I won't put you through the whole ordeal about how we had actually made a reservation from the road because it was getting late, but how they somehow lost it in an hour and a half. How they gave us a room anyway but neither of our keys worked so we had to move down the hall. How in the midst of all this hubbub we forgot to tell them about One Dog (who is allowed, but who costs extra) and by the time we remembered we were so mad at them we decided they weren't getting no $12-stinking-.50, so we snuck her through the back door like a couple sneaky stealers. Or how, exhausted and not in the mood for a sit-down dinner, we walked across the street to McDonald's and had to wait -- I shit you not -- 45 minutes for our food.

I won't get into any of that. What I will tell you is this: in the lobby of the hotel there was a basket and a magazine rack and a sign: "Need something to read? Take something. Finished with something you've read? Leave something."

Score!

The books turned out to be mostly businessman brain candy. Nelson DeMille, John LeCarre, Louis L'Amour. The magazines ran to mostly Time and Readers' Digest. But then, buried between last week's copies of Newsweek and Fortune -- with the address-corner painstakingly clipped so as to protect the identity of whatever Assistant Vice President of Central Acquisitional Typecasting left it behind -- I found me this:

How did he know I was here!? Do you think he can see me? Oh my god, I wish I'd shaved!

I couldn't wait until this morning. I read it before I went to bed last night. Did you know he was fired from QVC for doing obscene things to a nun doll on the air? Oh, you dirty, filthy boy!

That's it. Sudden yonic-hill-licking urges or no, I am definitely not a lesbian.

Unfortunately, I am a not-lesbian with, once again, nothing to read.

Cold Facts

I didn't post when we got here last night because I had misplaced my skeleton, probably in the big bucket of grease I fell into somewhere long about Kearney, Nebraska.

By which I mean to say: I was tired, and unclean.

We drove yesterday from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Des Moines, Iowa -- well, Colfax, Iowa, if you want to get technical about it, but I'm not sure if you'll find Colfax on any map. Except for Google. Because everywhere's on Google Maps. So never mind.

Still tired, in case you can't tell. It's 4:30 a.m. (ignore the time stamp on this post: the computer doesn't know what the hell time it is, anymore). I went to sleep at 11:00 or so and I've been up since 3:00, because 38 years of thunderstorms in Massachusetts did nothing to prepare me for the Iowa variety. FLASH! CRASH! BANG! BOOM! Right through the curtains and the earplugs. Dang.

Still dirty, too, in case you were wondering.

So let's see... Yesterday we did this:



For about eleven hours.

We'd heard all kinds of horror stories about the truckers in Nebraska, but don't you believe a word. Truck drivers are always so nice. Best drivers on the road. I briefly considered lifting my shirt for one of them on our way out of the state -- you know, as a sort of "thanks for proving the naysayers wrong" salute -- but then I remembered I'm not twenty anymore. Nobody would feel appreciated if I made them look at that. I might as well just shoot their tires and blow them to smithereens.

When we were in Wyoming, whatever the hell day that was, I took this picture:


I included it in my post that day, with a snarky comment questioning the usefulness of motorboats in Wyoming. Then I remembered motorboats work in small bodies of water, too, not just in oceans like where I live. So I decided it wasn't funny, and I took it down.

Then, yesterday, I snapped this:

Who the hell needs a motorboat in goddamn Nebraska?

Oh yeah, it's the same dude all right. Turns out his license plate's from Maine. We didn't think there would be anybody on the road with us going farther than we were -- what with the, um, oceans on either side and all -- but we were wrong. We forgot about Vacationland. Although, if it's such an all-fired Vacationland, I'd sure like to know why he felt the need to drag his freaking boat across the country.

Here's a little poem I wrote about Lincoln, Nebraska:

Lincoln, Lincoln
I've been thinkin'
Just how bad
Your rest stop's stinkin'

And then we were in Iowa.

I took pictures of Iowa, but the camera seems to have decided it wants to keep them. That's fine with me, because seriously? Iowa looks exactly -- and I mean exactly -- like what you think. Corn. Hills. Silos. Farmhouses. We drove through a county named Polk or Harding or Cleveland or something, where apparently there are some covered bridges that somebody wrote a book about a couple years ago. I think there might have even been a movie made. But it was all in a language that I never learned to speak, so I am unfamiliar.

Today we're only going to Chicago. Three hundred or so miles. Compared to 620 yesterday, that's a walk in the cake. But I think I'm going to make One Friend do it all, because One Friend? Slept right through the flashcrashbangboom.

Apparently, tornadoes are de rigeur in California.

The Gross-Out Chronicles, Con't

Real quick, before we hit the road...

1. No pictures this morning, because we think we might be staying in the hood -- if there is such a thing as a hood in Cheyenne -- and I don't want my Mom to get a gander of the stabbers. Mom, don't worry, we escaped the stabbers and we're getting out alive. Besides, look at the nice place we stayed!

(I'm not kidding about either of those things. We are staying at the Hitching Post, and we are in the hood. There is a hotel down the street called The Sands, but something tells me Ol' Blue Eyes wouldn't cross the street to piss there.)

(And yes, I am determined to make at least one excremental reference every time I post.)

(Apparently.)

2. Turns out you can get pretty good Mexican food in Cheyenne, too. Oh, did I not mention we were on the North American Cheese Tour? Well, we are. This time it cost approximately $18 for the two of us -- and I say "approximately" because I'm subtracting the cost of the beers, but I don't know even generally how much that was.

Oddly, though, this place had the exact same chairs as did the place in Utah. Wethinks there must be some sort of central Mexican restaurant-supply conglomerate shaking them all down. There must be. Because it's not like they were the nicest chairs. Big old smiley sun staring at you from the back of the guy at the next table. Creepy.

3. We've decided to accept y'all's verdict and forgo the Daisy shavers. But I am desperate for a freaking tweeze -- and on this, you do not have a say. The beard is getting out. of. control. And, although I can put up with not being atractive to members of the opposite sex, I flat-out refuse to be mistaken for one.

4. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be here all week. Oh wait. No, I won't. Well, tip your waitresses anyway, it's good karma. Besides, if you don't, they just might send the Mexican Syndicate after you. And something tells me you don't want to find yourself on the business end of a smiley-ass sun.

We're hoping to make it to Des Moines today, but we hear there's weather in Nebraska. So we've agreed that, if we have to, we might call it quits in Omaha. If, you know, the decision is Mutual...

Ba-dump-bump!


Oh, I kill me.

It's All Downhill From Here

We passed the Continental Divide this afternoon. Forgot to take a picture of the sign, because we were in such a hurry to do what we had to do, which was get out of the car right there and pee before somebody caught us. One Friend on one side of the sign, my ownself on the other. Wave goodbye to One Friend's pee, tell mine we'd see it on the East Coast in a couple years, jump back in the car and peel away.

Bye-bye, PP!

No. I kid. We didn't. I mean, we did pass the Divide. And we did forget to take a picture of the sign. But we did not drop trou and let it rip by the side of the I-80.

I so wish we had. I even did suggest it. But we were on the left side of the highway when the big green sign went zooming by without any warning, and there were a couple of semis between us and the breakdown lane. Plus, I can't speak for her, but I'm not entirely sure One Friend was honestly amenable. There is nothing but a whole lot of nuthin' out there -- where would we have hid our hoo-ha's?

Okay, now that I've got that vulgarity out of my system... Anybody wanna see some pictures?

1. The Great Salt Lake wants to crawl over the interstate and eat your car:

2. Wyoming has a billion different landscapes. We saw 970,000 of them. Many of them looked a lot the same around the middle.

3. And, last but not least: hills like these always look vaguely sexual to me. I don't know why. I think it's got something to do with all those folds. I just want to get out of the car, run over, and lick 'em. Does that make me a lesbian?

And if it does, will you promise not to say anything to Johnny until after I get home?

What'll You Give Me if I Lick The Dirt?*

1. If I were in high school, and our biggest rivals were from a place called Wendover, I would call them Bendover.

2. Especially if I were from a town called Shafter. And I were a cheerleader. Which I were not.

3. Know what it turns out you can get in Wendover, Utah? For eleven dollars for two grown-up ladies? Pretty decent Mexican food.

4. Know what it turns out you can't get? A BEER! Dang Mexican Mormons. Don't worry, though. By dinnertime tonight we'll be in Wyoming. Something tells me beer won't be too hard to come by over there.

5. We just realized that all of the shaving accoutrements went in the moving truck. Which is taking a different route. Should we a) stop somewhere and buy a disposable Bic, or b) have a who-can-grow-the-longest-pit-braid-before-we-get-home contest?

Sorry, man. The road brings out the Disgusto in Destructo. Oh, speaking of which, PS:

6. I'd just like to point out that the shotgun door handle was broken when I got here -- it broke just before I got here, so it may still be due to my radiating Destructive Superpowers -- but it is technically not my fault that the passenger has to be let in from the inside like we're on a marginally chivalric date.

The cooler, though? Yeah. I broke that.


*You know, to see if it tastes salty.

Gimme an EGE!

The contest in the post below is still open, if anybody's got any ideas. In the meantime...

Apparently, it is some sort of tradition in Nevada for towns to write their initials REALLY large in something white on a hill by the side of the highway. (You might have to click on these pictures to make them bigger to get the full effect here, but see if you can follow:)

E is for Elkin.

C is for Clavin.

W is for Winnemucca!

So I guess the point is that Nevadans are durn proud of their towns. That's cool. I dig it. We Massholes can be, too, after a fashion.

But, um, if this Masshole were city planner in a town called Battle Mountain? I might just decide to skip on over the whole thing...

...or at the very least I'd call it quits after the B.

One Friend and I did not, in case you're wondering, BM in Battle Mountain. We did P here, though:

It was disgusting!

(Sorry, man. But seriously, how long has it been since we've had a good poop joke at The House and I?)

P.S. Ms. Lucky Pork, I'm watching you! You and your Mighty Mighty Woodcocks!

You're lucky (pork) that San Francisco's not on our agenda! Grr!

Know Any Big Balls of String That We Can Pee On?

This is not even remotely about the house, but I put the houseblogs tag on it because I'm soliciting nation-wide advice and I want as many eyeballs as I can get. Please forgive me (there is a CONTEST!, after all), and please advise.

I've been talking about it forever, but now it's finally here! I fly to California tomorrow, and One Friend and I embark on our 2008 cross-country tour Tuesday morning.

I say "2008" because we've done this once before. That time it was three weeks in August, from Seattle to Orlando in a Jeep Cherokee with a slightly crippled cat.

Crippled cat hiding from thunderstorm in Atchafalaya swamp.
R.I.P., Crippled Cat.

This time: one week, April, Sacramento/Boston, Ford Taurus, 75-pound dog. Methinks this is going to be a very different trip.

But I'm excited! I've got all my Very Important Road Trip T-Shirts packed (plus some Also Important flannel 'jams)...

... and will be leaving home just after the sun comes up.

As a result, I won't be able to post here for a couple days. I'll do it when I can, but I can't possibly know when that will be. I know for sure I'll be too busy tomorrow and Tuesday mornings. As far as Wednesday goes, well, we'll be in Utah by then -- and I don't know what Moroni has to say about the WiFi.

Which brings me to the balls of string (you do read the titles, don't you?).

See, last time we did this, we stopped. For a few days here and there. In Salt Lake, in Albuquerque, in Austin and New Orleans. But we don't have time to lollygag like that this time around. Other than a single, 200-mile, 2-night detour to Chicago at the halfway point, we're booking down I-80 the entire way. Well, I-80 till it hits I-90, but you get my point. (I couldn't figure out how to copy the screen image from google maps, but here's the link. It's going to be a fascinating ride.)

We do, however, have that dog, and the dog has to get out to pee once in a while (as does One Friend, and as do I, after all). And she is shy to do it by the side of the road (as is One Friend, and as am -- well, as is One Friend, anyway. Not so much me. I'll pee pretty much anywhere. Heck, I once peed on the Tobin Bridge at rush hour, and I wasn't even drunk. But that's a story for another day). So, instead of my regular Monday Madness CONTEST! this week, here's what I'm thinking...

Anybody know of any big balls of string out there for us to pee on?

What I mean is: we're looking for odd little roadside attractions reachable from I-80. Not too far off the highway, because we really are just looking to stretch our legs and have a pee. We can't be driving an hour out of our way just coo over the Butter Cow. But if, say, the Corn Town is a mile from the exit ramp, we'd be tickled to death to goo pee there.

So. Got any suggestions?

Okay, here's how it becomes a CONTEST!:

Anybody who suggests a place we actually go, I will send you something from the road. I don't know what yet, and I probably won't actually mail it till I get home, but I promise to pick up a souvenir from someplace with you in mind.

And don't be shy. We've got to pee at least, what, four times a day? We'll be on the road for seven days. So that makes at least twenty-eight opportunities to win a prize!

(Don't forget, I can write all this crap off my taxes. So, for those kindhearteds among you who may be concerned for my oft-bemoaned financial situation -- you would actually be helping if you entered and let me send you something. Better you should be the proud recipient of an Idaho Spud (and the postage it takes to send it) than that The Man should get my 87 cents. Can I have a what-what?)

And, for the record, even after I do put up a new post from the road, this game will still be open. Unless we're already past whatever landmark you're suggesting, then please feel free to suggest away.

In the meantime, crap. I just now realized that we're going to be on the road for the NFL Draft. One Friend doesn't give a hoo about such matters, so I can't exactly expect her to listen to it on the car radio. Besides, wherever we are, they're only going to care about their own team, anyway. So, wait, now that I'm thinking: whereabouts will we be on that day?

Oh, crap, again. If I'm not mistaken, we will be in freaking Indiana. Okay, hang on...


There.

Anyone know anything I can pee on in Indiana?

Never Beat

The thing about the AssVac (well a thing about the AssVac) is that it was very well designed for dog days in New England. I don’t know for sure if it was originally built to be a summer cottage, but we suspect as much, because of the practically-waterfront location, and the fact that all the houses around here just look like summer cottages. Quaint, you know, and flimsy-like. Which means they weren’t necessarily constructed with an eye towards retaining heat in wintertime, but they sure as heck know how to keep it out in August.

This is nice for me, because I’ve never been fond of air conditioning. Except when we lived in that skank railroad apartment in South Boston. That p.u. place was located on street level, so we could never open windowshades unless we wanted to put on a show for all the locals. And let me tell you a little something about the Southie locals: not as charming as they’re made out in the movies. Not by half. Not by quarter, for that matter. Yuck.

(Point in fact: Jill Quigg – the local woman Ben Affleck plucked from a barstool to play the part of the best friend in Gone Baby Gone? Any sane person would have got herself an agent and turned that lightning-strike into the opportunity of a lifetime. Ms. Quigg cashed her check and drank herself homeless. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the real South Boston. Those Affleck boys grew up in Cambridge. They don’t know the half. Or the quarter, for that matter. Yuck.)

Of course (getting back to that old apartment), it wouldn’t have mattered, cross-ventilation-wise, if we did open the windows – what with it being railroaded and all. Plus, there was the smell of moldy dead things always wafting up through the air ducts from the wet dirt basement.

Good times.

So yeah, in that apartment, for the two summers we were there, we sucked it up and got an air conditioner. Actually, Mom & Dad bought it for us. A window one. We used it while we were there and then when we got kicked out (thank god) for reporting the landlord to Inspectional Services because of an annoying lack of heat, we took the a/c unit with us to our fabulous apartment in North Quincy. For the five years we lived there we never plugged it in, not once. And then we moved it here. Even a/c devotees would probably agree that we don’t need it here, but we’re still keeping it around. For the day we lose the house and wind up back in scumbagville with all the other legionnaires. It’s in the basement as I type this, feeling sorry for itself.

We don’t need it here because the AssVac was built to stand against the August heat. She’s a big rectangle, with the long sides (and therefore most of the windows) facing north and south – where lie, conveniently enough, the two bodies of water that the property sits between. Therefore, voilá, the seabreeze blows right through.

Oh hell, I’ll show you. Here:

That little yellow sort-of triangle in the middle there? That’s my piece of the planet. And the grey rectangle on the bottom of it is the AssVac. So you see? The seabreeze – whoosh!

This seabreeze thing is also, by the way, why I have to pay more than you do for homeowners insurance. And why there was a tree branch sticking through the bedroom ceiling when we bought it. And why we had to spend the best part of a year and more dozens of thousands of dollars than I care to enumerate on de-yucking the house enough to walk through without having to throw up out one of those north-facing windows.

Good times.

But this whole keeping-the-warm-air out thing is not as nice in April as in August. That first spring we lived here I refused to turn on the heat – partly because it was freaking May and partly because I was convinced the furnace would blow as soon as we turned it on (it didn’t; it lasted two entire winters after that. Hu-bleedin’-zzah.) – and so that first spring is a haze for me of shivery, chin-wiping vapors. And beer. Buckets and buckets of mind-numbing beer.

Good times!

Since then, we’ve grown accustomed to the notion that it will always be at least ten degrees colder inside the AssVac than out. We’ve apologized to all the spinning New Englanders in the graveyard up the road, and made peace with the idea of turning on the heat in April. We don’t like it, but we do – though I still put my foot down firmly come the first of May.

So April is now, for us, a balancing act. Do we open the windows and let in the fresh air, even though it means we’ll have to turn the heat on when we shut them? Or do we leave them closed and save those dear degrees? I have mentioned how cash-strapped we are, about a billion times now, haven’t I? And gas heat does cost money, after all. Yet, have I ever also mentioned that my husband smokes? Inside the house? All winter?

I’ve been opening the windows. Only on random odd days here and there – when it’s at least 70 degrees outside – and only for a little while at a time. I get home from work, throw the house wide for the fresh air, then sit at my computer shivering until I just can’t stand it anymore (meaning, oh, about 45 minutes), then run around closing it up and turn the heat on.

Good times!

I was complaining the other day to Johnny about this, and he said: “Why don’t you open the windows before you go to work? Shut the heat off and let it air out while you’re away, then close it up again when you get home?”

Duh.

So that’s what we did. On Thursday. Which happens to be the day I wrote about before, when I wound up asking Johnny for his sweatshirt. Same night on which I may (or may not) have consumed a few too many beers. Because we stopped over at the neighbor’s house on our way home from work that evening (oh yeah: news! We have nice neighbors! More about them later!) and we wound up sitting in their back garden for an hour or four. Good times. Really, this time. Until the chimenea fell apart, that is, and we realized that 42 degrees Fahrenheit is not the temperature most conducive towards sitting in back gardens.

It was well past dark when we got home. And would you like to know what the temperature inside the AssVac was?

54.

That’s colder than they recommend you keep an empty house at so the pipes don’t freeze, but still a whopping twelve degrees warmer than the air outside. So I’d like to think that we are at least gaining ground.

Dyn-O-Mite!

It's a Woman's Prerogative...

...to sit around on her ample ass all day.

See, this morning, I woke up at the regular time. And I may or may not have had more than the regular number of beers last night, so I may or may not have hit the snooze alarm a couple extra times. But it worked out in the end, because I may or may not have fumbled with the clock when setting the alarm (thanks to said questionable imbibing), and I may or may not have accidentally set the clock ahead an extra twenty minutes.

Eventually, I did get up. I padded out to turn on the computer so I could write something pithy and toss it out into the void. (That would be you people. You're the void. Heh heh.) And on my way by, I shouted in to Johnny:

"Johnny!" I said. "I'm sorry! I forgot to set your alarm last night! Which may or may not have had something to do with beers seven through nine!"

(He pretends not to be able to set alarms for himself. He cries dyslexia, pulls a face, says pretty-please. I know he's perfectly capable, but I do it for him all the same. You see why it's best I just keep on not having children? Anyway...)

"It's six o'clock!" I went on. "Time to get up!"

As you can see, I'm very exclamation-pointy in the morning.

"But," says he, "I don't have to go to work today!"

He's not usually so exclamation-pointy in the morning. Only when I wake him, shouting, on days he doesn't have to go to work.

"What?" says I, going all question-marky. "I thought? Since when?"

"L. was going to call if we were working. He didn't call. So we are not." Period.

"Oh..." I responded, beginning to feel somewhat elliptical. "So...

"What the hell am I doing awake, then?"

And soon enough, I wasn't anymore.

All this is to say I gave myself a spontaneous day off. Of everything. But then I was literally sitting on the couch, watching The Daily Show and eating bon-bons (okay, Lindor Truffles; just what the truffle is a bon-bon, anyway?), and I started to feel guilty. Thinking about all of you out there sitting in your offices, hitting the refresh button over and over all day long, waiting for your pithy dose of void. (You see what I did there? This time it's me. Now I'm the void. Heh-heh).

So here it is:

Oh no wait. That's noid, not void. Just what the pizza is a noid-thing, anyway?

Mmmm... pizza...



Well, I guess I'd better get back on the couch. Dinner's not just going to go ordering itself, now, is it?

May the Windows Always be Open

Our front door
Has an attitude –
Sometimes it will
And sometimes it won’t
Open.

In damp or wet weather
You have to coax it –
Right?

In hot or warm weather
It’s very obliging –
It can be considerate
At times.

Now
Here’s how to work it:

When it’s cold
Push the button, and then
Kick it
On the bottom
While you pull it – if it’s stuck –
At the top.

When it’s warm
It opens at ease.
Push the button,
Pull it forward,
And it’s fine.

So (Johnny says)
We don’t have to take a plane
To the top,
Or the bottom.

But he’s wrong.


P.S. Johnny wrote this one. He came in last night all excited. "It's officially spring! The door opened without me kicking it! Let's write a poem to celebrate!" And so he did. Mostly. Can you tell which parts I edited in?

As God Is My Witness, I'll Never Go Spongeless Again!

I've got nothing to say.

Only, I realized while I was at work that the title above (do you read the titles? I hope you do. I work awfully hard at them) is what this morning's blog post really wanted to be called. But if I just went back and changed it, no-one would notice. So I posted again.

Oh, but since I'm posting anyway, I'll tell you this (consider it my bony gift to you):

Wanna know the nice thing about being a girl and having a husband? Especially a husband from the Old Country, trained in Old Country etiquette?

If you're cold, and you turn to him and say "Give me your sweatshirt" -- even with no explanation -- he freaking does it! Takes the sweatshirt off his back and hands it over!

Dang, why didn't I cotton to this girlie crap two (or three) decades ago?

Jeeves, You’ve Done It Again!

We were poor when I was little. Poor, poor. Well, not poor, poor, poor. Not eatin’-dirt poor. But welfare-cheese and hot-dog chowder poor. Plastic money and free lunch poor. You know, just good-old, 1970s-America kind of poor.

Not for lack of trying, you understand. It was just (ahem) recession-time. Things were tough all over. Eventually, though, my folks hauled their freakin’ bootstraps up over their ears and sent us all to private school, and private college – both with a little help, but still. All those loans are paid back now, and they even own a second home – in Maine, no less, where Presidents vacation!

I didn’t mind being poor – hell, I didn’t even know we were, most of the time. I lined up in the free-lunch line, across the room from kids with money in their pockets, and didn’t realize how humiliating that could be until two dozen years had gone by and I’d turned it into a punch line. I was telling the story (basically: I tried to sneak an extra hot buttered roll by shoving it in my pocket – I don’t know how they ever caught me), and when I got to the part about them separating us according to how much we paid, somebody (okay, it was my mother) gasped and said “How awful!”

And I thought “What?”

I still, honestly, don’t remember it being any source of shame. Maybe everybody else did, I don’t know. I’ve always been a little off on my emotional reactions. Like, um, did you silently beg to be lied to by the government about the plane that hit the Pentagon on that September morning? Or were you pissed off at Bill Clinton not for the Lewinsky scandal, or for lying about it, but for finally caving in and fessing up?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Anyway…

We were poor, and I’m proud of it. We were raised in a very Norman Rockwell manner because of our economic situation, and I thought it was great fun. Victory gardens and chicken coops, berry-picking expeditions and the jam that they produced, toys Dad made for us on his workbench from old scraps of 2x4, wood stoves and homemade maple syrup sugaring down on them. These may have all been economical measures our folks took to survive, but would anyone in their right mind turn their nose up at any of those things?

Yeah, I didn’t think so!

So the point I’m (slowly) driving at is that I came out of it unscathed. Except for a lingering tendency to pretend money just plain old does not exist (which I’ve more or less gotten a handle on, thank you very much), I figure I made it to adulthood with no tell-tale signs of my so-called deprived youth.

Then, I was under the kitchen cabinet yesterday, and I saw this:

Okay, so, um, I have a sponge thing.

See, when we were little, and poor, and every penny counted, we didn’t always have new everything. Shoes, yes. Pencils, yes. Underwear, of course. But sponges? Not so much.

I don’t know how much a sponge used to cost back in the day, but however many pennies it amounted to, there was a better way to spend them. So we’d use each sponge for months until it was a thin, foul memory of the bright-colored cellulose it used to be. And we didn’t even have a dishwasher back then to run the old ones through. I remember when we got the dishwasher. Oh, that was a happy day! It was hand-me-down, just like the one Johnny and I have now (because we are, without meaning to, re-enacting that economy-inspired life).

Sponges weren’t the only things we'd use to death back then. We recycled milk cartons a thousand different ways, decades before it was considered the right and holy thing to do. Mom bought Tupperware lunchboxes as an “investment,” to save money in the long run on sandwich bags. And hell, she could get about a dozen meals out of a decent chicken.

But that chicken soup was yummy, and those sponges were gross.

So I (and, ahem, I'm not the only one) have been left with a bit of an obsession. Every single time I’m at the grocery store, I manage to convince myself we might be running out of sponges, and that I'd better pick up a pack just to be sure. And then – oh, what the hell – lets make it two. Before I know it, I’m clearing out shelf space in the attic to store all the thousands of O-Cellos tumbling from under the kitchen sink.

I used to have this whole elaborate system, too, regarding the rotation in which they should be used (dishes, counters, bathrooms, floors – duh), but I couldn’t manage to train Johnny to do it right, so now we just have two. Well, the bathroom one stays in the bathroom, but in the kitchen we have two: a scrubby one for dishes, and a non-scrubby for all the rest.

In fact, the reason I was under that sink-cabinet yesterday was to get a new non-scrubby sponge. I’d used the one that had been there to dust the TV, and so obviously it would have to be demoted. I saw the stack of sponge-packs, laughed at myself and went to get the camera, took the photograph, and then…

Look at that picture.

“...the reason I was under that sink-cabinet yesterday was to get a new non-scrubby sponge...”

Oh, god!

I guess this week's allotment of spare pennies are spoken for.

I only hope I've got enough room in the car.

Just Cuz

¡Si, sabeis que los Partridge tienen duende!

I Am a Senile Old Fool!

Since when do we not have to dial 1 before a long-distance call? We don't. Did you know that?

For years -- years! -- I have been writing numbers down off the caller ID, then clearing them off the phone and re-dialing them. Because my caller ID didn't add the 1. Though I have also just learned I could have adjusted that.

Sheesh. What won't they come up with next?

P.S. I hear there's this new device that records live TV!




P.P.S. I kept putting this post up and taking it down, because I kept thinking I could turn it into something longer (and funnier) if I took more time. I've decided to leave it up for now, and reserve the right to reprise and extend at a later date. You may call me Mary Shelley, if you must.

Winning is Relative

For Jean...

All weekend nobody knew it not even Jean
But all at once she woke up to something that kept knocking at her brain.
I know that I’m insane for what I came right out and said
(Were I not quite so well-fed, I might have shown you it instead):
I have a tattoo!

I’m trying not to be too revealing,
My mother couldn’t deal with the tale of me deciding to myself
I'd write it on myself and never go without it
But didn’t I go and shout it into the series of tubes?
I have a tattoo!

I have a tattoo, Jean didn’t know what it’s made of –
If she did we weren’t apprised of until I gave a prize for…
Naming my tattoo! And this is said accolade of –
Though it worries me to say that it took her three whole days.

Don’t know why I love Partridges.*
What do you think it’s all about?**
Of it ought I to just grow out?***

No!

I have a tattoo, Jean didn’t know what it’s made of –
If she did we weren’t apprised of until I gave a prize for
Naming my tattoo. And this is said accolade of –
Though it worries me to say that it took her three whole days.

Now Jeanie, why’d you go and get all blurry
With Renovation Therapy, and why’d you say "hey go away" Blogger?
Is Wordpress such a thrill you had to cut out on I Love U.?
Do you think I am debased? How does this affect my case:
It’s not my only!****

I have a tattoo!
In fact I have three!*****
I have a tattoo!
In fact I have three!******
I have a tattoo!
In fact I have three!*******
I have a tattoo!
In fact I have three! ********
I have a tattoo!
In fact I have three! *********


*Oh, yes I do. There's nothing like a little prepubescent lust to last a lifetime.

** Still, though: I've never been so deep inside of it before. You go back to the original and try to match the rhythm and the rhyme scheme -- it's much more complex than even I ever gave it credit for. Tony Romeo was a freaking genius! I couldn't come close.

***See?

**** Though I would like to point out: this is my only one in the Partridge Family oeuvre. I'm not all kitsch. The other two were inspired by the musical stylings of Minneapolis and Detroit. Well, Minneapolis and Bay City, Michigan. Which is very close to Detroit, but it ain't Motown.

*****I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that I invented tattoo-getting. Not for sailors or bikers of course, but for impressionable young women. Which makes me ancient, but at least doesn't make me a trendy idiot. I was a trend-setting idiot, dagnabbit!

******I do wish nobody'd invented the phrase "tramp stamp," however. Or that at least they'd invented it before I stamped #3.

*******Other than that little quibble, I still love them all. No regrets.

********But that is the last you will ever hear about any of them here, I swear to god.

*********Hey, it's a woman's prerogative. And if you watched that clip, you know it's all about the Power of Women.

Okay, Fine...

I'm not going to be shedding any forty pounds before we hit the road on Tuesday.

Not unless the airlines lose my bag.

And okay, no: this is not actually the bag I plan to bring. I just thought it would be funny, right? A good pun on the name? 'Cuz we're taking a road trip, see? And cars have tires? Also, I'm fat? And I drink beer? You get it?

Sheesh.

I know. It's dumb. I'm not even really planning to check luggage, for crying out loud. And, if I were, that thing (which probably doesn't even weigh twenty pounds, let alone forty) is not a bag. It's a cardboard box. Der.

Plus, why would I be bringing a cardboard box of beer onto the airplane? Would they even let me? Not to mention a kind of beer I can't get here but that's made right where we're going.

Well, going right past. Sort of. Within fifty miles, anyway. And in another state.

Whatever.

Also, all right, it's not mine. It's just a picture I found on the internet. But there. That's it. That's everything.

Are you happy now? It was a bad joke to begin with, and now it's been completely stomped to death. Jeebers. You people could talk the 2,000 year-old man into admitting he's really a Kaminsky from the Lower East Side.

So fine. This was not the point I started out to make, but here. This is what my real bag looks like:

You think they'll let me carry it on the plane?

Fun Day Contest!

Before anybody gets too excited, I'm sorry, but people who know me personally are officially, hereby disqualified from this week's contest. It would just be too easy.

I posted this picture on Friday without thinking about the fact that you might not recognize the graphic. Then I was asked, and decided not to answer, because I was sure somebody out there would know. Thirteen comments later, here we are, still answerless, so I've decided to turn it into this week's MONDAY CONTEST.

This...

... is an actual tattoo I have somewhere on my body (none of your business). Got it in 1991. Copied it off a t-shirt. Dude only charged me $25 for it, because he'd never done one before (I'd be willing to bet he hasn't since) and he thought it was hysterical.

Can you tell me what it is?

You can follow the link above to Friday's post to get caught up to speed on all the guesses so far, but I will give you one more hint: I have admitted to it, and posted a link to the inspiration for it, in the past. But no, I will not be providing that link to you today.

You're playing for a poem this week, which will be inspired by you and the tattoo-subject, and which I will post in this space on Wednesday morning.

As always, if you don't know the answer, feel free to make a silly guess. If nobody gets the right answer, then the silliest guess will win the prize.



I won't be back at this computer until after 6:00 tonight, so please, people who know me in real life, don't ruin the surprise. Even if somebody gets it, don't give it away. But feel free to make silly pretend guesses!

Treasure!

I cleaned out the attic yesterday.

Ugh. I was up there for five hours and I didn't even finish. Mostly, though. I'll finish it next weekend. But guess what I found!

The pictures of my golden boy back when he was a golden boy! The ones I tore the house apart looking for three months ago, remember?

Did I ever tell you that he used to swim for Ireland in the All-Europe? He's the one on the left. Yum, yum.

He was a bit of a wanderer back then.

And also a bit of a hippie.

He got stuck in Greece one time with no money, and this very nice lady agreed to let him mind her children while she was on holiday. She gave him a roof and three squares, he taught the kids to swim, and when the two weeks were up she bought him a ticket on the Magic Bus back home.

This was back in the days when you could still climb around all over the Acropolis. You can't do that anymore.

He swears there wasn't any sort of Mrs. Robinson thing going on with Mrs. Magic Bus, but I don't know. He did used to be a bit of a flirt.

That's not the same lady. This one doesn't look like she's having any of it. She's dead now, poor girl. Lots of his friends from those days are dead now. It makes him sad.

He met Cat Stevens in this park, in London. I think he was still Cat Stevens then, at least. Not the afternoon this shot was taken, obviously. He was too busy playing frisbee in his OshKosh to ride the peace train that day.

And last, but not least...

I, um, did mention that he used to swim for Ireland, didn't I?

So we'll forgive his unfortunate taste in swimwear, then?

P.S. Johnny says "That's not a swimsuit, those are me jocks! Can't you see the opening where you stick your dick out?" Oh, well, then, sorry dear. I stand corrected.



P.P.S. I'm also over here today, and I want to be very clear: the attempted rape happened before I got there.

Only Small Men Are Afraid*

There’s a call-in show on NPR here (and in some other places) that I don’t usually listen to anymore, because I think the guy who hosts it is a wad. But I was in the car yesterday, and all the other stations had banded together for some reason against the cause of decent music. I mean, maybe “Gypsy” was a decent song the first 80 million, billion, trillion times I heard it – but enough already! Let the memory be all that’s left for a while, could you please?

The point is, I listened to the call-in show. And this time, the guest was a wad, too. She’s written a book that's essentially about how people don’t read books anymore, and therefore what is the internet doing to our very BRAINS????

Good god, Chicken Little, take a pill.

To make it a complete and total wad-o-rama, they threw in this particular Senior Editor at a certain Literary Monthly (who, my true sycophantic heart would like to interject, is obviously a brilliant genius, yay!). You might assume he was on because of his connection to the bookish cause, but no. He turns up on the show three times a week. They call him a “News Analyst,” but all he really does is read loosely-related quotes (quotes he no doubt culls from Bartlett’s over his morning Muesli), passes them off as witty observances that just occurred to him, then pats himself on the back for being so gosh-darn well-read.

My Lady and I like to pretend he’s caught up in some clandestine intell-exual affair with the Chief Wad and Bottlewasher.

Anyway, I’m taking my frustrations out on these folks, but the real reason I’ve got my knickers in a twist is that I am sick unto my very death of people bitching and moaning about this whole "Future of Literature" issue. All they’re really doing is standing on a soapbox, shouting “I read! I’m smart! I’m better than you!” If these people really cared so much about the written word, I say, they'd be willing to give it a shot it in any form.

Let me put it to you this way: I don’t know what a shirred egg is, exactly, but I like omelets and frittatas, I like sunnyside and scrambled, I like quiche and hard-boiled, and lord knows I loves me a decent flan. So if you put something on my plate and tell me it's a shirred egg, you can bet your ass I’ll take a taste. Even if it looks like snot, which something tells me that a shirred egg probably does.

All that said, I am an avid reader (I’m smart! I'm better than you!). I am also sometimes bold enough to call myself a writer, whatever that might mean. And it seems obvious to me that these could be thrilling times. We could be heady with artistic innovation, adaptation, and experimental spirit, instead of taking out our spinal columns and flogging ourselves with them at every turn.

I used to work in the music industry, and because of the particular job I held, I fancied myself a sort of amateur ethnomusicologist. One thing I learned back then that fascinates me still is how, over the 20th century, popular music reinvented itself with every subtle change in sound recording.

At first, for sure, some things got lost. Folk songs that lived and breathed and had dozens of verses, got standardized and shortened down to two or three. But then people started playing around with the new medium, writing for it specifically. Later, when 45s were invented, the B-side became an art form all its own. Long-playing 33s made possible the notion of the “concept album,” and when Walkmen became ubiquitous, some people wrote with headphone-listening in mind. Not too long afterwards, digital recording (i.e., CDs) brought previously-unimagined layers of sound. And now we’ve come full circle: folks are once more thinking in short snippets, with a mind towards thirty-second ringtones.

It is sad, undeniably, that those folk songs got paralyzed a hundred years ago. But, if you had the chance, would you really get in the way-back machine and shoot Thomas Edison to save them? I wouldn’t. Although I might anaesthetize Stevie Nicks for however long it took her to write “Gypsy.”

The same thing has always happened, with every artistic discipline. Look how many different ways painters have found to fill their canvasses since photography made portraiture obsolete. Or how writing for the screen diverged from writing for the stage -- and imagine what Samuel Beckett might not have been able to accomplish if moving pictures hadn’t relieved him of the burden of actually entertaining people.

Instead of mewling and shaking our fists at “kids these days,” we ought to be working at sussing out what these new media we have at our disposal could do for our craft. Maybe a novel – or whatever we might choose to call the new style we’d invent – could be written on the actual internet, jumping around from site to site to let the reader find the pieces on his own. Maybe an e-book comes with musical accompaniment for every scene. Maybe subjects literally wander through the story, carrying on the business of their daily lives behind the words, and even speaking up once in a while. Maybe it’s as simple as hyperlinks to images and definitions, to provide a broader background for those members of the audience willing to dive in, without bogging down those looking for something lighter. Or maybe – ooh! – maybe, like in the old Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons, the words themselves are always blowing off the page…

Or else perhaps it’s none of these. Perhaps, since I’ve never even seen an e-book, I’m in no position to imagine what one might someday do. But I also can’t imagine that when, say, firearms were first invented, all the old knights sat around bemoaning how “Nobody appreciates a decent swordfight anymore.”

I don’t know, though. Perhaps they did.

At least until the last of them got shot.


*Yes, I got this out of Bartlett's. So? I never claimed to be anything other than a pompous old wad myself.

The Naked Truth

Johnny was away last night (at Andy's, remember?), so I spent some time sitting here, quietly, thinking (and also, quite honestly, quietly drinking). And I wound up meditating for a while on the fact that there are great swathes of Things People Do that just aren’t a part of my day-to-day realm. For example:

Great Rooms:

How do people heat these things?

Text messaging:

And, okay, since it's been brought it up...

John 3:16:

All right, then, I'll go to hell!

Pretty much the entire freezer section of the grocery store.

– gag – gag – gag –

(Cookies for everyone!)

Babies

I don't believe this clip needs any introduction.

And facial tissue:

You think it's Kleenex, but (say it with me)...

Then there’s another whole group of things I do understand, but that I opt out of for one reason or another. They include:

Dishwashers:

You'll have to ask Johnny about this one.

Air conditioning:

No, thanks.

And facial tissue:

My own personal Where's Waldo game!

There are things I do reluctantly:

Housework:

What? That's me. Sure, it is!

(Oh yeah, like I iron.)

Recycle:

He's crying because sometimes I forget.
(Because sometimes I "forget")

Change the oil in my car:

Like clockwork. Every 7,000 miles. Usually.

(12,000 for sure)

And floss:

I should just tape this picture to the bathroom mirror, what?

Finally, there are some concepts that I grok altogether too well:

Reality television:

But let's keep that under our hat, shall we?

Sub-prime lending:

At least I fixed for ten years. We could all be dead by then.

Yo-yo dieting:

That's also me.

(in my hot-fat-mess phase)

Chapstick:

Seriously. It's a problem.

And beer:

Steamroller! Steamroller!

All in all, I think if you put my many facets in a jar and shook 'em, I'd come out normal, more or less.

Oh.

Unless you're counting this:

That's just not right.

The Hum of the AssVac

Johnny and I are both comfortable enough doing electric work, but only under knowledgeable supervision. We need somebody to be in charge of the breaker box itself. Somebody to remind us again (and again and again) which wire is the ground. Somebody who owns one of those doohickeys you touch to things to find out if they’re live.

This sounds like a job for Super-Andy!

Poor Andy, we owe him so many favors. He bought a house of his own last year, and Johnny’s been trying to get down there to help him out a bit and start paying him back, but things just keep conspiring against it. Johnny goes while Andy isn’t there, and discovers the room he’s supposed to paint is full of moving boxes. Or they go down together, but Andy’s just finished a double shift and falls asleep as soon as they arrive.

So we tried not to complain when he flaked out on us a couple times. Andy gets out of work at 7:00 a.m.; if he hadn’t arrived by 8:00, we’d know he was on a tear and we were better off without him. The only time we got annoyed was when he showed up with a couple pops in him and wanted to get to work. We may not know how to play breaker box ourselves, but we do assume it’s not a game best tackled with a load on.

Finally, Sunday, he showed up only two sheets to the wind. Johnny allowed as how they could at least make a shopping list with him in that condition. Monday he was one sheet gone, so they went shopping, and came home from Home Depot with a plan.

The only way we’d get Andy here stone-cold sober, they insisted, was if I agreed to play the part of Mother Hen. I was instructed to wake up at 6:30 on Tuesday morning (ha! by then I’ve already been up for an hour, boys) and dial Andy’s cell phone every couple minutes until he picked up. That way, I’d catch him as soon as he stepped out of work, and he wouldn’t have the balls to tell me he was on his way and then go on the piss, as he’d done to Johnny a time or two before.

So I did, and he came, and we (meaning he and Johnny) put the new electrics in the kitchen. It’s not finished-finished yet, but all the wires are run up to all new boxes. See?

Except I lied. There aren’t all new boxes. The ugly old switch that controls the ugly old light is still ugly old there. No sense replacing that until we get the new light/ceiling fan, which I hope to do tomorrow afternoon. But all the other ancient, burn-the-house-down crap got taken out, including the mystery do-nothing switch – which Andy said was so frayed and otherwise disintegrated, we were good and goddamn lucky that we hadn’t managed to conflagrate the AssVac yet. Phew to that, I say!

Andy had said the job would take two hours, and two hours is exactly what it took. They were done by 10:00 on Tuesday morning. Johnny took Andy down the corner for a drink, and I went off to work.

Just like Ozzie and Harriet, we are.

I came home from work later that afternoon to find Johnny – shirtless, freshly shaven, and smelling like an Old Spice factory – running in a tiz around the house. “I just called L—!” he announced, without saying hello.

L— is our actual electrician. We hadn’t called her (yeah, that’s right, she’s a her) in on this because we haven’t got the cash. We did intend to call her for the last, important bits – the range hood, the ceiling fan – but we knew we could get to that point on our own. And, did I mention, we really (honestly, genuinely, I swear to god) have got no freakin’ cash?

So why’d Johnny call L—?

“None of the overheard lights work! Not one of them! None! Every single outlet is okay – well, all the ones that worked before are still okay – but not one of the overheads. I just spent two hours plugging a lamp into every outlet, up and downstairs throwing breakers. Something’s wrong. We did something. It’s not Andy’s fault. I don’t know what we did, but it can’t be good, so I called L—…”

I see. And then you shaved for her?

No, no, I kid. He’d showered and shaved before discovering the situation – in fact, he first noticed it when trying to turn on the exhaust fan when he was done. Why he can’t turn on the exhaust fan before he’s had his shower, I don’t know, but that’s an issue to be dealt with another time. For now, holy crap, there’s a live, frayed, shorted wire somewhere in our attic insulation!

L—’s advice had been to make sure everything was switched to “off.” She said as long as we didn’t flip the switches, it would be okay, and she would be here first thing in the morning. Okay. Phew. Good old grounded L—.

I ran around the house scotch-taping all the switches, because I didn’t trust us not to flip them out of habit, and I didn’t know which toggle might be the one that burned the house down. Then, since the plugs still worked, we brought a table-lamp into the kitchen and cooked dinner by its odd, romantic light:

Yeah, okay, maybe I had my own load on by this time. Can you blame me?

Anyway, in the morning, guess who never showed? Guess who never so much as returned our frantic calls? Guess who still has not even checked in to make sure we didn’t get char-broiled in the night? That's right: good old L—.

But guess who did show up, sober, and who figured out the biz?

Super-Andy!

You will never guess where the short turned out to be.

Mystery, do-nothing switch.

Apparently, the switch was so old and frayed that it hadn’t actually been functional in years. When we toggled it and it did nothing, that was because it was broken (and, incidentally, dangerous), not because it didn't connect to anything. It did – or was supposed to – connect to something, and when Andy (and Johnny) disconnected it, that circuit was cut off.

And what did that circuit connect to?

Every single overhead light in the whole house!

All the ceiling lights – porch, exaust fan, everything – are run off a single wire in the attic, and that wire goes (or went) up to the attic through that switch. Andy connected a new plug where the old one used to be, so the juice from the breaker box can once more get upstairs, and we’re back in business. For some reason, looking at that new plug makes me laugh:

Okay! We’re all finished now!

I don’t know if it was just a fluke of execution that made the wiring like that, or if there was a reason why somebody’d want to control all the overheads from one kitchen switch. It would make a heck of a neat party trick, I tell you what.

“Last call, folks! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats. The curtain will rise in one minute.”

“If you are here, Spirits, please give us a sign…”

And last but not least, my favorite:

“EARTHQUAKE!”

That's my favorite so far, anyway. Anyone got any more ideas?



P.S. Johnny's down at Andy's as I type this, painting or spackling or doing lord-knows-what. He'll spend the night down there and work again all day tomorrow. At which point we will only owe Andy a million minus two.

Still Crying, Man

At the beginning of the beginning of the end of the beginning of this kitchen thing, the idea was that it wouldn’t take too long, wouldn’t be too difficult, and wouldn’t cost too much money.

So far, we’re on track with the money thing. We had Home Depot gift cards to buy cabinets with. We had a big jar full of change to cash in for buying drywall. I even won $300 at Restoration Hardware from PW, so that will take care of the ceiling fan. But we’ve encountered a few hang-ups regarding the long-and-hard.

First off, we discovered that the range hood wants to vent directly through a wall stud. Which is – according to the laws of physics, anyway – not technically possible. But Super George came to the rescue. He says he can finagle something for us with a weld – move the hole in the back of the machine two inches to the right or so, to go around. Which is fine with us. We haven’t gotten around to it yet, exactly, but we will. We’re perfectly okay with that cockamamie solution.

After all, why should we do things properly around here when nobody else has, never, not one time?

Exhibit A:

That, presumably, is where the back door used to be. And this:

Is how they dealt with the sixteen-on-center issue when they moved the door.

I swear to god, this house was pieced together from whatever happened to blow down off the tree in the back yard. If the 2x4 you’ve got is not quite long enough, just jam in some other little bits until they meet. Provided every piece of wood is actually touching some other piece of wood (or at least gets very, very close), then there’s no need to worry about support that will hold up through the ages. Because, as we discovered on the train, tomorrow never happens, man…

Here’s how our thoughts progressed on this issue over the course of the week:

1. We’ve got to pull that hot mess and replace it with a real stud.

2. But the light switch – the light switch that we put in, on the other, new side of that wall – is mounted on that mess, so we can’t take it down without re-wiring that switch and messing up the plaster (you see? you see what doing things the proper way will get you? instead of just punching boxes through the drywall like some people I could mention?).

3. Wait, though, that did used to be a doorway. So it must have been originally constructed to bear weight without that 2x4. That 2x4 is only necessary now as a receptacle for drywall screws. So who gives a poop about the acey-deucy?

4. Except, um, look at those photographs again. Does that header look designed for weight-bearing to you? Johnny says the fact that the house is still standing at all must mean that it was originally a weight-bearing door.

5. Crap.

— and then here’s where I got brilliant —

6. Hang on, hang on, hang on… When we put that switch in – when we did the back room – we pulled down the other side of this same wall. At that time, everyone – Johnny, Andy, Yeto (our brilliant and meticulous carpenter), Paulie (our shifty and irresponsible contractor), Art (his asshole helper), my dad (an assessor, who knows about these things), two electricians, two plumbers, an insulation guy, the Building, Electrical, and Plumbing Inspectors, plus assorted sundry other ball-scratching, spitting types – all saw that hot mess just the way it was. And not one of those people had a problem with it then. So who are we to wanna care about it now?

And you know what? Johnny agreed.

You gotta call that love, man. That’s what it is.


I’ve gone on too long to start in on the electrics, but I will tell you that whole tale tomorrow. For now, know that it involves a teeny bit of indecisiveness on my part (big shocker), a night spent in total darkness for fear of flipping a switch and blowing up the house (ho hum), and this final result on my lovely bedroom wall:

It’s all the same f*cking day, man…

Six Yoots

For Donna…

My cousin Donna’s a lot like my mum,
And my mum’s just like me – so, we three, we have fun
Drinking and swearing and passing our gas.
But Donna’s got some things Mum and I don’t have.
Three things more than Mum has, and six more than me –
Six things I’ll never have, if I’m lucky.
Namely: Girls One and Two, and Boys One, Two, Three, Four.
It was some saving grace got me out of that chore
(In fact, that’s not true, wasn’t grace did that duty.
It was acres of latex and, at last, an IUD).
Donna’s fecundity doubled at once
Doubled her daughters, and doubled her sons.
But still cousin D remained fun as she ever
Was when she and her own Johnny first got together.
Nobody else could have raised all them kids
Unexpectedly-like, the way cuzDonna did.

Which is all to say naught ‘bout the contest I planned
But if you need a joke, cousin Donna’s your man.

Wir Haben Einen Sieger!

Now, here's the thing: in a perfect world, DonnaStaf would be my winner, because really there wasn't a better suggestion than "If it is 3am and they are still ugly, use the stick to fend them off."

But remember how I said I already gave away one copy of the book? Well, Donna got it. (And actually, technically, she may not have it yet, but it's on a truck somewhere, trying to find her.) So this afternoon I will write a poem for DonnaStaf instead, and send the Chinglish to my runner-up.

First, though, I want to award a few Honorable Mentions.

Jenni worked much the same angle as DonnaStaf, and honestly she might have won for that. But she won last week, and we do like to spread the AssVac love. So instead, she gets a set of beer-goggles for her very own.

ILU and Braveheart both gave me honest translations, more or less. And they more or less confirmed what I was told it said, even though the person who told me is German and we bought the stick in Austria. Which just goes to show: Austrian, German, same dif. They both get edelweiss.

Khurston, Su and Stephanie all get points for working the violence angle. As it turns out, alcohol and weapons are a magic combination! Black eyes for everyone!

Cake gave me a Douglas Adams reference, which I have to assume was in honor of Johnny's tombstone. So, for her, here's an especially bookish and handsome picture I took of him last night in our lovely kitchen.

Hm. I never did ask him what the bad news was. And now, looking at that face, I'm just too scirt.

Moving on...

Janice actually figured out how to make the bottle-opener be a fire-extinguisher. Who knew? She gets two thumbs up from Smokey the Bandit -- I mean, Bear. Smokey the Bear.

Which brings us to our winner. And I have to tell you that my first thought upon reading this entry was "Huh? What the hell does that mean? You do have to at least make sense, you know!"

But then, as I went on to doing other things, a tiiiny little fact I'd plum forgotten that I knew, woke up and started elbowing its way through my brain like Bugs Bunny in a movie theater ("Scuse me, pardon me, scuse me, pardon me, scuse me") until at long last it flopped, exhausted, right before my eyes.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

I didn't get it at first, you see, because I'm not (ahem) a gamer. But I read an article or something about this phenomenon somewhere, and I guess my brain socked it away as Possibly Useful Information. Apparently, this is as Possibly Useful as Information gets around the old AssVac anymore.

I lke it for lots of reasons, first and foremost being that I love that feeling of unbidden knowledge crawling up from my brainstem of its own accord. Truly, if I'd gotten the reference right away, it might not have won. And of course, if I'd never gotten it, I'd've written its suggestor off as nuts. But instead, we Goldilocksed it: juust right.

So congrats, Green Fairy! Send me your address (my email's in my profile) and I'll send you your (now even more tastelessly appropriate) prize.


P.S. If any of y'all follow that link to her blog, you'll see that our Green Fairy's on a bit of a prizewinning roll. But don't let the green monster get you down. We'll have another contest next week. And who knows? Maybe you'll be playing next for pickled beets & eggs!

Monday Contest #2

Remember this?

The bottle-opener that I posted as my in-case-of-emergency when I couldn't find the fire extinguisher? Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is...

Tell me what it says.

Now, I know what I think it says, but I didn't get my translation from a native speaker of the language that it's in -- close, but not quite -- so I could be wrong. And no, I'm not going to tell you what language it is.

You can say something funny that will make me laugh, or you can actually try to figure it out. The winner will be the one that I like best, which may just turn out to be the truth. Who knows?

And, since we're on a translation kick this morning, you're playing for this:

I already gave one of these away, but I bought two and was saving the other for a special occasion. This, apparently, is as special as it gets here at the AssVac.

Now go!


My finger, by the way, is not included in the prize.

We Were Just Thinkin'...

Not for nuthin', but:

If Johnny and I were to have tombstones made for ourselves (which we won't, because we're both going to be burnt up and scattered to the wind, but if we were)...

Johnny's would say:

Thanks for all the fish.

And mine would say:

All right, then, I'll go to hell.


Ain't we hi-lar-ious?

Kitchen Catch-All

I've been promising and failing for so long to update you on the kitchen project, that I've amassed a little bouquet of short stories. A nosegay, as it were. Not much actual progress has been made yet (hey man, that's how we roll) but we have discovered lots of interesting things...

Johnny got every last bit of the wainscotting down and salvaged -- except for one piece that has the live wire for the kill-switch on the furnace running through.

We're going to think a while on what to do about that one. Don't really want to risk sawing through the wood there, even if we shut the power off. Could we maybe saw very, very close to the wire, and then, like, ruin a scissors or something to cut through the final bit?

(Let's not talk about the fact that this is a kill-switch installed about a month ago, after Johnny pulled off the old one and Andy came to help us out. Let's not mention that where he mounted it anew is where the refrigerator is supposed to go when the kitchen's done, so the switch has to be moved again. But let's do mention that I, just now, looking at these pictures and talking about this, realized that the switch can go on the other side of the doorway, and therefore not be in the way of the fridge at all. Yay, me! Thanks, guys!)

At any rate, back to the wainscotting: The good news -- perhaps the goodest news I've heard all year -- is that the back of it was never varnished! And the back of it looks just like the front!

Which means... I don't have to strip it!

Come on, y'all, get your italics on and say it with me: YA-FREAKIN'-HOO!

In other news: whoever did this work the last time apparently didn't understand the concept of weight-bearing. Didn't understand that, in order for weight to actually be borne in any sort of useful fashion, there has to be a constant stream of solid matter from the roof down to the floor.

Instead of that, though, beams just stop

and start

and stop and start again

Which is comforting, to say the least.

Ah, well, on the bright side: I think we've just discovered where the Golden Ceiling Spiders have been emanating out of all these years.

Ew.

Moving on, a little to the right...

We think they must have literally punched this box through the drywall without bothering to first cut a hole.

There are so many things odd about this outlet, beginning with the fact that the wiring is so obviously newer than the rest -- the rest that we can see, anyway, in the kitchen -- and yet there were no holes in either wall on either side for whoever to have worked the wires through. Also, it's not screwed onto anything, except presumably the faceplate in the front.

Speaking of which, wait a second. The other side of this wall is in the -- yes -- spare bedroom. And there is not an outlet on that wall in there. Did they actually install the weird cork panelling (which is a story for another time) onto the wall over a power-outlet?

Oh, wait. Hang on. No, they didn't. It turns out, if you move the dresser, you find all sorts of useful things (including but not limited to Johnny's dusty, cat-haired knee brace that would have come in really handy when he hurt himself last fall).

Oh well. That outlet must not work. That must be why I didn't know about it. I must have tested it when we moved in, discovered it was dead, and then put its existence clear out of my already-cluttered mind.

Nope. It works.

Huh. Well anyway...

Ooh, here's something: When I was taking that picture of the smashed-in outlet up above, I noticed a small rock in the debris. I thought it was odd, so I zoomed in and took a picture of it:

But when I downloaded the picture, I noticed something I hadn't seen in person. And if you click on that picture to enlarge it, you will see it, too.

Did you see it? The amber trail?

Seriously. I shit you not. Look here.

The wood the house was made of wept its sap, and in the near-ten decades since, it turned to stone. Or glass, or something. I tried to pick it up in one piece, but I failed. I've squirrelled the bits away now in an envelope for safekeeping, and someday -- when I'm stupid-rich and have money to burn on such frivolous things -- I might see if I can get those fragments made into a piece of jewelry.

In the meantime, the only amber I'll be working on is ale.



Oh, also, I was here this morning. Testicles only figure in a little, at the end.

BLEAH!

I just did my taxes. I told myself that was all I would have to accomplish this weekend, and I'm pretty proud of myself that I got up first thing and did it. It took me four freakin' hours, and we are officially busted.

I feel ill.

I'm going to go swing my body around a bit and see if I can't work off some of this anxiety so I don't wind up hurling in my lap this afternoon.

Later, if I get drunk enough, I'll tell y'all (happy, Amalie?) about the kitchen, but in the meantime...

BLEAH!

Boogah-boogah, I say to the IRS -- and the Mass. Department of Revenue, while I'm at it.

Why y'all gotta make it so hard on a pimp?

Would You Trust This Guy to Make Your Watch?

I know I said I was going to tell you more about the kitchen today – and there is such good news, wait till you hear! – but first I simply must tell you about something ridiculous that happened in said kitchen last night.

Let me begin in the morning, when I’m leaving for work. Johnny asks me, as he always does, what I want for dinner, and I remind him that I’m on the forty-pounds-in-twenty-days plan. Vegetables are what I’m having for dinner, always now, and you should know that. Vegetables, and – if I’ve been really good – a bit of rice. He starts muttering about how maybe he’ll make himself a spaghetti sauce.

I know what this means. This means a pound of ground beef, peppers and onions and carrots and celery and spices and everything else, cans of tomatoes and paste – and then, at the last minute, opening a jar of sauce to mix in, too, because what he made is too thin or too chunky or not spicy enough. This means upwards of a gallon of spaghetti sauce, with meat in it, to feed one man one meal.

Now, I do eat meat these days. I didn’t, for twelve years – and I was about to say I started up again when I moved in with Johnny, but even that’s not true. I lasted almost five years after that. But we took this one particular vacation in 2002, and I decided I was tired of going to all these places that we used to go before we bought the AssVac, and eating nothing the whole time I was there but bread and cheese (and beer and wine). Local cuisine has its charms, and it doesn’t always cater to the finicky. So I carnivored up slowly, in preparation for that trip, and I’ve been off and running ever since.

Except not exactly running. I eat it, it doesn’t disgust me or anything, and once in a while I remember something I realize I haven’t had in almost twenty years, and sometimes trying it again is a truly transformative experience. (Seriously. You go two decades without a piece of bacon and see if you don’t cry a little bit at the first bite. There was a while there we couldn’t keep bacon in the house. I mean literally. I made a rule.) But for the most part I’ve still got the palette of an herbivore. I likes my lasagna and my chili garden-variety, my grinders vegetarian, and lordy-knows I want my marinara sauce meat-free. Especially now that I’m on track to look like Mrs. Skellington in three short little weeks, I did not want a Dutch-oven full of Bolognese around.

All this is to say: I talked him out of the spaghetti.

“Why don’t you just have vegetables and rice with me, Hon? Didn’t you say you were going on a diet, too?”

“But, I need to eat more than vegetables and rice for dinner.”

“Well, then, why don’t you take out a chicken breast as well, and we can split it.”

“Okay. Yeah. That sounds good.”

“Good, then. Okay. See you later.” And off I went -- to not bring home the bacon.

When I got home, he was positively giddy. The work he’d been doing in the kitchen had gone well, and he even had a lead on some added good news (added good news that I’m too superstitious to share yet at the moment, but if it does come through, I swear you-all will be first to hear. You, and the creepy guy who reads this poppycock over your shoulder. Boo! Made you look.). He kissed me hello, and then he started stuttering like a little kid.

“I made,” he started. “I made, I made, I made, I made, I made – I made two steaks.”

Um, and what does that mean, exactly?

He pointed to the crockpot, then opened up his Crockpot Cookery paperback and pointed to a recipe.

Ah. Well, that explains the stuttering. Poor bastard got his Porky Pig stuck on “Stroganoff.”

Wait.

What?

Oh this is wrong on so many levels, I can’t even count. But I will try.

#1. I kid about the forty-pounds thing, but I really am trying to diet. And, not for nothing, but he says he is, too. Beef and sour cream. Oh yeah. That’s light.

#2. Even if I weren’t on a diet, I never eat whole steaks. A few bites of his, maybe, and that’s it. He could have made this dish with only one.

#3. But even if I weren’t on a diet, and even if I would eat a whole steak, I sure as hell wouldn’t have crock-potted two of the Omaha Filet Mignons that were a birthday present to him from my Lady! Christ, I could have put my shoe in there with a bit of sour cream and it would have tasted much the same. Which brings me to my next point.

#4. Even if #s 1 & 2& 3 were all okay, I don’t like stroganoff. I never have. It tastes like hot, creamy, mushroom-wine -- and it looks like throw-up. Bleah.

#5. Last, but not least: We agreed on vegetables and chicken! Why do you make me tell you in the morning what I want for dinner, if you’re just going to go and throw up in the pot?

That last one’s not quite fair. It didn’t look like throw-up in the crockpot yet, because we were out of sour cream. He thought we had some, else he would not have started this endeavor, but that container turned out to be holding… “What is this, Horse?” he asked me. I looked. “I don’t know,” I said at first. And then… Oh. Leftover spaghetti pie. Throw that shit out, man. Now.

He told me to go ahead and cook my vegetables and rice, he would walk up to the quick-e-mart for sour cream, and we could both have both. He’d have more meat than veg, I’d have more veg than meat, and we’d Jack Sprat off into the tra-la-la.

Fine.

Except the pub is right next to the quick-e-mart. And he might, while he was out there, just stop in for a little pint.

Oh, thank god.

So he went to the pub and I chopped and cooked and ate my vegetables, infinitely glad they didn’t have to share a plate with puke. And, two hours later, Johnny came home without the sour cream.

He tried to get me to go out for it, but I refused. “Why don’t you just take your meat and gravy as it is, pour it over the rice I made for you, and call it a meal?” I suggested, helpfully.

“No, this is a recipe, and you have to follow the recipe.”

Johnny can whip things up from his imagination with the best of them, but give him a recipe and he will refuse to deviate. We have cancelled plans for his beloved chicken curry because all we had were red peppers and the recipe calls for green.

“Well, I’m not going out.” I said. “Try throwing in the veggie cream-cheese that One Friend left in the refrigerator.” I was kidding, but he thought about it.

“No,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”

He pretended not to understand the concept of thickening with a paste of flour, and I still declined to provide assistance on that or any count. He considered and (inexplicably) discarded the idea of using Bisto. He tried to get me – again, and repeatedly – to go out for sour cream.

I kept iterating my suggestion about the as-is meat/sauce and the rice – because, honestly, it looked to me like a perfectly good meal, if you are of the eating-an-entire-steak persuasion (as, we have established, I am not). But he kept saying “Nah, nah, bollocks to that, bollocks to that.”

Finally, I heard him announce triumphantly “I know! I’ll use cornstarch!” And then I did get up and fetch it for him, because the poor bastard was never going to find it in the new cabinets on his own.

You’ll never guess what happened next. Ah, go on. No? All right, I’ll tell you.

He barely even got it open before he dropped the box straight down. I just so happened to glance up at that very second, and it looked like the goddamn 4th of July. Poff! It hit the floor flat-bottomed, and cornstarch went everywhere. Oh my lord, I laughed until I cried. I am so glad I happened to glance up so I could see it, otherwise the night might have ended in a yell-fest instead. Because look:

“Ka-poof.” Johnny said, a little stunned.

“It looks like the universe.”

And in case there are any physicists out there who might be wondering: when the Big Bang happens, the universe does, in fact, get all over the stove.

Also, if you try to rein in the entropy – by, say, plugging the vacuum cleaner into the rogue kitchen-plug – all the stars go out at once.

Ka-poof.

So anyway I threw the breaker, and he finished cleaning up (you’re damn right I didn’t help him!). Afterwards, he ate his meat and gravy (like I told him) over rice. “Strog-,” he said it was, “without the -off.” I don't know what happened to the -an-, but strog- sans -off was apparently a huge success.

And later, as I passed through the kitchen on my way to bed, I found a four-pound pork roast thawing on the counter.



What is it about vegetables he doesn't understand?!

Actually, Johnny Told Me

I found the

Behind the
Next to the

Der.

Yes, we use our fireplace. A lot. How can you tell?

Angry Dust

We haven't gotten much work done in the kitchen since the last time I talked about it -- or else I would have talked about it. You see? How this "blog" thing works? It's okay, it took me a while to figure it out, too. Gosh, for months there I was just floundering around, muttering about boobs and valium. Once I figured out you want the real smut, though, it all fell into place. Thanks for that. Now, where was I? Oh.

We haven't got much done around here lately, what with Johnny leaving and One Friend coming in and out, then Johnny returning home "just feckin' bollocksed" and having to spend a week on the couch trying to think his blood pressure back down under 200.

Seriously. It just so happened that he had a doctor's appointment two days after he got back. His blood pressure -- on his regular medication -- was so high that they put him on an EKG machine to make sure he wasn't dying. He wasn't. Obviously. (Or I would have talked about it -- see?) But now he's taking two different blood pressure medications until it gets under control. A beta blocker and an, I don't know, gamma ray or something. Doctor says it was caused by drinking so much on holiday and then stopping abruptly when he got back home. Doctor says it's a kind of DTs he's going through, and maybe it would be a good idea for him to have a beer. Johnny says nuh-uh, I drink that much all the time, it was just sleep deprivation combined with seeing the condition that the other house is in.

Oy. The other house. Could I have a few of those blood-pressure-curers, Doctor?

So anyway, we haven't gotten much done in the kitchen, is my point.

To wit:

This box is, believe it or not, still functional. This box is, believe it or not, how we've been switching on the kitchen lights for going on a month. Grope wrong in the dark and who knows what could happen, so we've developed a system for the middle of the night in which we light one of the gas burners on the stove to guide our way.

Kidding! I kid! Really what we've been doing is a lot of putting our fingers in the water glasses to feel when they're about to overflow. Which means no getting drinks of water for each other in the night, because who knows where fingers wind up when folks are sleeping.

This, meanwhile, is where we've been plugging in the microwave.

Nuff said?

Actually, let me just add one thing (well, come on: have we met?): it never occurred to us, until the day that we pulled down the walls, to wonder what that switch beneath the plug might correspond to. Somehow never, in four years, had we thought to give it so much as a toggle. Probably a wise choice, considering what happens to everything else in this house when you put it to the purpose for which it was supposedly intended, but nevertheless. Now that we'd noticed it, we figured that it must -- obviously, der -- control the outlet that it is attached to. So, just to kill the cat, we plugged in a radio and flipped the switch.

It does not control that plug. It does not control anything. Or else maybe it used to, and it's just burned out. Like everything else in this house. Including us.

So, to sum up, this is our kitchen:

Still.

(Although, if you're very astute, you may have noticed that the wainscotting is gone. Most of it. I'll write about that bit tomorrow.)

In the meantime, it's a good thing we have one of these:

Erm. That's a bottle-opener. I meant to take a picture of the fire extinguisher, but I couldn't find it. That's not good. I know. And I will look for it, I swear. But I didn't think waking Johnny up to ask him if he knows where the fire extinguisher is sounded like a very good idea. He does still have that high blood-pressure, after all.

For which, come to think of it, that bottle-opener might come in very handy.

The Subtraction of Weight

I’m on a mission to lose forty pounds in twenty days. That’s possible, right?

See, our big cross-country trip has been moved up. We’re leaving on the 21st (well, actually, I’m leaving on the 21st to go to California, then we are leaving California on the 22nd, but you see my point). And the truth is I actually only have about twenty pounds to lose—

Okay, fine. Technically I could probably lose three times that and still not be a twig, but size twelve has been my finish line for decades (except for miraculous months at size 10 here and there, attributable to either poverty or else some piece of ass I was chasing around, trying to throw a leg over) and I see no reason to shoot for scrawny now that I’m approaching middle-age.

So why forty (extraordinarily-possible) pounds in twenty days?

How about the fact that I’m going to be spending a week on my automatic-transmissed ass, eating Three-Cheese Flatbread Sandwiches from Dunkin’ Donuts at every rest stop from California to the New York Island? (Seriously, have you tried these things? They are dee-lish! Except, oh crap, when I went to the page to provide that link, I discovered that they're pretty much only available where I live. Oh well, maybe I should just stay home. Nah). My thought is that if I lose forty pounds before we leave, I can gain twenty back in the car and still come out ahead.

Right?

(Don’t worry, my friends: I am well aware that this plan is not only dangerous, it is downright impossible without a tapeworm and a flesh-eating disease. You don’t get to be thirty-eight and able to rattle off the caloric content of every food group known to man without some understanding of the metabolic process. But I’m making funnies here, so roll with me, okay?)

Towards this end, I have started eating nothing but vegetables and fruit (you see why I had to get rid of all the Toblerone in one fell swoop now, don't you?) and I have started doing… everything. Situps, stairmaster, pushups, swingy-leg things – and walking to work.

Okay, not walking to work. That’s twelve miles. Don’t be ridiculous. I’d have to be Rosie Ruiz to pull that off, for heaven’s sake. But I have been walking to the train and back.

Okay! Fine! I’m not doing that either! Jeez, you people! The nearest station is 2½ miles from my door – which I honestly did used to do, for a while, but then I realized that hour and a half I was wasting every day could be much better spent eating Toblerone and watching Dirty Boy on television. I mean, working. So what I do now is, I drive to the beach, park the car (bonus: parking at the beach is free) and then walk to the train from there. One mile, each way, just about.

Really.

Honest.

Okay?

Okay.

So (and here is where my story really starts) I was very windy yesterday.

No, no – I meant to say it. It was very windy yesterday. Not I. All those fruits and vegetables have not kicked in with that kind of vengeance yet. At least, as far as any of you can tell from where you're sitting.

So (again) it was very windy yesterday. Gusts up to 40mph, they said, and raining on and off in scattered showers. But yesterday was just day two of my new fitness regimen, and if I buckled to a little weather on day two, then before I knew it I would be huddled in the Cuddledown, eating Swiss Miss out of the packet with a spoon.

(I can’t recommend this as highly as I can the flatbread and the Tobler, but in a tight pinch it will serve to quell a chocolate jones. It will also, if you’re not neat, like me, leave mysterious dust-brown patterns on the Cuddledown that will take dry-cleaning to remove, and your dry-cleaner will wonder what sort of horrible disease you’re suffering. But anway…)

The walk in was kind of fun. I leaned against the wind like Marcel Marceau (only, you know, alive) and pretended to be Tabitha, whisking trash cans across the street with the power of my nose – a very different sort of “powerful nose” than I accidentally attributed to myself above, although both probably equally capable of blowing an empty Rubbermaid across the road.

Good lord. Somebody stop me before I fart-joke again. Moving on – with dignity, this time…

The walk back, though, was tough. Not only had the wind changed direction – as it is wont to do around here, with the water on both sides – so that I was walking into it again at the end of a (physical) workday, but this time I had Donna behind me.

You know Donna, right? As in “Hey, Donna-Donna, ya wanna-wanna?” Didn’t she go to high school with you? Maybe her name was Courtney or Lila, or Ladonne or Michelle – or, hell, maybe her name was even Erin – but where I come from, they’re all Donnas. (Which has nothing to do with my cousin of the same name, I swear to god. In fact, if I had to make book on it, I’d bet she doesn’t ever wanna anymore. Not since, with three kids under five, she found out she was having triplets. That was twenty years ago, but I bet it still smarts. “Hey, Donna, ya—” “Fuck off!”)

But you know what Donnas didn’t have when we were in high school? Cell phones. She was walking right behind me, keeping pace with me and the wind (oh, how I wished I could have kicked up a windstorm of my own at this moment), dialing up everyone she knew. Now, not only was my underwear stuck about four inches up my ass – and I couldn’t very well pick it out with her waiting back there to give the play-by-play – but I also have a habit of reading while I walk. Between her conversation and my Fruit-of-the-Looms, I couldn’t concentrate. Finally, I gave up and went in to full-on eavesdrop-mode, listening to Donna’s search for somebody (let’s call him Joey) who, apparently, did not have a cell phone of his own.

Can you imagine?

Eventually, she found him. And you won’t guess how. She – get this – dialed his home phone! Go figure. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from asking where he was. In the living room, apparently.

From there, she commenced to send him on a scavenger hunt through his own house, walking him from room to room. “Okay, you know where your sister’s bed is? Next to it there’s a dresser? On top of that there’s a television? Look on top of that. No? Okay. You know where the kitchen table is…?” etc.

By the time he at last found the envelope she wanted, I had had enough. Just as she was telling him to open it and read it to her, I turned down a side street. Not the one I usually take, but one that would still lead me back down the beach and to my car. I could hear her for a little while, repeating “Yeah… Yeah… Yeah,” and then, just as we went far enough in our opposite directions for the wind to blow the words away, she raised her voice:

“Expelled!?” she said. “Or suspended? ...

“Shit. Are you serious?”

It was all I could do not to run back in her direction and listen to the end. Poor Donna. I wonder what she did to deserve it.

Ah, well. At least I finally got to pick my wedge. And I must have lost something like eleven pounds as a result of that ordeal.

The scale doesn't say so, but I think it's full of wind.

Monday Winner #1

I asked:

Which is more likely: That I ate my Toblerones all at once, or that I had one every day and just let the empty wrappers keep accumulating on the floor beside my bed? Discuss.

Somebody answered:

You ate one package, the Pony ate a one and the Princess ate one package all together @ one time. There was a race to see who could finish and you all washed them down with Diet Coke mixed with a jigger or two of Johnny's home brew which accounts for the hangover and not setting the alarm clock...


Our first Monday winner knew just how to play
It’s not about “right” but the things that you say.
I’m vain, insecure, and I need reassurance
That you all are paying attention to Prudence!
So when someone wrote in quoting me back to me
Mentioning Diet Coke and the brews of Johnny
I knew that the poem had to go to her, and
I hereby present: 1311 Vernon.

Let’s hear it for Jenni, who won this first go!
She’s also reviving an old bungalow –
But she’s not a MassHole, she’s living in Georgia
(That’s G. as in peaches, not as in perestroika).
Which explains why its springtime on her blog, full-torch,
(And why she’s got pollen all over her porch).
She drove a lot-lanta this week, Jenni did
She went to the market, she went to the skids
She went to the DQ (they’re looking for workers)
And an old soda fountain place, devoid of jerkers.

Last but not least, Jenni’s been rated E
For "Excellent," of course – and she shared it with me!


Really! Look here! But I didn't know that before I chose her for this, I swear!

Have I Mentioned...

...that Johnny came back from Ireland looking very much like Elvis?

T'ank you, t'anks very much.

... or that Boy Cat stayed here the whole time, looking like a spud?

What does a potato say?
Idaho, Alaska!

... or that this was Johnny's birthday cake?

Happy birthday, Princess!

... because somebody thought it sounded like a good idea?

Knickers!

... and that I got a bug in mine?

Although I'd like to point out: that is not my hand.

... or that I actually made this sweater?

Although I'd like to point out: my dad does have a head.

... or that I really do have One Friend?

Also, apparently, elephantiasis of the calves.

... or that -- well, I got nuthin'. I just figured it had been a while.

Oh, Prudence, how can I get my dirty hands
on that AssVac of yours?

Happy April Fools Day, everybody! Even if all of the above are true and deadly serious, and I'm just taking this the opportunity to clean out my picture folder of all the things I forgot to tell you about last month.

Oh shoot. Last month.

Rabbit rabbit.

Dang.





P.S. We have a winner on our First Official Monday Contest. I will immortalize their entry as soon as I get home from work.