Shit Happens & Other Recipes

Football season is here!!

Well it’s the end of another long hot summer and good riddance to it! All I can say is its FOOTBALL SEASON again, halleluiah and thank ya Jesus! The end to sweating my ass off and eating and drinking in the back yard…to freezing my ass off and eating and drinking at the stadium.

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I can finally put down the unfinished projects from summers past; and leave them to be unfinished again next summer. No more quiet Sundays spent with the in-laws…it’s time to PARTY!

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Football season is like going into a 16 week coma where they feed you hot sausage and beer intravenously and make you watch barely dressed women dance and do contortions. If I could figure a way to spend it lying down, it would be perfect. The roar of the crowd and the electricity of the stadium combine to a beautiful numbing buzz that stays with me the whole year.

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Public drunkenness, over indulgence with food and drink, and fist fights are perfectly acceptable behavior…along with screaming obscenities and pissing on the neighbor’s dog. What could be more fun?

The Mother-in-Law Files...

Without mentioning any names, I have to say my mother-in-law is slightly nuts. The following is a true life conversation… (Okay, so ‘true’ can be interpreted differently to different folks)… but it’s damn close.

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In the car going to dinner:

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MIL (mother-in-law): We need gas

Me: We just got gas 5 minutes ago

MIL: Don’t argue…I like to keep it topped off, besides I saw gas for $2.67 in Browns Mills NJ

Me: Browns Mills is 50 miles from here

MIL: Don’t argue…its 20 cents cheaper and I have a coupon.

Me: A coupon for gas?

MIL: No…a coupon for a free turkey.

Me: At the gas station?

MIL: No at the Acme, if I spend $1200…I get a free turkey. And a 2 liter Pepsi is 60 cents off.

Me: (hesitantly), At the Acme, right?

MIL: No at the gas station, stupid. Keep up will you!

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And it goes on like this forever. I could swear I’m in the Twilight Zone when I’m in the car with her. Everyone else in the car seems to be oblivious.

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I know in my heart that mother-in-laws the world over belong to some cult to confound and confuse us guys. I bet with a bunch of free turkeys I could infiltrate their ranks and be prepared for the next mystifying onslaught. Next up….Rules My MIL swears by.

Family Fun

I love family get togethers. This weekend we celebrated my nieces’ graduation from college. Her story of a 3 pronged lure stuck in her nose and the resulting trip to the ER via ambulance, won best of night honors. Honorable mention goes to the conversation…”so how’s Aunt Fannie?” Aunt Fannie is dead….still dead. But someone will always ask how she is.

Then there is the obligatory ‘fight with son about what he’s wearing’ contest. It goes like this:

Mom: “You’re not wearing that shirt!”

Son: “Why not? Fuck is only a word and this just describes its usage.”

Mom: “Pick something else….not that…yes Bush is an asshole but it’s not appropriate to wear that today. Save it for school.”

Son: “I should be able to wear what I want and proclaim my individuality”

Mom: “Okay fine. Wear whatever you want…but don’t expect to drive until you’re 40.”

Son: “Fuck”

Oh…late for work…to be continued…

Do you know where you were when Pluto was demoted?

I had a dream last night that scientists found Pluto inhabited by sentient beings. So Earth sent astronauts 3 billion miles,10 years to greet them. When we got there they were pissed off and refused to talk to us. Fucking astronomers.

Spam spam eggs and spam...

If I had responded to all of the spam e-mail I received in the past two weeks, I would have  netted approximately $7.4 billion from assisting various deposed heads of state in securing their rightful fortunes.

Also, my penis would be 56 inches long and I would have seen more than a lifetime's worth of vaginas and boobies.

Ken

Ken is our handy-man. He makes $300 a day, plus all the iced-tea he can drink. Ken also likes to talk. He talks to us, he talks on the phone he talks to the neighbors, he talks to my dog Sam…he talks to the neighbors dog…he talks and talks and talks…., probably, $150 worth a day. I even tried to limit the time I spend with Ken; in hopes he would stop talking. But that didn’t work…he just saves it all up for when I see him and lets loose like the twisted rubber band on a hand glider.

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It’s not like he doesn’t work; he does. He sips iced-tea and talks and occasionally hefts a hammer as though it were some new modern technology he has to reacquaint himself with. If you deduct the chatter and iced-tea breaks from his daily salary, (and I assure you this was done…all scientific and shit), he works about $37.46 per day.

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Ken was telling me a story the other day about his grandkids birthday party, (in between sips of tea), and I just nonchalantly asked him when he thought he might finish hanging the picture over the fire place.  He’s been working on that picture since November. I knew immediately this was the wrong question. He set his iced-tea down and said, “Don’t you go rushing me now! That’s how mistakes happen! You won’t be happy if it’s not done correctly, will you? Now refill this tea and let me get back to telling about all the presents my grandbaby got.”

Throwing out the earplugs

Thank God my son is now old enough to go to concerts by himself. I knew it was time when I saw that I was the only one at the WachoviaCenter with earplugs and a book. Fucking Corey wouldn’t even hold the flashlight straight. He insisted he needed to jump up and down and scream with everyone else. That shit is something I cannot fathom; unless of course your hair is on fire. Then jumping up and down and screaming is perfectly acceptable. Rolling also. Don’t forget to roll.

   

The very last concert I took him to was The Offspring at Electric Factory. They were fantastic but thank God, (again), for the small bar upstairs. Without it I would have had to endure a ‘mosh’ with 2,000 pubescent teens and never would have gotten drunk. Now since ‘mosh’ rhymes with ‘nosh’, you’d think great fun eh? A little music, maybe a bagel with a shmear and some lox… fat chance. Now instead of my son jumping up and down and screaming, he is jumping up and down and screaming on top of other pubescent teens. What the fuck is that about? People were actually hitting each other…smashing and slamming their bodies, and get this…no one was on fire! They did that later.

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What ever happened to the good old hippie daze? When concert goers could barely stand let alone fight? I miss em. I don’t remember them, but I miss them all the same. There was no ‘moshing’ at Woodstock; just good old hallucinogens and weed, (not that I was there, but I saw the movie dammit!). Can you picture Mamma Cass doing a little crowd surfing? Some stage diving by Hendrix?

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Anyway, Corey and his friends can now do just about anything without parental supervision. Amen to that brother! Say goodbye to The Jungle Book and gay purple dinosaur shit, and hello to Pennywise and The Misfits. Corey…just a word to the wise. Don’t break any bones and don’t forget to roll son.

Remodel This! Part II

Terri and I had an argument at Lowes last night. She insisted that only items marked ‘baseboard’ are actually baseboard; and that an item marked ‘casing’ though it appears to be baseboard, cannot be used for baseboard. Sweet Jesus, where is that Vicodin? I assured her that the item marked ‘casing’ can indeed be used for things other than casing and no one will be the wiser. I reminded her that manly men know these ‘tricks of the trade’ and she should just nod and be respectful of my skill as a home remodeler. “After all”, I reminded her, “who is it that tightens the screws to your eyeglasses regularly?”  Okay, so what if I have to consult my 1954 series of Time-Life books on home repair to fix her eyeglasses…it gets done.

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Lowes is no place to have an argument anyway. It’s bad enough that we practically live there; and that the employees greet us by name. (Last night I actually heard a cashier go ‘cha-ching’, when we entered).  We tied up aisle 14 for a good 20 minutes and drew a fair sized crowd. I got really annoyed when a guy in a ‘plumbers lay great pipe’ tee shirt started taking side-line bets.

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To top off this wonderful evening the doorway alarms started blaring as we were exiting. And yes, another crowd formed as a grim faced store manager made his way over. “Where do you think you going with that casing?” he exclaimed. “I paid for it, I’m taking it home,” I said smugly. “Not if you’re going to use it as baseboard you’re not. That would be against store policy and code B312 of the New Edition Time-Life Series. You’ll have to pull over next to that plumber.”

Remodel This!

We’ve been very busy remodeling our home. What an ordeal… You’d think it would be fun, picking out flooring, kitchen cabinets and the like. But honestly, it is a grueling test of marriage vows and color coordination.

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My wife runs around the house like a dog chasing its tail. Actually, the dog is chasing my wife as she runs around the house like a dog chasing its tail. “The floor color, Mickey, is it too red? Is the paint too brown? Will everything clash with what we have?” I have to calm her down…that’s my job. I say, “Who gives a shit honey” and “will you please stop chasing your tail? You’re giving the dog a headache”.  Men are not equipped for this kind of chaos.  Do we really have to measure the height of the pendant lighting; from the top of the countertop to the optimum elevation for area illumination? To quote a great man…’ who gives a flying fuck?’ God forbid we just throw those fuckers up any old way.

And the boxes…boxes everywhere, for everything. We’re living out of them now, for christsakes. I can’t find the goddamn toothpaste, but I did happen to find my son at the bottom of one. Good thing too, cause he was holding the goddamn toothpaste. “What are you doing in there, Corey?” I asked. “I dunno Dad. Mom packed me”. Christ. “What’s Corey doing at the bottom of a box, Terri?”  “He clashes with the floor,” she says, “I told you it was too red!”

Someone give me a Vicodin.

Forever Dribble My Love

It was the summer of my 13^th birthday and I worked at a day camp. They called me a CIT and for me it was a very big deal. My first job and all…even though it cost my folks $300 for me to ‘work’. I got to take care of a bunch of snot nosed brats, whose snot nosed parents didn’t tip worth a shit for dumping their kids and then leaving for the golf course. Yeah, I know that’s what they were paying for …but really a tip or even a kind word would’ve been nice.

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Anyway, it was the summer of my first true love, and I’ll never forget it. Sharon, (the object of my heart’s desire), will never forget it either…but for a totally different reason.

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She was the love of my life. A crush to beat all others. I lived and breathed Sharon…and she loved me back, with all the love a 13yr old puppy love could muster. You get the idea. I followed her around whenever I could; scheduling activities to be where she was…and she did the same.

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One day I came to the basketball court where she was shooting hoops with her group…she was holding a basketball and looked to me like Helen of Troy, or perhaps a Greek goddess. She was beautiful and my heart beat faster just knowing I was near her. At that moment, (I really don’t know what came over me), I though it would be so cool to announce my arrival to the courts by hitting the basketball out of her hands, with the ball I was holding. She would love me for it. My physical prowess. My power, charm, abilities.

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As I threw the ball and called out her name, I wondered what possessed me to do such a thing. Surely there were other ways to declare my undying love. I mean, I could’ve picked flowers for her, or perhaps written a poem…a sonnet to her beauty…anything. But as I watched the ball soar through the air towards the love of my 13 yr old life; toward the girl I was confident I would marry and bear my children…I knew with a kind of inner certainty that my aim was a little off. And so, as she turned to my voice, a smile on those luscious lips, knowing the voice she heard belonged to someone who worshipped the ground she walked on…the basketball hit her smack in the face.

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Well, you can guess of course, that was the end of my first true romance. Sharon ran from the court and I never saw her again. Well that’s not altogether true; I saw her a few months ago at the supermarket. We didn’t say anything to one another, but we both knew who the other was. She looked almost exactly the same too…if it wasn’t for that giant lump in her nose.