Grand Am-erica, Part 1

I'm going to lay this one out in installments. It's about me getting sent to Virginia to look for moonshine in the 90s, not finding any, but telling myself that I found so much more.

The story's too long and involved to rely on my memory, which can be pretty spotty thanks to stories like this. To retell it, I had to retrieve a shitty, 1998 attempt at nonfiction novelization, which I'd imprisoned like the villains of Superman II in a flat, 3.5" floppy disc labelled "The Longest Virginia". Apparently it took me a few drafts to turn something that should have topped out at 30 pages into a 250-page carnival of self-indulgence for which the term "masturbatory" doesn't really do justice. Provided you're not too drunk, masturbation only takes a few minutes.

Freeing General Zod took some doing. For starters, floppy drives are rarer than 8-track players these days, because there's no strain of nostalgia that causes people to say "I just like the way this Word Document reads on floppy disc". I certainly don't have one. I sold the Dell on which I'd originally pounded out this monstrosity over a decade ago, to a Dallas guy named Otto. Otto was a fat ex-skater who was always talking about how, when Armageddon came, survivalists like himself would thrive while the rest of us helpless slaves would starve like abandoned babies. He could have said "I totally get why not everyone is as preoccupied as I am with the fall of civilization; we're friends, so if my paranoia proves useful, I'll make sure you're taken care of." He didn't. This dickishness is why most survivalists are murdered long before the End Times arrive.

Otto promised me $100 for the Dell. He also said that to protect me from cyber-criminals he'd wipe the computer clean. I have no idea if he wiped me. I do know that he never paid me; the last time I saw him he was slinking around a dark corner near the Cotton Bowl, once again successfully avoiding a confrontation. Just one of his many survival techniques.

I bought another Dell after that one, the Experion something or other. It hosted a single port, into which you could either slide a detachable floppy or CD-Rom drive. I still have that computer, but it only operates eight minutes at a time before overheating and shutting itself off. Dell claimed this was not their fault; some vandal must have jammed a pen into the fan system when I wasn't looking, and vandals aren't covered under warranty, and that will be $800 please, and go fuck yourself, I'm buying a Mac. Regardless I have no idea where the detachable floppy component disappeared to, so really the point of this paragraph was to let you know I have trouble throwing away things that hold no value.

I called my parents to see if they could find a printed version of the story in their Montana attic, in the boxes where I store cassette tapes like Judas Priest's British Steel and Cinderella's Night Songs and maybe also a Rodney Dangerfield comedy album with a rap song on it. No such luck, though they did find a copy of the fiction novel I'd written around the same time. I told them to burn it, so they wouldn't remember how close I'd come to having to live in that attic.

Then I rang up my buddy Cole, who, with grudging good humor, has stored a few boxes of my junk since I moved to New York 10 years ago. This likely did more harm than good: he found no tragically unpublished works of nonfiction, but was reminded that, after 10 years, maybe I could store my own fucking boxes.

Finally I asked our company's tech officer, Mark, if he had access to a floppy drive. He laughed and asked if I needed a 3.5" or a 5 1/4". When two things become equally useless, the degree of their archaism becomes irrelevant. And hilarious! To tech people.

Funny thing is, Mark does have a floppy drive, hooked up to this massive screen whose displays look like they belong back in 1986, when interfaces looked less ludicrous than they did in WarGames, but still, pretty ludicrous. Comically, my floppy disc was so old, the floppy drive couldn't read it without inputting long-forgotten special codes (like tech Sanskrit). Mark walked over to a table used mainly by junior employees and interns and pulled a thick manual out from under the desktop monitor its main job had been to support. Apparently the book was ancient (possibly as old as eight years, gasp), and Mark caught a lot of shit for even bothering to keep it around.

Old as it was, it still did not contain the required information. Mark told me to leave the floppies with him, and he'd see if Mike could pull it off. I'm almost certain Mike is 12 years old -- too young to remember codes whose utility expired when he was, like, zero. Maybe he eagerly soaked up outmoded programming commands the same way young British dudes soaked up old American blues in the 50s and 60s, but why would anybody do that?

Mike did that. I don't know why, but at some point he had absorbed the right information, and so was able to retrieve this terrible, terrible manuscript. But dig underneath the terrible treatment, and the story itself was good. Hopefully now I can retrieve it.

Tommy Rockstar

Kerry Collins' Greatest Country Hits

So Al Michaels or possibly Chris Collinsworth just said Kerry Collins had been sitting on a front porch in Nashville writing country songs when he got the call from the Colts. Since he's too busy for all that now -- and because my buddy Skinny told me I probably needed to -- I took the liberty of writing one for him during the 2nd quarter of the Steelers game.

"Back When I Was Drinking" 

I have been to Super Bowls

Okay, just one Super Bowl

But my career was laudable

You can't say otherwise

I could throw 50 percent

And they'd call me dependable

I guess I was defendable

They figured I was wise

But now...

I got

Receivers blocking linemen

And the turf pounding my brain

Back when I was drinking

I was in a lot less pain

How bad could they really be

They all play professionally

It's not like Peyton played on D

We'll at least be mediocre

Jesus Christ this running game

Is redefining the word lame

Could we just call up old Edge James

Or possibly Al Roker?

I got

Receivers blocking linemen

And the turf pounding my brain

Back when I was drinking

I was in a lot less pain

From Ray Caruth to Kenny Britt

It's not like I give a shit

Which targets my passes hit

Can't we get something going?

I swear to god my beard was brown

Three weeks ago when I hit town

Clinton didn't age this fast

After Oval Office blowing

I got

Receivers blocking linemen

And the turf pounding my brain

Back when I was drinking

I was in a lot less pain

Country didn't hit this hard

Can we get some blocking from these guards

And I don't think that Dallas Clark

Is built like Brandon Manumaleuna

I thought I would be a stop-gap

Now it's a 16-game trap

I didn't sign up for this crap

Painter, learn this offense soon-a

I got

Receivers blocking linemen

And the turf pounding my brain

Back when I was drinking

I was in a lot less pain

Lone Star(s)

Who Wants to Sex Mutombo?

The Mavs' playoff success has put me in a very erotic mood, so erotic, I wrote a song about the most awesomely sexy moment in basketball history. I can't play guitar, and my voice is only as big as JJ Barea, so the real question is: are there any musicians out there who actually want to perform this motherfucker?






"Who Wants To Sex Mutombo?"

When I walk into bars
I don't beat around the bush
In Georgetown or Kinshasa
They know it's time for tush

So be the first to answer
This all-important question
And you'll come back to my place
For a 48-minute session

Who wants to sex Mutombo
Tonight!

I average seven cockblocks
Every single night
Swatting balls into the stands
To the crowd's delight

All my competition
Flops down to the floor
Don't they know that Euro game
Won't work here anymore

Who wants to sex Mutombo
Tonight!

George W once praised me
For my humanitarian organizations
My B-ball's Without Borders
So's my sensual imagination

Before you climb my love ladder
Of many many rungs
I'll give you oral pleasure
In at least nine different tongues

English, French, and Portuguese
Spanish and Tshiluba
Will blow across you gently
As I play you like a tuba

Who wants to sex Mutombo
Tonight!

BRIDGE:

Watch
My Rocket take off
Fly like a Hawk
Til it hits the Net
Position
Seven Six
Is how I get my kicks
I also played for the Knicks

Hey girl, do you want to play “Honorary Doctorate”?

SOME GUITAR SHIT GOES HERE!


When I wag my finger
It doesn't mean rejection
It signals that before I dunk
I must put on protection

And when I've blown my Nuggets
I'll collapse with joy
You have made Dikembe
A very happy boy

Who wants to sex Mutombo
I wanna sex Mutombo
Who wants to sex Mutombo
We all wanna sex Mutombo
Who wants to sex Mutombo
Tonight!

A Sheen Recap as Long as Straw

The following takes place between 7:45 and 9:30. Events occur in real time. Except Charlie Sheen being in Young Guns with Kiefer Sutherland, which occurred for a few minutes in 1988. Audiences were shocked when Sheen got gunned down within the first half hour. 

My friend Jake got free tickets for Sunday night's Charlie Sheen Radio City show. Jake's buddy's a scalper, and like all NYC scalpers apparently did, he scooped up Sheen early, then got screwed when Stub Hub started selling well below face value -- which in our case would've been $109 + a $19 Ticketmaster service charge. I ask our South Asian cab driver if he'd pay $126 for a ticket; he says he wouldn't pay 26 cents. He certainly knows a lot about Charlie Sheen though. He also asks if we knew that a cobra had escaped from the Bronx Zoo.

There's exactly one protestor outside Radio City, a schlubby bearded guy holding up an UnfollowCharlie.com sign and wearing a t-shirt bearing the same. I ask what's up with that. He says he's protesting Charlie Sheen making money off doing things like shooting Kelly Preston in the arm. Fair enough. Jake asks if he has a personal connection to domestic violence issues. "I'm three girlfriends removed," he says. I have no idea what that means, other than that this guy has problems holding down girlfriends.

There are PIX 11 cameramen everywhere -- they have a huge vested interest in 2.5 Men reruns proving more popular than new episodes starring Maybe Rob Lowe, a far more wholesome guy who once banged a 16-year-old on camera.

Now onto the show:

The spectacle kicks off with a totally random movie montage, with the Theme from Jaws bleeding into a live guitarist ripping punk-metal as scenes flash from Jaws, Taxi Driver, Animal House, Apocalypse Now, and more films starring guys who actually professed to care about acting. Also, Platoon. Also also, there are some boxing clips -- I think Ali, though Tyson would make more sense, or maybe Prince Naseem.

Next a co-host I'm betting was formerly the asshole half of some New Jersey nightclub's self-produced version of The Man Show ("The Guy Thing, Tuesdays at Ricky Slims!") comes out to introduce Sheen ring-announcer style as the man who once starred in a lightly regarded movie called Cadence marches up the aisle without any.

Sheen hugs the dude, then tells the crowd he's turning around the speech monitors because this show is about something more organic, as opposed to Friday night, which he said went to crap because it was too scripted and he'd forgotten that what this was really about was him bonding with the audience through tiger blood, Adonis DNA, etc. Actually having monitors onstage just so they can be turned around doesn't seem scripted at all. Also, Sheen is wearing the Arms-Crossed John Lennon shirt, even though you'd think he'd be a Stones guy.

Sheen's first official show-has-actually-started act is recognizing an Asian woman in a tight Goddess #3 shirt standing up in Row 5 or so. She wants to be officially inducted into his pantheon. Sheen invites her onstage, then brings out Goddesses 1 and 2. They hug the would-be #3 with not nearly enough lesbian energy, and the co-host says something about this looking like a Benetton ad, even though I'm pretty sure #s 1 and 2 are caucasian, and anyway Benetton regulations require at least one woman to be a hot Ethiopian. Sheen asks the audience whether they think #3 has the goods. Half cheer, but the louder half boos, which is weird because she's actually attractive and their booing is pretty much cockblocking Charlie Sheen. For whatever reason he goes with the audience and politely denies her application.

Then the co-host, who not that it really matters is probably Simon Rex, asks Sheen why he calls himself a Warlock. Sheen says it's because he's been at war since he was born, and also because he'll lock you out, and lock himself in. In what's to become a recurring audience-participation theme he asks if there are any warlocks in the crowd. Apparently there are a few, though none are impeccably spoken Englishmen named Julian Sands.

Sheen goes off on people calling him bipolar, asking "What the fuck is bipolar?" as if the whole notion was bullshit because it didn't apply to him. Somewhere Tom Cruise is smiling. Probably somewhere bipolar, and expensive. Sheen declares that the experts have misdiagnosed him, and that he is in fact "bi-winning" -- that'll teach psychiatrists to abandon their ethics by taking money to diagnose people who aren't actually their patients. Or not.

Sheen asks if there's a psychiatrist in the crowd who can come onstage and explain this bipolar thing. There isn't. Then he asks if there's any kind of doctor at all, totally disrespecting psychologists. Some fat sloppy guy volunteers. Turns out he's not an MD but instead a "doctor of life", and his expertise lies mainly in his first wife telling him that he was bipolar, and then I guess divorcing him. He's kind of a retarded-pauper's Lewis Black, and is clearly drunk. Nobody likes him much, and Sheen kicks him offstage. Then Sheen brings up the possibility of calling Dr. Drew. The crowd starts chanting "Fuck Dr. Drew! Fuck Dr. Drew!" Sheen agrees, because why should he take his valuable time to boost Dr. Drew's ratings, even though he kind of just has, because half of this crowd probably had no idea Dr. Drew was still alive. (Warning: the following picture is completely without context.)

The Cohost Who Is Probably Simon Rex asks Sheen about his tattoos, particularly one over his heart reading "Death from Above". Sheen takes off his shirt. Fucker's still pretty ripped. He flashes his "Death from Above" tat without explaining it (or why there's either an apple or tomato underneath it), then shows off the "Winning" tattoo on his wrist. Then with much fanfare he throws on an FDNY shirt, salutes the heroes that the acronym stands for, and makes a crack about how ironic it is that he's currently smoking. Steven Seagal might be Above the Law, but Charlie Sheen is Above the Municipal Ban, and that's winning.

Cohost makes a crack about having a "Tying" tattoo on his ankle. It's the closest thing to an actual joke we'll hear tonight. The audience lightly boos him for attempting to mooch off Sheen's 60-90 minutes of fame.

Cohost pulls out a laminated printout containing Sheen's 20 best quotes, which is kind of hypocritical in that it defies the unscripted thing, but hey, that's what spontaneity is all about. The first quote is something or other about still being alive. Cohost flatteringly says it sounds like something Ozzy would say. Sheen says yeah, but unlike Ozzy, he can still talk. Sheen suggests Ozzy shut up and just sing, an egregious example of Disrespecting Your Elders Who've Been Living Completely Unrestrained By Any Societal Mores Since 1969, When You Were Only Like Two Years Old Or Something. Then Cohost brings up a quote about Sheen proclaiming himself an F-18, which apparently shoot and bomb shit into oblivion. Sheen says "What do you want me to say, that I'm a Cesna?", even though that's probably the plane he'll buy/rent with the money he's earning off this tour, unless the Armed Services give him an F-18 to help with recruiting (why not -- it's no worse than them commissioning a song from 3 Doors Down).

And speaking of the Army and Sheen's "magic brain" and the poetry running through his fingers: Darryl Strawberry is in the audience, wearing combat fatigues. Sheen gets him to stand up. The audience cheers "We want Dar-yl!" Then Sheen calls out James Lipton. Everybody cheers, until Sheen invites Lipton onstage, at which point they start chanting "We want Dar-yl!" again.

It takes Lipton a very long time to get onstage. Sheen applauds him for taking the stairs like a gentleman, but Lipton clearly has choice in the matter. Sheen hugs him, and Lipton talks about how Sheen's Actor's Studio episode was the best Lipton had ever hosted. Sheen invites Lipton to ask him one question. Lipton tells the audience "You already know what I'm going to ask!" Then he asks Sheen "What is your favorite curse word?"

Sheen says "It's either fuck, or Denise!" The crowd gets a hoot out of this. So does Lipton. This might prompt The New School to ask him a few probing questions. Then again, The New School's all about freedom, man. Lipton just-as-slowly exits the stage. The crowd chants for Darryl again. Sheen pulls him up. Darryl hugs Sheen. Sheen invites Darryl to ask one question. Daryl asks "LA, or New York?"

Sheen says, "Of course I'm going to say the Yankees". Not the Mets. Clearly Sheen doesn't care about Winning when it happens in Queens.

Next, Sheen and Cohost do a bit where Cohost asks Sheen a question as they run at and past each other from opposite sides of the stage. The question is "How many women are you going to sleep with tonight, one or two?" I think Sheen answers two, but it's not clear he's got the stamina for one: he's wheezing from the effort, and the sprinterview format is immediately dropped.

Sheen tells either a story or an allegory or a storegory called 7 Grams, about having too big a crack rock for his small pipe. The solution: get a bigger pipe.

Sheen announces that he's going to play his reedited 20/20 YouTube, and that anyone who's already seen it (on YouTube) can use this time to take a piss. I'm pretty sure I have food poisoning, so I run out as fast as you can run when you think you might have food poisoning. After that's over with, I get in line for more insanely priced beers. There's a girl in line showing off her "Winning Boobs" and the Winning necklace that dangles between them. I ask if I can take her picture from the neck down so's to retain her anonymity. She says "What, you don't like my Winning smile?" What a girl -- here's hoping she gets elected to Godesshood, and doesn't catch cold.

On the way back in, I see some guy in a suit jacket walk up to a group of his buddies, one of whom says, "Oh, man, you wore a suit jacket, that is awesome!" Truly.

Back inside it's questions-from-the-audience time. The first girl asks if Sheen remembers spilling a drink on her in 1997. She has a picture to prove it. Hopefully for her blouse Sheen was abusing vodka tonics back then. Another guy asks how much money Sheen will make tonight, and if he can have some of it. Sheen gives him $100. For whatever reason Sheen chooses this time to apologize to Jon Cryer for calling him a troll. He calls Cryer a rock star, just not a rock star from Mars like Sheen is.

Then Sheen asks the audience if they like Two and a Half Men. They cheer wildly (and they say that show's ratings depend entirely on the Midwest). He tells them he didn't quit, he got fired, and that him returning to the air boils down to a very simple proposition: "If they rehire me, I will go back". Everybody boos the show for not having hired him back already. Those few in the crowd who know who Chuck Lorre is start chanting "Lorre sucks!" Sheen partially defends Lorre, saying he's a good writer. Then he asks the crowd how he should apologize to Lorre, noting that he traditionally begins apologies "Fuck you".

An older woman stands up and warbles "You should say 'Let me live my life!'" Sheen salutes her brilliance. Someone else -- according to my friends a little person, which makes sense, because I can't actually see him -- says "You should say 'Fuck you, I'll do what I want!'" Sheen laughs and says he admires his passion. Some other dude says "Tell 'em, 'Give me more money!'". Sheen asks "Does that work at your job?" Some creepy guy in a ponytail says Sheen should start with "Maybe your wife and children aren't that ugly." Sheen looks confused, probably because the guy in the ponytail isn't Julian Sands. "You know, for Lorre," says the guy. Creepy Ponytail Guy is booed roundly for overstepping his bounds -- kind of like when you're at a party, and there's a guy there you don't know talking about a fight he's having with his longtime girlfriend, and you volunteer "You're all good, man, that girl's a total whore."

Almost done, but a few more questions: a busty woman asks "Do you remember how much fun we had in the jungle? In the Philippine jungle?" Sheen says "I guess so?" but clearly this woman either has a very particular imagination, or Sheen was Bali high the whole time he knew her.

Creepy Ponytail Guy gets up again to ask what the difference is between sex sober and sex on cocaine. Sheen says "Now, I am the cocaine."

The show closes with a video of Snoop Dogg doing a song about Winning, though until Sheen goes batshit enough to actually rap with Snoop Dogg the victory will be incomplete.

In the cab, "Neon Bodoe" from The Kingsbury Factor tells about the Masters party he was at earlier, where a much-older guy who still loved smoking grass said that he used to own a bar in Tribeca where all the 80s Mets would hang out. Apparently Kevin Elster was the craziest, and Darryl Strawberry had a dick as big as Kevin Elster's forearm.

Is it too late to nominate "Darryl Strawberry's Penis" as the Winning name for the Bronx Zoo cobra?

That's Gold, Lindros. Gold!

Those glasses belong to a girl whose closest friends call her "The Golden Vagina", because she's dated or otherwise slept with numerous men who weren't players at the time but who went on to great success, including a very big television writer, a Golden Globe and Oscar nominee who apparently used to drive a sweet Camaro, and a guy who directed a big-budget action flick that ended up bombing ("I got him his shot, I'm not responsible for what happens after that").

She also had some level of sub-intercourse relations with Eric Lindros after meeting him in a Philly bar called The Black Banana. Before hopping in his Mercedes SLK she told him "this is just like my dad's car!", then wrote "!PLEH" in the back-window fog because she thought it was funny. Even though his P didn't enter the GV, he made his first trip to the Stanley Cup Finals the next year.

On the other hand: she dated the guy from Dog's Eye View who sang that song "Everything Falls Apart". The song was already a hit by then, and obviously no hits followed it, which prompted me to say there should have been a commercial advising the dude "There has never been a worse time to buy gold".

After hearing this tale of magical genitalia and sweet cars, our friend Matt could think of nothing to say but "I drive a Hyundai Santa Fe. It's Fudge-colored, but they call it Espresso." He used to drive a BMW -- draw your own conclusions.

Please Don't Tell Anyone I'm a Virgin

Drank at the PDT bar last night with a friend who works for Karlsson's Gold Vodka, which is interesting stuff because it's only filtered once, and's made with 7 different varieties of "virgin" potato (so young the skin hasn't yet developed) grown by farmers who were doomed to lose their land to encroaching golf courses until Karlsson's came along. Obviously, "virgin potatoes" is fodder for some great advertising tag-lines, so I promised my friend I'd come up with 20. Here goes.

1) Spuds not Sluts!
2) Our potatoes are virgins. Your cocktails won't be.
3) We sacrifice virgins, not taste.
4) No skin, no sin. Karlsson's Gold, with real virgin potatoes.
5) Our potatoes are virgins. And not just in the Italian way.
6) Try Karlsson's Gold, made with virgin potatoes. Because vodka made with slutty potatoes will have sex in the shower with your asshole friend while you're passed out on a twin hotel bed after an out-of-town frat party.
7) Our potatoes: like a virgin, fermented for the very first time.
8) Our virgins have never touched a tuber-snake.
9) Virgin potatoes: no matter how much vodka you give them, you'll never get into their plants.
10) Help Our Vodka Lose Its V: try Karlsson's Gold, made with real virgin potatoes.
11) Karlsson's Gold: Just because our potatoes are virgins doesn't mean we support abstinence.
12) Karlsson's Gold. Made with virgin potatoes, so when a dragon's threatening to burn down your village, you can just hand him our vodka. Or hand him your girlfriend, and keep the vodka.
13) Worth the Wait: Karlsson's Gold, made with real virgin potatoes.
14) You Know You Want It: Karlsson's Gold, made with real virgin potatoes.
15) Looking for a vodka you can't get pregnant? Karlsson's Gold: made with real virgin potatoes.
16) Okay, so apparently virgin potatoes can get pregnant. But that's okay, because you will definitely want to marry Karlsson's Gold.
17) Karlsson's Gold: our potatoes are virgins, but our master distiller has plenty of experience.
18) Vodka that feels like the first time: Karlsson's Gold, made with real virgin potatoes.
19) Karlsson's Gold: Our potatoes might be virgins, but they have watched a lot of late-night cable television.
20) Karlsson's Gold: because why would you want potatoes that had sex with some guy with a giant root?

I Am A Phoenix War Eagle Tiger

True story from watching last night's BCS Championship Game between Auburn and Oregon:

My buddy Dan's lady friend is from Mississippi, but her family are such die-hard Auburn fans they practically bleed whatever color either tigers or war eagles or both bleed. During the game, she at various times screamed, yelled, jumped up on the table, clasped hands in prayer with whoever was nearest, and generally served as the bane of the next table's existence, a bunch of jackholes who tried and pathetically failed to tl'ask (to tell someone they're going to do something while putting on the pretense of asking them) us to have the bartender turn the sound off**.

So, the girl's 85-year-old grandfather is a retired minister. And somebody died, and asked him to speak at the service, which totally pissed off her grandmother, who she talked to periodically during the game, and who said, "Who schedules a service during the national championship game?" Which is totally true -- unless you're Jewish and have no time flexibility, it's a dick move.


So after the game's over, the girl talks to her grandmother again. A lifelong small-town enemy of hers had actually walked up to her during the service and, knowing she'd probably put someone else in a coffin to be home watching her Tiger War Eagles march to victory, said "Quack, quack". And made a little Oregon sign with her old hands.


Apparently funerals for the elderly are quite the social occasion for the still-living elderly, since by that age you're pretty used to people dropping off and're just happy to see who's left -- so the casual chitchat wasn't offensive. But using the occasion to hurt her in the cruelest way possible? You don't have to be a University of Phoenix graduate to know that lady's going to hell.



*As if they could have heard music over their discussions of Battlestar Galactica and "stupid football commercials" that actually appear during other programming including Battlestar Galactica.
**As if "you can still watch the game, but I don't have to listen to this stuff" is a good argument when you're 1) in a bar whose many giant TVs make it painfully obvious who's in the right during any major sporting event 2) completely discountingthe additional enjoyment crowd noise and announcer drone provides sports fans 3) a dick. Fuck you, jackholes. Hope you enjoyed the vocal stylings of HerbsBurger.

Moms I'd Like to Watch Baylor Football With

Started Wednesday night at The Windsor, where me and two TX friends were the lone table more interested in watching the Baylor-Illinois “Texas Bowl” than the Georgetown-Notre Dame basketball game – after fending off a few prep-tastic would-be channel-changers, I said “Those guys can Choate on my cock”. I wish I'd thought of that before they switched tables, though with my luck, they probably went to Exeter.

Except my luck last night was fantastic: I laid down a $200 bet on Oklahoma State -4.5 vs Arizona and ended up winning the shit out of it.



Then on the way to the oddly imposing urinal, two also-preppy Devils fans at the bar asked if I was friends with “Jordan”, who I found out later was the manager. I said no, I was just a man out to watch some exciting Baylor University football, a program built entirely on recruiters telling Baptist moms their sons would go to hell if they attended the University of Texas. For some reason they thought I was cool, or at least “remember that dude we met last night? holy shit!” cool.

Probably because they were high. On the ecstasy. “I share everything, except my pills!” said the louder one (the other one was so quiet I had to ask if he was rolling too, or just babysitting – his tiny terrorist fist bump affirmed that, yes, he was rolling too). Pretty quickly he was offering me his girlfriend. Her not being around, he quickly threw his steak into the deal. “Have my steak, cool guy!” he screamed. “If you don't eat your steak, how can you have any pudding? How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your steak!”

He had a point, and a bad English accent. I cut off a big bite of his steak. Then came the pudding: when they decided I needed to take four shots of Jack, one after the other. The bartender asked what I wanted to do, in a tone that said that while there was shame in turning down a shot, there was none in turning down four. But really, there's more shame in it – you're not just turning down momentary fraternity, you're turning down a story that'll last a lifetime. Or at least a week.

“Fuck it, I want these guys to remember me tomorrow”. I took the four. When I left them, the loud one was on his knees, enraptured by the shoe size of a guy who'd played football at SUNY Buffalo. "Look at how big! These feet were all-conference at CUNY Buffalo!" The big fellow was not happy with the mispronunciation.

Within 30 minutes I was at the new Hog Pit, drinking Wild Turkey and belting out a song I'd just made up to Ibar (short for Ibarguengoitia), a guy who once drunkenly punched me in the gut for flirting with a married woman I'd already half-truthfully told him I had no intention of actually trying to sleep with. “Flirting's where it starts!” he'd yelled as I'd tried really hard not to throw up.

Fittingly, the new song was about a guy telling his friend not to cockblock his own mom.

“I know
You want to drive her home
Like any good son would
But she's feeling the love, so don't get in the way...
Your mom wants to stay!”

Yesterday I smuggled a flask of vodka into Tron. Needless to say, I didn't even have the heart to drink it.

Big Sky Country

Just got back from visiting the family in Montana, where I learned:

Peacocks will not necessarily die if you take them out of their natural environment and dump them in the snow. These here can often be seen hanging out on the front porch of a house five minutes away from my parents':

Kids don't care how idyllically placed a concrete embankment is. They will graffiti it.

Five years and 20lbs after the last time you skied, it is still possible to descend the mountain without dying like a peacock in the snow should but doesn't, provided you stick to blues, and spend $60 on the latest boot-insert technology for your now-flatter feet.

Farms tend to amass huge collections of vintage automobiles, though the farmers probably don't call them “vintage”. Spent an hour roaming a lot full of these cars, which the proprietor hauls away after one farm purchases another and want to be rid of the rusting treasures they've inherited. Saw everything from a custom mini '57 Chevy, to a (Dali-esque?) battered metal tricycle resting atop a 50-year-old pickup, to an old sedan artists frequently stop by to render because its patina evokes an oil painting. The lot's affably conspiratorial owner was as open to showing me around as he was to expounding on the general goodness/rightness of expansive interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. When discussing impending state laws allowing for unlicensed concealing & carrying, the filing off of serial numbers, etc, he periodically snicker-laughed like Mumbly the Dog from the Laff-A-Lympics.

My dad recorded an album of classic country parodies – most dealing with the theme of being a big-city transplant in cowboy country – in the tradition of Tom Lehrer, the original Weird Al Yankovic, except not overtly weird, other than also being a math savant (except not savant, because he did other things well, like song parodies). Over the past few years my dad's been performing these songs a capella at Cowboy Poetry gatherings. At the urging of people including actual cowboys, he went into the studio with one half of the local folk duo Storyhill, and came out with a 16-song disc, complete with cover art featuring two hulking dudes from his gym. If you purchase this album at digstation.com, it will help my dad pay for my boot-insert technology.

The Needle and the Healing Done. Titicaca!

Saw two coffeeshop friends at Mud on 9th. Chad's a longtime EV personal trainer (from martial arts to making clients do high-school-style bear crawls across the Tompkins Square Park hoops court) and actor (he sold Nate's dad the fake passport in the Gossip Girl Season 1 finale). He's also the only guy I know who'll put a foot through your throat, then go home and feed his two cats. Since last I saw him, he moved uptown and enrolled in acupuncture school -- after twenty years teaching people to tear other people apart, he says wants to learn to put people back together. It also doesn't hurt that all but three students in his acu class are women.

Also discovered that Jeff, a screenwriter & USC grad, wrote for Beavis and Butthead in the glory days. He's lucky he didn't know me back then. I actually yelled at the TV when "Home Sweet Home" lost the top Countdown spot after, like, 16 weeks. I would have ruined his life with dialog suggestions.

These cookies were just brought in by a girl who really is hitting on a guy here with baked goods. I don't know if it's going to work on the dude she's after, but if my heart were a bunghole, cookies would be the TP.

Wang Dang Sweet Matt Barnes

Went to the Iron Bowl with my brother in law over Thanksgiving. Alabama fans have a lot of cre-hate-ivity.

Upon my return, attended an event at the Maserati dealership for Matt Barnes' charitable foundation. Barnes, who's around 400x better spoken than most NBA defensive stoppers, lost his mom to cancer, and's now funding prescreening for people who can't afford insurance. Met a lovely white lady named “Dove” who works as a hip-hop writer/talent agent/content producer, and who started out as a rapper in Seattle in the early 90s, when she also went by “Dove”.

Later hit an apartment party on 48th and 10th, where these designer housecleaning tools made a majestic appearance. Met a guy whose stepmom used to run a hotel in Tampa/St. Pete. During the mid-90s, she booked a then-desperate Hall & Oates, and actually met her now-husband (this guy's dad) at the show – and the guy's sister also met her husband at the same show.

In “Wango Tango”, Ted Nugent advised men to pretend their face was a Maserati in need of a garage/vagina. It's uncertain how many loving relationships were sparked during performances of this song, but probably fewer than there were white female Pacific Northwest rappers in the early 90s.

Method of Modern Loving the Lord

Saw Hall & Oates last night at the Beacon, a really nice place for musicians to die. The show was actually great, and the backup band was tight -- the groove they laid down made me feel like I was floating over a field of happily flaccid dicks. But H&O also gave the backups room to shine: the sax guy, "Mr. Casual" -- big like Clarence Clemons, white like that guy who played the Area 51 scientist in Independence Day, old-school-purple-suited like a 1960s version of Prince -- spent as much time near the edge of the stage as the guitarist, a relaxed shredder who took every solo, leaving Oates with around 14 seconds of legit tearing-it-up time. The percussionist, who never stopped gyrating the whole show, was allowed to belt out Hall-shaming harmonies on "I Can't Go for That"; if a song was ever written about him, it would contain the line "He played his bongos with his tambourine". Also, at one point Hall tried to convince the audience to watch his New Year's show on TBS by saying "instead of watching the ball drop, you can watch my balls drop." Oates said "I'd like to be there for that." Really, he did.


The set list was all-hit, with only one post-'82 song ("Say it Isn't So", from Big Bam Boom, a smash album I distinctly remember a Dallas Times Herald critic arguing would end up being totally forgotten -- he was right, though the Times Herald suffered the same fate). Except: for their second encore, they played three Christmas songs: a version of "A Midnight Clear" that apparently contained some "obscure" verses, a number written by Robbie Robertson with the refrain "son of a carpenter..." (not nearly as catchy as "Private Eyes", the song everyone assumed they'd end on, since they hadn't played it, and they couldn't possibly finish up with another Xmas tune?), and the finale, "Jingle Bell Rock", which they've actually been doing at least since they recorded that goofy-ass video for it in the early 80s.

The random psychopath sitting next to us had literally said nothing but  "This is great, this is great, this is great" all night. He said it again, in triplicate, then left during the first Xmas number. My friend Brian, who was good enough to have gotten the tickets, said "I was expecting around 20% less Jesus".


And here's why I wasn't (explanation after the impressive picture gallery):

That was from two days before. I was walking through the East Village listening to the new LCD Soundsystem and successfully convincing myself I was post-ironic when I ran into a friend-of-a-friend. Then someone who turned out to be a close relative of an actress you've heard of walked up to us on the sidewalk and said "Hey, can I show you something?" The friend-of-a-friend quickly introduced me to the new guy, then said "I gotta run" and literally bolted, like he knew what was coming. The new guy proceeded to tell me the entire story of Jesus via this holy-rolling Rubix Cube.


So yeah, lately, I've been expecting 20% more Jesus.

Condensed Milk and Honies

Dan turned 40 last night. The party was at Mekong. This is a Vietnamese coffee with vodka in it. There was a bar in Dallas called the Thin Room; their house drink was Thai coffee & vodka. I was trying to recreate the magic, since to my racially insensitive mouth there's no difference between those coffees. My friend Thomas claims I'm making the Thin Room thing up, because he went there all the time, and never had a Thai Coffee; but that would mean I'm creative enough to invent a Thai/Vietnamese coffee & vodka cocktail, which he also probably wouldn't admit.

Dan and a bunch of folks camp every year at Hither Hills. I always have an excuse. Dean's girlfriend says her family used to camp all the time. When she was really young, a watersnake slithered into their area. Her dad was also young, and didn't know what to do, so decided he had to protect his family and kill the snake, by pinning it with a forked stick and chopping off its head. But he was also a hippie, which somehow meant that he also had to skin the snake. Except the snake was pregnant, and skinning it exposed a gut full of babies. Her dad released the babies into the water.

My dad once mistook an escaped gerbil for a rat. He wasn't wearing his glasses, and we did have rat problems (old house, messy neighbor), and so as it ran across his foot while he sat on the john naked, he just thought, damn, that's a rat. He killed it with a cane my mom had been using after a back injury, then had to buy a replacement when he looked in my brother's gerbil cage and saw two where there had been three. But the pet store gave him a female instead of a male, so soon there were a dozen where there had been two -- hilarious, because before some kid left them with us for what he thought was the weekend (his family didn't tell him they were moving away forever), there were approximately zero.

I also met a guy from India last night. Good guy. Lives in Jersey, commutes into NYC. He grew up wealthy, so when he first came to America, he wanted to experience the menial work he'd never had to do. Someone convinced him Oklahoma was just like Mumbai. He went there and for three months worked in a convenience mart next to a strip club. He laid on a thicker Indian accent than his real one when giving the strippers free cigarettes (“Just for you, lovely”), and says this actually worked. It makes me want to go to Mumbai.

Even Thomas admitted that Thai/Vietnamese coffee & vodka is delicious.

Con-genital Defects

At Lorelei Friday afternoon, drinking goodby to a departing coworker, when the talk turns to pheromones, the naturally produced chemicals that allegedly make you irresistable to the opposite sex, prompting shady supplement companies to market them despite their already being naturally produced.

Apparently, one of my coworker's former roommates used to rub his balls in his hands, then rub his hands all over his face. Because he thought that smell wafting off his balls was pheromonal. And that women would be primally attracted to it. But how would he react if his ploy did attract a woman, and her face smelled like vagina?

"The Class of 1990" -- That's Actually a Sweet Double Entendre

Just got back from my 20th high school reunion. Some high points from the weekend:

The day before I left, my sometimes coworker Nick popped by the office after renewing his passport in Soho. For whatever reason, the officers there frisked him, and found a tiny knife he uses as a bartender's tool – legal to carry, but still, not a big hit with the government employees. “That's strike one,” they said, even though he wouldn't be boarding a plane for a month. When they saw his miniature-pistol belt buckle, they got even angrier – “That's strike two.”

I was not frisked upon renewing my passport, even though I was sporting a year-in-the-making terrorist beard. Flying to Dallas Thursday, the TSA agent stared at my pic in disbelief, but only because the beard had been a bad idea. “You look much better without it”, she advised, without raising the alert level to...orange? Nick's hair is pretty much orange; if he's any kind of terrorist, it's IRA. So much for ethnic profiling.

I read most of a GQ on the way down. Did you know that Sly Stallone has tattoos now? Did you know that Sly Stallone didn't have tattoos when his shirtless torso captured America's heart in the 70s, 80s, and kind of 90s? I think this one is of his wife though. It's fine to get a late-life tattoo to commemorate/honor something, so long as you're not just doing it to stay relevant in your post-Judge Dredd years.

Touching down in Dallas, I learned that a close friend and his wife also got tattoos, Roman numerals commemorating the date of their marriage – except the artist screwed up and inked the wrong numerals. Fortunately they caught the mistake; had it been Chinese numerals, no one would ever have known. Except the Chinese.

Great story told the first night over pork chops and grilled okra: another old friend (25 years of shenanigans) got a call from Washington state, from his old work colleague's husband, who he was never all that close with. “I heard you've been killing hogs with machine guns. That's just not right, man. I'm afraid I'm going to have to call the ATF.” My friend reminded the guy that in Texas, hogs are a destructive force of nature, and it's legal to kill them in whatever manner you prefer, even mowing them down from a helicopter (actually according to this video that might still have to be part of a state-sanctioned eradication program, but you can definitely kill some fucking pigs). Later he called the guy's wife, quickly moving from pleasantries to what-the-fuck. “Yeah, he was really upset about the hogs. He says he's not going to call the ATF anymore, but he does want to talk about what would be a fair amount of money for you guys to give him for not calling them.” Apparently moving to Washington is not the best thing for your sanity.

Nor is staying in Texas: my buddy then related how after the A&M-Arkansas game the week before, our friend's Aggie fraternity brother yelled “go back home and fuck your cousin!” to a passing carload of Razorbacks. Then a post-college friend ran after the car and menaced its passengers with a folding chair. Then my guy grabbed his crotch and asked the Razorbacks, then emerging from the car, if they maybe didn't want to lick his balls. A girl sprinted out of the Arkansas gaggle, and punched another friend in the face. Then out of nowhere an Aggie fan who was friends with nobody ran into the thick of it and started screaming about how he was a Green Beret and he wasn't going to put up with disrespect like that from a bunch of “Woooo...pig-sooie!” rednecks. I think things broke up after that – get to a certain age, and the last person you want on your side is someone who actually knows how to fight, and actually wants to.

The next day we hit the State Fair. Three Shiners and the auto show. No rides. Also convinced some women grimacing over their basket of fried beer pockets to donate a few to us, so we didn't have to buy our own just to say we'd tried it. They looked like little raviolis, and tasted like hot, watery light lager. Sometimes skipping a second corn dog in favor of the annual deep-fried experiment pays off; this wasn't one of those times.

After the Fair, we picked up Mark Baker's drums at his Expo Park studio, threw them in back of my buddy's truck, and hauled them over to the Friday night reunion venue. I hadn't seen Mark Baker in almost 20 years. He now boasts more than a few tattoos, and must have hit a growth spurt late in college. Mark ended up being Ministry's last drummer before they broke up. That night he was reuniting with his first band, the Suburbans, a truly quality high school group whose style could not be described as “industrial metal”.

That night our friend who works for the Cowboys secured us the Official Team Fun Bus. I don't know how much XS Energy Drink and vodka I consumed, but probably a lot. Back outside the bus after eating at Manny's Tex-Mex, this little kid decided we actually were Dallas Cowboys, and started taking pictures of us as we were taking pictures of ourselves. Then he hopped on the bus and took a few shots of the interior. I'm pretty sure he was the only person all night who mistook us for football players, even though we did all play football.

For some semblance of brevity, a few paragraphs from now I'll merge the things I learned Friday night with the things I learned Saturday night, except I will go ahead and mention that Friday 1) I got really drunk and never left the bar area for the main floor, and 2) Gary Fulkerson has become an accomplished singer-songwriter in Bend, Oregon. Says the Bend Bulletin: “Fulkerson’s songs are deep and layered, with understated vocals and sharp acoustic guitar work, plus an edge that’s indicative of Neil Young." I should've moved closer to the stage to listen, but since I was positioned mere feet away from the complimentary beer, I kept on rocking in the free world.

The next day some guys got together on the Barley House deck to drain buckets and watch UT-Nebraska and Rangers-Yankees, plus bonus action from Arkansas-Auburn and SMU-Navy. A guy from the class ahead of us was there, a former o-lineman who ended up at both Navy and SMU, and who's pretty much the best guy any of us know. A lot of the guys he hung out with in high school didn't make their reunion. One of them did friend him on Facebook. Looking at his profile, he learned that his old friend had a 22-year-old kid, kind of disconcerting since they graduated in '89.

Talked with our own team's qb for a while. From 4th grade on, everyone knew he'd end up starting varsity, and back in 4th grade, his temper was too volatile for most kids his age to comprehend, especially on those occasions his teams lost. Which wasn't often: his YMCA squad beat us like 56-6 one year, and almost as bad the next. But then in 6th grade we tied them 6-6 when our linebacker solo-stuffed their running back on a goal-line sweep. My team maintained that the kissing-your-sister result had actually made our future high school field general cry. We, on the other hand, were very proud of the tie – we started off sucking, and this was the apex of our 3-year climb to not-totally-sucking.

I doubt he actually cried. He probably just blurted out some frustration, and our little 6-man squad made the most humbling interpretation possible and ran with it. I do know that we had no idea the kind of pressure he must have been under at the time. Back then, we still played teams like Odessa Permian and Dallas Carter in the playoffs, and even though we seemed impossibly young at that moment of semi-victory, high school was only a few years ahead, and some parents were already plotting how that would play out. My folks were just happy I was playing sports at all, and not getting even fatter watching black & white monster movies on the couch. But given the heat put on by a lot of parents – not to mention coaches, former players, and random neighborhood jackasses – a Friday Night Lights comparison isn't out of order, at least as far as crushing expectations go.

He ended up excelling in five sports, and people still rib him about the “Congratulations to Our 5-Star Athlete” ad taken out in our football program. He handles the ribbing gracefully. These days, he's got two little boys, both of whom he coaches. One's an instinctual athlete – not the fastest or the strongest, he just feels the game, and until you hit the NFL combine (and sometimes even after that) that's all that matters. The other's already a voracious reader, knows everything there is to know about sports, and loves playing, but probably won't end up being one of the great ones. His dad seemed perfectly happy with this, almost serene.

All right, so now, the guy in the kilt: I wasn't there for this part, but on Thursday, a certain member of our class who has apparently “retired” from...nobody's quite sure what, showed up at an informal warm-up happy hour and announced that on Saturday he'd be competing in the Scottish Games to set the world record at hurling some sort of traditional heavy missile, like, 11 feet. Sure enough, he shows up Saturday night rocking a formal black kilt. I asked him if he'd done whatever; he kept walking and over his shoulder affirmed that he had. I asked if he'd set that record, but he never looked back. I would've asked if he was wearing anything under that kilt, because you know what they say about Scotsmen, but honestly, I'm not even sure if he's Scottish.

Did I mention our team name was the Scots? Anyway, this stuff also happened:

Duncan, who I used to cheat off in AP Physics, came out a while back, and's been with the same guy for 18 years. “That's longer than my parents were together”, I said. “Mine too”, he said.

A very drunk individual I haven't seen in years told me “You know __ and his wife are swingers, right? She'll grab your balls and put something in your ass if you're not careful.” I think he was fucking with me, but hopefully he wasn't – not because I want someone's wife to put something in my ass, but because you want your classmates to turn out as diverse as possible. Life's just better that way, and plus when someone says “Your high school was a bunch of boring white people” you can reply “Yeah, boring white people whose wives will put something in your ass.”

Another guy's wife told me he sat on a bulldozer and cried while watching a construction crew tear down his childhood home. Mine was built in 1912 (ancient in Dallas, comparable to Pilgrim cabins up Northeast), and a few years ago was the last old house on the block to get flattened. I would have cried too, if I'd been there to see it. I won't go on and on about the place, but I will say it had a grated floor furnace I used to drop army men into to watch the plastic luminously melt, and that the kid who had my room before we moved in left a small orange Zig-Zag sticker on the middle of three windows, and for some reason I'd assumed the bearded mascot was Shakespeare.

One of my classmates is now the Executive Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. That's a weird card to have in your wallet. I slid it right behind the card I got from this pleasant borderline-elderly guy I met standing outside La Colombe coffee on Lafayette, openly scoping at young girls in that way only 68-year-olds can get away with (“You see those boots? Those boots were made for walking”). He was in advertising, and his company logo was a flying camel. My wallet is this laminated-plastic job depicting a cartoon, ink-spitting octopus set against an aqua sea, a random gift from a friend who once stealthily hung a naked portrait of himself in the MOMA. I guess that NRCC card feels pretty weird too, surrounded by flying camels and octopi.

Best excerpt from the Back By Popular Demand reunion yearbook:
When I grew up, I wanted to be: a child psychologist, specialty in play theory.
Instead I now: pay a psychologist to make me more childlike so I can PLAY a game for a living.
             -- Harrison Frazer, PGA pro

The oddest: in his “Guests at my fantasy dinner would include” response, someone picked the most affably self-destructive guy in our class – doing hash with him could warm your heart the same way eating warm pie with a Rockwellian grandfather could – #1, and Winston Churchill #2. Neither showed up to the reunion.

My football girl still has the t-shirt with my number on it. Apparently it's gotten too soft to throw away. And, one of my teammates who couldn't be there sent the whole team DVDs of some VHS highlights he'd saved. My d-line coach (nickname: “The Tall Cool One”), who once told us “you guys might as well be jacking off behind the backstop!”, is apparently on there bragging about how much I bench-pressed – probably because I was too undersized/chronically injured for him to brag about my play. After I got hurt the last time (ankle – shitty, but better than the back/knee), our junior defensive end slid over to my noseguard spot, and another junior took his spot. Our line got a lot better after that; I think my coach knew it would weeks earlier, and let me start five games anyway. There's a lot of pressure on these coaches too; running a 3-4 defense and not going with your best three so a senior can have his day...well, maybe he wasn't such a son of a bitch after all.

I made it through the entire weekend without anybody forgetting who I was, except one girl who I think had me confused for a guy built sort of like me who ended up going to jail after robbing the same bank for the third time – no gun, just hand-in-pocket, and he was actually successful the first two attempts, but on that third, the police followed him home to his parents' house. I saw him after he got out, working as a host at California Pizza Kitchen. He'd lost 50lbs. I told him he looked great, and he smiled and said, “Well, you know, prison.” My own 50 added pounds have bloated away any resemblance I might have had to the bank robber in his current condition, but I guess this girl hadn't seen him, and had no idea how ripped jail could make a dude.

I was among the last standing at the afterparty on the Common Table's patio. Actually, I was sitting, drinking bourbon and smoking. It's possible a lot of people I won't see for a very long time now think I'm a smoker. At 3am, an hour past Dallas closing, __ wanted the rest of us to keep rolling, to a bar he said served late-night. A few people wavered. One girl was into it, but only if everyone else was. Our class president was very enthusiastic. __, one of he most rockingly charismatic guys in our class and just an all-around good-if-struggling soul, is a bad-ass guitarist who very freely admits he's had problems over the years with drugs you've never tried. Our class president, who looks exactly like Ricky Schroeder (seriously, if Ricky Schroeder was Saddam Hussein, our class president would have been his senior body double), was really excited about keeping the night going. He doesn't do drugs – never did as far as I know – and is happily married, but his wife had headed home around 2am, and he was just energized by all his hard work bringing so many walking memories together.

In the end, we called it an evening – I had a noon flight, and most everyone else had kids who'd be waking them up in a few hours. This seems overly poetic, but as I hopped in my ride's SUV, I really did see __ ambling east into the night, and our class president walking west. To absolutely ruin this poetic ending, I forced my ride to stop by the 24-7 Dickey's Drive-Thru at the Shell station, where I got three breakfast tacos. They were fantastic, but apparently this woman with a pencil-thin mustache makes the best ones, and she wasn't working. But even if things weren't as absolutely perfect as they could've been, it was good to be home. If you're thinking of skipping your reunion because of old resentments or fears or laziness or whatever, quit being such a vagina. You might miss a guy in a kilt.